Friends
Friends are important, maybe at no other time more than this one. You’ll want to spend a lot of time with them—they’ll be important to you. What they do will often be what you do.
Therefore, it’s pretty important that you share the same values. Oh, you don’t all have to be the same faith and think the same things, but if some of your friends like to go out and vandalize car trunks, or shoplift, or think that it’d be great to have sex before they’re eighteen, those friends might not be the best to have.
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Members of the Mormon Church believe that who you spend time with often affects who you are. Peer pressure is very real. If all your friends want to sneak alcohol or what have you, it’s your opportunity to show moral strength, sure, but it’s hard to stand against the crowd over and over and over again. Eventually, you may just not have the same common interests. Or, eventually, you might start doing what they do. It’s always hard to act differently from people around you, even when they’re really understanding about it. And a lot of the times, they won’t even be understanding. They might even make fun of you for not doing what they do. It’s part of the nature of many crowds or cliques. |
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So it’s best to spend most of your time with people who will help you be a better person. If you’re with people who constantly try to bring you down, or do things that you know would be wrong to do, you’ll end up struggling to stay where you are and that can be very frustrating and dangerous. It’s much easier to slip when everyone else is doing it.
This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t ever hang around people who don’t share our values, but we’re more sensitive than we think. And our friends should be our allies. We can all help each other, but we need to want to.
And we need to look out for others beyond our immediate circles. For every person in your circle, there might be some number of kids who just aren’t able to walk into any friend group at all by themselves. There are always the shy who may be lonely, but afraid that if they approached, they’d be pushed out. You might find that they’re a lot like you.
Invite your friends to religious meetings (and this Mormonism does encourage), but don’t harass them! Remember that you wouldn’t want to be pushed into going to religious meetings that you weren’t interested in. The best teaching is through example. If you live well and help other people to live well, they might be a lot more interested in the whys.
If you’re Mormon and your friends aren’t Mormon, this doesn’t mean that they don’t share your values. Just like Mormons know that they’re Christian and want to be treated that way, not treated like outsiders, we should never leave people outside our friends just because their religion isn’t like ours.