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Home » The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints » Current Church Doctrine » Knowledge enough to sin (When do we know enough to be accountable to knowledge?)
Re: Knowledge enough to sin [message #509 is a reply to message #497] Mon, 18 June 2012 16:53 Go to previous messageGo to previous message
Dragon is currently offline  Dragon
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Registered: June 2010
Location: Earth
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Primary Teacher,
Quote:
This is why I do not think it is bad to let the missionaries teach children and have them get baptized even when there is very little chance that the parents will continue to bring them to church.


I must agree with you that there is an element of benefit to baptizing children even when they are unlikely to attend church as children.
The church has clearly taken a different stand, and here are a few of the reasons I have heard.
1. By requiring the children to attend church, it will encourage the parents to come back to church as well. I have seen this work on my mission. It doesn't always work, but it does happen.
2. The church already has too many inactive members on the roles. They are working hard to reactivate all these inactive members. Requiring attendance will give the seed more fertile soil to grow in, and reduce the chance the child will remain inactive.
3. There are certain members of polygamist groups who believe their church leaders have lost the authority to baptize, but also believe in polygamy. These people will often pose as inactive families (because the parents were baptized at age Cool and try to get their children baptized by the LDS church, fully planning to return to their own church, once the baptism is complete. I have seen one such family make it halfway through the discussions before it was discovered they were members of a polygamist group. The elders teaching the family were very displeased. The children were not allowed to be baptized.

I do recall a very special 9 year old boy I tracted into. Both of his parents had been shunned by the local ward, due to their mental handicaps. One of their four children had no such handicap, and the parents allowed us to teach him. Because he was required to attend church prior to his baptism, he rode his bike 1.5 miles to church. He didn't tell us he would be required to do this, but did it anyway. The following week we rode our bikes with him, and the time after that.
Finally the primary presidency heard about this, and arranged a ride for him. The child demonstrated his faith and his desire to become a member, despite his parents refusal to ever return. If he had not been required to attend, would he have attended anyway? I cannot say for sure. What I do know is, he was required to go to extraordinary lengths to meet the requirements placed on him, and he did so.

- Dragon

- Dragon

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