There is a person in my ward who doesn’t like i when I grow a beard. Last winter, when all my rehearsals were done for Papers, this person gave me a ride home from a meeting. On the way home, he asked me if I was going to shave my beard now that the performance was done. There were other such comments.
One of my counsellors works for him, and he asked my counsellor to stay late Thursday night, the night we have our presidency meetings. Even after my counsellor explained about our presidency meeting, he still insisted he needed him to stay late.
Does it seem odd to anyone else that he would make a big deal about facial hair, but then have no problems expecting someone to miss a presidency meeting?
People find fault with others to mask their own insecurities over their own faults, hence Jesus’ admonition to not pick at motes at in other’s eyes. Ignore him, and grow a goatee and nice set of lambchops.
confront him and ask him what the problem is!! There will always be people in every ward that think that facial hair is a no no and unless you shave it you will go straight to hell and it is their mission in life to keep all male members on the straight and narrow path.
This subject always makes me laugh since avery artistic depiction of God or Jesus, even in the LDS temple, is with long hair and a beard. Don’t forget Brigham Young, Wilfred Woodruff etc. People nowadays who get uptight about such fashion choices are basing it on a very outdated fear of the hippie/drug culture of the 1960s. A well groomed beard no longer depicts the same social statement. I agree with Kurt that this sort of obnoxious nit-picking behaviour is all about covering up one’s own insecurities
Boyd K. Packer gave a talk a number of years ago titled the Unwritten Order of Things.
He also gave a talk regarding those who focus on one particular part of the Gospel and become fanatics about it.
The point being, there are those who have a sense of always being right, because sometime, somewhere, some GA or other said something about it, and now it is their responsibility to enforce it, to the detriment of all else.
This ward member has a fetish about control because of something he is fanatical about facial hair.
Trying to have a rational discussion with someone like this is like trying to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. It won’t make any difference. Your test is to love him in spite of his piece of lumber.
As an aside, is it your intent to let it grow to the point where it will hide your little buddha? :>)
a) this guy is being too invasive (boundaries people!)
b) this guy is an ignorant hypocrite
See, the problem with the ignorant is that they’re ignorant of their own ignorance. It’s a vicious cycle, really.
Could he maybe think your beard is not grown well? Some people, like my own dear dad can not for the life of him grow a nice beard! It tends to look more like pubic hair!
Maybe he is just nicely trying to tell you that, thinking you might not realize it!
Definitely not.
I had a nice Ward Mission Leader on my mission that gave me some advice. It was the English equivilent of, “Non illigitamus carborundum”.
I’ll let you look it up.
Nice.
For what it’s worth, I’m not letting it get me down. I just thought the stances on the two issues seemed odd.
The difference is that one requires you to make an effort to please him, and the other requires him to make an effort to please you.
Larry’s comment #4 (made over a year ago) mentions a talk by Boyd K. Packer called “The Unwritten Order of Things.” I’ve been looking for the talk, and I can’t find it. Anyone know where it is?
Is this it?
Yes, though I had a little trouble getting there just by clicking on the link you gave. This is how I got there:
http://emp.byui.edu/huffr/The Unwritten Order of Things — Boyd K. Packer.htm
Well that’s weird. I guess whatever problem made the web address incomplete when you typed it in did the same thing for me. Apparently something about the automatic editing. Just go to http://em.byui.edu/huffr/ and you’ll get there after a few clicks. It’s an excellent address. I couldn’t find it before because I was looking at general conferences.