I’m sure you have heard that spiel about extended warranties plenty of times lately. You hear it when you buy a gadget from the electronics store. You hear it over and over on satellite radio. When you buy a car, the finance guy tries really really hard to add an extended warranty to the sale. With so much attention given to selling a product most of us don’t really want (hey, I’m buying a new car so I don’t have to worry about car repairs for awhile!) I’ll bet I’m not the only one to conclude: (1) They are making a lot of money off of extended warranty contracts; and (2) therefore, it’s probably not a good deal for me the consumer. If they’re making a lot of money off of these things, it’s coming out of my pocket.

Here’s another example: airline credit cards. It’s on their website. It’s in the pocket in front of your seat, along with the emergency exit brochure. Somewhere in the flight, the flight attendant gives a five-minute presentation blaring over the announcement speaker above your head about how you’ll get 50,000 free points if you get the card, plus extra points when you buy more airline tickets with the card, how could you possibly live without this new credit card? The consumer warning light inside your head is probably going off, telling you: (1) Wow, they really want to sell me their credit card, don’t they? and (2) They must be making a lot of bank off those cards, right out of my pocket. Hard pass.

Even if you buy the warranty or get the card, there’s no guarantee that the “promises” you hear pan out. They can deny your warranty claim for a variety of reasons. Airlines from time to time “readjust” the value of the points they give you, so suddenly that flight to Hawaii costs 125,000 points instead of 60,000 points. You can never really trust what a company or institution says, can you?

So what is the Mo app? Let’s look at what the Church is pushing in its messaging. Doctrines or services that get way too much attention in Conference, in the curriculum, and at LDS.org.

First, tithing. Sure, the Church has to pay the bills, like any other church, but there is just way too much emphasis on tithing. And the way it’s talked about should set off that Church warning light in your head, if you still have one: (1) Pay 10% tithing and you’ll actually have *more* money each month. Yeah, right. Like 0.9x > 1.0x. And you thought algebra would never be useful after ninth grade. (2) The stories about how a full tithepayer gets a miraculous check in the mail on the last day of the month so they can pay the rent. I suspect this is a very rare occurrence. And hey, if number one is right (you have more money from paying tithing!) then number two doesn’t make sense. The true way to justify tithing rarely gets articulated over the pulpit: Yes, it is a significant sacrifice, but it is worth it to you, as an active Latter-day Saint, to help build the kingdom — even if you have less money each month and sometimes you can’t make rent or your car payment because you sent the money off to the Church.

How about temples? The Church really pushes temples. Doing a quick check, eight out of fifteen news boxes at the LDS Newsroom site are about temples. Lots of mentions and talks in each Conference. There is a link to tithing, of course (to get in, you need a recommend; to get a recommend, you have to pay tithing) and “follow the money” is usually a good way to understand why corporations do the things they do, regardless of what they say. But there is more to the story, I think. The Church builds lots of stake centers and chapels, but they are rarely mentioned. A groundbreaking for a new stake center is not celebrated the way a new temple is. And every new temple generates a dozen or more news blurbs on LDS sites and press releases to the media: an initial announcement; a site selection; a projected drawing; a groundbreaking with a photo of a bunch of guys in suits and a shovel with a little dirt on it; a projected completion date; tickets for the open house; pictures of the open house; the blessed date when the temple is finally open for temple-going Mormons to attend.

Let’s be clear: I’m not criticizing LDS temples. Crowning LDS ordinances are performed there. A lot of you were married there. The idea of holy ground or a holy place is appealing in some ways. It’s just the overkill in terms of coverage and (like tithing) the exaggerated claims made for temple attendance. In the LDS scheme, sure you get blessings for attending the temple, but you get blessings for anything in church: going to church on Sunay, doing your calling, reading your scriptures, going on a mission. It’s not like you learn anything there (you’ve seen the movie several times before). You don’t socialize with friends like at sacrament meeting; you don’t even get the sacrament.

I suspect one reason temples get so much attention is because other Christian denominations don’t have them. Kind of like how Subaru talks incessantly about “symmetrical all-wheel drive” for its vehicles, although it seems like all such systems are fairly symmetrical. And really, if you want better traction, get an *asymmetrical* true four-wheel drive that puts more power to one side or one wheel where you really need it. I think the phrase “symmetrical all-wheel drive” was a marketing guy’s brilliant way of making a system deficiency sound like a good feature. Nothing wrong with Subarus, of course. My little Impreza was amazingly reliable along with being dependably symmetrical.

So what do you think, readers? Any other advertising examples where way too much attention is given to products or services you and everyone else don’t generally want or need? Any other examples of Church messaging and emphasis that seem like overkill or oversell? Any examples of things in church that were way overemphasized in the past but now are almost never talked about?

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