To LDSX,
My son started this.
Before he was born, the love Heavenly Father has for His children was an idea. I could defend it. I did not know it.
Then I looked into my boy's eyes and the idea became a fact. In one second I understood what decades of study never gave me. This is what a father feels for his son. This is what He feels for us, multiplied past anything I can hold.
This journey is not for me. It is for him.
I have shared this before. Grandparents who chose estrangement. Children who came late in my life. A family scattered by geography across generations. My kitchen table is empty. There is no grandmother in the next room and no uncle down the street. When my son looks up from that table he sees his mother and me and nothing behind us.
I want him to inherit more than a community. I want him to inherit a people. I want to know that if something happens to me, men will show up on the porch. Men who will take him into the mountains. Men who will put their hands on his head and bless him. Men who will look him in the eye at fourteen and tell him what a man of God is and expect him to become one. I want to know he will be held. Not managed. Held.
I know the Church can do this. I watched it happen in the nineties. It took boys and handed them back to their mothers as men. Scouts. Quorums that worked like a tribe. Missions that broke boys open and rebuilt them. Wards where every man in the room was your father's friend, and every one of them would have driven through the night for you.
I have serious doubts it still does this. No more Scouts. Rainbow flags. An erosion of the culture that made those men, and everyone inside the building can feel it, including the ones who will not say it out loud.
So I ask hard questions. And because the questions are hard, some of you have decided I am a wolf in sheep's clothing, or a man who found a niche and is farming it for attention.
I have no ulterior motive. I am not building a brand. I have never told a Saint to leave, and I never will. I tell them to stay and keep their covenants.
I am not trying to pull anyone out of the fold. I am trying to find out whether the fold is still there, because I intend to put my son inside it. I am in the pews on Sunday with him on my lap while I find out.
Thank you
https://x.com/nicoraytruth/status/2099709967116955759?s=20
And Jesus said unto her, “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no more.”
Be men, not women.
Be fathers, not mothers.
Be the priesthood of the apostles.
you have let feminism creep into your house and you don't realize it because it masquerades as compassion.
Oh Kirk… this community of saints is still the core of the church and the pop-culture LDSX/youtube influencer present a skewed view. You will find the clear view if you will show up, every Sunday, at every invitation to serve — when you put your shoulder to the wheel and push — when you make and keep covenants. You will find your people! Your family! Your home! — And these online controversies and apostate fringes — these tares among us — will be a challenge to be met with faith in Christ and a love for God and for all men.
We’re not afraid of the hard questions, you just don’t like the answers. We (those willing to follow the prophet) are leaving the wandering in the wilderness to get ready to enter the promised land. There were different objectives in the 90’s church. Our prophet is leading us in exactly the way Jesus Christ is telling him to lead us… to accomplish His objectives for TODAY. It is why LIVING prophets are so important. People have explained it to you many, many times, you just don’t like the answer.
IMO the Fold is still there… but there seems to be something significant and maybe not quite yet revealed to me about the shift to Home-Centered-Church-Supported.
Which can be harder for people in your situation and others that haven’t been able to keep a nuclear family intact or extended family close. Mine is one of those. My children have divorced parents, and one of them has lost her way. Thankfully they are resonating with my example - my oldest is on her mission and the other two come to church with me regardless of whose parent-time it is.
I certainly wish the church had something ready to roll out that would replace BSA when they pulled that plug. Maybe they assumed the torch would be carried by the few who enjoyed the Scoutmaster calling. My dad was one of those. But that didn’t seem to happen.
And 2020 really rocked the wards.
Having moved to another ward in 2023 I’ve definitely noticed the need to actively put myself out there if I wanted to be seen and appreciated. The 90s welcoming feeling is not as present. People are nice, don’t get me wrong, but things changed. And it could be demographics as well.
I dunno.
I guess what I’m getting at is that I’m starting to realize that I need to make my community what I want it to be. If I want men to pick up the torch in my absence? I need to seek them out and befriend them. If I want to feel confident in a support structure in my ward? I need to create the blueprints thereof and frame it with trustworthy people. While simultaneously being those things for others.
I know it can happen. It just may not be there as readily as before, therefore requiring much more effort. And there are too many other things that have changed in the last 30+ years to place the onus entirely on the church.
Not that I think it’s what you’re doing, but the external factors have to be considered.
Above all else, what I am striving to make sure my children know is that our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are real. That they are there. That they know and love each of them individually, no matter where they are or what they do.
It’s the Foundation. Then they’ll have somewhere to safely stand when the mighty storms come.
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