At 3pm, the Friday before Christmas, we were rounded up for an impromptu all-hands meeting. It wasn’t exactly “all-hands”, as half of us had already left for the Christmas break, but those of us who remained figured something bad was happening. The other times all-hands meetings had been called in this manner, somebody’d been fired. This was worse. They’d just found out that my co-worker — the guy I’d sat next to for the past 4 years — had been found dead.
We were, of course, shocked. I had been a little surprised when he hadn’t shown and hadn’t called in, but I figured since he’d just completed a project, he probably considered himself on a long leash. 
Maybe he’d left on his Christmas trip a little early, or needed the day off to get ready. But no, his brother hadn’t heard from him for too long and brought the authorities to open his apartment door. They’d found him dead in bed.
Needless to say, it was an extremely sobering way to start off Christmas. Mike and I were total opposites, and everybody thought it was funny (or evidence of my fall from grace) that’d we’d been assigned to sit together. I was the straight-laced family-oriented Mormon and he was the loud-mouthed, hard-drinking bachelor sixteen years my younger. Surprisingly, we got along just fine. Mike had a certain charisma and charm, and he had a very positive and hard-working attitude when it came to “crap-work”. He’d grown up the son of a tobacco farmer and turned himself into a pretty sharp engineer, and he’d spent a good part of his early career on overseas assignments placating our Korean taskmasters at our most important customer. His charm and attitude were so good, he was literally taking the VP’s children to the amusement park as a babysitting “favor” after working a 70-hr week. He was very funny and likable. But he swore a lot, said and did inappropriate things at work, and was a material component of two ex-employees’ wrongful termination lawsuits. He’d quit attending company parties because once, all liquored up, he’d almost said enough to get himself fired. Philosophically we disagreed on just about everything. I remember us talking about abortion, and him stating his opinion that it was no different than pulling a plant. I’d said that I didn’t think most pregnant women felt that way, whether they chose an abortion or not, and he said it was only because people like me made them feel guilty about it. Sex to him was recreation. He liked to shock me with his stories and kept threatening (jokingly) to show up at LDS singles’ activities to see just how “Mormon” the women really were.
The past year he’d become erratic, coming in really late, sleeping at his desk, calling in sick on Mondays, and his personality and manner of speaking changed from day to day. He confessed to being a drug addict, but didn’t tell me what it was he was addicted to. He’d made several half-hearted attempts to quit smoking, get exercise, and generally clean up his life, but after a week or so, everything would go back to normal. Finally, it all caught up to him. It appears he probably just combined the wrong substances before bed and that was it. Life over.
My co-workers’ reactions were as expected. Most wondered what they could have done, and why they hadn’t tried to do more. Yes, they’d all seen him decline, but nobody thought he’d fallen that low. A couple felt bad for Mike but made it clear that he’d had resources to get help, and he’d made the choice not to take advantage of them. He’d made his own deathbed, so to speak, and we shouldn’t blame ourselves. One was actually angry, suggesting that if anything, we should’ve complained about how erratic and disruptive Mike had become, spreading his garbage everywhere — maybe if Mike thought he was about to lose his job, it would have been the wake-up call he’d needed.
My most distressed co-worker (the only woman in the group) called me over the Christmas break, wanting to talk through it, feeling a lot of guilt that she hadn’t done more. When work resumed, she told me she’d called her mother in India about it too, and her mother used the opportunity to accuse her generation of not having adequate structure. “You’re all willing to try things — some things you shouldn’t ever try!” I presume she meant if Mike had never tried drugs or alcohol as a kid, he wouldn’t have ended up the way he did. She proceeded to point out that her daughter wasn’t much better. “Your kids have no beliefs!” (my co-worker and her husband are upper-caste Indians, she Hindu and he Catholic, but they’ve become completely secular). “You drink alcohol in your home — in front of your kids! How are your kids going to make good choices? How will they understand that some things you simply don’t do — not ever! — if they have no faith?” The conversation as reported was as disjointed as written, but I understood the points. It resonated enough with my co-worker for her to be shaken.
I live in a pretty permissive area. Youth around here generally don’t think very much is “really bad”. Marijuana is not really bad. Alcohol is not really bad. Sex isn’t bad unless someone is coerced. Vaping isn’t bad. Smoking IS bad — for you. Cheating on a test isn’t that bad, but don’t get caught. Lying isn’t bad unless it hurts someone. Sexting isn’t bad. Racism IS bad. Homophobia IS bad. Getting pregnant IS bad. Abortion isn’t good, but it’s better than being pregnant. Drugs are kind of bad because you can get addicted. Stealing isn’t bad unless it hurts someone (ie., pirating is fine, taking from an institution is just risky, taking someone’s things IS bad, unless it’s just candy or something like that). This is just the culture at the high school. Judging from Mike’s stories, I get the impression that his high school growing up was pretty permissive too, notwithstanding being in bible belt. He was experimenting with “not that bad” from a young age.
The church youth in my area seem better, but jumping into an empty golf cart you have no right to and taking it for a joy ride was considered funny. Some of them think raiding the kitchen between 2nd and 3rd hours to steal the Single’s Ward’s food for their linger-longer is okay. Stealing candy from a youth leader’s bag and lying to her about it wasn’t considered THAT big of a deal. I’ve even heard an active youth say “we’ve done everything you can do except actual sex — but we haven’t had sex!”, the idea being that only penis-in-vagina sex is actually THAT bad.
The permissive attitudes of the adults in my area definitely contribute to teens’ shenanigans. We all tended to brush off the golf cart incident as boys being boys, because “they’re good kids, but they were just a little dumb that time”. Of course, the golf course management and the police certainly didn’t see it that way. Those boys were originally charged with felonies — probably to impress on their minds, and the minds of their parents, that yes, it was THAT bad.
The fact is that our kids, and many of their parents, have a progressive form of morality — namely that how immoral an action is is determined by who and how much someone gets hurt. If there’s no obvious victim, there’s no real crime. Having your girlfriend give you a blow-job, therefore, isn’t immoral, because she’s willing, and nobody’s getting hurt. Cheating on a test, therefore, isn’t immoral, because whatever harm it does (shifting the curve) is distributed over a big enough group that nobody is really hurt. Experimenting with drugs, therefore, might not be a good idea, but it’s not immoral, since the only person that could get hurt is you. And of course, taking the golf cart, therefore, wasn’t immoral, because they weren’t going to keep it and nobody got hurt.
But… I think a lot of hurt can be done that isn’t immediately apparent.
Funny enough, my co-worker’s conversation with her mother brought to mind a BCC post by EmJen (Emily Jensen?) from a few years back which has somehow stuck with me. EmJen was offended by Wendy Watson Nelson’s (President Nelson’s wife’s) childrens’ book, The Not Even Once Club. 
At the end of the book was a pledge the children were encouraged to make, to not break a list of basic commandments, “not even once”. EmJen felt it set children up for failure by making them feel that if they break a rule even once, they’re out of the club. It didn’t teach them the atonement, just the commandment. So EmJen presented her progressive-Mormon corrected version of the pledge.
Most people in the comment thread complained that the church so emphasizes the commandments to children that they get the idea that they earn their way to heaven, don’t understand the concept of grace, and just feel unnecessary shame. Ardis Parshall pushed back, saying
What I hear you saying is that we should teach “Thou shalt not X — but we all know you’re going to do it anyway.” If that isn’t an uncertain trumpet, I don’t know what is.
In a world where everybody says “go ahead — just once won’t hurt you” (with this post’s corollary, “… you might as well, because the atonement is a get-out-of-jail-free card”), teaching that it’s NOT okay to smoke or seek pornography or cheat or break the law of chastity even once is NOT a bad thing. It isn’t comprehensive (what child’s book is?), but neither is it wrong.
(Angela C., of course, weighed in by citing a study that pledges don’t work). It’s an interesting post and comment thread, and I can see both sides of the argument.
When I grew up in the church, I was taught in the manner EmJen was rejecting. The focus was following Jesus’ example and keeping the commandments. We were taught that we would be judged on our works, and that if we didn’t repent, we’d be damned. We were taught that our choices decided who we were. My personal integrity became integral to my self-worth.
In a very important way, this style of teaching worked for me. Never in my life have I intentionally drunk alcohol. Never have I tried drugs. Never have I had sex with anyone other than my wife. Never have I shoplifted. My self-worth was based on whether I kept the commandments.
But, I also fell pretty short of my ideals in other ways. As a teen, it became clear to me that I just wasn’t celestial material. I was going to have to settle for the terrestrial. I still wanted to be good, so I tried hard. I tried to repent. But I clearly wasn’t going to make it, and I grieved in my shame.
It wasn’t until later in life that I realized that Jesus wasn’t saving me through His example, but through His grace. That’s when I felt truly free. Turns out I’m celestial material after all.
But, I wonder how things would have gone for me if I’d understood as a youth that it was expected I’d break the commandments. With my under-developed prefrontal cortex, what would I have been willing to try? Would I have thought, “well, it’s not so bad — maybe just this once”? What if I had tried alcohol? What if I had had sex with my girlfriend? Plenty of people did. But those simple choices could have radically changed the course of my life.
Would I ever love the Savior the way I do now, if I never appreciated just how bad my sins were?
Church kids these days understand the atonement so much better than I did then. But do they use it as a “get out of jail free” card as Ardis suggests? How important to them is their integrity? Upon what do they base their morality? How many of them have the attitude “Not even once”?
What is happening to our society in general, when kids are being taught that all choices are valid, so long as they understand and accept the consequences and aren’t hurting anyone?
In all of Mike’s crazy stories, from whoring in Colombia to drinking in China, nothing that he told me about could be considered “all that bad”. Even in those few bar fights (which he didn’t start), he wasn’t really trying to hurt anybody. He was a charming, good-natured guy — he just loved the inappropriate, and was willing to try anything that wasn’t clearly “really bad”. And now he’s dead, and there is a lot of hurt.
Wheat & Tares 
“What is happening to our society in general, when kids are being taught that all choices are valid, so long as they understand and accept the consequences and aren’t hurting anyone?
What’s happening is that they are being taught free agency. Moderns understand that there ARE consequences to taboo behaviour. They may sometimes underestimate the risk. But they can see quite plainly and eloquently that a few drags on a joint are not going to do them any harm. But they can also quite plainly see that a few snorts of cocaine could be a whole other level of harm.
LDS youth are not taught free agency. They know no difference between coffee and cocaine. They are taught that moral choices are a choice between “liberty and eternal life and captivity and eternal death.” Choices between life and death are not free agency. Choices between life and death is called coersion, the coersion of a set of theologically created supernatural consequences: supernatural consequences that turn into self-inflicted guilt and shame. Guilt and shame which mercifully, Jesus’ can pay for with a few drops of blood, until we recommit to “never again.”
In the Garden of Eden, God didn’t say, “you can eat the fruit of every tree in the garden, but one thing you shall not do: Never jump off that cliff onto the jagged rocks hundreds of feet below, for if you do, you shall surely die.” It’s not that obvious.
God does not command the obvious. Instead God commands what is NOT obvious, and forbids it with a set of supernatural consequences: “Don’t eat any fruit that would give you wisdom, understanding, progress, or divine potential. Don’t drink a drop of coffee or a glass of wine, not even once.” Is it because a drop of coffee will have any natural consequence at all? No consequence but the consequence of open rebellion against the Almighty, leading to captivity and eternal death, unless you beg Jesus to bail you out. “Thou shalt not…Thou shalt surely die…not even once!” I see no free agency in that.
My sincerest condolences for your loss. Regardless of all the whys we can’t help but ask, it’s a sad and horrible thing for him and his family/friends.
The argument itself is interesting in that comes down to ‘all these bad things are happening because kids are being raised too permissively’ just as your co-worker’s mother pretty much said. I’m hesitant to buy into that entirely. I don’t know that permissiveness and integrity are on the same spectrum. I see them as very much separate. One can both believe in a permissive society but have such high integrity that the choices one makes keeps one out of trouble. Or flipped, one can both believe in a non-permissive society and be a person of no-integrity that ends up in a ton of trouble (Hitler comes to mind).
And is a non-permissiveness society really that much better than a permissive? The post highlights all the negatives of a permissive society, but none of the positives. What are those? What are the negative/positives of a non-permissive society (Josh Weed’s recent article on LGBTQ in the LDS church seems an example of negative in a non-permissive society). Is there perhaps a balancing act between the two that is a sweet spot?
Or is it that all a permissive society does is make an individuals integrity (or lack thereof) more obvious rather than have any part of its creation? IDK, just thinking aloud.
Bless this post. I might print it.
Perhaps we can trust that god is a perfect parent; set the bar high (not even once) with the quiet knowldege that perfection isn’t possible, and then demonstrate another way.
In my secular life, I fall into the “progressive form of morality — namely that how immoral an action is is determined by who and how much someone gets hurt.” category. The ideologies, students, and clients I work with at My university all require this type postmodern multicultural approach. But I disbelieve what I’m required to teach.
Martin, I’m sorry for your loss, that is tragic indeed. It’s sad to see how good people can ruin their lives through drug and alcohol abuse. It’s also easy to see as we get older that we can avoid a lot of heartache by not experimenting with things that seem tempting when we are young. In short, there are some people that can have a healthy relationship with alcohol and use it responsibility and some cannot. It’s hard to tell which one you’ll be and easy to avoid it all together if you never take that first drink.
I’m a big fan of Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward and his discussion about the two halves of life. To him, it’s crucial that one receives proper first-half of life training that includes clear boundaries, responsibility and consequences. He advocates for a home which offers unconditional love that comforts and soothes as well as conditional love that motivates. I think we do a good job of teaching kids these boundaries and giving them a good moral compass for life. The downside of this is what you mentioned earlier, not thinking one is celestial material and constantly feeling inadequate or shamed. Our model that you articulated with perfection being God’s standard to get into heaven and repentance being required when we fall short fosters an unhealthy perfectionism, but also produces people who avoid a lot of life’s pitfalls.
What I hear you saying is “why is everyone so down on the not-even-once idea, this would make the world a better place and reduce a lot of heartache.” I think that’s a valid point. But, what do you do with the unpleasant results of a perfection standard? Things like kids lying to get on missions or get married in the temple due to family pressure (and feeling awful guilt and shame for doing so), kids confessing things to their bishops and getting kicked out of BYU or kids trying alcohol, drugs or pornography once and thinking they’ve lost all hope of being celestial material. Those things are pretty common and produce problems later on in life.
So what is the answer? For me, I think we should teach the whys of the commandments and be realistic with kids about consequences. If you start drinking now, you have a higher chance of being an alcoholic, here’s how awful that can be. If you get into pornography now, you may have a totally skewed view of sex that may hurt your marriage and dating relationships. If we don’t have good reasons for commandments, I think we need to take a serious look at them and see if we think they are really worth keeping (i.e. tea and coffee prohibition in the WOW). If we can be in the business of teaching the boundaries and being able to give the kids a “here’s why” in mid-adolescence, I think we have a better chance of them owning the standards and trying to live them. When they fall short, and come for help we need to offer unconditional love, hope and motivation to get them back on track. I think there’s a tendency to be overly punative in a way that leads to some of the negative consequences I mentioned earlier. I also think we should give adults a little more leeway with standards. We have strict rules for younger missionaries and if you are a senior couple we figure you’re old enough to figure things out for yourself and don’t need media restrictions, curfews, etc. If adults in the Church can handle an occasional social drink, I think that is not the worst thing in the world. I certainly don’t think we should be making married adults feel guilty about things like R-rated movies and masturbation.
I work with the youth in my ward and, in my experience, they get into a lot less trouble than the kids did when I was young.
“For me, I think we should teach the whys of the commandments and be realistic with kids about consequences.” I’m not opposed to this, and that’s pretty much what I’ve done with my kids. However, the “whys” are hardly always clear, and often can’t be truly understood unless you’ve gotten up close and personal with the consequences. Go ahead and try to explain to a kid why the law of chastity matters, when they know their friends are breaking it and the older kids are moving in with each other — they don’t see a problem. Morality is about the hurt you can’t see, and integrity is about doing the right thing even when the consequences for doing so seem worse than the consequences for not doing so.
Also, don’t forget the part about the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex. Even obvious consequences are not always an adequate deterrent (click the link in the post).
I agree about the prefrontal cortex, but disagree a little bit on the whys of chastity. I think avoiding unwanted pregnancies, diseases and saving yourself for a future spouse are all great reasons. I think as much of our experience we can share will sink in more than we think. I’m not saying you have done this, but I think the old school idea and what some parents in Utah still do is try to shield their kids from information about sex so they don’t get any ideas. The data show that kids who have all the information about sex make more responsible decisions and are less likely to get pregnant or have sex early on. If kids think the reasons for staying chaste are compelling and they own it, they will be more likely to do it. If we can’t convince them of that, we’re in for a tough time, no matter what we do.
I enjoyed the post, Martin and the questions you raised.
I wonder if one is better able to appreciate the Savior’s grace and atonement if one has strived to obey the commandments and fallen short. Does the atonement and grace have the same significance, if “commandments” were view as mere suggestions.
I wonder if without “commandments” but with “suggestions” if there isn’t a significant probability that one will a)minimize the significance of the atonement and/or b) conclude that there is no grace nor an atonement, because God loves everyone and will overlook out inability to follow the “suggestions”.
I love, love this post.
In teaching my daughter, I talk about weighing choices based on their potential to cause harm, but also on potential to affect strength: which choice will leave you in a stronger position? How can you build the most physical, spiritual, academic, and financial strength so that you can support yourself and be of service to others? Which choices will compromise your strength, and cost you time and effort to undo them?
It’s worked pretty well so far. She’s incredibly kind to others, but never in a way that’s harmfully over-accommodating (“nice girl” syndrome). She enjoys delicious foods but stops eating when she’s satisfied. She sees inherent value in physical and intellectual strength. She’s not often quiet but it’s because she fills her space with music and questions and reflective thought. I am ok with all of this, particularly if it sticks as she grows older. She seems to be much more mentally healthy than I ever was (or am today).
The thing she’ll need to grow into is planning for future consequences (“If I leave this glass on the edge of the table, what’s probably going to happen when my baby brother comes dashing through?”), but shucks, I need to get better at that myself.
Yep, Emily Jensen.
“Some of them think raiding the kitchen between 2nd and 3rd hours to steal the Single’s Ward’s food for their linger-longer is okay.”
Guilty as charged. I do it every chance I get, and without remorse. It is completely unreasonable to expect me to resist the smell of tacos wafting through the halls of the church on a fast Sunday, when I’m at my hungriest and crankiest. Shame on those YSAs for taunting me like that.
I don’t necessarily see the environment as more permissive, but shifting culturally for better or worse. One such example: when I was a kid, it was normal for teenage boys to casually throw anti-LGBT slurs at each other, ostensibly as part of good-natured ribbing, but completely oblivious to the possible harm that it was causing. Nowadays, my kids and their peers won’t tolerate such behavior, thankfully.
Also, I must push back against the “Not Even Once” mentality. I have some OCD/scrupulous tendencies, which caused a lot of unnecessary aggravation and heartache growing up with such high-stakes black-and-white doctrine. I wish my parents or leaders could have helped me better understand nuanced thinking, not to take some things so seriously, and that some things we do in the church just don’t matter that much in the long run, if at all. If only a bishop had said to me, “no, Mt. Dew will not jeopardize your salvation” or “no, masturbating is not as bad as murdering someone” or “don’t take (x) so literally” it would have saved me years of self-loathing and feelings of unworthiness. I will do everything I can to keep the “not even once” attitude away from my kids.
The problem is the examples your bring up have obvious reasons (I.e. the “do harm” principle) , but a lot of the stuff in church is purely cultural and we completely equate it with more serious sins. Wearing a sleeveless top is not the same as shoplifting, but you might not know that under “the not even once , mentality which seems to be only about obeying authority.
We don’t steal, use women as sexual object or drink, not just because it is harmful to us, or it goes against authority, but because it hurts others. The fact that the kids in your ward can’t puzzle out that stealing from other people is, in fact, causing harm, shows that they need more instruction on being able to apply moral reasoning to variety of situations. It’s not a lack of rule following, it’s a lack of understanding that their actions impact others beyond headpats at church. That’s why the whole “not even once club” as sole motivation doesn’t work, because it is not actually teaching people integrity, just how to look to authority for moral validation.
jj, I understand what you’re saying, and I entirely agree that kids need to be taught moral reasoning. However, all people, and kids especially, usually end up exercising moral reasoning based on one’s evaluation of how much harm something will do vs. how much you want to do it. When you want something, it tends to look much less harmful. In-the-moment moral reasoning can easily become simple premeditated rationalization. Established morality and personal integrity is the barrier that prevents that, and they seem lacking. I’m not making an argument for simple rule following.
I don’t see any valid reasoning OTHER than that all choices are valid, as long as one understands and accepts the consequences. And frankly, I would even discard the caveat about hurting others, although on that point I suppose it ultimately comes down to how one defines “valid”. If a human being wants to do something, and they fully understand and accept the consequences that choice are going to bring, I don’t think anyone has the right to tell that person their choice is invalid, and I don’t think we should be expecting more than that degree of informed choice. At least not from an absolute or “moral” perspective. As a parent, or an organization, or a society, we absolutely have the right and responsibility to place value on certain activities and declare them unacceptable and invalid, within the context of agreed upon rules. But that’s not really what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about validity from a moralistic perspective. The problem with placing absolute moral value on certain actions is that it only works if the person whose actions you’re judging subscribes to your concept of morality. Therein lies the problem with the “not even once” construct. Many of the people who are being instructed in that fashion do not share an identical concept of morality with the person so instructing them, and, particularly when it comes to children, many more would come to a different conclusion if given the leeway to consider such matters on their own. (Which is, I suspect, the reason this strategy was implemented in the first place) Within a traditional religious framework, though, such leeway is not only not encouraged or provided, it is assiduously discouraged. I think human beings can and should expect nothing more from each other than that they inform themselves sufficiently as to the consequences of their actions, and be willing to own up to and accept them.
brjones, that strikes me as not even a humanistic perspective, but downright Darwinian. It’s not even just that morality is whatever you decide it is (which of course means you don’t believe in morality at all), but whatever you rationally decide is fine. You’d be pretty dependent on strong natural empathy to generate anything that approximates a decent person.
I actually think it’s the epitome of a humanistic perspective. In fact, even by religious standards it’s a humanistic perspective. Religious adherents believe the reason we should follow god’s edicts is because human instincts, values, etc., are at least insufficient, and at worst reprehensible. “The natural man is an enemy to god.” I don’t think there’s any question that “morality is whatever [we] decide it is.” I see this as an axiom. Of course most people believe it’s not them deciding, it’s god. The problem there is that there are countless moralities “from god” from which to choose, so human beings can essentially morality shop until they find a version of morality that suits their personal sensibilities, and then tell themselves it’s god defining morality, not them. I’m actually not saying the fact that morality is an invented construct is good or bad; it just is. And I actually don’t personally believe that anything anyone rationally decides is fine. I have my own set of personal values, as does everyone else. I have a sense of morality, and I hold myself and others to that. I just recognize that my sense of morality is ultimately just my opinion, and there’s nothing inherently better about it than someone with a competing sense of values or morality. Finally, even if I agree that we’re dependent on a strong natural empathy to approximate what we would consider a decent person, so what? Am I supposed to feel better about a moral construct that advocates stoning sinners to death or allows children to be taken as sex slaves or encourages slaughtering infidels or permits the chosen to lie, cheat, swindle, steal, and commit what we all would otherwise see as sexual misconduct, just because god said these things are ok? If “morality” is defined simply as what god says is right in any given context, regardless of how we personally feel about it, then I would submit that morality is a completely empty concept. That’s the kind of convoluted thinking that gets you: “murdering a man so you can steal his property is moral; and letting children of gay couples belong to god’s true church is immoral. Why? In both instances because I say so.” Hard pass. I’ll take my chances with Darwin. At least with Darwinism what you see is what you get.