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Roy wrote:
If I was asked – “1) when was the last time you looked at porn; 2) when was the last time you masturbated.” I would respond with “I don’t quite know. I didn’t exactly mark my calendar. What is it that you are trying to get at?”
I like that answer. I might include a vague “It has been quite some time.” (Depending on my mood I might not give an answer at all, though, and if I’m feeling especially frisky I might just ask them to stick to the written questions as the instructions state.)
Quote:Repentance is crap.
Repentance is the heart of being human, since only humans, as far as I know, can make a conscious choice to change.
Repentance is essential to growth, since repentance means change – and change is the only way to grow.
Thus, repentance is the heart of the Gospel Jesus taught – with faith in it being worthwhile as the heart of repentance.
Interpretations and implementation of the concept of repentance get really wonky really quickly, since each and every person needs different motivation to change and defines areas that need changing differently – but if we reject repentance as a concept, we reject progress and growth and advancement and on and on and on. Old-Timer wrote:Quote:Repentance is crap.
Repentance is the heart of being human, since only humans, as far as I know, can make a conscious choice to change.
Repentance is essential to growth, since repentance means change – and change is the only way to grow.
Thus, repentance is the heart of the Gospel Jesus taught – with faith in it being worthwhile as the heart of repentance.
Interpretations and implementation of the concept of repentance get really wonky really quickly, since each and every person needs different motivation to change and defines areas that need changing differently – but if we reject repentance as a concept, we reject progress and growth and advancement and on and on and on. I agree with this, and repentance of some sort is part of the major world religions and belief systems (in some cases repentance means being reconciled to others).
In your case, Rob, I’d advocate being honest with yourself and God before worrying about being honest with another human (bishop/SP). That is, I wouldn’t “lie” if I made it 364 days and slipped up on the last but I would also know the effort I put into it and would feel fine answering that I had indeed “made it.” I think it’s really more between you and God than you and the bishop.
Old-Timer wrote:Quote:Repentance is crap.
Repentance is the heart of being human, since only humans, as far as I know, can make a conscious choice to change.
Repentance is essential to growth, since repentance means change – and change is the only way to grow.
Thus, repentance is the heart of the Gospel Jesus taught – with faith in it being worthwhile as the heart of repentance.
Interpretations and implementation of the concept of repentance get really wonky really quickly, since each and every person needs different motivation to change and defines areas that need changing differently – but if we reject repentance as a concept, we reject progress and growth and advancement and on and on and on. Let me rephrase and clarify. Repentance the way it has been defined to gain rebaptism is not very helpful. It emphasizes time between mistakes, not human progress. The position I have been presented is you are only as good as your last mistake. So, from that perspective, repentance is crap.
Why?…because I can guarantee I will probably have some sins between when I repent now and when I die in the future. If I am only as good as my last sin, i’m lost. And that, presented in so many words from LDS leaders at local levels to me, is shamed based.
I’m not making this stuff up guys…..
What was said above which was probably a little tongue and cheek (and taken well by me either way) actually is kindof how disciplined members are treated. The standards are set to almost impossible levels, and if there are mistakes, all the progress is dashed and you start over…AT THE BEGINNING.
Once you are disciplined, you don’t mess up again,…even a LITTLE bit. If you do, you are OUT!
Very few people who are disciplined come back. One of the objectives I heard when I was being ousted is that this “court of love” is to save the soul of the sinner. If that is true, and the way I have been treated on my return trip is an indication, this save the sinner’s soul is crap. Repentance as it has been outlined is shame based and is crap.
That is my take. White-wash it all you want. This is my experience. Whether this is policy or not, whether this is the way JC would have it or not, doesn’t matter much to me. What HAPPENS, and what is REALITY is what affects me. You can have the ideal all you want, but when it happens to you, in your face, and you live it,…takes on a whole new meaning.
I once heard a number that only 3% of excommunicated members come back. I don’t know if this is true of not. But, it seems to me that “saving the soul of the sinner” is a little weak in this area…would you agree?
DarkJedi wrote:Old-Timer wrote:Quote:Repentance is crap.
Repentance is the heart of being human, since only humans, as far as I know, can make a conscious choice to change.
Repentance is essential to growth, since repentance means change – and change is the only way to grow.
Thus, repentance is the heart of the Gospel Jesus taught – with faith in it being worthwhile as the heart of repentance.
Interpretations and implementation of the concept of repentance get really wonky really quickly, since each and every person needs different motivation to change and defines areas that need changing differently – but if we reject repentance as a concept, we reject progress and growth and advancement and on and on and on. I agree with this, and repentance of some sort is part of the major world religions and belief systems (in some cases repentance means being reconciled to others).
In your case, Rob, I’d advocate being honest with yourself and God before worrying about being honest with another human (bishop/SP). That is, I wouldn’t “lie” if I made it 364 days and slipped up on the last but I would also know the effort I put into it and would feel fine answering that I had indeed “made it.” I think it’s really more between you and God than you and the bishop.
DJ…thanks. I understand your perspective as well.
There is a human factor with regards to who the bishop is or SP happens to be at the time. Often their choices are as influenced, IMHO from their own upbringing as from any doctrine they may or may not believe.
I sound bitter above,..and some of that is true,…but I have peace inside in many areas as well. It really is between JC and me. The rest,…well, that is that. If salvation is ONLY for LDS people, in the grand scheme of things, Heaven is gunna be a relatively sparsely populated place.
And,…I know things are way off topic here with this thread. Sorry Roy. Will try to get it back on target.
So .. To be very crude here, a wife can give a husband
a hand job, and it’s okay, but if he does it himself, it is a punishable sin.
Hmmm …
Moderators .. Throw this out if you must.
amateurparent wrote:So ..
To be very crude here, a wife can give a husband
a hand job, and it’s okay, but if he does it himself, it is a punishable sin.
Hmmm …
Moderators .. Throw this out if you must.
This is precisely why I believe that this should be a matter left between husband and wife. The church doesn’t come out and say exactly what is and is not allowed between married adults. I do not really want them to. I really need to give the church credit in this area as it has slowly removed itself from the married bedroom and family size/spacing issues. Unfortunately, many of the old ideas still persist and since we are loath to talk about sexual issues many couples persist in incorrect assumptions for extended periods of time.
[Moderator Note to nobody in particular: We seem to be straying from the thread topic. This thread is already 15 pages long. Please try to stay on message or create another thread to discuss tangential issues.]More seriously: Years ago, our local area authority sent a letter to all area stakes and wards. It was to be read in each RS meeting, and a copy given to each married female member. The letter was on official letterhead of the church. It stated that all contraception was seen as wrong, that the Lord wanted the church to grow through large families, and each woman was supposed to prayerfully consider how she could best fulfill her role as a mother in Zion.
I sat through the reading, took my copy, and arranged to have it mailed to church headquarters. Within two weeks, an announcement came out though the Stake President that the previous letter had NOT been authorized nor approved by the church and it was to be ignored, discarded, and all copies destroyed.
The added questions that are being asked of men about pm reminded me of that long ago letter. Those extra questions are not church approved. Church headquarters would be VERY interested in knowing about the added punitive measures. Please consider contacting church headquarters and letting them know. They will address the issues through appropriate channels.
This might be a tangential point but I reallydon’t want to start a thread called “handjobs” so bear with me. Polygamy is a very emotionally charged subject, so is pornography and sex in general.
Roy wrote:This is precisely why I believe that this should be a matter left between husband and wife.
I don’t mean to single you out Roy, I agree completely with you, but I also think that the church
hasinfiltrated the bedroom and I think that it happened irrespective of intention. All of the language surrounding masturbation in the church works on the husband and the wife individually long before they even meet. I suspect that for many people the feeling is that there’s no need to discuss things with their spouse because there’s already a tacit understanding that masturbation is evil. Premarital restrictions can persist as marital restrictions. Even if the conversation occurs it can be an uphill battle for someone when their spouse considers their sexual desires to be “evil.” In some other thread we discussed a program to help RMs readjust to civilian life. Maybe it’s time for a sex ed program for newlysealeds to discuss how sex isn’t gross and to encourage couples to talk to one another openly about their sexual needs… and then make the oldest, crustiest couple in the stake teach the course.
🙂 In all seriousness, just make sure that couple that ends up teaching the course doesn’t consider an Irish Spring commercial to be pornography. That’d be a good start.amateurparent wrote:More seriously:
Years ago, our local area authority sent a letter to all area stakes and wards. It was to be read in each RS meeting, and a copy given to each married female member. The letter was on official letterhead of the church. It stated that all contraception was seen as wrong, that the Lord wanted the church to grow through large families, and each woman was supposed to prayerfully consider how she could best fulfill her role as a mother in Zion.
I sat through the reading, took my copy, and arranged to have it mailed to church headquarters. Within two weeks, an announcement came out though the Stake President that the previous letter had NOT been authorized nor approved by the church and it was to be ignored, discarded, and all copies destroyed.
The added questions that are being asked of men about pm reminded me of that long ago letter. Those extra questions are not church approved. Church headquarters would be VERY interested in knowing about the added punitive measures. Please consider contacting church headquarters and letting them know. They will address the issues through appropriate channels.
This is exactly how the “caffeinated sodas are against the word of wisdom” teachings get started and once they get started they are almost impossible to uproot, even in the face of a GA pounding a pulpit repeatedly.
Sitting on the train today reading the posts on my phone, and as soon as I got to the end of this one, my dictionary app forwarded me the word of the day: “Penitent” . I choked a moment.
Its a sign….
🙄 Rob4Hope wrote:My prior stake had 2 additional interview questions for men on TR interviews: 1) when was the last time you looked at porn; 2) when was the last time you masturbated…There was a bishop as well, that required a minimum 3 month waiting period of informal probation before you could do things like take sacrament, or ordinance work. So, we are moving in this direction.
This is becoming a “no tolerance” position of the church,..at least at this local level.Rob4Hope wrote:DevilsAdvocate wrote:
In fact, if Church leaders want to make the Church into even more of a fringe organization mostly geared around hardcore zealots and make it even more irrelevant worldwide than it already is then I think one of the best possible ways to accomplish a major purge and scale down their operation would be to add a specific question to directly ask men when the last time they viewed porn was in worthiness interviews before they can go on missions, get married in the temple, etc. and if the answer is within the last yearthen simply tell them to wait a year on probation to prove they have properly “repented.”When I read your post DA, I chuckled. In my situation, I’ve been told to live a perfect life in this area for a minimum of a year or I will have to restart my clock from the beginning, re-baptism placed on indefinite hold. The idea of going 11 months, possibly having a slip in the middle of the night (for example) and restarting the clock is disturbing. I could have 364 days of perfect living, a day where in a half sleep I perhaps act out (being single sometimes those feelings happen in me,… sucks to be human I guess), and then have to discount those days and start over, is a recipe for discouragement and leaving forever. But, I’ve been told what the standards are. I know what the requirements are. And, I’ve been offered no help at all other than to read my scriptures, say my prayers, attend my meetings (where I am to remain utterly silent–and disconnected and alone), etc. One reason I say this is because the repeated guilt-trips about porn were definitely one of the main reasons why I became inactive after my mission and didn’t get married in the temple. I would usually stop viewing porn/nudity for several months at a time but always ended up doing it again. Eventually I got tired of this routine and didn’t even try to stop anymore which made me feel better overall but the problem was that I still believed that if I died in a car crash or something like that then I would literally go to the Telestial or Terrestrial Kingdom because of this so I didn’t see the point in attending church, doing home teaching, paying tithing, etc. anymore either and started drinking. At that point, I thought I wasn’t worthy to marry any “good” Mormon girl and didn’t even like to go on first dates with them so I gave up on that idea and started dating non-Mormons and inactive members instead and ended up having sex with a few different girlfriends.
As far as I’m concerned I was basically set up for failure by a slippery slope the Church itself created because every step of the way there was a convenient and comfortable way to do things and a ridiculously hard and painful way and every single time the Church’s way was the hard and painful way. I’m not even a particularly rebellious person; in fact, I have never had many problems with rules and authority figures at school, work, home, or anywhere else, only in the Church. And I know I’m not the only one that has struggled with these strict rules and expectations. Many of the Mormon guys I grew up with didn’t even go on missions. They wouldn’t necessarily say they felt unworthy and typically just said things like they would rather work or that kind of thing but I suspect that the real reason for many of them was that they got the impression that the Church was only for straight-arrow types and they weren’t really like that. Meanwhile many outwardly obedient TBMs are actually viewing porn/nudity in secret just as much as any non-Mormon tattooed blue-collar roughneck.
What we really have here is basically largely an illusion of success where there is the misleading appearance of strict conformity and discipline with the white shirts, short hair, etc. Not that I blame many active LDS men for pretending they don’t ever view porn/nudity when they really do because in many cases that’s the only way to survive in the Church when telling the truth is punished so harshly but playing along with what everyone wants to hear is rewarded (if constantly having callings and temple recommend can be considered a reward). If you really think about it the only reason the Church is as large as it is with as many men supporting it as it currently has in the first place is precisely because many men have basically ignored or shrugged off some of the guilt-trips about porn and masturbation instead of taking the idea that this makes them unworthy too seriously.
Even if the Church doesn’t ever officially add more explicit questions to worthiness interviews, porn and masturbation are already implicitly included in the generic chastity question anyway so it doesn’t surprise me that some local leaders would ask these questions on their own to try to make sure the members of their flock are really “worthy” according to the letter of the law. That’s what Dallin H. Oaks is basically reiterating in this article, that if you are not completely porn free then you are not worthy but what I don’t think he realizes is that the Church might as well thank millions of supposedly unworthy men for making the Church what it is today and it’s not like they are going to suddenly be convinced that viewing porn/nudity is absolutely unacceptable for them on personal level in practice just because Church leaders said so because that’s what they have always been saying for decades already and it hasn’t really changed anything for many of these men in real life.
This is a tangent, but it fits in a way with this thread and will pull things back a little. The reason I acted out, eventually forcing my own excommunication (because I wanted out…not resigning,..I WANTED OUT!) was the idea of rolling over in the middle of the night and being rejected by my spouse. The fact that she wasn’t interested wasn’t the problem; I went to the church (BIG MISTAKE) for answers, and found out that the church had a covertly hostile attitude toward sexuality in general. It isn’t universal, but systemically it is woven, IMHO, into the fabric of the church.
You see, when my wife rejected me over and over, it hurt. If I masturbate as an outlet, I am condemned by the church. If I push my wife for sex, I am condemned by the church. If I look outside of marriage, I am condemned by the church. The church doesn’t want to get into the bedroom of the saints…sure, we all believe that right?…haha. But, whether they do or not, they do.
An example (and I choose this because it affected me mostly), is the book MoF from SWK. Old book, but most of the local leaders I know use it in my area still; and when Richard Scott said we should read it during a GC talk, my heart sunk. Well, there are 16 pages devoted to the pitfalls of sexual immorality, and a single small paragraph that says husbands and wifes are for each other in a “controlled” way–but no idea what “controlled” means. And, no where in that book does it say it is a sin for a husband or wife to refuse their spouse over and over.
That is what got me. It wasn’t that my wife refused me–it was that this refusal was covertly approved of by the church. It is clearly a sin to “act out” in marriage: adultry, fornication, masturabation (I wonder about this one) and porn use are condemned. But, “acting in” in marriage by refusing your spouse is not considered a sin. The church hits on a single side, but has inadvertently given license for a spouse to refuse another for whatever reason they think. Oh sure, the church will suggest and perhaps pay for marriage counseling, but the damage for me was already done.
This original article that is part of this thread strikes me as having merit. It talks about arousal itself being considered wrong.
Folks, in subtle and not so subtle ways, the church promotes restraint and even celibacy in marriage (after the kids are created, and sometimes regardless of that as well), and this creates a problem. People have sexual feelings. That is one of the reasons they get married in the first place. And then the church, which creates some of the problem religiously in the first place by pitting sexuality against spirituality, condemns and punishes those who use their sexual feelings in the only way they can, which sometimes is outside of marriage.
I don’t think its fair.
In the middle of my marriage crisis, I needed answers. My mistake was I looked to the church for those–this pro marriage church (that makes me laugh now…sorry) failed me. I found out that sex appeared to be a tolerated evil.
The original thread for this article is that arousal itself is considered bad. This fits VERY WELL with some of the things I have read other experts (the they are experts) say about it.
For example, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife on Bill Reels podcast mentioned (and it says it in her dissertation as well) that women are generally considered completely non-sexual people until–poof–they are married, and all of the sudden they somehow become sexual people. But, the message is still told to many of our youth: “Don’t have sexual thoughts and feelings. They are discusting. They are wrong. They are immoral. Save those feelings for someone you love.” pure poison.
I feel for you Rob. I can relate a bit in that my faith crisis really started with unresolved decades of pleading in prayer for some relief – even taking away my desires (and work from me on LDS/Religious self help books). For quite a while it was “I need to find out why I am not getting answers.” After a decade or so working hard at that, I started to think something else was going on as this was not working. That is when I first had the though of “what if this isn’t all true”. A few podcasts later and boom! LookingHard wrote:I feel for you Rob. I can relate a bit in that my faith crisis really started with unresolved decades of pleading in prayer for some relief – even taking away my desires (and work from me on LDS/Religious self help books). For quite a while it was “I need to find out why I am not getting answers.” After a decade or so working hard at that, I started to think something else was going on as this was not working. That is when I first had the though of “what if this isn’t all true”. A few podcasts later and boom!
Oh yeh my friend,…oh yeh.
Same pathway for me. I was angry because my marriage was falling apart, and I felt condemned for having feelings in the first place. Then started looking to the church. This may sound crazy, but I wanted to find if the LDS faith believe that sexual fulfillment in marriage was something that was at least going to happen in the next life. You see, I was willing to hang it up, just accept my marriage as it was, and move on with life.
That is why this thread and this article are so relevant. You see, for YEARS I have felt like the idea of arousal itself was condemned. I felt bad for having feelings in the first place.
When I went to the church to find answers, what I found were mixed, unclear and disturbing answers. And then it spiraled out of control into other areas. SSM, the idea of not correcting past leaders, the SWK letter condemning sexual practices IN THE BEDROOM, the church’s way of not disavowing that but just letting it fizzle out and in a way sacrificing those who have already been hurt by it, priesthood ban, plural marriage, polyandry, autocratic leadership with regards to controlling what questions are appropriate and pouncing/ignoring the others, gender issues and a hostile attitude toward women in general, etc.
Whole thing blew to hell.
So, here I am.
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