Saturday, February 25, 2012

Obligatory Title

100% obedience. I hear it so often from all my missionary friends. Realize you may never get there, but strive for perfect obedience to the mission rules. I think there is a fair number of missionaries with that same attitude. They recognize that life is actually better when you follow all the rules, not just the ones you like or that are convenient or easy. Sure, you may not get to listen to Vocal Point's absolutely beautiful voices sing brilliant harmonies and create mind-blowing sounds, but what you get is worth so much more than that.

It's interesting, however, that such an attitude on a mission doesn't necessarily carry over into normal life. I see, for example, a young man that tries to uphold certain rules a large group of people have agreed to live by for a period of time. He goes about it in terrible fashion, but his public ridicule is not due to his method so much as his intention. Now, could this young man find someone violating the rules in more fragrantly? I'm sure of it. It probably wouldn't have taken much searching to do so. The target of his attempt at constructive criticism was certainly not the person at the time going farthest outside the rules, but what has been glossed over--and many times denied entirely--was that she was, in fact, outside the rules: "Dresses, skirts, and shorts must be knee length or longer." Seems like a pretty cut and dried rule to me. The dress of the young woman who was the recipient of the criticism quite clearly did not meet that requirement. Whether the top was cut low enough to be "revealing" is up for debate (I personally fall on the side that it was), but it's pretty hard to debate that a dress is knee-length when it isn't.

Now, I recognize that it can be difficult and sometimes very inconvenient to find clothing that fits this standard and is cute. It is inconvenient and expensive for me to be clean-shaven every day, yet I strive to do so. Until recently, I would forgo shaving on Saturday because my facial hair really wasn't that long, and after all it is Saturday, and I like to be freshly shaved for church on Sunday, and shaving every day really is overkill for how much/fast my facial hair grows, so I either shave two days in a row or don't shave Sunday if I shave Saturday, and neither option sounds very good. The last few weeks, however, I've taken a step back to look in the mirror, and decided that the hair really was long enough that I couldn't fit the clean shaven bill. Yes, it means I'll spend more money on shaving cream and razor blades because I'll use them more often, but it's a small price to pay to be a little bit closer to 100% obedient.

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