It is quite late and our guests have gone home. I had several interesting conversations today. I love days like this, filled with stimulating postulations and hopefully, increased understanding and wisdom. I am blessed to be surrounded by good people.
My favorite, is my wife. She likely is the wisest person I will ever meet on this earth. She is by no means the smartest - but smarts will not get a man or woman to heaven. Loyalty and devotion to truth and good principle and wisdom are the key. She excels in all these things.
We are both survivors of abuse which was a topic today in several conversations.
My wife and I finished the day going over some elements of basic human nature. One of them that is becoming so predictable as I meet more and more people is the almost base need/desire to blame others for our problems. Neither my wife nor I were ever raped (violently or by force against our wills), but we were talked into doing things by people who were in positions of power over us. We allowed ourselves to be influenced or acted upon by someone else. In each instance, wee could have said no and walked away. Neither of us did so. We both agree that, in varying degrees, we were also accountable for the events that occurred.
Many, finding themselves in this situation, instead of seeing things as they are, seek to assign blame 100% to the other party. In the case of rape by force, this clearly is the case. Where things were not so cut and dried, some accountability has to be assumed by BOTH parties. My wife agrees with this idea. I initially thought she would reject the notion - but she agreed that it is a shared accountability, especially as the accountability and agency of the abused is increased. This is the reason that no one looks down on the notion of a 30 year old teacher becoming romantically involved with a 24 year old former student, but would have severe heartburn over a 30 year old teacher and a 14 year old student or four year old child. Each scenario getting progressively worse from a moral standpoint.
I have a former Scoutnaster who decided to blow his life up and left his faithful wife for a former high school sweetheart who was not LDS. He, of course, left the Church over DNA evidence which later proved to be a fraud or incorrect. A few years after he left the Church, he would take weeks long vacations where he would tell his wife and grown sons that he was hiking in the Olympid Peninsula. They got suspicious and followed him over to his girlfriend's house and then called him on the cel phone. Whem he continued to lie, they called him out literally. What an embarrassing moment for this fellow......
He was a wicked and adulterous man - who deflected his lack of good morals on the Church and left it in a supposed huff over DNA evidence. Even after it was shown wrong, he still chose to deflect onto the Church..... Sad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEm9Sc9_jis
My wife and I both agreed that this was his Anakin moment.....
We have people who are on the bloody cusp of apostasy who are now openly criticizing the Brethren over something they have little to do with.
Folks - snap out of it and keep it together for just a few more years until the Savior comes..... After all, how hard can it be?? Probably within the grasp of good people...
No comments:
Post a Comment