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Old Timer wrote:
Leadership roulette is a real thing at BYU – but there are plenty of excellent Bishops there, as well.
Definitely true. I got lucky with the four bishops I had in Provo, but they were not all equally good. My favorite bishop was easily the one I had for the two years immediately after my mission. His favorite topic was pornography/addiction, but he approached it in such a comfortable and loving way that nobody really seemed to be bothered by it. He really did a lot to make the kind of environment where you could feel comfortable talking about it with your roommates or him. He even addressed the fact that it affects women too. His wife also made amazing barbecued pulled pork.
I’ve definitely heard of the bad bishops. I worked with this one unorthodox guy at one point. He was having issues getting his ecclesiastical endorsement renewed for some dumb reason (I can’t remember what it was, but it was something petty. Maybe it was because he was lazy about shaving. Maybe it was because he didn’t agree with the honor code. I dunno.) and his bishop made him jump through a bunch of hoops to get it renewed. I’ve also heard similar horror stories along the same lines from various people.
FTSOY really should be defining what the heck heavy petting is because it sounds like any sort of prolonged rubbing anywhere on the body (is that what your girlfriend thinks it is?), when that is not the definition I got when I Googled it (erotic contact between two people involving stimulation of the genitals but stopping short of intercourse.). Basically, it’s more like almost sex. [Admin Note: We have a policy against using graphic, sexual language, purely because so many different people read what is written here. We try to follow Paul’s advice about not eating meat with those who don’t eat meat. Therefore, some descriptions have been deleted.] If you and your GF have not done that, you have done nothing wrong.
The church really needs to stop using such vague terminology and just call a spade a spade when it comes to sexuality. :sigh:
It seems that people go to their bishop or branch president for two reasons, to find out if they’ve done something wrong and if they have to find out what to do to fix it. In the first case we seem to forget that we’re capable of deciding for ourselves right and wrong and in the second I’ve decided that the Bp/BrP just gets in the way. Your recommend will usually be taken away and you’ll be told not to take the sacrament, but how does that help? If you’ve confessed your sins to God, don’t you need the sacrament for its ability to renew baptismal covenants and receive the help of the HG? Is the bishop able to decide if you’ve been forgiven? One of the first things that reformers threw out was confession to and absolution by a priest. I know a bishop doesn’t absolve but the way things are set up, that’s the way it seems to be. A number of years ago a friend of mine went through a years disfellowshipment for a chastity problem. At the end of the year he was asked in the council if he had felt that lifting of guilt like a person feels when they take off a heavy pack. He answered that yes he did, a year earlier when he confided to his bishop. As I look at it he spent a year being punished for something he’d been forgiven for before it all got started. He learned a lesson from that and to my knowledge hasn’t been back in a bishop’s office since. I dunno if avoiding the bishop is necessarily the right course of action in every case. Not every bishop is that black and white. At least in theory, he’s there to be a love and a support to you as an arbitrator in helping you work through the repentance process. Sometimes repentance involves disciplinary action (as in the case of pre- or extramarital sex, and murder), though I will admit there’s a pretty serious leadership roulette problem there because some issues are treated with wild inconsistency. For instance, masturbation has little consistency from leader to leader when it comes to disciplinary action. There are bishops who revoke your TR, bishops who will say you can’t take the sacrament, bishops who just tell you to stop doing it and move on, and there’s probably just about everything in between.
I guess you should consider your bishop’s personality and pray about it before taking action. If your bishop is a “Gospel of Christ” bishop rather than a “Law of Moses” bishop, you’ll probably be fine confessing the sin and he’ll actually be helpful. Law of Moses bishops will likely resort to more strict, and generally less helpful, action.
Thank you for giving an update and I am glad that the discussion has been helpful. I also agree that reading through this thread together can foster some important conversation on topics that might not come up otherwise. Just a small clarification. I understand TBM to mean “Traditional Believing Mormon” or Orthodox. I do not use it disparagingly.
Roy wrote:
Thank you for giving an update and I am glad that the discussion has been helpful. I also agree that reading through this thread together can foster some important conversation on topics that might not come up otherwise.Just a small clarification. I understand TBM to mean “Traditional Believing Mormon” or Orthodox. I do not use it disparagingly.
I agree. I use the term to describe someone who views the gospel in the mainstream manner taught at church.
I concur; TBM is not meant to be derogatory. It’s a stance on belief, rather than lifestyle. I know a couple of chain smokers, who I’d consider TBM because they really believe in the Church with all their heart. I also know of a few who keep most every commandment the Church has, but who don’t have a literal belief in the fundamentals of Church doctrine. A couple of terms I’ve heard on here that I like even better are the “Sheep” and the “Llamas”. Sheep love and trust their shephards with all their heart and soul. They would follow their shephards to the ends of the earth. Llamas, on the other hand… they go about doing their own thing, and will spit in your face if you try to stop them. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. The docile nature of sheep lead them to be heavily domesticated in Europe. Clothes for everyone! But the downside is… when you have a lot of livestock in close proximity with humans, you get plagues. On the flip side, over in Peru, the Llamas did not obey! Have you ever tried herding llamas? It’s not easy. That means, smaller cities, and less livestock in those cities. No plague! This is why the new world caught the old world diseases, which nearly wiped them off the face of the earth; but the old world didn’t catch any “new world” diseases; the llamas did not allow for them to develop.
I think there’s a real analogy here; are you going to shake things up by being a rebel, and thereby keep things relatively “disease free”? Or are you going to help our communities thrive (until a “plague” hits)?
I don’t think TBM is necessarily derogatory on it’s own, but it is often used that way (more especially on other sites/forums). I tend to not use it unless I am being a little derogatory. I usually refer to them as “more orthodox” or “more believing.” Your analogy is worth a little pondering Dande. There is at least something there. I had just always considered the sheep and llama thing as the llamas being a bit different but not enough that the sheep probably notice (and yeah that infers that the sheep are a bit stupid, which is true of sheep). There certainly are other ways to look at the two.
dande48 wrote:
I think there’s a real analogy here; are you going to shake things up by being a rebel, and thereby keep things relatively “disease free”? Or are you going to help our communities thrive (until a “plague” hits)?
The problem is that us llamas have our own diseases that are unique to us llamas.
SilentDawning wrote:
dande48 wrote:
I think there’s a real analogy here; are you going to shake things up by being a rebel, and thereby keep things relatively “disease free”? Or are you going to help our communities thrive (until a “plague” hits)?
The problem is that us llamas have our own diseases that are unique to us llamas.
…and some of the sheep are very afraid that we are contagious to them.
FWIW, I don’t like using “sheep” due to the common connotations in the broader public. I know literally thousands of active, conservative, orthodox members who are not sheep, as commonly defined by society. I also think lots of llamas love their shepherd. 
I try hard to use descriptors that are not loaded with cultural meaning – but I have NO problem with others using whatever terms make sense for them, as long as those terms are as balanced and charitable as possible.
I came to the conclusion a couple years ago that a believing heart is in no way inferior to an enlightened mind. Both are very valuable and necessary in the Church. Unfortunately, even if the term TBM is not used derogatorily (such as in my original post) it is often interpreted that way.
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