113: Special Episode: Our Bad Days

Bill, I had not listened to you for awhile and then came upon this episode and was a bit surprised, to put it mildly. It had the disappointment of your podcast on patriarchal blessings expressed with a lot more anger. I wrote a long email to my brother expressing my thoughts on the podcast and wanted to get his input on things. I am going to cut and paste that here without adaptation, because frankly I grew tired of looking at it and want to go on to other things. It is windy, unwieldy, and long enough that perhaps you and others might not bother to read. Despite its length it leaves a lot out. Most things I am not expressing as well as I would like. It is also intensely personal. Here it is:

Gary: here is something for you to consider and comment back if you want, as I would be interested in how you might put it together. I am considering writing a private letter to someone that I think is struggling with something that need not be, but I am detecting a fair amount of bitterness in his writings that previously had been supportive of the Church. It has to do not with the content (e.g. historical and doctrinal) of what is being talked about in and around the Church today, but the “fact” that so much of it was “hidden” or “suppressed” “by the Church” for so long. Where to go with this? In the 1800’s and at least the early 1900’s these current controversies were all things people knew about from personal experience having church leaders living down the street, etc, and history was up close and some aspects of doctrine were argued openly and differently by various leaders, but in the end they all took the sacrament and attended the Temple together and got on with the work of the Kingdom. Personally, I look upon that era with a degree of nostalgia.

However, at some point the sheer volume of Church history and doctrine becomes so vast that to a degree “those in the Church” have to pick and choose what to talk about: more gets left out than what gets included. What is most important? What is not so important but everyone should still know about it? And when? What do you translate into a hundred different languages for the missionaries to carry forth, or for the international members to have as a reference? Do you need to explain polyandry to the Koreans when they have such a difficult time with the concept of atonement (many elements of the atonement are completely foreign to the thought processes of those born and raised in Korea and some other Asian nations)? How do you write the history of the Church, or the biographies of its members, when you know that outside of the Mormon Corridor just about everything you hear will be derision and calumny? What if you grew up with a father, say Joseph F. Smith, who had been personally subject to open persecution and grew up fatherless because of martyrdom? How would you write your Essentials of Church History? What would be your bias?

One cannot read about the correlation program in the scriptures, but since the basics of it were formulated by Apostles and Prophets as the Church started penetrating world-wide, it has a divine mandate and it has aspects which are absolutely good. But since correlation is, to a certain extent, a collection of policies might not some aspects of it need rethinking? What parts of the program are close to divine and what parts of it are perhaps, being run by overzealous censors that ought to just leave things alone (thinking of conference talks/prayers being altered, etc.) As a program, correlation has certainly been weaponized by the critics. I have heard the same critic praise it when it suppressed something he thought should be suppressed and castigate it when it suppressed something he thought every investigator ought to be “taught this first.” Well, all these things are interesting questions and possibilities and I would like to see them discussed, eventually, as to how so much came about from a historical perspective by scholars and historians I trust.

Do you not find it perplexing to hear of the disillusionment many feel for the current “openness” of the Church that somehow they had been lied to previously by said Church? Who lied to them? Who, exactly, should be verbally crucified for having lied? Why did they lie to them? Did they lie to them? Whose responsibility is it to inform them of everything? Is anyone ever fully informed? Just look at Church magazines and what has been written about over the years that is now surprising people. Do you have to write everything out, with references, take it to the members’ door and have them read it: “turn off ‘The Voice’ now! Leave it, and all the other… off, read this and sign it and it will be placed in your membership records!”

Before the age of internet, podcasts, Amazon.com…where did you and I, who like to just read for ourselves, get our information such that none of this is surprising now? Where did you and I learn of polyandry before it was ever called polyandry? (As an aside, I hate the term…it took a non-Mormon at a Mormon History Association meeting a few years back to show how the term was being misused, regardless of one’s take on it.) My recollection is that I got just about everything I read at Deseret Book, and even though a book may not have been published from them it was still sold there. Sometimes the wards in the East or Midwest or overseas would have their own tiny bookstores. On visits to Utah I would sometimes drop into BYU Bookstore where I could pick up issues of Dialogue or Sunstone, but after awhile I grew weary of the whining (especially in Sunstone) and grew to appreciate BYU Studies as being better-written anyway. All in all, for the thirty years from the 70’s through the 90’s I picked up the bulk of everything I read from Deseret Book on intermittent trips, or later moving to, Utah. I would love to go back to peruse those books again, to see by whom they were published, etc., but like you are doing now, on at least two occasions I just ran out of room and hauled away boxes of books to give to DI.

I do remember that if a book cover or review said anything about a book being “faith promoting” I usually left it on the stand. There was so much else to read “really thick and worth the time and cost” and just gave “history” without culling out the “nonessential”. To me it was all “faith-promoting” to learn the whole darn thing, what some call “the mess”, but which I disagree with such a characterization: it is human history, and with we Latter-day Saints it is where human history strongly intersects with the divine and it still marches on. These men being derided today: Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, Orson Pratt, Orson Hyde, Joseph Fielding Smith…these and countless others were all men with biases, faults, prejudices, weaknesses which, because of their leadership positions and the nature of their callings, have had their frailties ever magnified. It is very possible that I may not have even liked one or two of these men. They could be hard, and idiosyncratic. But I love these men and what they did and what they sacrificed for the restoration. The transposition of heavenly light and divine keys to human kind has always been entwined in the imperfection of all of us. It has never been different. If the source of light and truth to all of us, Jesus Christ, could have had his earthly message at almost every turn be misunderstood, and uncorrected by an immediate voice from heaven, with so many going astray as result…what should our expectations be in these latter-days for the unfolding of the still ongoing restoration?

Since this is the way it is, and as I read scripture and history it is the way it has always been, the difficulties we seem to be encountering now lead me to believe that this is what earth life was meant to be: very very hard with these kind of problems, ironies, etc. being the norm. What is to become of it all? I think at this time, like at other times, we may very well lose significant numbers from Church membership. It is agonizing. However, if the picture of things at the second coming is anything like that of the first coming to America, the membership of the Church is going to be struggling at the time of His coming. I think it is a way off, and that there will be many ups and downs for the Church before, but membership lability was the norm in ancient America in the final years before the Lord’s appearance.

There is something that really alarms me now, with some disillusioned members leaving, more so than just the fact of their leaving. If they make a prayerful, conscientious decision to leave after much study and prayer it is no doubt a tragedy, but perhaps Christ might exercise more leniency at the time of judgment than what we think. He sees into hearts and knows the whole story of people better than we will ever do, so I am glad to leave that up to him. But what alarms me most is the unwarranted criticism, the vituperation, the railings that people heap upon God’s chosen during and after their exit that really sets them up, I believe, for an extremely unhappy future. I happen to believe what Christ said in that we will be judged, in large part, in the same way we judge others. That may not bode well for many. I know some things about the lives of a few critics: I have seen them researching down at the Church History Library. My thought, for them, is to take great, very great, care in what they say, in how they criticize. I would like to say, but will not: “you criticize one for this, and yet you have done this, this, and this?” My thought is the same for those for whom I do not know any of the personal details of their lives. Just the fact of their all being human would make one want to take great care in criticism, in vituperation, in railing. Especially if one has a forum, that one has a responsibility to take great care in what they say because once it leaves their mouth, they own it. And once something has been broadcast, it is hard to undo.

Well Gary, this is getting long but I want a close with a personal history of which you are aware and has to be told delicately. It has to do with the disillusionment that many feel with the Church for only now becoming aware of its imperfections. It has to do with these questions: How could the Church, and its leaders, (perhaps even God?) have done this to me after all the time, money, and effort that I have invested lifelong into it? Next, who, exactly, is responsible? And last, who is it that really needs the forgiveness?

If this were a parable, the subject of it would be me. The disillusionment toward the Church, its leaders, its members would be mine: I own them. The source had essentially nothing to do with Church history and only a bit with doctrine; it did have to do with a temple marriage gone wrong, based on original righteous desires and attended to with prayer and struggle for many years. After the bitter end I was disillusioned with the Church in the same way that others are now. If it had not been for the Church, I would have never picked that partner (so I thought). If it had not been for the Church, I would have ended it years before I did, while yet young with most of life still before me. If it had not been for the Church’s teachings, the counsel of its leaders, the advice of its members my married life would have been completely different. At least so I thought for a few years, while the attitude continued. It did continue for a few years and certainly did not help subsequent relationships. But eventually, after kicking against the pricks long enough, alone in the world, I stumbled upon another and better way. “The way” was made possible by the Savior, His atonement, and a better understanding of His teachings taught in His restored Church and centers on one word: forgiveness. I totally and completely forgave those I thought had contributed to my unhappiness, known and unknown, by their counsel and advice. I forgave completely all other parties and had a wonderful feeling of lightness and magnanimity for a long time: it was the right thing! In terms of relationships, I became blessed as Job of old, hundreds of times over, for any unhappiness I had experienced previously. However, in time I began to realize that my “forgiveness” was only a very small stepping stone on the path to a greater experience of truth, which is made all the more poignant now by seeing what the current disillusioned are experiencing with the Church. The insight of truth was this: in what way was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its leaders, or its members ever originally responsible for any of my unhappiness? The answer was: NOT the Church and no one in it has ever been responsible for whatever lot fell my way. It, and they, have never been in need of my forgiveness! Forgiveness for me seemed good, and it helped me to move forward, but it was never warranted in the first place! In the marriage, only two people needed forgiveness and that forgiveness has been given and received by those that needed it, and I was one of them. The early marriage had been, all along, mine for the making. The countless personal moments of selfishness, lack of effort, and not doing my best over many years are the reason the marriage folded. The leaders that counseled, the members that advised: they all did the best they could and like all of us are imperfect and God be praised that I had the experience to learn this lesson during my sojourn on earth and to find joy in marriage, in the Gospel, in the Church, and with the God who created me. I hope our fellow members who struggle likewise now with blame and anger, can learn to forgive, and at some future time see who it is that really needs, and does not need, forgiveness.