estradling75

We are instructed in the scriptures to perform many ordinances... But in practice we have Priesthood Keys that need to authorize such ordinances. (Aka Baptism, Confirmation, Sacrament etc.) So I have always taken it as an Ordinance that required authorization, like many others. I given that I can find detailed instructions on performing the Ordinance that I could be reasonably expected to perform, but not this one. I'd conclude that those with the proper Priesthood Key were not expecting me to perform this ordnance. I am OK with that. While I agree that many members (including myself) can be lacking in following the commandments as given. But I do not see it as the same thing as not be authorized to perform an Ordinance

Part of the of the problem we have with these types of discussions is that we Human in general are bad at math. (I do not mean individuals. I know there are some really good at math individuals, but I am talking as a group generally) So lets walk through a completely made up example. A contagion spreads across the world. This contagion does nothing to 97% of the population. That sounds like nothing to be alarmed about even if you hear that the remaining 3% will have a long protracted illness in which 1/3 will recover eventually 1/3 will be left with permanent disability and the last 1/3 will end up dead. When we see that 97% of the time nothing we say and think we do not need to worry about it... Until we see what that 3% looks like. If you have a Ward with 200 active members that means 6 people you know will become very sick and have a protracted illness and of those 6... 2 will end up dead and 2 will be left permanently disabled. When they are people you know it doesn't feel like the odds were that good after all, in-spite of the fact that is exactly what those odds mean. Of course those numbers are of one ward. but in reality that 97% is of the whole world so the numbers aren't going to be evenly spread out. You could have one ward of 200 where no one gets sick and they would think that any precautions were completely worthless because it is not as bad as everyone was making it out to be. But a different ward of 200 has 12 that get sick and they think it is so much worse then people are saying it is. Both groups are being bad at math and are wrong kinda but it is completely understandable why they feel and think the way they do based on their experience. And honestly having a legitimately differently experience and opinion isn't a problem. We run into problem when someone tries to force the others to agree with them as if having someone disagree with you is some how personally offensive.

Was Brigham Young Unstable? I would not assume so but why would it matter? Where in the scripture does it say God calls prophets from the cream of the crop? It does not. In fact it often says he calls the weak and unlearned and the foolish. If you get your apologetic answers then great... But if you don't.... if you only find more and more negative things about Brigham Young what are you going to do? Will you get to a point that you decide that you know better then God whom he should call? Because that is Pride which is a very deadly sin. Perhaps instead of looking through the history books and making judgements on how wicked and evil people where and question how God could possibly work with them... maybe instead we should all look in a mirror and say "Thank you God for being willing to work with such and evil and wicked person as I am." Of course those are just my thoughts on the subject and I am some random guy on the internet. Take what works for you (if anything) and discard the rest

Not consciously no... More likely the Evolution of expected Extrovert and Introvert interactions, would be my guess. 2 Extroverts are passing in a hallway. They have nothing to say, but they are Extroverts, so they say Hi and get a slight charge. 2 Introverts are passing in a hallway. They have nothing to say. They are Introverts, so they say nothing and avoid the cost. 1 of each are passing in a hallway. They have nothing to say. Extrovert says HI and the Introvert says nothing. This causes the Extrovert to suddenly have a lot to say. The Extrovert didn't get his charge up and he accuses the Introvert of not caring. The introvert disengages as fast as they can. Later on the introvert realizes it would have been less draining to say Hi... then to be accosted by the Extrovert. So they decide to say hi in the future and consider just the price they have to pay being out in public. Repeat thousands of times with many different people and it becomes just the way it is.

The rules of society are usually setup by extroverts... This usually leads to us introverts complaining about interactions we consider pointless or absurd. We can usually make a very good point about their absurdity and pointlessness. But the extroverts don't care. More often then not the introverts protest are more about preserving what what limited social bandwidth we have for things we consider much more important and valuable. A limit extroverts really do not understand.

I do not have enough knowledge of Mose's culture or expectation to understand a why the removing of shoes meant what it did to him. But I can take a stab at why passing in the hallway acknowledgement is considered polite. Humans are social animals. Even the most introverted needs some social interactions to maintain mental health. To the point that studies on prisoners subject to prolonged solitary confinement develop serious issues. Leading to the idea that solitary confinement should be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Anyways with us being social critters the minimum response is "I acknowledge that you are there" when there is someone else nearby. If you do not do that then you are saying in effect "You do not exist." That is kinda of rude and a bit hurtful. Thus at least in the US before Cell phones it was considered polite to acknowledge someones existence or really the reverse... Very rude and hurtful to act like someone does not exist.

Indeed they do... It's been my experience that Women are no more to be mindless sheeple blindly following prophetic council then Men are... But it has also been my experience that Women have a greater tendency to deflect bad News they give then Men do. For this case imagine a young Woman who has no interest in the Young Man perusing her. Instead of telling the young man "You do not have a chance in Hell with me." and deal with the potentially very violent reaction. (Totally understandable in my opinion) She will punt to whatever excuse she can that passes the blame. "Oh you didn't serve a mission... I can't possibly marry someone that didn't go." Thus redirecting the rejection anger of the Young Man from her to the Church. If it happens enough then the Young Man blames the church for his relationship failures.

So you are saying in D&D terms..... For their stat roll (3d6) Mirkwoods department rolled a 3 or 4 instead of a 10-11. Well that sucks for them Of course you always hear about the people who get 3 or 18's in D&D vary rarely about the 10-11s. Same with the COVID Vaccine. Because "Hi I apparently rolled a 10 on my COVID shot. I had a sore arm for a few days and that was it" isn't really much for conversation. Plus it might be viewed as a bit insensitive to those who got a worse result. And of course with any tragedy people want answers they want to blame someone... The answer "You rolled poorly" usually does not work. Lets not forget all this data we have now.... Did not exist then. We were being asked to "trust the science" When the science wasn't finished yet... It was pushed on us like a dealer trying to get someone new hooked on their product.

There are two ways to serve the Lord. The first way is what the scriptures call using our Agency to do good. This is us using our mind and will to try to bring to bring to past much righteousness. The Lord commands this and we spend much of our life in this state. This is good. It is us using our Initiative our Agency which God approves of. But it has a big limit. It is limited by our ability to foresee to predict the best way. Using the terminology of this thread this is the Non-Black Tag service, and it is literally were we will spend most our lives in our efforts of serving God. The second form of service is putting yourself on the altar. This includes all your strengths and abilities but also all your flaws, weakness, and hindrances, trusting that the Lord knows exactly what you really need and can do. This is something God want/expects/asks from all of us. Both forms are from a "Desire to Serve" but this last one is harder and requires, greater faith, because we do not get to control it. That is scary. Trusting the Lord's wisdom especially when manifested through his flawed servants is hard. Using the terminology of this thread we can call this "Black Tag" service although Black Tags are not always used. Not surprisingly those that the Lord has called to help people grow and develop spiritually are going to push hard in their own flawed way to get everyone to do "Black Tag" type service when the opportunity is there. That is literally what they are called to do. Can they mess this up? Of course they can. But their flaws do not make it wrong. The idea of helping people at a young age come to trust and know God is golden... We just screw it up a lot. The problem we get is when people doom say when someone misses a chance. We all miss chances and make mistakes, that is literally what the atonement is for. A young man who for whatever reason does not serve at 19 will not be the same person at 30 or 40 or 50. (Same can be said for those that do serve) And if you are dealing with a young person who does not go... We are not dealing with an apostate in the making (our actions can push them that way though) we are dealing with someone who is having a Faith struggle because missions are hard leaps of Faith and not everyone is ready for that at older ages much less younger age. And don't get me started on those serving for wrong reasons. (Because if you are not doing a mission out of a desire to serve the Lord you are doing it wrong, but even then you might end up getting there so it is hard to tell)

Indeed... I am a big fan of truth, but there is so much we do not have right now. As far as I am concerned Plural Marriage in the Celestial Kingdom is "Tomorrow's" problem which in truth I am not seeing as problem either way for me personally. However right here, now, "Today's" problem is in truth is I that need the reassurance that I have just as good a chance as anyone else. This does not have to be true... But right now I need to believe it to be true. If once everything is done, if then, I find out it wasn't true it will no longer matter

Yeah... The question becomes "Why are there more exalted women then men?" The Lord promises no blessing will be denied the faithful. The idea that the number of exalted men and women exactly match seems a bit of a stretch. So it would seem that Plural Marriage is the answer to that with women having greater number in exaltation. But if it is widespread then it more likely means that men are less likely to make it to exaltation. Which is not something I accept. That being said a small reasonably insignificant percentage difference (aka women having a so slight advantage) can add up over large numbers and I am ok with that

I am sorry for the pain you are going through. I do not have any direct experience with a spouse breaking trust... Just more generic events when someone breaks the trust I have extended to them. So my advice will be around that. First piece of advice is that you can not control another person. We all know this logically but when our feeling are hurt when our emotions run high we can be seriously tempted to say this is the way it must be... that just tends to make everything worse. Instead you need to focus on what you can control... and that is you. So what can you do... Well I am going to mention the hardest thing first. The Lord commands all of us to forgive. This is not optional. This is going to be very very hard... and it could take a very long time, and you will probably fail at it a lot as you try. This is normal and expected but it does not release you from trying. You do not get to wait to do this until she repents or shows remorse. This part of what makes it so very hard. Of course a lot of us have some distorted ideas of what forgiveness means. But here it is in an nutshell. We do not get to declare someone else's sins. You are asking if your wife violated the Law of Chasity. That is not our call, its not your call, it is the Lord's call. Its between him and her you do not have a voice in that. Related to this is that you do not get to set the punishment for her sins either. That is also just between her and the Lord. It is natural to feel that you are some how entitled to... Or that you need to see her "punished," that is so normal and natural. Which is why the Lord pushes us so hard on forgiving. He wants us to hand all that over to him and trust that he knows what he is doing. However forgiveness does not require us to trust someone we have found to be untrustworthy, nor does it require us to stay in or return to harms way. The question you can ask yourself and act upon is "Can you trust her?" While you can't control her behavior, and you can not judge her sins, you can and should make a judgement call on your safety and the trustworthiness when interacting with her and act accordingly. Again I am so sorry for your pain and suffering... Hopefully this helps with some direction.

I have also heard of people prototyping 1 hour Church. The church tries out alot of things that never make it to widespread use. Will 1 hour church become the standard announced at this General Conference? I do not know. It might not work out in the testing. But if they do go for it then the questions we have about it will be addressed, because they will have already tested and gathered the data they need to move forward with it

I have always been interested in "Doing the right thing" As I have gotten older and more experienced I have come to realize it is not enough to "Do the right thing" but the "Right thing" has to also be done the "Right way" or it becomes the "Wrong thing" This was a kind of paradox that took me awhile to wrap my head around. So when people so when people come with various problems that need to be address.. the debate usually centers on "How to address the problem" not that we need to address the problem. The contention usually comes in when people start accusing others of not caring about the problem which is a strawman. When it comes to Health Care it is never free unless you are enslaving Health Care providers. Without that someone has to pay. And that kicks in a variation on the Golden Rule which is.... They who have the Gold make the rules. In the case of Government paid for Health Care the money is coming from taxes filtering through the Government red tape of Government Made Rules. Frankly the Government has never been very good at managing anything. And here in America if you told people that there Health Care was under control of President Trump half the nation would have a collected meltdown. And just a short time ago it would have been under Biden which would have melted down the other half of the nation. So while we can all agree that making sure the elderly are taken care of in their end of life care is "The Right thing to do" We are not going to agree that the Government is the "Right way" to accomplish that goal

When Nephi and family were traveling in the wilderness, they lived on raw meat. That is not a very good diet. Yet the Lord blessed them and per Nephi they had the strength and energy to do what was needed. While I fully believe that story I do not assume that the Lord would bless me if I made the choice to only eat raw meat. I have other options that the Lord has given me. If I use my agency to only eat raw meat, I am pretty sure the Lord would respect that and let the consequences of my choices teach me different. So I fully believe God can and does work miracles with food. But I also believe God works through small and simple things that he has provided for us, and he expects us to be wise and actively engaged in good causes.... Which includes our health. So for prayers over food I have also stepped away from the "Nourishing and strengthening" request... Not because I do not believe that God can't do it... but because it seems more like a vain repetition and asking amiss, when I have options. For me I have taken to saying things like "Bless this food that we might enjoy it" To me this works on just about every case. Eating food should be an enjoyable experience. If we are trying to eat healthier... then learning to enjoy that is very important. But if we are praying over a table of junk food, well isn't that kind of the point? It totally sucks to consume a bunch of empty calories only to find you didn't actually enjoy it.