You still don't get it. I am none of the above, and my life doesn't reflect any of your observations.
In which case you need to say something, in some post, at some point, that doesn't reflect attitudes and beliefs that would lead one to suspect something fairly eqivalent to my observations. As soon as you do, I'll stop making them.
I really find it hard to believe you are a middle-aged man. You sound like a pre-pubescent missionary hopeful who has memorized the Journal of Discourses.
Last time I checked, the church doesn't send pre-pubescents out on missions. And anyone who can memorize the Jorunal of Discourses is headed for the Guiness Book.
But I am used to TBMs making me out to be the problem because they can't understand how sick it is to purport a book that claims being "pure, white, and delightsome" to be indicative of God's favor.
Thanks again for confirming, in the same breath as you deny it, your racialism and fixation on skin color and ethnicity when the overwhelming majority of Mormons and white people in general in this society have moved well beyond it. Those references are well known to have both physical and spiritual connotations, and are easily explained without invoking racism. Numerous quotations of a similar type can be taken from the Bible and used to impugn it just as easily as you attempt to do with the Book of Mormon (the early attitudes of the Apostles to taking the gospel to the Gentiles, for example, or the New Testament's neutral position on slavery, for another. Or, of course, the Old Testament's support of Plural Marriage among some very prominent "GAs" of the age).
Loran, three nations meet within me. I am not ashamed of any of them.
Good, why should you be?
But I also don't believe that God looks at skin color. I wasn't raised to think that people's skin color were determined by what they did before they came to earth. But carry on. I know that reality with regards to this is hard for you. And your apology thread was so very noble. "I'm so sorry for fighting with those I percieve to be idiots, I'll just walk around them groveling on the ground this new year." How sublimely arrogant. You and Wade take the cake for pompous aseninity.
The above is a prime example of just why I apologized and why the apology was necessary. It is in my very nature to respond to something like this in one of two ways. One is with an eluquent denunciation in clear and unambiguous terms; a blistering ad hominem retort. The other is with a hopefully witty and sarcastic parody in verse or song lyrics. After Jason made a statement that i wasn't' defending the church in a manner in which the leaders of church would appreciate, i realized he was right and determined to alter my coures on that wise. I didn't say anything in that post about anyone being an idiot. I mentioned people with whom civil, rational debate was impossible. I intend to keep to that alteration of course in the future.
Attitudes like the one you so proudly display, are exactly why I left the church. I'm not going to wear the mantle of racist all my life, because I have a problem with being the seed of Cain, or because I would like to sing Gospel music in church, which even your prophet thinks takes away from the spirit of the meeting.
The seed of Cain idea was again, never official doctine. It had doctrinal standing yes, in an unofficial way as an explanatin, but the correction of course the Church has done over the last 30 years (keep in mind that David Mckay was willing to restore the Priesthood to blacks in the sixties, but could not until the Lord directed him, or anothe Prophet, to do so) seemingly has not fazed you. The concept of the Prieshood ban in traditinal church teaching had little to do with "race" per se, and much more to do with lineage, which is a well established concept in the gospel and biblically, as to the blessings and experience various peoples will undergo during a phase or period of time. This is the case with Caucasians, Jews, and other peoples based upon certain variables, including the relation of experiences and personal preexistent attributes to mortal life and our particular circumstances in it, which are going to include time and place of birth as well as ethinic background. If you just don't accept the idea of preexistece on metaphysical grounds, then you need not concern yourself with this. If you do, then I frankly don't see any way out of the probability that the major features of our lives, especially those we cannot change, like ethicity, body shape and size, cultural background, and the age in which we were born, do not have a a unique connection to our experiences in our first estate, just as our behavior and experiences here will condition or final estate in the sphere of existence we will occupy after this life.
I love a number of old Negro spirituals, I find them deeply poweful emotionally and of value to the church. I, however, share the GA's concern about much of the music of charismatic Protestantism, both black and white, that is loud, boiisterous, and dustructive of the quietude and reverence we understand from the revalations is the major feature of the environment the Lord want's us to have in our meetings. If you cannot stand back and be even slightly critical or analytical about the cultural baggage of your own ethinic background, preferring ethnic and racial solidarity to a search for truth, even if it means abandoning some of the traditions of your fathers, then what choice do you have but endless divisive bickering with those who do not see the same value in everything you do? What choice do you have but to see every criticism, or contextual rejection of certain aspects of your ethnic background as "racism"?
Let it be done in a fireside, yeah. I'm not going to let someone attack me because I have a problem with the church's perception of me. I'm not going to be the problem, and a Stalinist, AND a racist because I don't buy your precious leaders' explanations for the priesthood ban. Irony doesn't even begin to describe you, Loran.
I did not say your were a Stalinist. I said that about Angela Davis. As to racism, I think you have a personal and visceral fixation on it, yes. Further, I don't think you have the slightest idea what the "church's perceptions of "people like you" is. Hint: its no different than the church's perceptons of me.
Seriously. And you speak of hell for other people? Feeling the need to be angry with folks all the time for not thinking like you is a far more terrible hell,
I never get angry at anybody for not thinking the way I do. My agner arises because of the mendacity and disintegrity of much of the argumentation and slander of the church and its leaders that is part and parcel of the anti-Mormon and active exmo world.
I would think. I personally do not hate you, and even though your constant "you're a racist" javelins may hurt, I know the truth. You don't anger me. You just don't get it, you're causing much of the problems you have here. And to go and make up some soapbox apology, blaming your peevish behavior on other people on this board (they made me do it) is so juvenile.
If you had actually read that post, you would have seen that I put the blame for the behavior entirely on myself. I gave myself no excuse for the attacking of others and vowed to simply stay awary from people who make me feel like doing that and concentrate my discussions with civil and intellectually honest opponents.
Loran
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