LePeel

Lucky for me I don't recall Rick Macy from anything else, I really enjoyed him as Lehi. What I didn't like was the guy they got to play the voice of God. I've heard his voice in other church videos and I find it extremely fake sounding and forced. I think it was a mistake using this guy. At least his unnatural diction was a mistake.

France would roll over and let itself be absorbed by foreign nationals. It has no reason to exist.

Their suggestions aren't helpful anymore. My bishop said I could continue to masturbate but the stake president told him I can't. The reasons the stake president gave for why I can't had nothing to do with my situation and were unhelpful. I just don't want them to ask anymore. I've made a lot of emotional progress in this area and their paradigm of abstinence and shame forces me to regress. And if I was married they wouldn't even ask, which make me think the only reason they can ask is because I'm single, and that just doesn't make sense to me.

Take the sacrament, so the requirement to do literally anything.

The bishop is requiring me to abstain from masturbation in order to meet his worthiness requirements. I've been trying to meet that requirement for the last 12 years, it's not going to happen, and at 25 I've decided that is not something they should be asking me. So I figured the next time he or the stake president asked, I would just tell them I'm not comfortable with that line of questioning.

Is there anything the bishop can't ask me? And can I say "that question makes me uncomfortable" to any question I don't like?

The companionship of the holy ghost isn't a feeling, it's much deeper and more subtle than that. It's like following a trail surrounded by fog, but when you reach the end of the trail you find yourself at the pinnacle of a high mountain. Whereas not following the trail, you find yourself stuck in a swamp, oblivious that there's a mountain at all.

For me, porn was like a black hole, and I was stuck. What Christ did was pull me out, restoring my ability to choose. But porn is still a black hole. If I get near it, chances are I'll get pulled in. But at least now I have a choice to stay away from it. What didn't help me was that the church essentially taught me to be scared of it or by making me feel shame. I felt shame because they told all these stories about hurt wives and children, and if I watched porn, it meant I didn't care about that and was a bad person. Porn, in reality, is a small thing. The God of creation comprehends all things, and He counsels man about all his choices. Rather than fear porn, one of many choices available to man, we should accept that God has cleared us of the law and we are free to make mistakes and to learn without shame and without giving undue power to the devil through fear.

I'm skeptical of the need to even call ourselves "feminist." We're radically free, and our gender roles are unalterably defined. Expand within these parameters, not within "feminism." Feminism is about as necessary to understanding women's roles as Nicaea is to understanding the Godhead.

If a government didn't enforce its laws, would it still be a government? If the Father didn't enforce the law, He would still exist, but He would have no authority, he would cease to be God. Alma 42 has extended meaning for me. I grew up with weak parents, and by weak, I mean they literally had no authority in the house. Nothing they said to me carried any weight, nothing would happen if they threatened me with a punishment. And as a consequence, I've had to learn some things in adulthood I should have learned when I was a child. Weakness in authority has negative consequences for "weaker intelligences."

According to the vision with Wilford Woodruff and Heber C. Kimball, Satan probably has a dark and violent countenance. However if I was to imagine him as a man, he would probably look like this. Inviting and welcoming but also kind of off, like there's something not quite right. He'll get you to trust him so that he can run you in when you're not looking.

What makes you think it wouldn't work?

The number one misconception about “heavenly mother“ is that such a concept is church doctrine. No doubt there is a divine Mother, but talking about “misconceptions” regarding such a being it’s kind of silly considering there’s not a single statement about a divine mother anywhere in the scriptures or in the revelations. How can something be a misconception when there’s nothing to the contrary? I suspect the reason we don’t hear about a divine mother is because she isn’t in authority, as a mother and a wife that isn’t her role in the family. God the Father presides over all spirits, He is the disciplinarian but also the merciful father who loves his children. Besides, how can we talk about a divine mother when there are people in the church who can’t even except that God is a man? Actual doctrine?

Jordan Peterson doesn’t believe in the kind of premortal reality that we do and therefore he blames everything in the human condition on evolution. I wouldn’t bother attributing man’s desire to worship on evolution at all, but rather a holdover from a different age in which we all lived before the world was.

I really relate to your post, especially the first two points. It’s very helpful to have them enumerated and conceptualized, thanks