clwnuke

I find this statement interesting and worthy of exploration. It is also crucial to any couple working through any number of issues that may or may not involve sexual matters to face this question: Why was the marriage fractured? Is it truly because of the husband's habit of viewing sexual images/content, or are marriages fractured by how we react to issues and difficulties that arise?

Science geek note: Perfection in stages only makes sense from our perspective where time matters. If time is taken out of the equation we will see perfection in a different way. It may make it easier to understand why Jesus called himself the great I AM or HE WHO IS in one rendered translation. In other words, if God is the same yesterday, today, and forever then perfection is more of an eternal state than an accomplishment. My weird 2 cents if it helps.

While serving as High Priest Group Leader when I was about forty, I had a situation where a Bishopric counselor in my ward was difficult to home teach. Even his father-in-law requested not to teach him. Our families had been good friends earlier and I had home taught them years before so in a bit of desperation I placed them on to my already full HT route. Funny thing was, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get him to set an appointment with me. After several months I finally cornered him and asked him point-blank what was going on? We went to a private room where he was very embarrassed to say that his spouse thought I was interested in her, and though he didn't think it was true he was having to avoid me for her sake. Of all the reasons I had imagined for how I had offended his family, that one completely blind-sided me! I diplomatically assured him that while his wife was very beautiful there was absolutely no reason for concern. I then went to the Bishop and asked him if he knew about this. He did, but he had never approached me on it because he knew there was no substance to the concern. However, I was ignorant to the damage that had already been done. For some months I had noticed people treating me strangely and now I found out that many people besides the Bishop and the Stake President had heard the gossip. I went home, told my wife, and tried to be as loving toward the other couple as possible, but then it hit me. I began to feel intense anger, resentment, and frustration that my church reputation had been destroyed by a false accusation. It was almost impossible to shake off. I found myself getting ready to angrily confront my former friends when I felt the Holy Spirit clearly tell me to stop and not to confront them as it would do harm to the other couple. The Spirit said that I did not know what personal difficulties they were having in their marriage and to forgive his spouse. This was very, very difficult for me to do, but I heeded the prompting and never discussed the matter again except with my wife. The long and short of this story is that only a few people ever treated me the same after that. Perhaps they never heard the gossip, but it was always clear to me that many former friends and church colleagues kept me at a distance from the previous callings I had held. My family eventually moved out of the area a few years later, but it remains a lesson to me that gossip is a sharp knife. You are right Char713, it is hard when people do not make you feel welcome. But do your best to forgive them and stay faithful. The Lord is mindful of the many harms caused by imperfect people in His perfect gospel plan. Some of the people in the great and spacious building still go to church every Sunday.

The Old Testament is full of information about the temple. My father was a temple worker when I went to the temple for the first time, but I still don't feel like I was well prepared. If I had taken a course about ancient temple practices it would have made a difference to me. I think people need to better understand the use of symbols and rituals in sacred teachings, especially in the ancient temples. Then it will not be such a surprise when they are taught with spiritual symbolism and participate in the sacred rituals that are used in the Lord's temples today. Much of that symbolism and ritual can be taught right out of the Old Testament when you have a knowledgeable person to help you.

I agree wholeheartedly. Alas I confess that I am a science and math geek. But even those who enjoy it must confess that repeating Calc 101 for eternity might be slightly less than exciting?? :)

Having been in that situation I can honestly say I did not freak out. I simply testified to my child about the blessings that I saw come from numerous confessions and church courts. I offered to assist if and when my child decided to approach the Bishop and left the matter alone until they were ready. I did not pry into details either. Eventually my child made the decision to speak to the Bishop (who was a wonderful brother) and asked for my support and help. It took some time, but the process was a blessing. Years later I think it surprised the Bishop when he learned that I did not know everything that had happened, nor did I feel the need to know. These days I really don't care what people's sins are, I just care about them. I have not always been able to say that. The Lord had to help open my eyes to the depth and breadth of His Love and Atonement before I could understand that my limited role involved mostly working on my own abundant weaknesses and gently succoring His children when appropriate.

This is from the Book of Craig. It's in the Old Testament somewhere: "Wherefore will the Eternal Judge be merciful, and no man or woman shall be required to enter into any degree of salvation wherein they are neither comfortable or desirous to live the lifestyle of that kingdom. Therefore, those that love living a Celestial law shall enter into a Celestial glory, and those that love living a Terrestrial law shall enter into a Terrestrial glory, and those that love living a Telestial law shall enter into a Telestial glory, and those who don't care shall enter into Calculus 101 for ever and ever where there will be gnashing of teeth and limited texting." Don't worry. If your heart loves Celestial living then I think the proper place for you will be in the Celestial kingdom. There would be no justice or mercy in a plan that placed us where we would not be happy. In many respects, you will be the judge of where you properly belong as every knee will bow to acknowledge and confess that His evaluation of your heart is just and true.

A very interesting perspective on the matter. Thank you!

My vote? Go on your mission. An alternative definition for a "broken heart" is to break away from all the things that the world seems to offer us and serve Him. I say go, serve, and you will come to know the truth of all things.

f1lbr, I believe that beating down LDS and non-lds men is the key to Satan's plan to destroy the family. If I wanted to create a game plan to make Priesthood power ineffective on the earth I would focus my time and efforts on young men and fathers. Pornography is one of the weapons employed to destroy trust in relationships, and while I can fully appreciate the Stake President's counsel you quote above, the advice does nothing to foster trust, love, or improve the behavior of Priesthood holders. It will however frustrate the men who are asked the question and decrease their chances of ever finding a worthy companion because they are asking about personal sins and becoming judge and jury. Now I'm sure most of the good women who might read this post will think that the question "When was the last time you looked at pornography?" to be a perfectly legitimate question in this day and age for a women who is dating, but let me generally illustrate how it may feel to a man to be asked that question and then end this post with a spiritual warning based on my own experience. From a scientific point of view, the brain patterns of a woman (or a man) desiring and eating chocolate are indistinguishable from a man (or a woman) desiring and viewing pornography, or an addict seeing drugs, desiring drugs, and using drugs. And the evidence is clear that many women have a weight problem, many men have a pornography problem, and many people have addiction problems. In each case, the problems are made worse by the ready availability of the consumed product. There is no scientific difference in the weakness or lack of resolve shown by women who overeat, men who view pornography, or addicts who use drugs. The difference is in how we view the behaviors. We have normalized being overweight, despite strong spiritual counsel to take care of our temples. However, we have not normalized viewing sexual content or drug addiction. The result is that we shame and guilt the latter two groups endlessly, while bringing chocolate to church and feeding the problem of the first group - but the weaknesses in sinning and the brain areas stimulated can not readily be distinguished between the three. None of them should be normalized behaviors. You do not even need a product to have this problem. Experiments show the same addictive behavior will develop in people with electrodes implanted into the pleasure centers of the brain. The novelty soon turned into an insatiable appetite to press the electrode button, sometimes 1500 times an hour, resulting in callouses on their thumbs, and ultimately to depression and frustration. It's not the product, it's the behavior. Chocolate, pornography, drugs, or electrodes, they can all result in the same damaging behaviors. Now then, how would it be if a Stake President were to counsel men to ask "When is the last time you exceeded your ideal BMI and overate?"? And more importantly, how would women feel if the question were considered legitimate by the majority of men in the church? The advice would do nothing to foster trust, love, or improve the behavior of women. Sound familiar? Men who are struggling with the same desire to feed the pleasure centers of the brain feel just as degraded when asked about pornography. Women especially need to realize this. As an alternative I might suggest asking the question differently once the relationship has matured to an appropriate point. How about something like this "I believe that you and I are growing quite fond of each other, and if we are to move forward it could involve a marriage where we begin to struggle to understand and overcome our weaknesses in order to keep the commandments and our temple covenants. Many men struggle with pornography because Satan wants to destroy them. I want to build you into a great Priesthood holder full of the Spirit of God to bless our family. Are you comfortable trusting and talking to me about this very intimate subject?" I think the results would be very different. Here is my warning: Please do not ask people to "confess" their past sins to you. If a man or woman has fully repented of their sins, they no longer own the sins. The sin is owned by our loving Savior. He bought them with a price and took possession. If we probe into those sins we are not probing the person in front of us, we are probing the Savior. I once made the mistake of bringing up a past sin of my spouse in a moment of frustration. The Spirit swiftly condemned me with unmistakable power and clarity. I can think of no time in my life where I felt the Lord's condemnation more strongly and I have never wanted to feel that darkness again. I know personally that the Lord takes his role as Redeemer and Judge very seriously. Allow His forgiveness and mercy to flow freely to all, especially those you love most. We need each other. We need to help each other in love and kindness. Satan is working to reduce our love, reduce our trust, reduce our willingness to help each other, and his ultimate goal is to destroy the family and frustrate the Lord's work. He will not be victorious in the end, but until that time even many of the elect will abandon love and hate their own. In this time of war men and women need to help each other be faithful more than ever. I believe that the Balm of Gilead is forgiveness, compassion, and understanding. That is the only path to the true Hope we can rely upon IMHO.

Just_A_Guy, we did not double-staff our primary when I served in a Bishopric. That was not church policy at the time. But you deserve an answer as if it had been the policy, and that answer is that we would likely have not done so - we did not have the membership numbers in our ward in Georgia to support doing it. However, I think we would have done something similar to what our little branch in New Jersey did years later: kept an open door policy for all classes and checked on them as the handbook currently allows. I really do appreciate the challenges of two-deep leadership. I have a ward that has not been able to call me an assistant Scoutmaster for over two years because nobody will accept the calling. I serve as the 11 year-old Scout leader as well for the same reason. More than 90% of the time I have to rely on my own family members to provide two-deep leadership at meetings and outings. It is not easy, but the statistics simply do not support the idea that men present "a clear and present danger to pre-pubescent children in Primary classes" and women do not. Neither presents a clear and present danger. I'm simply suggesting that it would be prudent to make our primary child protection policy a blanket policy like all other public and private institutions of which I am aware. Gotta get to choir practice. Have a great Sabbath day :)

I've worked in primary many, many times. It's a wide-spread custom to be called into nursery and primary when you are a young couple with little children. Having also served in bishoprics and stake presidencies I appreciate the challenges of staffing, but I still believe the policy would be enhanced by closing that gap. Since the policy provides an alternative for those wards without the ability to provide two-deep leadership I think the change is highly prudent precisely because of our litigious society. The first question a good lawyer will ask in a lawsuit over a child abuse claim at a Mormon church perpetrated by a female will be "Why didn't you require two women as well as two men? Were you not aware that women perpetrate these crimes as well?" You don't have to look very hard in the news to find a female perpetrated child abuse case.

The great majority of serial murderers are men as well, but that doesn't make the case to treat all men as serial murderers. I think you may be misconstruing the statistic you cite. Even if 100% of child abuse cases were male, it would not justify treating the 99.5% of men who do not abuse children as potential child abusers. The facts do not support the conclusion. Since some child abusers are women it seems prudent to make the policy a blanket policy. I am not aware of any other organization that limits its child protection policies to men only.

But researchers estimate that less than 1% of adult men are potentially pedophiles, with the actual number likely being much less than 0.5% when you only consider children's age groups less than 14 years-old. So 99.5% of men are not a threat but that justifies singling men out? Would it not be wise to make sure ALL situations are safe? My wife does a lot of babysitting at night to earn extra money. At times there are more jobs than she can handle so she often asks clients if our older daughters can help. I have also been volunteered several times, but my wife says clients freak out when she says I'm a man. The funny thing is that they trust her child care because she's a woman, but don't trust mine because I'm a man. However, the relevant facts are: 1. I was raised changing sibling's diapers and babysitting kids in the ward, but my wife was a single child and didn't. 2. When we had our first child, my wife was overwhelmed and didn't know what to do. I did everything other than breastfeed - even getting up at night until they were toddlers. 3. We had six kids and I did just as much if not more diaper changing and caring for them. 4. My wife has always acknowledged my ability to relate to kids and turned to me when things got tough. So I find it funny that her clients "think" that they will be putting their children in harms way if they have me babysit.

In Handbook 2: Administering the Church section 11.8.1 Men Serving in Primary it states: "When men are assigned to teach children, at least two responsible adults should be present at all times. The two adults could be two men, a husband and wife, or two members of the same family. In small branches, if it is not practical to have two teachers in a classroom, a member of the Primary presidency frequently visits and monitors each class that a man teaches alone." This change was made a few years ago, and I understand the concerns related to it, but something I did not like was singling out men rather than focusing on two-deep leadership for all teaching situations. It makes me feel as if I'm considered a suspected pedophile just because I'm a man. Having been raised in a large family, and having raised four daughters and two sons of my own, and having worked in Scouting for 25 years I fully support the two-deep leadership principles of the Scouting Program. But they apply equally to men and women. Would you support changing this policy title to Adults Serving in Primary and having the text changed to: "At least two responsible adults should be present at all times when teaching Primary. The two adults can be two men, or two women, a husband and wife, or two members of the same family. In small branches, if it is not practical to have two teachers in a classroom, a member of the Primary presidency frequently visits and monitors each class that is taught alone."?

Critical mass is the mass of a material necessary to create as many neutrons as are being absorbed. When a nuclear reactor starts up, control rods (absorb neutrons) are slowly withdrawn in very small increments until the fissile material (usually Uranium and Plutonium isotopes that give off neutrons) is providing just enough neutrons to keep the reaction self-sustaining. It is expressed as a ratio and having a ratio of 1.000 is when the reactor is considered to have gone critical. Ratios well above 1.000 can result in runaway reactions, while below 1.000 the reaction can not be sustained. In power plants the critical point is usually reached at a very low power level. Most nuclear engineering computer codes can predict the critical point within a few cm. Nuclear weapons can be made small or large by adjusting the amount of fissile material (these days it's usually Pu-239) and the method of detonation to either increase yield or decrease yield (the destructiveness of the device). It's all very fascinating. However, there are design and physical limitations that prevent the creation of "planet-busting" weapons. That's only in the movies.

Amen to the mental illness comments. As I mentioned, I grew up thinking that every troubled person could just pick themselves up by their bootstraps. Then my firstborn wonderchild who entered BYU on a full scholarship at 15 years old gets two years into college with straight A's and I receive a call from his roommates telling me something is wrong. We arrived at college to find a completely different person - adolescent onset depression entered my life through my son. I foolishly tried to talk him through getting his act together for almost two years growing increasingly frustrated with his "lazy" and "disingenuous" efforts to fix his problems. Then, one of my teenage nieces who was living with our family after having been on the streets, and whose behavior was a constant up and down from playful kid to wicked satan child, suddenly has a seizure. My older brother had epilepsy so I was very familiar with how to deal with this. We took her to the doctor the next week and he prescribed Lamictal for her seizures. She starts taking it daily and guess what happens? Her behavior levels out like a perfect child. It turns out she is bi-polar. A light bulb went off in my head! Mental illness is very, very real. There are many forms of mental illness, but the common characteristic is that good information goes in, does not get processed properly, and undesirable behaviors and decisions result. Since that time I have had to change my whole philosophy on how to work with God's children. The brain has many different channels for processing information. These channels can operate at the same time and is the source of much of our personal hypocrisy. When it comes to viewing human sexual behavior (most of which is fake acting) the brain's multiple channels are affected on many levels. One channel may sincerely desire to live a chaste life and to be faithful to one's spouse, while a different brain channel is relentlessly wanting to stimulate itself with pornography, and through it all hormones are inhibiting clear thinking as they are rightly designed to do. The processes are simultaneous and result in tremendous guilt and shame since we have been taught that "good" people don't desire to view these images. Isn't this the typical situation for couples dealing with pornography? One spouse feeling pain and frustration due to a pornography habit they can't shake, and the other spouse working hard every day to "make sure" that the offending spouse feels incredible pain and frustration for their sins. It's a recipe for failure all around - just as my two years of trying to change my son's depression was also a complete and utter failure. My son is doing better now, but the real success story is how I've changed. How I've stopped wanting to be the judge of those around me and how I now love them no matter what their challenges have been. Personally I don't care about a person's sins anymore. I care about helping them reach a happier state and I adapt my work to their level. In the process I'm the one who benefits the most. I also see my own spouse in a much more loving way now. We see ourselves as a much more wonderful couple now - even with all of our personal flaws and weaknesses. Is it possible to completely love a viewer of pornography as you work toward a solution? Of course it is. Just as it is possible to completely love somebody who recklessly participates in sexual relations outside of marriage. But it does take a whole new loving approach to the problem.

flygirl, I want to ask you some questions but I want to tell you a little about my experience so you don't think I've fallen off the spiritual cliff. I was one of six kids in an active LDS family. My dad was a mechanic and my mom stayed at home, but she was college educated and had taught college courses prior to having children. For some reason we had a multi-volume medical encyclopedia set in addition to many other good books in our home and so I grew up knowing more about anatomy, biology, and sexuality than most kids. My teachers had no idea how much I knew about bodies and I always found it condescending when they would try to "hide" knowledge from me. My very shy mother did not do this. She always answered my questions in a plain straightforward manner. Over the years and having raised six kids of my own (two sons and four daughters) I have learned that truth conquers error, but sometimes you have to search very hard to find the truth as to why people actually behave in certain ways. Whether part of it is the God-given biology that people are endowed with, or one's upbringing or thought processes, we often need to look beyond the black-white good-bad analogies and find more meaningful and targeted solutions. I'm a nuclear engineer and physicist by trade so I believe that easy explanations for complex subjects like pornography will leave your search for answers very empty. The extent of the pornography problem in society and even in the church, and the ineffectiveness of the simple "stop" solutions that we often turn to serves as evidence that simply feeling hurt and mad at your spouse is not the way. I have children with depression, I used to think people with depression could just think themselves out of the problem. They can't. They need non-judgmental love, understanding, and help. And they need it forever. I have a cousin who has struggled with substance (alcohol and drugs) abuse. I used to think addicts could just stop. Many can't. They need non-judgmental love, understanding, and help. And they need it forever. That being said, now let me ask - how many times have you sat down and just discussed with your husband in an exploratory and non-judgmental way what he finds interesting about human bodies and sexuality? No decisions to change, just learning about every thought process he goes through, why, when, and where. That is where I think you need to start. Go back to day one. Instead of having your world collapse when you learned that your husband liked viewing pornography, what if you had simply said, "Oh, that is a challenging problem. I love you and want to help you in any way I can. Would you be willing to talk to me about this?" and then sat and listened, for months or more if necessary. Would opening up those communication channels in a much broader way have helped lay a foundation of trust and love to deal with the issue rather than hurt and frustration? It's just some of my thoughts. I don't know if they help, but I pray for you both to find a way to put sexuality in it's proper context within your temple marriage. Feel free to ask more questions as you search for help and answers.

As so happens I was also in a foreign mission, and I left just as a new mission president had arrived. It is my understanding that he was fairly conservative with mission resources so perhaps he didn't write or send those letters either. Again, thank you for your response.

Thank you for the replies. It's good to know that I was not the only one with a quick release! I did enjoy reporting to the High Council about my mission and I look forward to a future mission

Hello everyone, I'm a lifelong Mormon boy who is new to this site. I chose to join so that I could ask questions and communicate in a spiritual atmosphere. So here is my first question, I've read recently about missionaries receiving "honorable release letters" at the end of their missions. I didn't receive one when I came home at the end of my mission, my Stake President just met with me and released me (he was late for something and in a hurry). Does not having this letter mean that I didn't serve an "honorable" mission? I've always worried about that though I have no reason to think I did anything wrong and I would like to put the concerns to rest. Also, is there a way to get a copy of the letter? Does the Church store them?