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http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3305 Gonna see where it goes. I know I probably lean much more towards the edgy end of the comfort zone. I am going to respond and see if I can steer the conversation into a productive direction. I am pretty sure Shawn is gone of his own accord. That’s fine. If he holds traditional beliefs, he has a whole giant church network to support his journey.
I responded. Feel free to disagree with me on keeping this thread around. It is a volatile one. If it gets worse, we should yank it. I would like to keep it up though, if possible, as a mentoring moment. These are the kinds of things our users have to deal with in everyday life when their loved ones find out they are having problems. If feel a little bit like: if we can’t handle it here with all our experience, how do we hope others can?
Let’s try to model a good response to those we serve in this community.
If he leaves and only our comments remain, or if he does return and doesn’t turn it into a verbal fight, I don’t want it locked. I love the responses so far, even as I gulped and shuddered in anticipation as I was reading it initially. BTW, cwald actually sent me a PM telling me about it and saying I might want to lock it if it got dicey. He’s got a really good heart, as all of you know.
He alerted me too. It looks like it the thread is going in a good direction. It is better to be a good example than to simply lock things down. Yup. I totally agree with your decisions on handling this thread. I am heading over to the thread to respond with my thoughts now. I like to show we can be open to all thoughts, as long as it doesn’t get nasty. So far, everyone seems to be respectful. I’d really like to try to keep Shawn involved to flush out why this site appears to be so bad. My bishop and SP continue to tell me the exact same things…I’m looking beyond the mark and I’m prideful. It would be nice to have some threads or some posts that can try to talk about why that perception is there? Why do others fear this site? Why is it so dangerous to say outloud that the prophets are fallible, or that other religions are just as good at helping people? The Church is the scaffolding to the gospel, which is to point us to Christ. The church, the gospel, and Christ are not all the same thing. Why is that so dangerous? It would be nice to have more threads showing it is not scary.
While I’ve had a long time to study this and think it through, because of my family situation and my bishop being zealous to get involved to help “fix” our family, I have to directly deal with this issue right now. And I am absolutely open and keen to learn if this site is a negative force for my life, my marriage, and my standing with God. I just can’t believe it is, but feel it has really helped me in time of need when no other church resource could. But I always check myself against what others are telling me, should I be seeing things wrong.
I just wish there was more of a way to bridge my thinking with my bishop’s or my family’s. Perhaps I was too optimistic, and it is much harder, or near impossible to do. Can Shawn stay and be a contributor…or is there too much angst between groups? If so, Why Is That?
In theory, I can see a way to make it work with TBM views. In practice, I don’t know how to get others to see it. Patience. Long-suffering. Temperance. Love. I will keep to those principles, but hope people like Shawn or others don’t need to
FEARthis website. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was an equal balance of voices from all sides of the spectrum, and we all played in the sandbox nicely?
I’ve been getting a kind-of bi-polar vibe from Shawn lately. It’s just an impression, but I wanted to mention it and ask you guys to let me know if you get the same feeling. It’s like dealing with a yo-yo, and I wanted to see what you think. His intro post went into detail about chronic drug use, dropping out of high school and other fairly dramatic subjects. This was all cured through a religious epiphany, except for his depression or ADD, or whatever it is that isn’t quite clear. Power to him if a religious experience got him off drugs. That’s cool. It sounds like he’s a little bit “off” still.
Agreed, I think the other part of his personality is once he has the “epiphany” – he is so sure about it, he assumes it is THE answer for everyone else as well. It could be from drug use, or just chemical imbalance, but he seems a bit myopic. I thought he was just very TBM that he needed to learn to be more tolerant and open-minded, which he does, but I can see there is a bit more to it than that. We’ll need to watch him.
wayfarer sent me a PM a little while ago about the homosexuality thread, and I’ve been talking with him, cwald and Silent Dawning about it. Their consensus is that they would like the thread locked, with a last note that the conversation has run its course and there’s not anything more to be said. That will end the discussion in that thread without having to do anything more – and, cwald is the most adamant about wanting to make sure any TBM readers see that we are patient with people whose views are more traditional than ours. Does anyone have a problem with locking that thread?
Just saw the PM conversation. I’m cool with locking it. I think Shawn has probably run his course here. We tried to be patient. I think some level of tension and even disagreement makes the forum conversations more interesting, engaging and beneficial; however, I feel like it is crossing the line now that Shawn is creating such a level of tension that Wayfarer gets THAT frustrated. I don’t think Shawn is here with the right spirit. If he’s had his “witnesses” and stays in the Church, cool. I am happy for him. He isn’t helping people in our community. I think he’s turning into the kind of person that chases people away from church. It’s not about his beliefs. It’s about his attitude and how he projects them.
I really do think that there are physiological issues involved – like bi-polar disorder and the inability to slow down before typing in the heat of the moment. I’ll go ahead and lock the thread.
I wasn’t really following that thread closely. I stopped reading it a little ways into it after it started. I just skimmed through the last couple pages. This statement by Shawn crosses the line: Shawn wrote:I find some of your ideas to be false and dangerous and I will continue to post an opposing view to them. I will do so as respectfully as possible.
That kind of language and attitude is unacceptable within our community standards. Moderators can say stuff to each other like that in the back channels, but it is an unacceptably hostile attitude. We can not have people like this posting. I was all for keeping him around. I think I was the first to go to bat for him. I think he has crossed the line and needs to go.
Thoughts?
I’d like to wait and see if he crosses it again in a thread with a different topic. It might be that homosexuality one of his hot-button issues and that he won’t react that way in other threads. If he does react like that in another thread, I am totally fine banning him.
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