askandanswer

Thank you Maureen

Dorian, perhaps the more important question for you to reflect on is when will you let your decisions and feeling about the LDS church be guided by faith rather than empirical research and reasoning? It may be that at the moment, your balance between these two points may be a little skewed in favour of reasoning and on the question of whether the LDS church is Gods' true church, you may need to reset the balance a little more towards faith. Its always possible to find questions and stumbling blocks and unexpected oddities that can suddenly grow from molehills to mountains and become stumbling blocks that get in the way of our search for eternal truth, but the exercise of faith can quickly shrink them back down to molehills, or make them disappear altogether. 

Hi Dorian,
 
let me just focus on #2 this morning.
 
In the OT the priesthood was even more restricted than it was in 1954. Anyone outside the lineage of Levi with few possible exceptions was not eligible for the priesthood. The children of Israel were also forbidden to marry foreigners. It may seem ugly and narrow minded, but it was God's decree, and before I would accuse God of being too exclusive, I'd be more inclined to accept my own lack of understanding while accepting He has a purpose.

She actually had to live at a gym? The poor woman.

"True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior.

The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior. Preoccupation with unworthy behavior can lead to unworthy behavior. That is why we stress so forcefully the study of the doctrines of the gospel."

Boyd K Packer, October 1986 General Conference

There was a time when two wards and a branch met in our chapel but the branch was dissolved years ago so now its just two wards and some people still say the chapel is too small. Its been probably close to three years now that every sacrament meeting, when the person conducting gets up to announce the intermediate hymn and the final speaker, that they will remind the congregation to clean up after themselves in the chapel, to replace the hymn books, stack the chairs and clean the boards. The counsellor in the bishopric who first started doing this was released about two years ago but other members of the bishopric followed his lead and continued to make the same announcement each week. This same counsellor could sometimes be seen vacuuming the chapel early on Sunday mornings if he didn't think it was clean enough. I suspect that these things would continue to happen each week even if members were not reminded of it but I guess there is no harm in repeating the message. I don't believe the other ward makes a similar announcement in their meetings. Its also my observation, and not just me, that when its the other ward's turn to clean the chapel, they don't do it as well as our ward does but nobody seems to get really bothered by it. 

There was a time when two wards and a branch met in our chapel but the branch was dissolved years ago so now its just two wards and some people still say the chapel is too small. Its been probably close to three years now that every sacrament meeting, when the person conducting gets up to announce the intermediate hymn and the final speaker, that they will remind the congregation to clean up after themselves in the chapel, to replace the hymn books, stack the chairs and clean the boards. The counsellor in the bishopric who first started doing this was released about two years ago but other members of the bishopric followed his lead and continued to make the same announcement each week. This same counsellor could sometimes be seen vacuuming the chapel early on Sunday mornings if he didn't think it was clean enough. I suspect that these things would continue to happen each week even if members were not reminded of it but I guess there is no harm in repeating the message. I don't believe the other ward makes a similar announcement in their meetings. Its also my observation, and not just me, that when its the other ward's turn to clean the chapel, they don't do it as well as our ward does but nobody seems to get really bothered by it. 

Sushi or wasabi?  No way!
 
Something sweet.  I'm thinking I'll have a Lindor milk chocolate truffle.

I lke this rule of thumb from from galatians 5:
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
 23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Will they take checks?

Depends on the Catholic.

Like this:

Oh no... the polar bear in my profile picture is not wearing a shirt.  Or pants.
 
 
 
I take it the ginger bread person is appropriately dressed?

So can the profile "headlines," which often make me laugh out loud, e.g., "Foodie seeks bad cook for weight loss purposes."

This sounds like the beginning of a joke. Let's make one up:
 
An atheist is meeing with LDS, Baptist, and Buddhist missionaries. He gets up to make himself a hot dog and asks the missionaries if they'd like one, too.
 
The Baptist missionary says, "The hot dog is like the Trinity. It's made of beef, pork, and turkey, but it's all one hot dog."
 
The LDS missionary says, "The hot dog is like our mortal lives. It's made of flesh. We dress it up with fancy condiments, but the real goodness is inside. And if we look at it in cross-section, we see it's one eternal round." (His companion says, "No thanks, I'm fasting.")
 
The Buddhist missionary says, "Yes, thank you. Make me one with everything."

I have no idea.
The best that I think I can come up with is that discrimination on the basis of superficial things, unchangeable, or situations from which you were born into. e.g. skin color should not be discriminated against.
However there are exceptions to a general rule, such as being born poor and and not being able to afford things.
Generally discrimination shouldn't cause harm to another human being. Though prison, fines, and even the death penalty could potentially be seen as causing harm. (there is a reason we discriminate against many legally defined criminal acts)
 
Discrimination should largely be based on how an individual acts (say stealing). It's perfectly acceptable for people to avoid jerks/people they don't get along with. There is still the problem with this though, e.g. mental disorders, is it really alright to discriminate against them (probably not, though if for example you aren't capable of being say a chemist you shouldn't be one)
 
I find most arguments pro-discrimination (e.g. required education before entering college) generally have some merit. Don't discriminate against {insert here}, also generally have some merit.
The way discrimination is applied in modern society seem completely arbitrary to me.
 

I was hoping to keep it as a surprise until the stake and wood are fully prepared :)

Last night while looking around for some material that I thought might inform my planned input to one of the current discussions on this site Google directed me to another LDS themed discussion forum. I read a few of the posts and was shocked to read how critical the posters were of other posters. After enjoying the friendly, good natured discussion on this site, it really was quite a surprise for me to see how unpleasant the posters were to each other on this other site. This experience renewed my appreciation for the thoughtful, well informed, friendly tone of discussion that prevails on this site. It made me feel grateful for people like Anatess, Vort, Pale Rider, Prison Chaplin, Mordurbund, Seminarysnoozer, Just a guy, the folk prophet, eowen, polarvortex, Jimmigerman, estradling and many many others. New as she is, I also enjoy and appreciate Claire’s well thought out and well written comments. And of course, I’m grateful to Pam for all that she does in moderating and maintaining this site, and the organisation she works for. 

Of course you are right askandanswer and SpiritDragon, but the point is somewhat of a non-starter when it comes to the gay-rights issue. That is because the homosexual non-discrimination discussion clearly carries the idea of biased/unfair discrimination as an implicit adjective. And bias is always, at it's core, mistaken.
 
Those who argue against non-discrimination either have to confess bias, or they must claim that homosexuality is harmful to society and there is valid reason to discriminate. That's a pretty tough argument to make in today's culture.

The reason I focus in on the "God given" part is because the origin of the institution is relevant. If it really is something man just made up, even if he originally made it up to be between only a man and a woman, men would still have the authority to change that definition. If it has its origin in some power external to man, then it is what it is and we can't change it. Even if we try to argue that the institution is rooted in nature vice God, and logically there's good reason to say that it is, it could reasonably be argued that we are not necessarily bound by those origins in establishing our civil institutions. 
 
I agree that invoking God doesn't carry a lot of weight, but I also think that that is something of a double standard that I don't think we should capitulate to. Truth is truth, whether or not everybody agrees with it, so we should be willing to invoke the truth (at least as we understand it) in the political arena. Others are of course free to disagree, and debating why we disagree is probably more profitable that trying to side-step the issue altogether.

Claire, this comes from the official church website
 
https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints?lang=eng

If I hadn't been so tired when I wrote this post, it probably would have been more concise. Its longer than it should be but I think it still makes the point I want it to.
 
 
In 2013, the last time our federal parliament gave some serious thought to same sex marriage, the church asked us to communicate our thoughts and feelings on the topic to our local Member of Parliament. I did so, and one of the lines I used in my letter was similar to the line Vort took in the news conference posting – that if we allowed same sex marriage because not to do so was unfair, unequal and discriminatory against gay couples who wanted to get married – then there was no longer any logical argument for banning daddies who wanted to marry their daughters or women who wanted to marry their dogs. A few weeks later, Senator Cory Bernardi, a government Senator and ferocious right wing hard core Christian, started making public statements along exactly the same lines. He was very strongly condemned from all sides, even his own, and after a week or two he stopped making such statement. Last year, the government wanted to remove a few words from Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which would have had the effect of reducing the number of grounds on which a person could be sued for discrimination. These two events have led me to think a bit about discrimination and exactly what it is, or might be.
 
It seems to me that the essence of discrimination is when a group that possesses a particular characteristic or attribute, is treated differently by other groups because they possess that particular characteristic or attribute. In the recent case, the attribute in question was being gay and the difference treatment was differential access to housing and jobs. If that sort of behaviour is indeed discrimination, which of the following is, and is not, discriminatory:
Limited access to housing because of gender preference
Limited access to housing because of a person's height
Limited access to housing because of ethnic origins
Limited access to housing because of inability to pay the rent
Limited access to housing because of the poor condition of the house
Limited access to jobs because of colour
Limited access to jobs because of inadequate training or not having the correct qualifications
Limited access to heaven because of sin
Limited access to disabled parking spaces because of not having a disability
Marriage only between a man and a woman
Marriage between same sex couples
Marriage between people and animals
Limited access to baptism and temples because of sin
 
Does God discriminate against those who are not worthy to enter the celestial kingdom by not allowing them entry? I certainly hope He does, otherwise there is no point in striving to meet the entry requirements. Is there a temple recommend question that discourages us from associating with certain groups or people who propagate certain beliefs? Is not the whole temple recommend interview process a means of discriminating between those who can and those who cannot enter the temple? I think that all of us, every week, need to be making decisions that involve a degree of discriminatory practice – eg, do I praise my son (different treatment) for a job well done (a characteristic)? Do I avoid my neighbour (different treatment) because he swears and is drunk (a characteristic) all the time? Do I refuse to employ the American gardener (different treatment) because he charges more than double what the Mexican gardener charges ( a characteristic) Do I make a different decision about someone or something or should my decision be influenced by (a difference) an attribute that that person has that is good or bad (a characteristic). If we answer yes to that question, we are practicing a form of discrimination. I hope we are making these kinds of decisions every day.
 
My point is that discrimination is a necessary, unavoidable, important, and everyday, although usually unrecognised part of life. There is good discrimination and bad discrimination. The line between the two is often blurred and quite mobile. To simply reject something on the grounds that it is discriminatory may be failing to recognise the true nature of discrimination. The trouble seems to arise when people can’t agree on what is acceptable basis for discrimination. 

If I hadn't been so tired when I wrote this post, it probably would have been more concise. Its longer than it should be but I think it still makes the point I want it to.
 
 
In 2013, the last time our federal parliament gave some serious thought to same sex marriage, the church asked us to communicate our thoughts and feelings on the topic to our local Member of Parliament. I did so, and one of the lines I used in my letter was similar to the line Vort took in the news conference posting – that if we allowed same sex marriage because not to do so was unfair, unequal and discriminatory against gay couples who wanted to get married – then there was no longer any logical argument for banning daddies who wanted to marry their daughters or women who wanted to marry their dogs. A few weeks later, Senator Cory Bernardi, a government Senator and ferocious right wing hard core Christian, started making public statements along exactly the same lines. He was very strongly condemned from all sides, even his own, and after a week or two he stopped making such statement. Last year, the government wanted to remove a few words from Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which would have had the effect of reducing the number of grounds on which a person could be sued for discrimination. These two events have led me to think a bit about discrimination and exactly what it is, or might be.
 
It seems to me that the essence of discrimination is when a group that possesses a particular characteristic or attribute, is treated differently by other groups because they possess that particular characteristic or attribute. In the recent case, the attribute in question was being gay and the difference treatment was differential access to housing and jobs. If that sort of behaviour is indeed discrimination, which of the following is, and is not, discriminatory:
Limited access to housing because of gender preference
Limited access to housing because of a person's height
Limited access to housing because of ethnic origins
Limited access to housing because of inability to pay the rent
Limited access to housing because of the poor condition of the house
Limited access to jobs because of colour
Limited access to jobs because of inadequate training or not having the correct qualifications
Limited access to heaven because of sin
Limited access to disabled parking spaces because of not having a disability
Marriage only between a man and a woman
Marriage between same sex couples
Marriage between people and animals
Limited access to baptism and temples because of sin
 
Does God discriminate against those who are not worthy to enter the celestial kingdom by not allowing them entry? I certainly hope He does, otherwise there is no point in striving to meet the entry requirements. Is there a temple recommend question that discourages us from associating with certain groups or people who propagate certain beliefs? Is not the whole temple recommend interview process a means of discriminating between those who can and those who cannot enter the temple? I think that all of us, every week, need to be making decisions that involve a degree of discriminatory practice – eg, do I praise my son (different treatment) for a job well done (a characteristic)? Do I avoid my neighbour (different treatment) because he swears and is drunk (a characteristic) all the time? Do I refuse to employ the American gardener (different treatment) because he charges more than double what the Mexican gardener charges ( a characteristic) Do I make a different decision about someone or something or should my decision be influenced by (a difference) an attribute that that person has that is good or bad (a characteristic). If we answer yes to that question, we are practicing a form of discrimination. I hope we are making these kinds of decisions every day.
 
My point is that discrimination is a necessary, unavoidable, important, and everyday, although usually unrecognised part of life. There is good discrimination and bad discrimination. The line between the two is often blurred and quite mobile. To simply reject something on the grounds that it is discriminatory may be failing to recognise the true nature of discrimination. The trouble seems to arise when people can’t agree on what is acceptable basis for discrimination. 

If I hadn't been so tired when I wrote this post, it probably would have been more concise. Its longer than it should be but I think it still makes the point I want it to.
 
 
In 2013, the last time our federal parliament gave some serious thought to same sex marriage, the church asked us to communicate our thoughts and feelings on the topic to our local Member of Parliament. I did so, and one of the lines I used in my letter was similar to the line Vort took in the news conference posting – that if we allowed same sex marriage because not to do so was unfair, unequal and discriminatory against gay couples who wanted to get married – then there was no longer any logical argument for banning daddies who wanted to marry their daughters or women who wanted to marry their dogs. A few weeks later, Senator Cory Bernardi, a government Senator and ferocious right wing hard core Christian, started making public statements along exactly the same lines. He was very strongly condemned from all sides, even his own, and after a week or two he stopped making such statement. Last year, the government wanted to remove a few words from Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which would have had the effect of reducing the number of grounds on which a person could be sued for discrimination. These two events have led me to think a bit about discrimination and exactly what it is, or might be.
 
It seems to me that the essence of discrimination is when a group that possesses a particular characteristic or attribute, is treated differently by other groups because they possess that particular characteristic or attribute. In the recent case, the attribute in question was being gay and the difference treatment was differential access to housing and jobs. If that sort of behaviour is indeed discrimination, which of the following is, and is not, discriminatory:
Limited access to housing because of gender preference
Limited access to housing because of a person's height
Limited access to housing because of ethnic origins
Limited access to housing because of inability to pay the rent
Limited access to housing because of the poor condition of the house
Limited access to jobs because of colour
Limited access to jobs because of inadequate training or not having the correct qualifications
Limited access to heaven because of sin
Limited access to disabled parking spaces because of not having a disability
Marriage only between a man and a woman
Marriage between same sex couples
Marriage between people and animals
Limited access to baptism and temples because of sin
 
Does God discriminate against those who are not worthy to enter the celestial kingdom by not allowing them entry? I certainly hope He does, otherwise there is no point in striving to meet the entry requirements. Is there a temple recommend question that discourages us from associating with certain groups or people who propagate certain beliefs? Is not the whole temple recommend interview process a means of discriminating between those who can and those who cannot enter the temple? I think that all of us, every week, need to be making decisions that involve a degree of discriminatory practice – eg, do I praise my son (different treatment) for a job well done (a characteristic)? Do I avoid my neighbour (different treatment) because he swears and is drunk (a characteristic) all the time? Do I refuse to employ the American gardener (different treatment) because he charges more than double what the Mexican gardener charges ( a characteristic) Do I make a different decision about someone or something or should my decision be influenced by (a difference) an attribute that that person has that is good or bad (a characteristic). If we answer yes to that question, we are practicing a form of discrimination. I hope we are making these kinds of decisions every day.
 
My point is that discrimination is a necessary, unavoidable, important, and everyday, although usually unrecognised part of life. There is good discrimination and bad discrimination. The line between the two is often blurred and quite mobile. To simply reject something on the grounds that it is discriminatory may be failing to recognise the true nature of discrimination. The trouble seems to arise when people can’t agree on what is acceptable basis for discrimination. 

I won't go into too many particulars since Catholics and LDS tend to differ a bit on some of these things, but I do think either camp can probably admit to there being some "principle of continuity."
 
Obviously we all have standard issue "mortal" bodies right now. Throughout our lives, from conception to birth to adulthood to old age and death, those bodies change in a pretty radical way. The physical matter that makes up my body right now is probably 99+% different from the physical matter that made it up when I was first born, but we still consider it to be the "same" body. What this means is that, over and apart from the physical stuff making us up, there has to be some underlying unchanging thing that makes us up. For a Catholic, this would be the soul which orders and gives form to the body. For LDS, I think anatess was probably on the right track with your spirit bodies (I'll leave it to other LDS to determine if that's accurate or not).
 
Regardless, we know from observing our physical bodies that there's some unperceived principle of continuity at work. I think that whatever that principle is, it will likely be present in your resurrected body as well.