Further Light and Knowledge

If this had happened before I graduated from high school, I would've gone right away. I think it would've destroyed me. My freshman year of college before my mission gave me a foundation of being away from home, thinking for myself, forming relationships that were real and meaningful (I *still* have friends from that freshman year) before embarking. My mission almost killed me as it was. It definitely would have killed me had I gone right after high school graduation.

There was no call to graduate from high school first, right?

Our concept of marriage is motivated by revealed truth, not by worldly sociology. The Apostle Paul taught “neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:11). President Spencer W. Kimball explained, “Without proper and successful marriage, one will never be exalted” (Marriage and Divorce, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976, p. 24).

According to custom, men are expected to take the initiative in seeking marriage. That is why President Joseph F. Smith directed his prophetic pressure at men. He said, “No man who is marriageable is fully living his religion who remains unmarried” (Gospel Doctrine, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1939, p. 275). We hear of some worthy LDS men in their thirties who are busy accumulating property and enjoying freedom from family responsibilities without any sense of urgency about marriage. Beware, brethren. You are deficient in a sacred duty.

I think that the main reason they want the boys to go on missions younger, so that they will get married younger.
The LDS Church leaders want the young men to get married young.
LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks once stated.



(1993 Ensign)

This makes me think, funnily enough, of one of those "I Am An Ex-Mormon" videos. I watched it, oh, it's been quite some time ago now. The subject of this particular video is a woman in maybe her late 50s who lives in Salt Lake. She talked about one of her wake-up moments and it was a somewhat unusual one.

She was one of those women who'd been made the nursery teacher and actually really loved it. She loved the kids, loved the lessons they had for the kids. She said the lessons were things like "God made puppies. He loves puppies. We love puppies. Let's all be kind to puppies and take good care of them."

Then one year she went to a meeting where they were introducing a new curriculum. Now the nursery curriculum would teach "deep doctrine" -- Joseph Smith's first vision, the apostasy and restoration, the nature of the godhead, sin and repentance, eternal progression, what have you. To kids from 18 months to age three. She was quite appalled by it and asked why they were making this change. They said that the GAs were concerned about how many people - including many BIC, raised in the church people - were leaving the church. They felt like if they just started indoctrinating earlier that kids would not leave the church when they were older. She was a devout believer, but said she couldn't see the move as anything but "a violation of young minds." So she started questioning and investigating things - why ARE so many lifelong members leaving the church? - and eventually . . . well, you all know the story.

I think the common thread here to the new mission age (yes, I have a point) is the kind of insane linearity to this. We'll just teach 'em younger and younger and their brains will just be FULL UP with church stuff. I mean they can't even let 18 month olds talk about puppies, for Spider Pig's sake! We have to stuff their heads full of our narrative before their brains are even developed enough for language. If teaching them starting at oh, four or five, doesn't keep them from leaving the church as adults, then we'll start teaching them at a year and a half.

It's amazing to me that they don't look at what they're doing. The unspoken assumption here is that the people are somehow deficient. If they just got with the program (young enough) they wouldn't be doing this. So no examination of the death of community at the hands of correlation and pervasive corporatism. No looking at how defunding the local level has killed the members' experience, and of course, OF COURSE, no looking at the actual dubious truth claims they're trying to put across. What we're doing isn't working and so rather than look for why we'll just do MORE of it, SOONER.

I think this is a similar impulse. We'll just send them younger, when they're less developed, and we'll get them molded right earlier on and later they "won't depart from it." It's just jaw-droppingly dumb. I think it's going to cause all kinds of problems on all kinds of levels (both for individuals and institutionally) and it isn't going to stop people leaving in droves 5, 10, 15 or more years down the line.

Musings From The Mission Field

** snerk **

all a missionary really needs to learn at the MTC is some unique door approaches, clever comebacks to all of satan's arguments, a commitment to "never take no for an answer," a little jujitsu, some basic escape and evasion tactics, and the ability to run like heck at a moment's notice. voila! hahahaha )))))))))))))

so take that sister horse face and all you other miss bossy pantses. face it, what's really bothering you is that the new 19 year old sister missionaries are going to be way hotter than any of you and when you get back home youll all be in your mid-twenties and too over the hill and fat and prideful to get dates. SO THERE! PPPP

Michael Purdy, a spokesman for the church, said that typically about 700 new applications for missionary service were initiated each week. Since the announcement, the number has jumped to about 4,000 applications each week, and slightly more than half of the applicants are women.

The New York Times reports that Young Mormon Women Jump at the Chance to Become Missionaries.



Interesting. If slightly more than half of applicants are women (as opposed to about 10-15% in the past) then this could really, REALLY change the dynamic in the mission field.

My original bet with this was that these girls are going to be slapped in the face by patriarchy with the gloves off for the first time and that it would cause a lot of questioning, etc.

On the other hand, if fully HALF of missionaries are women, they're going to have to deal with the presence of females differently (one would hope anyway) - where it's no longer a question of females being allowed into the male world on sufferance, but of them being represented in the same number that they are in the population. It will be interesting to see what happens.