- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
The Church’s official position has never been that the highest blessings of exaltation were reserved for white people and that black people would be excluded forever. There were a few leaders who believed and said it, and there were far too many members who beleived it, but it has never been the official position – and more leaders taught differently. As with so many things, this is a very important topic, but we can’t perpetuate incorrect information if we are to grapple properly with it. I know the statement was “church leaders” – and I know that is correct, as worded – but the incorrect implication (that it was all or most church leaders) simply needed to be addressed.
:thumbup: Joni wrote:Frankly, the idea that ‘SSA is not sinful in and of itself’ is a fairly new idea in Mormon theology (you have to ask yourself, did we change our tune on SSA to be more in step with ‘the world’? Is that a thing that God’s true church should be doing?)
Being more in step with the world is not always a bad thing.
In the one true church paradigm we tend to think of the church as a standard bearer to the world. I try to view the entire world as god’s one true church. There will always be groups of people in the world that are “ahead” and groups that are “behind” what we might consider to be gods will. The LDS church is not immune to being behind and is not always at the forefront; no group is.
Joni wrote:I think if you were to ask the top church leadership if we believe that the highest exaltation is only for heterosexual people, they would say no, of course not.
I’m not so sure they would say “of course not”. First, if they implied it was possible for gay people to have exhaltation, then it would raise the question “Why can’t they have full church blessings in this life, then?”. I think the church leaders would be more inclined to say “no”, or the classic “we don’t know” (the ultimate sidestep even when you have a “no” or “yes” opinion that could be controversial).
Quote:I can no longer ascribe to the idea that God will “cure” homosexuality at the Resurrection. That just feels wrong to me. At the best, such talk is speculation (and statements to that effect have never come from an official, correlated source).
I think most everything in this thread is speculation really…I would like to know your reasons for not ascribing to the idea that God will cure homosexuality at the Resurrection….I don’t ask this from an adversarial perspective, as I don’t know the answer to the question “What is God’s plan for gay people”. But the idea of a perfect body in which there are no longer homosexual urges, with full blessings given, reconciles homosexuality with the church’s stance that you have to be heterosexual to enter into the marriage covenant, which is necessary for the highest level of exhaltation. Giving eveyrone a perfect body, free of same sex urges and replacing them with heterosexual ones reconciles the two perspectives. The only thing I don’t like about it is that it’s a bit of a cop-out. We can explain away all kinds of stuff by saying “God will work that out”…at least with this theory, we have promises of a perfect body that imply a reversal of same sex urges. The perfect body assertion in our scriptures provides at least some practical justification for this theory.
What I don’t like about this theory is that it implies homosexuality is an aberration, and I’m not even sure if that is true.
Again, I ask these questions in an exploratory way, not as a challenge or to draw you into a point by point debate, which I rarely do…(except maybe over one issue that is not related to your opening post].
I am listening to the Nelson BYU-H Devotional. Sister Nelson says in regards to gifts of the spirit: Quote:The Savior paid the price for every gift of the spirit we will ever need to help us but it is up to us to prayerfully discover which gifts we need…[snip]…Perhaps we need the gift to have our sexual feelings to be in harmony with eternal laws.
Edit: sorry that I inadvertently dropped the word “sexual” from the above quote. It has now been added back in.
Quote:Perhaps we need the gift to have our feelings to be in harmony with eternal laws.
Yes, we need that gift – but it is SO much easier to seek the gift of our hearts being in tune with what we want eternal law to be.
That is not an indictment of conservative, orthodox members; it is a comment about all of us, including myself.
Yeah, that quote from Sis. Nelson is particularly scary given that she was a family therapist. Apparently being heterosexual is now a spiritual gift, so if you don’t have it, if you are gay, you lack the faith to be heterosexual. Last time I checked, I didn’t do anything special to be heterosexual. It just happened. Roy wrote:I am listening to the Nelson BYU-H Devotional. Sister Nelson says in regards to gifts of the spirit:
Quote:The Savior paid the price for every gift of the spirit we will ever need to help us but it is up to us to prayerfully discover which gifts we need…[snip]…Perhaps we need the gift to have our sexual feelings to be in harmony with eternal laws.
Edit: sorry that I inadvertently dropped the word “sexual” from the above quote. It has now been added back in.
This is the moment where I want to insert a GIF (moving picture) of a person slapping their forehead in frustration.
Also, how bizarre
:crazy: . Is she somehow implying that we can get this “gift” from Christ in this life??? I thought we moved away from teaching that through the atonement we can change our sexual orientation? Hope she’s not implying that.*another face palm*
If we really believe that the Atonement can cure homosexual attraction, why don’t we lead off with that? I mean, it’s terrific news if it’s true. Shouldn’t that be the cover story of next month’s Ensign? Sister Nelson is a hardcore, conservative, beyond orthodox zealot, from what I have been able to tell from multiple things she has said. It really is as simple (and sad) as that, imo.
It’s not receiving a lot of attention, but her talk cast a pall over the whole proceedings for me. I don’t get a good feeling – i.e., I don’t feel the spirit – when I’m in her presence and in her worldview. I can hope that changes, but I don’t expect it to. It’s times like these that I can legitimately see the value of of correlation
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.