Mormon - Beliefs - A civil Discussion Please

[CJ_Nick]

Precisely. I originally came here looking to see if there was ANY truth in Catholicism, and now thanks to these fine folks I know there is NONE.

Hi mfbukowski,

I realize a am a very new member here and have jumped in this thread a little late.

This contribution is rather confusing to me.

If I may ask, you find NO TRUTH in Catholicism because of the perspectives some Catholics have on the practices and behavior of your first prophet, JS ???

Would you suggest that I go on an LDS board and see what members there share on Catholicism to measure and find if there is ANY TRUTH in the LDS faith??
A rather odd way of finding truth, IMHO.

At any rate, I would be happy to extend my Catholic hand of friendship to you.

Peace,
CJ

 

[Jerusha]

It is my own personal belief that those who are genuinely happy practicing polygamy should be left alone. I do not approve of it; neither do I approve of people who practice homosexuality. So long as they leave me alone, and do not force me to accept their lifestyle, I believe in leaving them alone.

A mistake was made, and you continually mull over what happened. You only become more and more bitter.

Have you ever noted what the Book of Mormon says about polygamy? It most definitely does not voice approval. How do you resolve that difficulty?

You know how men get when given too much power over women. There were abuses, and you deny it. I know beyond a doubt that there were abuses.

 

[dianaiad]

It is my own personal belief that those who are genuinely happy practicing polygamy should be left alone. I do not approve of it; neither do I approve of people who practice homosexuality. So long as they leave me alone, and do not force me to accept their lifestyle, I believe in leaving them alone.

A mistake was made, and you continually mull over what happened. You only become more and more bitter.

Have you ever noted what the Book of Mormon says about polygamy? It most definitely does not voice approval. How do you resolve that difficulty?

You know how men get when given too much power over women. There were abuses, and you deny it. I know beyond a doubt that there were abuses.

Jerusha…

I do NOT ‘deny it.’ In fact, I flat came out and said that the abuses were probably one of the reasons we do not practice it any more, and that men don’t generally know how to deal with the lack of power that properly practiced polygamy results in for them.

And yes, the Book of Mormon condemns it…and it is supposed to be lived ONLY when commanded by God for His purposes. When He says ‘don’t,’ then we don’t.

There was a time when Jewish men all had to wear a blue band around the bottom of their robes, colored with a dye made from a certain shellfish—that is, according to what I have read, now extinct. It was considered important enough at the time to have been a vital part of their lives.

Yet now I don’t see any Jews walking around in robes, never mind robes with blue borders. The time is no longer appropriate, and the practice is not appropriate–for you OR the Jews to wear robes with blue borders colored with a dye made from an extinct species.

Abraham and Isaac were polygamous. They were not sinners. In their time, and for God’s purpose, it was acceptable. God actually GAVE, quite literally, hundreds of wives and concubines to David–and He wasn’t unhappy with David enjoying their company. He was unhappy about Bathsheba.

Throughout much of the Book of Mormon, monogamy was the commandment, and it was right for the people, for the time…and according to the law of God.

For a time during the nineteenth century, polygamy was practiced and it was right for the people and the time. Now it is not, and both are by the commandment of God, Who deals with His people as He will deal with them; not necessarily according to your dictates.

 

[Jerusha]

I see your reasoning. That does not mean I have to accept it.

Women were forced into polygamy. Some particularly strong women rejected it. And they had that right.

Some men only want power.

 

[dianaiad]

I see your reasoning. That does not mean I have to accept it.

Nobody is asking you to accept it. I AM asking you to read what I actually write and respond to that, rather than some imaginative construct.

Women were forced into polygamy. Some particularly strong women rejected it. And they had that right.

What part of “There were abuses and that’s probably one of the reasons polygamy was discontinued” didn’t you get, Jerusha?

Some men only want power.

Like I said…many, if not most, men are not able to live polygamy as it should be lived. They aren’t willing to accept that in a household with multiple wives, that he is more likely than not to simply get outvoted…and that he’d have to live with that.

At the same time, I do find considerable irony in the fact that all those self righteous knife edged noses who looked (and still look) down on the Mormons because they were ‘mistreating’ the women kinda overlooked the fact that Mormon women owned their own property, voted, and were encouraged to go into higher education and to explore their own talents sooner than the vast majority of American women–by a factor of nearly half a century.

An entire generation of Mormon women grew up understanding that they had the right to vote, to go to school, to become doctors, lawyers, writers–pretty much anything they wanted–before their daughter’s sisters in “mainstream Christianity” got the same rights.

…and yet WE were the ones who were supposed to be the downtrodden victims of polygamy and patriarchal dictators.

Irony is sometimes a kick in the kisser, ain’t it?

 

[Jerusha]

How do you know that I write from a theoretical construct?
You admit that there were abuses.
Maybe I write from family history, just as much as you do.

Have you read In Sacred Loneliness by Todd Compton?

 

[dianaiad]

How do you know that I write from a theoretical construct?

I said “imaginative construct.” I know that because even though every single post from me about this topic not only admits that there were abuses, but also states that one of the reasons I believe that polygamy was discontinued was because of them, you accuse me of denying that there were abuses.

You admit that there were abuses.

Yes. I did, from the very beginning—and you accused me of denying that there were any, proving that you didn’t read what I actually wrote.

Maybe I write from family history, just as much as you do.

Perhaps so. I haven’t seen you actually do that, though.

Have you read In Sacred Loneliness by Todd Compton?

Nope. Are you still trying to prove that there were abuses of power? You seem to have quite a problem with taking ‘yes’ for an answer, don’t you?

I’m sitting here telling you that the sky is blue, and you are answering with some heat telling me that I’m absolutely WRONG, because the sky is BLUE, dammit.

Well, yeah. The sky IS blue. How about that. I don’t care how often you get insulting or plop cute little emoticons in there to illustrate that it is TOO blue, it’s going to stay…guess what…BLUE.

Y’know what else? The laws of polygamy were abused and they were very difficult to live. I’ve mentioned that, what–five or six times now? Many people couldn’t do it. Which is one of the reasons why, in my opinion, we no longer practice it.

My family story was given to prove that it wasn’t ALWAYS abused, and that when it worked it worked well. But I never denied that abuses occurred, or that men sometimes (frequently?) practiced something we call ‘unrighteous dominion.’

So yep, whether you like it or not, Jerusha, the sky is blue, whether or not you keep insisting that it is actually…blue.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Ah, so this is a tit for tat sort of thing?

Someone (not me, by the way) has ‘looked down [their] nose’ at you for drinking coffee or wine or wearing sleeveless blouses, and so it is acceptable for you to condemn me for something I do NOT do?

Odd method of getting justice, there, Rebecca.

says the woman who constantly tells us how persecuted she is at every board she goes to

news flash: i don’t really give a hoot what you think of me, in fact, i don’t think about it at all

 

[dianaiad]

says the woman who constantly tells us how persecuted she is at every board she goes to

news flash: i don’t really give a hoot what you think of me, in fact, i don’t think about it at all

Rebecca…

I’m sorry, but you are making me dizzy. There is no way I can say anything you will NOT react badly to, is there?

 

[CJ_Nick]

Rebecca…

I’m sorry, but you are making me dizzy. There is no way I can say anything you will NOT react badly to, is there?

Hello dianaiad,

I realize that I am not Rebecca ( just thought I would help my Catholic sister out a little )

I think there IS something you can say that she will not react badly to. Here it is :

Dear Rebecca, I am sorry that I can not appreciate or digest any perspectives from anyone who used to be of my LDS faith and is now of a different faith.

Peace,
CJ

 

[dianaiad]

Hello dianaiad,

I realize that I am not Rebecca ( just thought I would help my Catholic sister out a little )

I think there IS something you can say that she will not react badly to. Here it is :

Dear Rebecca, I am sorry that I can not appreciate or digest any perspectives from anyone who used to be of my LDS faith and is now of a different faith.

Peace,
CJ

I would, if that were true.

 

[RebeccaJ]

Rebecca…

I’m sorry, but you are making me dizzy. There is no way I can say anything you will NOT react badly to, is there?

what do you want from me diana?

 

[dianaiad]

what do you want from me diana?

A fair reading of what I actually write, Rebecca, so that you don’t accuse me of saying the precise opposite of what I actually do say, as you did in our most recent exchange.

(shrug)

 

[RebeccaJ]

A fair reading of what I actually write, Rebecca, so that you don’t accuse me of saying the precise opposite of what I actually do say, as you did in our most recent exchange.

(shrug)

diana, I kindly explained Catholic belief to you, which you took as an attack.

You see persecution everywhere, and I’m trying my hardest to stick to my beliefs, and not be your personal mormon persecutor.

I am sorry that I misunderstood, at first. So many times I hear mormons telling people to do this, that and the other thing for missionaries, as though we have to hide who we are and protect the poor missionaries from ourselves. Like, praying a rosary. God forbid we do that in our own homes.

This is what I understood you to be saying, at first. I said I figured it out. In the meantime, all I have done is explain Catholic belief regarding the rosary. I won’t apologize to you for feeling persecuted by me telling you what I believe.

On the other side, you have a belief that a Catholic would be disrespected by a Mormon praying the rosary. All I did was explain how this is not so. It is you who kept insisting that I should feel disrespected by this. No. Sorry. I don’t. But if you want to believe that you are mocking our prayers, fine, believe it. Just accept that I do not believe this about you. I do not believe you ruin a prayer by your saying that prayer.

This is all I said, and somehow, this is me twisting your words around.

Stop feeling persecuted by me. I have no interest in destroying your faith. That does not mean I will not speak the truth, which I am sure, causes you to feel persecuted. And yes, I know, I write very straight forward and can say what I mean, to the point. This does not mean I do not have compassion for the people I am “speaking” to, or understand that the person I am talking to is a person.

So, I’ll leave it at that. Except to say, to what you said a few days ago, that I don’t like you much. This is not true. I may disagree with you, quite often, but I really wasn’t kidding when you first started posting here, and I said you would be an interesting person to meet and get to know. This has not changed. I like strong people, especially strong women, and I know for certain you are one of these.

There it is, take it for how I mean it, not as persecution.

Rebecca

 

[JohnVIII]

I don’t want to get things to fractured, but I do have another question I’d like to toss out.

My understanding is that the Mormon Church believes that the Bible contains errors. Is that True?

If it is True, does the Mormon Church publish a list of what these errors are?

Peace
James

Yes, Joseph Smith completed what was called an “inspired” version of the Bible in which the so-called “errors” were corrected. This “version” together with the Book of Mormon is said to hold “the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”. One of the problems with this however is that some of these biblical corrections do not agree with current-day Mormonism; and for that matter Book of Mormon teachings don’t fully agree either.

 

[Jerusha]

Diana, I am sorry for having misquoted you. If course you wrote “imaginative construct”. And I do agree with you that the Book of Mormon is an imaginative construction.

Rebecca, perhaps we ought to ignore someone. There are plenty of other people just as well equipped to deal with her . She doesn’t like the fact that you left LDS, and she doesn’t like my ancestry.

 

[dianaiad]

diana, I kindly explained Catholic belief to you, which you took as an attack.

You see persecution everywhere, and I’m trying my hardest to stick to my beliefs, and not be your personal mormon persecutor.

I am sorry that I misunderstood, at first. So many times I hear mormons telling people to do this, that and the other thing for missionaries, as though we have to hide who we are and protect the poor missionaries from ourselves. Like, praying a rosary. God forbid we do that in our own homes.

This is what I understood you to be saying, at first. I said I figured it out. In the meantime, all I have done is explain Catholic belief regarding the rosary. I won’t apologize to you for feeling persecuted by me telling you what I believe.

On the other side, you have a belief that a Catholic would be disrespected by a Mormon praying the rosary. All I did was explain how this is not so. It is you who kept insisting that I should feel disrespected by this. No. Sorry. I don’t. But if you want to believe that you are mocking our prayers, fine, believe it. Just accept that I do not believe this about you. I do not believe you ruin a prayer by your saying that prayer.

Thank you for the explanation…but you just did it again. I didn’t say that you should ‘feel disrespected.’ I said that it would be disrespect in the eyes of God because of the motives involved. He would know that it was me being disrespectful. Other people could do it without being disrespectful or irreverent, and I even said that I could imagine a time when I could–without being disrespectful. However, not at that time or place.

I once attended a Temple session where someone had smuggled a camera in to take pictures. Those pictures went up on a website later, along with some very denigrating (and false) commentary. I didn’t ‘feel’ disrespected during the session, even though that person was being blatantly disrespectful. He did everything the rest of us did…how were we supposed to know? I may even have shaken his hand or spoken with him quietly sometime during the session; I’ll never know. The only way I did eventually know was that he later told the world that this is exactly what he was doing.

This is all I said, and somehow, this is me twisting your words around.

Stop feeling persecuted by me. I have no interest in destroying your faith. That does not mean I will not speak the truth, which I am sure, causes you to feel persecuted. And yes, I know, I write very straight forward and can say what I mean, to the point. This does not mean I do not have compassion for the people I am “speaking” to, or understand that the person I am talking to is a person.

So, I’ll leave it at that. Except to say, to what you said a few days ago, that I don’t like you much. This is not true. I may disagree with you, quite often, but I really wasn’t kidding when you first started posting here, and I said you would be an interesting person to meet and get to know. This has not changed. I like strong people, especially strong women, and I know for certain you are one of these.

There it is, take it for how I mean it, not as persecution.

Rebecca

(grin)

Well, ‘strong’ may be problematic, but outspoken? Yeah, the both of us are that.

I’ll make you a deal; I’ll try to write more clearly, and you, if you think I have written something that completely makes you nuts, will reread it and make certain I actually wrote what you think I did.

Might make our exchanges duller, but more productive.

 

[dianaiad]

Diana, I am sorry for having misquoted you. If course you wrote “imaginative construct”. And I do agree with you that the Book of Mormon is an imaginative construction.

cute, Jerusha. Not precisely what I said, though, is it?

Rebecca, perhaps we ought to ignore someone. There are plenty of other people just as well equipped to deal with her . She doesn’t like the fact that you left LDS, and she doesn’t like my ancestry.

Actually, I like your ancestry a lot, Jerusha. Where do you get the idea that I have a problem with your ancestors?

 

[LAMBOFGODGIRLY]

If this is how you react to your husband, Alisha…

I don’t know what you mean?

You do not have to defend your practice of drinking coffee or wine or wearing strapless (and absolutely beautiful, by the way)

Thank you so much, it was one of the happiest day of my life, it went by in a flash
!!

Now, how would you react if I said that it was ‘what you deserved’ if the government raided your home and took your children because you had a cup of coffee in the morning, or a glass of wine with dinner? What if it raided your home and shattered your family because you had crucifixes upon the walls of your children’s bedrooms? Do I have a right to make you live according to MY beliefs?

I know that God instructed Moses and Aaron to put the blood of the lamb on the houses so God would see the blood and not destroy them with the plague because the blood was their sign to God. Now that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, we use a crucifix in the same way because Jesus saved us and died for our sins, so we show him a cross on our door. (sorry if I don’t make since, but sometimes it’s hard to put into words what’s in my head) (Im referring to Exodus 12:13)

Yet I tell a story about my great grandparents and the love and family that they had, a family that was shattered because someone ELSE thought they had the right to make them live according to laws in place somewhere else, made by folks who would never see them, or live near them, or understand them: folks who, by the way, still treated THEIR women like chattel, without vote or privilege or ability to get an education or exercise their God given gifts and talents.

Because they were looking down THEIR noses, a thousand miles away, four women and nine children lived the rest of their lives in hiding, in poverty and in constant fear. A community lost a physician, a poet and a legal advocate…but oh, that’s OK, because at least they weren’t living in polygamy, so that’s alright then.

The hypocrisy is getting a little noisome. More than a little.

Sorry Diana, I don’t know what point you are trying to make with this story. Could you give me some more details? (I really am sorry, but I didn’t understand the story. Sometimes I think you think I’m being sarcastic when I’m answering you, but it’s hard when your writing and, not speaking to someone, but I promise I am not sarcastic at all! If you and I were talking (voice to voice), you would know (by my tone) that I’m not that way at all!! Sometimes when I write, it sounds like I’m being sarcastic, when I truly am not. I really didn’t understand it.)

 

[LAMBOFGODGIRLY]

Jerusha…

I do NOT ‘deny it.’ In fact, I flat came out and said that the abuses were probably one of the reasons we do not practice it any more, and that men don’t generally know how to deal with the lack of power that properly practiced polygamy results in for them.

And yes, the Book of Mormon condemns it…and it is supposed to be lived ONLY when commanded by God for His purposes. When He says ‘don’t,’ then we don’t.

There was a time when Jewish men all had to wear a blue band around the bottom of their robes, colored with a dye made from a certain shellfish—that is, according to what I have read, now extinct. It was considered important enough at the time to have been a vital part of their lives.

Yet now I don’t see any Jews walking around in robes, never mind robes with blue borders. The time is no longer appropriate, and the practice is not appropriate–for you OR the Jews to wear robes with blue borders colored with a dye made from an extinct species.

Abraham and Isaac were polygamous. They were not sinners. In their time, and for God’s purpose, it was acceptable. God actually GAVE, quite literally, hundreds of wives and concubines to David–and He wasn’t unhappy with David enjoying their company. He was unhappy about Bathsheba.

Throughout much of the Book of Mormon, monogamy was the commandment, and it was right for the people, for the time…and according to the law of God.

For a time during the nineteenth century, polygamy was practiced and it was right for the people and the time. Now it is not, and both are by the commandment of God, Who deals with His people as He will deal with them; not necessarily according to your dictates.

I do not agree with polygamy either, but it was part of the Mormon religion for some time, and that is the only life style those people knew. I feel bad for the kids who were born into it. I feel they must have been confused, and that is the reason there are a lot of people that still practice it. I feel bad that they were kicked out of their church for it. That’s all they knew. It would be like someone telling me I wasn’t allowed to carry down a tradition, from my parents to my children, of decorating a Christmas tree the way I did when I lived at home with my parents, with my children. That tradition would be something I would want to do with my family because it was done with me as a child. I wouldn’t know how else to celebrate Christmas, so I would do it the same way I thought I knew, no matter who told me not to. (I know that isn’t in the least comparable to what they went through, but I didn’t know how else to compare it.) That’s what the polygamist are trying to do for their kids, and it was a never ending chain, the chain never broke. It’s very sad. I pray for them. God will have mercy on them because they were confused, and most of them don’t know any better because that is all they have ever knew. They are thinking we are the cruel ones.