I learned a pretty hairshirt version of Mormonism growing up. As I’ve blogged about before, I was a neurotic kid, and was probably extra sensitive to any harsh messages I read or heard from both GAs and local leaders. I realize this isn’t everyone’s experience, as the punitive, anti-happiness strain of Mormonism clearly isn’t the only one. But I also thought it might be interesting to think back and see if I could find some of the most influential bits of scripture and GA teachings that helped me reach the conclusion that the unstated commandment underlying all others was Thou shalt not have any fun.
- Any mention of “recreation” was invariably preceded by the modifier “wholesome.” Although I couldn’t put this into words as a kid, this GA tic really sounded to me like they were suspicious of the whole idea of recreation, and maybe would prefer that we all just be working all the time. It seemed clear that they didn’t think we members could even be trusted to choose our own leisure activities without them reminding us that we shouldn’t have too much fun. Wholesome recreation just doesn’t sound as fun as just plain old recreation. Wholesome recreation is to recreation as the mildly humorous jokes told in Conference are to actual comedy.
- Book of Mormon prophets are quick to remind us that now is the time for us to repent and do better (clearly a difficult process, or else why would we want to put it off?) and the next life is when we’ll reap the rewards or punishments. These aren’t explicitly anti-happiness-now, but they do make clear that the real payoff isn’t now, and they fit perfectly in a framework where it’s worth enduring any suffering in the now to make sure you’re in the right place when you die. Here are a couple of passages that stuck in my memory:
- Mormon 8:38: “Why do ye not think that greater is the value of an endless happiness than that misery which never dies—because of the praise of the world?”
- Alma 34:32: “this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.”
- Nephi makes clear that he’s not a fan of merriment. His brothers and their wives “began to make themselves merry” on the ship, which was part of the reason Nephi scolded them and got tied up for his troubles. Much later, he warns of the misguided universalists who think they can “eat, drink, and be merry” because God will save them later even if he punishes them a bit first. Of course he didn’t outright say that being merry is wicked, but when the only examples of it he cites are ones he’s criticizing, you can see how it’s pretty easy to conclude, especially for a young person, that he just didn’t like it.
- Stories in primary lessons and Church magazines seemed like they were frequently about kids learning the important lesson that having fun is just wrong. Should you go boating on Sunday? No, that would be fun. Should you go to that party? No, there might be drinking, drugs, or R-rated movies. Best to stay home and enjoy some wholesome recreation. For example, here’s a random New Era article article from the 1980s that I don’t remember reading specifically, but that perfectly captures the tone I’m remembering. The author is answering a question about appropriate Sabbath activities, and although he gestures at the idea of teaching correct principles and letting people govern themselves, he then proceeds to list activities he considers acceptable, all of which sound like they would make even the most devout youth miserable if actually stretched to fill the entire day. The only tiny bit of enjoyment he concedes is that “enjoying each other’s company at the dinner table” could be acceptable.
- It was obvious to me that GAs were deeply suspicious of the pleasure associated with sex. This was of course a top issue for me, as a (I think typically) sex-curious teen. GAs preached against masturbation (of course typically only using euphemisms like “self-abuse”), against homosexual sex, and against birth control. An obvious thing these three share is that they allow for the pleasure of sex without the possibility of pregnancy. Two other items that were less on my radar at the time but that clearly fit on the list pointing to GAs’ suspicion of sexual pleasure are the abortive oral sex ban (which I didn’t learn about until years later) and their preaching against abortion, which I heard, but didn’t connect at the time. They didn’t have to say it straight out, but it was quite clear to me that they felt that God permitted sexual pleasure, but of course only in marriage, and then only to ensure that pregnancies would happen.
- Speaking of sex, when all, or virtually all, of the discussion around it by GAs was of how deeply wrong it is to have it outside marriage, probably worse than anything other than murder, it was difficult for me to get any message other than that sex is somehow wrong at its core. It was never even discussed as sex, naturally, but just as immorality, unchastity, or the filth of porn. Even when they occasionally mentioned that of course it’s okay to have sex with your spouse when married, they sounded so grudging about it that it seemed clear they still didn’t like it.
- The line “endure to the end” that’s repeated so often both in scriptures and in Church rhetoric in general was always discouraging to me. It sounds like we’re just straight up admitting that life is going to be miserable throughout, so we should get used to it.
I was born in the 1970s and was a teen mostly in the 80s. I know some Church rhetoric has definitely shifted since then, for example like in mostly backing off on denouncing birth control. I’d love to hear if you learned a more pro-happiness or anti-happiness version of Mormonism when you grew up, and whether you think things have changed in the Church since then.
Definitely I was raised with the anti-fun route in the last 1990s. We were even getting rid of road shows and church sports!
“Men are that they might have joy”, but that joy is found in raking the old lady’s lawn and reading scriptures, not worldly “fun”. Then there is also the temple’s prohibition on loud laughter.
Pretty sure every discussion of “men are that they might have joy” that I’ve heard included the mandatory reminder that we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that “joy” meant earthly happiness. Nope. It might just be that you don’t ever feel happy during this life, and any joy you feel won’t be until after you’ve passed on to the next stage. If you were righteous enough to earn it, of course.
“the most influential bits of scripture and GA teachings…helped me reach the conclusion that the unstated commandment underlying all others was Thou shalt not have any fun.”
I am truly sorry that this was your experience but it couldn’t have been further from mine. The fact is, the precautions that the Church taught helped me navigate through all of the fun of my youth. When I look back on my youth in the 60’s I really can’t believe how fortunate I was. It’s probably because I had an alcoholic father who had little to do with me that I super appreciate now the counsel I received. My fun included a life of playing several sports on a competitive basis. While many of my friends drifted into drinking during late Junior High and High School – including one who died in a car accident he caused by drunk driving – I never touched the stuff. In HS I played in a rock band that was fairly successful by Ogden, Utah standards. Again, this was the late 60’s and early 70’s and this part of my life was noted for the indiscriminate drug culture, which was everywhere. Again, I absolutely abstained from all illegal drugs and partly because I could play the organ part of the long version of In A Gadda Da Vida perfectly and people knew my stance, I was given the moniker of being “naturally stoned”. On the other hand, the lead singer in my band (probably the most handsome and intelligent of us all) became highly addicted, the main dealer at our HS, and later jumped to his death off the top of Ogden’s City and County Building. The sports and the band gave me the opportunity to do way more than my share of dating, but included no teen pregnancies or venereal disease. I played CSN’s “Guinevere” on my organ at my guitar player’s quickly-put-together wedding when he was 17. Gary and his wife actually made it work for many years.
I enjoyed the activities and lessons that Primary and Cub Scouts provided me. I tremendously enjoyed becoming an Eagle Scout at 14. And I’ve been honored to hold the priesthood from 12 years until now. Life could have gone a lot worse.
In case you want support for your argument . . . when I was an editor at Church magazines many years ago, we were discouraged from using the word “fun” in the magazines because Elder David B. Haight, of all people, was opposed to it. I really can’t imagine what President Packer would have said about it.
Thanks for your comments!
HokieKate, yes! Thanks for raising the “loud laughter” prohibition. I didn’t learn of this until I went to the temple right before serving a mission, but when I did, it totally seemed to fit my sense of the Church.
Just Me, spot on. Great point about the distinction between true and “worldly” joy.
larryco_, thanks for sharing your experience. I totally get that people have different experiences with the Church, and I’m glad that it worked out so well for you. It sounds like in particular, the WoW was a great guardrail to keep you from falling into difficulties that many people around you did.
Frank, that’s fascinating! Thanks so much for sharing that! And I agree that it seems like if David B. Haight didn’t like the word “fun,” and he seemed (to me, at least) to be pretty middle-of-the-road among GAs, I can’t even imagine what words or ideas some of the more hardline members of the Q15 might want to ban.
This also feels like the church’s whole message to LGBTQ+ folks as well: You are prohibited from any close, personal, non-familial relationships during this life, but don’t worry! Once you’re dead, God can fix you!
Disclaimer: I know different people have different experiences. If you lose leadership roulette, though, you might not even be able to hug a member of the same sex or put an arm on the back of the bench where they’re sitting if your bishop knows you’re not straight. And that note on your membership record means he’ll always know you’re not straight.
Even as a young bride I was curious and frustrated all at once because it seemed sexual pleasure was ‘allowed’ in marriage, but only for men. And when I went to research and learn about my own body, I was sure I was sinning because of some conference talk that spurned anything related to “preoccupation with sex”. So thinking or learning about it felt sinful.
This made me think of my GA interview for a BYU professor job. My interviewer recommended that I should make sure I provided lots of family fun. He suggested I buy a houseboat to sit at Lake Powell, so when the free weekend popped up, I could run the kids down to Powell and get out on the lake, fishing or swimming in some out of the way bay, etc., because that’s what he did and it was such a success. I wanted to ask if I was getting a really big salary bump down at the Y. I didn’t do that. Nodding and smiling is good. I’m trying to draw out a major lesson here but failing. I’m sure he meant this as metaphor. Pretty sure. Anyway, fun is important, but maybe you don’t say it too much.
When I was a new convert in the early 00’s I got the impression from testimonies that part of the “proof” the gospel was true was that it made life better in this life as well as in the next. For example, the law of chastity is great because we don’t have to worry about pregnancy scares or venerial disease. And all those hangovers we avoid from never getting drunk. Not to mention how much better our finances are because we pay tithing first. Imagine how poor we would be if we didn’t give God His 10%.
This is why I never really got a testimony of tithing, even when I had a strong testimony of other things. It never noticeably made my life better, like it was apparently supposed to. I have a lot easier time now, when my “alms” go to people who need it and my “tithes” go for the upkeep of the building and the salary of the church employees. The services happen, the lights are on and the water is running, so I am getting my money’s worth. I also have access to the church budget, if I ever am concerned. No fuzzy feelings required.
Perhaps this is pitfall of trying to say your religion makes life better. When people don’t feel better, they can leave. Tell them it isn’t supposed to be fun, though, and they aren’t dissappointed when it isnt.
I read this post a few days ago and revisited today and read some of the later comments, so I may have already let the original purpose of the post slip from my mind. But I’ll just note that it sure seems that the criticisms here come, in some ways, from a very privileged vantage point. We are all so privileged that our gripe is that we’re told that we can’t have too much fun right now, that it has to wait for the afterlife. Do I understand how people would feel that way, having felt it myself at times? Yes.
But I think the other side of the coin, at least with respect to the general idea of this life kind of sucks and the afterlife will make amends for that, is that for most of history such a large percentage of the human population in total seems to have lived generally lives much more difficult. The promise of the afterlife being better was a true balm of hope to help with desperation in the now. How wonderful that for so many of us now, our main concern is that we feel we’re being told to not have too much fun now.
HokieKate, Ziff probably time to revisit the temple.
Ditto jpv (hint: that language has been removed, I believe).
Larryco: I’m glad you had a different experience. This is my first visit to this blog, and I’m going to spend a little more time here. For several years I’ve been in the process of observing that and trying to understand why my experience in the Church has been so harsh relative to the experiences of so many others. I grew up in the Church mostly in the 1990s. Many of my friends are from your generation, Larry, and they are baffled when I relate my experiences with the harsh messaging on so many topics. I’m not entirely sure why my experience, and that of so many others, was so different from that of people of your generation in the Church.
A disproportionate number of young men from my high school married late or, like me, have never married. The CES seminary videos, the tone of the Twelve, the culture communicated by local leaders (including seminary teachers) was all very hardline. It occurred to me just last week, also, that my Latter-day Saint adolescence fell between the AIDS crisis and much greater acceptance of, for lack of a better term, the opening of societal acceptance of LGBTQ+ people. I don’t know if I’m onto anything with that, or not, but the messaging about sexuality was dire and horrible.
There’s a lot of talk in the Evangelical community about “Purity Culture.” We Latter-day Saints had (have?) our own brand on a cocktail of meth and steroids. The parallels between Evangelical “Purity Culture” and our special Mormon (at the time) equivalent could be the subject of a thesis. A lot of wounding has occurred for a lot of us. A lot of healing is needed. I’m still looking for a full diagnosis in order to get the right treatment administered.
“When you’re dead” is more than just when you get to be happy. It’s also when you get to learn why God wanted Joseph to be polygamous and why God seemed racist for a while and then stopped, but really he wasn’t, we promise. Everything that troubles you about the church, it will all make sense when you’re dead. I think leaders who say such things really believe it, and themselves have faith that all will one day be revealed, but it makes it hard for them to understand and empathize with members who are troubled and want answers now. “When you’re dead” is an easy way out of dealing with the hard questions.
Just Me, that’s another excellent point. Really, the postponement of happiness I learned as a straight cisgender person is dwarfed by the “you can be happy later” thrown at LGBTQ folks.
And Chiaroscuro, that’s a great related point that at least by being male, I’m in the class of people the Church is designed for. I’m sorry about the negative messaging around sex directed at women in particular. I don’t recall where (probably fMh, back in the day) I read women saying that they felt extra bad for being interested in sex as teens because at least the boys were scolded for their interest. For the girls, it was mostly just not mentioned (outside, of course, of lots of “purity” talk), which made them feel like they were not only wicked, but deviant among girls.
Hedwig, thanks for your thoughts on whether it’s even a good idea for a church to say “follow us and you’ll be happier now.” Like larryco_, I feel fortunate to have followed, for example, rules against smoking from the WoW, but I agree with you that not all things the Church commands have worked out so well.
Adam F., that’s totally fair and a good point that I certainly live a comfortable life from a historical perspective.
jpv, thanks. I heard about the “loud laughter” change. I find it encouraging for sure, but it also feels like it’s late to undo the anti-happiness sense I got from the Church. Also, like so many other changes, I feel like it would have a lot more impact if the GAs just announced the change and said “Maybe we were wrong before” rather than just slipping it in and counting on people to gaslight themselves and each other, starting in about six months, about whether the prohibition on loud laughter was really ever in there.
IC, welcome to the blog! I hope you like our stuff. It’s just me and Lynnette sometimes now, but if you want to wander through our archives, you’ll find some really cool posts from bloggers who are no longer actively blogging. Also, I like your comparison of Mormon to Evangelical purity culture.
Oh, that’s a great point, Quentin, about how we shove off all kinds of things to the next life, and not just happiness.
I think I missed much of the anti-fun stuff from a combination of my convert parents, growing up in California, and it simply never making sense.
What’s the point of the Paradise/Spirit Prison if not to help us overcome our shortcomings? Is it only for teaching about Christ? That can’t be all of our time, no matter how many there are to preach to. It’s only God who decides who cannot progress, and I choose to believe He is more liberal in his judgement than most believe.
It makes me sad that we’ve moved so solidly into the stick model, rather than expressing joy in the growth we’re experienced