Mormon attitudes toward service

Here are a couple of eye-opening experiences I had as an active believing mormon. Neither of these caused me to question my beliefs at the time, but they made an impression on me and caused me to think seriously about some of my assumptions.

Story #1: The Good Samaritan

A few years ago, I helped my parents move from the east coast to a small, mostly mormon town in Utah.

As we unloaded the rented moving truck, the next door neighbor came over wearing a wife-beater and daisy-dukes (obviously not a garment wearer), introduced himself, and helped us unload. At one point he mentioned to my parents that he was LDS but doesn't go to church anymore.

It took four or five hours to unload the truck and get everything haphazardly piled approximately where it belonged. The temperature was pushing 100 degrees (late August in Utah), and it wasn't pleasant work. The inactive neighbor stuck with us the whole time until the truck was empty.

The entire time, a steady trickle of picture-perfect mormon neighbor families strolled by to get a look at the new family. Most of them stopped and chatted for a few minutes, several made sure my parents knew about a ward activity that was coming up that weekend.

None of the active mormons offered to help.

Now mind you, I don't believe anyone in that neighborhood had any obligation to help us unload. We certainly would have welcomed more help, but we didn't feel entitled. We were fully prepared to do it all ourselves.

It's just interesting to me that out of several dozen able-bodied people who strolled by, only the unworthy inactive volunteered to pitch in and work alongside.


Story #2: Service Projects For The Wealthy

My east coast ward included a certain lawyer, who had done very well for himself, as lawyers often do, and owned a large piece of waterfront property. He had a large and beautiful house, and a yacht moored out back. He was a generous man in many ways, but he also had some typical mormon blind spots and an arrogant manner about certain things. He once refused to sign a girl's temple recommend because she wasn't interested in attending the monthly singles dances.

This lawyer was, at one point, a counselor in the stake presidency, and somehow ended up closely involved with the youth and "young single adults" or "YSA's". I'm not sure if this was at the church's request or on his own initiative, but the lawyer built a guest house on his property, complete with separate wings for boys and girls, partly so he could have the youth and YSA's stay overnight.

As a YSA, I was once invited to one of these sleepovers. We weren't told much, except that there would be meals served, a fireside Friday night, and a service project Saturday morning. The Friday activity was actually kind of fun and I had a good time.

Saturday morning, we woke up early and found out that our "service project" would be helping the lawyer's wife with yardwork. She had specific tasks mapped out, and we had to finish them by a certain time so she could go shopping.

I felt extremely irritated for a couple of reasons:

• This was a guy who could easily afford to have professionals maintain his yard, and often did. As a service project, this was absolutely meaningless. I've helped out at a food bank and a soup kitchen, stacked sandbags to protect an elderly woman's house from flooding during a storm, and volunteered at a school to help kids learn to read. That's service. Doing free yardwork for an able-bodied and financially stable family is just exploitation. At least that's what it felt like at the time.
• Mainly, I was frustrated because I felt like the lawyer wasn't honest about it. If he had said, "Come help me with my yard and I'll feed you dinner and we'll hang out," I could have made an informed decision whether or not to go. Instead, he lured us in with food and a fun activity, and then sprung the trap after creating a feeling of obligation. The unspoken vibe Saturday morning was that we owed him our labor because he had done nice things for us.
  

This lack of disclosure is similar to how first-timers in the temple are given the option to go forward or back out only before they know what they are getting into.

Being young and naive, I ended up keeping my mouth shut and doing the work, but I resented every moment of it and never entirely trusted the guy after that. Since then I've developed some boundaries. No one gets free labor from me unless they are either close friends or family, or it's a genuine humanitarian project.