I have a few friends that have son's on missions and never miss an opportunity to share pictures and stories from their missions on social media.

Over the past year or so I have noticed that in almost every post there is a sense of arrogance -- either in the pictures posted or comments made in the post. For example -- picture of two missionaries with a poor 3rd world family with nothing but rags on -- both missionaries flashing the thumbs up, cheesy grins. Another picture shows a missionary using a book of mormon as a "gun" to "kill" the adversary (holding it in a firing pose). The comments in another post talk about how wonderful it is that the poverty of "these" people make them so humble and accepting of the lards words.

Is this a common trend or are all my member friends kids just dicks! I'm pretty sure it is both.

Thoughts?

Many of them have never lived beyond the walls of mormonism so they can't help, but look out of place in their photos. Also, consider that very few people are welcoming yankee idealism into their homes.

I wasn't a dick as missionary some 30 years ago, but I also took a bunch of cheesy photos. Ever hear of a zone necktie (for elders) and a sash for sisters? Yep, we earned the privilege (a zone goal of discussions/baptisms) to have custom neckties/sashes for the entire zone.

I would only be critical of them if they blamed people's poverty on not living up to LDS Corp's standards.

All missionaries aren't like that but a good portion are.

It's not about the missionary work. It's about the triumphant missionary selfie to send back home for all to see. Its about giving mom and dad some bragging rights so that they get their money's worth. There is a lot of pressure to appear to be the wise warrior for the Lord. It is easy to fall into. Most 18 year olds still have a little growing up to do. Mormon 18 year olds often have a lot of growing up to do. And, so do Mormon parents.

The poverty comment-- making people humble enough to accept the spiel --is a very common one. Decades ago I heard it all the time while on my mission. Oddly, the MP always wanted us to convert the rich and avoid the poor. This was worded carefully, but we got the drift.

I saw a lot of that Mormon arrogance. There is a competitive element to the mission and pressure that fosters that. I also knew a few who were sincere and loved the people of the country like I did.

Arrogance is inherent in mormonism.....from the top down. The missionaries are only modeling the behavior they see in leaders they admire.

Roy G Biv Wrote:
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> Arrogance is inherent in mormonism.....from the
> top down. The missionaries are only modeling the
> behavior they see in leaders they admire.
================================

Bingo.

- and that survives only in a field of self-deception, zero self-reflection, learned willful blindness, and hypocrisy.

As you observed -- modeling behaviour

Not so much arrogance as ignorance.

Or, is it arrogant ignorance? Ignorant arrogance?

Tough to choose which one is the better fit...

'Dumb ass' might work!

Been watching "The 70's Show"?

I'm still living the 70s Show!

I'm still living "Office Space".

I think that their ignorance keeps them from seeing their arrogance.

As religion wanes in the developed world arrogance as a defense mechanism will only get stronger.

Elder Berry Wrote:
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> As religion wanes in the developed world arrogance
> as a defense mechanism will only get stronger.

I know that was meant as an edgy statement, but it's not really true. Religious arrogance was probably more of a defense mechanism back in the time of the Spanish Inquisition or the Witch Trials.

Nothing new for me. Met a mishie from California when I was a kid. Asshole!

Some years back, TBM (though inactive) DH was visited by a pair of mishies while I was out shopping or something. I am so sorry I missed this episode, though I might have been jailed for physical assault if I had been there.

DH stopped attending church when I resigned, at least 15 years ago. He still believes, but he has refused to make an issue of it. Our relationship is more important to both of us.

Anyway, one of the mishies got in DH's face during this visit, going so far as to enumerate his sins: failing to attend meetings, failure to pay tithing, failure to force erring wife to repent, failure to "honor his priesthood," and I'm probably forgetting other stuff. After the visit was over, DH called the Stake president, complained about the arrogance of this mishie (DH served a mission himself, so he knows the rules) as well as the rudeness, and told the SP that until further notice, NO mishies were welcome at our house.

SP tripped all over his own tongue, trying to apologize, saying that the kid only had a few more weeks to serve, and was getting very trunky, etc. DH told him that the rule still remains: NO MORE MISHIES.

Can you believe the arrogance of that kid? Telling a man old enough to be his father about all of his shortcomings!

The arrogant little twit is probably a Stake Pres himself, by now, with that kind of attitude. That's the pity of it.

has himself left the church by now.

Some of the missionaries I knew who were the most self-righteous, rule-obsessed, chastisers and condemners on their missions are now fellow apostates. They went far enough in the wrong direction to find out for certain that it was the wrong direction. Then they snapped back hard in the opposite direction. Some are as zealously anti-church as they once were zealously pro-church. They still need to work a bit on their balance issues, IMO. ;o)

I can't even follow anything about that operation anymore. I know it will just piss me off. Goos fraba. The healthiest thing i have done is not pay any attention to it or acknowledge it as anything anymore. I never realized the bullet i dodged by avoiding the mission but i now see the giant bullet of slavery i dodged a little more clearly now. Just seeing the behaviors of missionaries in public is annoying enough. Definitely don't want to follow that on any social media.

in Colorado. It caused quite a PR disaster for the church at the time.

https://www.denverpost.com/2008/03/10/mormon-missionaries-investigated-in-vandalism-at-catholic-shrine/

The desecration included the decapitation of a statue of a Mexican martyr.

Given the fact that the LSD Church is sending kids out as missionaries and many of those kids were brats giving each other wedgies and sticking gum in other kids' hair just before going out as "ambassadors" of the lard, I guess it's a kind of minor miracle that this kind of thing doesn't happen every freakin' day. Of course, I'm sure the Church is busy doing clean up work to prevent many such incidents from going public. We probably only know the tip of the iceberg.

I remember some years ago that young missionaries desecrated a statue of Buddha in ?Thailand. I think one may have been imprisoned, but they certainly went home early.

--> "In 1972, a group of missionaries traveled to Sukhothai, the ancient capital of Thailand. One of the missionaries climbed on an ancient Buddha relic, sitting on its shoulders and had his photo taken by another missionary. A photo shop employee noticed the photo and sent it to the Siam Rath on July 9, 1972. Other newspapers included the image, causing it to spread. The Thai people felt that the elders disrespected Buddhism and Thailand. Thai Christians separated themselves from the Latter-day Saint Church, some writing articles against the LDS Church. The missionaries were arrested on July 12, 1972 and were found guilty of desecrating a Buddhist image and insulting the Buddhist religion. They were sentenced to a maximum six months in jail, for which they served the full-time. After their release, they were deported from Thailand. This event was widely publicized."

I have a friend who served in Thailand. He said the only thing unusual about the missionaries in the above story was that they got caught. He said it was commonplace for them to stick a Book of Mormon in the hands of Buddhist statues and take photos.

Elders. Remember they're "Elders". Most of them are fresh out of high school and just started to shave. But for some reason, the church likes to call them "Elders". It's a joke. I guess the one thing that they have going for them is that they're too young to realize how embarrassing it should be to be doing what they're doing.

This is remarkable. I was working in Taiwan many years ago and befriended an older man who had served in the Peace Corps in Thailand during the Vietnam War. He told me this story with a single difference: he said that the missionaries were leaning backward displaying the soles of their shoes, which is another gesture of disrespect. I don't know if that embellishment is true, but with that single difference the story is identical.

I am still friends with that man. Thank you two for confirming his account.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2019 03:09AM by Lot's Wife.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> I was working in Taiwan ... an older man who had
> served in the Peace Corps in Thailand during the
> Vietnam War.

I hope you didn't just confuse Taiwan and Thailand there!

Nope. I was in Taiwan and speaking to a man there, an American expat, who had been in Thailand long before we met.

here (discussing it in the context of the perceived winding down of the U.S. presence in Thailand during the Vietnam War, among other things):

https://www.academia.edu/28796318/THE_SUKHOTHAI_INCIDENT_BUDDHIST_HERITAGE_MORMON_MISSIONARIES_AND_RELIGIOUS_DESECRATION_IN_THAILAND

My first thought is that the Book of Mormon musical couldn‘t have done a better job. Your description just gave me a musical flashback.

A lady had experienced a miracle when she heated up some tortillas and the face of Jesus was burned into the tortilla. She created a shrine to it. She would permit believers to see it for a 50 cents fee.

So a bunch of missionaries (including the arrogant prick of a zone leader that followed me around the big mission area) was in the group. They were so rude and arrogant that the lady had to ask them to leave her home. They were making comments that it didn't look like Jesus and it more closely resembled Brigham Young. A bunch of them told her that she should feed it to the poor. I think the zone leader told her to repent and find the true Jesus. So the lady made a decision to never allow another white shirt missionary into her home.

probably didn't even know that Joseph Smith's mom, Lucy, charged 25 cents for people to come see the mummies that Joe bought from Chandler. You know, the mummies who were the keepers of the sacred records made in Abraham's own hand. Har dee har har.

---> "Lucy began to take the lead on displaying the mummies, in a way to support her in her old age, charging 25 cents for admission."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith_Papyri#cite_note-94

From birth you are told you are God's chosen and of that chosen group you are the chosen generation. Only you have the truth. You were told as priesthood holders you had more power than the President. You were told you had God's power to heal. You knew what no one on the planet knew. So you looked at everyone as inferior, as being deceived by Satan, as not possessing your great wisdom. Your head got a little big?

This is the grooming the Mormon youth are given. Is it any surprise that many of these naive boys ape the smugness of Oaks or BKP or Bednar? Is it any surprise that an immature 18 year old who has been raised this way acts in an arrogant manner? It is not hard to feed an 18 year old ego.

Arrogance and Ignorance. What a combo.

I remember Arrogant members when I was out in the field. One asshat use to go with us to visit less actives in the South. Well 20 years ago the South was still pretty segregated as it probably still is today. We use to visit the less actives on the other side of the tracks and this member who was 26, big and blonde, corporate, with a wife and kid, living in the most expensive neighborhood in town, would rant on to these older people that they were ignorant, and ungrateful, and should be at church, otherwise they'd go to hell. These nice older senior citizens just took it and didn't throw us out into the street (like they should of). He use to tell me about the prosperity idea that all you got to do is Blab it and Grab it! Gawd almighty would reward you just because your special and had a big mouth.

I remember some of my fellow missionaries doing some pretty arrogant things. Most of them were not arrogant they just didn't know better; there were maybe something like 20% who thought they were gods gift to the world because they were mormons and missionaries called forth in the later days to be "Saturday's Warriors ... this kind of crap was considered scriptural in the late 70s....

Who are these children coming down, coming down.
Like gentle rain though darken skies.
With glory trailing from their feet as they go.
And endless promise in their eyes!
Who are these young ones growing tall, growing tall.
Like silver trees against the storm.
Who will not bend with the wind or the change,
But stand to fight the world alone!
These are the few, the warriors
Saved for Saturday, to come
The last day of the world
These are they, on Saturday.
These are the strong, the warriors
Rising in the might to win
The battle raging in
The hearts of men, on Saturday.
Strangers from a realm of light
Who have forgotten all.
The memory…

One of the many peaks our arrogance on my mission: We saved up bunches of bottle caps (corchalats) to take on our trip to see the pyramids at Teotihuacan.

We hustled up the pyramid of the sun and when we got to the top we flipped bottle caps out onto the lesser people far, far below. But, and I take some relief in this, no beer bottle caps were involved.

It's my recollection that I only had two companions who refused to participate in light-mindedness at some point during a day of tracting. So I had to be light-minded all by myself.

You don't get to be good at something without practice, and that includes being a good sourpuss.

"You don't get to be good at something without practice, and that includes being a good sourpuss."

If I didn't know better I'd swear you were plagiarizing Judic here.

I saw depressed kids in those photos.

yes treat missionaries good, it is not their fault, most have never known anything else, and their heart is trying to be in the right place, make parents and leaders proud etc. Better to try to get in a word or 2 in a nice way, to get them to thinking, I like to explain to them some Buddhist/Hindu notions, just to say there are other ways to explain how Life works, but I am respectful, & nice to them. they are just young folks after all/ kids. All of earth life is to learn from, It's like the idea: I don't make fun of 2nd graders for being in 2nd grade (etc.) ,I was there once. Just ,my 2 cents.

So the missionaries moms and dads actually believe that they will be God and Goddesses, Kings and Queens, Priest and Priestesses of their own dominions, planet(s), and kingdoms. This is what they truly believe about themselves. Mormons have a superiority complex over, well, just everyone else in the world. They believe they are better, more righteous, more "blessed", more "choice" than all non-Mormons. The missionaries were raised in this paradigm. So then they go to the temple before their missions, for their endowments, and this superiority belief is conditioned into them even more.

So, yeah, when they go to a 3rd world country or anywhere else outside of Mormondumb, they feel, act, behave, and socialize in a superior (arrogant) way. The people they teach and interact with are beneath them. They cannot relate to the poor being so egocentric and pompous, but it's just the way they have been indoctrinated. Mormons are arrogant by nature, but they really shouldn't be because they believe in silly things like peep stones and hats, liahonas, fantasy civilizations, the priesthood, etc. Silly Mormons.

I've told this before but here it is again.

Many decades ago I had just left the military with an eye to serving a mission.

I was in the chapel having just finished my bishops interview.

There was a group of my friends talking with some missionaries.

The one missionary was talking about setting up an "institute" class. He pointed at each person in the group, male and female and invited then, but he skipped over me.

I thought maybe he didn't know I'd moved back into the ward so I said I'd be interested too.

He said I wasn't invited because I hadn't served a mission.

I told him I'd just gotten out of the military and before I could finish my sentence he said something to the effect that by killing innocent people I was condemned to the telestial kingdom and unworthy to be in church.

Anyway...the next thing I remember is my arm across his throat pinning him to the wall and me uttering some choice and profane words.

Then I realized that no one was pulling me off him. I let him go. He sagged to the ground sobbing, I realized he'd soiled himself.

I took a deep breath turned around and saw three ward members, all Marines, facing the crowd.

One said. "Sergeant Heartless are you done?"

I said yes sir and they escorted me out of the building.

Later that evening I had my stake president interview. He was also a Marine. He very politely told me I was excused by the Lord from missionary service since I had not only served my country but had also baptised a new member during my service.

What a story!

as most stories from "Ex-marines" do.

Isn't it magnanimous of the missionaries to try to help "the little people from the village?"