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I had an interesting conversation with a member of my ward the other day. I consider him & his wife to be good friends. They are very conservative & very orthodox. We have had some interesting discussions along the way. We never get upset or angry.
They have several children who have gone on FT missions. He said that he made it very clear to them that if they ever came
home early from their missions, they would have to walk home from the airport. He wasn’t going to pick them up. This was
half joking & half serious. All I could think of was: what a message to give to your children. Even if it was in jest.
My conclusion is: everyone lives the gospel according to their own conscience. We are all different. There are those who don’t
accept the call. Others who may come home early. Who are we to judge? This is one aspect of the church that gets to me from
time to time. We expect conformity & we are quick to judge when we don’t or won’t conform.
I made it perfectly clear to my sons that I was fine with them coming home early for whatever reason. I told them if need be I’d pay for the ticket and/or come and get them (they all served foreign). Just saying. Setting high standards with no safety net is great for some. It might help them to achieve more than they would be able to do otherwise – knowing that quitting really isn’t an option. For those that fail to meet those high expectations (for whatever reason) it can be brutal.
I have also heard said in SS (quoting BY) that it is better to die resisting a rape than to submit and live. It is a similar do or die, make it or brake it, false dichotomy. Thankfully, the person making this claim was challenged my more moderate voices.
I have not heard this type of rhetoric over the pulpit in my lifetime. This represents an old school approach that has fallen out of favor.
Roy wrote:
Setting high standards with no safety net is great for some. It might help them to achieve more than they would be able to do otherwise – knowing that quitting really isn’t an option.For those that fail to meet those high expectations (for whatever reason) it can be brutal.
I have also heard said in SS (quoting BY) that it is better to die resisting a rape than to submit and live. It is a similar do or die, make it or brake it, false dichotomy. Thankfully, the person making this claim was challenged my more moderate voices.
I have not heard this type of rhetoric over the pulpit in my lifetime. This represents an old school approach that has fallen out of favor.
To me, if a parent has this attitude toward their child serving a mission, it shows the parent values the church and the child’s reputation in the church than the health of the child. Many of my friends had to come home early from their missions, mostly for medical or anxiety purposes. The ones who had open armed families and a ward that treated them as a full time missionary were able to treat their issues and slowly become active or healthy again. The ones whos parents were displeased, tried to send them back, or otherwise made it clear their choice to come home early was bad, ended up going less active and getting worse health.
Like you said, for those who like that military like focus of quitting isn’t an option, great. But I think it’s one of the big things that separates the boomer and older generation from my and gen z’s generation. Mental health wasn’t taken seriously back then. People often asked why everyone is being so soft and weak now. I think we are actually opening up to problems we used to ignore or dismiss.
Minyan Man wrote:
I had an interesting conversation with a member of my ward the other day. I consider him & his wife to be good friends.They are very conservative & very orthodox. We have had some interesting discussions along the way. We never get upset or angry.
They have several children who have gone on FT missions. He said that he made it very clear to them that if they ever came
home early from their missions, they would have to walk home from the airport. He wasn’t going to pick them up. This was
half joking & half serious. All I could think of was: what a message to give to your children. Even if it was in jest.
My conclusion is: everyone lives the gospel according to their own conscience. We are all different. There are those who don’t
accept the call. Others who may come home early. Who are we to judge? This is one aspect of the church that gets to me from
time to time. We expect conformity & we are quick to judge when we don’t or won’t conform.
When I read something like this, I just want to scream! Heaven forbid that friend of yours be humiliated by a son’s or daughter’s early return from the mission field. It sounds to me as if there is zero concern for the child and only a selfish concern that your friend’s own reputation might be damaged. What is it with people anyway? Talk about having a misguided understanding of the gospel. If you ask me, that dad is not only flat out asking for trouble, but deserves it. Maybe his kids share his mindset, but sending a kid on a mission and having his serve out his full two years and “returning with honor” is no guarantee that ten years later the kid won’t be leaving the church entirely. Heaven help that man’s kids if any of them turn out to be gay. What if they fall in love with a non-member and don’t marry in the temple. Honestly, the fact that you can even consider him to be your friend says a lot about you. You are a lot better Christian than I am. I’d have written them off a long time ago.
The easy thing to do in situations like this is to not have contact them. Meet in church or the neighbor, say hi & don’t go beyond that. They do have good qualities. I try to focus on that & from time to time go more in depth. He is one of these guys at church that you
know he will be Bishop, SP or HC someday. I hope he will be more understanding & compassionate along the way.
Sometimes our focus on passing our religion on to our children can be like making sure that they carry on the family business. Or maybe an immigrant family has made large sacrifices for their children so that they become doctors or lawyers (what the family sees as the definition of American success). What if the children do not want to take over the family business? What happens if they are not interested in being a doctor or a lawyer?
Do we heap guilt, disappointment, and expressions of failure and wasted potential upon them?
With my own children I do worry about their ability to support themselves financially, to become good life partners and parents, and to become good citizens in their communities. I try to raise them with that vision in mind.
You’ve got to ask whether they are just saying that or whether they would do it. There is a horrible story about my father. My grandfather took him to the beach, put him in the water and said, don’t come back until you can swim. He learned to swim. But if he started to drown, I suspect my grandfather would have probably dove in after him. I never knew my grandfather, but I know he wasn’t completely heartless. My father remembered that someone had abandoned a baby near their house, and my grandparents ended up raising her as their own. She was much younger than my father and his blood siblings, but it was better than her getting put in an orphanage or state care. In the great scheme of things, giving a baby girl a home outweighs cruel swimming lessons.
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