"A Confession and an Apology"

Everyone should read this!

Thanks for sharing, I don’t get out much so it’s nice to have people share things from other places. I liked this part:

When we are wounded by a policy or its ham-handed implementation, we extrapolate the certain wrongness of the policy for all times and all places. When, on the other hand, the Church has helped us to flourish, we readily believe that all good-hearted and right-thinking Saints will flourish similarly.

In reading some reactions to the NY Times article what I found the most troubling was that many people were trying to tell other people how they should be feeling… and it came from both sides of the argument. I’ll give what I call the “Ray warning” : this thread isn’t about polygamy or the NY Times article, there are many other treads that talk about that.

Apparently us humans have a terrible time of accepting the fact that other people are allowed to feel differently than we feel. Maybe a part of that stems from an innermost desire to validate our own feelings, i.e. if someone else feels the same way I can be more assured by my own feelings.

I singled out the quote above because I needed the reminder to not assume that one person’s bad experience or even one group’s bad experience is looming out there waiting to be a bad experience for everyone. The promise I made was to be wiling to bear someone else’s burden – there are no assumptions that are made as a part of that promise. Adhering to the promise requires me to listen, let other people relate to me their burdens, it will be different for everyone I meet, and help where I can. More often than not just listening may be all the help I can provide, but that may be exactly what someone else needs.

In support of my experience with Kristine – I am quoting a comment she made in the comment section.

–I can’t find anything to disagree with in your comment. There is a strong streak of anti-intellectualism in many places in the Church, created in part by Correlation and the lust for homogeneity that it sometimes spawns. I think we are currently reaping the whirlwind that those attitudes have sown. It will take a while for the Church to find a new balancing point. There’s not much you or I can do about that, but I do think it is possible and necessary to create bonds of love that transcend ideology; I have seen it happen and it is glorious. And it’s both easier and infinitely harder than working and hoping for institutional change.

I have a problem with this. Should one spend their whole lives denying their own life’s experiences? When experiences are repeated and extreme (in the beholders’ view), characterized by repeated unhappiness, overcoming, return to activity, and then another extreme experience, unhappiness, overcoming, and then activity in the church — at what point are those experiences “allowed” to be considered normal in the church, with all the implications for one’s activity in the church?

I think you just described life in general, not the church. I don’t mean to be insensitive to your experiences with the church in any way, shape or form. It’s just that what you describe reminded me of life in general, at lest my life.

I think that some of this might go back to the discussion on the one path to god. The one path to god model might make us feel like we have to mold ourselves to someone else’s ideal as opposed to finding the ideal within ourselves.

That is my biggest concern when I read this article. Through my own lens, and as far as my own issues go, the article seems to further the “tolerance of abuse due to exception” mentality that I personally just don’t accept anymore.

Fair point.

I think one of their central points was to legitimize experiences like yours/ours. A person that has had nothing but good church experiences shouldn’t discount the bad experiences that people have had and vice versa. In other words the person with good experiences should recognize the abuse instead of tolerating it passively by pretending that it does not exist.

Nibbler — I see what you mean — life IS like that. Problem is, I’ve managed to stay “active” in my job of over 2 decades, same company, in spite of “life” happening there. Same with my marriage. So far, same with community service.

The issue is that our church makes such huge claims about its role on earth, and sets such high standards for its members, that its own failings become very hard to take — especially when they are repeated and without apology.

I’ve been subject to repeated (and sometimes SUSTAINED) AND highly negative experiences in my career, company, marriage, community service, but they all seem so much easier to take because the line between divinity and humanity is not so BLURRED as it is in the church.

I CAN write off those experiences on the basis of personality, or human frailty. In the church, it’s way harder because on one hand, we’re constantly reminded that leaders are inspired, prophets will never lead us astray, that if we follow the advice of priesthood leaders all will be well. But then, when men (including prophets) fail to live up to that idea, we classify their behavior as isolated and atypical. The whole while, demanding large quantities of time, and money, often without any co-missioning or consideration for our own desires for where and how we serve.

Therein lies the difference between life, and the church, in my view, Nibbler…

I agree, Ray. I’d frankly really like it if a member or two of my ward said something similar to me. I don’t expect them to, and it’s not necessary for anyone to do so for my sake. Nevertheless if someone did I would most certainly gain a much higher respect for him or her as an individual.

I CAN write off those experiences on the basis of personality, or human frailty. In the church, it’s way harder because on one hand, we’re constantly reminded that leaders are inspired, prophets will never lead us astray, that if we follow the advice of priesthood leaders all will be well. But then, when men (including prophets) fail to live up to that idea, we classify their behavior as isolated and atypical. The whole while, demanding large quantities of time, and money, often without any co-missioning or consideration for our own desires for where and how we serve.

Therein lies the difference between life, and the church, in my view, Nibbler…

I hear you. When we attempt to write off those experiences in church it can just end up creating even more problems for us, no?