clbent04

Having grown up in the Church and lived an overall obedient life to the gospel (minus my on and off activity in the Church over the last 7 years), I've lived what I consider to be a straight-laced life, a life that has been more straight laced than most. Having been raised conservatively and personally preferring to live most my life by conservative values, I've seen myself, particularly in my former years, failing at being able to relate to people who commit sins I've never had an issue with personally. For example, my younger self would look at a drug user and simply think they're dumb. Or I'd read in the news about depressed people committing suicide, and, while I felt sad about it happening, I couldn't relate since I had never experienced severe depression. And while my sympathy and understanding for the world around me has improved over the years, I find myself still dealing with closemindedness in relation to being unable to understand people who commit certain sins that I personally don't have issues with. The primary issue isn't being incapable of understanding why people commit certain sins, but rather writing that person off entirely as unrelatable, dumb, or as a low-caliber human I have no interest in associating with. I need to be better at separating the sin from the person and keeping in mind we all are natural men capable of committing the same sins. The husband that beats his wife. Scumbag, right? But what about the abusive husband that was physically and sexually abused himself as a child who never got therapy or help from anyone which compounded into the mental issues he deals with today? Maybe still a scumbag in our eyes, but how does God see him? The drug addict or alcoholic who can't keep a job while trying to bum money off anyone he comes across. I may have labeled this one as a drain on society. But what if he's just trying to escape reality because being present is too painful to deal with? What about murder? If God condones murder to preserve a historical record, could all the murders in the world be unequivocally parallel in the degree of seriousness of the sin? Where I'm at right now is I'd like to change my gut reaction to the sensational headline news out there that lures us in by saying things like, "CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS PERSON DID THIS?!" Or I'd like to maybe befriend someone I previously would never have wanted to associate with because of my judgmental attitude towards them. I'd like to do a better job at keeping in mind that even within this microcosm called Third Hour that we're a part of, maybe someone expresses an idea very differently to how my life experience would allow me to understand, but that doesn't mean their opinion is any less valid than mine, and maybe getting to know them a little more will help open up my understanding and relate to them as we are all worthless absent of God.

@SpiritDragon I admittedly had the same thought when I read the email earlier today. If anything, medical experts and government leaders have proven themselves incompetent throughout the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. The part that probably concerns us both is that this statement by the brethren appears to be a blanket statement saying all medical experts and governments leaders who have recommended getting the vaccine are wise and thoughtful, whereas we both know incompetency among this group of "experts" and "leaders" has been rampant. Here goes my Mormon apologist effort: I don't think the brethren are making a blanket statement that all medical experts and governments leaders who have recommended getting the vaccine are wise and thoughtful. I think they're specifically referring to the experts and leaders who have led with good intentions, not those who have politicized the pandemic to their advantage. I think corruption is common with both democratic and republican parties, as it is common with most positions of authority throughout the world, but I also believe we have many leaders in America on both sides of the aisle who are trying to fight the good fight against corruption. I think this is even more true with the medical experts out there who have trained themselves to be motivated by science over anything else. The incompetent handling of this pandemic by a select few "experts" and "leaders" has largely tainted America's ability to trust anyone in a position of authority regarding the pandemic, but I think, at large, the medical professionals who created and recommend the vaccines have the interest of saving lives as their primary focus. I'm someone who actually is on the fence about getting the vaccine largely due to the gross mishandling of information the public needed to know throughout the pandemic, but if anything speaks to me it's the statistics, and even accounting for bad data, the trend of the statistics clearly shows the benefit of getting the vaccine outweighs the risk of the potential side affects. However, as I've stated before, I recovered from having the coronavirus and I believe I still have naturally built antibodies in my system which might make the vaccine unnecessary for someone like me, so I remain hesitant on getting the vaccine.

@Vort l am surprised as well that you’re just finding out about this. You of all people who is one of the few who has visited almost every nook and cranny of this forum. And come on, you’re practically Mr. Universe on here. How does Mr. Universe not know he’s Mr. Universe? But enough about you, today is my day!!!

Apologies, @Emmanuel Goldstein, after reviewing your profile, I realized I should have rightfully acknowledged you as well. What I should have said is when you're destined like US for stardom, I guess it is bound to happen! I see you there Mr. July 30, 2020.

When you're destined like me for stardom, I guess it is!

As a visual aid, I share my beard trimmings. Not exactly a chalice here, but you get the idea.

After 4 years of being on and off this forum, my day has finally come. For the first and probably only time ever, I have won the day on Third Hour. Yes, folks, the title belt is mine for the next 24 hours hours. Kicking back, putting my feet up and popping open one of those glass bottles of IBC cream soda. ALEXA, play "We Are The Champions" by Queen on repeat for the next 24 hours!

The divinity of the organization of the Church is obvious to me. In my experience, no other religious organization exists in the world that molds its members so effectively into learning how to love others. Consider the participation the Church encourages of its members and how the sky is the limit in how much you want to grow in the service of others. I believe the purpose of life is to learn to love, and no other institution promotes learning how to love others more effectively than the LDS Church. Being a member of the Church has the benefit of showing us the optimal path on how to develop love. As members of a divinely inspired organization, we don't have to take as many detours to accomplish God's objectives for us. LDS religious ceremonies have meaning beyond good intentions. Ministering and missionary efforts, Family Home Evening, temple ordinances, redeeming the dead... all divinely inspired initiatives that promote love. My opinion is the organization of the LDS Church and how it develops its members within is not only divinely inspired, it's one of a kind ; however, given my limited experience and knowledge of the world around me, I can't say definitively that the LDS Church is the only church out there that allows it's members to grow from calling to calling the way it does. Does anyone have experience with other religions to support or invalidate my opinion that the LDS is truly unique in this regard?

This is interesting to me that the Church opposes medical marijuana when smoked but not the edibles. Why? My 25-second Google search just now brought up an article by ScienceNews stating "Edibles are tied to more severe health issues than smoking marijuana". It's either your liver or lungs that will be processing the THC depending how you consume it. I don't understand the Church's different stance on it other than maybe being influenced by the societal perception that smoking looks worse on the surface level.

I agree. Besides the gospel perspective on it, I personally do not handle THC well at all, but I know plenty of people aren't as sensitive to it as I am. I had to give it up because I mentally felt myself becoming progressively too ungrounded while using it, but, again, most people aren't as sensitive to it as I am. I do not recommend THC to anyone with a history of paranoid schizophrenia in their family which I think is a factor in how it affected me so strongly. I'm not paranoid schizophrenic, but I still think it's a factor at play considering genetics and other family members who had that mental disease.

For more context, my curiosity to see what marijuana was like was spurred on by me wanting to escape my reality at the time due to depression. My primary motive in trying weed was to deal with my mental state, although the main reason the doctor greenlighted me for the marijuana medical card was to deal with my occasional back pain (state law at the time didn't allow medical marijuana cards to be issued to treat mental issues, but now can be used by anyone over a certain age with a recent law that passed). If by demonic experience you simply mean committing a sin, I would say yes, as would any violation to the Word of Wisdom. But the Lord considers motive and all factors in our lives leading up to everything we do, and He will judge me accordingly. Does weed generally make people hallucinate? No. That's very uncommon, and I realize that, but I had the experience I did maybe due to the extra hash that stoner girl added. Do harder drugs like acid make people hallucinate? Yes. My uncle told me he saw demons while using acid for the first time.

Both valid points. Even though it’s been a year and half since the outbreak of COVID-19, no one fully understands this virus or knows what the long-term effects are going to be from getting the virus or the vaccinations. As for those who criticize people who have chosen not to receive the vaccination yet, there are valid points in not doing so. If anyone should be criticized, it should be agencies like the CDC who bred mistrust in the first place for its contradictions and those in the medical community that stopped behaving like medical professionals when presenting skewed and biased data to the public to fit a narrative. Just give us the data and let us draw our own conclusions rather than have us listen to the obvious spins. The misinformation and one-sided reporting can’t help but create skeptics. The blame really needs to be directed at those who poorly managed the information the public needed to know during this crisis. What makes me seriously consider getting the vaccine now are the statistics. Is the data perfect? No. Can it be trusted? I think to a degree. While we don’t know how much the numbers may be skewed, I trust the general trend of the numbers, and that trend is clearly showing us that the benefits of receiving the vaccine far outweigh any risks associated with receiving the vaccine. But you have to ask yourself, have you already had coronavirus and recovered and possibly have natural antibodies already built up in your system? The vaccine might not be necessary for you in that case. Still too much we don’t know. Have you already had the virus and how old are you? These are important questions to ask ourselves when considering if the vaccination is necessary. I’ve had coronavirus and recovered, and I’m 35 years old which puts me in a low risk category from dying from COVID-19. Should I get the vaccination? I’m not sure at this point considering the statistics. But what I do know is the media, the CDC, and everyone else should more focused on the necessity of the vaccination for people who have naturally created antibodies against COVID-19. This is hardly talked about or investigated at all, something else that breeds mistrust since looking into it doesn’t fit the media’s pro-vaccine narrative.

This is a good point as to why mistrust is bred with COVID-19 vaccinations. Only a Sith Lord speaks in absolutes. Since when in the history of the US did the CDC and others In the medical community vehemently speak in absolutes rather than the traditional approach of methodically evaluating pros and cons? It’s such an aggressive push to get people to shut up and take the vaccine and save their questions for later.

@NeuroTypical I'm not anti-vaccination, but the media, politics and misinformation turned me off from the COVID-19 vaccine. I couldn't trust any information after being dumbfounded by the many contradictions that were pumped out by supposed authoritative sources like the CDC as everyone has scrambled for over a year claiming to have the answers to something they didn't fully understand. Never have I seen a health issue politicized the way COVID-19 has been. And then, speedier than any other vaccine to be approved, they fast-tracked the approval process for the COVID-19 vaccinations with the FDA Emergency Use Authorization. Ever since the COVID-19 outbreak, I've been astonished that for the first time ever, world economies nearly came to a complete halt over what many described as a virus not much more serious than the flu but more contagious. With that said, the media finally started speaking my language recently by using meaningful statistics in their headlines over the typical politized squabble. And to your point, the statistics win the case to be vaccinated. The benefits of taking the vaccine clearly outweigh the negative side effects. I am not vaccinated at this point in time, but after reviewing the statistics and seeing the FDA is close to giving its full endorsement for the vaccines, I think I might proceed in receiving the vaccine. Two questions for you: 1.) I had the 'rona back in January 2020 before anyone knew what it is was. One gray area around COVID-19 is how long do the naturally produced antibodies last in someone who has recovered from it? I know the Delta variant is out there and I might not have immunity against that, but I wouldn't want to inject that vaccination cocktail into my system if I still have natural immunity. 2.) Which vaccine do you recommend?

I forgot she sprinkled so much of that stuff on it until you triggered my memory on it just now lol

Stoner girl sprinkled a lot of hash on the pieces of bud we smoked, so that definitely increased the effect

Thanks @NeuroTypical. Both could very well be a possibility. It seems marijuana and other drugs can invite that kind of energy. Based on my limited experience with weed, and hearing some accounts of drug use from others, I think drugs have the ability to open your mind up in a way that pierces the veil. But the problem is, your mind becomes so flooded with heightened stimuli that it's hard to make sense of it. I remember one night, I started having all sorts of insights about the premortal life and how we existed as intelligences. That's where I got most of my inspiration to write this post lol:

So I went off the reservation a little bit last year after going through a divorce that was finalized in June 2020. The divorce was a little rough on me, but I'd say the marriage was the harder part to get through. Suffice it to say, the ex-wife and I are both happier now. During the separation and divorce process, I applied for a medical marijuana card. After a cursory examination, the doctor said I was approved and needed to smoke as much weed as possible everyday to alleviate back pain I experience from time to time. Did I personally believe I needed to smoke as much marijuana as possible? Well, no, but I'm not a doctor. Did I maybe want to visit a marijuana doctor in hopes of being approved for a marijuana card more than just for purposes of alleviating my back pain? Well, yeah, I figured let's just see what this marijuana stuff is about after never having broken the Word of Wisdom in my 34 years of life. After having separated from my ex-wife, we both began dating others and that was a weird experience for me considering the whole dating scene had changed from the last time I had dated back in 2012. Fast forward to 2020 and no seemed to be messaging anymore. Everyone was just swiping left and right. After getting the hang of the apps and dating a couple different girls, I began to hang out with a stoner girl who became my "Weed Sensei". She had lived a much different life, but we became friends nonetheless and occasionally smoked together. So that's the context, but this is the main part I want to get to. Marijuana can be a hallucinogen depending on the person. Some people might laugh at that and say it's only the harder drugs that make you hallucinate, but it's true. And while it's not very common to hallucinate off marijuana, the effects of marijuana vary depending on how sensitive a person is to it. I turned out to very sensitive to marijuana. So sensitive, that after having smoked maybe a total of 25 times, I gave it up completely. It really messed with my mind. It takes you to Lala Land where your mind feels like its drifting through the clouds, makes you experience a loss of feeling in control, and also makes you highly paranoid as your mind will want to race 100 miles per hour but unable to process as it would absent of marijuana in your system. On one of the last times I smoked with stoner girl, I had an negative hallucination. She was at my house one evening, and after smoking on the backyard patio, we came to sit in the house. We were in the living room where she was sitting on the loveseat, and I was on the 3-seater couch with my 2 dogs. I remember most of the lights being off as it was dark but still visible in the living room. This is when the hallucination happened. I looked up at her while I was sitting on the 3-seater couch, and her eyes were glowing a hazy red. The moment I saw her eyes like that, my 2 dogs started barking uncontrollably. They wouldn't stop barking at her. It's strange my dogs were barking at her because they've never bark at anyone before, only other dogs. As all the commotion was going on, she asked me what's wrong and she started to freak out too, and mentioned something like feeling a negative energy in the room. I tried to just play it cool as I was uncomfortable seeing those glowing red eyes look at me. I avoided eye contact and tried to casually respond to her that I have no idea why the dogs are acting so crazy, and playfully suggested that she was supposed to be my Weed Sensei and anchor for both of us when we were high given her vast experience of smoking weed. She suggested the dogs were sensing my energy and were barking because they felt that I was uncomfortable. And that's pretty much the gist of it. So was this just a hallucination or could it have possibly been a demonic experience? Possibilities I think of when recalling this event in order of what I think is most likely: 1.) it was the marijuana and the dogs were sensing my energy, or 2.) I was seeing a sign that stoner girl and I just weren't meant to be, or 3.) stoner girl was possessed and I was seeing it for the first time, or 4.) it was a negative energy in the room that overlapped itself onto stoner girl giving me the impression that stoner girl was possessed but not really

The point of having the presence of the gospel here on Earth isn't to condemn those who don't discover it for what it is. The point is to be a beacon of light, to inspire the building God's kingdom, to develop us, to promote unity and love, and to guide us by showing us the optimal path back to God. Mankind is prone to self-sabotage. We've oftentimes chosen chaos over order, dissension over unity, and greed over fairness. Even with the gospel restored in these latter days with its 16 million members strong, in a world of 8 billion people the gospel is like the flame of a single candle in a stadium at night. But are we to place blame on the 7+ billion non-members that the gospel isn't as readily available to them as it could be if this world was a better place? We can't blame anything but the nature of mankind, the very nature we all share, member and non-member alike. The divinity of the organization of the Church is obvious to me. No other religious organization exists in the world that molds its members so effectively into learning how to love others. Consider the participation the Church encourages of its members and how the sky is the limit in how much you want to grow in the service of others. I believe the purpose of life is to learn to love, and no other institution promotes learning how to love others more effectively than the LDS Church. Being a member of the Church has the benefit of showing us the optimal path on how to develop love. As members of a divinely inspired organization, we don't have to take as many detours to accomplish God's objectives for us. LDS religious ceremonies have meaning beyond good intentions. Ministering and missionary efforts, Family Home Evening, temple ordinances, redeeming the dead... all divinely inspired initiatives that promote love. If we consider a non-member who lives a life worthy enough to be admitted to the Celestial Kingdom upon eventually accepting the gospel for what it is, the fact they made it to the highest Kingdom without living as an LDS member on Earth shouldn't discourage us into thinking the gospel isn't as important as it is. It should further validate the truth that God is a merciful and just God who is mindful of all His children, and how we are unable to comprehend even a small fraction of the many moving pieces involved or the many beautiful reunions that await us.

I would be happy to be wrong on my opinion of this, but human nature and my observations of the world around me including my own personal struggles have somewhat turned me into a skeptic of how many of us will be admitted to the Celestial Kingdom. My honest opinion is I'm not a skeptic on this matter, but a realist, and my opinion is largely based on what I've interpreted from the gospel and applying that to the reality around me.

I think an important part of this discussion is to frame it properly as to when we refer to the dividing line between the Telestial and Terrestrial glories and the dividing line between the Terrestrial and Celestial glories. My personal opinion is the greater percentage of mankind will end up in the Terrestrial Kingdom. But when referring to salt-of-the-Earth type people who are fiercely devoted to their faiths, that category I considered to be part of the Celestial minority. I don't equate D&C 76's description of "honorable men of the Earth" to our category here of "salt-of-the-Earth type people who are fiercely devoted to their faiths". I believe when D&C 76 talks about honorable men of the Earth, the scriptures specify "of the Earth" for a reason. These aren't necessarily honorable men of God, whereas I would consider "salt-of-the-Earth type people who are fiercely devoted to their faiths" to be honorable men of God.

58, @Vort? You're still a spring chicken in my books. At least one of the sharpest tacks whose comments I enjoy reading.

My point is, if your non-member family is already exerting all the effort they are to be the most decent, honorable, good-hearted, Christ-loving people who are fiercely devoted to their churches, why would they not redirect that same amount of effort to whatever religion God finally reveals to them as the true religion? Your non-member family sounds like they probably exert just as much effort towards good as a Celestial LDS member would in their lifetime. Do you think it's a matter of pride? Because I think it's a matter of opportunity they aren't yet members. It could be that from the surface it appears your Dad and these family members were extended the exact same opportunity to be members, and your Dad was the only one to accept, but that's something that only God can really discern. What constitutes as a fair chance to accept the gospel has to be God-given knowledge that can't be refuted (not specifically stated like that in the scriptures, but that is how I personally interpret the gospel in my own words), and I believe the vast majority of those who are non-members and also in the category of "the salt of Earth" have simply not been extended an adequate opportunity yet to accept the gospel into their lives.

That dinner party would be like tip toeing through a field of land mines. No levity allowed! Like a sweated stick of old dynamite

Emphasis on "church culture"