Confusing Family and Church

Suddenly, it hit me. None of how I was raised was part of the church’s agenda. My parents used the church as an excuse for their own personal agendas. But none of it had anything to do with the church. Even after all these years, I was making assumptions. I had mixed up and confused my own personal background, culture, and religious traditions.

Serious lightening bolt moment. I hope you don’t mind if I borrow it?

Suddenly, it hit me. None of how I was raised was part of the church’s agenda. My parents used the church as an excuse for their own personal agendas. But none of it had anything to do with the church. Even after all these years, I was making assumptions. I had mixed up and confused my own personal background, culture, and religious traditions.

What an “ah-ha” moment! Very profound.

If it makes you feel any better, I think we all have traditions of our parents we don’t even realize had nothing to do with what the church actually teaches, but things are just the way we’ve always heard them. For me, it was things like assuming Joseph Smith was actually looking at some plates while translating, and frogs boil in water if you slowly turn up the heat…stuff like that.

It is uncomfortable at first, then maybe a little embarrassing we never thought to question or ask things before…but it is a sign of maturity when we can accept it isn’t the “church’s” fault for people having limited understandings. It is our challenge to question and find truth for ourselves. That is what God wants us to do.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Rene Descartes

I don’t think we are ready to see things as they really are at all once. We have grow line upon line, grace upon grace, until we can molt the things we thought we knew to grow a newer spiritual skin. It is not just mormons that go through this. Humans do.

To me, this underscores a bedrock principle of StayingLDS (at least, for me). And that is to teach your children about what YOU think, and have solid reasons for it. No appeals to church authority.

I do appeal to the law — when training my son about ways kids get into trouble, and the consequences. But church reasons are rarely, if ever given for why things run a certain way in our family. I will admit, we have at times consulted the Strength For Youth pamphlet to determine options for how to handle dating etcetera, but that was as an “option”.

Also, don’t underestimate the power of “culture” and how it directs behavior unconsciously. When you elevate one group over another, the superiority-inferiority implications tend to cascade to other behavior and situations. One must be on guard to make sure that we are aware of these assumptions and don’t let me affect us in ways that go beyond the culture.

I’m thinking of the STanford Prison Experiment where experimenters took subjects. Some were relegated to prisoner status and others guards. This status drove a whole host of other behaviors that went beyond the scope of the guard’s responsibilities to the point they had to shut down the experiment.

It takes the kind of awareness and mental discipline that AP implies to prevent this kind of “culture creep” into our families.

As I read thru paragraphs one and two I was thinking ahead and then read paragraphs three and four and that was just what I was thinking. Interesting how we can mislead ourselves about the church and the church can also mislead us about ourselves.