{"id":46616,"date":"2024-03-09T05:00:29","date_gmt":"2024-03-09T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=46616"},"modified":"2025-05-28T20:12:04","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T02:12:04","slug":"griping-about-church-leaders-and-policies-in-front-of-my-kids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/03\/griping-about-church-leaders-and-policies-in-front-of-my-kids\/","title":{"rendered":"Griping about Church Leaders and Policies in Front of My Kids"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Griping about religion<\/em><\/p>\n

First of all, I don\u2019t have a lot to gripe about when it comes to the Church or its leaders. This isn\u2019t a holier-than-thou attitude, I\u2019m sure that if I looked hard enough I\u2019d find plenty with an organization as large and with as many moving pieces as the Church, just that with all the demands for my big family I\u2019m saving my gripe energy for the elite charter school that wantonly discriminates against homeschool applicants (ahem). Plus on a local level my bishopric probably puts in 20+ hours of uncompensated work every week, largely to help my children\u2019s religious formation, so I have no desire to look the gift horse in the mouth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, of course, sometimes things come up. I don\u2019t really work for the Church in any significant capacity and I\u2019m engaged with it of my own free will and choice; If they want me to drive out an hour to undergo a multi-hour training that would completely wipe out my precious and rare weekend time with my family, I just tell them no. If Elder so-and-so only seems capable of speaking in cliches, platitudes, and quotes from his superiors I’ll internally roll my eyes and maybe mention something to my wife but will move on; the<\/span>\u00a0little gripes are more of an intellectual exercise than anything at this point, and they don\u2019t really affect me personally if I don\u2019t let them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, kids pay attention and are sensitive to parental examples, and one of those little anecdotal correlations you pick up is that children of parents who gripe a lot about the Church during their sensitive developmental period tend to inherit the habit, and they are much more likely to eventually leave (unless, and again just my own anecdotal observation, the griping parent happens to be clearly toxic, abusive, and dysfunctional, <\/span>then<\/span><\/i> the kid is often on the road to seminary teacher, molly-Mormondom).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Consequently, as somebody whose premise is that I want my children to stay in the Church (as it currently is, no change needed), who believes that it is the way of truth and light,\u00a0I know I need to watch myself on this point, even if griping can be sort of a guilty pleasure, the Swedish Fish of cognition that you know is rotting your insides but gives you a jolt in the moment. <\/span><\/p>\n

They aren\u2019t a majority, but I\u2019m surprised at how many parents seem to think nothing of chronically griping about the Church in front of their kids, whether on the local, general, or historical level. <\/span>When considering where we should be on this or that continuum of membership, one litmus test I sort of apply if how many children of people like X are still in the Church. While on individual level that has arguable validity (e.g. Laman and Lemuel), in the aggregate I think it’s reasonable that if you see hardly any children of people who are X-type members in the Church, then, if I decide that I do in fact want to affiliate with the Church, it’s sort of a non-starter to become X.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, this is not to say that there should be no recognition of the humanity of leaders or the fact that people disagree with the particulars all the time, or that we should sycophantically sing the praises of high Church leaders in a sort of weird personality cult way (sorry, speaking of gripes\u2026) I wouldn’t be doing my children any favors by giving them unrealistic expectations about Church leaders or the tools or perspectives to deal with being let down or worse. (And yes, I\u2019m aware that the boundary between that and \u201cgriping\u201d is highly subjective.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe light of the body is the eye.\u201d If the failings are the focus they\u2019ll become bigger and bigger until that\u2019s all that there are. To be more specific; if, for example, you do a sort of implicit association test and the first thing you think about Brigham Young is \u201cracist\u201d or Joseph Smith is \u201csex,\u201d you\u2019re probably missing the point.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

D&C states that \u201ccursed are all those that shall lift up the heel against mine anointed, saith the Lord, and cry they have sinned when they have not sinned before me, saith the Lord, but have done that which was meet in mine eyes\u2026.They shall not have right to the priesthood, nor their posterity after them from generation to generation.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>Growing up this scripture was always a little confusing to me and I wasn\u2019t quite sure what to make of it. Why would their posterity not have the priesthood by dint of their parents? However, as I\u2019ve had the aforementioned experiences, where people are very seriously accusing the prophets of having sinned when they have not sinned, it becomes clear that at some point it is difficult for the intergenerational transmission of religion and belief to operate once certain lines have been crossed and the fruit has been poisoned, even if the parent does stay in the Church. Children of non-gripers may leave or may stay in the Church, but it seems rare for children of chronic gripers to stay in any active capacity.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Griping about religion First of all, I don\u2019t have a lot to gripe about when it comes to the Church or its leaders. This isn\u2019t a holier-than-thou attitude, I\u2019m sure that if I looked hard enough I\u2019d find plenty with an organization as large and with as many moving pieces as the Church, just that with all the demands for my big family I\u2019m saving my gripe energy for the elite charter school that wantonly discriminates against homeschool applicants (ahem). Plus on a local level my bishopric probably puts in 20+ hours of uncompensated work every week, largely to help my children\u2019s religious formation, so I have no desire to look the gift horse in the mouth.\u00a0 Still, of course, sometimes things come up. I don\u2019t really work for the Church in any significant capacity and I\u2019m engaged with it of my own free will and choice; If they want me to drive out an hour to undergo a multi-hour training that would completely wipe out my precious and rare weekend time with my family, I just tell them no. If Elder so-and-so only seems capable of speaking in cliches, platitudes, and quotes from his superiors I’ll internally roll my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":46619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2970],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-leadership-and-policies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/DALL\u00b7E-2024-03-02-20.51.15-A-thought-provoking-illustration-depicting-a-diverse-group-of-individuals-engaged-in-a-heated-discussion.-They-are-sitting-around-a-rustic-wooden-tabl.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46616"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50233,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46616\/revisions\/50233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}