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Pahoran recently said:

Pahoran wrote:My position is further that a faithful Latter-day Saint really ought to expect to live in some degree of tension with a lost, fallen and increasingly wicked world. If someone can't handle the tension of a policy that was not entirely politically correct

Judging a person’s spiritual capacity (e.g. if they can hold the Priesthood) based on the superficial and utterly facile justification of their skin tone isn’t about you and your church not being politically incorrect, it has everything to do with you and your church being ethically challenged.

Pahoran, your Church isn’t a very ethical institution, it’s a tree that produces the barest of fruits that never make it to market.

Pahoran is just another example of the my notion that in a Mormon context, a Saint is nothing but a potential sinner who lacks imagination, a sense of humor, and a moral compass.

MrStakhanovite wrote:Pahoran recently said:

Pahoran wrote:My position is further that a faithful Latter-day Saint really ought to expect to live in some degree of tension with a lost, fallen and increasingly wicked world. If someone can't handle the tension of a policy that was not entirely politically correct

Judging a person’s spiritual capacity (e.g. if they can hold the Priesthood) based on the superficial and utterly facile justification of their skin tone isn’t about you and your church not being politically incorrect, it has everything to do with you and your church being ethically challenged.

Pahoran, your Church isn’t a very ethical institution, it’s a tree that produces the barest of fruits that never make it to market.

Pahoran is just another example of the my notion that in a Mormon context, a Saint is nothing but a potential sinner who lacks imagination, a sense of humor, and a moral compass.

Have real live faithful Latter-day Saints come out from under their mommy's skirts to play in our sandbox?

If it pleases God to keep genetics segregated for any length of time and for his own purposes, the least of which might be priesthood prohibition, another might be genetic reasons, you cannot blame hypocrites from getting tangled up with it in a mess like everything else.

Abraham forbid his sons from taking wives of the Cannanites. The Patriarchs are a saintly line that goes back to Adam. Having so many generation visited of God's power and truly changed to a higher state of existence is something to hybrid and keep distinct if we should not use the word pure.

Ham laughing at his father's nakedness does not bode well that he was a saint. And his wife had little to no saints all the way back to Cain, who was a true saint, ya know. After about ten generations even a bastard line can serve in the Temple. Since our day is probably a hundred generations with no saints nowhere, there is no advantage or distinction in genetic purity.

According to Isaiah 19 we are all one people before the Lord in this day and age.
You know that getting the Priesthood SHOULD require that you first become a true saint.
Since it is also to do with lineage, no true saints ever might be why the priesthood was denied in the first place.

Also from the very same post

Pahoran wrote:Understand: the Priesthood ban consisted in the Church withholding a privilege it was not then and is not now obligated to bestow upon anybody. Exactly who is owed an apology, and for what?

Couldn't racists use this same logic to justify their racism? Eating at my restaurant is a privilege and I'm not obligated to serve anyone. Blacks also weren't allowed to enter the temple. When you consider that for the LDS the endowment is a saving ordinance necessary for salvation, how can it be considered a privilege? It's essentially equivalent to denying someone the 'privilege' of baptism.

Pahoran wrote:Understand: the Priesthood ban consisted in the Church withholding a privilege it was not then and is not now obligated to bestow upon anybody. Exactly who is owed an apology, and for what?

Stormy Waters wrote:Blacks also weren't allowed to enter the temple. When you consider that for the LDS the endowment a saving ordinance necessary for salvation, how can it be considered a privilege?

What makes you think that the LDS church has any obligation to offer salvation to anyone who sincerely desires it?

It's not like it's Christianity or something.

My position is further that a faithful Latter-day Saint really ought to expect to live in some degree of tension with a lost, fallen and increasingly wicked world. If someone can't handle the tension of a policy that was not entirely politically correct, by the canons of early 21st century society, and which ended thirty-four years ago, then it seems to me that their tolerance for tension is rather low.

I agree with Pahoran's statement. Years ago I walked away from the Church because I realized this policy was abhorrently wrong. But they discontinued this policy and years later I returned to the faith because this obstacle was removed. Pahoran is right, because what is wrong can be manifest in so many things - things that have nothing to do with the Church. We need to have some forgiveness just to navigate through life. The Church tried to improve and that should count.

One ethic we as Church members need to work on is when occasionally some Church member may take it upon themselves to practice lying for the Lord. It would be good if we could gently step in and remind them that honesty is the best policy.

moksha wrote:One ethic we as Church members need to work on is when occasionally some Church member may take it upon themselves to practice lying for the Lord. It would be good if we could gently step in and remind them that honesty is the best policy.

How does one do that when General Authorities have specifically told us not to contact them directly?

Drifting wrote:How does one do that when General Authorities have specifically told us not to contact them directly?

We need to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the items we cannot change, no matter how glaring.

Drifting wrote:

moksha wrote:One ethic we as Church members need to work on is when occasionally some Church member may take it upon themselves to practice lying for the Lord. It would be good if we could gently step in and remind them that honesty is the best policy.

How does one do that when General Authorities have specifically told us not to contact them directly?

Don't tell juliann Reynolds she is lying, she'll ban you

moksha wrote:I agree with Pahoran's statement. Years ago I walked away from the Church because I realized this policy was abhorrently wrong. But they discontinued this policy and years later I returned to the faith because this obstacle was removed. Pahoran is right, because what is wrong can be manifest in so many things - things that have nothing to do with the Church. We need to have some forgiveness just to navigate through life. The Church tried to improve and that should count.

It’s hard to have forgiveness if there is no admittance to wrong doing, that is what the apology symbolizes.

For example, take Jack, point out some kind of institutional racism in her denomination and she’ll don the sack cloth and ashes, and give an unconditional apology. She’ll say it was wrong, and always wrong, and anyone who taught otherwise, no matter how brilliant, wise, or apparently inspired, was wrong. No caveats, no buts or howevers.

Now can Pahoran do the same?

Given the timing of the change, I think it's legitimate to question the motivation for the change. Perhaps it wasn't a change of heart as much as it was an act of self preservation. Imagine what would have happened if they had not lifted the ban. Should we give the church credit for the change? Maybe we shouldn't.