Fether

Maybe not on an extreme level. But how often do we hear the phrase “I don’t want to be rich, I’m happy where I’m at”. Is that just laziness or is there some underlying feeling that seeking riches is pure evil?

Money is an interesting thing in the church. Many believe it is righteous to be poor while others think it is righteous to be rich. I personally take Grant Cardon’s view on it and believe that it is selfish to say “I don’t want to be rich”. You may not need all the money, but you can do SO a much good with wealth. I think if you wanted to safe guard yourself from being tempted by materialism, start donating a lot of it, even if it is in the name of tax deductions. As for your patriarch’s warning following him learning you wanted money... I wouldn’t worry to much about it being inspired or just a personal warning he came up with. One can easily see a patriarchal blessing as nothing more than a medium or fortune teller using basic info to “predict what will happen”, but I don’t. I think sometimes we have too high of expectations from patriarchs. We expect almost a “holy whiskers batman! How did he know that!?!?” Experience. I think we can do some good to demystify these spiritual things.

I think a better response is that the church or many of its defenders (fairmormon) have completely acceptable answers to all the questions

My biggest issue with MormonStories is that they seek out those that have been excommunicated. I listened to his podcast on Dusty, a homosexual man set to be tried at a disciplinary counsel. The host got him all Riled up about the whole thing and started giving out the time and date of where the counsel was going to be and told everyone that they should go and “support”. A similar thing happened with Jeremy Runnels and it was a bunch of people cheering him on after he said “I excommunicated the stake president and resigned from the church”. Im sorry but this does t seem to be pro Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to me at all. You look at their comment sections in their videos and they are all full of either “we love you!” Or “The church sucks” comments. Want to know what kind of organization MormonStories is? Look at it’s followers There are answers, and they are GREAT answers. There aren’t ANY holes on the answers the church has for their questions. The whole backbone that supports these antis (or “unorthodox”) is the premise that the church is hiding things or directing its members away from these supposed “problems”. I read the entire CES letter and had a strong answer for all the questions he had. The reason people don’t accept them is because they don’t believe in God at all. It simply comes down to that. Every example of an answer to a “hard” question being rejected is because they believe in man more than God. They deny God’s hand was in the Book of Abraham, plural marriage, blacks and the priesthood, women’s divine roles, and all myriad of other topics. They choose to believe that man’s evil and manipulating influence is the main driver for this.

I agree completely. I think we are especially susceptible of this on forums like this.

Personally I don’t believe he came up with all those questions. I think maybe he had 2 questions tops and the rest he looked up.

There were quite a few questions I had never heard before in his list. I personally enjoyed reading them. His tone was aragant and condescending, his story was utter hogwash, but he had some pretty good questions in his mix of questions.

@Madam_Mim A fantastic example of an online group that discusses difficult church topics in a healthy manner is “FAIRmormon”. They have a website, YouTube channel, podcasts and a yearly conference. They are so thorough in their studies and really a one stop shop for all your difficult questions.

MormonStories is a joke. The host has been excommunicated and so has half of his guest speakers. They are constantly patronizing and criticizing the leaders of the church and wanting some sort of reformation. To be honest, most online communities are like this. A Thoughtfulness Faith, MormonMatters, and many other online sources. I would consider MormonStories a prime example of “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. They say they love the church and only want the best for it, but everything they teach and talk about is completely against what the church teaches (and they do it under the banner of “love”). I absolutely love critical thought and honest questioning. Not everyone needs it or wants it, but for those who naturally think to themselves “well that is convenient” when they learn Joseph Smith Jr was the only one to physically see and touch the plates, and then later have the plates taken up to heaven, honest and critical thought is important. Honest intellectual questioning becomes anti as soon as you reject plausible explanations and start arguing in the side of “this is dumb and doesn’t make sense”. Jeremy Runnells, a popular anti-Mormon, is a great example of this. He had a series of questions he “wanted answered”. Many of those questions were fantastic! But what his problem was was he would reject the answers given to him from leaders or from the Church's Essays because they didn’t satisfy his own requirements for a good answer. He openly states he loves the church and wants to be a faithful member, but rejects to believe and teach basic principles and doctrines because he doesn’t like the answers to his questions. All questions of the church can be easily answered with “Orthodox” views. A common stance many of these antis (or as they call themselves “unorthodox”) is that they believe the traditional or orthodox Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is in sufficient and inferior to what God wants. That God is unhappy with the church today and the leaders today are making grave mistakes that need to be repented of. They may not use those words, but that is what they want.

I was greatly disappointed when I learned that you were not referring to the Billy Joel song 😕

Admittedly I didn’t understand much of that, but would CoJCoLS be more accurate?

CoJCoLdS*

Just so at understand,you are saying a testimony of the Book of Mormon does not domino effect into the church being true and the prophet being a true prophet of God. Do we need to seek spiritual confirmation for every single thing that the church does? At what point do we accept that church is Gods church in its fullest and not need spiritual confirmation for every matter? Surely there has to be some domino effect somewhere

Lemme guess, someone's idea of a fellowshipping opportunity? We need more people like this in the world

Wasn’t intending it to 👌

Oh for sure! But It isn’t that I can come up with a better plan, it’s that I can’t even figure out what their plan was. But just try this. Sit down with a copy of the movie playing and write out what you think their intended plan was. And how would it have played out if it went perfectly? Why did they do what they did prior to all being captured following the release of Han Solo? I can’t figure out what the plan was. And I’m not COMPLETELY trying to get you to see my point. If you could provide an explanation, I would be thrilled

Jabas palace. The rescue mission of Han. The HISHE video I posted above explains my feelings perfectly

Yea... I still think ALL the Starwars movies are fantastic

Yes, and there are countless explanations behind all the problems in the new trilogy... but no one cares

@unixknight @anatess2 I have the same feelings that you do. But why don’t the holes and rediculiusness of the original trilogy get you as fired up? The begginung of return if the Jedi is nonsensical. But it is still dang cool and episode 6 is still one of my most favorite episodes. All of Luke’s family was murdered and yet I can’t think of a single tear shed. Or when Leia’s entire home world is destroyed? No emotional reaction at all. Why are all these things completely exempt from harsh criticism?

Inconsistent Story: - Luke’s whole family was murdered and Leia’s whole planet was completely destroyed. Neither of those events seem to have any impact on the story, and both protagonists seemed to forget all about it moments later. - The whole Jabas Palace seen in episode six. - Darth Vader doesn’t seem to remember anything from the prequels (which I guess you can just blame on lack of foresight on George’s part) Awkward Dialogue/Hammy Acting: - Luke (my preference) - In all honesty I can’t think of examples... but Om sure they exist. Narratives/Other - in the beginning of episode 4, during the meeting scene, Darth Vader seem to be bossed around by the other guys in the room. They treated him Like he was that guy that no one wanted to see if the party. This seem to clash with the rest of the Star Wars trilogy that pretrade Darth Vader as a mighty sis warriors that everybody figured - To this day, I do not understand how firing a middle into a tiny exhaust port Destroyed the entire death star. How did the missile find its way from that tiny hole all the way down to the core of the death star? Maybe I just don’t understand it. And of course these My aim is not to convince anyone that the original trilogy is bad, but to show people are just high in nostalgia. To be honest, I love all the Star Wars movies. In another post i said that episodes 1 and 4 where my Least favorite, but I still really enjoyed both of them.

And my argument is that all those complaints exist in the original trilogy. Yet the new movies are the only ones getting the heat

My thought process: If for some reason time switched and there was some other Starwars trilogy other than 4-6 that first came out back in 1977 and then today, Starwars episode 4,5 and 6 all came out EXACTLY as they are now (but only with updates effects), people would be making the same complaints they are making about 7 and 8 today. Im sorry, but I think nostalgia and the “But it was huge for it’s time!” arguement is the only thing carrying the argument that the OG trilogy was better. I loved 7 and 8. Yes there were some awful and pointless scenes and events (I’m looking at you casino scene) and awful characters (Rose). But the original trilogy has it’s mirrors.

Full disclosure: 1) I really did love last Jedi 2) I freely admit that if you slap the title “Starwars” on anything, there is a 99.99% I will love it. 3) I only made these comments because I know @anatess2 hated it. 4) Starwars 4 and 1 are my two least favorite Starwars episodes.

Oh, don’t be rediculous