madeleine wrote:I do in fact think it is very sad. I have a daughter of a similar age and as her parent, I would be devastated. I would also think there would be a small measure of comfort found in recognizing she was following what she believed and her own passion for what she wanted to do with her life. I don't see how anyone can be critical of that. I think there is an underlying assumption that if there wasn't a statement of promised protection, she may not have chosen to serve an LDS mission. I haven't made that assumption.
Actually, my underlying assumption is that missionaries and families of missionaries would be better prepared if they didn't have the inbuilt expectation, actively reinforced by the man at the top, that God was going to grant them special protection because of what they are out there doing. Clearly He doesn't.
That said, with the Book of Mormon, we are not dealing with a civilization with no written record. What we are dealing with is a written record with no civilization. (Runtu, Feb 2015)
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
madeleine wrote:I do in fact think it is very sad. I have a daughter of a similar age and as her parent, I would be devastated. I would also think there would be a small measure of comfort found in recognizing she was following what she believed and her own passion for what she wanted to do with her life. I don't see how anyone can be critical of that. I think there is an underlying assumption that if there wasn't a statement of promised protection, she may not have chosen to serve an LDS mission. I haven't made that assumption.
Actually, my underlying assumption is that missionaries and families of missionaries would be better prepared if they didn't have the inbuilt expectation, actively reinforced by the man at the top, that God was going to grant them special protection because of what they are out there doing. Clearly He doesn't.
I think there is an element of full disclosure that should be there. To what degree it is, or isn't, I'm not in a position to say. :-)
Reality is, people die. In a population of 50K (or whatever the missionary population is these days), it is not only possible, but probable, some will die while on their mission. It is by and large a youthful population, so the death rate will be lower than the general population. I don't know, in a Mormon context, what "God will protect you" means, it can be nuanced, or it can be very literal. There is the understanding, in the Mormon view of things that death is eliminated, at least from a psychological impact and understanding. So, how a devout Mormon understand such a statement, is something I think is more nuanced.
Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction -Pope Benedict XVI