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A large part of my motivation for my journey to StayLDS has been to pass on the priesthood line of authority that I inherited from my father. My dad died last year and was fairly angry at the church at the end. He also seems to have never been all in but supported his wife in raising us kids in the church. I believe that he would be ok if his priesthood line of authority did not continue.
We have gone pretty inactive since the ward combined last year. We are still on the periphery, attend events, and receive emails about church building cleaning assignments but we attend services sparingly. We have tried attending some other churches and we found one that seems to fit us for the moment.
My son is currently 17 and turns 18 in a matter of months and I am coming to accept that he might not receive the priesthood line. Roy jr. had a TR interview last year (right before we stopped attending regularly) and the bishop quizzed him on his intent to serve a mission. I am somewhat conflicted because if Roy jr. does get the higher priesthood then it will come with all these expectations and strings attached, like serving a mission, paying tithing, and temple marriage.
I don’t think my dad would want the cycle of “endure to the end” to continue in his name…
Anyway, I think that I’m coming to a place where I can support Roy jr. in what he wants. If he wants to be ordained then that’s ok. If he doesn’t want to be ordained then that’s ok too.
I was very inactive and still in my angry phase when most of my sons came of age for the priesthood (both), but I did not have a family line to pass along. My family did attend church and as in almost everything else I was supportive of what my children did and desired. My oldest son was ordained without me, but it was what he wanted and he was getting ready to serve a mission (which he did, along with both brothers). I think you’re probably in the right spot Roy. FWIW, none of my children are currently active and they for the most part have lost belief.
Roy wrote:
Anyway, I think that I’m coming to a place where I can support Roy jr. in what he wants. If he wants to be ordained then that’s ok. If he doesn’t want to be ordained then that’s ok too.
I have seen your posts throughout the years talking about how it was important to you to create space so you could bless your son with the priesthood authority and repeat the tradition of the father passing the priesthood authority to the son. This has been a goal/aspiration that meant a lot to you and had motivating value to you. NOTE: Statement of observed facts, no guilt-tripping or shade being thrown here.
One of my favorite quotes by Adam Grant is this:
Quote:It’s more important to be good ancestors than dutiful descendants. Too many people spend their lives being custodians of the past instead of stewards of the future. We worry about making our parents proud when we should be focused on making our children proud. The responsibility of each generation is not to please our predecessors—it’s to improve conditions for our successors.
– Your comment about your father conveys to me that your father may be ambivalent about any expectation of passing on the priesthood line to the next generation.
– Your comment about being aware of the added responsibilities/expectations attached to priesthood ordination for your son is in line with what “good stewards” do.
– The remaining point is more about what ritual do you and your son need that would have a similar emotional vibe of passing on a legacy that would make you a “good ancestor” here?
Roy, out of curiosity how far back does your patriarchal PH line go? Is it just you and your father, or does it extend back more generations? Roy wrote:I am somewhat conflicted because if Roy jr. does get the higher priesthood then it will come with all these expectations and strings attached, like serving a mission, paying tithing, and temple marriage.
I fully understand those concerns. I had a time setting a boundary around home teaching/ministering and one of the tools in their toolkit was applying the you have a duty/you already agreed to this pressure. In fact I’ve heard anecdotal stories (and seen videos of talks posted online) where leaders use baptism at eight years old as tacit agreement for young men to serve missions.
One thing to be aware of, and I’m sure you know this, is that there’s a “prospective elders” list. Men that have reached the traditional age to receive the MP but they still remain a priest. Sometimes wards will use such a list to track people down and apply pressure to get involved with church. Typically to dangle the MP in front of people as an incentive to reactivate.
My kid never got ordained to the MP, though it was briefly talked about in our ward. It’s his choice, he’s just not interested in church to even have an opinion on it, so I don’t see it happening.
I never had the generational pressure but when I was more orthodox I did carry around a lot of pressure where I felt like I was the start of the chain, that it was all on me to link my ancestors with my progeny. I no longer carry that weight.
nibbler wrote:
Roy, out of curiosity how far back does your patriarchal PH line go? Is it just you and your father, or does it extend back more generations?
It is just my dad. My grandfather on my dad’s side never joined the church, even though he did support his children being raised in the church. Grandpa was baptized and sealed to his family posthumously.
I think part of my hang-up has to do with being named after my grandpa and dad and also being the only boy in the family. I remember being told that I was the only person that would continue the family name. I am also the third Roy in the line and I carried on the tradition by naming my son Roy. There is also the pressure for father’s to baptize, confirm, and ordain their children and I think that my little mind and heart internalized all of those formative experiences as needing to carry on the tradition, the name, the line.
AmyJ wrote:
It’s more important to be good ancestors than dutiful descendants. Too many people spend their lives being custodians of the past instead of stewards of the future. We worry about making our parents proud when we should be focused on making our children proud. The responsibility of each generation is not to please our predecessors—it’s to improve conditions for our successors.
I love this quote Amy!
Maybe tying my son to a lifetime of obligation is not the best way to honor my dad. Looking back, my grandfather (the 1st Roy in the line) never joined the church but was supportive of raising his kids in the church. My dad never served a mission and worked away from home so much that I don’t remember him ever having a calling – he was likewise supportive of his children being raised in the church. Now here I am, a disaffected member that has for many years gone through the motions of church expectations (minus tithing payment – much to the frustration of successive bishops) with the motivation and hope of passing on my priesthood line of authority and all the obligations that come with it to my son (once again the only boy to carry on the tradition, the name, the line).
Maybe it is kinder to grant Roy jr. the freedom to set his own course – not forgetting the legacy that came before but also not feeling bound to retread the same paths.
I remember when my sons were baptized & confirmed, I baptized them & my Father in Law confirmed them. We did it that way because I looked up to him & he was a very spiritual person. I have no one on my immediate
tree that are in the church. My FIL was also in-active for a period of his life. He eventually came back & became
a branch president.
When it comes to Priesthood Line of Authority, I have always thought in terms person doing the ordinance & not
a family member necessarily. Anyone who is ordained can trace their Line of Authority back to Jesus Christ.
Amy J, I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again. I like the way you think & believe. I wish you were a teacher in my ward.
Roy wrote:
Maybe it is kinder to grant Roy jr. the freedom to set his own course – not forgetting the legacy that came before but also not feeling bound to retread the same paths.
Roy Jr. will do his level best to set his own course as he transitions into adulthood at different points. And if he is anything like my teenager, it will be part rebellion at parental common sense, part “oh shiny”, and heavily under the influence of hormones and social conditioning.
Our job as good-to-decent ancestors and stewards is to make accessible to them the legacies that were passed onto us – the good and the bad.I have told my daughters since they were around 6 years old or so about how our families have a biological legacy towards substance abuse as it comes up. 3 of my 4 grandparents were alcoholics, 2 of my grandparents who were raising my parents as single parents got drunk enough long enough that my parents in essence self-raised themselves and eventually joined the church. My husband’s side of the family fared a little better with substance abuse – but not enough to fully counter my biological legacy.
After about 10 years of hearing the family legacy, it came up last week. My teenager rolled her eyes in the exasperated way that teens do and was like, “Moo-oom, we don’t need to hear again how our family gets addicted to alcohol or drugs – stop being annoying”. But the coolest part was that she was annoyed at being bored by being told it again – she has internalized the cautionary warning about our family legacy and alcohol. She no interest in alcohol or street drugs [but is interested in the “forbidden coffee”].
Minyan Man wrote:
Amy J, I’ve said it before & I’ll say it again. I like the way you think & believe. I wish you were a teacher in my ward.
Thanks:)
Update. We are not regularly attending the LDS ward in favor of another church with a stronger youth program.
I had a car conversation with Roy Jr. and DW. I essentially told him that he is approaching the age to receive the higher priesthood and be ordained an elder. Different then when he was baptized or received the Aaronic Priesthood, we would like for him to make the choice of what he wants.
We talked about the pros and the cons.
Pros are that he would be able to give and assist in blessings of healing and comfort and this would also be a pre-requisite for temple endowment or sealings. Another pro would be to better fit in with his age group at church.
Cons are that this also comes with expectations of missionary service, callings, tithing, and leadership in the church.
We can either be proactive in setting up his ordination as his birthday approaches in November or we can sit back and wait for him to to be added to the list of prospective elders.
Roy Jr says that he would like to receive the higher priesthood but he is not in any hurry to do it. We’ll take the latter approach of waiting for local church people to bring it up and then going from there.
I have not said anything about priesthood line of authority or asking who Roy Jr. might want to ordain him in an attempt to not put pressure on him.
It sounds like a good start to an ongoing conversation:) If it comes up, I think it is fair to your son that if this is something he wants to do, you would like to have the specific role of completing the ritual of blessing him with that power and authority from an organizational perspective. I have no idea what language you would use to convey that meaning to him, but that is the gist of my suggestion.
Based on your post, you would feel better if he knew that this is a wish of yours without it binding him to automatically choosing to gain the priesthood (and the other stuff) because of your wish. I haven’t had this exact experience, but I have had similar conversations where I add the aside like you did on what the boundaries to my choices were because they mattered so much to me. For me, it was a verbal/thought process flag that came up whenever I wasn’t being fully honest about why I still was giving a care for something I was striving to be more impartial about. It usually means that I need to go back to a conversation and add a bullet point or footnote to clarify something and satisfy an internal requirement I have of myself.
Yes, Amy, I am making an effort to not bring it up. I am practicing mourning for my dreams of watching my kids carry on the traditions without giving hints that I am mourning. I think that if Roy Jr. does receive the higher priesthood and I am asked to ordain then I should not make a big deal about the priesthood line. That shouldn’t be hard to do because church culture only cares that it can be traced back to Christ.
I don’t want to give my baggage to my son. It’s ok if it stays and dies with me.
I don’t want him to feel like I’m disappointed in him if he doesn’t receive or pass on the line and I certainly do not want my grandsons thinking that they need to jump through these hoops to honor my memory.
If my son receives the higher priesthood from someone else, that’s ok. If my son never receives the higher priesthood, that’s ok too. I’m practicing getting comfortable with that being ok, anyway.
I think I will wait a while since we just had the priesthood discussion, but I also want to give my son freedom to name his first born boy whatever he and his future wife want and not impose the weight of the tradition to carry on the name of Roy. That too, is something that can stop and not be continued on – generation to generation.
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