Speaking up in class

[Anonymous]

You might say so. 😳

The Sunday School lesson was on the Word of Wisdom, taught by a wonderful young man I really like. He did a good job, and I emphasized at the end the wonder of living in a time when prescription drugs are available to help with issues and that we can’t over-interpret the prohibitions as applying to all drugs if we only are faithful enough.

HPG was about Home Teqchi, but it was handled well. One of the listed reasons for people becoming inactive was “being offended” (which is correct in some cases), and I grinned and said, basically, “Sometimes we can choose not to be offended, but sometimes we can be a pretty offensive people. There is a difference between taking offense and being the recipient of seriously offensive words or actions. Some people who leave over offenses are 100% justified in doing so, because the offense actually was serious and harmful.”

One brother whose default setting is consistently different than mine said even Jesus was offensive to some people, but we both agreed we were talking about opposite sides of the same coin. It was a good discussion.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

I’m curious if anyone spoke up in class today and if so, how it went?

I did sort of. Long story short, the HPGL is out of town on his usual extended summer vacation (he owns a cottage in a beautiful setting) and his assistants dropped the ball not realizing it was presidency lesson – so there was no planned lesson. A temple missionary “rescued” the meeting by suggesting we read the First Presidency message in the Ensign and discuss it. That’s what we did (only the tech savvy ones could read it of course, and that left out both assistants). https://www.lds.org/ensign/2016/08/the-hope-of-eternal-family-love?lang=eng” class=”bbcode_url”>https://www.lds.org/ensign/2016/08/the-hope-of-eternal-family-love?lang=eng I don’t agree with all of what Pres. Eyring says in this article.

So, the discussion came around to lots of speculation about temple work and how doing work for our ancestors is important even if they don’t accept it because they have their choice (I dont necessarily disagree with that idea, but we also don’t know much about it and it’s all speculation). So I threw in an example I have shared here before and asked about the here and now, which is more what the article is about. I told them the example many years ago where the young man asked “What if that’s not what I want?” in talking about families being together forever (I can understand why he didn’t want to associated with his father for eternity). Popping that out did cause a short pause and caused some people to think beyond the rhetoric a bit with some asserting that we just don’t know how it works in eternity (my goal accomplished, I was thankful time was up).

[Anonymous]

I spoke up in HPG. The lesson was on the Sacrament, and I don’t know how we get so far off the subject, but our resident prepper, who is also the ward Emergency Preparedness guy (obviously an inspired calling), said he was at a regional meeting last week, and the 70 that spoke to them said that they had looked at all the members that were hurt during recent disasters, and then looked at their activity rate (yes, you know where this is going), and that those members that were “keeping their covenants” were less likely to be hurt or damaged during a natural disaster.

Well, this deserved a response, so I said that this is a very slippery slope to be heading down. I asked what about the very faithful that get hurt or have property damaged from a disaster. They then put the blame on themselves that they must have not been living “good enough”. Or others start to judge everybody that is hurt in a disaster as “covenant breakers”.

Everybody agreed with my comments, and the instructor kind of saved Brother Prepper by saying that any blessing we get from keeping out covenants may or may not come in this life.

[Anonymous]

Good for you. I wish you were in my ward.

[Anonymous]

Minyan Man wrote:

Good for you. I wish you were in my ward.

If Sheldon were in my ward, I suspect we would be texting back and forth during classes or even sacrament to almost compete with the number of texts my teenage kids do (actually they only use snapchat and instagram – texting is “old fashioned” like using facebook!!!).

[Anonymous]

I wasn’t in adult classes yesterday, so I enjoy all your posts. Thanks.

[Author]

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