NeuroTypical

Yeah, everyone hearkens back to their mission days where the president would yell "Elder, we don't have limits, we have goals! And we exceed our goals!"

Melodramatic "my experience amongst strange and bizzare people" fiction was quite the rage in those days. I have a book called (and no kidding - this is really the title): It tells the melodramatic story about a guy who came to Zion, got initiated in the temple, and tried to run from King Brigham's theocracy. Brigham sends Porter Rockwell after him, but the guy buys Porter off with a shot of whiskey and some bawdy yarns. LM

No worries James. Every time I see someone else discovering this is false doctrine, I count that a win.

I'll just take this one, because there's so much confusion about it (even amongst mormons).You are saved through Christ alone, not temples. The Bible and LDS scriptural cannon both are very, very clear on this point - salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ, repentence, baptism, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost. You'll notice the word "temple" doesn't appear anywhere there. To understand temples, you need to think about the differences between the words "saved" and "exhalted". We believe that there are levels in heaven (the "many mansions" Christ tells us about in the Bible). Exhaltation is what the Christ is talking about as he's mentioning how people will inherit everything He and the Father hath. Most non-LDS Christians, from what I can tell, gloss over those verses in the Bible. They figure heaven is a place where folks spend the eternities in fervent worship of God. Mormons, on the other hand, belive the Bible means what it says about inheriting everything the Father hath. That's exhaltation, and that's what we learn about more fully in the temple. LM

The mormons and the United Methodists are both huge supporters. I think the Methodists claim the largest percentage of boy scouts, and the LDS claim the largest number of supported troops.

Be safe.

I volunteered to be tased during a police demonstration. Such a tough guy - the cop told me he went 3 seconds, so I asked for 4. It's not as bad as the guy describes. Or, I guess I should say, it is far worse than he describes, but once the current is off, it's off, and you're fine. There is no passing out or flopping around or burning hair. The experience left me in full support of our cops carrying such non-lethal, non-injurious items. (The words I used were "twin supernovas burning into my back") LM

I just couldn't resist another thread bump. Yesterday, the meager LM financial empire (a 401k account and some kid college savings) returned to profitability. We are now up .7%. I'm glad I continued my meager stock purchases through this economic downturn - I bought much more shares that way, because they were the low priced stocks everyone was fleeing from. And, as a comment on the title of this thread, inflation has not done what these doomsayers had predicted (source: InflationData.com. Historically, inflation is around 2.5%. Guess what the average rate has been since this thread opened in Jan '08? 2.46%. We've had near zero or negative inflation for the last five months straight. My opinion in Jan'08, was to dismiss doomsayers who use ALLCAPS with a wave of my uppity hand. My opinion hasn't changed. LM

How old are the kids? Also, how good are things between you and your parents?

I've never been through one. Disciplinary councils involve more people than just the bishop, and are a little more formal. Their purpose is the same as the Bishop all by himself - to help the member repent in every way possible. I've attended two of them in my duties as seceretary or clerk. I've found the men in that room to be very dedicated to helping, and very understanding. It looks like the Bishop is giving you a couple of options. Maybe handle things with him alone, or accept a group of righteous priesthood holders, maybe pulling from a wider base of experience. I have sat in the 'hot seat' and been through a period of informal probation with my Bishop. It was one of the most freeing, tender experiences of my life - over an issue that really needed a soft hand. I can heartily recommend the process. LM

Disagree. She isn't perfect, and her radio talk show format often isn't adequate to help resolve a caller's problems adequately, but most of the principles she nags about are the same ones I hear coming from our church leaders.And she's also the only non-LDS nationally syndicated AM personality I'm aware of, who has read an entire article from the Ensign to her audience. LM

Don't have kids? It's basically up to you what to do. You seemed to know who and what she was when you married her, she's still the same person now that you're married. Stay if you wanna stay, put up with the consequenses. Leave if you wanna leave, put up with the consequenses. Only for the love of all that is holy, do not bring kids into the world with this woman. Already have kids? That's a harder question. Secret fact: Parents of kids still have to deal with each other after a divorce. Except everything is umpteen times harder, increased chances of kids going to prison, or having kids out of wedlock. Upped chance of one or both parties ending up in poverty. Sometimes, staying married is worse than those consequenses. Can't really help you with the judgement call there. I can say that I was raised by one self-absorbed insane parent and one eternally patient parent. I turned out ok, with a healthy perspective on my upbringing. A lot of kids in my situation don't. LM

I wonder - will he be inviting any mormons to his sermon? Did he run his 9 things past a couple first, to see if they had anything to say about it? "9 things I would say to a Mormon, hoping that none of them actually heard me, and refusing to discuss anything with them if they did." Standard fare. LM

Try to not make the same mistakes we heard about in this thread.LM

A lot of variables. Who has the custody? How does the visitation work? How 'fairly well' is the adjusting really going, and what will happen when dad gets a new girlfriend? How many girlfriends dad have before he marries one? I dunno. My general answer to any specific question like this is: "whatever is best for the kids". I know that someone new can be added to their lives that will be a blessing to them (and to you). I also know that there's a lot of grief divorced people can rain down on their kids that make life a lot harder for them and increase the chances of bad things happening. My advice? Put them first. LM

Yeah, idealistic discussions can be pretty polarizing. I'm glad you explained where you're coming from. The problem is that tricky word "if". Yeah, the world would be a better place IF people would abandon violence and work together as brothers and sisters to solve their problems. But from where I'm standing, humanity's nature places that "if" out of reality. It will take an act of God to change the way reality works. We're told one is coming (the millenium), and if I live to see it, I sure wouldn't complain, but I'm living in the real world here. And in the real world, a "sane society" understands that the world is governed by the aggressive use of force. Geopolitics is a business where "do to them or they will do to you" rules the day. The more leverage you have over the next society on the map, the more concessions you can force at the bargaining table. The game has always been played - you've got what we want, so we're going to find a way to take it, and you're going to try and stop us. Maybe it involves violence, maybe just the threat of violence, but violence is always in the equasion somewhere. The OP of this thread asks us to consider when a nation's citizens become "them" and violent means become the only response. On a smaller level, a "sane society" understands that there will always be bad people in the world who will never play by the rules. For whatever reason, be it a bad upbringing or a broken culture or a mental illness or just a plain choice to work evil, there'll be people we need to stop with the application of deadly force. I'm willilng to work with you on how to help societies provide good upbringings, fix the culture, detect and treat the mental illnesses, and find ways to persuade people to choose good. But until we solve those problems, I want good cops, and I want an army following a just consitution, and I want the freedom to defend myself. On the smallest level, the "sane society" of the family includes people who protect innocents within their stewardship. My wife and I helped put a felon behind bars for 5-life, and his parole hearing is in less than a year. It's a very real possibility that when he gets out, he'll want some payback. We live out of the city, where a cop would take 15 minutes to get to our house with siren on and foot to the floor. So my wife and I have handguns and conceal-carry permits, and we practice our skills and our mindset, so if he shows up, we can stop him from harming us or our kids. LM

Hmmm... But corruption still exists when legitimate businessmen engage in legitimate business...

I think you nailed it. Locker room humor gets less and less funny the more you mature.But don't worry - there's plenty of other stuff that gets funnier and funnier.

Ya know ryan, the military has desk jobs too... What's the ratio? For every front line combat troop, there are something like 9 support people?Is that fair and brilliant enough for ya?

All money in wallet, in decreasing value from back to front, heads up and facing the same way. LM (Now, if I can just have some money to put there...)

Supposedly that book is pretty popular in Israel. I read it because an Israeli introduced my buddy to it, who gave me a copy.

We homeschool our two kids, 8 and 5. The formal sit-down-and-do-something portion is maybe 11-12 hrs/wk total. That amount goes up a little every year. The prepare-the-kid-to-be-a-mature-contributing-happy-member-of-society portion is a little hard to quantify, but probably about the same amount of time. (In Colorado, the state requirement is 172 days/yr, 4 hrs/day average) Kitchen table. And the car, the McDonald's play place, the park, doctor's offices, and anywhere else we happen to be. We have most of the 'sit-down' stuff in a binder my wife hauls around. We have a dry-erase board in the living room, and the front door hallway is where we hang large-print artwork that we got from a Dept of Education grant for schools. Anywhere and everywhere. We've got a bookcase of crafts in the kitchen, a bookcase of books in the kid bedroom, a bookcase of curriculum and math stuff in the living room. We're finding that to be a bit of a struggle at first. 8 and 5 - one can't read or write or spell, the other is still learning to spell. They tell me that as our kids get older, they get more self-directed and capable of following lessons themselves. Right now, it's rather haphazard. Our overall philosophy is found in the Well Trained Mind book. We follow bought curriculums for math, language/grammar, and history. Latin, reading/spelling, piano, chemistry, and typing do involve a book or program, but don't involve a formal curriculum.And of COURSE we expose our children to "drugs, alcohol, sexualized relationships, violence and just plain antisocial behavior". The purpose of educating kids, is to create healthy, capable, smart, strong adults that can handle the realities of life. You can't do that and hide reality from them at the same time. We just expose them in ways that are unlikely to result in their adopting such crap into their own lives. We've visited casinos, and they've had a good look at the rows of unhappy people chained to slot machines. We talk to cops and have sat behind bars and thought about consequenses. We talk with folks who have overcome addictions, about how better life is clean. We talk about pregnancy and kids and shacking up and being ready and not being ready. It's not that hard - so far, they've come up with perfectly comforting answers to "does that sound like a good thing to do?" type questions. Homeschooling is hard. You need energy, and you need to reeeeeeeealy love to spend a TON of time with your kids, every day. Not everyone should homeschool. Not every kid should be homeschooled. But if it's in the kid's best interests and is happening, it is beautiful. LM

If that idea takes off and spreads across churches everywhere, can this one go along for the ride? Bring Your Firearms to Church Day

This lady sounds like she's struggling with some sort of mental illness. The commandment is to love her. That doesn't mean exposing yourself or those within your stewardship to harassing or unwanted contact. My suggestion: Start a very detailed notebook of every intrusion this lady makes. Record witness information. Pay special attention to threats of suicide or threats directed against other people. When you've got a couple of pages, go see the police. Perhaps they can help her get the help she needs. Moving also works to an extent - but if she's stalking you, she'll probably find you. LM

There's nothing wrong with being worried about a loved one joining a cult. There's something very seriously wrong with rejecting and cutting off contact with a loved one who joins what you think is a cult. I mean, if you really love that person, wouldn't you want to keep the communication lines open? Try to maintain some way to influence the poor deluded soul? Let them know they have a safe place to escape to should they come to realize they're in a cult? I'm thinking she hasn't cut off contact with you because she thinks you've joined a cult. I'm guessing she did it to protect herself from difficult ideas that might demand her to rethink her life. Nobody likes to be wrong. Some people dislike it enough, that they shun loved ones who might bear some news they don't want to hear. Good luck with them, freckle. Love them. But loving them doesn't mean you need to put up with their garbage. LM