Jesus isn't coming this week

I don't think the LDS Church should teach that Jesus is coming again.

How's that for controversial?

But let me rephrase: I don't think the LDS Church should teach that Jesus is coming again so soon. Like, not tomorrow. Or even the next day. Or even next year.

I understand the reason this is taught — it's so people don't put off repenting, that they live right right now. And because Jesus might just come really, really soon. I get it. But you want to know what it really does? Besides cause a fringe population of the church to become obsessed with preparedness, food storage and the like? It gives the impression to very impressionable Mormon children and teenagers that they don't need to plan for the secular future.

As a kid, I knew Jesus would come again — and soon. The earthquakes, floods, wars and general horribleness of the world was proof. I figured we'd see the Second Coming before I was 30. In my mind, I might be married and have a couple of kids, but I wouldn't get past that point. Cause Christ would come.

I don't blame my parents for this. They did not specifically tell me anything of the sort. And they most definitely prepared me for college. Maybe it was the Primary teachers, the hymns we sung every week in church, EFY, seminary, or maybe it was just the overarching belief among good Utah, Mormon kids. (Remember, we were the generation that was — incorrectly — told we'd been held back from being born for 6,000 years because we were so special, that we'd be bowed down to in heaven once others found out the time period in which we had lived, blah blah blah.) Who knows. But all I knew was that I needed to plan as far out as about 30. Go to college, maybe work for a few years, raise some little kids. No use thinking about what to do with teenagers — we wouldn't get to that point. No use thinking about a 401(k) or developing a career. Or thinking about a 25-year roof. Or retirement. Or, good crap, death.

Don't tell me I'm the only one out there who thought like this. I know I'm not.

As the years went by, that age of 30 went up. When you're 8, your aunts and uncles are 30. It's conceivable. When you're 18, that number might go up to 40. And so on.

I have a feeling this don't-prepare-for-life-only-for-Christ message may have been inadvertently pushed on girls more than boys. Obviously, this would be because of the church's still present, but now slightly minimized, focus on keeping women in the home and having men make the money.

But little Mormon girls need to be taught more than that. We needed to, during weekly Young Women's activities, hear about careers — not try on wedding dresses. (Really, how creepy to dress up a bunch of 15-year-old girls in wedding dresses and take pictures of them together. FLDS, anyone?) We needed to hear more about the promises we'd make in the temple as individuals, not just that we needed to be sealed to a man in the temple. We needed to be taught about finances, not crafts. (No one can argue that crafts are doctrinal in any shape or form.) We needed to be taught about how to stay physically healthy — throughout our entire lives— not just spiritually healthy.

If I have children, they will know that Christ will come again and that they need to be ready. But they — especially any girls — will also know there's more to prepare for in life than just that.