The Folk Prophet

No one has said that.

You're missing the point. You're offending others to defend against offensiveness. Your posts to spamlds have been cringe-worthy offensive to my third-party reading. As I read through the posts, spamlds is the one who seems to be attacked personally throughout. He's the one I'm feeling sorry for -- not those who are oversensitive in their defense of Papal authority.

Be honest with your fellow man. If they ask, tell them. If they don't, I'm not sure you're obligated to bring it up. But if you feel you're being dishonest by not telling them, be honest. In the end of it all, that will matter. The rest won't.

Side note: Agency requires accountability. Agency is defined in the scriptures as the freedom "to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil;" (2 Nephi 2:27) Can children (before the age of accountability) choose captivity and death? No. They are not accountable. Do children have agency?

It fits well in the principle of agency. It does not fit well into free will -- which we plainly do not have in all regards.

How is defending your faith against someone who is trying to prove it false going against the Articles of Faith? I sure haven't read anyone saying, "you can't worship according to the dictates of your conscience." A bit of a stretch of an accusation, imo.

It's sort of a sticky wicket of a situation isn't it? On the one hand, you don't want to destroy a child's faith and/or learning about revelation and going to the Lord. However, on the other hand, perhaps an even more important lesson to learn is that A. Not every feeling we get is revelation and. B. You don't get revelation for things that are not your stewardship. Where a child goes to school is not the child's place to say. It is the parents. It is their right to receive revelation for their children on this, and regardless of the child's impressions, it is the parent's decisions and place. As also pointed out, there are legal issues sometimes in play, and regardless of feelings, sometimes we have to do what we have to do legally. So one could try, as an example -- What if I prayed and felt very strongly that I was going to be the next bishop? Would it be my place to go to the Stake President and tell him that I was? What if then I wasn't called to that position? Would that mean the church was false, of that the Stake President was wrong? Can our feelings get in the way of God communicating with us? Etc... In the end, the parent needs to go to the Lord and do as they feel the Spirit directs them. If the answer there is contradictory to the child's "revelation" then it is time to teach that child about stewardship and obedience. If it the answer is the same as the child's then emphasize the revelation and use that as the focus of teaching. Either way, care is required, and the parent should very carefully follow the Spirit's guidance.

This Ask Gramps article addresses Joseph Smith's polyandry somewhat: http://askgramps.org/25342/eliza-r-snow-early-leader-church

Good thoughts. As I see it, there are three tiers to motivation. 1. Fear. 2. Hope for reward. 3. Love. The highest, and best reason to be and do good is, as we know, love. Love of God and love of fellow-man. However, the other two tiers, where lesser reasons, are still valid reasons that are consistent throughout God's word as given in the scriptures. The scriptures are consistent with warnings of destruction for failure to be and do good, and they are replete with the promises of reward for doing and being good. I see it as necessary in the training/raising of children to address all three motivations. I think it is inappropriate to disregard the first two tiers. Parents that ignore them and only go with "love" as the solution to raising someone fail to teach them important concepts of consequence for behavior (punishment/reward). Consequence for behavior is a key aspect of agency. However, as you have implied, I think that it's very natural to fall into defaulting to the first tier, as in, "Behave or be punished", as the full measure of parenting. It is well to remember and incorporate more fully the other tiers as well -- most particularly instilling in our children a love of righteousness, God, and their fellow-men.

I do not, nor have I ever taken Joseph Smith's word for it. Neither have i ever just taken Paul's word for it. Or any other prophet or apostle. This entire thread, and many like it, we LDS consistently claim that the Spirit teaches us the truth and it is by the Spirit that we know what is right and what is wrong, and who is and who isn't a prophet. That men lead the church, and write scripture, and prophesy, and give us Gods' word, is obvious. But whether to accept any given man as a prophet REQUIRES the Spirit. And my belief has no bearing on whether these men are speaking for God. My belief does not make the Bible true. No one's belief has any bearing on the truth.

Realistically, awkward is part of it. It always has been, and always will be. It requires honest and sincere humility to confess, no matter who you are, and it's part of (in my opinion) why we are to confess. If someone can go in and confess a serious sin to their bishop and not feel awkward about it, there's a problem.

Haha. Yeah. Because what people believe about the Bible defines truth... Oh...wait. People believe all sorts of different stuff about the Bible? Everyone who views the Bible differently thinks their (or their church's) interpretation is the right one. And yet they all believe differently. You expect us to just fall down, roll over, and abandon ours just because you believe differently. On what? Your logic is better than ours? At least we recommend prayer when we are suggesting people question their long-held beliefs. We ask them to turn to God. You're asking us to turn to some man or to a committee of men's views. Actually, since you haven't revealed your faith, you're really asking us to just turn to your views. I think I'm going with prayer and the Spirit over you.

Accidentally getting drawn into something that I don't want to be. You're objective here is the problem, not how strongly you feel.

Probably. But I won't. You are hostile. I won't engage.

Must be the missing tone and the poor southern accent.

I don't know if I've posted this on here before, but I have a southern sister-in-law who jokingly points out that you can get away with anything insulting if you add "bless his/her heart" to it. "That boy's a real idiot, bless his heart." and so forth. Of course it doesn't play in writing. You have to have the tone, and, of course, a southern accent helps. :) Maybe that's the solution: "Nonsense, bless your heart." No?

For what it's worth, I would, personally, only consider divorce if my wife was somehow seriously threatening to me or my children. And I mean SERIOUSLY. I simply do not believe in divorce. If she's going to murder me or the children, I'm outta there. Otherwise, relatively speaking, I'm hanging in.

You mean laughter, right? There's a logical fallacy herein. Laughter is not always a result of mirth. But... I'm not anti-laughter or something. I don't see laughter as some sort of to-be-sought cure for health, mental or physical. "Go see a funny movie," doesn't strike me as the best of the "good, better, best" approach to life. Moreover, laughter seems more of an indication of healthy living than a means to it. Someone who never laughs is likely struggling with deeper issues. A suggestion to laugh more doesn't cut it. Dealing with the deeper issues would naturally lead to more laughter. As I said, just my thoughts.

This is false. Christ came to bring new truth, but He also came to restore lost truth.

This would solve all the problems. Instead of calling it medical marijuana, give it some fancy sounding medical name and no one would know the better.

That may be true. But they cannot possibly be reliable. How can you have a reliable study to show that someone who laughs more often is likely to live longer? Even if you watched a billion people daily and tracked every time they laughed, and then saw that those who laughed more seemed to live longer, it would still be entirely inconclusive because there are way too many variables. Of course, legitimately tracking how often people laugh throughout their lives, even for a single person, is practically impossible.

I find that interesting that it isn't considered a fact. If you exercise, you need more calories to get adequate nutrition. Seems fairly obvious to me.

This idea is not canonized. You may feel free to disbelieve it, or simply ignore it, and still be a Mormon in good standing. We honestly do not know how this all works. All we know is that God is God and that He is all that matters. We worship Him and He has promised that we may inherit all that He has if we are obedient to Him. As much as this idea makes sense to me in that if we are inheriting all that the Father has, and someday becoming gods to rule over our own posterity in the same manner that God rules over His, then it only makes sense that it goes the other direction too. But you will find LDS who do not agree who are good, solid, righteous, temple worthy members. You really need to read/understand the Mark E. Petersen quote in context of the time. The literal fact of the matter is that the Priesthood was restricted at that time. Therefore, to marry someone who could not hold the priesthood meant (according to the understanding at the time) a forfeiture of priesthood to one's posterity. It had nothing to do with the eternal value of their souls. And, as the church has explained, the culture was different. Leaders of the church, in spite of being good men, are products of their culture, and are not perfect in all their views and understandings. As far as the ban itself goes, there are scriptural examples even biblical, where the priesthood was restricted because of race. I'm not sure how it can be a theoretical problem at one point and not at another. Is it a problem that only Aaron and his sons (Levites) had the priesthood rights in Moses' time? Or that they were restricted from having the higher (Melchizedek Priesthood) at all? This really just comes down to trusting God and trusting that it will all work out in the end, that He will be fair and just, and that, ultimately, in spite of the seemingly unfair matters of mortality, that God is no respecter of persons in the eternal scheme of things.

With this, I agree. Though, in many cases, it is an issue of tone. I forget that tone and the wry smile that might accompany a spoken response does not come across in writing. In other cases, I'm trying to be forceful and purposely not friendly. Either way, I agree. Incidentally, I always struggle with spelling it baloney instead of bologna. Other words/phrases to clean up: Garbage. Rubbish. Ridiculous. Hogwash. Poppycock. Drivel. What did you smoke this morning? Etc. I'll try instead: I disagree. That doesn't make sense to me. The church doesn't teach that. That's incongruent with what I understand to be true. Etc. I've also been working on adding "IMO" or the like into my posts lately. Whereas I have always viewed IMO as obvious (everything said by anyone is their opinion) it seems to soften things. Other people add "respectfully" or the like at the start of a disagreement. This can be effective if not overused. If it's always used it can come across as insincere. This is also true of closing statements that are "God bless you" and the like. This is particularly true if "respectfully" is followed by something akin to "you are ignorant" or something. In the end, I somewhat wonder if removing "nonsense" and the like from posts will make a difference in the amount of brawls that occur. (I suspect it won't). But either way, it is, ultimately, about who I should be, and not about how others are, that matters. Therefore, I choose to commit to take these sorts of phrases out of my posts, and please feel free to call me on it if I forget or fail.