The Church's public affairs department sent an open letter to mormon blogs yesterday. You can read it for yourself. There are parts of it I like, and parts of it I don't.
First, the part that I don't like. Otterson describes a criticism from the internet community at "By not engaging with the more extreme groups, the Church – and Public Affairs in particular – is not acting as Christ would." Let me start of by just clarifying that the argument "public affairs is not acting as Christ would" is just stupid. I get that much. Public affairs is an entity meant to help develop and distribute messaging from the Church. They shouldn't be expected to "act as Christ would."
That being said, if you're going to claim that you're not meeting with extreme groups, then don't meet with extreme groups. And yes, Mormon Women Stand is an extreme group. In response to Ordain Women, they describe themselves as women who "unequivocally sustain the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles." That may seem perfectly harmless at first, but unequivocal doesn't leave much space for doubt and concern. The expectation of unequivocal stifles innovation and creativity in solving problems the Church and local congregations face.
Mormon Women Stand and Ordain Women are the opposite extremes in the discussion of women's issues in the Church. So let's not claim that we're not meeting with extreme groups.
The part I did like: in response to the question of whether women (or men) are ever demeaned or marginalized in the Church, "Yes, of course....What this argues for is better training of leaders and members1." As it turns out, I just had a brief talk with my bishop about this on Tuesday. And I can't tell you how relieving it is to have a bishop to whom I can speak of my wholly equivocal support for how the ward is being managed without him calling into question my commitment to the Church. But we talked about how so many positions in the Church require strong leadership skills, and the Church does next to nothing to teach those skills. I mean that quite seriously: the Church does next to nothing to teach its members leadership skills.
Sure, we have "leadership training" meetings pretty much every stake conference. There's one catch to those training meetings, though--you're only invited if you've already been called into leadership. And most of the leadership training meetings I've been to end up with a public speaking format (ie, usually no interaction between the speaker and the audience) and focus on how we need to "listen to the Spirit" and "ask for and follow inspiration."
I won't argue against those principles. They are certainly true and valuable. But how about doing workshops that teach interviewing skills? How about workshops that teach leaders how to ask questions that get members to evaluate and express their own beliefs? How about workshops that teach leaders how to build a common vision and inspire people to want to contribute; to do better than manipulate them with "the Lord is calling you and you don't want to let down the Lord, do you?" When you possess these skills, the power of inspiration and revelation are magnified many times over. We should be teaching them routinely. We should be teaching them to people before they are called into leadership. We should be teaching these skills to our youth, our home and visiting teachers, and our Sunday school teachers.
Screw it! We should be teaching these skills to anyone who walks through the door.
So yes, we need better training. Can we please start by recognizing that our ability to lead is not completely determined by our ability to hear the Spirit? Can we admit, already, that there are practical skills that we aren't teaching our current and future leaders that, if they developed, would make for a stronger church? Can we start now?
1 I'm going to ignore for now the fact that the problem isn't really that local leaders sometimes demean and marginalize members, but that there are systemic and cultural forces in the Church's teachings and structure that enable and perpetuate these things.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Friday, May 23, 2014
How to Break the Unbreakable Nalgene (Or, Why I Understand Those Who Leave the Church)
I don't know if Nalgene officially bills its water bottles as unbreakable anymore. Truthfully, I don't know if it ever did. I do know that they can withstand an incredible amount of abuse. You can probably find plenty of clips on YouTube. But it is surprisingly simple to break one.
Here's a decent video that captures the main points (it's only 50 seconds long). When you watch, you'll notice that the bottle is full of, not water, but ice. If you fill the bottle up to the cap, put the cap on, and freeze the bottle for a day or two, all of the water in the bottle will freeze. The nifty thing about water is that it expands when it freezes. So if the bottle was full before you froze it, all that ice is going to push on the inside of the bottle, creating a large amount of force pushing outward. The second component is the drop onto a hard surface. If the drop is far enough to create enough force, the combined forces pushing inward and outward will be enough to break that virtually indestructible bottle.
By Common Consent ran a post yesterday titled "Our Sisters are Leaving," in which the author discusses how some of the Church's public relations choices may influence some men (and women) to leave the Church. Especially when the PR choices implicitly endorse hyper conservative positions on gender roles.
I believe the Church needs to make changes in how it addresses gender issues. I'm convinced that there are several Church leaders who believe it needs to change the way it addresses gender issues. The status quo is inadequate and many of the statements and policy changes in recent years lead me to believe that there will be more changes coming in the future. But I also see how the Church tries to message these changes, and I also see how incredibly slow and hard fought these changes seem to come.
One of the comments in the BCC blog post stated
Alas, I am a promote-change-from-the-inside kind of guy. If you're feeling like you don't have a place in the Church; if you feel a desire to leave it, know this: I don't want you to leave. I also don't want to you live in constant pain at church. I want you to stay and help build a network of saints that can support change. But I also understand if that is a burden too heavy for your soul to bear right now.
To you I say, "please, don't go." But if you do, know that I still value you. I will always consider you an ally and a friend. And I hope that as I push on that bottle from the inside I'll see your familiar hands, opposite mine, pushing firmly from the outside.
1 And one time even had a full exit plan established.
Here's a decent video that captures the main points (it's only 50 seconds long). When you watch, you'll notice that the bottle is full of, not water, but ice. If you fill the bottle up to the cap, put the cap on, and freeze the bottle for a day or two, all of the water in the bottle will freeze. The nifty thing about water is that it expands when it freezes. So if the bottle was full before you froze it, all that ice is going to push on the inside of the bottle, creating a large amount of force pushing outward. The second component is the drop onto a hard surface. If the drop is far enough to create enough force, the combined forces pushing inward and outward will be enough to break that virtually indestructible bottle.
By Common Consent ran a post yesterday titled "Our Sisters are Leaving," in which the author discusses how some of the Church's public relations choices may influence some men (and women) to leave the Church. Especially when the PR choices implicitly endorse hyper conservative positions on gender roles.
I believe the Church needs to make changes in how it addresses gender issues. I'm convinced that there are several Church leaders who believe it needs to change the way it addresses gender issues. The status quo is inadequate and many of the statements and policy changes in recent years lead me to believe that there will be more changes coming in the future. But I also see how the Church tries to message these changes, and I also see how incredibly slow and hard fought these changes seem to come.
One of the comments in the BCC blog post stated
if the church is God’s church, however inadequately administrated, you don’t get to wander off and blame it on somebody else. You have to stay, to serve, to contribute, and even enlighten. You don’t really have a choice. What are you going to say? “Yes, God, I felt the BOM was from you, yes, I’ve felt priesthood power, yes, I made covenants, but people weren’t very understanding of my feelings, I didn’t feel valued enough, and your apostles don’t listen to you very well, so I left” I just don’t think that’s going to fly.Unfortunately, change--kind of like breaking a water bottle--often only comes as a factor of internal and external pressure. So I get it when people get frustrated that their voices aren't heard. I can relate to how it feels to be marginalized because you have some of those 'crazy ideas.' I understand the temptation to express myself with my feet, walk out the doors, and not come back. I've sat on the precipice of leaving the Church twice in my life1.
Alas, I am a promote-change-from-the-inside kind of guy. If you're feeling like you don't have a place in the Church; if you feel a desire to leave it, know this: I don't want you to leave. I also don't want to you live in constant pain at church. I want you to stay and help build a network of saints that can support change. But I also understand if that is a burden too heavy for your soul to bear right now.
To you I say, "please, don't go." But if you do, know that I still value you. I will always consider you an ally and a friend. And I hope that as I push on that bottle from the inside I'll see your familiar hands, opposite mine, pushing firmly from the outside.
1 And one time even had a full exit plan established.
Monday, April 14, 2014
The Statistician's Approach to Improving Home Teaching (Part 1 of 2)
Go ahead, roll your eyes. Groan. Dread what is about to come. If you're sane, the question you are hopefully asking yourself is "how can you possibly use statistics to improve home teaching1?" Allow me to answer that question for you:
You can't.
Statistics by themselves cannot -- and will not ever -- be a useful tool for improving home teaching.
That is my official and educated position as a professional statistician. So please, for the love of all that is holy, let's stop talking about home teaching statistics2.
Just to make sure we're all on the same page, by and large, when someone talks about home teaching statistics, they are referring to "the percentage of families who received a visit from their home teachers in the last calendar month." I blame ward clerks for this. Clerks are tasked with the ever-unpleasant task of reporting this percentage to the higher-ups once a quarter, and so they routinely ask those in charge of the home teaching program to provide this percentage. The problem is that the clerks are the only people in the world who are asked to have this kind of information. Those who are in charge of home teaching are required to, "give the bishop monthly home teaching reports. Each report includes a list of those who were not contacted."
From my own experience as a clerk, getting a list of names was nearly impossible. Almost every time I asked for it, I was given the home teaching percentage instead. I'm sure that my insistence on being given a list of names was not well received. I can only imagine that it was a frustrating request because the list of families not visited was so long, and people hated typing out all those names3.
So, of course, since the monthly percentage is so convenient to report, that's what gets reported. It's also the metric by which congregations often evaluate the quality of their home teaching program. So here's a hint from a statistician: any time you try to boil any issue down to a single statistic, you're doing it wrong.
Statistics is the art of allowing data to tell its story (not to be confused with using data to make up your own story). As with all good stories, there needs to be context and depth. You have to be able to relate to the story, and if your statistics don't help you do that, they are worthless.
The monthly home teaching percentage is a worthless statistic.
Have I harped on that enough yet? I think I've made my point. So let's talk about how, as a statistician, I would recommend evaluating the quality of a home teaching program. Rather than focusing on a single statistic, we're going to look at a combination of three key pieces of information4. One piece is superficial, the second is contextual, and the third is personal.
The Superficial
First -- and this one is going to make you scratch your head -- calculate your monthly home teaching percentage (go ahead, take a moment to scream at me). But never look at a single percentage alone. Instead, look at a graph of (at least) the past three months' home teaching percentages. In my congregation, it would probably look something like this (yes, this makes us look pretty bad):
This graph actually shows the percentage of families that haven't been visited. In each case, 31% of the families were visited last month, so for 69%, it's been over a month since their last visit. If there is a balanced level of effort from the home teachers, we would expect the percentage of families without a visit to decline as we get two and three months out. This would indicate that, although not every family is being visited every month, they have been visited sometime within recent memory. On the bottom, we see what happens if only a portion of the home teachers are participating--the percentage of families who haven't been seen in recent memory keeps climbing. Obviously, the goal should be to keep the bar on the left as small as possible.
The Personal
The last piece of information you need is feedback from those being home taught and is where you actually learn if your home teaching program is working. This feedback should be received during the regular meetings the leaders of the men's organizations are supposed to have with the men. During these meetings, the leaders should ask a couple of tough questions. Questions like:
For Part 2, I'll discuss some strategies and concepts for organizing home teaching that, in my opinion, have the potential to enhance the process of building relationships between people.
1 The home teaching program in the Church is a kind of internal tool for evaluating the spiritual and physical needs of families within a congregation. Each family is assigned a pair of home teachers from among the men who are expected to come visit the family periodically, get to know the family, and be their first line of spiritual and temporal support. For an extremely sterile description of home teaching, you can read what the Church has written in its administrative handbook.
2 Everything I'm about to say could be applied to visiting teaching as well. But I'm male and ego centric and am not directly affected by visiting teaching. So I'll talk about home teaching and you can call me sexist. Deal? Okay, moving on.
3 Now would be a good time to point out the the Church's computer software has the ability to generate this list automatically if people would use it. But people don't use it. I can't really blame them for that, because the software isn't particularly user friendly, and is only available on the lone administrative computer given to the congregation which is always in high demand. So what I'm really trying to say is that if the Church would finally go about making home teaching reporting available online, you'd get much better usage, much better reporting, and much better tools for improving home teaching (assuming we stopped talking about it in terms of monthly percentages).
4 You may be curious about the difference between a statistic and a piece of information. If I were to state it simply, the statistic is the number. The information is what that statistic tells us about what we are trying to measure. The numbers I'm about to address aren't what's really important, but what they tell us about the home teaching program.
5 By this I mean, minor financial worries. I'm not advocating that we should feel comfortable borrowing large sums of money from each other, but perhaps it isn't all that bad to be comfortable saying things like, "money is tight right now and I'm worried about the cold weather" or the car breaking down. Some of these things can be repaired or alleviated if you can find someone with the right skills, and it would be good if we had relationships in which we were comfortable letting down the barriers that prevent us from talking about these things with strangers.
6 Well, maybe. It's possible you're getting a lot of yes responses, but the friendships involved aren't between home teachers and home teachees. But I don't know that it is important to know if the friendships involved are related to home teaching. If you're getting a lot of yes responses, it means a lot of people have a support network within the ward, and that really isn't something you need to bother tweaking. Instead, your home teaching program will hopefully support and expand those relationships while allowing you to focus on building networks for those people who say no. But I wouldn't investigate any further than a yes or no answer here.
You can't.
Statistics by themselves cannot -- and will not ever -- be a useful tool for improving home teaching.
That is my official and educated position as a professional statistician. So please, for the love of all that is holy, let's stop talking about home teaching statistics2.
Just to make sure we're all on the same page, by and large, when someone talks about home teaching statistics, they are referring to "the percentage of families who received a visit from their home teachers in the last calendar month." I blame ward clerks for this. Clerks are tasked with the ever-unpleasant task of reporting this percentage to the higher-ups once a quarter, and so they routinely ask those in charge of the home teaching program to provide this percentage. The problem is that the clerks are the only people in the world who are asked to have this kind of information. Those who are in charge of home teaching are required to, "give the bishop monthly home teaching reports. Each report includes a list of those who were not contacted."
From my own experience as a clerk, getting a list of names was nearly impossible. Almost every time I asked for it, I was given the home teaching percentage instead. I'm sure that my insistence on being given a list of names was not well received. I can only imagine that it was a frustrating request because the list of families not visited was so long, and people hated typing out all those names3.
So, of course, since the monthly percentage is so convenient to report, that's what gets reported. It's also the metric by which congregations often evaluate the quality of their home teaching program. So here's a hint from a statistician: any time you try to boil any issue down to a single statistic, you're doing it wrong.
Statistics is the art of allowing data to tell its story (not to be confused with using data to make up your own story). As with all good stories, there needs to be context and depth. You have to be able to relate to the story, and if your statistics don't help you do that, they are worthless.
The monthly home teaching percentage is a worthless statistic.
Have I harped on that enough yet? I think I've made my point. So let's talk about how, as a statistician, I would recommend evaluating the quality of a home teaching program. Rather than focusing on a single statistic, we're going to look at a combination of three key pieces of information4. One piece is superficial, the second is contextual, and the third is personal.
The Superficial
First -- and this one is going to make you scratch your head -- calculate your monthly home teaching percentage (go ahead, take a moment to scream at me). But never look at a single percentage alone. Instead, look at a graph of (at least) the past three months' home teaching percentages. In my congregation, it would probably look something like this (yes, this makes us look pretty bad):
What's important about this graph, however, is not the height of the bars, but the height of the bars relative to each other. What you want to see is consistent, constant effort from month to month. If you 31% in January, 73% in February, and then 20% in March, it means that you managed to motivate people to get involved in home teaching for a month, but their energy and enthusiasm wasn't sustainable. Ministering to individuals and families should, ideally, be integrated into our lives. If we are successful in this integration, the height of the bars should be fairly consistent from month to month.
The Contextual
While the previous graph may give us insight into the consistency of the home teaching program, that insight is very limited. Most notably, that previous graph could mean that nearly every family is being visited in a three month period (equal effort across all the home teachers) or it could mean that the same 30% of families are being visited each month (effort is only coming from a limited group of home teachers) or anything in between. So we need another graph, and the way this graph appears will give a lot more context into what is actually happening. In this graph, we want to show the percentage of families whose last visit from their home teachers was one month ago, two months ago, and three or more months ago. I provide two examples below and will discuss the interpretation of each.
This graph actually shows the percentage of families that haven't been visited. In each case, 31% of the families were visited last month, so for 69%, it's been over a month since their last visit. If there is a balanced level of effort from the home teachers, we would expect the percentage of families without a visit to decline as we get two and three months out. This would indicate that, although not every family is being visited every month, they have been visited sometime within recent memory. On the bottom, we see what happens if only a portion of the home teachers are participating--the percentage of families who haven't been seen in recent memory keeps climbing. Obviously, the goal should be to keep the bar on the left as small as possible.
The Personal
The last piece of information you need is feedback from those being home taught and is where you actually learn if your home teaching program is working. This feedback should be received during the regular meetings the leaders of the men's organizations are supposed to have with the men. During these meetings, the leaders should ask a couple of tough questions. Questions like:
- Do you have a friend in the ward you would feel comfortable going to for advice if you were having marital/relationship problems?
- Do you have a friend in the ward you would feel comfortable talking to about your concerns of paying for heat this coming winter5?
- Do you have a friend in the ward you feel comfortable asking for advice about your home improvement projects?
- Do you have a friend in the ward you feel you can safely talk to if you had concerns or doubts with respect to church doctrine?
If you're getting a lot of 'No' responses, you're home teaching program isn't working and you should probably work on building friendships within the group.
If you're only getting a few 'No' responses, congratulations! Your home teaching program is a success6. You will also know which people feel the most socially disconnected and are probably in need of additional friendship.
A quick note on this piece of information: First, don't ever publicize a percentage of 'No' responses. When you make a display of this information -- and especially if you make it a common goal to reduce the number of 'No' responses -- you inadvertently put pressure on people to give the answer they think you want to receive. The only answer you can be interested in with these questions is the honest answer. Remember that the focus of these questions is not to demonstrate how good your home teaching program is. The purpose is to gain the insight necessary to take steps that may improve the lives of those being home taught.
One more caveat on this: if you're going to buy into this kind of an approach to evaluating the quality of your home teaching program, you may want to consider (partially) abandoning the expectation that home teachers visit every family every month. It would be nice if it happened at all, and it would be fantastic if it happened consistently. But only if it's happening because people are getting together in friendship. If your 100% home teaching is accomplished through a sense of duty instead of friendship, I would argue that you've lost a lot of the strength of the home teaching program.
The home teaching program has infinite potential as a power for good. I worry that by boiling it down to monthly percentages, we've put artificial limits on its potential. We need to talk less about metrics and more about relationships, friendships, trust, and ministry. We need to stop caring so much about the numbers and motivate ourselves to care about the people the those numbers represent. We need to stop using improvement in numbers as a motivation to do good and start using our motivation to do good as a way to improve our numbers.
For Part 2, I'll discuss some strategies and concepts for organizing home teaching that, in my opinion, have the potential to enhance the process of building relationships between people.
1 The home teaching program in the Church is a kind of internal tool for evaluating the spiritual and physical needs of families within a congregation. Each family is assigned a pair of home teachers from among the men who are expected to come visit the family periodically, get to know the family, and be their first line of spiritual and temporal support. For an extremely sterile description of home teaching, you can read what the Church has written in its administrative handbook.
2 Everything I'm about to say could be applied to visiting teaching as well. But I'm male and ego centric and am not directly affected by visiting teaching. So I'll talk about home teaching and you can call me sexist. Deal? Okay, moving on.
3 Now would be a good time to point out the the Church's computer software has the ability to generate this list automatically if people would use it. But people don't use it. I can't really blame them for that, because the software isn't particularly user friendly, and is only available on the lone administrative computer given to the congregation which is always in high demand. So what I'm really trying to say is that if the Church would finally go about making home teaching reporting available online, you'd get much better usage, much better reporting, and much better tools for improving home teaching (assuming we stopped talking about it in terms of monthly percentages).
4 You may be curious about the difference between a statistic and a piece of information. If I were to state it simply, the statistic is the number. The information is what that statistic tells us about what we are trying to measure. The numbers I'm about to address aren't what's really important, but what they tell us about the home teaching program.
5 By this I mean, minor financial worries. I'm not advocating that we should feel comfortable borrowing large sums of money from each other, but perhaps it isn't all that bad to be comfortable saying things like, "money is tight right now and I'm worried about the cold weather" or the car breaking down. Some of these things can be repaired or alleviated if you can find someone with the right skills, and it would be good if we had relationships in which we were comfortable letting down the barriers that prevent us from talking about these things with strangers.
6 Well, maybe. It's possible you're getting a lot of yes responses, but the friendships involved aren't between home teachers and home teachees. But I don't know that it is important to know if the friendships involved are related to home teaching. If you're getting a lot of yes responses, it means a lot of people have a support network within the ward, and that really isn't something you need to bother tweaking. Instead, your home teaching program will hopefully support and expand those relationships while allowing you to focus on building networks for those people who say no. But I wouldn't investigate any further than a yes or no answer here.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Cast Away Your False Idols: Use Mine Instead
"So this Sunday I've been asked to teach Relief Society on one of my two least favorite talks from this past conference.....the Dallin Oaks talk entitled 'No Other Gods'."
This was the first e-mail I saw that day. It came from a friend who, as she would later explain, felt like her Relief Society presidency had chosen this talk for the basis of a lesson and asked her to teach this lesson specifically because of how my friend feels about gender issues and same sex marriage1. Her request was that I help her 1) reconcile how she feels politically with how she feels religiously with the things Church leaders say on the topics, and 2) organize a lesson around this talk that wouldn't leave her fuming and unedified after teaching it.
Challenge accepted!
(For the remainder of this post, I'll be addressing my friend. It's just easier to write the post this way)
One aspect of Elder Oaks' talk that was discomforting was that it didn't seem to have much to do with putting God first in our lives except in the context of marrying earlier, having more kids, and rejecting same sex relationships. I remember feeling the same way when I first heard the talk. When I heard it, I kind of rolled my eyes and thought, "oh here goes Elder Oaks again." And then I tuned him out.
Reading the talk again now, it seems less grating to me (though parts of it still make me roll my eyes). Having removed myself from the context of the current events at the time it was given, I am a little better able to see some of the principles outside of the application. This talk was given at the first General Conference after the US Supreme Court issued a decision that upheld the overturn of Prop 8 in California. It was also during the first protest by Ordain Women. Elder Oaks' talk took clear swings at each of those events. It also took up one of his hobby horses from past talks as he spoke against the societal trends of later marriage and fewer children.
So how do you make a lesson out of this kind of material? You don't. In fact, my advice is to ignore all these things in your lesson. They're too controversial and too emotionally charged to lead to any kind of productive conversation in a large group discussion (by large group, I mean larger than 4-5). So just don't do it. Go find some other talks on the same principle of false gods and work from those. You might find such resources here, here, and here.
There's the answer to one question. Now you can go write your lesson. Let me know how it goes.
The harder question is how to reconcile how you feel politically, religiously, and the things Church leaders say on these topics. It's a hard place to be in. One of the reasons I started writing this blog was that, during the height of the 2012 election season, I started to feel that the spaces at church and among the saints were no longer safe spaces for me, or for anyone who felt that US social policy shouldn't mirror LDS moral codes. It's a really scary feeling to walk into church -- a place that should feel safe, and a place where one should be able to open their heart to the Lord and their peers -- and feel fear of ostracism. Especially when you've employed the same processes of exploration and confirmation for your political beliefs as you have over religious truths.
Eventually, all this anxiety over-boiled, and so I started writing. I started speaking out 2.
What gave me the confidence to speak out was a combination of a few things. An important epiphany I had was that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is an organized implementation of eternal principles. It is an entity that exists in a temporal world and has to deal with temporal issues. The Church, therefore, lobbies for social policies that are consistent with its mission. It can and should do that. I recognize that legalized same sex marriage, and broader acceptance of homosexual couples as part of society, will make it harder for the Church to convert and retain members. I get it. The earthly organization has to get involved in politics sometimes. That doesn't really bother me.
It bothers me more when leaders try to make it seem that spiritual worthiness is dependent on conformity to the political priorities of the temporal body of the Church. And I feel like Elder Oaks was attempting to do exactly that. It worked, too. I had seen people on Facebook commenting prior to conference that they were changing their opinions on legalized same sex marriage because of discomfort with imposing their religious preferences on others. Then after this talk, some of them reversed course because they felt that Elder Oaks had accused them of not living up to their covenants. I'm convinced this was the outcome Elder Oaks wanted.
So how do I maintain my faith when I feel like Church leaders are manipulating the members into policy positions that aren't essential to living the Gospel? With a lot of reading, I've come to the conclusion that even the highest leaders of the Church have opinions and biases that manifest in the way they interpret the Gospel. Some of those interpretations I agree with, some of them I don't. What's comforting to me is that, in some cases, not even all of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve agree with each other.
There have been deep disputes over matters of doctrine and policy in the history of the Church. Hugh B. Brown and Ezra Taft Benson were worlds apart on the priesthood ban (Elder Brown wanting to rescind the ban in the fifties, and Elder Benson being a staunch opponent of Elder Brown's attempts to do so). And even today, it seems that there is disagreement among the top leaders about how much members are expected to conform their political positions to the Church's.
Take for example, Elder Uchtdorf's talk from April of 2013. It was praised by members of all sorts. And one of the most inspiring messages he gave in that talk was "we are diverse in our cultural, social, and political preferences...[and]...The Church thrives when we take advantage of this diversity and encourage each other to develop and use our talents to lift and strengthen our fellow disciples."
If the Apostles don't agree with each other in every respect, how on earth am I supposed to agree and conform to every opinion and message given by every one of them? Simply put, I can't. But it's comforting to know that I don't have to. I can disagree with them on some matters and still have absolute faith that the eternal principles they are trying to teach me are true and applicable to my life.
I feel like the notion that we have to obtain perfect alignment of our cultural and social beliefs with every statement the Church leaders make to be a false god in and of itself. Let's try to keep some perspective3, 4.
1 So far as I know, she mostly shares my opinions on these matters. If you feel like I haven't been clear enough on my stances in the past, I wholly accept the Church's teachings that marriage between man and woman was ordained of God and that sexual activity outside of such a marriage runs contrary to His will. And I also wholly accept the Eleventh Article of Faith. Which is part of why I believe same sex marriage should be legal. If you want my opinions on gender issues in the Church, you can read up on those here.
2 And since I know someone will want to bring up that if I'm feeling anxiety, perhaps I should change my views. The problem with that idea is that I've never felt guilty for having my views. I've never felt anxiety over my views. I've only ever felt anxiety at the way other members treat me for having my views. That's a pretty substantial difference.
3If you're writing lengthy blog posts about how Disney's Frozen is indoctrinating children to the homosexual agenda, you may want to consider the possibility that you've adopted a false god
4Likewise, if you're repeatedly writing lengthy blog posts about how Mormon culture has it all wrong, you may want to consider the possibility that you've adopted a false god.
This was the first e-mail I saw that day. It came from a friend who, as she would later explain, felt like her Relief Society presidency had chosen this talk for the basis of a lesson and asked her to teach this lesson specifically because of how my friend feels about gender issues and same sex marriage1. Her request was that I help her 1) reconcile how she feels politically with how she feels religiously with the things Church leaders say on the topics, and 2) organize a lesson around this talk that wouldn't leave her fuming and unedified after teaching it.
Challenge accepted!
(For the remainder of this post, I'll be addressing my friend. It's just easier to write the post this way)
One aspect of Elder Oaks' talk that was discomforting was that it didn't seem to have much to do with putting God first in our lives except in the context of marrying earlier, having more kids, and rejecting same sex relationships. I remember feeling the same way when I first heard the talk. When I heard it, I kind of rolled my eyes and thought, "oh here goes Elder Oaks again." And then I tuned him out.
Reading the talk again now, it seems less grating to me (though parts of it still make me roll my eyes). Having removed myself from the context of the current events at the time it was given, I am a little better able to see some of the principles outside of the application. This talk was given at the first General Conference after the US Supreme Court issued a decision that upheld the overturn of Prop 8 in California. It was also during the first protest by Ordain Women. Elder Oaks' talk took clear swings at each of those events. It also took up one of his hobby horses from past talks as he spoke against the societal trends of later marriage and fewer children.
So how do you make a lesson out of this kind of material? You don't. In fact, my advice is to ignore all these things in your lesson. They're too controversial and too emotionally charged to lead to any kind of productive conversation in a large group discussion (by large group, I mean larger than 4-5). So just don't do it. Go find some other talks on the same principle of false gods and work from those. You might find such resources here, here, and here.
There's the answer to one question. Now you can go write your lesson. Let me know how it goes.
The harder question is how to reconcile how you feel politically, religiously, and the things Church leaders say on these topics. It's a hard place to be in. One of the reasons I started writing this blog was that, during the height of the 2012 election season, I started to feel that the spaces at church and among the saints were no longer safe spaces for me, or for anyone who felt that US social policy shouldn't mirror LDS moral codes. It's a really scary feeling to walk into church -- a place that should feel safe, and a place where one should be able to open their heart to the Lord and their peers -- and feel fear of ostracism. Especially when you've employed the same processes of exploration and confirmation for your political beliefs as you have over religious truths.
Eventually, all this anxiety over-boiled, and so I started writing. I started speaking out 2.
What gave me the confidence to speak out was a combination of a few things. An important epiphany I had was that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is an organized implementation of eternal principles. It is an entity that exists in a temporal world and has to deal with temporal issues. The Church, therefore, lobbies for social policies that are consistent with its mission. It can and should do that. I recognize that legalized same sex marriage, and broader acceptance of homosexual couples as part of society, will make it harder for the Church to convert and retain members. I get it. The earthly organization has to get involved in politics sometimes. That doesn't really bother me.
It bothers me more when leaders try to make it seem that spiritual worthiness is dependent on conformity to the political priorities of the temporal body of the Church. And I feel like Elder Oaks was attempting to do exactly that. It worked, too. I had seen people on Facebook commenting prior to conference that they were changing their opinions on legalized same sex marriage because of discomfort with imposing their religious preferences on others. Then after this talk, some of them reversed course because they felt that Elder Oaks had accused them of not living up to their covenants. I'm convinced this was the outcome Elder Oaks wanted.
So how do I maintain my faith when I feel like Church leaders are manipulating the members into policy positions that aren't essential to living the Gospel? With a lot of reading, I've come to the conclusion that even the highest leaders of the Church have opinions and biases that manifest in the way they interpret the Gospel. Some of those interpretations I agree with, some of them I don't. What's comforting to me is that, in some cases, not even all of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve agree with each other.
There have been deep disputes over matters of doctrine and policy in the history of the Church. Hugh B. Brown and Ezra Taft Benson were worlds apart on the priesthood ban (Elder Brown wanting to rescind the ban in the fifties, and Elder Benson being a staunch opponent of Elder Brown's attempts to do so). And even today, it seems that there is disagreement among the top leaders about how much members are expected to conform their political positions to the Church's.
Take for example, Elder Uchtdorf's talk from April of 2013. It was praised by members of all sorts. And one of the most inspiring messages he gave in that talk was "we are diverse in our cultural, social, and political preferences...[and]...The Church thrives when we take advantage of this diversity and encourage each other to develop and use our talents to lift and strengthen our fellow disciples."
If the Apostles don't agree with each other in every respect, how on earth am I supposed to agree and conform to every opinion and message given by every one of them? Simply put, I can't. But it's comforting to know that I don't have to. I can disagree with them on some matters and still have absolute faith that the eternal principles they are trying to teach me are true and applicable to my life.
I feel like the notion that we have to obtain perfect alignment of our cultural and social beliefs with every statement the Church leaders make to be a false god in and of itself. Let's try to keep some perspective3, 4.
1 So far as I know, she mostly shares my opinions on these matters. If you feel like I haven't been clear enough on my stances in the past, I wholly accept the Church's teachings that marriage between man and woman was ordained of God and that sexual activity outside of such a marriage runs contrary to His will. And I also wholly accept the Eleventh Article of Faith. Which is part of why I believe same sex marriage should be legal. If you want my opinions on gender issues in the Church, you can read up on those here.
2 And since I know someone will want to bring up that if I'm feeling anxiety, perhaps I should change my views. The problem with that idea is that I've never felt guilty for having my views. I've never felt anxiety over my views. I've only ever felt anxiety at the way other members treat me for having my views. That's a pretty substantial difference.
3If you're writing lengthy blog posts about how Disney's Frozen is indoctrinating children to the homosexual agenda, you may want to consider the possibility that you've adopted a false god
4Likewise, if you're repeatedly writing lengthy blog posts about how Mormon culture has it all wrong, you may want to consider the possibility that you've adopted a false god.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Now Is the Time to Repent ... But Not Necessarily of Everything
Those of you who think I'm a raving lunatic would have loved to see my Elders' quorum meeting this week. We talked about faith and repentance and we discussed the following passage from the manual:
The very next thing we read was "The time to repent is now." Followed by "do not procrastinate
the day of your repentance until the end" (Alma 34:33). If you think I need to be put in my place every now and again, you probably would have enjoyed that.
But I'm not yielding (I'm not that humble). I still believe that it's okay not to repent right now.
Sort of. To see why I claim this, we're going to have to look a little further than the sound bites.
The relevant portion from Elder Scott's talk is this:
The Atonement has an infinite capacity to heal, but it doesn't heal all at once. It doesn't haphazardly pick up the shards of a broken heart and tape them all together all rough at the seams. Instead, it carefully gathers each piece and carefully, deliberately helps each piece and nurses the pieces to grow together, both minimizing the scars and restoring the original function.
Some pieces may not be ready to be grafted in yet. Perhaps the heart isn't strong enough to mend in a certain part. That's okay! Mend in the pieces that the heart is strong enough to mend. Then, periodically, re-evaluate the heart and decide if it's strong enough to mend in that bigger piece.
When listening to Elder Scott speak I realized instantly that his advice didn't apply only to abuse survivors, but to all of us who struggle to repent. We can piece together our repentance little by little. There's no need to try to do it all at once (as nice as that would be).
Mostly, I think this principle applies: every time we rid ourselves of any one sin in our lives, we come closer to God. Regardless of whatever other sins plague us. It isn't like there is any one sin that is so grotesque that it prevents us from drawing nearer to God until it is resolved. We can always draw nearer to God, in whatever little ways we choose. The chasm that separates us from God is more like the sum total of our short comings than it is just the worst of our failings.
Having just put that last thought in writing, I realize that this notion is filled with both despair and hope. This principle, if true, only widens the chasm between us and the Lord. But I still think that is merciful. Because it means that every little victory we accomplish--every small repentance--brings us a little bit closer to God. And every time we get closer to God, we find more strength to vanquish the larger demons in our lives.
So if I were to put all of it into context, I would say this:
Now is the time to repent.....of something. Anything.
Are you having trouble paying tithing? Perhaps you can pay something less than 10%. Sure, it won't satisfy the strict letter of the commandment, but it will bring you a little closer. And perhaps a little closer is what you need to prepare yourself to go further.
Are you addicted to smoking/pornography/Facebook and can't find the strength to quit. Fine. Maybe you can focus on reading your scriptures, or controlling your temper, or paying more attention to those around you. And by bringing yourself a little bit closer, you might find strength to kick your habit.
Do you find yourself frequently having unkind feelings toward your fellow saints and church leaders? (hmmm...who does that sound like, I wonder). And is your heart too callous to give them the benefit of the doubt, and try to help instead of quietly criticize? (really, I know this reminds me of someone) Try softening your heart through other means first.
The key to this is to re-evaluate periodically. When I say it's okay to delay your repentance of some sin for now, that grace has a shelf life. And that grace expires if you neither reevaluate your preparedness to change nor strive to repent of something else in the meantime. I can't think of anything worse than spoiled, rotting, unused grace.
So just do something. And feel a little better. And a little better. Before you know it, you'll feel a lot better.
Repentance is a gift of God. … It is not so easy for some people to repent, but the gift of repentance and faith will be given to every man who will seek for it. (Teaching of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Fielding Smith, p. 89)After reading this, I chose to speak about the difficulty of repenting; to acknowledge that it really isn't always an easy thing. I made reference to a message from Elder Richard G. Scott to abuse victims in 2008 and used his comments to claim that we didn't have to repent of all of our sins right now. If there was a sin we really struggled with, or one we just weren't prepared to give up yet, that was okay. We can work on other things until we are ready to repent.
The very next thing we read was "The time to repent is now." Followed by "do not procrastinate
the day of your repentance until the end" (Alma 34:33). If you think I need to be put in my place every now and again, you probably would have enjoyed that.
But I'm not yielding (I'm not that humble). I still believe that it's okay not to repent right now.
Sort of. To see why I claim this, we're going to have to look a little further than the sound bites.
The relevant portion from Elder Scott's talk is this:
As impossible as it may seem to you now, in time the healing you can receive from the Savior will allow you to truly forgive the abuser and even have feelings of sorrow for him or her. When you can forgive the offense, you will be relieved of the pain and heartache that Satan wants in your life by encouraging you to hate the abuser. As a result, you will enjoy greater peace. While an important part of healing, if the thought of forgiveness causes you yet more pain, set that step aside until you have more experience with the Savior’s healing power in your own life.At the time I heard this, I was struck by both the challenge and the compassion in this one segment. I have no doubt that forgiving one's abuser is a difficulty that I will never comprehend. For some (perhaps for most) in may seem an impossible task. And what is Elder Scott's advice if this is the case? "set that step aside."
The Atonement has an infinite capacity to heal, but it doesn't heal all at once. It doesn't haphazardly pick up the shards of a broken heart and tape them all together all rough at the seams. Instead, it carefully gathers each piece and carefully, deliberately helps each piece and nurses the pieces to grow together, both minimizing the scars and restoring the original function.
Some pieces may not be ready to be grafted in yet. Perhaps the heart isn't strong enough to mend in a certain part. That's okay! Mend in the pieces that the heart is strong enough to mend. Then, periodically, re-evaluate the heart and decide if it's strong enough to mend in that bigger piece.
When listening to Elder Scott speak I realized instantly that his advice didn't apply only to abuse survivors, but to all of us who struggle to repent. We can piece together our repentance little by little. There's no need to try to do it all at once (as nice as that would be).
Mostly, I think this principle applies: every time we rid ourselves of any one sin in our lives, we come closer to God. Regardless of whatever other sins plague us. It isn't like there is any one sin that is so grotesque that it prevents us from drawing nearer to God until it is resolved. We can always draw nearer to God, in whatever little ways we choose. The chasm that separates us from God is more like the sum total of our short comings than it is just the worst of our failings.
Having just put that last thought in writing, I realize that this notion is filled with both despair and hope. This principle, if true, only widens the chasm between us and the Lord. But I still think that is merciful. Because it means that every little victory we accomplish--every small repentance--brings us a little bit closer to God. And every time we get closer to God, we find more strength to vanquish the larger demons in our lives.
So if I were to put all of it into context, I would say this:
Now is the time to repent.....of something. Anything.
Are you having trouble paying tithing? Perhaps you can pay something less than 10%. Sure, it won't satisfy the strict letter of the commandment, but it will bring you a little closer. And perhaps a little closer is what you need to prepare yourself to go further.
Are you addicted to smoking/pornography/Facebook and can't find the strength to quit. Fine. Maybe you can focus on reading your scriptures, or controlling your temper, or paying more attention to those around you. And by bringing yourself a little bit closer, you might find strength to kick your habit.
Do you find yourself frequently having unkind feelings toward your fellow saints and church leaders? (hmmm...who does that sound like, I wonder). And is your heart too callous to give them the benefit of the doubt, and try to help instead of quietly criticize? (really, I know this reminds me of someone) Try softening your heart through other means first.
The key to this is to re-evaluate periodically. When I say it's okay to delay your repentance of some sin for now, that grace has a shelf life. And that grace expires if you neither reevaluate your preparedness to change nor strive to repent of something else in the meantime. I can't think of anything worse than spoiled, rotting, unused grace.
So just do something. And feel a little better. And a little better. Before you know it, you'll feel a lot better.
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