The Folk Prophet

Let me ask you this? If you were going to hire for a company board, would you consider it important to make sure you had at least one Nazi, one KKK member, one Christian, one Muslim, one Marxist, one Feminist, one Satanist, and one flat-eather in order to be successful as a company? I mean there's a big difference between the idea of not being intimidated by other viewpoints and actually claiming random diversity of view points is good for anything in particular.

I didn't say anyone's viewpoint should be suppressed.

This is a falsehood. Diversity of thought has no value of good or evil. Good thought is good. Bad thought is bad. How diverse that thinking it has no actual measure of good to bad. It just is. It's more reasonable to say that oft times diverse viewpoints can be helpful. But it's also reasonable to say that sometimes diverse viewpoints can be harmful.

So the good part of diversity is the...uniformity.

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.

@zil2 needs to draw a spiritual witch now.

Yeah. Since when does, "I trust in God" mean "Just shut up"?

And I'm not saying that the concern others have isn't natural. I'm suggesting a choice of determination in response. It's something I've had to consciously do in the past 5 years or so. I am naturally GREATLY concerned by these sorts of moves. But I choose to put that aside and trust in God. That is my response, rather than my natural instinct. If that makes sense.

Addendum to my previous post to @Carborendum I realize that read a certain way that what I wrote might come across as "all's well in Zion" or, "am I my brother's keeper" or the like. And I did not intend that messaging in it. We should be concerned with our brother, and we should worry and fret over that. I just don't think it's useful to take broader church actions, policies, etc., and publicly fret over them.

Maybe it's a gap in my knowledge. I really don't know what point you're trying to make. I'm saying we shouldn't be concerned because God leads the church. God's plan is just. It'll all work out as it should. Etc. And you're....I think....pointing out a time when there was concern from the people of the church....?? Meant as justification for and indicative that we should be concerned? Is that your point? What's the actual fear here? Someone who deserved to be exalted now won't be? God's plan is just. Those who should be exalted will be. Those who should be condemned will be. And in EVERY case that will be according to the agency of the individual. The rest is interesting to watch and discuss. It's not worth "concern" though.

I'm sure you have a point. I'm just not sure what it is. Care to elaborate?

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

It's the referring to it as a permanent trait that I find random and strange. But like I said...if you mean God's way isn't to make things permanently blurry for his children who are faithful then.... yeah. Obviously.

Okay. If you're going to randomly define things a certain way and then set your points against that backdrop then...okay. Blurry doesn't mean intentionally forever muddled though. And it's strange to define it that way in my opinion. But if that's what you mean then..... okay.

I don't believe this is the case for mortality. Obviously it's the case for the eternities. Anyone who thinks they can see things as clearly as God in mortality is gonna get themselves in pretty big trouble pretty quickly. We are meant to live by faith. We are meant to trust. We are meant to obey. We are granted understanding and insight in small portions to help us with that, sure. But the condition set forth for our exaltation is not understanding. It is faith and obedience. As far as understanding helps us with faith and obedience it's a good thing. But even the dumbest person alive has the same opportunities for salvation as the most brilliant. I think setting up understanding as key to anything gets people into trouble pretty quickly. Obviously writing off understanding as meaningless would be wrong too. But it's so often the case that people set up understanding, knowledge, logic, and intelligence as the bases for their gospel journey. I generally agree, but... I'm not sure I can even accept that if someone became perfect in this life that they would/could then develop a perfect understanding of the eternities. But even accepting that as right...it's a non-starter because we can't be and won't be perfect in this life. God knew that. He set it up that way. He provided the Savior for us because he knew that. I guess I agree with you "theoretically". It's just practically speaking...that's not the plan of salvation as I understand it. The plan was that we're going to fail and fail and fail and will we or will we not accept the Savior's atonement by way of obedience, repentance and faith. And as much as we improve in our understanding through faith, we're still going to be pretty blind overall and dependent on faith and obedience. I mean I have no doubt that President Nelson understands the Priesthood better than me. I also have no doubt that there's a lot about the Priesthood that President Nelson doesn't understand and that he'd be the first to admit it. I accept this is a part of it. I know it is in the case with parables, because Christ said as much. But I don't think it's the entirety of it. I think it's multifaceted. Of course it also still fits quite nicely into the idea that God wants things blurry. It only adds a "why" (among what I assume are many whys). But I guess what I'm really trying to get across is that we ought to be comfortable with the fact that there are going to be an awful lot of things that we may never understand in this life, and that failure to understand them shouldn't really throw us.

Why can't blurriness be a part of order? Clearly God wants things blurry for us. That's the entire point of the veil. That's the entire idea behind living by faith. That's the whole concept behind the "mysteries of God". That's the very reason Jesus explained why he spoke in parables. Etc., etc., etc. Obviously it's lack of understanding. That's synonymous with "blurry". But it seems pretty clear to me that man's lack of understanding in mortality is God's intent and part of His plan. Or, in other words, it seems clear that God wants things to be blurry for mankind.

Why not?

I think that is the case sometimes. I am confident that we as mortals, even in the church, only have a very small taste of understanding of the priesthood and what it actually means.

We bought our home in 2009 at 225k. It appraised about a year back at 620k. We did finish the basement in that time, so that explains some small part of it. But we don't have a big fancy house by any means. This made me think of the interviews I've seen recently with Michael Malice and his anarchism philosophies. He has some interesting ideas. I like a lot of his thoughts. But no government? Really? That's gonna work out.

I'm not sure government and taxes is sufficient to explain the fact that our house is worth 3 times the amount we originally bought it for 15ish years back though.

I have an alternate take. Probably highly controversial. Stuffing cooked inside the turkey is gross. Stovetop is the best! I'm not saying that just to be contrary. I legitimately prefer Stovetop. Every time I go to a family gettogether where they've done some fancy schmancy stuffing I don't like it as well. Stovetop is, however, good, and every time we do our cheap out-of-the-box approach to stuffing/dressing, I enjoy it and crave more. It's one of my favorite parts of turkey dinners. Either way, what comes out of a turkey is slimey, disgusting slop.

The point isn't danger. If you cook the stuffing to done then you cook it to done. The problem is that cooking stuffing inside a large turkey to done pretty much guarantees that the turkey itself will be overcooked and overly dry. With a smaller bird like a chicken it's less of an issue.

I don't believe these things are diametrically opposite.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/hymns/using-the-hymnbook?lang=eng&para=title8-p19#title8 Selecting Verses to Be Sung You need not feel compelled to sing all the verses of a hymn unless the message is otherwise incomplete. However, do not routinely shorten a hymn by singing just the first one or two verses. Singing the verses printed below the music is encouraged.

If you want to watch woke garbage that pretty well destroys the source material....sure.