Posted by:
ThinkingOutLoud
(
)
Date: January 16, 2014 12:20PM
Mormon missions seem to be all about making converts out of anyone you can get to listen to you. Quantity over quality, and most of the time it seems its all about how to sell, persuade, evade, backpedal, omit, or forget. It's a race to the baptismal font, first and foremost, many times. I am neverMo and I have never served a mission, but I have sat through several sets of discussions with other people who have thought (and some who did) convert to being Mormon. Under extreme pressure, healthy does of guilt being thrown about and with urgency/time limits being set to do so, it seems to me.
Religious degrees and lengthy theological training and even what I call "real" missions where you are doing service in a hospital providing care to all, as part of a church group, for example, are about loving the people who come to you to teach them what you have studied, and also about loving what you studied. And many times it is all about the other person, not you, and is about medicine or education or doing good in the greater world, not to please your mission president or to make yourself look good to others, versus what can be seen in some religions with their mission groups.
Now, I don't happen to believe any version of the Gospel and believe an awful lot of hooey is taught any time religion is being bandied about, and I make no claims for the truthiness of either side's version of the truth.
But, I can say that a 2 yr mission with the main goal of selling as many baptisms as you can, to rope as many tithe payers in as you can, and some high school seminary classes taught to teenagers is in no way equivalent to the serious, dedicated, long term study of any religion, anywhere, by anybody else.