There is pressure on all those matters I mention in the form of the fact that people don't want to join the church because it involves being willing to change from the various points I just mentioned. If we changed it, perhaps that coffee drinker would be interested, or would he, when he can just go to whatever church never considered it wrong to drink in the first place?jbalm wrote:Benjamin_LK wrote:He doesn't want us to drink that coffee (society accepts that)jbalm wrote:So basically God wants us to do whatever is acceptable to society at large.
Like Brigham Young, we are all just products of our times.
Everything is relative.
He doesn't want us to drink that whiskey (society accepts that)
He wants me excommunicated because I fornicated with my fiancé/girlfriend before we were married (that's totally fine with the majority of society, a few nonmembers still are opposed to it)
He wants me excommunicated for cheating on my wife (not a serious crime with society at large, not even worthy of me going to prison)
He wants me unworthy for temple because I drink either booze or coffee (society doesn't view that as quite as serious offense)
The Primary message for 2014 is The Family: A Proclamation to the World, I know because my wife and are are serving as Primary Teachers right now. Oh my, all that heresy before the OW crowd! Not really though.
I could go on and on, but your thinking is focused on a really narrow aspect of the church's peculiarities. Why haven't we just dumped the WoW, we would be a lot less absurd without all the alcohol and coffee consumption taboos anyways? Why not just dump the law of chastity, I mean we're so odd for calling any of our members engaged in cohabitation sinners, right? Is it really of God, or is it not? It's time to start thinking about those things. However, what's also true is once we cave in to one commandment, we will be on a path to ditching many more. We don't have to be like the CoC, which BTW, is a perfect option for those OWs to join. The fact that they well, don't tells me that they're not really true believers in every sense of the word, they just want to try and manipulate people, just like the lie of Zeezrom was solely to bait Amulek into denying the existence of God, then try him as a heretic. If someone really believed in some God or miracles backing them, they can utilize their freedom of religion rights to go and found their own church.
If there was enough pressure to change those things, they would change.
If the church caves on the OW crowd, it will be subsequently demanded to cave on one issue, after another, after another.
As for the OW crowd, it's a totally different issue, it's one of figuring that men and women are identical just because we can try and impersonate one another. That's not the case, there are two distinct genders, and both are meant to respect and collaborate in the Lord's Church. That doesn't mean I have to see a woman as no different than myself to respect her, I see the differences between my wife and myself, or my sisters and myself, and my mother and myself, and recognize that this gender difference and diversity as a productive, and positive, even sacred, aspect worth recognizing.