MrShorty

Hello all,
I joined this forum because I need some advice from believers. I have been a member my whole life and raised up all my kids actively in the church. My oldest two kids left the church as adults because of perceived problems with origins and Joseph Smith. I still have three active adult children and have worked hard to keep a good relationship with all five of my kids including the ones who became "disaffected" and stepped away from the faith. I have recently discovered that one of my adult children is heavily and visibly involved with "anti-Mormon" rhetoric online, having several personal platforms with numerous followers. Unfortunately it appears that they are pretty successful. I'm not sure how to handle this. I know that love is the key, but I'm not sure what love means in this situation or how to apply it correctly or how to maintain a relationship with someone who is vocally and visibly very "anti." This crosses a line that is different than simply "leaving the church." I have already made the decision to never engage with any of the online content, but I need some moral support or suggestions on how to address this in my relationship with this adult child AND as a family matter where several others are in the family that will most probably be negatively impacted by this. (Unfortunately, Satan is very strong.) Also, FYI the content is particularly emotional and victim-y. It doesn't have a lot, if any, accurate doctrinal content or context, is not well-researched, or even logical. I'm not sure why it's so popular except that some ex-Mormons seem to just love to complain about and bash the church. I love the church and I love the Savior and am offended by this child's actions. They are not yet aware that I know what's going on as I stumbled upon it with some nudges from the spirit. I'm trying to determine the best way to navigate this situation and move forward. Any help or perspectives are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

My other big hobby is Dungeons and Dragons.  I've played since about 1977 and still play today.  In fact, the group is playing again tomorrow night.  My group consists of my son (the other is on a mission right now), my best friend from Jr High forward and his son, a couple of former kids in the ward (now adults) and my bishop. Greatest game ever created.
 
I love music too, mostly rock and metal.  Someday I may learn to play guitar. 

I found a good deal on a used Obsession UC 18” scope about 6 years ago.  I should use it more often.  It’s great.  I love the deep space objects. Watching Venus and its phases.  Seen the Cassini division.  Think I saw the big red spot once.
The Aug 21 2017 solar eclipse was awesome.  We drove into Oregon and had a blast.  The bumper to bumper 18 hours drive home sucked though. Hoping to see the Eclipse in Texas on April 8th!

stargazing. I have 6 inch and 12 inch Dobsonian telescopes. When the weather permits, I love to haul them out away from the city lights and see what I can see.

stargazing. I have 6 inch and 12 inch Dobsonian telescopes. When the weather permits, I love to haul them out away from the city lights and see what I can see.

stargazing. I have 6 inch and 12 inch Dobsonian telescopes. When the weather permits, I love to haul them out away from the city lights and see what I can see.

stargazing. I have 6 inch and 12 inch Dobsonian telescopes. When the weather permits, I love to haul them out away from the city lights and see what I can see.

So cool! 

For sports I’m into college baseball, college football, pro baseball, Taekwando and boxing. I’m a second degree black in TKD (still do it, going for third degree in December. I also teach as a side hustle). 

Raising children
I used to do alot of mountain biking, kite flying and boomerangs, but I’m now 55+ and slowing down a bit.  Also I take too much hospital call
Video games on and off Mostly Blizzard stuff.
Coin collection.
I also frequent a single social media site loosely associated with my chruch.  I only do it on my iphone, in my spare time, so I try to keep the posts short.
Football and olympic sports on TV.  Ran track and field in HS & undergrad.
Bit of a foodie as well.  
 

Everyone here knows I’m really into heavy metal music (more an obsession than hobby) but I also collect comic books and I make my own soap. 

You all know that fountain pens constitute a hobby for me, as well as simply being my normal writing instrument.  I also review fountain pen inks for how they look and perform in a Japanese EF nib (this is the finest "extra fine" nib available for stock fountain pens - as opposed to custom) - it's a very under-represented nib size in most ink reviews, making said reviews not very helpful for EF nib users, so I'm trying to fill the gap.  This is my main / biggest hobby.
So, what are yours?  Do you collect Legos?  Do you spend every spare minute out in the garden?  Maybe you play in a band on the weekends.  Whatever - tell us your hobbies.   (Those who have absolutely no hobbies can lurk here for ideas...   )

I like to think I'm open minded (but who doesn't like to think they are open minded?). For me, I think this particular issue falls in line with similar issues like slavery in the Bible or genocide in the Bible where the scripture/prophet(s) claim that God commanded/approved of something and we only have the scripture's/prophet's word that God said or did something. As noted, I would like to think that I am open to the possibility that God said or did things that seem so immoral to me. However, in cases like these, something about the immorality of the practice -- something about how the practice seems so anti-thetical to my understanding of the gospel and goodness and the nature of God and man -- demands a higher burden of proof than the explanation that God did not do what fallible prophets and errant scripture claim of Him.

I think I have mentioned here before that, IMO, Ben Spackman captures the real problem of the priesthood and temple ban in his blog post about slavery in the Bible: https://benspackman.com/2019/11/gospel-doctrine-lesson-40-colossians-and-philippians-but-mostly-philemon/
Spackman writes,
Spackman writes in the context of slavery, but I find the same thing can be said of allegations that God commanded genocide or that God commanded/approved of a race based ban on priesthood ordination and temple ordinances (I think it is important to remember that this wasn't just about who could officiate priesthood ordinances, but also who could receive ordinances that we claim are necessary for exaltation).
Even if I ever find myself convinced that God caused or approved of these "evils," I expect these issues to still end up under the problem of evil umbrella, as we then have to wrestle with the whys and wherefores and such of God who can and does inflict (or allow to be inflicted) practices on His people that seem so contrary to what we believe is right and good and true.
Adding as a hedge against "presentism" or some other "maybe we in the 21st century don't or can't understand God's moral calculus on these things. I think it is pretty solidly accepted in LDS circles that a major purpose of our mortal experience is learning to judge good and evil, right and wrong. IMO, if we are too quick to simply write this sort of thing off as "God's morality is inscrutable to mere mortals," then I think we are failing in some way to pursue our purpose in this life and learning how to judge right and wrong. Perhaps at the end of the day, I can begrudgingly accept that I just don't understand right and wrong the same way God understands right and wrong, but I am going to be uncomfortable with an inscrutable morality until the moment I can stand before God and ask Him to help me understand it.

I can only speak for myself. And I can't say for sure whether this is solidly accepted by others or not. But I can say that in my current view, I don't think this is the purpose of our mortal experience. Rather, I think it's perhaps more of a benefit/blessing than a concrete purpose. And as with all blessings, to some it is given, to some it is not.
But even IF that is one of the major purposes of morality, then the question of HOW still needs to be considered.
It seems like you're suggesting that the how of it is that we need to learn to exercise our own mortal intelligence to figure it out. Therein lies destruction.
The purpose of life is stated as a proving grounds. But the test wasn't stated as "see if they will learn good from evil", but rather to "see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them".
It seems to me that the how of the matter lies therein. We learn good from evil by doing what the Lord commands.
After all, what's inscrutable to one seems plain to another. Believing that anything I find inscrutable is the end-all control for morality is such an arrogant and prideful idea.

As a naive 20 year old I also thought that most people wanted to be thought of as open minded, but now I know better. People don’t want to be open minded, and they don’t care about being thought of that way. Instead, they want constant reassurance of their already held views. 
I pride myself on having friends who I disagree with. I had a two and half hour religious debate yesterday with  a friend on our way to and from a Gators basketball game. 
But I’m guilty of this too of course. 

The Jewish holocaust and the wars currently raging are not the very kingdom of God on earth. The two classifications are not comparable.
I'm sure Brother Reeves is a wonderful man. I bear him no ill will on a personal level. I find his arguments biased and utterly unconvincing. His book reads like that of a man who has made up his mind on the issue and is now looking to justify his position.
True enough, and this is certainly a fallacy. But we're not talking about evils in the world. We're talking about supposed evils within God's restored kingdom—and not just the expected evils of an imperfect membership, but evils of official administration and literally the doctrines taught in the Church for well over a century.
That's a pretty important claim. Such a claim should be established by a lot more than some philosophical armchair reasoning and fault-finding of supposed shortcomings of the early prophets and leaders of this dispensation, disguised as a simple and affectionate recognition of imperfection.
I appreciate your candor. Are you willing to consider that maybe God actually did institute that policy? Are you willing to grant that you do not know the mind of God well enough to base your opinion on what you believe God must think? Are you willing to concede that it's possible that the God who ordered his chosen people in the past to kill men, women, and children, the being who is the master and creator of life and death and who literally gives and takes life as suits his purposes, that same divine man who ordered Abraham to sacrifice his own son Isaac, may very well have good and sufficient reasons to give his Priesthood to whom he will and withhold his Priesthood from others as he sees fit, even if you don't now and probably never will (in this life) fully comprehend the reasons why?
I frankly don't care very much whether or not you agree with me on this. I'll like you either way. In fact, I freely admit I may be wrong. Strange that I have never found those on the other side of the issue willing to say the same about themselves and their opinions, though. They seem to have an urgency to encourage others to adopt their particular views. I don't understand this attitude, and when I perceive it I find it unpalatable.
Other than the fact that it seems distasteful, politically incorrect, and more than a bit embarrassing to you that the Church long had a policy of excluding black men of African descent from holding the Priesthood, do you have any particular and solid reason for doubting the divinity of the policy?
I mean, you can believe what you want, and I won't excoriate you for it. I enjoy our conversations, and don't harbor any ill feelings against you, either for this opinion or for any other that I'm aware of.
But I have had the experience more than just once or twice of being, in effect, taken to task by those who call themselves my brothers because THEY want to preach a version of restored truth that names early prophets of our time as "racist" and claim for themselves supposedly enlightened views on what they call "an erroneous and unfortunate policy". This they have done during Church meetings dedicated to teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Saints. When I have dared to object to the characterization of our prophets and opine the view—taught in the kingdom of God for over 130 years—that the policy was established by God for reasons known to him, they have reacted condescendingly and with barely concealed contempt and have rushed to point out that the long-accepted teaching I espoused is "just an opinion". Funny that, to my recollection, they have never bothered to mention that their own revisionist history is "just an opinion", as well.

I have never understood how people can make this correlation.  There is zero, absolutely zero logic to it.

I believe in God, but I totally understand how someone could lose their faith if they lost loved ones in world war 2. Atheism in Europe is skyrocketing, and if we had two world wars in under 50 years in Kentucky, Utah, and Alabama it would probably skyrocket here too   

In which case, God was tacitly supporting the so-called Priesthood ban by not revoking it, for whatever reasons he had. Thus it was divinely supported, whatever the circumstances of its original implementation.
I know you don't want to go down the rabbit hole, but I find the reasoning you described above completely unconvincing. We belong to a Church that we claim is the Restored Church of Jesus Christ. We claim that God the Father himself and the risen Jesus Christ physically stood before the founding prophet when he was but 14 years old. We claim that Joseph was given square plates made out of gold (!!) along with seemingly magical stones that allowed him to translate or somehow render the otherwise undecipherable characters engraven on these gold plates into English. We claim that each of us may receive revelation to the degree we prepare ourselves. We claim not only that we do ordinances through the very power of Jesus Christ, but that we can do them by proxy in behalf of dead people, and that such ordinances are acceptable to God and will be honored if the person being proxied receives the ordinances.
But we are to understand that the same all-knowing, all-powerful God responsible for such marvelous, miraculous institutions was too afraid to let black people hold his Priesthood until the late 20th century?
Nonsense. Remember, Joseph Smith ordained at least two black men of African ancestry to the Priesthood, one of whom stayed faithful throughout his life and reared a faithful posterity, and was apparently honored by those Saints who knew him. (At least, I've never read evil words about Elijah Abel*.) The very idea that God would cause all these miracles upon the earth and among his people, restoring his gospel and his very Priesthood, but then would chicken out from one particular instance of these radical changes because too many of the white members just weren't ready to accept black folks into fellowship, rings completely hollow. Remember, these are the same people who were willing to practice plural marriage, a far more reviled idea than that black people could be in fellowship with white people and others. It is my opinion that the only people such an explanation would possibly appeal to are those who have already decided that the Priesthood ban was wrong and evil, and thus are thrashing about, searching desperately for any explanation that might fill the obvious logical hole without abandoning LDS beliefs altogether.
*By the way, and apropos of nothing in particular: Given the old traditional explanation of African blacks being denied the Priesthood because they inherited through their ancestry the curse of Cain, I've always found it entertaining that the most famous example of a black man holding the Priesthood early in the restoration was a man named Abel.

I don't think it's a question of the historical happenings, but the interpretation. In a couple of podcast/youtube videos, Scott Woodward made the observation that, the very first time that the combined quorums of the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 approached God, unitedly prepared to receive and accept the direction from God to extend priesthood to all, God granted the revelation. (See the race and priesthood series of the church history matters podcast at doctrine and covenants central). The implication that I see in this is that maybe Pres. McKay received no answer because the Q15 and the rest of the church writ large was unwilling/unable to receive and accept the revelation that God wanted to give. The revelation to extend the priesthood had to wait until the top quorums of the church and a threshold of the lay membership had prepared themselves to receive and accept that revelation.
I think I've said before here that the history of the priesthood and temple ban is a solid case study in what we believe about how God reveals things to the church. Perhaps in some future day, we will have a similar conversation about LGBT issues (and the hiring of brother Sherinian will be one data point in that larger narrative).

My apologies. I wasn't intending to accuse any individual of anything. My intent was to explore this idea that, when we find something uncomfortable in what the church is doing that we as LDS tend towards "silent loyalty," and whether that is a good thing or not.

Time will tell.  My misgivings are that his expressions go beyond standard disagreement; it’s a fundamental loyalty issue.  Plus, it’s frankly a little galling—at the behest of Elder Holland and others, many of us spent a lot of time and effort defending the Church and its teachings from the criticisms of people like Sherinian. Many of those who did so under their own name continue to face stigma, discrimination, and career stagnation; while the buffoons they were defending the Church from wind up getting Church money, Church public recognition, and Church confidence.  It kind of makes some of us apologists wonder what the #%$@! we’ve even been doing this for over the last couple of decades; and feeds into a sneaking suspicion that the Church leadership doesn’t have our backs the way we’ve tried to have their backs.  I hope and trust that I’m wrong, but it’s hard to make those niggling doubts completely go away. 
One of my comforts (other than knowing that the Lord is in charge, yada, yada, yada); is that for professional reasons I’m fairly confident that some things are going to come out in the next 2-3 months that will cause the Church’s PR guys quite a few headaches.  The full facts, if known, would tend to exonerate the Church—but few will be willing or legally able to provide any public statement that might independently collaborate the Church’s response.  (Incidentally:  buckle up, folks.  Take your vitamins, eat your Wheaties, say your prayers and read your scriptures and do all those things the prophet has been telling us to do.  I may well be wrong, but think it’s going to be an interesting year.)  If Sherinian is the snake in the grass that I rather suspect he is, he just won’t hold his job for very long under those circumstances.  He’ll either say something so stupid or off-base that the Q15 will have no choice but to distance itself from him—or the professional need to back the brethren when every fiber of his being revolts against it, will just plain make his head explode.
And a potential silver lining here is that if he is indeed good, he’s probably very good.  I believe his wife Emily was the originator of the “I’m a Mormon” campaign from 10-15 years back, which I thought was extremely well done.  

God led the Israel when Samuel was the Prophet.  Yet there was concern about his sons being Judges in Israel.

This will be the ultimate battle for the church members in the future. The near future. The Catholics have been dealing with the “liberalism” of Pope Francis, and now it’ll come to Salt Lake City. 
 
I have a ton of conservative Catholic friends, and they said “Shut up and obey the pope” when Benedict was in office. Now they squirm, wiggle and look uncomfortable because “Shut up and obey the pope.” doesn’t work when they disagree with the Pope. I’m almost certain the same kind of thing will happen shortly here.    
 
It’s a taste of their own medicine, and boy do they dislike it. 

Why?
God still leads his church, doesn't he?