estradling75

Note that in the when Christ gives the command to be perfect he also give examples. When he is mortal the command was Be perfect like our Father in Heaven is perfect. And when he give the command to the people on the America's he once again pointed to our Father in Heaven but he also pointed to himself. Which he did not do the first time. Think about that. Christ did not consider himself to be an example of perfection until after the resurrection. With Christ being our example then we know we can not gain perfection while mortal. Does not mean that we shouldn't be working on it, because we totally should be. But we should also know that we can't do it without Jesus and his atonement which means its on his time scale not ours

The local congregation does not really get to choose the size of it buildings, nor does it get to choose the what the local building/fire-code ordinances are. It does get to choose if it obeys the local ordinances and how it response to a large influx of members. If it chooses to violate local safety ordinances its going to get shut down especially if it does so with any kind of predictability. If it gets shut down... then no one gets the sacrament. A congregation choosing to serve the maximum people it can legally with in the walls of it building seems eminently Christ like. While having to turn people away because they did not get there in time is a hard thing to do... but its got scriptural support. (See parable of the Ten Virgins)

It is... lets see if we can help people better understand what is happening. It appears we have three local congregations sharing a building (aka the three meeting times) This is pretty normal. The building was built to local needs, these needs can change over time so they do there best guess to make a right fit. This is all normal. However what is different for this location is that it appears to get hit with a vacation surge. If standing room only is to be believed then it seem they get hit with a 1000% percent-ish increase in demand for a couple weeks of the year. How long has this been going on... at least long enough to make a sign.. but maybe not long enough to get a bigger building. Assuming it is considered wise to invest so much in a building for a couple of weeks to a month of need. I can see why that might not being considered wise. And we have heard from the disgruntled vacationer about how unchrist-like the locals are in not supporting them in spite of the fact that the locals went to their max to accommodate the vacationers. But nothing about how unchrist-like the vacationers are being in their entitled expectation that the locals go above and beyond their means and resources in the total disruption of their sabbath day activity. I can only image that trying to get the sacrament to a standing room only crowd is a significance effort that takes up most if not all of their two hour block. And the locals are doing it, but all we hear are complaints that it is not enough.

I don't think we need to look that hard on why Satan did what he did. I think we all understand how sometimes we can desire something so desperately that we over blow the evidences that support our desire and minimize the evidences against what we want. Con-artist take advantage of this all the time even though we think we are to smart to be suckered in. Satan wants what he wants so badly that he convinces himself that he can thwart the plan or maybe even that his plan might work (It can not). His mind is darkened not because God did something tricky or sneaky, but because Satan conned himself and those that followed him.

Us humans are really bad at math and probabilities as a general rule. For example People go swimming in the ocean. The oceans have sharks. Sharks can and have attacked people swimming in the ocean. This is bad. This is horrific. This is a very low probability event. Then the movie Jaws came along and people became afraid of being attacked so they did not go swimming in the ocean after seeing the movie. The odds of them getting attacked had not changed, yet people's behavior did dramatically. Homeschooling is like swimming in the ocean. Yeah something bad might happen, and when it does it is horrific, but the odds are low. Any response we take needs to consider that. The problem with homeschooling is fundamentally just a rebranding of the standard human problem. How do you keep bad people from doing bad things? That is a question we have been trying to answer forever.

Transference much??? DEI is a process... that we are examining that and it is the only attack that is being made. The nature of DEI is that it is a non option for White Males. It can only be examined in the context of Non white males. But we can not examine it for real life potential failures because people like you instantly transfer any questioning of DEI process to an attack on person. Which we aren't doing. You correctly state that we would not be doing this if the person was a white male... but that is because we can not. DEI does not apply. If it were a white male we would be questioning things like the "Good old boys network" and "privilege" and you would be right there with us and not considering it an attack on the person. And then you put words in our mouths saying the its "the only reason" and that is flat out lie and fundamentally dishonest of you. She failed. Stating that is not an attack on her character. I would have failed. The difference is I know I should not have the Job... Lots of people know I should not have the job. But apparently people thought she should and it raises the question of why? There are lots of experienced people who are not leadership material. The idea that her limits were overlooked by the hiring process because of DEI is a totally reasonable line to investigate. It may not end end up being true but until it is investigated we will not know.

Of course not. That is part of the reason we can't have civil discussions any more. Lets break this down. We had a organization that failed at it primary purpose. An absolute necessity is to find out why it failed and fix it if we want to have that organization work like it should. There are two things to look at in these kind of cases. People and Processes. Both can fail. Now in most cases its kinder and more Christ-like to focus on processes and only go after people when it is clear they did not follow good processes. DEI hiring is a process. But to certain people this process is a sacred cow, holy and unassailable. We see the fruits of this idolatry in their attacks on anyone who dares question it. They would rather attack a person then a process. So they call anyone who thinks about questioning it sexist or racist or whatever label of evil they think might fit so they do not have to question if the process they are worshiping has fundamental flaws.

By present standards.. If are white you are racist If you are male you are sexist If we in the here and now do not stand any chance against such charges.... how can any historical figure be expected to?

Should.... being the million dollar word in that phrase... Do you know why public schools came into existence in the first place? Because home schooling had failures... Failures stemming in large part to parents failing to educate their kids. Look at the numbers... The numbers show that a successful kid is a kid who had parents actively supporting them.. it really does not matter how they got the education as long as the parent was actively involved. Are there exceptions to this? Of course... but they are just that exceptions. Home schooling is not some magic panacea that will solve the problem. Parental involvement is. If you could wave a magic wand and make public schools go away you would not solve the problem, because parents would still fail. All that you would do is remove the scape goat that everyone find so easy to blame.

In many respect we can consider Humans to be animals as well. And in the animal range we can note that there is a difference between the Human animal, and animals consider "useful" and animals we consider "pests"... So we understand and accept that animal is a spectrum with lots of variety. Yet when we say that animals have spirits we often mistakenly assume that all the "spirits" are the same? Why would that make any sense? (Other then we do not know any better) While the restored gospel gives us more information on the subject of spirits it is still a subject we really do not know that much about.

When reading ancient prophets I think sometimes we engage in "Present-ism" and read into it things the prophet themselves did not. One of the biggest examples is the use of Symbols vs Literal. We are a very Literal people, but the ancient prophets were/are full of symbolism. This causes all kinds of problems. Another is that we assume the light and knowledge we have now the ancient prophets also had... This is debatable on some subjects. For example Heavily Father as we currently understand the concept did not seem to really take hold until Christ came. Before the the record is really sparse, I am not saying it wasn't revealed but it did not seem to stick until after Christ. Now the Old Testament does talk about God as Father... But both ancient and modern Jews would take this as a reference to Jehovah. Modern revelation clearly identifies Jehovah as Christ. And Father is a Title that Christ himself also has.... So this can get a bit confusing. So here is a tip. When you hear an ancient prophet talk about the Father and the Son try replacing the "Father" with "Jehovah" and see it the statement still holds true? If it does then odds are that was how the prophet themselves were expecting their audience to understand it that way, not the way we currently struggle to understand it.

To me there is a very good historical reason to push on the monotheists versus polytheist line... But I'm not so sure its really needs to be pushed as hard now beyond tradition. In historical times there were pantheons of Gods (Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian etc.) and they were very popular. If an individual felt that one God in a pantheon was against them they could try a different God or a different pantheon. This allowed people to be fickle and faithless in their devotions. Then God delivered his chosen people out of Egypt. The physical deliverance was probably the easiest part, delivering Israel from their fickle and faithlessness was much harder. The 10 plagues showed the various Egyptian Gods had no power, and they had to be continually reminded that nothing could stop their God. There was no other power they could run to no one they hide behind. This is a very important lesson. But now I think is a lesson we only need to revisit when someone tries to divide the Godhead. We are to pray to the Father in the name of Christ because that is what Christ instructed us to do. Or setup a non authorized channel (Prayers to Heavily Mother)

Indeed... Because we can totally agree with the statement of the Oneness of God being very important to understanding God and knowing his power to Save. While still disagreeing on the type of Oneness

For alot of people Bias is when the Court does not rule the way they wanted them to. For me the closer the Court votes to party lines the more likely it is to be Bias (which is why the parties want to have there people in) When the Court vote has crossing of party lines I am less likely to think Bias an more likely to think the Lawyers either really really made their case, or really failed to make there case that it is basically decided on technical merits... not bias

We have to remember how the tech overlords running social media platform view us. We are not some charity case to be educated and raised and trained to make good decisions. We are a product to be packaged and sold to the highest bidder. They do this through our engagement. The more engaged we are the more they can sell us for. And what do we engage on? Things we are passionate about. Positive and Negative. For example if we are really passionate about politics social media will figure it out and it will start showing you your team being all good and Saintly because you will engage with that. It will also so you the "others" being all evil and villainous because you will also engage with that. This leads to your social media reinforcing your beliefs. And if every day all you see our your team being good and the other team being bad you begin to wonder how anyone could think differently on the subject... because the evidence is "overwhelming" (When really all the information you are getting is being carefully curated to give you what you think you want) This also leads a person to minimize counter information... Stories showing one of your guys being evil... Becomes "False News" or justified in "No one is perfect", or "How hypocritical to turn a blind eye to all your teams evil but focus on one person being kind of a jerk", or the "He is an a** but he is our a**" (like that is something to be proud of)