Today’s guest post is from Jon G.
Like many of you, the fifth Sunday lesson in my ward was on Sabbath day stuff. That’s fine, and it troubles me not at all. In fact, I think that it would be of great benefit to make our Sabbath worship more meaningful.
However, we watched a clip of David Bednar addressing some general authority group talking about the demographic that most frequently leaves the church and he made a statement to the effect that if teenagers (the aforementioned group) leave the church it’s because of inadequate gospel teaching and living in the home. To me, this was nothing more than a serving of guilt-pie. But the kind that I’ve grown accustomed to ignoring.
But then I looked at my wife sitting next to me as she tried unsuccessfully to hold back tears of pain as she wrote a note to herself: “We said family prayer. We went to church. We did family home evening. We did weekly service projects during the summer and holiday season. We read scriptures, and my son left the church. WHAT ELSE CAN I DO? We taught him to think for himself. We taught him to ask questions and not accept easy answers to difficult questions. I taught him to use his agency. I would NEVER change that. Does he make choices that are different than the ones I might have chosen? Yes. But does that make those choices wrong? NO.”
Looking at my beloved suffer was more than I could bear, so I raised my hand.
I called Bednar’s statement “a steaming heap of guilt crap served up to parents who don’t know what to do with what is already on their plates.” I stated that I’m willing to grant Bednar good intentions, but sometimes hurtful statements are just hurtful statements. I said some other things, but in my emotional excitement, I don’t remember them.
The member of the stake presidency who was teaching the lesson tried to shut me down…maybe I was misinterpreting…maybe I misheard…maybe…
And then the craziest thing happened. As the brother from the stake was trying to close down what I was saying, someone else interrupted him and said, “Jon’s right. That’s what he [Bednar] said, and it’s garbage. God lost 1/3 of his kids, does that mean he wasn’t teaching and living the gospel well enough?”
Then the floodgates opened. Parents weeping. People that NEVER agree with me came up and touched me in a display of fellowship, with tears in their eyes, saying “if you haven’t lived it, you just don’t know.” Mothers saying that “the burden of guilt on top of everything else was too much weight to carry.” People saying that “we have to let go and let God be there.” “We need to trust in the savior and trust that God’s view is broader than man’s.” “We raise our children as best we can, then we let them go, loving them, giving them a place to return to that is safe should they need it, and letting them walk their own straight and narrow path, a path we all walk alone, with only the light of goodness and grace to lead us home.”
I cannot adequately state the feelings and power in that room. A group of saints took ownership of their faith for a moment. It was not a rejection of the teacher or Bednar so much as it was staking an individual claim to the grace of God.
Wheat & Tares 
Beautiful! And cathartic! I like it when a whole class can bring nuance to a strident claim by a GA.
Often it is when the parents are too tyrannical in their gospel living proscriptions that children feel driven from the church.
Interesting. I agree, my parents have one that left and five that stayed. If only they hadn’t canceled FHE that one time, right? Bull.
I do believe the new emphasis on the Sabbath is rooted in retention; they talk about this is how you strengthen families generationally. And I do think our sabbath observance can be improved, I like the self introspection in my own life that it’s prompted …..but I’m not sure more perfect gospel living will stem the tide of leavers.
Sigh?
Nice work! This is one of the reasons there is never LDS lesson time to question, only time to listen.
We said family prayer. We went to church. We did family home evening. We did weekly service projects during the summer and holiday season. We read scriptures, and my son left the church. These simple formulas that have been repeated generation after generation simply don’t work!
We taught him to think for himself. We taught him to ask questions and not accept easy answers to difficult questions. I taught him to use his agency. Oops! That’s where you really screwed up you’re supposed to teach obedience and only obedience, don’t you know that thinking for yourself and critical thinking is of the devil?
I’m so glad you had the courage to stand up and call something out for it’s hurtful implications. I’m even more glad that it was able to spark a real discussion. I love love love that this happened!
It is pretty obvious his real target was the administration of Spencer W. Kimball who lost a son who never returned.
He obviously was attacking Kimball’s call as a prophet and the changes in the church he initiated.
He really didn’t need the stalking horse he is using. He already has many like minded Snufferites.
They will rejoice that Bedmat is one of their own.
So very impressed. MH.
This hit me hard. It is bringing me to tears while I am eating my lunch at my desk at work. Even though I am in a faith transition, I still mourn that my mother is heartbroken that one of her many kids has about 0.0001% of a testimony of the church (not anti or angry, just does not believe any of it). It angers me that when she hears this she is going to have that knife of guilt turned in her heart yet again when she is such a loving person.
I also have resolved to do as you have done and start being vocal when I see the guilt card being WAY overplayed. I love the analogy of the 1/3 of the hosts of heaven. That is a good perspective to have.
I wish my mother had been in your lesson that day. I truly feel that the guilt and blame put on parents is so damaging to their relationships with their children. I know my mother blames herself about me and my siblings who have left. It permeates all our interactions and not in a good way. In fact it makes me dread them and try and find ways to avoid them at all cost. I know this isn’t the case with all relationships between parents and their children who have left, and I’m trying to fight the instinctive defensiveness I’ve developed in response to her constantly viewing me as her failure and trying to fix me so that we can have a real meaningful relationship. Its just so much harder than it should have to be. I wish I could just talk to my mom instead of always being afraid of how she is going to twist my life experiences into a sunday school lesson because she is convinced she failed me and now its her job to fix me.
Ah Delina, I am proud of you.
Every Sunday I go to church and I introspect, tearing my every thought and motivation apart as I think of my beloved children who no longer share my faith, if indeed they ever did. And, horrifically, I think I might even blame them for ruining my life. How crazily wrong is that?
In reality, I love my kids for who they are.They are good people. They simply do not share my faith.
Does family end because my children are not sealed in the temple to a spouse or they don’t believe in my interpretation of God? That’s how I feel, sadly, and I have to find some way to unfeel it. It doesn’t help that, whilst my husband and I are sealed and active, we are both lone converts. Establishing a house of faith has always been our major life goal.
So, somehow I have to change how I feel about the results of my life’s labour and grapple with the depression that now invades my life, the sense of absolute failure. I have to accept my children and love them exactly as they are, with no agenda and indeed with the intent of avoiding all possible hint of guilt and communicating absolute acceptance. Because if we get caught up in a spiral of their escalating defensiveness we will have no common ground.
I think this will require greater love from us than we can currently muster, and greater tolerance and patience. It will require us to let go of our ambitions for them , the things we need them to do in order for us to feel good.
It’s asking a lot, and I can’t do it yet, but I do know that this is the love that God has for His children, so I’m assuming that I can trust that I will be accurately tutored.
Will someone forward this conversation to David Bednar? What a failure of compassion! I already struggle enough to get through a Sunday.
God give me grace.
Can’t wait for the next modesty discussion!
Yes, I know so many older parents who cannot stand to attend church for this reason.
People assume that they are staying home due to health reasons.
But it is really that when they come they are moved to tears at the overwhelming feeling of failure. No success can compensate for failure in the home. Doomed, doomed, doomed.
Beautifully stated. I hope people like you speak up more often and more loudly.
There is such a strong desire to be in control. We are always searching for the magic formula to keep youth from leaving the church, to bring in new converts, to raise slagging activity rates. But there is no magic formula when free agency is involved, and any effort to impose one quickly turns into coercion or manipulation. And when things inevitably fall apart, we blame the members/missionaries/parents for not being faithful enough or trying hard enough. We could learn a thing or two from Budhism.
Elder Bednar’s talk “Faithful Parents and Wayward Children: Sustaining Hope While Overcoming Misunderstanding” is much more nuanced than this video seems to have been.
I imagine that if we question the apostle, we are just hard hearted and don’t have ears to hear.
Perhaps guilt and humility is just part of religion.
None of my kids are inactive so I guess I’m a good faithful parent. We might celebrate with Sunday dinner at Olive Garden, while I text my mom that she failed to teach me better.
I thought the same thing as this post yesterday as I looked over at our previous RS Pres. Nearly every one of her kids left the church. I know she feels guilt and anger, she once told me she kept praying for someone in leadership to understand her sons and help.
On her behalf and all the other parents – Thank you. A thousand times Thank you.
There’s more nuance in Bednar’s statement than he is being given credit for. The OP makes it sound like he made a deterministic statement–“if teenagers…leave the church it’s because of inadequate gospel teaching and living in the home.” But that’s not what he actually said. He said that “weak gospel teaching and modeling in the home” is the “first, foremost, and most powerful reason” why children who have been baptized fail to progress to receive their endowments.
That’s probably true, but not nearly as scary as it sounds. Donald Trump is first in the Republican polls, but his support has yet to exceed 30 percent. So these family failures may be responsible for significantly less than half the problem and Bednar’s assertion can still be correct. And it’s entirely reasonable of him to want to reduce that percentage, whatever it may be.
As for me, I’ve long since abandoned any notion of family determinism. When I was growing up and as I raised my children, we went to church (albeit without my father), held family prayer in the form of blessing the evening meal, and held scripture study and FHE on a haphazrd basis if at all. Yet both my sister and I are active, as are three of my four accountable children. (And my mom still fumes over the YM advisor who was ready to write me off because my dad was inactive.)
I don’t know who you are or where you live, but I want you to know that what you wrote had quite the impact. Even last night, in my nightly phone call to my 87-year-old mother, I was having to allay her misgivings and doubts as to her self-worth on this issue.
Some one needs to slip this under Mr. Bednar’s office door…even if the message he intended to convey were different, he needs to address how it is widely misconstrued.
So about that quote, “No success can compensate for failure in the home.” While the quote comes from President David O McKay – as far as the Church is concerned (it originally came from J.E. McCulloch) – President Harold B Lee later softened it with greater context that resonates with how you and others in your class responded.
http://mormonsoprano.com/2010/01/08/no-other-success/
In a recent talk before Stake Conference I attended, Elder Ronald Rasband – the presiding President of the Quorums of the Seventy – discussed that quote and then added the context that President Lee provided, which he said, is often missed.
“The most powerful weapon we have against the evils in the world today, regardless of what they are, is an unshakable testimony of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Teach your little children while they are at your knee and they will grow up to be stalwart. They may stray away, but your love and your faith will bring them back. Remember, paraphrasing what President McKay said, “No success will compensate for failure in the home.” Remember also that no home is a failure as long as that home doesn’t give up. If a sixteen-or seventeen-year-old is incorrigible, don’t give up. Keep the pipeline of faith and love filled and win him back. We are the Lord’s children, and he doesn’t give up.”
1972 February Ensign
Elder Rasband said that after President Lee first made that statement, he later attended a conference with young adults where there was a question and answer session. One youth put the Prophet on the spot and asked him, “President, what then constitutes failure in the home?”
The simple response was as he stated above, “We only fail if we quit trying.”
That’s not a call for perfection. No, it’s a call to do our best and accept that every child has their own agency.
Eponymous – It feels less like those quotes are acknowledging that children have their own agency, and more like they are saying that parents can somehow save their children from completely falling away for good, and if they don’t it means their faith wasn’t strong enough.
“but your love and your faith will bring them back”.
I am not coming back. Of course I’m not able to see into the future, and so I can only say that with 99.99999999% certainty. But me not coming back has nothing to do with my parents love or faith and regardless of some nice words trying to soften their message that seems to be ultimately what they are saying, if only they were more faithful, and tried harder, and pushed their faith on me more I wouldn’t have “fallen away”. My parents don’t deserve that guilt.
That is a good way to put a message, Eponymous. Very Rocky Balboa-ish.
Perhaps the failure is not the youth leaving, but that parents are exhausted and confused by so many do’s and don’ts in a labyrinth of well intentioned good ideas that made it difficult to truly see divine gospel principles like the ones you expressed.
Love is better than fear. Cramming gospel principles down the throats of youth and requiring everyone to stay dressed in church clothes all day will never be as productive as listening and loving the youth so they feel cared for.
Youth need boundaries and enough room to fail and figure out what feels right to them.
When an individual chooses to leave because it is more fun, we don’t need to wonder what we did wrong, but know they are smart enough to figure it our while they are in the middle of existence and have time to learn truth. Examplify truth and have faith.
Active in the church is not the barometer of a good individual.
I will choose good over active every day and twice on the sabbath.
I know plenty of leaders who’ve “lost” a child for a time, so give them some credit for understanding member’s feelings of loss and frustration and guilt. And those leaders are the first to encourage parents to continue to do the basics – family prayer, scripture study, FHE. Why? Because those things do work the vast majority of the time. Children have their agency. Not every child in every family is going to make the same choices as his or her parents. I know a stake president whose struggling adult son (inactive since his teenage years) complained about church, leaders, doctrine, you name it. All of his woes were the fault of someone else or “the church.” He blamed the church and his father for all failures in his life. The father said something to his son I’ve carried for almost 20 years, and have said it to my own children: “I may not have been a perfect parent, but I was good enough.” What Bednar said was not garbage, either.
As a side note, sayings like that also lead to parents saying things like “we know you will come back” which in my experience just makes me reject the idea even more (petty I know, buts its true). Its very frustrating to have someone else tell you they know your heart and thoughts better than you do. Especially when those assurances often come after a failed attempt to discuss one’s disaffection with the church/gospel. Its not helping parents or their children to continue this harmful rhetoric.
Delina, the consistent message I hear as I look across the many way this message has been presented is that what is most important is that parents love their children. They don’t say, love your children only if they return. Elder Rasband also called out the message that we can see clear evidence that a Prophet of God even encounters children who depart when you read the first two books of the Book of Mormon. The quote was, “Perhaps Nephi and Joseph Smith didn’t have the word dysfunctional in mind when they described Lehi’s family but was it anything but? Were they that different from many families today?”
What do we learn from Lehi? He loved and blessed all of his children and he wanted what was best for them even though he couldn’t control the choices they made. And he looked for the best in them and made great promises to them in his dying blessings. He even went so far as to reaching out to Laman’s children and blessed them as well. He clearly cared about each of them. Can anyone say his faith wasn’t strong enough? A wealthy man who took his entire family and ripped them out of their obvious comfort and dragged them through the wilderness and then across the seas into a foreign land all because God told him to do it? Of course his older sons thought he was crazy and saw their younger brother as a conspirator attempting to steal their birthright. Who wouldn’t?
So what is the lesson? The calling is to love and leave the rest in the Lord’s hands.
From the site Mormons and Gays (if there was ever an issue that splintered traditional Mormon families, this clearly is one of them):
“If we want to understand one another we have to see ourselves in one another. Open the book of each individual life and you will find a familiar story. We all need forgiveness, because we all sin. We all need comfort, because we all suffer. Along this common path each of us carries a cross. But we can’t do it alone. Latter-day Saints believe that Jesus Christ suffered and died for this very reason — to bear our burdens with us.
We also need each other. Belonging to a community of family, friends and believers allows us to help and be helped. We recognize in each other our common needs for intimacy and companionship and can discuss them without shame or rejection. Our individual blind spots can be filled in by our collective wisdom. Here we find our truest selves.”
That is the message that I hear being taught. Love no matter what. You haven’t failed until you quit loving your children. And that’s not a manipulative kind of love but instead a willingness to see ourselves in each other. Walking a second mile in another’s shoes.
Of course the whole “Job’s friends” attitude is common in a works oriented church, where judgement is sometimes heaped upon those who experience hardship. “If you keep my commandments you shall prosper in the land,” and if you are not prospering maybe its because you didn’t keep the commandments hard enough. So we need people like Jon G. to stand up for reality once in awhile.
But I think it could have been done with more respect than characterising a revered leader’s words as “a steaming heap of guilt crap.”
Lastlemming noted correctly that Elder Bednar’s quote was taken a bit out of context. He wasn’t categorically saying parents are always to blame, but that weak gospel teaching is usually to blame. If you looked at it statistically, you would probably see that Elder Bednar is correct. The majority of kids who don’t reach their endowment were raised in families where where there was probably only partial activity in the church, and where gospel teaching in the home was obviously lacking. But Jon G. and his wife are interpreting this as an attack on parents who are very active in the gospel but still lose their kids, and I’m sure Elder Bednar did not mean this.
Additionally, Elder Bednar was addressing church leadership, not church membership, so the comments were perhaps not for general church consumption, but meant to inspire leaders in their PEC meetings as they look at the youth in their congregations who come from homes that are weaker in the gospel. I don’t recall hearing this sort of guilting of parents in General Conference. Rather, I have more frequently heard expressions of consolation to parents who grieve the loss of their children.
This is a very interesting post.
I think we would do well to look past a few things here and look at the undercurrent. Let’s look past Elder Bednars exact words and phraseology and let’s look past the reference in the retort to fecal matter…
There is more than an undercurrent of belief, culture and teaching in the church that supports the notion that being obedient parents produces obedient children – that there is a causal relationship. That is simply not true. If it were, Satan would have won and free agency is no more. It is a correlational relationship – but the undercurrent is strong to make people believe it is causal.
Independent of the mistakes Elder Bednar, or the person posting this made, surely the GA’s would be interested in the fact that one emotionally charged comment literally brought the house down and allowed people to open up in ways they had never before. Anyone have Elder Bednars address..???
Nate, I’m not sure statistically correct statements outweigh the connotation that is clearly being insinuated.
Statistically, I bet you could say that people who left the church had stopped praying as frequently as when they were active, or you could say people who left the church statistically were doing less home teaching then active members (even though those statistics are low too). Or you could statistically say those who left were not being interviewed by their leaders regularly.
But no…they were focusing on parents and Sabbath day choices.
It was clearly being presented to conclude a causality that I do not think statistically can be significant.
It’s a bad use of statistics. It’s an immature approach to religion.
I wish I could find the guy that wrote “train up a child in the way he should go… and tell him what “a steaming heap of guilt crap served up to parents who don’t know what to do with what is already on their plates.” That would make me feel all better.
Heber13 – yes, the business style model at its worst.
I love that the guy who finally stood up was doing it in service to his wife. And he found that he had provided a service to his ward community. It could be he actually provided a service to the church as well. …that is if they would actually listen to members and consider their spiritual needs and realities.
Nate: “The majority of kids who don’t reach their endowment were raised in families where where there was probably only partial activity in the church, and where gospel teaching in the home was obviously lacking.” If you are accurate, Nate, then why should this be addressed in a 3rd hour 5th Sunday meeting? If I were skipping meetings, you can bet your bottom dollar the 3rd hour on a 5th Sunday would be the first meeting I’d skip!
Heber13 makes a point well worthwhile. Correlation does not equal causation. Plenty of very faithful families who check all the right boxes have had children who left the church upon adulthood. If a product only works half the time, is that the fault of the consumers? This talk smacks of a pyramid scheme in which our success depends on getting a level of participants below us. And yet each person’s spiritual journey is individualistic. We each work out our salvation with fear and trembling as Paul says. One size does not fit all.
Been there, done that (similar, though not the “heap of crap”), many times. Followed by utter silence from my brothers and sisters. So, I gave up attending anything but sacrament meeting.
The OP is a great anecdote. In this same meeting, yesterday, my wife says the bishopric was unable to tease out hardly any comments or ideas from the ward members–they are well-trained not to take any risks.
I hope the author of this post, Jon G. will take the time to back up his post with a source or sources where Elder Bednar or any other GA in modern times made a statement as represented in this post.
If it turns out this is what Elder Bednar said, then I suggest a letter be written to Elder Bednar explaining how unfair the that kind of position is.
Jared: the graphic in the post is taken from the presentation, from E. Bednar’s slides. Here is a youtube post of the entire presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJsDydvpxGQ
Not a huge Bednar fan, so I am not surprised at his statement. But I do agree there is more to it than meets the eye.
While I am very sympathetic to the OP because he was actually IN Church and raising the issue, it would be interesting to take a poll of those commenting to see who was NOT in Church when these discussions were had.
I think if you posed the question of agency to Elder Bednar, he would probably agree that it has more to do with our children’s choices than the strength of the Gospel teaching in the home.
I can cite examples of both side of the issue. We had 4 children (one deceased) who lost interest in the Church mainly because of the influence of outside friends rather than what we taught in the home. Could we have done better? Sure. But I certainly do not blame myself or my wife for THEIR choices.
My wife and I discuss often how we might have done better, but for what? We can’t change anything now, just be as good an example as we can. We have one left at home and we are determined to help him get on a mission. Because that is what he wants. Ironically, almost all his friends are LDS and that is making a huge difference. And the group of LDS kids embrace their other non-member friends and bring them into their group, not the other way around.
I can’t totally ague against what Elder Bednar said, but I also know there is more to it than just that.
“If it turns out this is what Elder Bednar said, then I suggest a letter be written to Elder Bednar explaining how unfair the that kind of position is.”
You mean one of those letters they refuse to read that just get rotated back to the bishop of the person who sent it?
#34 Jeff, great response. Friends are a huge influence, in and out of the church, good and bad. At a certain age, friends outside the home are huge.
The issue I have with the position the author takes and that most of the comments support is that because what “Bednar” says makes some feel guilty then his entire message is erroneous. The author makes a good point in saying that “it would be of great benefit to make our Sabbath worship more meaningful.” In addition, the quotes from others in the room about teaching your children and letting them make their own decisions are also true. But then throwing out all of what Elder Bednar says as “a steaming heap of guilt crap” is just wrong. I have watched the video and Elder Bednar does not offer any type of guarantee that strong gospel teaching and modeling in the home prevents children from making wrong choices. Nor does he offer any type of guarantee that weak gospel teaching and modeling in the home will produce wayward children. What he does say that there is a strong correlation between weak gospel teaching and modeling in the home and children who do not choose to be endowed. I challenge anyone to dispute this. In most cases, the correlation expressed by Elder Bednar is very accurate. Look at just about any ward in the church and you will find ample evidence supporting exactly what he says. That does not mean there are exceptions, my own family included. So, if you say you believe the statements that you have to raise your children as best you can and then let them make their own decisions then believe it. If your child falters, don’t give up on them but don’t be crippled with guilt either. They are responsible for their own lives. On the other hand, if you are raising your children now and want to provide them with the best chance of success in life then listen to what Elder Bednar says and teach them about the importance of the Sabbath and give them the strongest gospel model that you can in your home. Elder Bednar is not trying to deal out guilt. He is trying to give parents tools for success – tools that I need and appreciate in raising my own children.
#33 Hawkgrrrl, thanks for sharing the slide. It looks to me like the problem is lightening bolts are striking our kids before getting to the temple.
Friends are powerful influences…as are bullies. When church becomes a hostile environment to a youth, it is very understandable for someone to get disillusioned.
hawkgrrrl,
Thank you for the link.
I viewed Elder Bednar’s portion of the program.
I didn’t come away with the same take on Elder Bednar’s presentation that Jon G and his wife did.
Elder Bednar discussed the topic of strong multi-generational families in a general overview. There was no attempt to be specific. The analysis he referred to pointed to the breakdown in the cycle he diagrammed as taking place prior to the endowment. This break down occurred because of weak gospel teaching and modeling in the home.
That general statement is most likely true for those families who fit that description. However, there are many other factors that cause the breakdown. He only addressed one factor.
I think it was poorly done and I could see how Jon G and others took offense. If my wife were brought to tears by the presentation I would call Elder Bednar’s office and let him know my concerns.
I would ask if Elder Bednar meant to teach that 100% of the time children leave the church is due to weak gospel teaching and modeling in the home?
In recent years, I have called the office of several members of the 12 and talked with their staff about various things. Most recently I called Elder Nelson’s office about something he was reported to have said in a meeting. His secretary pulled out the talk I had a question about and read me the portion of the talk I needed to hear.
I never identified who I was.
Look, being a parent is hard. If E. Bednar had said, “Most young children who die before age 18 die as a result of parental negligence” that might be a true statement or it might not, but anyone in the audience who has already had their heart ripped out due to the death of a child is going to feel that they are being blamed.
Bear in mind that individual wards emphasized what they chose in reviewing these materials. In my experience, ward members who have had children go their own way are far more empathetic to other parents whose children have left. Those with younger children who still have a great degree of control over their children’s behavior often lack empathy, still thinking that their parental success is earned.
E. Bednar’s diagram reminds me of a false teaching that is common in many missions, that missionary success is controllable by the obedience level of the missionaries. While it’s likely true that an obedient missionary won’t be distracted from spiritual promptings, that’s not the same thing as obedience = baptisms. It’s not a justification for ditching the commandments, but we also can’t expect our own choices to do more than influence others. Children will also be influenced by peers and heroes in their lives, people we likely don’t even know very well, people whose values may contradict our own.
Elder Bednar’s talk is also the perfect way to alienate the parents of the child that has ‘fallen away.’
I grew up in a very devout home where we said family prayer and observed the Sabbath very strictly. We obeyed the commandments, and I was a true believer. I left the church in my mid-30s. I didn’t leave because my parents shirked their duty or failed in some way. I left because after decades of unanswered prayers, and feeling empty and bored at church, and completely exhausted afterwards, I realized that something was wrong. I started considering the other possibility; that maybe the church wasn’t true after all. Long story short, I studied a lot and came to the conclusion that the church wasn’t what it claimed to be. I left the church and resigned my membership, along with my husband and kids.
I might have stayed, just for the community, but there is no room for unbelievers in the LDS church. They are viewed with everything from blame to suspicion or contempt. Nobody ever says “She must have had a really good reason for leaving, I’m going to ask her why.” There is a combination of blame and avoidance. People are afraid to talk about why. So they make up reasons like ‘Their parents didn’t teach them right’.
The only hope the church has of retaining members, especially those with doubts, in the information age is to stop trying to hide the problematic parts of the faith. And they need to stop trying to silence people who find problems and want answers. The church needs to own up to their own problems (which they have started to do in the Essays on the LDS.org website https://www.lds.org/topics/essays?lang=eng ). But even in those essays, they are still trying to spin it dishonestly.
Next, if the church wants people to stay, it needs to be a place where people WANT to be. Have FUN, UPLIFTING activities and lessons, explore deeper social issues instead of the same old stuff about obedience and temple attendance, encourage free thinking. Learn to be a truly supportive, tolerant and loving community and not judge people who think differently, or belong to a different political party or wear sleeveless shirts! I’ll bet that many doubters would stay in, even if they didn’t believe it, if it was still a pleasant place to be.
Good job for speaking up in class. Your words brought comfort to a lot of people, and hopefully the word will go back up the chain of command that it’s NOT okay to blame one person (the parents) for the actions of another (the children).
Modern prophets have had kids leave the church.
Only half of Lehi’s sons stayed active. (As that awesome guy pointed out, god lost a third, come on Lehi!)
Give us a break, Bednar.
And this type of advice could lead parents to be too controlling of their children, which could be bad for everyone in the long run.
The ‘floodgate’ reaction is understandable with the alarming numbers of return missionaries becoming inactive. “Between 1/3 and 1/2 of all returned missionaries become inactive.” Surely this isn’t the result of “inadequate gospel teaching.”
Source: 20 minute mark: http://radiowest.kuer.org/post/lds-missions
I think of the example of Lehi and Sariah. The same parental modelling and familial circumstances produced both Nephi and Laman and Lemuel. Similarly, Lucifer and Jesus were brothers.
@ Indiana,
When I look around, I don’t see that “the most strict families have the least children leave the church.” Now Bednar didn’t say “strict”, but I really don’t see most members interpreting his words as, “I need to be more strict on what my family can do on Sundays” or something like that.
I don’t see how doubling-down on keeping the Sabbath day holier would make a hill of beans difference in most people that left the church. imaworkinonit a few comments above reflects that in her experience and as AC13 mentions that many RM’s go inactive and I dare say that most individuals have their most “strict” observance of their religion when on their mission.
In fact what I have seen is the most TBM families end up with some equally TBM offspring alongside those that said, “I am out of here” and ran from the church.
Those families that are a bit less stringent tend to have a higher % of the kids staying in the church.
Those that don’t put much into the church has the least retention.
So I can agree that on the latter end of the spectrum that it does follow the correlation you (and Elder Bednar) state. But those individuals have a less % chance of hearing this message as they are either not in church at all on a given Sunday, or are gone after sacrament meeting. Those in the meetings are probably at high risk for taking the meeting in the way the original blog poster has written experiencing it.
I have seen many great parents who have had children leave the church. These parents have done there best to teach their children the gospel. They should not feel guilty for something they really haven’t had much control over.
I have had some callings in primary and had the chance to work with some wonderful children whose testimonies were growing and developing. However later on the parents of these children for one reason or other quit going to church for one reason or another. Perhaps they lost interest or developed personal or marital problems. Some became very involved in their children’s sports and they decided to spend their time and energy on that. The parents quite coming and so did their children. I wouldn’t know if their parents continued to pray or have FHE, but there is a good chance that went by the wayside. It should be no surprise that these great kids do not continue with church most of the time. After all, if the children see that it isn’t important to Mom and Dad, why should it be important to the child? I think this is the group that Elder Bednar was addressing.This group however, probably won’t be around to hear his message leaving other sensitive parents to deal with unjustified guilt.
“They should not feel guilty for something they really haven’t had much control over.”
Lecturing them how they should or not feel is not particularly comforting, though. It’s like telling a single person that if faithful she will be married in the eternities or telling an infertile person that she can mother the kids in nursery.
It may even be true but comes off as lectures.
When DAB gets up to a microphone I tune him out. I feel the same way about him as I always have/did of BKP. Instead of being helpful, and thankful of what members of the church do, they both always seem to find a way to criticize members about the things they “don’t do”. They are nit-pickers. My guess is, people do not observe the Sabbath anymore, because church is a bore. Canned talks, canned lessons, canned instruction, from canned manuals that are about as motivating as a high school chemistry texts.
I believe this blog was spot on, and I imagine, in the future, their will be more reactions from congregations that the author writes about. I think people are getting worn on the pomposity of some of our “leaders”.
I’ve had the privilege of watching that video more times than I’d like, and I really feel it got misrepresented here.
Elder Bednar was addressing a group of general authorities and general officers at a general conference training, not the general membership. The presentation created from excerpts of that training was intended for ward councils, not the general membership. He probably wasn’t thinking he needed to carefully couch all his words. But even then, what he said was that the most common reason for losing kids between baptism and the endowment was weak gospel teaching and modeling in the home. He never said it was the main cause, or even the cause of the majority of cases, simply that it was the most common (and if it’d been a general conference talk, he probably would have added “that we can do anything about”). He was framing the importance and opportunity the Sabbath gives parents to indoctrinate their children.
I understand the grief and guilt parents can feel when their kids go astray. I understand that our minds interpolate limited data to create an overall picture. I can even understand how delicious it must feel to tell an apostle he’s full of crap and use this as an example of how the church abuses its members. But that’s NOT what he said, and what he did say, in context, is probably correct. It’s like saying the most common reason kindergarteners are behind in reading is because they don’t get read to at home. That’s probably true too, and it doesn’t take into account any other factors.
It’s so funny that leadership of the LDS church tries to pin people leaving on the remaining members for “failing” to be good enough Mormons. As if people leaving could have nothing to do with the fact that the church is based on a scam started by a master con-artist and is today run as a fortune 500 company by business men and lawyers.
Note the Bednar: I left because Joseph Smith was a sexual deviant who “translated” plates that never existed using a rock in a hat. The book he produced from the “translation” is filled with anachronisms, racism and plagiarized material. Also, while we are at it thrown in the fact that Joe clearly couldn’t translate anything based the one item we have that independent scholars can also translate – the Egyptian papyri. At no point did I leave because my parents failed to hold enough family home evenings.
coyote-
I hope you won’t be shocked to learn that you are dead wrong about Joseph Smith. That is my position. You are welcome to take whatever position you like, but I hope you are free thinking enough to allow others to disagree with you.
I’ve studied all the issues you touched on, and many more. I know Joseph Smith is the real thing and the church today is on course.
If you are in the camp of those who think everything has to be perfect in order for the church to be true then you don’t know the scriptures very well.
Once again, I respect your right to believe as you like.
To all those who have said that DAB comments were not made for the general population of the church, can I just make these observations.
1. They were shown in countless Wards and Branches across the world including my own.
2. Nothing he said was secret or special or in language or style only for a GA audience.
3. If he is right, shouldn’t we all wish to know that???
At 47, WHY IS SAM ALWAYS FORGOTTEN? 🙂
OP: I’m glad that you had the guts to not just “go along to get along”. Though Elder Bednar’s intentions were certainly lofty, his execution evidently stunk on ice (my ward and Stake had a presentation on the new LDS community service website, JustServe.org). Just proves that the Lord’s will is carried out on Earth by those who are, as Sarek of Vulcan once said (the late Mark Lenard in the original franchise, Ben Cross in the reboot), “So Human” (the Ferengi pronounce it “Hew-Mon”). Your point about even the Greatest Parents of all, Heavenly Father AND Mother, lost a third of their offspring, tells us that as some point, regardless of how diligent we are in living the Gospel, as ANOTHER movie quote (from “The Devil’s Advocate, 1997), “Free Agency…it IS a (w)itch!”
#52 – “Great Bambino”, aka the Sultan of Swat, the King of Crash, the Colossus of Clout…Babe Ruth! … Church is as boring or as uplifting as you want it to be. Often the hard part is dragging me tired old bones, putting on the Sunday best, and hauling myself and the loved ones off for three hours, when a quiet, restful day beckons. But NEVER, after getting there, and parking it on the pew, and, imaging the voice of the late Vic Perrin (“we will control the horizontal…we will control the vertical…”) saying, “For the next THREE hours…”, have I EVER said to myself, as I went to the car, “Gee, that was a waste of time!”
#47 (BrendenQ) wrote: “Similarly, Lucifer and Jesus were brothers.” You don’t know how that concept drives Evangelicals ape-doo-doo! They consider us utter heretics and devil worshipers for that ALONE.
If example of the parents along were a guarantor of how their children would turn out, it’d make a mockery of Free Agency.
I like the scene from the original “Back to the Future”, now THIRTY years old (and supposedly by now hovercars and Mattel hoverboards are on the market, and the Cubs will win the World Series, but somehow the Miami team will jump leagues, change its name to something Crocodiles, and win the AL pennant)…Marty McFly ends up being hit by his Grandpa Baines, and he sees his Uncle Joey Baines in the crib, about 16 months old, and tells him, “better get used to these bars, Kid!”. Hopefully when history was revised (Lorraine was a beautiful, confident woman instead of an alcoholic, George was a successful writer, and Marty had an awesome Toyota 4×4 in the garage…ok, should he have stuck with Claudia Wells or Elisabeth Shue?)
#57… “Why is Sam always forgotten ??”
Middle child syndrome. Dang Jacob and Joseph!
Martin, if a school district had poor graduation rates, and their response was “parents aren’t reading enough at home”
…I take my kids to a different school district that will seriously address their responsibility towards education, and in a fair market environment, the weakest schools will change and catch up or close their doors.
Please don’t tell me you want the church leaders to play that card.
I can understand if you feel Elder Bednar is being misunderstood. But don’t excuse it with “he didn’t mean for it to go public” or “the problem is you”. Get some quotes from Elder Bednar and explain what he said that was good. Read #43 iamworkinonit and hear what others have experienced.
H13, I think you ought to go back and reread Martin’s analogy, once you get it right it might make more sense to you.
Perhaps Martin (ironic since we are discussing Elder Bednar being misunderstood ) should clarify his kindergarten analogy.
I think he was pretty clear, he didn’t say anything about graduation rates, thus your whole “I’d find another school district that…” in other words making it an institutional problem, makes “playing that card” irrelevant. So, go back, reread and report.
Sheesh, Heber13, I’ve got to walk you through it? If your kindergartener’s class got tested and found to be behind in reading, and you attended a school meeting for parents to discuss the issue, and one of the teachers stood up and said she thought that the most common reason was because the kids didn’t read or get read to at home, are you going to jump up and tell her she’s full of crap? And all the other parents are going to join you? Yeah, you probably would. The teacher obviously ignored the fact that your kid is dyslexic and isn’t getting her needs met, she’s ignored that the rich districts have reading coaches, and she’s ignored how the single working parents collapse in piles of guilt because they’re tapped out and just can’t do any more. That teacher is obviously the problem — blaming the victim and all that.
Clearly, the teacher isn’t talking about your specific student. She’s not trying to establish or deflect blame, she’s talking in general terms about what could help her class, from her perspective, and what’s actionable by the people in the room. And she’s probably right.
There’s a certain point where we all have to be grown up about things and realize that we need to be just as responsible for what we hear, as church leaders are for what they say. We’re responsible to make some attempt to see where they’re coming from and what motivates them to say what they said, and that’s true even if we’re going to disagree with them in the end. That’s not being Christian, that’s simply being rational. I understand it’s hard to be rational when we feel so strongly about things, and I understand that they’re are plenty of people who have decided the church is a load of bunk, but this piling on about what a jerk Elder Bednar is is beyond ridiculous.
I think Bednar is a jerk. But not because of this speech.
Martin is right.
We need to be logical, here.
Bednar is saying: biggest reason kids leave is lack of gospel teaching and living in the home.
People assume that means, my kid left, so it’s because of lack of gospel teaching and living in my home.
That is illogical. That is like saying the biggest cause of death in America is old age. Bob died, therefore he must have died of old age. No way, Bob could have died from a car wreck or a million other causes. If Bednar had said, ALL kids who leave do so bc of a lack of gospel teaching and gospel living in the home, then he should be heavily criticized. But he didn’t say that.
That said, I still like that the author of this post stood up for his wife and other parents. Many parents feel this shame with or without this particular speech from Bednar.
I don’t get the angst and guilt. I am not my children. If, for example, my children converted to Mormonism, would that be because I was a good parent or a bad parent? They are completely able to make decisions for themselves. Their decisions do not reflect on me and mine dont’ reflect on them.
Ummm…unrelated to some extent but kids certainly do not make decisions completely independent of their parents.
Thanks for walking me through it, Martin and KLC. It is so profound and really drives home the point.
What are we talking about again??
Oh ya, guilt trips and blaming.
The kindergarten thing has so many holes in that example compared to the OP, but not really worth responding to. You kinda highlight why people get offended with your version of logic that makes so much sense to you.
Moving on.
Vajra makes a good point.
It made me think of another angle to this.
When youth leave their family traditions and join the church it is because the church is true, despite what parents taught.
When you in the church leave the church, it surely isn’t the church, it is the parents.
Martin: ” That teacher is obviously the problem — blaming the victim and all that. Clearly, the teacher isn’t talking about your specific student. She’s not trying to establish or deflect blame, she’s talking in general terms about what could help her class, from her perspective, and what’s actionable by the people in the room.” I cry BS to this teacher, yes! She is deflecting the blame onto the parents. There is a huge issue with this in the US right now, and it’s why we have the homework epidemic we have. Teachers constantly blame parents, and parents blame teachers. Meanwhile the US continues to lag behind other nations academically. There are plenty of causes aside from this, and if I had to point at one it would be that we don’t recruit great teachers when we pay them so poorly. There’s plenty to this analogy to be considered.
The steps in Bednar’s talk are not that complicated:
-The strength of the church is in multi-generational cycles of families. Older generations strengthen younger generations (dead trees providing nutrients).
-The most common break in the multi-generational cycle is between baptism and endowment. We’ve identified the most common cause (among many) as poor gospel teaching and modeling in the home.
-We’ve decided to emphasize Sabbath Day observance to the entire world-wide church, because we believe it will lead to less breaks in the multi-generational cycles (meaning, less children leaving the church).
Connections aren’t hard to make – it is a responsibility of older generations to strengthen younger generations. We’re having a problem of younger generations leaving, and we’ve identified the most common cause as older generations not modeling enough good behavior. We are asking the older generation to please buckle down and do better at Sabbath Day observance so that more individuals in the younger generation will stay in the church.
So little charity offered in interpreting Elder Bednar’s remarks and so much expected in return.
He was not nearly half as harsh on any specific or general individual as you are on him. This thread is a clear demonstration of how the seeds of apostasy could have been sowed in the times of the ancient church – the apostles spoke, the people lawyerly critiqued and disregarded counsel, so the Lord saw fit to disregard his servants.
If the people were united with the Lord’s servants in the ancient church I do not believe the Apostolic authority would have been withdrawn.
Let’s pray for unity with the Lord’s servants, rather than dividing into camps against them; as the result of not being united, clearly results in “us” having no part in the Lord.
Remember, the Lord will chasten his servants when and if they step out of bounds, in his own time and in his own way. I can think of no scriptural precedent for public agitating in this manner as a way to become more united with God.
Lord saw fit to disregard [continuing to call] his servants.
Maybe we are being uncharitable in our interpretation of Bedner’s words. If that is the case I’d like to see his research that proves the most common reason for people leaving is poor modeling in the home. I feel safe betting a lot of money there is none. The church loves it’s surveys, but they don’t do exit surveys. In fact it sounds like a whole lot of grasping at straws and knowingly shoveling blame and guilt on the parents who actually did all that they could. The parents who aren’t coming to church or whatever other sabbath day activities Bedner wants probably don’t care about their kids leaving anyways. (And I am guessing I have as much evidence to back up that statement l as he has to back up his).
If the problem really is gospel teaching in the home and Sabbath observance, I guess there are two ways to approach it. One would be to encourage parents to do a better job teaching the gospel and observing the Sabbath. You could do this by warning them of the dangers of their children falling away, though the fallout is that you end up heaping guilt on those parents whose children have already fallen away, implying they just didn’t try hard enough.
The other option would be to consider why parents struggle teaching the gospel and observing the Sabbath, and try to fix those problems so that parents naturally will improve their gospel teaching and Sabbath observance. I’m happy to offer up some ideas. There’s something called the 2-hour block I think the brethren might want to consider.
Does the leadership of the church ever accept some responsibility for the exit of some of the members? I think the church is at least as culpable as parents.
Just that they do not is part of the problem, there is always someone else to blame we don’t have to accept responsibility. Our teachings on women, gays and racial minorities. Our culture, and style, the age and isolation of our leaders.
We have an article in the August Ensign that says some of us have to give up our human rights for the good of the patriarchy. And that society was better in the 1960s when women were available to abuse, without question, gays were illegal, so could be abused without recourse to the law, and white supremacy was church policy. This seems like a message that will appeal to anyone under 40.
How can parents keep their children active with this to explain, as example of the Church showing a Christlike loving example?
“If that is the case I’d like to see his research that proves the most common reason for people leaving is poor modeling in the home.”
This is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Not a sociological academic journal. Pick your news outlet and virtually none of them show you the research when they cite a study.
But the reality is, all of us could do a better job modeling Christlike behavior in the home. No one, including Elder Bednar said that a perfect model would negate another’s freedom of choice.
These kind of posts always seem to turn out exactly like you expect…, Don’t they? Even if it is not intended.
If this was a leadership meeting, I think the remarks can be explained as “Stake Presidents, Bishops, whatever: Get more people to church each Sunday. Get them to come to classes. Get them to treat Sunday as an actual Sunday, not just another Saturday.” Since it *was* a leadership meeting, I think this is what was meant.
However, at the 5th Sunday ward level you aren’t in a leadership meeting talking about the hundreds of people under your care (most of which aren’t attending church). You are speaking to people IN church. At that point, the leader at the front of the room isn’t asking what we can do to get others in our stake and ward to come to church, they are asking me what I can do to improve Sabbath Day observance in my own home. They are asking me directly to take a “Lord, is it I?” approach. If I’ve had a kid leave the church, then I need to reflect, “This is the most common reason kids leave the church. In reexamining my situation, can I honestly say that I was perfect in Sabbath Day observance?” The answer will ALWAYS be no, because no-one is perfect. Which means, I must take responsibility (at least in part) for my child leaving the church. My deficiencies weakened their foundation.
If you honestly see this as an unreasonable takeaway, then you must not have attended many Relief Society meetings. The righteousness of the mother is the biggest influence on the spirituality of the children (Mary Fielding Smith, Lucy Mack Smith, Heber J. Grant’s mom, Dallin H. Oaks’ mom, etc.). If the mother’s faith is strong enough, her children cannot help but be strong in the church (stripling warriors). If you pray hard enough, God will provide the light for your child to come back (Alma the Elder). Your primary responsibility in this life is the raising of your children – how they turn out is a direct reflection of your success. If you have righteous children, then it is clearly evident that you must have been a wonderful mother and a righteous influence in the home. Your children and husband will rise up and call you blessed (Proverbs 31:28). Laman and Lemuel left the church, but remember Sariah and Lehi weren’t always super righteous – they had their own share of murmuring. You can’t let them off the hook that easily…
MK I understand that this isn’t a sociological journal, but when the defense is used that it’s okay he is placing the majority of the blame on poor modeling because he qualifies his statement with “the main reason” not the only reason, I’d like a little explanation of how he could possibly know the main reason people fall away. As I said he probably didn’t actually ask anyone that has left which makes that qualifier unverifiable. If it’s not verified than its really just them using it as an excuse to deflect their potential guilt on the active members.
Do appreciate those that point out that Elder Bednar does deserve as much charity for his efforts as those critiquing him think he lacks for others. Being from the male portion of the “Hew-Mon” race, even LDS apostles commit a gaffe every now and then, and the Lord, and His leaders, are sufficient to correct any deficiencies. Would it hurt to see where we ‘older’ (I’m a ‘dirty’ MIDDLE-AGED man, thank you!) and supposedly so wise and sophisticated members need to clean up our respective acts?
In March 1940, the then Commander-in-Chief of the French Metropolitan Armies, Gen. Maurice Gamelin, received an intelligence report from his G-2 equivalent. It reflected that the French Army morale was high (over 100K men, most “Series B” reservists, dissatisfied with the primitive conditions and meager pay, had deserted to return to their jobs or farms), the “Force de Frappe” was in high readiness (over 40% of the French tanks were out of service), and the Germans facing them lacked even enough food to feed their troops, let alone ordnance and fuel. Three months later, the Wehrmacht would be marcing down the Champs-Elysses. Complacency is dangerous and deadly.
It’s an interesting question how we get the messages we get from the leaders we’ve sustained and how productive (or not) they may be in our lives and the lives of people who are struggling. And it comes at a time when shortly we will be asked to sustain 2 (and possibly more) new leaders.
Should we know who it is we’ll be asked to sustain? Should the vote be automatic or represent a more authentic consideration?
#73 Mary Ann, that is a good summary, and I appreciate your call for charity and understanding.
But charity is not to roll over and take bad information because leaders said so. Perhaps there are charitable ways to disagree or point out another view. But your summation shows the problem.
First you sum up the point older generations should teach younger generations. No problem with that. I don’t think anyone has a problem with taking on responsibility to raise and teach.
But your second point states the part that raises a red flag to me. Assigning the root cause of youth leaving to poor gospel teaching in the home? That’s not right according to my experience. It’s a confusing statement to me. I don’t feel charity not do I feel rightly chastised. I just feel they have wrongly correlated issues. I can’t help it, that’s what I think and I can’t be asked to turn off my brain and stop thinking that…I need to be taught by the church why they are saying something that feels wrong by me. Surely…the church is there to teach us, not just tell us what we did wrong. Right? So this training is keeping us stuck on a point that doesn’t make sense.
Point 3 is to suggest emphasis on the Sabbath day…great…but you lost us all on #2 and we can’t just talk about Sabbath day while still thinking you just told us (uncharitably) the problem is my fault for not teaching gospel principles in the home.
It isn’t an argument that members need to be willing to take on responsibility. It is the point that the message drove the spirit out of the room when blame and guilt (intentionally or not) caused a reaction from parents who try so hard they cry and cry for their kids.
It isn’t that we can’t do better at teaching in our homes. We can. But the connection between youth leaving and older generations loving and teaching is either incongruent with my experience, or at the very least just a poor delivery to motivate me through blame.
These steps to the reaction in the OP and other parents who thanked the person for speaking up are not complicated.
Perhaps here is a suggestion:
Have the church do a study for 20 years and have some families emphasize the sabbath day and some families not. Get data on if there is a statistical difference to this approach on children staying faithful in the church or not.
Then…they could present this data in a charitable way by putting on disclaimers that there are no guarantees, and with agency, even prophets like Mosiah who undoubtedly kept the sabbath and taught his children had 4 kids that were extremely rebellious, but if we don’t give up, even those that rebel for a time have a chance of coming back, it is never too late. But something the church has learned by experience is that emphasizing the sabbath day will have a better chance of helping youth avoid falling away, even if it can’t be prevented in all cases no matter how powerfully and faithfully you teach in the home.
This kind of approach would be based on something they can support, can inspire that just because some kids leave parents don’t always have to take the blame, and inspires us to try something that can help increase chances even if there are no guarantees.
But they don’t have a study like that. Even if the training was for leaders and not parents and not delivered with charity…the leaders are showing the clips and reading the statements word for word, so leaders are not delivering it with charity.
I don’t think it is complicated to see that if you don’t want parents to throw their hands up and leave (like the youth are), then church leaders should take responsibility for the statements they are making and how THEY are teaching US.
#84 Heber13, I agree with you. I think it is very reasonable for someone to have come away from that meeting feeling like they were getting personally blamed for a child falling away from the church. Hence my comments in #81. The summary actually supports the fact that leaders are putting responsibility on the older generation for the younger generation’s weaknesses.
Based on the rolls taken weekly, statistics of sacrament meeting attendance, and sheer personal experience (it’s been rare for me to have seen a ward with more than 50% attendance), my gut tells me the leadership is trying to get at the people that aren’t coming to church. Trying to put sacrament meeting first, to get an emphasis on Christ so that people who do come have a higher chance of receiving a spiritual message and maybe being inspired to come back. I honestly believe that when the leadership are calling on the weaknesses of the older generation, they are referring in large part to very basic principles – attending church, praying semi-regularly, having some familiarity with scriptures. I do NOT believe they are referring to super strict Sunday dress codes, TV rules, etc.
This is why a message to the leadership can mean something different than a message from the same apostle to the members who are sitting in the pews.
As far as data is concerned, I am aware that my older sister (and many of her church peers) has been involved in various in-depth church surveys throughout her entire life. I don’t believe this whole idea of weak gospel teaching in the home is something they pulled out of nowhere. They accumulate data wherever possible to pinpoint areas of improvement.
CHI – information on who’s allowed to do research (https://www.lds.org/handbook/handbook-2-administering-the-church/selected-church-policies?lang=eng#21.1.35)
Statistics about missionary work obtained from the Research Information Division shared by Dallin H. Oaks to the MTC in 2003 (https://www.lds.org/ensign/2003/03/the-role-of-members-in-conversion?lang=eng)
Description of the research used (including outside help) in developing, implementing, and evaluating the impact of the “I’m a Mormon” campaign (http://www.boncom.com/media/im-a-mormon-case-study.pdf)
So if they share data gained on surveys, they’ll be accused of acting like big brother. If they don’t share the source of their data, they are accused of making stuff up. The leadership really doesn’t have a good position in this case.
I just wish I hadn’t seen the video. The whole increased Sabbath Day observance thing felt a little off, but I was okay just assuming it was an effort to bring people closer to Christ. I don’t like finding out statistics are driving church initiatives. It’s just discouraging.
I completely agree, Mary Ann. An inspirational lesson where the spirit can testify of truth is better than statistics. That is what I prefer at church also.
But it doesn’t sound like you were the only one that felt “it was a little off”. And in some cases, really struck a painful chord with some people.
OK, I’ll bite. What is exactly weak Gospel teaching? and modeling?
Dexter, re69: I assumed the article and the subsequent posts applied to adult children. Aren’t children considered accountable and, therefore, moral agents at age 8 in LDS doctrine? What does that mean exactly? What is agency?
Well, Jeff, on the gospel runway, it’s doing your alms so as not to be seen of men while still being stylish and striking a pose. I think weak gospel teaching is when we reduce the gospel to a formula for success that invariably fails, leaving people vulnerable to doubt.
This post could be a case study in cognitive distortion (see Heber13’s post):
-Emotional Reasoning
-Blaming
-Should statements
-Filtering
-Overgeneralization
If you’ve taught the gospel in the home, then Elder Bednar is giving you a gold star, not a scolding, regardless of the choices your individual children have made.
Furthermore, it’s irrational to take a general rule — for example, “smoking is the most common cause of lung cancer” — and take it to mean, “everyone who has lung cancer is (or was) a heavy smoker”. Elder Bednar’s point is true in the aggregate, but not for every individual case.
I won’t speculate about why the author applied these particular cognitive distortions, leading to his irrational reaction. I do suggest Heber13’s post as a much needed corrective, however.
Finally, some of the responses have asked for statistics about the parental role in children who eventually leave the faith. Luckily, those statistics exist, and have been elegantly summarized by John Gee:
http://fornspollfira.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-parental-role-in-loss-of-faith-in.html
He also links to the original study, if you’re interested.
Finally, a quote from Elder Holland:
“Parents simply cannot flirt with skepticism or cynicism, then be surprised when their children expand that flirtation into full-blown romance.”
John Gee gives a much longer quote from the same text, as well as the complete citation. I give this quote in response to a couple of red flags in the post:
“We taught him to think for himself. We taught him to ask questions and not accept easy answers to difficult questions. I taught him to use his agency.”
I suspect that these are euphemisms for “flirtation with skepticism”, but I cannot be sure.
I made some comments above (#43) where I briefly summed up my reasons for leaving, which had NOTHING to do with my parents. If anything, my parents taught me to believe the church 100%, which made it that much more of a shock when I discovered serious problems in the LDS scriptures and history.
In thinking about this for a few days since I posted, it seems strange to me that the blaming has shifted to the parents. It used to be when someone left the church, it was invariably because of their own sin, laziness, anti-mormon literature, deceived by Satan, or they were offended. People have insisted on making many of those assumptions about me, even AFTER I’ve told them why I left. I get it. The assumptions they make are more consistent with what they WANT to believe. But it has severely damaged relationships, because some people started treated me like I was ‘less than’. Having people you have loved and trusted make these kinds of assumptions about your character is very painful. And I lay the blame for that squarely on the LDS church.
I hate to see parents suffer from the same kind of judgement, or blame themselves. It’s bad enough for them to believe they’ve lost their child for all eternity. They need comfort, not guilt.
So why do people REALLY leave? Do you want to know? Does the LDS leadership actually want to know? Do they ALREADY know, and choose to ignore it because it’s uncomfortable?
The following is a link to the results of a survey of people who have left the church. They selected their OWN reasons for leaving. (I think I might have even participated, can’t remember).
Click to access Why-Mormons-Leave-Comprehensive-List-February-2014.pdf
http://whymormonsleave.com/ includes video and other info.
The reasons for leaving cited in the first link are consistent with reasons I’ve heard in over a decade of interacting with other people who left the church. However, the people in the first group (those who were never active, or believers) don’t usually participate in exmo support groups (I guess they don’t need it), so I was actually surprised by that result.
I have three daughters. All of them are now adults and flown the coup. Two of them are married in the temple and the second one is still looking. My wife and I love their husbands. My wife had five children from a first marriage and two daughters of hers are now members of the church. I’ll have to admit that my wife did most of the teaching.
I didn’t have the brains for a college education so I had to get a living doing multiple jobs and I realized after the children were gone that I really didn’t know them and then one day I had kind of a spiritual attack that I had not done what I should have in raising them. I knew that it was from God. I knew it.
Yes, I had done a lot of work and as a result I had been away from them a lot because of that. I was not afraid that I had lost my salvation, but I thought I had lost my exaltation and I spent a number of days with that feeling and then I realized that there was a scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants that strongly went against that so I stopped feeling that but I never forgot that it was from God. I hope that my interpretation of the feeling is right.
What I think He has showed me is that when we are married that it’s kind of like running a world of our own in which He shows us what can happen when we do things that could have been better and should have been better. Sometimes it’s the that things that could have been better if the parents had done better and sometimes it’s that things that the children simply went against.
I am only interested in the things that I could have done better if I would have done better. I knew that it was from God. I have learned that playing with the toys of little children when I am with them, at least my little children, is something you need to do whether you like it or not. I have done that with my grandchildren and have seen what happens. The children started wanting to be with me. At first my oldest grandson always wanted me in his room playing with him and his toys. The younger granddaughter didn’t seem to care for me. This last visit surprised me and everyone else. She was always sitting with me and holding my hand and leading me places and talking with me. The only thing now is that with my grandchildren I’m an old man and it’s harder to do those things but I force myself to do it anyway. I also feel that I’m learning something and showing God that I have learned something.
So now this is what I am trying to say. If you have heard a talk by anyone who says that parents are not teaching their children the gospel if their children are not following it and you feel guilty about it than two things are possible. First, you really are guilty and need to realize it or you should not be feeling guilty because God is not making you feel that way. You are only forcing yourself to feel that way and then to make things much worse you are putting down a general authority or anyone else because God wants him to say what he is saying so that the people who need that message will get it. Stop feeling guilty if you’re not guilty and stop complaining about it if you are guilty. Just make sure your guilt does not come from any person on the face of the earth. When you feel real guilt, it’s coming from God. You should be able to tell the difference.
I think one thing that’s not being addressed in all this is that women are disproportionately affected by rhetoric and advice about modeling things in the home. Most (not all) of the comments talking about just letting it go if the advice doesn’t fit and being “rational” (which often just means “see things like I do”) seem to be from men.
Women are told from the time they’re 12 that THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is to be a good wife and mother. Lesson after lesson in YW and RS goes over how important mothers are and how our role is to raise our kids right. So when a woman feels like she has failed in this role, even as she keeps on keeping on, it’s devastating. Especially if she’s been a SAHM her whole life. What else can she point to as having accomplished if the only thing that she devoted her life to didn’t turn out the way she wanted, and she was led to believe it would lead to her happiness if she just did everything right? It’s no longer a matter of detached intellectual analyzation, and I find it pretty unfeeling that so many on here are more quick to point out how wrong parents are for hearing something that hurts them as opposed to trying to understand and heal them.
Of course Elder Bednar didn’t MEAN to cause pain to good parents. But he did. Who was wrong or right in this whole debate is irrelevant. What is relevant is how things got communicated, and where the break-down happens. Instead of blaming people for having feelings that don’t conform to our own, maybe we should figure out WHY they have those feelings and care about the answer instead of telling them why they shouldn’t feel the way they do.
Laurel, I heartily agree. But the only solution to me is a complete overhaul of how we talk about a woman’s role in this life. As long as we keep motherhood as a woman’s defining role, then the outcome of her children will determine whether *she* is a failure or success as a daughter of God in this life. Either that or we need to change our view and see children leaving the church as a relatively normal outcome and does not constitute a failing on the part of that child or their parents (what imaworkinonit #92 was getting at).
I think it is much more likely that we’ll be able to redefine a woman’s success in life based on her efforts to be a disciple of Christ in her various capacities rather than changing our view of people leaving our church. I don’t see it happening anytime soon, though.
Laurel, that’s a great great point. In isolation, I don’t know if Elder Bednar’s comments are directly “wrong” or harsh. But in context of the culture, teachings, and how some things have been emphasized to shape purpose (like emphasis in Proclamation on the Family) and identity (think YW programs), to say the greatest problem is not enough effective teaching in the home is not sensitive enough to listeners.
It’s another example of some men being clueless to the way it could be received, even if they may not have intended that. They are directly calling out the teaching in the home, and have directly told women that is their most important role.
As a husband, I’ve unintionally offended my wife. Not because I meant to, or she is senstive, but just because she was right that my delivery was not well thought out. I have to own up to those mistakes to try to get credibility and to show compassion, even if what I said was factually or statistically correct.
That is why I’m better with my wife helping me see things different than how I naturally see things on my own.
That is why it is appropriate for people to speak up in church (especially women).
Easier said than done.
I just happened to be playing the piano and came across #281 Help me Teach With Inspiration. The words go like this:
1. Help me teach with inspiration;
Grant this blessing, Lord, I pray.
Help me lift a soul’s ambition
To a higher, nobler way.
2. Help me reach a friend in darkness;
Help me guide him thru the night.
Help me show thy path to glory
By the Spirit’s holy light.
3. Fill my mind with understanding;
Tune my voice to echo thine.
Touch my hand with gentle friendship;
Warm my heart with love divine.
4. Help me find thy lambs who wander;
Help me bring them to thy keep.
Teach me, Lord, to be a shepherd;
Father, help me feed thy sheep.
I think we would do well to follow this council regarding teaching instead of that espoused in the Ward Training.
My husband I would like the source for the talk by Elder Bednar referenced in this article. Is there a link? Can we see the video clip? It’s hard to believe that Elder Bednar would say something so incredibly hurtful. I would like to hear it for myself.
Ronda – see comment #33. There is a link to the talk. The graphic E. Bednar displayed is in the OP above.
Our kids have adopted grandmas in our ward who share reciprocal love of church activity with our children, where the grandmas’ own biological children are not active. This provides the grandma’s someone with whom to share their active church enthusiasm and provides the outlet so that the biological children who don’t care to hear the active church enthusiasm don’t have to hear it. I would hope Delina’s mother and others like her could find joy in these types of friendships and accept that not giving up means never stop loving–and not continuing to turn the screws.
Have you all heard the quote from Joseph Smith “The Prophet Joseph Smith declared—and he never taught a more comforting doctrine—that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the divine promises made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only themselves, but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father’s heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain. Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God” (Orson F. Whitney, in Conference Report, Apr. 1929, 110). https://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/09/hope-for-parents-of-wayward-children?lang=eng