• NegativeNull@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    25 days ago

    My parents are pretty much estranged from my son (their grandson) since they have decided to cook for 50+ missionaries almost every week. For the first 5 or so years of his life, they babysat him twice (the only real time they ever spent with him). Every other time we tried, they had the excuse of “having to feed the missionaries”.

    He’s 11 now and I think they sense they screwed up that relationship, but it may be lost as my son doesn’t seem to regard them in any special way.

  • lobut@lemmy.caEnglish
    5·
    25 days ago

    I’m not a Mormon. Can someone dig into this a little further?

    • TheGreatJouneyIsA@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      13·
      25 days ago

      As an active Mormon, you are typically expected to:

      • Have a “good, better, best” mindset. Sure, what you’re doing could be good, but is it the best thing to spend time on? Only things that involve the church are the best use of your time.
      • Read scriptures every day.
      • Attend several hours of mind-numbing meetings every Sunday. In the case of bishops, this is almost the entire day.
      • Attend weekly activities with other people in the church.
      • Avoid doing most “worldly” things on Sunday, effectively reducing the weekend to one day.
      • Go to the temple as often as you can, where you sit through boring ceremonies that take a minimum of a couple hours out of your day.
      • Research family history so you can do more boring temple ceremonies.
      • “Hold a calling,” which is volunteer work for the church that can range from a few hours a month to a part-time (unpaid) job.
      • “Minister” to someone, which means you’re an assigned friend that tries to keep the other person spiritually healthy.
      • Clean the church building on random Saturdays.
      • Watch 10 hours of General Conference every 6 months.
      • Spend 18-24 consecutive months as a full-time missionary. No, I don’t mean 40 hours per week. I mean all day every day. It completely consumes your life during that time.
      • Even when that’s over, you’re still expected to seek out opportunities to bring people into the church. This makes interactions with non-members a lot more exhausting and inauthentic than they should be.
      • Get married ASAP and have lots of kids.

      I’m sure there’s more I forgot to include, but I think these posters get the vibe across:

      • Naz@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        8·
        24 days ago

        So it’s a cult.

        If you’re giving more than you’re receiving and not even breaking even, and everything is “the church first”, it’s a cult.