Is Harry Reid Now Moving Toward Official Church Discipline?

[_Chap]

We are to judge, and must judge (discriminate, discern, inspect, scrutinize, categorize, make judgements, and come to conclusions on moral, ethical, social, cultural, and political questions and issues) as human beings and as Saints both to negotiate the mortal world rationally and prudently and as a matter of covenant responsibility, but are to judge righteously.

It is of course impossible to survive daily life without making judgements in the sense of making decisions about how to act. But when it comes to 'judging' other people, in the sense of expressing condemnations of them based moral evaluations of their conduct, Christians might reasonably feel they have good dominical reasons for caution:

Matthew 7 KJV:

1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

And in one particular instance, just to see what this attitude meant in practice to the person who expressed it:

John 8 (KJV)

1 Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

2 And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.

3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,

4 They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.

5 Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?

6 This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.

7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

8 And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.

9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.

10 When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?

11 She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

Of course I am not a Christian any more myself. So I get to judge people when I feel like it, and can cast the first stone whenever there is a tempting target. Can I see one around, I wonder?

[_Kishkumen]

in my opinion, Romney is the one who needs to put up or shut up. Either provide the tax returns or quit whining over accusations that arise because of how suspicious it looks to the public when you hide them.

Exactly. Here's the thing. He's obviously calculated that his returns are more damaging than hiding them. Given the loud volume of the demands for him to release them, they have to look pretty damn bad, regardless of any legal issues.

I would bet that there are no legal issues. What it will show is exactly what Americans don't want to see right now: a man who exploits every last loophole imaginable so that he can avoid paying taxes through instruments that you and I can't afford to buy into.

In other words, his tax returns will well illustrate how skewed the system is against the average American, thus providing a wonderful argument for why we don't want to elect a man who will perpetuate the same injustices in the tax burdens doled out to different actors in our economy.

[_Droopy]

Nope, you're going to actively work to sow division in the church over political affiliation. Don't let me stop you.

All I'm doing is defending and reiterating the core, established teachings and doctrines of the gospel, and comparing and contrasting them to teachings and doctrines that are not compatible, and critiquing the beliefs of those who claim that accommodation between the Church and the secular/pagan surrounding culture is possible and desirable.

I'm not sowing any "division" within the Church that wasn't already sown long ago:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
(Matthew 10:34).

The most divisive thing in the universe is truth. It is truth that "sows division" and creates the contention and conflict. Once truth is introduced into the mortal setting, the only thing left to say is, "Let the games begin."

One thing remains, however. Truth, if only those who loved and sought the truth were within that mortal setting, would then not be divisive or create contention and struggle. It is the presence of falsehood, and not so much that, in and of itself, but the presence of those that love falsehood, who love darkness rather than light; who "loveth and maketh a lie," and who love falsehood because that is what is required to justify, establish, and rationalize that which they want to do and the manner in which they want to live, that creates the division.

There is division in the Church because there are those within the Church who are divided as to their ultimate loyalties, commitments, values, and focus, and it is the existence of the Church itself, and the gospel it teaches, that is the source of such division.

It is people like Joanna Brooks and John Dehlin who are sowers of division and contention, not me nor the apologetics community (to the degree it actually is an apologetics community). If David Bokovoy wishes to openly teach and exhort members of the Church to accept aspects of egalitarian socialism, communism, and communitarian collectivism as key aspects of the LoC and UO, then responsibility for the division and contention he sows should fall upon him (or others holding similar views), and not on the faithful and valiant members of the Church who rise up to challenge and critique his claims as the oath and covenant of the priesthood and the covenants made at Baptism require.

Don't run a sword through the bearer of bad news. The Church is a strait and narrow way. The gospel is not a big tent and life is not a cabaret.

[_Chap]

The Church is a strait and narrow way.

The gospel is not a big tent and life is not a cabaret.

I think Droopy feels a song coming on ...

[_kjones]

Not a good analogy, I'd have to say, because the claims of the Swifties at that time were, for the most part, as a matter of substance, true, and remain so today. The Kerry campaign and his supporters in the mainstream media never even attempted a fact or evidence based refutation of the charges themselves, nor did Kerry ever bother to publicly refute them except in ad hominem terms.

You haven't read up on your swifties in the time since 2004, have you? And the only things you seem to know about John Kerrey are the things you hear from Republican approved media (Fox "Fair and Balanced", the talk shows, maybe) sources. It would be like someone going to the Tanners to learn about Joseph Smith.

Harry Reid is not doing anything different than a Repub would be doing, if the tables were switched. (The only difference is, you wouldn't be whining about it now, you'd be applauding.) You see the "swifties" as having been only telling the truth, doing their patriotic duty, etc., etc., and T. Boone Pickens, who funded the whole thing, as a patriot. Why, because you are a right wing Republican and this is the right wing Republican narrative re: the "swifties". The Democrats, for their part, accept a different narrative. Which narrative you accept depends on what your prejudices are, which party you identify with.

An intelligent person can look at these two narratives and see them for what they are; not as the "truth", but as two competing narratives. A ideologue sees one or the other as the "truth", the last word.

[_kjones]

Hi, Droopy...

You asked for CFR on what I said re: gay marriage and active temple rec holding LDS.

I know, in my small church circle, at least 6 temple rec holding LDS who, if they do not support outright gay marriage, are uncomfortable with the church's political involvement in it. They are not making a fuss, they are generally quiet about it. There are a few (not in my circle) who have gone public about it, one being Steve Young's wife. During the prop 8 business in CA, the Young's had a big sign in their yard announcing they did not support the measure--or at least his wife did not.

I believe the Young's are hosting Pres. Monson's upcoming b-day bash, aren't they?

It's OK, droopy. The gospel net brings in all kinds. It sounds as if you'd like to be standing at that net as it's brought in, throwing back into the ocean everything that, to you, doesn't belong in the Lord's kingdom. Some of us are glad you're not, and hope that you never will be.

[_Droopy]

You haven't read up on your swifties in the time since 2004, have you? And the only things you seem to know about John Kerrey are the things you hear from Republican approved media (Fox "Fair and Balanced", the talk shows, maybe) sources. It would be like someone going to the Tanners to learn about Joseph Smith.

Their claims regarding Kerry's medals and other aspects of his conduct while in Vietnam still stand as evidentially substantive and unrefuted, if not directly proven claims, and more importantly, his pivotal role in the Winter Soldier political theater, his friendly liaisons with the North Vietnamese leadership against his own country and in their behalf while the war was still in progress (and while he was still in the navel reserves), and his association with the most extreme anti-American, pro-communist elements of the New Left at the time are historical facts beyond serious argument.

He chose his own path then, and it came back to haunt him, no matter how he tried to sanitize his own history.

Harry Reid is not doing anything different than a Repub would be doing, if the tables were switched.

Except that no Republican presidential candidate or president in recent memory has or is doing such stuff. This kind of behavior is confined almost exclusively within the Democratic party, which raises serious questions regarding the entire moral condition of that party and the ideology that drives desperate power madness of this kind.

(The only difference is, you wouldn't be whining about it now, you'd be applauding.)

I'm not a Republican, and not particularly a fan of Mitt Romney. You're already running on fumes.

You see the "swifties" as having been only telling the truth, doing their patriotic duty, etc., etc., and T. Boone Pickens, who funded the whole thing, as a patriot. Why, because you are a right wing Republican and this is the right wing Republican narrative re: the "swifties". The Democrats, for their part, accept a different narrative. Which narrative you accept depends on what your prejudices are, which party you identify with.

In other words, you don't know what you're talking about, haven't done any substantive reading on the subject, and have nothing to bring to the table but ad hominem circumstantial innuendo.

The head of that group, John O'Neill, a black Vietnam Veteran and lifelong Democrat, debated Kerry in 1971 on the Winter Soldier agitprop and his association with the radical Left. O'Neill started the Swift Vets for Truth, with other vets, many conservative but containing some clear Democrats as well, because Kerry was an utter phony who, like many on the Left at that time, had openly supported and shilled for America's enemies during that war, and had become a legitimate fifth column within America seeking the defeat of the United States and the conquest and subjugation of South Vietnam by the Stalinist North.

Kerry was up passed his ears in this entire culture and ideological stew.

An intelligent person can look at these two narratives and see them for what they are; not as the "truth", but as two competing narratives. A ideologue sees one or the other as the "truth", the last word.

Yes, that's the standard, formatted, all-purpose postmodern epistemological cop-out. Throw up your hands and run away from the very serious problems posed by stubborn things such as facts, evidence, logical argument, and historical documentation into "narrative" and "text."

You can have it both ways, that way. No, in point of fact, you can have it any way you want it. Nihilism works that way, but like the monkey's paw, it exacts a terrible price for your granted wishes.

[_Droopy]

You asked for CFR on what I said re: gay marriage and active temple rec holding LDS.

I know, in my small church circle, at least 6 temple rec holding LDS who, if they do not support outright gay marriage, are uncomfortable with the church's political involvement in it. They are not making a fuss, they are generally quiet about it. There are a few (not in my circle) who have gone public about it, one being Steve Young's wife. During the prop 8 business in CA, the Young's had a big sign in their yard announcing they did not support the measure--or at least his wife did not.

They have their free agency.

It's OK, droopy. The gospel net brings in all kinds. It sounds as if you'd like to be standing at that net as it's brought in, throwing back into the ocean everything that, to you, doesn't belong in the Lord's kingdom. Some of us are glad you're not, and hope that you never will be.

I've been crystal clear (and I believe bc has been as well, over years of time) that I have no interest in making ultimate judgements about anyone nor in determining anyone's official status vis-a-vis Church membership.

My concerns are matters of principle, not Church membership. You say that the Church "brings in all kinds," but if you will look again at the parable of the sower, you will see that all those kinds, like the various kinds of stones used to construct the tower in The Shepard of Hermes, are not suitable for the fulness of the blessings of the gospel, and many are suited to receive few. All have an eventual place, but not within the Kingdom of God in its higher and more encompassing form.

That's a matter of agency, not excommunication or membership in the Church in an official, technical sense.

[_kjones]

The following appeared in the SL Tribune in 2009, following Democrat Bill Orton's death:

Two days before Election Day in 1990, the Utah County Journal , a free newspaper delivered to every household from Lehi to Payson, ran a large ad paid for by the Republican Party. Republican congressional candidate Karl Snow was pictured with his large family above the caption "Karl Snow and his family." On the other side was a picture of Snow's unmarried opponent, Bill Orton. The caption read "Bill Orton and his family."

A larger caption read: "Some candidates want you to believe that their personal values don't matter...Families do matter! Vote Republican."

Snow apologized for the ad, but Orton won by a wide margin, reminding us that Utahns prefer positive campaigns.

[_Chap]

..
I've been crystal clear (and I believe bc has been as well, over years of time) that I have no interest in making ultimate judgements about anyone...

It's good that Droopy has made this quite clear.

Droopy's deity will be very relieved to hear that his job is in no way under threat. For a while it was looking bad for him.