- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Today was a typical F&T meeting with a gaggle of kiddies, 4 & 5 years old bearing “their testimonies”. While I know that the Church discourages parents from prompting them on the stand, IMO they most probably have been strongly coached and practiced at home on what to say. It’s something that drives me up the wall because I believe it is the bad kind of indoctrinization. Growing up in a Mormon community I attended seminary. At the beginning of the year we studied the BofM, the teacher announced that anyone who read the BofM and gained a testimony would get an “A” for the class. Well at the end of the year, everyone had a private interview with him, and I said that while I believed it, I didn’t feel any burning burning conviction. Because I once in that conversation misspoke and said I know, then immediately corrected it to I believe, he then proceeded to argue with me that I did. I felt pressured to deny my own feelings, and after many years have come to wonder how many kids’ integrity has been similarly compromised. Only recently have I become more comfortable with this concept, as I began to read it for the “principles”. JS said the truth of the book was it’s principles, not doctrines, not history or archeology, or anything else. And for me the book is now becoming more and more significant as I read it again. (In total I very likely have read it 2 dozen times trying to understand it.) So when these kids who aren’t old enough to be in kindergarten testify of the church, the BofM, Pres TSM, it just doesn’t float my boat.
One concept that seems so central to my understanding of Mormon philosophy is the primacy of truth. (We cannot be saved in ignorance, the glory of God is intelligence, learn out of the best books words of wisdom, etc.) Yet I have never met a Mormon who understood what Epistemology is. It is a branch of philosophy that explores “how do we know what we know. How do we recognize truth and falsehood.” I would really love it if the Church would get serious about exploring this in its discussion of the gift of Holy Ghost, prayer, testimony, etc.
Anyone else have thoughts about this? Please share.
I do not like this practice at all. Mostly I think the parents who coerce and rehearse their kids’ performance creep me out. But beyond that, it reminds me a lot of the Langston Hughes short story “Salvation.” It’s well worth a read if you haven’t read it: http://www.spiritwatch.org/firelangsave.htmhttp://www.spiritwatch.org/firelangsave.htm” class=”bbcode_url”> Quote:“Finally all the young people had gone to the altar and were saved, but one boy and me. . . Finally Westley said to me in a whisper: “Goddamit, I’m tired o’ sitting here. Let’s get up and be saved.” So he got up and was saved. Then I was left all alone on the mourners’ bench. . .
I kept waiting serenely for Jesus, waiting, waiting – but he didn’t come. I wanted to see him, but nothing happened to me. Nothing! I wanted something to happen to me, but nothing happened. . .
I began to be ashamed of myself, holding everyone up so long. I began to wonder what God thought about Westley, who certainly hadn’t seen Jesus either, but who was now sitting proudly on the platform, swinging his knickerbockered legs and grinning down at me, surrounded by deacons and old women on their knees praying. God had not struck Westley dead for taking his name in vain or for lying in the temple. So I decided that maybe to save further trouble, I’d better lie, too, and say that Jesus had come, and get up and be saved.
So I got up. . . .
That night, for the first time in my life but one – for I was a big boy twelve years old – I cried, in bed alone, and couldn’t stop. I buried my head under the quilts, but my aunt heard me. She woke up and told my uncle I was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into my life, and because I had seen Jesus. But I was really crying because I couldn’t bear to tell her that I had lied, that I had deceived everybody in the church, and hadn’t seen Jesus, and that now I didn’t believe there was a Jesus any more, since he didn’t come to help me.”
Now, on to a more positive ending. When I read this story, it reminded me of my mom’s experience in the Lutheran church. The 12 year olds went through the catechism together and then they were all up on the stand and supposed to receive the Holy Ghost when the minister said it. Afterward, my mom leaned over to her friend and said “I didn’t feel anything; did you?” and her friend agreed she didn’t feel anything either. She said she couldn’t believe in the Lutheran church after that. When she was in her late 20s she and my dad converted to Mormonism. She said that when she was confirmed, she felt the Holy Ghost go through her like an electric current, something she had never felt before, so it was a big part of the basis for her testimony.
I do think kids under age 8 are too young to be doing anything but pleasing their parents and authority figures. Encouraging that kind of social pressure is wrong-headed, IMO.
I don’t like it at all when kids under 8-10 get up and bear their testimonies, especially when the parents have to whisper it in their ears. Sometimes it’s cute but mostly just embarrassing and I worry if investigators are there if they will think how strange. It’s also very uncomfortable when the ward’s crazy person ( every ward has at least one) get up and talks about how their dog could sense the evil spirits in the room and started barking that notified the Home teacher to come over and cast them out. Or they go on for 20 minutes and the bishops has already politely asked them to finish up. I do enjoys some testimonies but since the whole faith crisis it is a little harder for me to set there and feel any strong impressions. I miss that. Kids acting silly I don’t miss. There is an older post about this. I will try to find it and bump it up so you can read those comments, as well. Sometimes, it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. I like it when they talk about how they should be nice to people, and not lie etc, but it’s when they talk about other stuff, I realise that they just don’t understand it. Besides, I’m a man, I like cute, but only just, and probably would only like it if it were one of my own!
Like others have said, I struggle when small children have to be told what to say or when they breathe heavily or start giggling. When a teacher uses peer pressure to get children to bear testimonies it troubles me. However, generally I don’t have a problem with children standing up in church and saying what they know the church is true, etc and often I find it refreshing. I see them as a person someone on the continuum of faith. Last Sunday a woman stood up and spoke to the congregation for 5 minutes about her uterus and how details of her health challenges strengthened her testimony. I know the bishop was deeply uncomfortable as were probably 90% of the congregation, but to this woman it was a meaningful experience. The comparison to children isn’t perfect, but testimony bearing is one of the quirks of Mormonism, and as long as there is public bearing of testimonies there will be moments of inspiration, randomness, childishness, and downright foolishness.
In formal language, forcing children to make truth claims based upon peer pressure distorts their epistemological integrity. Essentially, it is teaching them to lie about their feelings. This pattern of claiming knowledge about the church is at the heart if why the church cannot be honest about its own history, and why many adults become disaffected when the pattern of coverup is found. There are two core principles, taught in the temple, that are violated here: First, Adam and Eve and their posterity are to learn from their own experience, and are not to partake of any predefined schema (tree of knowledge) of good and evil. Indoctrination and rote repitition are the antithesis of learning through experience.
The second core principle is the supremacy of truth, as noted by a previous poster. All truth circumscribes the Gospel…As Joseph Smith said, “The Latter Day Saints have no creed, but are ready to believe all true principles existing, as they are mad manifest from time to time.” (HC v5p215).
To force the Testimony Glove rote version of truth, a child’s ability to learn truth is impaired. Truth is “what the church teaches”: the explicit definition of “doctrine” and to force this is “indoctrination.” Joseph said the problem with this forced belief in a creed is that it circumscribes what a person can believe and know–and this is a distortion. So, when someone teaches a child real truth that somehow contradicts the rote schema, then the child rejects the person and the truth, leading to persistent ignorance.
Indeed, forced compliance and forced confession of faith is the antithesis of the Lord’s plan of free will and agency.
I agree with wayfarer, but I also love the beauty and purity of a child’s heartfelt testimony. I don’t like Sacrament Meeting as the time and place for most such testimony’s, but I have known and know some very mature children whose testimonies are not rote and are just as valid as mine.
My youngest daughter is ten, and she has been telling us she wants to bear her testimony for a few months. We simply tell her that when she knows what she wants to say and really wants to say it, we will support her – but that she has to do it completely on her own and that we won’t tell her what to say or suggest anything to her. She bore her testimony last month, and it was simple, sweet, sincere and moving. There was nothing that was rote or forumlaic, largely, I believe, because that’s not how her mother and I talk when we bear our testimonies and because we’ve never “practiced” bearing testimony with our children.
Old-Timer wrote:I agree with wayfarer, but I also love the beauty and purity of a child’s heartfelt testimony.
I don’t like Sacrament Meeting as the time and place for most such testimony’s, but I have known and know some very mature children whose testimonies are not rote and are just as valid as mine.
My youngest daughter is ten, and she has been telling us she wants to bear her testimony for a few months. We simply tell her that when she knows what she wants to say and really wants to say it, we will support her – but that she has to do it completely on her own and that we won’t tell her what to say or suggest anything to her. She bore her testimony last month, and it was simple, sweet, sincere and moving. There was nothing that was rote or forumlaic, largely, I believe, because that’s not how her mother and I talk when we bear our testimonies and because we’ve never “practiced” bearing testimony with our children.
if a child voluntarily goes up to tell testimony, I’m with you, but it really needs to be one’s own choice, in ones’s own language. like you said, “heartfelt”.then, yes, it’s sweet, it’s sincere, and often very insightful.
Certainly against the kid being fed whispered lines that aren’t real. But not against kids speaking in the meeting.
My daughter did for a few months, at her own request (after baptism). I encouraged her to write it down first and always helped her avoid phrases like ‘I know’ and instead ‘I enjoy’ or similar. I’d prefer my eight YO to say she enjoys going to church or reading the BoM until she’s older.
Roadrunner wrote:but testimony bearing is one of the quirks of Mormonism
Actually no it isn’t. Happens all the time in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches.
SamBee wrote:Roadrunner wrote:but testimony bearing is one of the quirks of Mormonism
Actually no it isn’t. Happens all the time in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches.
yeah. I thought our F&T meetings were awkward until I went to a Quaker Meeting…wayfarer wrote:SamBee wrote:Roadrunner wrote:but testimony bearing is one of the quirks of Mormonism
Actually no it isn’t. Happens all the time in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches.
yeah. I thought our F&T meetings were awkward until I went to a Quaker Meeting…Good point!
Never been to a Quaker service (although stayed in Quaker club). The services strike me as a cross between our silence at sacrament and the testimony bit. I’m told that they can be inspirational, but also that certain bores and windbags take over Quaker services.
Used to go to Pentecostal services. Testimony bearing used to happen all the time.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.