NightSG

Well, all the people who don't come to Sacrament Meeting (99.8% of the world, plus another .1% of the world who are inactive members, so statistically, the Church doesn't even exist) at all miss out on the whole thing, so why not just do away with all of it, sell the buildings off cheap and save a fortune in maintenance costs?

Then I'd be equally inclined to point out the lack of dancing in Sacrament Meeting.

If he was told to back off and stick to stake affairs as the OP said, then how do you figure dictating ward activities exactly as he was told not to isn't being disobedient?

The OP also stated earlier that it had previously been necessary for other leaders to go over his head, and it had come back down the chain for him to back off and stop micromanaging. How do you figure it's not disobedient to wait a bit and start seeing how much he can get away with before that happens again?

Actually rearing children means having them ready to be adults by the time they reach adulthood. Sounds like they've got a solid streak of not doing that.

Usually the voting Democrat thing happens after the dead in a gutter thing.

Strictly speaking, the calculations were done in binary, which then had to be converted to either of the other systems.

So nobody ever prayed about what the choir should be called until now?

There are two kinds of nations; those on the metric system and those that have put men on the moon.

Or at least it feels eternal while listening to some people on F&T Sunday.

More likely 7-9, 7:45-9:45, 8:30-10:30 AFAICT, meetinghouse scheduling is inspired by the spirit of mercury poisoning.

I must have missed the commandment not to gather outside of designated meetinghouses. Maybe you should push your luck and risk heresy by visiting at each others homes.

That was probably the reason; I won't say the Church has a problem finding good sopranos, but the dogs near every meetinghouse I've been to seem to howl a lot during that hour.

If Elizabeth Grau goes postal, do you think the articles will neglect to mention who she's related to?

You do know there are services every week, right? Go to some more and you'll see much worse. It's usually in full surround sound from all sides. On the bright side, it'll only be 7-8 more years before they teach that one to sit quietly.

This; I don't know where you are, but every place I've been, therapists are about as common as nail salons, and most of them got that psych degree in an unsuccessful attempt to figure themselves out. Shop around.

Didn't help the 46 victims at Sutherland Springs. What did help was an armed bystander who kept the shooter from going back in. (Or continuing on to find more victims, as he apparently intended to target his inlaws.) Which, over the average lifespan puts it roughly on par with dying in an airline crash. Lots of people make far bigger adjustments to their lifestyle to avoid flying than simply putting on an extra piece of equipment in the morning routine. You're 33,000 times more likely to die of heart disease, so why not some restrictions on bringing unhealthy foods to potlucks? 20,000 times more likely to die in a car wreck, so why not televise all services and mail out bread and water for the Sacrament? Why? Do those only kill you sort of dead? Maybe we should also exclude shootings with calibers that contain a three, so we can make the result even more irrelevant. And as we've seen from multiple incidents, innocent bystanders are at risk from those as well. (Only one of the Sutherland Springs victims was related to the shooter's wife, and it's unlikely that one was his intended target.) Even more so if they have the human decency to try to help the victim in any way. Realistically speaking, the situation you're pretending is hypothetical is happening all over the country without any of the problems your "statistics" predict. Are you claiming that LDS are less competent and/or mentally stable than other faiths, and thus wouldn't be able to handle themselves as well? The signs you're looking at are made up by people pushing the same agenda as you. "Basic concealed carry training" varies from state to state, as does police and security training. Frankly, my concealed carry renewal classes were more comprehensive in terms of how and when to use deadly force than the state training for an armed security officer. My initial class was taught by a retired Royal Marine firearms instructor, with input from a criminal defense attorney who helped write Texas' concealed carry laws and update some of the self defense laws. The security training requirements, on the other hand, made it clear that Paul Blart: Mall Cop was entirely too close to the truth. (Not to say I didn't work with some excellent security officers who took our work seriously, but there were also plenty who were only there because they couldn't keep a fast food job.)

Nope; you don't get to go back to that until everyone is converted and understands the essentials of the Gospel. Hope you've got lots of time for China.

You really don't recognize self-worship as a religion?

And sensible people look at you and wonder just how many more people you could lead to Christ in the time you spend pondering and debating this. It's very important what kind of road base and preparation is used when building a highway, but absolutely unnecessary for any of the drivers on it to have a clue. God already built the road, so why not focus more on your driving?

"We should associate with those who, like us, are planning not for temporary convenience, shallow goals, or narrow ambition—but rather with those who value the things that matter most, even eternal objectives." An exclusive directive as to who we should associate with is an equally clear statement of who we should not associate with - and thus shun. And frankly, with that wording, it's so open as to include virtually anyone; having at least one "shallow goal" or "narrow ambition" is a pretty normal feature of human consciousness, making it an open invitation to shun, or to recommend shunning, anyone at will. Three different HTs and two of my own former HT companions used the same quote at different times to tell me I should completely avoid different women I was dating at the time. You know perfectly well that the word barely even exists outside of a religious context. Narrowing the definition to be able to say "we don't do this" is the sort of thing that supports the "cult" perception. "No formal practice" sounds like you're making a last ditch attempt to defend against a worker's comp claim where somebody got hurt doing something a half dozen other workers just testified has been going on since the beginning.

And that's what the word means. Period. If we're going to redefine things for convenience, we might as well redefine "drinks" to not include coffee or tea and enjoy them to our hearts' content.

Who? Well, I'm not the one who produced an Inspired Version that copies most of that text verbatim, and makes only grammar and punctuation changes to the rest. Seems "this part is wrong; fix it right or leave it out entirely" would be a pretty easy and significant thing to inspire given the attention paid to such minor things as changing colons to semicolons. Really? You're telling me that Church leadership has never given clear instructions to avoid or ignore various types of people?