My son has jumped theough every hoop that has been laid out before him, gladly. He was asked to speak to a stake prez about going on a mission.

The prez could find nothing wrong with him. He attended every meeting and was a full tither. But he did find one thing.
He didnt like his hair. He has glorious long blond curls that he tipped with deep purple and blue.

He didn't just tell him to cut it, but that he has to go through the "repentence process" because of it.

As far as I know, odd hair isnt a sin and he isnt a student at BYU or anything.

He certainly didn't plan to keep it that way on his mission.

Overall it just feels like bullying.

The problem is that it makes no difference. Only gives glory in the eyes of the judaizers.

I am a male and have long hair. This style is from my hard rock-period in life. Can not imagine myself witout it today. I have cut it twice and never felt comfortable without it and was always longing to let it grow back out again.

The change makes no difference if you have repented and follow Jesus.

Still flying my freak flag.

It's deliberate and planned. The SP isn't just bullying, he's trying to **break** your son. If SP can succeed in breaking your son's will, it's going to be that much easier for other church leaders to control him, both during the mission and afterward. I'm very serious about this.

The soul-sucking church wants to turn your son into a mindless drone. You two can fight it together, but you will have to maintain a united front and stay strong in the face of the Pharisee SP's fury.

Correct. It is also one of the main reasons the MTC exists.

Exactly, it's also why rules are so strict for missionaries as soon as they're "set apart" before going to the MTC.

Exactly.

There are no true rules in TSCC, only orders to obey.

If someone above you tells you to do something it doesn't matter what it is. Sometimes this process may sound like they are instructing you in some kind of eternal principal or rule, but don't be fooled.

Don't masturbate
Don't drink coffee
Don't get tattooed

are just surrogates for the only rule: obey.

We often mention the humorous three rules "Pay, Pray, Obey" but it's really just Obey. Paying and Praying are simply two things they (currently) order you to do.

Susan and 2 late are right. If you don't believe us, test it out. Your son can refuse to cut his hair, and then see how the prez and other Mormons treat him.

I'm curious--exactly what does your son have to do to "repent" of having long hair?

The Mormons are testing your son--so have your son give them a test right back at them. Have him remove the dye, but still keep it long enough. (I think the rule is that it can't wander over the back of the white-shirt collar.)

Your son, and you, will see the cult's true colors. They will not accept your son, or anyone else with Christ-like hair.

The Mormons are too arrogant to understand that your son is doing the cult a favor by going out to recruit new members. It is not the other way around. The cult is doing your son no favors by "allowing" him to go on a mission, yet they act as though they are. You and your son are are paying for it, right?

"the rule is that it can't wander over the back of the white-shirt collar"

In my UK boarding school, this was also the rule (in the 70s...).

My brother got around it by having an extremely long forelock which went well below his chin.

This naturally infuriated the powers-that-be, but they couldn't do anything about it - which infuriated them even more ;-)

As for me, I have curly hair, so it was a massive afro for me ;-)

Tom in Paris

I would ask your son why a church volunteer (which is what a missionary is) should need to have any particular hair length or style. The church is not paying him to go, instead, he or you would be paying for the "privilege."

for long hair with dyed tips?

If I'm not mistaken, you're saying that your son is willing to cut his hair in order to go on the mission and will keep it cut to comply with mission rules throughout.

Back when I was a try-hard Mormon that would have been all that was needed. Nobody treated long hair as a sin to be repented of. I doubt that this Stake President's extremism on this would be approved of by the top leadership of the church. They would possibly present a united front to back the SP, but behind the scenes they would probably tell him that he's an idiot.

But the SP's lunacy has put you into an interesting position.

Your son now has to decide whether he can still believe in a church that tries to tell him that it's not enough to obey when they tell him to cut his hair, but that he has to also go through some humiliating "repentance process" just the same as if he had committed adultery or committed a criminal felony.

Alternatively, your son can go along to get along and pretend to go through the "repentance process" just to get past the idiot SP and get on with his life. But if your son does that, it will plant a seed of cynicism that will fester and bear fruit...probably before he even finishes his mission. Humoring and playing along with the SP's lunacy, while not believing the SP is justified in making that demand, will be a form of contempt for the SP. When your son gets into the mission field and realizes that his MP and the other leaders in the mission are also idiots pretending to have authority from God, he will feel the same contempt for them. It's not going to end well.

I gather that you feel you're not in a position to tell your son directly that it would be better for him not to go on a mission because the church is false and its leaders are ordinary doofuses whose "priesthood" is no more real than a plastic sheriff's badge from a toy store. If that's the case, I guess he'll have to find out the hard way, at the cost of at least two years of his life and two years of monthly payments to the mission fund. If he's in the church now and has been sporting long hair with dyed tips all this time, I don't think his enthusiasm for the church is going to last long.

The Apostle Paul wrote (I Corinthians 11, verses 14-15 NRSV):

"Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory?"

Person of Corinth: OMG! Saul/Paul is spamming us again. Is he still in jail?

Another Person of Corinth: I dunno. I thought they read prisoners' mail. Can't we say we moved or something?

And yet another Corinthian: I KNOW, Right?!?!??! [interrobangs forever] Dude never even MET Jesus. I think he might be cray cray.

Some other Corinthian: You know he had a vision, fell off a horse, and changed his name?

Corinthians in Unison: WHAAAAAAAT?! Dear God no. No. Did he hit his head?

Person passing through Corinth: Verily, verily I say unto youse, Saul is IN-SANE. He's probably into this self-promotion because he was a tax collector and didn't have any friends.

Nodding Corinthians: That makes sense. He's hiding behind this Jesus dude THAT HE NEVER MET because he absconded with ppls monies.

1st Corinthian: What a dick.

2nd Corinthian: I know, right?! Who gave that fool our address anyway?

3rd Corinthian: Um, well...I thought I was doing the right thing, you know, writing letters to lonely men in jail and then...

PISSED Corinthians: No. Just no. We told you to stop writing criminals! It's DANGEROUS! OMG. He better not come here when he gets out. Srsly.

3rd Corinthian: Calm down. I'm done with that batshit dude. But let me tell you about this Nigerian Prince who wrote to me...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2019 10:21PM by Beth.

Paul was a damaged weirdo.

Paul was simply using the Socratic method

Q:"Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory?"

A: No

No, nature did not, but culture did.

Just a thought, never in my life have I seen a picture of JC where he had a crew cut. If long hair is good enough for the son of God, it should be just fine on your kid.

+1000. Jesus is ALWAYS depicted as long haired and bearded. If John the Baptist wore a camel skin to proselytize, is it not also likely he was shaggy? And didn't he baptize someone kind of important? What about Samson, whose fall from invincibility was caused by a woman with shears? What about the Nazirite vow of Jesus's time, where the hair was grown out on holy, cleansing purpose? Or the payot that Orthodox Jewish men wear at their temples today?

The cult just wants to punish him for showing a bit of individuality. Like all things in TSCC they care about appearance, not substance.

Tell them there can be no repentance for that which is no sin. Better yet, tell them they can't have your child at all.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2019 11:01AM by ptbarnum.

Does anyone know how the tradition of depicting Jesus with long hair got started? Does it go back to something in the early years of Christianity?

have had long-ish hair.

Ironically, Brigham Young could have been kicked out of Brigham Young University due to his long hair and beard.

http://www.signaturebooks.com/product/brigham-young-colonizer-of-the-american-west/

As an excuse, I'm sure the church leaders will say that it was okay for Brigham Young back then because that was the generally accepted fashion for men. But what will the church do when the generally accepted fashion for men is neck tattoos and nose piercings? Just play along? Probably.

A good rule of thumb is to look at fashion followed by politicians, CEOs, and big name corporate law firms. That's basically what guides the church in deciding what their dress and grooming "standards" will be. It's as superficial as things can get and not at all what you would expect from genuine prophets and apostles.

Samson had the same problem with Delilah.

The others are right. This is how you get church broke.

A story that was used on us when I was young and being church broke:

Arabian stallions were trained rigorously so that one would be selected to be the Sheik's new mount. This horse has to be exceptional. As a final test of the obedience training, water would be with-held from the stallion until it was weak and near death. At that point the stallion would be released and allowed to run to the water trough. Just as it reached the water the signal would be given to return before drinking the water. If the stallion drank they were rejected."

We all know the ways Mormons use these stories. The hair thing really falls into the same category of just another control tactic to make you feel like extreme obedience is everything.

Your son was so good that the only thing the SP could even think of to make him feel less than was this bit of ridiculosity.

If your son actually repents for hair, they've "Samson'ed" him.

The story I read in one of Leon Uris' books. (I tend not to believe it in its entirety.)

When Nazism was reaching its pinnacle, becoming an SS officer was seen as a truly lofty goal. Just getting admitted to the program was both daunting and humbling.

When these young lads showed up at their MTC (all nefarious causes have an MTC) for their 18 months of training, one of the first things they received was a German Shepard puppy. Each candidate was told that the dog would be his life-long companion and that the candidate's care of the dog was part of the grade.

After graduation, each newly-minted SS officer met with an SS general for an interview that would lead to the new officer's first assignment. The dog was also there for the interview. After some initial chit-chat, the general would command the new officer to strangle and kill his dog.

Any officer who refused or cried while carrying out the order was transferred from the SS corps to another part of the army.



Shit...I was leaking tears when I finished reading this. But I know that the world has a teeming population of individuals who would have coldly carried out that order.

The reason I have some doubts about this story is that I think it would be hard to keep it a secret from the candidates. I imagine that most, if not all the students would at some point hear about that final exam. This means that it is likely that all those heartless bastards were quite prepared to carry out the death sentence of the dog they raised.

With regard to the mormon church, finding the members who will put the needs of the church ahead of their own needs or wants is constant. The church needs men (mostly) who will stifle their emotions. The church desire men who will kill for it, if only in the metaphorical sense.

Do I dislike the organization that is the mormon church? Indeed I do.

OMG Just when you think an atrocity can't be any worse . . .

I think I read it as a high school or young college kid, and I was shocked and cried buckets over it.

It has always struck me as the ultimate "Because I said so!" example. And I have never, ever, bought it.

The Nazis tried to talk to dogs, though. Kind of like Mr. Ed.

I thought Mr. Ed was a horse.

that story. Maybe I did and blanked it out of my mind. I tend to do that. I'd allow them to kill me first. First and foremost are my dogs.

But, yes, LDS broke. I haven't read all the posts as I just stopped by for a moment.

We had a friend who was an odd guy, but he was my husband's friend's roommate at BYU and for some reason he took to my husband and clung to him for years. He was smart in many ways, but weird. You'd have to meet him. He was bald on top and sometimes he'd just not get a haircut, but his hair was never very long. Just shaggy or sloppy. They got angry at him in the temple and told him to go home and get it cut.

I hope your son says no. This is only the beginning. I was church broke and they definitely broke me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2019 10:53PM by cl2.

The Nazi story reminds me of how kids of same sex marriages were told they’d have to deny their parents to get baptized. Not quite the same, but still ... strangle something you love.

It's all about allegiance at any cost.

Latter Day Stranglers.

Seems to me there is a completely relevant LDS scripture about unrighteousness dominion. One of the few things JS got right.

Son should tell SP unless he (SP) repents, amen to his priesthood. Or, in contemporary parlance, he's being cancelled.

Like that'll happen. Son has no doubt been church-broke enough that he thinks the church belongs to the leaders, not the members. Most of us were that church-broke at one time.

pretend for a moment that ChurchCo receives the funds (available) for the missionary on the first of each month;


on which day do the make them available to the mish?


times how many missionaries ?


me thinks the interest on the missionary balance in some financial institution is a revenue source for churchco...


any solid information on this?

Having the money that missionaries use to live on pass through the hands of the church probably was somewhat incentivized by having these funds pooled together and earning money at some stage of the journey, but part of the incentive was that it gave the American parents the necessary documentation to be able to declare those funds as a tax deduction.

The older plan had the parents sending the money directly to the missionary, who then paid the mission home their rent money and lived off the rest. There was a notable disparity between missionaries just scraping by and missionaries with generous parents (me!).

I remember Elder Kennedy, who carried a small hammer in his shaving kit, which he used to pound every last bit of toothpaste out of the tube. I swear this is true!

Exactly right. The pooling of the money served two purposes. It was required to meet the US tax code requirements for qualifying as a charitable deduction, and to make the mission expense more uniform. Some places (Japan, Europe) were expensive. Some places were quite inexpensive. Some parents or wards supporting missionaries felt put upon, and I think they had a point.

The current system addressed both issues.

What relevance does this have to the hair issue? But just for yucks, let's run the numbers. 70,000 missionaries times $6,000 a year is $420 million. If they hold onto it for 5 days a month and short term (5 day) invest it at 2% APR twelve times a year, that'd be roughly $150k per year.

That'd be a lot to you and me. To a church with an estimated $6 billion annual cash flow, that's not even lunch money. That said, I'm sure they do get short term interest on all their cash. Any corporation with that much money passing through would.

ETA. I did the calculations in my head. I just dug out a calculator. Given the hypotheticals above, it would be $1.4 million. I was off by a factor of ten. Damn decimal points!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2019 12:01PM by Brother Of Jerry.

As a father I would ask for scripture and verse for the supposed sin he is guilty of that requires repentance.

Have you heard of a mormon apologist named Hugh Nibley? Career BYU professor, wrote tons of books & articles defending the church, etc. Mormons love him, but few are aware that Nibley also wrote this passage:

"The worst sinners, according to Jesus, are not the harlots and publicans, but the religious leaders with their insistence on proper dress and grooming, their careful observance of all the rules, their precious concern for status symbols, their strict legality, their pious patriotism… the haircut becomes the test of virtue in a world where Satan deceives and rules by appearances."

– Hugh Nibley, Collected Works, Vol. 9 (Approaching Zion), Ch. 2, p. 54

When I was on my mish, 67-69, it was a 'requirement' of 1st MP that we wear HATS which I'd never done before; the first hat I got was 'a little too sporty' for my comp, he gave me crap about it...

2nd MP didn't mention, didn't care. That'd being a ChurchCo member fer ya!


we see: it NEVER occurred to the SP that members of the unwashed masses with similar hair / grooming styles MIGHT be interested in learning about ChurchCo;

gotta keep up the sterile image, ya know...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2019 02:58PM by GNPE.

As they say in the Russian Marine Corps
BULLSHITSKI

Can't anybody see??
It is a mind control power trip!!!!!!!!!!!

I try not to look.

When you repent, you have to stop committing whatever sin you supposedly committed, or all the sin comes back (except one tablespoon - bonus points if you get the reference).

So your son should agree that he will not grow his hair out AGAIN.

Leave it the way it is, because the only way you can grow it out AGAIN, is to cut it off.

You should appeal and tell the story to the area president.

and my spam prevention code for this entry is XFUK7

Give him a crew cut and let him go. He'll hate his hair style in a few years time when it goes out of fashiom and hair loss kicks in.

Zbegniew, I have to respectfully disagree with you. If he cuts his hair now or later he needs to do it because he wants to for his own reasons, not for the cult, not because he might change his style later, not because his parents say so, not for anything but to please himself.

I also have to contest "let him go". How can anyone send a young man to sell a cult that would shame him, and any other people he brought into it, for personalizing his own body?

His body and what he does with and to it aren't anything he ever needs to repent for. To anyone. Ever. People are not possessions.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/2019 07:34PM by ptbarnum.

Actually not the issue.

Its the fact that he would also have to go through a "repentence process" as if he had committed some sin.

What, exactly, does the "process" involve?

Geeze, DON'T ASK!!!

It might involve electro-shock 'therapy' administered by a 1st year psychology YBU student (done 'off campus', of course!!)

The SP is using his imaginary powers of discernment to deduce that the hair is indicative of some other hidden "sin."

Reading about this makes me sooo angry!
Who TF do these penishood bullies think they are? It's exactly these kind of self righteous, self important egomaniacs that made me hate the rules and the cult!
My cousin in Midvale Ut. Has told me about the verbal abuse she suffers befrom of her uber TBM jackass husband.

I’d just be worried that if they were pressured into changing the rules about hair length ,that he might be “ punished” by a super crappy assignment , living in a super crappy apartment, and not being able to come home, even if he got deathly sick

I have been thinking that your son can make a game of breaking the Stake President. He should just tell the bishop and the stake president that he has changed his mind, and that he doesn't think a mission is right for him. Then he can sit back and watch while they both drive themselves crazy trying to get him to go on one.

I like this approach.

It depends on what field you go into. It's not always necessary, even for professionals.

The thing is, missions are not really for converting others. It is to solidify the holds the cult has on the missionary. The big question is WHY the lad wants to do two.

I have often found it curious that with the recent Holland conference tirade on women and body part improvements and enhancements and earrings, that all the colored hair is perfectly acceptable? It is not 70 year old with platinum blonder, or deep auburn, it is the principle of priesthood can not touch that one. Perhaps soon it will be addressed with covered heads at all times, or even shaved heads.

It is when you do not know what to teach, you teach obedience. Claiming, they have the direct pipeline to what Jesus wants, whom as portrayed in the LDS church, was a long hair hippie freak, but not has short hair. Yet, that is too sacred to speak about.

I can never distinguish what is revelation, policy, or personal opinion. Nor can anyone else.

Jesus would have to repent of his long hair and beard if he wanted to serve a MORmON mission today, so your son is in good company and the MORmON leaders are Pharasies.
Christ had some pretty harsh words for superficial hypocrites like them.