Gosh, look what happens when I spend a day Christmas shopping, getting ready to host a brunch tomorrow, and getting our Christmas tree decorated!
Here goes, one by one.
the road to hana wrote: Re: BIC children who stray.
charity wrote:
I have never heard it taught or preached the BIC children have any higher expectations than a non-BIC child.
That's because you are a convert. By the time you joined the church, your opportunity for being raised a BIC child in an LDS home had passed, so you can't speak to that experience personally.
Yes, but I have six BIC kids. And they have 11 BIC children, which are my grandchildren. So I htink I would have heard about it in my 47 years in the Church.
Maxrep wrote:
How does the church regard a BIC child who chooses to adopt a different belief system?
As a sheep who has strayed. If the parents remain faithful, the child will return eventually.
Maxrep wrote:I find it odd that you state, rather matter of factly, that the loss of testimony precedes sin. It is my experience that the exact opposite has been the party line. One sins and then loses the testimony.
I am sure there are LDS who look at inactives or apostates and assume that the reason the person left the Church is because they sinned, or wanted to sin. For some it is true that the person committs a sin and then leaves the Church rather than repent. But the majority of people who fall away, either gradually or suddenly, have not done so because they wanted to break the word of wisdom, or robbed a bank.
Maxrep wrote:Were it possible to prove the church false, is there any accountability for leaders, parents, etc, who established expectations in their children to maintain a belief founded on fraud? It is not that parents want their children to lead moral lives that causes family issues, it is the fact that morality has been given a brand specific label to be acceptable.
Everyone has his/her own freedom to choose.
Trinity Teacher wrote:
What can I say about this. I have deliberately waited until my parents have died before outing myself to my family so that my parents would be spared the pain of knowing they had a child that left their beloved Mormonism. I don't know if it was the family dynamic or the belief dynamic that inspired me to break down communication in such an intimate area. Either way, I spent a decade of putting space between me and them. Absurd.
I am sorry for your choice.
guy sajer wrote:charity wrote:
Let's be clear. It isn't sin that precedes the loss of testimony. The loss of testimony precedes sin. The man who has a testimony of celestial marriage isn't gonig to cheat on his wife. He loses the testimony, he cheats.
This quote is breathtaking in its simple-mindedness. You can't possibly mean, as your quote implies, that true believing members are not capable of, and never commit, adultery or that apostacy necessarily leads to adultery? By the way, women cheat on their husbands too. It's been known to happen.
No, good members sometimes committ sin. But they don't just suddenly walk past a bed, fall on it with a strange woman and committ adultery. There are steps leading up to any serious sin, and one of those is their testimony starts to fail.
Inconceivable wrote:
Sure, Faithful Parents Save Wayward Children.. no problem.
You don't understand what the apostles have said. Where we end up in mortality is where wie will have the best possible outcome. For some that may be in a place where the Gospel never is preached during their lifetime. For some it may be in the family of faithful members. But whatever it is, when we get on the other side, no one will be able to complain they didn't have the environment they needed. That is what that means. And faithful parents have been promised that their actions can help their wayward children. The idea of someone being able to do something another person can't do for himself started with the Savior.
And you are right when you say "This has brought much comfort and hope to many LDS families struggling with children of rebellion, addiction and sinfulness of every description."
Inconceivable wrote:Hey?!
What a strange place this afterlife will be to discover Lehi and Sariah with all of their children, curse lifted from Laman and Lemuel - heirs to the kingdom. Jacob's son's.. the original wild bunch. Did Judas have righteous parents? Maybe not. Regardless, it would still have to suck to be him.
Alma is telling us that when we know the truth, we had better life up to it. It is a requirement for eveyrone to live up to the truth he/she has. You, too.
Trinity wrote:
I often wondered about fate of personal accountability when I was reading about Joseph and his promises for exaltation to women and their entire bloodlines simply by marrying him. Killed someone? Who cares? Your grandma is Helen Mar Kimball so you are free to sidle right up to the CK without having to pass Go.
You don't get it. But maybe you will someday. Your characterization is a gross misstatement.
truth dancer wrote:
Let's be clear. It isn't sin that precedes the loss of testimony. The loss of testimony precedes sin. The man who has a testimony of celestial marriage isn't gonig to cheat on his wife. He loses the testimony, he cheats.
This is one of the most odd things I have read on the board.
First, of COURSE there are men and women who have a testimony of celestial marriage who cheat on their spouses,
And you think they are willing to throw it away for momentary pleasure. We all conform our lives to what we want. Otherwise we have no rational choice.
truth dancer wrote:and obviously there is a world filled with those who do NOT believe in "celestial marriage" who do NOT cheat on their spouses.
DUH
truth dancer wrote:
Charity... your statement, that a man loses his testimony, then cheats is REALLY nonsensical.
What does often happen, from my observation is that folks no longer believe the truth claims of the LDS church and realize that there is no real harm in, say, drinking tea or going out for Sunday brunch, or perhaps they decide to donate money to a worthy charity rather than the LDS church. Nomal, healthy behavior that once seemed sinful enough to keep one out of heaven becomes normalized.
And this is what I said! Lose the testimony first, then start engaging in behaviors they wouldn't have before.
truth dancer wrote:
The idea that those with an LDS testimony are somehow better, more righteous, and less "sinful" than others is really rather ridiculous.
:-(
Righteousness is measured by how well you are living up to the truth you have. LDS are required to live to a higher standard in order to be "righteous " because they have more truth. But in general, yes, those with a testimony are more righteous, less sinful than the average. And it doesn't take much to beat the "average." But that is a topic deserving of its own thread.
thestyleguy wrote:
this is why people go crazy in the Church - the messages are so mixed from one sunday school to the next from one elders quourm meeting to the next - there is really no foundation of what they believe. Certainly honoring, obeying and sustaining the law was the last thing on the minds of the early Church leaders.
It does take a fair amount of intelligence, personal study, and personal revelation to keep up.
runtu wrote:
We were taught that, if we were faithful, our wayward children would eventually come around. That is not the case, apparently.
Hey, everything will turn out rigth in the end. If it isn't right, it isn't the end.
thestyleguy wrote:
If you are a non member and don't believe or have investigated after being baptized as a child and don't believe - now you are more likely to choose adultery than being faithful. "
That is nonsense, and I never said that. But the number of LDS couple experiencing infidelity is less than non-LDS.
Runtu wrote:
This is nonsensical. If it were true, people with testimonies would be impervious to temptation, and you and I both know that's not the case. People with testimonies sin all the time. As my mission president once put it, "We sin because we like it." Blaming it on loss of testimony is absurd.
As President McKay said, "The seagulls may fly over your head, but you don't need to let them perch on your shouilder. There is a great deal of difference between being tempted and giving in to that temptation.
Trinity
It actually doesn't surprise me at all that Charity would think that. Charity has high ideals of what belief is. She protects it, and would rather prefer to think someone has not had a testimony at all when they sin than the person who breaches the integrity of that belief by sullying it.
Taken to its extreme, Charity has just limited the flock of believers to one----the spotless, unsinning Jesus.
I think I understand this because I have been guilty, on occasion, of not accepting an apology from my spouse by telling him "if you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it in the first place." I figure if he fully understood the ramifications of what he was doing, it would have prevented him from doing it at all. The only other option was that he did not fully understand...and in Charity's terms that means they were not in a full, complete belief when they sinned.
I know. I'm a meanie. I won't apologize for it because I fully understand the ramifications of what I say when I say them. ;)
Very few people do things which they knokw will cause them great harm and injury, physically, spiritually, emotionally. We think we can get away with something.
Since you brought up your marriage dynamic, let's see where it leads.
"If you were sorry, you wouldn't have done it in the first place." That really is a goofy statement. We are all sorry for things we did, that if we had known the ramificaitons, we wouldn't have done it. But we didn't know until AFTER we did it, things would turn out so bad. So you are saying, "You knew when you bought the speed boat without talking to me about it first, that I would blow my cork and you'd be sleeping on the couch for a month."
Maybe he thought you really wanted a speed boat as much as he did and he is shocked at your reaction.
Or maybe he thought you wouldn't like it, but it wasn't a big deal.
Or maybe he thought the blown cork and month of deprvation was a small price to pay for the speed boat.