Figuring Out the “Reluctant, Resistant, and Hurting Mormon” Part 4

 

“We Are All Sick in Our Own Way”

In April 2015 Elder Renland (then a Seventy) tells of two women who after South African apartheid ended, “black and white members of the Church were permitted to attend church together.  For many, the equality of interaction between the races was new and challenging.  One time, as Julia and Thoba attended church, they felt they were treated less kindly by some white members.  As they left, Thoba complained bitterly to her mother.  Julia listened calmly until Thoba had vented her frustration.  Then Julia said, ‘Oh, Thoba, the Church is like a big hospital, and we are all sick in our own way.  We come to church to be helped.’”

 

How to react to someone who has been offended?  We can feel righteous indignation and commiserate, we can dismiss it out of hand, or we can change our perspective and do what Julia did:  give people room to learn and grow and come to terms with their own spiritual struggles.

Offenses and the spiritual pain they inflict are real.  Some may be unintentional, done in ignorance or small-mindedness.  Some may be small, others compounding, some egregious and harmful to our spiritual well-being.  How do we deal with the pain around us?  How do we deal with our own hurt?

Once a home teacher came to our home (without his partner, which may have ameliorated the offense) and talked to my husband all through the visit, even though I was sitting right next to my husband.  This representative of the Church never made eye contact with me, never addressed his questions to me about how things were going, never even noticed I was in the room.  At that point in time, I was dealing with other hurts and the perceived slights of sexism, so I was particularly offended by his neglect.

But I got over it.  With time, I could see how we are all feeble instruments in building up Zion – people full of cultural baggage and biases, and this neighbor was no different.  “We are all sick in our own way.”

It took time and learned patience with my neighbor to get over the offense.  And when I came to see that my causes to be offended were not nearly as large as others, I could reach out as well.  To the sister down the road who was abandoned by her husband and felt she could not face the “judgment” in the eyes of others, or the neighbor who was told his chronic depression was a sign he wasn’t living the gospel, or other members of the ward with similar issues and problems – these offenses were far larger, and my own concerns seemed trivial.

We go to church to be helped.  Alma’s admonition about what it means to be baptized comes to mind – a proactive reaching out to those who are mourning, needing comfort, need burdens lightened (Mosiah 18: 9-13).

And the results of this covenant of baptism are especially worth noting:  “That he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you” (vs. 10).  The Holy Spirit is the healing balm, the reason we can overcome our offenses and have patience with those who may be the cause of our offense.  The ultimate objective after all, is so that like Alma’s people, “there was no contention one with another but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another.”

Maybe we need to remember that this baptismal covenant works for unity among all the Saints of God.  Maybe the best way to overcome offense is the reliance on the Holy Ghost found through our baptismal covenant.  In that regard, we go to the “hospital” of the church, taking the sacrament, striving for understanding and forgiveness, and receiving the healing balm of the Holy Ghost.

We all need forgiveness and we all need patience – both for the offender as well as the offended.  As Elder Renlund concluded,

“If we do not give others the opportunity to change at their own pace, we are simply pretending to be Latter-day Saints”

Figuring Out the “Reluctant, Resistant, and Hurting Mormon” Part 2:

Dealing with the Hurt

These blogs are a method of working through the pain we encounter as members of our faith go through doubt and despair – either as we witness the shaken faith of a friend or loved one, or as we come to terms with our own resistance towards doctrine, principles, or policies.

First, reminders are necessary:

• Labels can be off-putting but helpful. No one wants to be labeled as a “resistant” or “reluctant” anything, particularly if it’s about one’s deepest held beliefs. But to view the hurt in terms of how we approach our spiritual growth, sometimes we must admit that we are reluctant in getting spiritually involved or resistant in heart-felt pleas to move forward.
• Self-reflection and honest appraisal of our gospel fortitude may be painful, but is so necessary. How would you rate your own resiliency, patience, faith?
• Not everyone’s hurt is the same. A principle that may offend one person (ie. not praying to our Heavenly Mother, polygamy in early Church history, importance of restored Priesthood authority), may be unimportant in another’s scheme of things. Some hurts can be mollified by thoughtful answers to change misperceptions, but other hurts need the balm of Gilead – prayer, love, the Holy Spirit, and plenty of time.
• The saddest stories are those who give up. One “post-Mormon” blogger admits after years of prayers and study, he was no longer interested in finding answers. A form of spiritual suicide in giving up the will to live by the Spirit? If mortality is an eye-blink, we certainly cannot give up our faith and desire to reach out to God in this life – even if meanwhile you feel hurt.
• Cynicism, sarcasm, or making fun of the sacred is the death knell for spiritual promptings. It may feel like a jaded view protects us from hurt, but it’s just hard-heartedness.

But why do we hurt? Cognitive dissonance – the buzzword among struggling Saints – means we have times when we come up against things that don’t jive – a competing “cognition” that doesn’t fit our worldview. Dissonance creates tension, and we seek to resolve the tension. Ultimately we have four ways to do it (Michael Ash Fair Mormon Podcast (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuZy4QtItXM) :
1. Ignore the dissonance (new idea is not important to you)
2. Reject the competing idea or cognition (new idea reads false)
3. Accept the competing idea and reject previous cognition or idea
4. Add additional ideas or cognitions to the original cognition
It appears that the third method of dealing with cognitive dissonance is the reason for a “shaken faith syndrome.” This rejecting of previous ideas may be legitimate (ie. B. H. Roberts believing all Native Americans came from Lamanites ), but rejecting ideas may run the risk of throwing out gospel truths because they just don’t “feel” right – especially if one is already vulnerable to black and white thinking or impatient for answers.
There is much to be said about the problems with impatience, or problems of speculation, for example, relying on Mormon folklore and Mormon (and “post” Mormon) bloggers or posters instead of the hard work of study and personal revelation. In that regard, the fourth method of dealing with cognitive dissonance seems the most powerful one – patience, scholarship, and sincere seeking.
Meanwhile, looking at the reasons for hurting allows us to help “reluctant” or “resistant” Mormons or to help ourselves when we are hurting, resistant, and reluctant. Like my middle school students, those who hurt will learn and progress if given sympathetic acknowledgement of their pain, and encouragement that the Lord will heal.

“Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief” (Mark 9:17) means doubt is real and inevitable. Yet exercising faith in God – through the pain, and especially because of the pain – ultimately is the best medicine for the hurt.

Measuring Pain

Measuring Pain

In the emotional turmoil on Facebook and other social media over the publicized LDS stance on gay marriages, people have begun to put a price tag on pain and suffering. “This is so bad, I am considering removing my name from the rosters of the Church,” or “The questions about the children break my heart!” Implicit in these outbursts is the policy/Church/God (pick one) is wrong, and we need to set things right. How can leaders not hear these cries of pain and do nothing?

Ironic that during real crises of physical violence and the resulting emotional turmoil caused by terrorism, we who sit at our keyboards are drawn to emote about the pain and spiritual angst we suffer vicariously for our gay friends and family members. But maybe not so strange. After all, the world offers a constant reminder that ours is a global community, that the suffering of someone else is also our suffering. And our gay friends and family members are indeed suffering the reminder that they are still different and still discriminated against. For whatever status a gay person is within or without the church, they are suffering.

Too many websites, blogs, and social media memes, however, both minimize the compassion some of us feel, while using Christian charity as a weapon to shame those of us who support the Church’s doctrines and policies on gay marriage. It’s as if the pain they feel for a gay couple’s child being asked to wait to be baptized is more than the pain I feel for someone who is trying to live the gospel and keep the commandments while living in a situation of same sex attraction that they did not ask for. Or the pain of a gay member who has given up, and wants to remove their name from the rosters of the church.

But you cannot and should not compare pain.

Nor tell me that I do not have compassion because I do not agree with the emotional outbursts of gay rights advocates, nor agree with those who accuse the church of “banishing” children (New York Times article), nor agree with those who tell me I cannot judge the actions of a gay LDS couple who get married as right or wrong.

So why should I go against the current, and insist on caring in a different way when others apparently “care” more than I do, or remind me not to judge, while telling me that they feel pain at the injustice of this policy?

Let me tell you the story of Mark, one of my favorite former students. Of course Mark isn’t his real name, although he hid nothing – the fact that he was gay as well as an active, devout Mormon. He loved life, his good friends, and of course his Savior. He was a thoughtful, caring, and hard-working student who looked forward to getting a good education and making a contribution to the world. Once he confided in me that he was so tired of being judged by—get this—the gay community for not being “gay” enough because he wasn’t a strident, “I demand my rights!” kind of guy. “The gays I see in the news are not what I want to be,” he told me. “They use being gay so they can force the issue on the rest of us.” Insightful and mature for a seventeen-year-old.

The policy instructing leaders that gays in a single-gender marriage or relationship are breaking the commandments is nothing new to Mark. He knows and intends to keep the law of chastity. He is trying to make his way in a world that is asking him to take up sides, to “defend his rights and free agency” when all he wants is to live a full and righteous life. He doesn’t want your pity, nor your explanation of how he should feel. His pain is living with the constant reminder, especially in the shouting about the pain caused by an LDS policy, that people see him as a victim and by doing so continue to see him as separate and somehow less.

So as we discuss the wounded and the weary, think of Mark and his pain.