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Old-Timer wrote:
Rob, nobody here believes prophets and apostles always speak the word of God. It is objectively provable through our scriptural canon that they make mistakes or say things that get changed later through “further light and knowledge”, increased understanding, on-going revelation, whatever.
It’s a dead issue here. Horse is buried. No sticks needed to beat it. Let it go.
:thumbup: Ray, I didn’t bring up the topic above about birth-control to open it up for discussion–it was just fascinating. My father remembers this, and I thought he was making it up. He wasn’t.
I will mention something I may want to bring up in another thread. There is an untaught policy that the the GAs don’t correct previous leaders–they just teach something new while leaving the old out there rattling around. A good example of the ONLY exception I am aware of is BRM when he was back-peddling about his position on blacks & priesthood. He said something like: “Forget everything I said before. The lord has spoken and now we have clear direction here….”
Forget everything he said about it? OK….I can do that. But, what about everything everyone else has said about everything else? Are we to
forget all of that?Sounds like an untaught doctrine. Is that a doctrine? It is tribal knowledge? What is it? Is the focus still on getting married young? What about having children very fast? Do we forget that? What is the policy,..and how do we reconcile what was taught with what is now kindof taught, but is it?…or is it not?…or, or, or…
:crazy: There is no policy, thank God. Old-Timer wrote:There is no policy, thank God.
Unless you have a hard-line leader. Then there is a policy because the “lack of policy” indirectly means (to them) to backtrack UNTIL you find what at one time WAS policy.
If a policy hasn’t been undone because someone hasn’t spoken new,…then are you saying the old is being replaced by
silence?And, if the old policy is being undone with silence, how are people to know this is happening? Can you dig my policy?
:wtf: :wtf: :crazy: :crazy: :crazy: :lolno: :lolno: :lolno: :lolno: Laura Brotherson, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, Louri Skaddie, and other PhD people have all concluded the messages about marriage from prior generations DO CONTINUE TO CAUSE serious problems. Changing policy by silence sacrifices people who find their beliefs in conflict with reality.
And, it isn’t fair.
I have never said and will never say old policies don’t cause damage. That would be stupid. I also have never said and will never say some orthodox leaders won’t look for older policies to justify their beliefs. That also would be stupid.
I will say there is no current policy against use of birth control.
Thus ends this discussion.
Old-Timer wrote:I have never said and will never say old policies don’t cause damage. That would be stupid.
I also have never said and will never say some orthodox leaders won’t look for older policies to justify their beliefs. That also would be stupid.
I will say there is no current policy against use of birth control.
Thus ends this discussion.
I didn’t even know we were talking about birth control. But, we are in complete agreement.
This problem wouldn’t exist if something other than governance by silence wasn’t so loud it deafens.
The only thing worse than governance by silence is vocal, detailed governance that doesn’t match our beliefs. That is true at every place in the orthodoxy spectrum. I will take teaching principles and self-governance every day – and about ten times on Sunday.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:I agree that waiting longer to get married probably wouldn’t have made that much of a difference in your case if you were going to marry the same person either way. Sure there are no guarantees or ways to predict for sure what will happen twenty years from now but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible to at least see some early warning signs that you are headed for trouble and avoid some obvious and unnecessary pitfalls with a little caution and common sense. That’s where I think having some Church members get engaged to practically the first person they meet after their mission and then jump into marriage head first hoping for the best after only few months (or even weeks) is an unnecessary risk because they won’t necessarily see some of the potential problems and incompatibilities in that case the way they generally would if they felt like they didn’t need to get married for a few years and dated more people before getting an idea who they feel is the best one for them. Also I don’t believe there’s any way that getting married much less having children while still in school and/or having low-paying entry level jobs is a very good long-term policy to recommend in general because of the typical unnecessary added stress involved. Sure some people can manage to get by this way and make it work but I don’t see why very many would want to nowadays if they don’t have to and to be honest I think it is irresponsible of the Church to continue push ideas like this so much.
I agree that there are many factors that would determine a happy marriage. I believe that factors such as the ability to provide a comfortable living and emotional maturity should increase with age. Other factors, such as common beliefs and sense of commitment may not.
I would feel very uncomfortable giving relationship advice. We can talk about trends that work for most people, but in the end it is the individual that will live with the consequences and the individual that needs to make the decision.
In regards to my children, I hope that they are a little older when they get married because of my belief that an older person has an increased capacity to evaluate important life decisions.
Old-Timer wrote:
I will take teaching principles and self-governance every day – and about ten times on Sunday.I so get this….
The culture is strange as it swirls around self-governance. We are taught to self-govern by principle, but there are general guidelines and even constraints that are often taught in subtle ways, or left over cultural mores from previous generations–we are a product of our cultural norm more often than any type of teaching or principle.
For example, this thread was about “Why the focus on getting married young.” Is that focus created because of a teaching, a cultural stigma that affects you if you don’t get married young, or what?
There are ideals of self-governance, but in reality that is difficult to achieve as illustrated by the closed cultural settings that many experience with church history, LGBTQ teachings, and so forth. There are efforts to open the dialogue more (as the essays illustrate), but how far has that come? And, who is sacrificed during the transition? And, what in the world is going to happen with the culture where the actual execution of principle meets reality?
I marvel that 2 good friends of mine still deal with crushing shame BECAUSE they didn’t serve missions. This is a cultural bye-product of an earlier era. But, it still exists, and it still hurts these two.
There have been threads posted on this site about the stigma for dating IF you are not a RM. That is changing in my area,…but how slow, and who will be injured along the way?
I often wonder if the question I find myself asking is framed right. IF the culture could be corrected by GAs being more overt and saying: “Hey, this is wrong. Now we are doing this, and want everyone to consider this…” would it be worth the black-eye the church would receive to admit that sometimes it hasn’t taught something correctly?
There are serious casualties happening because the idea of “principle” somehow doesn’t make its way to reality. For example, LGBT children still commit suicide in record numbers BECAUSE the culture hasn’t learned to self-govern by principle. But, is the cultural foundation the church created in any way responsible for this? Have we been taught to “follow the prophet” so much, we have stopped learning to self-govern? Does following the prophet actually translate into negating self-governance–as Elder Oaks indicated in the 2 channels of spiritual communication: if you receive guidance that is in opposition to that of the GAs, according to Oaks, it only can be from the devil; so in this situation, we must throw out self-governance and follow the prophet, even if we completely disagree with him?
Results are mixed, and the part that bothers me is there are people sacrificed in the mix. That is how I see it anyway….
There have already been so many great reasons given here for why the encouragement to marry early still pervades. I think the other one that was only briefly touched on is that YSA bishops have only one mandate: to marry off their wards. I think the real problem is that the church doesn’t know what to do with singles. This is a church for married people. Not the divorced, not singles, not homosexuals. And in essence because the focus is on cishetero traditional marriage, it’s not really for women either since women are the unpaid baby-making workforce that upholds that tradition. That’s neither doctrinal nor policy-driven. These are just the strategies of an older generation for whom these things worked, and now the good bishops who are trying to help the singles in their charge by getting them to wear the glasses that corrected their own vision. hawkgrrrl wrote:I think the real problem is that the church doesn’t know what to do with singles. This is a church for married people. Not the divorced, not singles, not homosexuals.
As I read the first sentence above and was mentally agreeing with it, the thought came to me about it being the same with gays. Then you enumerated them with the list of others. It is so true. For a man in the church (barring it being a singles ward or a branch starving for leaders to fill positions) you will never be called to EQ Pres, HPGL, YM Pres, Bishopric, or even possibly be SS Pres if you are any of what Hawkgrrrl listed.
hawkgrrrl wrote:These are just the strategies of an older generation for whom these things worked, and now the good bishops who are trying to help the singles in their charge by getting them to wear the glasses that corrected their own vision.
I agree and it is disheartening that it appears my church will always be behind the times by about a generation. I have seen it my whole life and I worry that my kids are going to have a lifetime of dealing with this also.😳
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