the Ogre

You're getting really worked up. I get it. I got problems, too. Even the great and mighty @pam has problems. We all do. No one is perfect on this board. Be patient and let the atonement work in your life and DO NOT FREAK OUT WHEN THERE IS A SETBACK OR TWO.

Think so . . . m'kay . . .

Ah, you get the point! New Point: it doesn't matter if you or I think something is allegorical or not, others WILL disagree and WILL disagree to the point where any scriptural instruction is possible. Fighting is always the problem. For example, the flood: I think the flood is both historical and allegorical, but there are individuals, entire faith-groups, historians, scientists, philosophers, and skeptics who disagree. Then there are disagreements about how historical the flood is or which allegorical interpretations are allowed if they can be allowed. Eventually, the whole point of any discussion is bogged down over the veracity or interpretation of the flood event itself and not the spiritual or scriptural point that might've been made and everyone gets mad, retreats to their personal orthodoxies, and no one learns anything and any hope of constructive discussion is lost. This very thread is an illustration of that point: whatever the OP's point might've been is lost in useless minutia, that's why points 1-3 of the bullet list I provided is so important. You've been active on this forum for decades, Traveler, and the discussions you get involved with or start always get bogged down. It's boring and you never accomplish anything, however, I like reading what you have to say, but almost never choose to rebut you or discuss anything with you because it would be useless to: you like bogs, pitfalls, stumbling blocks, minutia, and the nitpickery of language especially when it shows you just might the smartest person on the forum (keep in mind, I do not think you should stop posting, because you are very knowledgeable and have loads to contribute). I think such king-of-the-hill discussions are pointless and a contravention of the intent of the gospel and the four-fold mission of the church, however writing that is accessible, clear, and bereft of opaque subtlety and ego would be beneficial to everyone.

When I woke this morning and read the news and after I said my prayers thanking The L-rd for President Monson and his decades of hard work, I immediately thought about this thread. I love President Monson and when I posted this thread I wanted to guage people's reactions to the Trib's reporting (I was a little surprised at the rancor, but I should not have been). Personally, when I read the story about President Monson needing to stay home because of the effects health, age, and a life of hard work and travel back in September I think it was, I was not sad for President Monson. He was ninety and had worked hard his entire life for the church and the picture accompanying the photo showed him with some great-grandchildren and I thought then that that's what I want when I am ninety. I want to be able to sit in a recliner in my old age and to be surrounded by children. I am so happy the church was led by such a great man. I am eternally grateful for the gift of his service and the love that radiated from him every time he spoke or appeared in public. We are fortunate as Latter-day Saints to have leaders like President Monson. When I posted the story above, I was not worried about anything going astray with the church when President Monson needed to stay home because the organization of the leadership of the church is amazing and is established for continuity and smoothness of operation. President Monson's call for the disaffected to come back still resonates with me and I know while he was the person who said it, he was only voicing the hopes and wishes of the L-rd.

I just read the news and then said a prayer of thanks for President Monson's decades of hard work. In my prayer, I also thanked the L-rd for President Nelson. I'll be thanking the L-rd for President Monson for quite a while. He was a special man and a wonderful leader of the church. He will be missed.

At least someone did. :0

Here is a recent news article from Religion News Service that gives a little Jewish perspective. Edit: Here is an article from Jewish Telegraphic Agency on the issue.

According to the Deseretnews, Sen. Hatch is retiring. I know not everyone here is from Utah, but this is kinda big news even for Latter-day Saints not in Utah since Hatch is easily the most powerful member of the church in government here in the United States. As the senate pro tem, he is also the most powerful senator in the US. For me, I like him very much, but I am glad he is stepping aside. I hope Romney runs for his seat. We need another voice that will counter Trump's more stupid annunciations in the senate.

Normally, I'd gloat, but the Jazz aren't doing that well right now

Thanks Pam

Here is the complication I have: I am Jewish through my mother's side of the family. My Jewish ancestors converted to the church in the early 1900s and moved to Utah. They were disowned by the family who remained behind in the Pale and in Germany. ALL, All of the family who remained were killed in the holocaust unless they had the good fortune to die before (except for a few cousins in Philly who snuck out just in time). I can not do their temple work since I am not their direct ancestor. Honestly, I'm okay. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my great-uncles have already done the work and did so many years prior to the 1980s and 90s agreement to stop doing temple work for deceased Jews, particularly holocaust Jews. Now I have found a great many names from the trio of shtetls where those relatives came from that I am a direct descendant of and I am in the hunt for many more, but out of respect for the church's agreement (the agreement that those members who did the work for Carrie Fisher's family are in violation of), I have not submitted any of those names and will wait until the time is right. Maybe my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to do the work for them. Who knows, but world-wide Judaism is still recovering from the holocaust and right now, doing this temple work would hurt the church and its relationship with Judaism and simply be in bad taste. The work will wait.

Can you accomplish your aim without seeking to allegorize scripture? The process of allegorization is simply beating around the bush. A process that is fraught with danger, the danger of your intent being hijacked by people who disagree with seeing allegory in historical events or being hijacked by people who dispute the veracity of the same historical event due some application of science. Here's an ad hoc formula that I bet will work: Avoid controversial historical events, avoid the baked-in controversies surrounding controversial historical events, and obviously, avoid allegory altogether (it's confusing and allegory nearly always fall apart under pressure), then state your idea clearly without manipulation (I recommend a clear three stage thesis), provide a limited series of supports that get to the point quickly (really long series of supports bore your readers) , and close with a clear conclusion that reaffirms the original thesis. If you are writing for a forum, realize writing more than five hundred words is simply writing too much--more than five hundred words is too much for a blog even. If you need more space than five hundred words, write a series of forum posts and/or blog entries. The important thing is: be simple, avoid controversial historical events, don't allegorize, and be concise. Whatever you were trying to accomplish got lost in the controversies surrounding the creation narrative. I'm interested in your content, not a creation allegory: stop beating around the bush.

So, did you hear from your BP? I hope he had good news. I don't have seasonal depression, just the regular kind, but my springtime allergies are so bad, I can barely function. Every time I've been an EQP or SSP, I've had similar problems with counselors. Typically where one (and almost always, both) of my counselors could care less or is so busy with other concerns there's no contribution of any form other than "you go Br. Ogre." It's hard to delegate or get advise when the answer from the rest of the presidency is almost always "no" or "sorry bro, but I got softball/bowling/golf/work/the hunt/wife-problems and there's no way" or "huh?" or "whatever, talk to the Relief Society Pres, it's her job" Yeah, we survived. I always let the the counselors get the recognition when we succeeded and took it on the chin when we failed. Most of the time however, no one but the bishop and I knew there was ever a problem. I don't have any advice other than: keep on keeping on. Keep communicating with your BP, I know he wants to know and is supportive even if he can't help. It sounds like you are a pretty amazing person. I'm not saying you can or can't do it, but bide your time through the blue times. You know eventually the rain clouds go away.

Straight up excitement, man. You know what it's like: you get super involved in something and you can't hear anything going on around you. Just getting deafened by rhetorical adrenaline.

From the link shared by @NeedleinA, here are my favorite news items: President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency, announced on February 7 the creation of a new global higher education organization, BYU–Pathway Worldwide. The printer’s manuscript of The Book of Mormon was purchased by the Church. On December 14, the First Presidency announced changes in temple policies that give young men and young women more opportunities in temple work and that help Primary children better prepare to serve in the temple. The First Presidency announced on May 11 that the Church will discontinue involvement in the Boy Scouts of America Varsity and Venturing programs. March 17 marked 175 years since the organization of the Relief Society by the prophet Joseph Smith in 1842. On August 17, Elder D. Todd Christofferson visited the Church’s only branch in Nepal and surprised members with copies of the first Nepali translation of the Book of Mormon. Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles died on October 1. Funeral services were held on October 6 in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. On October 27, the First Presidency announced changes to the general women’s and general priesthood sessions of general conference.

I agree with the above. So often we get bogged down in the intellectual study of the scriptures and gospel and forget to also delve deeper into the spiritual and emotional depths associated with the gospel that are hard if not impossible to quantify intellectually through language and discussion. The solo attempt through "meditation and resolve" to become as one with the F-ther and S-n through the H-ly Ghost should be our aim and intellectualism is rarely the method that gets us there.

You didn't respond to the OP, however. Where did the Trib get it wrong since you despise them so much? What is the biggest LDS news of 2017 in your opinion? I'm interested in discussing the news, rather than shooting the messenger (and yes, it is fair to say the Trib is not always the best at reporting LDS issues, but so what, that's not the point here).

According to this article published by the Salt Lake Tribune, the following are biggest LDS related news events. Do you agree? What did they miss? What was the biggest event for you? President Monson skipping general conference due to health and age. President Monson essentially retires. Elder Hales dies during October General Conference. Elder Hamula gets exed. MormonLeaks publishes President Eyring's 2000 paystub of $89K and that all GAs of any level being paid $120K. The Church steps further away from scouting. A new Relief Society Presidency. The new MTC in Provo. New prospective missionary interview questions. The Church endorses an LGBTQ fundraising concert. The Trump visits Welfare Square. Shorter General Conference. Looser dress standards for church employees. Updated parental leave benefits for church employees. New Temples. Single men over 30 and the recently divorced can now volunteer at the temple. Priest age boys can perform baptisms for the dead. Teenage girls can now volunteer at temple baptisteries. Temple and Priesthood Prep classes will include girls as well as boys. Caffeinated Coke allowed at BYU and LDS Business College. The ‘Snufferites’ meet to canonize a new set of scriptures. FLDS Lyle Jeffs is captured, arrested, and sentenced to 5 years for defrauding food stamps.

Now, you'd submit your homework digitally and they'd run it through a word-counter and plagiarization detector to make sure your paper was on the up and up. 1010 students who thought they could tweek their papers as you did get screwed. And yes, I make loads of grammatical errors, too, but I have loads of fun doing them when I grammatically fart about just to mess with people.

At least my panhandling sign will be correctly spelled and punctuated!

I'm going to try something from a different angle other than to say I am not too concerned about the changes to the BoM text. It was something we discussed when I went to the Y in the early 90s and people are still getting hung up on it now. Especially people who are investigating, members who have doubts, or people who hate the church. Like everyone, I get doubts about hard questions. When I was a kid, I didn't understand the G-dhead v trinity stuff, but I decided to not panic and just kept working away at the problem and now that I'm older and much more educated about the subject of G-dhead v trinity, I don't get confused. So. Textual errors. I don't get hung up on it, especially when they are corrections made by Joseph Smith himself. Why? JS was the original translator. A dictator of text is a bad understanding of what happened. Okay: I lived in Seoul for eight years and I was part of translation team for business and legal text from Korean into English. There were three of us: two very expert speakers of Korean and a copy editor who spoke sufficient Korean. I was the copy editor who toiled over the English texts to make sure they would work in English while ensuring the intent and meaning of the original Korean text remained intact. The process took for ever and even when we declared a text to be as good as it could be, we often wished as a team we could go back to clarify problematic phrases or cultural inconsistencies as our experience and skill with Korean, English, and the subject matter improved. However none of us were prophets who received inspiration and regular updates from heaven regarding the texts we labored over. JS was. He translated the text at a time in his life when he was still a learner of the gospel and if he went back later to clarify a few points here and there, so what? I also keep in mind when Moroni says "And if there be faults they be the faults of a man. But behold, we know no fault; nevertheless God knoweth all things; therefore, he that condemneth, let him be aware lest he shall be in danger of hell fire" (Moroni 8:17). Moroni was specifically discussing the translation of his and his father's life's work. Moroni was also very clear when he said "a man" and to me that man was Joseph Smith. The translation work of JS was amazing and a miracle considering his age, naivete, and educational lack. I am not about to condemn JS, but then I am not one of the three types of people I mention above: an investigator, a doubter, or an enemy of the church. I think, @blossom76 and all sincere investigators (and most doubters, too), are innocent of any crime against G-d and His prophet. I also think we can cut JS some slack and also cut the church some slack when the church went back in the eighties and corrected printer's errors and the occasional spelling error. The book is a translation after all. Not only is it a translation, it was translated into the most imperfect of ridiculous languages, English. Don't get hung up, be patient, pray, meditate, research, ask questions, but absolutely do not jump to conclusions.

Hi. I took some liberties here and synthesized everything down to two parts: 1) What is my relationship to G-d and J-sus and 2) Why do we need a G-d AND a R-deemer anyway. I personally think the rest, while important, is essentially a series of red-herrings. Here is the problem, the only person qualified to answer these two questions for you is you and a bunch of meditation, prayer, and inspiration. For me, I take Nephi's approach and go for the plain and simple. I hate some of the pilpul and pin-head dancing that sometimes comes with answering these two questions. I'm a pretty skeptical person and love skepticism, but some of the problems with skepticism is over complicating the questions and the answers. My advise: take it easy and don't bake your head over it. Take it easy and know G-d loves you.

This is my personal opinion on this verse: I don't think the L-rd is showing Abraham the creation, rather Abraham is being shown that those who helped in the creation were organized and that creation was a structured, organized event. I don't think more should be read into this verse.

Think so? . . . m'kay . . .

Ogres brave all perils. We're not that smrt.