I’ve heard it claimed—over the pulpit, and multiple times—that the future church activity of a family’s children is the direct result of whether the family had family home evening when their kids were children and teenagers. I find this amusing, since family home evening was actually pretty rare in my growing up,* but all of my parent’s children married in the temple and are currently active in the church, achievements that can’t be claimed by a number of other people i know who held family home evening every week. This leads to three semi-unrelated thoughts:
- Claims about correct practice based solely on anecdotal evidence are, if not completely stupid, only a half step removed from complete stupidity.
- Wouldn’t the vital importance of family home evening make it impossible for converts to the church to remain active?
- Why do we find it so hard to admit that children have free will no matter what their parents taught them?
* I’m not an eagle scout, either—in fact, i completely dropped out of boy scouting when I was thirteen. Oh, the wickedness!
2 comments:
While not all my siblings are active (1 is not), but the other 2 of us are & married in the temple with no FHE growing up in our family either. I really struggle with this one myself, on more than one level!
We just all ended up good because we're awesome like that. Or it was luck. Yeah, probably that. So I don't struggle with those statements. I laugh at them.
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