I was having lunch with a long time friend who is a Stake President. He told me it’s pretty evident the church is very concerned about the millennials leaving the church. He said so many of them struggle financially because the cost of living has skyrocketed and what they can make hasn’t gone up much from when we were college students 30 plus years ago.

He said in his stake the young members are just struggling financially and many have a lot of debt. He said he’s convinced these young people are leaving because they can’t afford to pay tithing. In short. They can’t afford the church and when the wolf is constantly at the door you really don’t care about spiritual things so much. It’s like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Doing temple work for dead ancestors falls down on the priorities when you are worried about paying rent.

My friend said he hates to say it but the church is a social hobby for the better off members. People really struggling don’t have the money or time for it. It almost sounded like my friend had some disbelief. He said as Stake President I am told to tell the stake to be obedient to the church standards and the lord will help them. He then said. That’s easy to say when you are living comfortable working for the church as a seventy or an apostle. It’s much different if you are worried about being evicted.

So he said basically the church is saying hold onto the iron rod and have faith when the people saying that are living comfortable to people who don’t know if they will make rent this month. Also the people saying hold onto the iron rod have no real solutions to the problems and are worried the rising generation will all decide the church isn’t worth the bother.

He said the biggest problem in his stake is poverty.

A few years back, when I was still TBM, I was talking to a lady in my ward who had gotten pregnant with her sixth baby. Great family, husband was a photographer for a local paper and she stayed at home with the kids, but had a lot of health problems. She told me she was thinking of giving her baby up for adoption because she and her husband were struggling already, and another unexpected baby would make it so they couldn't pay tithing. I told her not do that, and maybe just not pay tithing because her kid is more important.

Thankfully she kept the child, but the fact that tithing was more important to her than her kid made me, and still makes me, sick to my stomach for those poor believers of that bulls--t.

I've heard a number of bigoted opinions about adoption here, and I usually ignore them, but this one seems over the top. Or maybe it is just jet lag and I'm cranky,

There are plenty of fine adoptive parents out there. You had zero data on which to decide that this woman would be a better or worse parent than an adoptive parent would have been. Yet you decided that "thankfully, she kept the child".

If a woman does not feel prepared to raise a child, for any reason, she should put it up for adoption or get an abortion. A child deserves someone ready and able to care for it. Stop talking about adopted children as if they were rejects who were unalterably shortchanged by being adopted. It is cruel, besides being specious nonsense. Shared DNA does not a loving parent make. Ask Don Bagley.

Sheesh.

What does a bishop tell a young couple with two children who are proven full tithe-payers, when they ask him for help paying their rent, and who will need help with their rent, for as far as they can see into the future?