The younger generation and the loss of testimony


JohnsonJones
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I took one of my grand kids out this past weekend, as grandparents do.  I suppose this one felt comfortable around me to talk to me about things they didn't talk to their own parents (one of which is one of my kids) about, and I am deeply disturbed.

Her parents have been trying to get her to apply to go to BYU, any of the BYUs.  They have met with a LOT of resistance from this child. 

My grandchild told me this weekend WHY they have been so resistant.  It was told in confidence, so with the expectation I would not tell their parents. 

It seems my grand child has lost their testimony.  They have spent a lot of time on the social media that teenagers these days spend time on and read a LOT of anti-mormon material (why is it that the anti-mormon material is so prevalent amongst the young on these platforms but the church lacks an equal type of presence?  At least that's how it seems to me).   They reiterated a LOT of the same arguments that they present (why would God not let LGBT individuals into the Celestial Kingdom if he loves them...etc). 

I tried to explain that God loves all of us.  However, the greatest rewards are for those who follow him and love him.  Those who do not love him still will be rewarded if they choose it, they just won't get all that he has to offer because they have rejected the rules that allow them to attain it.  They still will be saved in the Kingdom of heaven as long as they do not deny the Holy Ghost.

That did not appease my grandchild.  They turned very ugly for a minute there where they argued and shouted how unfair and evil such a being as our deity is.  It felt VERY dark to me. 

I love my grandchild.  It bothered me tremendously that they have listened to the detractors and feel this way about the church and even more so, about God and the gospel.  It feels as if they are turning atheistic.  I am greatly troubled and though I know they had a much harder time than I have, i can somewhat relate to how Lehi or Eli, or Alma the Elder, or other Fathers in the scriptures have felt when their children turn against the Lord. 

I have been praying, I plan on putting the grandchild's name into the temple rolls, but I am greatly bothered.  I see a lot of struggles with faith in my family these days.  It seems just a few years ago everyone was happy in the Church.  In the span of less than a decade I have had multiple difficulties in regards to my children and their children's faith appear.  I feel as if the world is in the midst of a great wave of sin and evil and even the most elect are not safe.  It seems this type of horrendous aggression can hit anyone.

I have been protected from it for so long and now, these days, it seems as if it is hitting the most elect.  This grandchild is perhaps one of the smartest and most brilliant of all my grandchildren.  I didn't show it to them, but I am devastated by how their faith has seemingly disappeared. 

I compared them to another one of my grandchildren that (at least they appear to be right now) going very strong in the gospel.  That grandchild has surrounded themselves with friends in the church, eagerly participates in church activities, and goes to the temple regularly.  They seem far happier than the grandchild I spent Saturday with. 

I wish I could send the joy of the gospel back into my grandchild's life.  I am worried.  I am worried about all my grandchildren.  We were told decades ago when I first joined the church that we were in some of the most trying times of any generation.  I think that today the world is far more perilous.  I fear for our youth. 

I pray for my grandchildren, and right now, especially this one I spent time with this weekend.  I don't feel like I am strong enough for them.  I pray, but I feel in the wave of the attacks that they get on their testimonies and morals these days, I am not even a twig in the storm.  I am simply not strong enough to save them or to help them.  I want to be, I want them to be strong in the gospel, but I keep on seeing them face these obstacles and feel powerless to help.  I can't even help myself (which is why we have the Savior), and need to pray for repentance and the Holy Ghost daily.  How can I overcome the despair I feel when I have a grandchild confide their failing testimony to me?

It bothers me and hurts.  This is a longer post because I don't know how else to express it outside of prayer (and I've done a lot of that over the past few days).  I wish I knew how to help my grandchild.  I wish I could give them an unshakeable testimony.  I told them my testimony on Saturday, but I don't think it went anywhere.  I asked them to read the Book of Mormon more and to pray more.  I don't think they will do so.  The wave of iniquity that is hitting the world so strongly has never hit so close to home.  I think this is something that is afflicting a LOT of the youth of the church, and a lot of it I feel is through the social media they now read and visit a lot on their phones. 

I wish the church could speak to our youth in the same way.  That somehow they could have an equal presence and just as strong a presence as that of the enemies of the church.  That may be just supplanting blame for my own failures though.  I am doing the best I can, but I know it's not enough, and that is where I come to the point that I don't know what else I can do.  I am simply not enough.  I am not strong enough to save them and I can't seem to guide them to have faith in the one who does (Our Lord, Jesus Christ). 

How do others cope with such failure in their lives?

Edited by JohnsonJones
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7 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

(why is it that the anti-mormon material is so prevalent amongst the young on these platforms but the church lacks an equal type of presence?  At least that's how it seems to me).

Well, first off, here.  One full of young people and happy and festive, one scholarly and book-y.  Both tackle hard issues:

Saints Unscripted 
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Homepage: https://saintsunscripted.com/

Interpreter Foundation
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Homepage: www.interpreterfoundation.org

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How do others cope with such failure in their lives?

By understanding what failure means, and what it doesn't.  And when it's appropriately applied. (Which, last time I checked, was when you finally quit and stop trying.)

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A couple of things:

I don't know why the church doesn't have a bigger presence on the internet and social media -- especially when it comes to the difficult "faith crisis" issues. One observation I see frequently being made is that things like the Gospel Topics Essays and similar are often implicated in triggering faith crises. Even a resource like Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling gets plenty of blame/credit for triggering someone's faith crisis. It sometimes seems to me that part of the reason that "the church" does not seem to have as large of a presence around these issues is that it is much more difficult to create content that faithfully and honestly discusses these issues. Our history is messy (and a foreign country), so it seems much easier to create content that simply criticizes, but much more difficult to balance the critique with faith.

As for the failures (my own included). This is part of where my growing universalism comes in. I am becoming less insistent that gaining/retaining a testimony of this church (at least in this life) is a necessary prerequisite to salvation and exaltation. I find myself more and more feeling like I can do nothing more than rely on God and Christ to help loved ones find their way home through whatever path they are following.

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6 hours ago, MrShorty said:

A couple of things:

I don't know why the church doesn't have a bigger presence on the internet and social media -- especially when it comes to the difficult "faith crisis" issues. One observation I see frequently being made is that things like the Gospel Topics Essays and similar are often implicated in triggering faith crises. Even a resource like Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling gets plenty of blame/credit for triggering someone's faith crisis. It sometimes seems to me that part of the reason that "the church" does not seem to have as large of a presence around these issues is that it is much more difficult to create content that faithfully and honestly discusses these issues. Our history is messy (and a foreign country), so it seems much easier to create content that simply criticizes, but much more difficult to balance the critique with faith.

As for the failures (my own included). This is part of where my growing universalism comes in. I am becoming less insistent that gaining/retaining a testimony of this church (at least in this life) is a necessary prerequisite to salvation and exaltation. I find myself more and more feeling like I can do nothing more than rely on God and Christ to help loved ones find their way home through whatever path they are following.

Salt Lake proper has historically been hands-off when it comes to internet debating, essentially leaving it to the discretion of the membership if they want to do so but hinting that contention should be avoided. Because of this, they haven't actually put together the kinds of resources necessary to help members handle things when they get bombarded online; it's up to more experienced members with links to apologetics websites to save the day. 

Plus, there was a point where it was depressingly easy to find local-level church leaders who were terrified of the internet because it was strange and new to them, and so they wound up frightening member after member away from going online. This helped give critics of the church a foothold, as there were precious few of us to go up against hordes of often mean-spirited critics who weren't afraid to engage in full-fledged cyber-bullying. 

...Which brings up another issue, how aggressive, hateful, and mean-spirited critics of the church often are. They'll roll in, drop walls of canned arguments on top of people, and demand snap reactions. They'll engage in verbal abuse, mind games, and even cyber-bullying to cow people who don't know what's going on, and a lot of today's younger individuals just don't know how to react to such behavior. It's not so much them being "soft" as it is nobody preparing them for what's happening or what's out there. 

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It's easy to hate.  Therefore, it is easy to produce hateful content.  It is also easy to rile up hate.  ANYONE can do it.  So, just about anyone DOES do it.

It is more difficult to love.  It is more difficult to produce charitable content.  It is more difficult to emote a loving, calming response in others.  Few can do it effectively.  Therefore, few people do.

Social media teaches Schadenfreude.  The Gospel teaches Mitfreude.

Edited by Carborendum
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3 hours ago, Carborendum said:

It's easy to hate.  Therefore, it is easy to produce hateful content.  It is also easy to rile up hate.  ANYONE can do it.  So, just about anyone DOES do it.

It is more difficult to love.  It is more difficult to produce charitable content.  It is more difficult to emote a loving, calming response in others.  Few can do it effectively.  Therefore, few people do.

Social media teaches Schadenfreude.  The Gospel teaches Mitfreude.

I got myself into a bit of a spot last week on social media on a not dissimilar topic. 

Call me an extremist, but at least as a philosophy, I see causing hate as one of two extremes: You either don't hate someone or a group enough to have them wiped off the face of the earth, or you do. And if you're not ready to champion destruction, why bother with sowing hateful things?

Few people have been able to vocalize their exact line in the sand on this matter. But usually the response is something of "Well, of course I don't want anyone dead but but but..."

It's true. Hateful, nonconstructive criticism is easy. It's fun. It can even make you feel important and righteous, like you're revealing and even solving a problem. 

Love and charity can be far more difficult. 

I was rewatching some episodes of "The Good Place" the other day, and found myself on one scene where a character and her sister were in a very humorous yet hateful exchange that resulted in an arrest. Yet as this was finishing up, the one character was able to drum up quite a lot of compassion to, in its way, help towards solving a very difficult issue. The whole thing was very funny and sweet, yet cathartic, and really pointed out to me how difficult not causing a nice hateful, even somewhat justified scene can be.

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On 10/25/2022 at 3:58 AM, JohnsonJones said:

I took one of my grand kids out this past weekend, as grandparents do.  I suppose this one felt comfortable around me to talk to me about things they didn't talk to their own parents (one of which is one of my kids) about, and I am deeply disturbed.

Her parents have been trying to get her to apply to go to BYU, any of the BYUs.  They have met with a LOT of resistance from this child. 

My grandchild told me this weekend WHY they have been so resistant.  It was told in confidence, so with the expectation I would not tell their parents. 

It seems my grand child has lost their testimony.  They have spent a lot of time on the social media that teenagers these days spend time on and read a LOT of anti-mormon material (why is it that the anti-mormon material is so prevalent amongst the young on these platforms but the church lacks an equal type of presence?  At least that's how it seems to me).   They reiterated a LOT of the same arguments that they present (why would God not let LGBT individuals into the Celestial Kingdom if he loves them...etc). 

I tried to explain that God loves all of us.  However, the greatest rewards are for those who follow him and love him.  Those who do not love him still will be rewarded if they choose it, they just won't get all that he has to offer because they have rejected the rules that allow them to attain it.  They still will be saved in the Kingdom of heaven as long as they do not deny the Holy Ghost.

That did not appease my grandchild.  They turned very ugly for a minute there where they argued and shouted how unfair and evil such a being as our deity is.  It felt VERY dark to me. 

I love my grandchild.  It bothered me tremendously that they have listened to the detractors and feel this way about the church and even more so, about God and the gospel.  It feels as if they are turning atheistic.  I am greatly troubled and though I know they had a much harder time than I have, i can somewhat relate to how Lehi or Eli, or Alma the Elder, or other Fathers in the scriptures have felt when their children turn against the Lord. 

I have been praying, I plan on putting the grandchild's name into the temple rolls, but I am greatly bothered.  I see a lot of struggles with faith in my family these days.  It seems just a few years ago everyone was happy in the Church.  In the span of less than a decade I have had multiple difficulties in regards to my children and their children's faith appear.  I feel as if the world is in the midst of a great wave of sin and evil and even the most elect are not safe.  It seems this type of horrendous aggression can hit anyone.

I have been protected from it for so long and now, these days, it seems as if it is hitting the most elect.  This grandchild is perhaps one of the smartest and most brilliant of all my grandchildren.  I didn't show it to them, but I am devastated by how their faith has seemingly disappeared. 

I compared them to another one of my grandchildren that (at least they appear to be right now) going very strong in the gospel.  That grandchild has surrounded themselves with friends in the church, eagerly participates in church activities, and goes to the temple regularly.  They seem far happier than the grandchild I spent Saturday with. 

I wish I could send the joy of the gospel back into my grandchild's life.  I am worried.  I am worried about all my grandchildren.  We were told decades ago when I first joined the church that we were in some of the most trying times of any generation.  I think that today the world is far more perilous.  I fear for our youth. 

I pray for my grandchildren, and right now, especially this one I spent time with this weekend.  I don't feel like I am strong enough for them.  I pray, but I feel in the wave of the attacks that they get on their testimonies and morals these days, I am not even a twig in the storm.  I am simply not strong enough to save them or to help them.  I want to be, I want them to be strong in the gospel, but I keep on seeing them face these obstacles and feel powerless to help.  I can't even help myself (which is why we have the Savior), and need to pray for repentance and the Holy Ghost daily.  How can I overcome the despair I feel when I have a grandchild confide their failing testimony to me?

It bothers me and hurts.  This is a longer post because I don't know how else to express it outside of prayer (and I've done a lot of that over the past few days).  I wish I knew how to help my grandchild.  I wish I could give them an unshakeable testimony.  I told them my testimony on Saturday, but I don't think it went anywhere.  I asked them to read the Book of Mormon more and to pray more.  I don't think they will do so.  The wave of iniquity that is hitting the world so strongly has never hit so close to home.  I think this is something that is afflicting a LOT of the youth of the church, and a lot of it I feel is through the social media they now read and visit a lot on their phones. 

I wish the church could speak to our youth in the same way.  That somehow they could have an equal presence and just as strong a presence as that of the enemies of the church.  That may be just supplanting blame for my own failures though.  I am doing the best I can, but I know it's not enough, and that is where I come to the point that I don't know what else I can do.  I am simply not enough.  I am not strong enough to save them and I can't seem to guide them to have faith in the one who does (Our Lord, Jesus Christ). 

How do others cope with such failure in their lives?

Your post made me immediately think of Alma the younger. I'm sure his parents had many of the same feelings you do despite all the attempts they must have made to help him. Eventually though it was the Lord that brought him around. 

I think it's important to remember that you can't save your grandchild anymore than you can save yourself. Have as much faith in God's plan for them as you do in His plan for you. That doesn't mean you won't worry and fret some because that's part of the experience. But continue to be there for them, finding some peace in the knowledge that the Lord does know what needs to happen and when.

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On 10/26/2022 at 8:47 AM, Backroads said:

"The Good Place"

Not to hijack the topic -- this is actually an on-topic observation, so pelase hear me out -- but I watched a few episodes a year or so ago, perhaps during my convalescence earlier this year. After two or three episodes, I had seen enough and decided my life was too short to spend watching such nihilistic programming. (As it happens, I had been having some problems with nihilism during that convalescence, so if I was watching "The Good Place" during that time, those issues perhaps lessened my taste for such thinking.) On a whim, I gave the show a second whirl a few weeks ago and made it through 1.5 seasons before I just couldn't take it any more. I looked up the show online, and to my astonishment there were many groups that actually took the show seriously, talking about what they considered "deep" emotional, psychological, and spiritual points in this TV show.

Just in case it needs to be said: **SPOILERS**

Absolutely no offense intended to Backroads or anyone else on this forum that enjoyed the show, but I was floored by the discussions. The show billed itself a comedy, and I naively assumed everyone who watched it accepted it at face value: A silly, meaningless parody of the idea of an afterlife. (Naivete is apparently my middle name. My parents lied to me.) So I got thinking about it. The plot turns traditional ideas of afterlife existence on their head. The initial premise is that a shallow, selfish young woman dies and finds herself in what Michael, the welcoming angel, says is "The Good Place". He compliments her on her life so well-lived, and specifies some details that indicate to her beyond doubt that she is not being rewarded for what she did, but for what someone else did. There has apparently been a mix-up. She is shown to her eternal home, decorated to (supposedly) her own tastes, including modern minimalist, somewhat Cubist-ish architecture and lots of clown paintings, which she finds nightmarish. She is also introduced to her "soul mate", a nebbish geek with a background in philosophy (he's a philosophy professor) and underdeveloped social skills. Two other important characters are introduced: A beautiful and utterly insufferable Indian socialite, and a supposed "Buddhist monk" who has taken a vow of silence even after death, but who turns out to be another fraud, a small-time and exceptionally stupid crook whose life's ambition was, and remains, to win a dance-off contest. (He was actually my second-favorite character, if any of them can be described as "favorites".) The last major character is the Help Desk Lady, my favorite character (if "favorite" means anything for this show). She is by far the most entertaining character, an (initially) emotionless non-being who serves as an all-knowing, all-powerful aid to help people get what they want, whether it's a glass of orange juice or information on that guy the questioner slept with once.

(By the way, sex plays a prominent, though not exactly pornographic, part throughout the show. Homosexuality is, of course, taken and portrayed as a normal, beautiful expression of human yadda yadda.)

After securing a promise from her "soul mate" that he would never hurt her and would always act only in her best interest, she confesses to him that she's in the wrong place. He is astonished, and lots of (attempted) humor arises from that, but in the end he decides to help her become better. How? By subjecting her to endless lectures on humanist philosophy coupled with endless reading assignments from the likes of Kant, Aristotle, Hume, and Descartes. Over the course of the series (or at least the episodes I watched), these lectures begin to make an impact and help our heroine out of her selfish mindset. But not really.

At the end of Season 1, the big, surprising reveal is made (to the shock of absolutely no Latter-day Saint, or I assume believing Christian of any stripe) that they are not actually in The Good Place, but rather in The Other Place. "Michael" is actually an unusually creative demon who, instead of going the traditional route of endless burning and skinning alive, wants to torture them by getting them to drive each other crazy. So in Season Two, the principles get "reset" as "Michael" (we are never given another name for him) keeps trying to keep them from figuring out that they're in Hell. This part of the series was the only part I found mildly entertaining, because it seemed to take itself less seriously.

Anyway, halfway through Season 2 I stopped watching, as I already mentioned. A couple of days later, I watched the final episode. It was not at all funny, nor was it insightful. It was pretty dreadful, to be honest. In classic nihilist fashion mined for laughs over the course of four seasons, the ultimate relief offered to mortal beings is -- yes, you guessed it -- non-existence. After spending however many eons you might want to spend perfecting your basketball jump shot or learning to make a chair, after you've had it with existence and are simply too bored to go on, you get to walk through a doorway and melt into non-existence.

This is the depth of this show.

I don't know why I was surprised. The world embraces nihilism and cynicism as "deep thought", probably because it knows nothing else but nihilism and cynicism. And this show is nothing if not deeply, completely nihilistic and cynical. I compared it to feasting and gorging oneself on a banquet of cotton candy, but that's really not it. It's more like gorging yourself and feasting on a banquet of bad photocopies of different kinds of bland foods. There is literally nothing there of any substance whatsoever.

Remember the thing about sex playing a prominent role? I will give you one guess -- JUST ONE, no cheating -- what aspect of an adult sexual relationship absolutely was not portrayed, nor even hinted at, in this show. Go ahead. Guess.

You got it. At no point is sex-as-a-method-of-creating-life even mentioned, much less explored. The perhaps greatest of the physical gifts God has given us, and certainly the central act of family-building, is treated very lightly as a recreational tool. Not as in "re-creating", but as in "having a good time". Even, or especially, in an irreverent comedy spoofing the human condition, you would think the writers would mine the golden nuggets of the actual, you know, purpose of sex. Nope. It appears never even to have crossed the mind of the series developer or the writers to so much as acknowledge this central fact of our very existence.

I actually thought of starting a thread on this forum to discuss some of these things, but I wasn't sure anyone here would know what I was talking about in mentioning "The Good Place". You know, because of the naivete thing. I hadn't heard of the show, so why would I suppose anyone else had?

Why has the younger generation lost its collective testimony in a way that seems removed from what has always gone on, throughout time, of people losing their way and rejecting the beliefs of their parents -- your standard, garden-variety apostasy from the teachings of the parents? I believe it is exactly because of this deep-seated, cynical nihilism that infects, or perhaps infests is a better word, the world. It is presented to us at every turn. Our politics are absolutely saturated with this, and not only on the Democrat side. You cannot turn on the television or surf the internet without being washed in a flood of this stuff. It is literally taught to our children on a daily basis, perhaps the best reason among a great many to eschew public (and even most private) schools and teach your children at home.

We are in the world. That is both inarguable and unavoidable. We could not effectively leave society behind, even if we wanted to. And our mandate to spread the word of God and serve as a light to the world would largely preclude our voluntary withdrawal. The world has in the past, and likely will in the future, drive God's people out. When the happens, then we, like our spiritual ancestors, can cross the plains and build Zion in whatever place of safety God leads us to. Until then, here we are, and here we will stay. But while we must be in the world, we must not be of the world. I kept my children home from the typical schooling scene precisely because I did not want them exposed to such toxins. There is a time to learn the harsh realities of society, but in my judgment, seven years old is not that time.

In any case, that's my belief. We are losing many of the rising generation because the world is forcibly teaching our children to be cynical, shallow, disbelieving, and nihilistic. We must act to protect our children and grandchildren and the children and grandchildren of those we love. We must act now.

Edited by Vort
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Couple of thoughts:

- A child choosing to use thier agency to choose otherwise doesn’t mean the parent failed. Remember, even a third of Heavenly Father’s children choose to leave. That is thier choice. 
 

- The best thing you can do is pray and keep the communication bridges open.  Ideally a person should be able to discuss things early, before it becomes a fully fledged soup box. 

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I still do not have a mainstream social media account.  When these came out years ago I felt they would not benefit me but be used against me.  It never crossed my mind that social media would be used to attempt to dismantle the spiritual faith of many.  Apparently the Adversary is being successful in his works.

After reading about this subject it makes me want a mainstream social media account even less.

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  • 2 weeks later...

@JohnsonJones First, I'm sorry for the situation you describe. Second, good job on being a safe avenue for her even though it's uncomfortable. Third, I applaud your granddaughter for not applying to BYU when she's not feelin it. Too many are there just to take advantage of the tuition. Fourth, you're not to blame or 'not strong enough'.

A couple thoughts:

 - sometimes people innocently stumble upon negative things on social media 

 - sometimes they search it out because they're annoyed about something and 'misery loves company' (the hope is they quit doing that sooner than later)

 - sometimes they've sinned and turn away instead of repenting (I know of a family who's oldest decided they're atheist but this was after they got pregnant)

My point is is that there might be an underlying cause and the social media was just the outlet. It's always best to get to the root of the issue and deal with that if you can.

Anyway, I just read* Sheri Dew's remarks at a devotional Nov. 2. Her audience is college kids and it may help your granddaughter.

Hope some of this is helpful and that you and your granddaughter can find your way through this.

 

*you can also listen to it here - Prophets Can See Around Corners (byuh.edu)

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