In the ideal Mormon world, everything and everyone would be perfect. However, this is not the perfect world, nor was it meant to be. Nothing and no one is perfect. Sometimes we here at BYU have a hard time exiting the bubble and remembering that, but it is important.
The first time my roommate asked me where my dad served, she was rather taken back by my response: “Oh, he never served a full-time mission.”
She asked about my other family members then: grandfathers, uncles, cousins, brothers. She thought I was joking when I said none of them had served missions.
Her response, “And they’re all active in the Church?” was said with a rather derogatory tone.
There are a large number of young men who do not serve missions. Yes, it is a priesthood responsibility to serve a mission.
However, there are legitimate reasons as to why a young man cannot serve a full-time mission, and this non-RM stigma should not follow him around forever, to every date he goes on, in every conversation he has and to every job interview he receives.
This cultural issue of immediate judgment against older guys who have not served a full-time mission needs to be changed immediately. There are different circumstances for everyone that we have no way of knowing or even understanding. Many of our current general authorities did not serve missions themselves, so who are we to judge those here at BYU who have not?
Kaylee Marsh
Visalia, Calif.
