Analytics wrote:But on the other hand the mission president is acting the way mission presidents act--he is not off script on anything he said.
Indeed, the adult kid can take his power back any time he wants to, and it is no surprise that the mission president is sticking to the well-known script.
This is the same mission program that shames people for wanting to go home for the funeral of a parent or sibling. It pegs almost all objective measures of use of thought reform techniques that I have ever seen. The only things they don't do on a mission are systematic extreme malnutrition and extreme sleep deprivation (although I'm sure those happen from time to time on a mission). Why would we not expect the MP to react in the most cult-like manner possible?
Part of me wonders if the prohibition on calling missionaries was instituted only to save $$ in a day when calling long distance was very expensive, and the rule just persisted because no one knew of the reasons for its origin.
Analytics wrote:On the one hand it's ridiculous. But on the other hand the mission president is acting the way mission presidents act--he is not off script on anything he said. The kid is an adult and volunteered for this. If the kid wants to call his parents he is free to break the ridiculous mission rules and call. But the mission president is under no obligation to give private phone numbers to people who email and ask--even if the person calling is a parent. In fact, in any other situation it would be considered an invasion of privacy to hand out the cell phone numbers of others.
If the parent didn't trust his kid to take care of himself like an adult and didn't trust the mission system to look after him, he should have made arrangements directly with his kid to keep in touch.
Drop the mic on this response. It's the only one that doesn't look at the exchange between the mission president and the parent in the worst possible light. The missionary is an adult. As hard as it is for the parent, it's the missionary's decision whether to give out contact information or not.
Yes it is the missionary's "decision" to run afoul of the idiotic mission rules and to be shamed by fellow missionaries or punished by the jack-ass mission president. #definitelynotacult
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
Viriatu wrote:Drop the mic on this response. It's the only one that doesn't look at the exchange between the mission president and the parent in the worst possible light. The missionary is an adult. As hard as it is for the parent, it's the missionary's decision whether to give out contact information or not.
And had the Mission President contacted the missionary (all missionaries) and given him (them) that choice then you'd be right.
But he didn't.
At least it's not a cult....
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
My wife asked a very effective question. Why on earth would the parents even worry or bother about what the Mission President wanted? Who cares about getting permission. No parent needs anyone else's permission to talk to their children. Why would they have even thought of asking permission?!
I gotta admit, she hit that one out of the ball park.
Dr CamNC4Me
"Dr. Peterson and his Callithumpian cabal of BYU idiots have been marginalized by their own inevitable irrelevancy defending a fraud."
Philo Sofee wrote:My wife asked a very effective question. Why on earth would the parents even worry or bother about what the Mission President wanted? Who cares about getting permission. No parent needs anyone else's permission to talk to their children. Why would they have even thought of asking permission?!
I gotta admit, she hit that one out of the ball park.
Was he asking for permission, or was he asking for the contact number. The parent had no way of phoning his son except by getting the number from the mission office, or by his son breaking mission rules and calling Home.
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')