Holding Past Actions Against People and Organizations

Forgiveness and boundaries are not mutually exclusive.

Forgiveness for me involves not holding personal rancor.

In my lifetime I have loaned money to people and have not been paid back. In general, I no longer loan money. DW and I have at times provided goods and services (sometimes with the expectation that we be paid back sometimes as a gift). Yet it is always small enough that we can accept not being repaid. If we are not repaid then we now know not to help that particular person in the future. There is no animosity, no rancor, no silent treatment or avoidance – just an additional boundary.

My faith crisis had much to do with my reliance of the “just world hypothesis”. I was young and naive. I was a young missionary bearing my fervent testimony to prospective converts. I knew more than I said but I emphasized the positive and downplayed or ommitted the negative. It would be hard for me to be bitter against people that are similar to how I was. I am also regularly reminded of how good these people are – flawed, sometimes thoughtless, somewhat myopic – but generally good. In a day and age when good communities can be hard to find – this can be a solid community. “It takes a village to raise a child” and the church can be a pretty darn good village.

My approach to the church is not too terribly different than with an individual. I set boundaries. The church is the church. One of the things that the church does is push boundaries. Some believe hypothetically that there should not be any boundaries – that we should sacrifice everything on the altar of church service. However, almost everyone understands that in the practical application each individual must prioritize their resources between personal pursuits, family needs, gainful employment, and church participation. There have even been church talks published in the Ensign that give permission to put family and emplyment needs before church service.

Surprise! The church as an organization acts as many other organizations in prioritizing the growth of the organization over competing interists. Surprise! The church gives fairly decent advice on a number of topics but I most likely gave it too much trust and authority over my life decisions.

I take this new information and make adjustments. My goal is to make the best decisions for myself and my family to maximize the potential for a full and happy life.

For me organizations are easier to forgive. Even if they are divinely inspired. I have worked on enough teams, whether that is volunteer or employed, to know that an organization is a full set of group think. Lot’s of compromise and most everyone loses something.

Individuals is my issue.

I am huge on forgiveness, if even a person hasn’t changed or apologized. However, I don’t give it easily when someone flippantly apologizes and doesn’t try to change, or if they find themselves above reproach. I can still forgive the church but the person who keeps giving talks about issues that tick me off isn’t so lucky.

I get some of the reasons “the church” won’t/can’t apologize. I have concluded that I would love something like, “We want to thank the members who have continued to connect with us, even when we have areas of disagreement or struggle. Your (insert word) has helped us with our past and heading into the future.” – It doesn’t need to be an apology, just an acknowledgement.

If the Internet didn’t expose our history and the church’s whitewashing thereof, would they have been up front about it out of free will?

So, while I’m not burning up with hate about it, I guess I still hold them accountable for that because in the heart, I am not sure they have actually changed at the top. As someone said in another thread, they are giving up ground they already lost with the Gospel Topic and Saints book, only being honest now because they can’t hide the history. If the Internet didn’t exist, I believe they would not have become more open about the faults in our history and past leaders. If given the opportunity to suppress new and damning truth about our history, that is not widely disseminated on the Internet, I believe they would still hide it from us rather than let the divinity of the church stand the test.

Devil’s advocate…

I’m sure there were some people in the know that actively suppressed information that they felt might harm people’s testimony. Their motives may have been altruistic. They may have been genuinely worried that members would lose faith in what they believed to be the only vehicle that could bring about their salvation. Risking it all on the “imperfections” of revered leaders would be seen as too much of a risk, so they whitewashed it.

I’m willing to entertain that the majority of leaders came online to this information sometime after the ground had been utterly lost, in other words it took losing the ground for them to open their eyes to the new information.

OK, something I think long and hard about. When you are in a long-term relationship with someone, the issue of when to stop holding past actions against them is an issue for me. It also applies to organizations, like the church, where there is a long, persistent relationship.

Forgiving 70 X 7 is easier when the relationship is at arm’s length than when it is long-term. I know there are extreme situations, like when an arms-length person commits murder or other heinous crimes against us or our loved ones, but those situations are not typical for me personally.

I want to borrow from one of my posts in an old thread (True Forgiveness):

One category I’ve struggled with, and the one where I feel it’s difficult to find a balance…

It’s hard to forgive people when there are chronic issues. Not just one time offenses but a pattern of behavior that has happened in the past, and worse yet, patterns that you fully expect to extend out to the foreseeable future. You know the change isn’t going to come, the offenses will continue but you have to dig deep to find a way to forgive… not just past incidents but future ones as well. Like you have to forgive a part of someone that will always be with them as opposed to forgiving a specific act.

I think this is where we get into the struggle; where the ideas of forgiving but not forgetting and the forgiving but closing yourself off from further harm come from. It’s not easy. It’s never easy. If there was an answer everyone would be doing it and it wouldn’t be a struggle. It may take time, let it take time, it’s supposed to take time, but continue to work at it.

I think that can apply to the church as well.There are one time events that can be forgiven and there are aspects of the church culture that are probably rooted in human nature, will outlive me, and can be forgiven.

For instance, the church tends to fixate on being the One and Only True Church. A church that fixates on being exclusively correct will have all problems that are associated with being arrogant. The church culture also tends to segregate along lines of perceived righteousness/worthiness. In my opinion that produces victims. I don’t see the organizational church moving away from truth claims or excising “worthiness” from the heart of the culture any time soon. So those would be examples of what I talked about in the quoted section above, things that you know aren’t going to change but have to find a way to forgive anyway.

So, in a close, enduring relationship, is it right to limit involvement over past dishonesties when you don’t believe the core character has changed?

Absolutely. We all need boundaries.

At what point do we let those past dishonesties go and then embrace the church like we did before the infraction?

That’s a tough question to answer. I think it can be something that just has to run its course, not something that can be forced.

Nelson Mandela said, “As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.”

Someone said, “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Just throwing those out there. Personally I feel there’s a time and a place for anger. Moderation in all things. The trick is to not let it consume you. Easier said than done when injustices are great or when injustices seem to be indefinite.

Is the church even the same organization that was around when JS was alive? That’s contestable, particularly from the period just after his murder. We can certainly draw a line back to BY and claim to be the biggest successor, but the succession was hotly contested and I think BY had to reconstitute things in the chaos.

Forgiving 70 X 7 is easier when the relationship is at arm’s length than when it is long-term. I know there are extreme situations, like when an arms-length person commits murder or other heinous crimes against us or our loved ones, but those situations are not typical for me personally.

I very much agree that forgiveness is easier when the relationship is at arms length. My relationship with the in-laws is not great but that is mostly resolved by living several hundred miles away. I also feel that I have mentally made some distance between myself and the LDS organization. This allows me to deflect some issues by saying some variation of “their club, their rules” or “their money, their choice”.

Of course this is also easier when I am not directly affected. If I were directly and personally insulted from the pulpit in SM, I do not believe that I would be successful deflecting. My strategies for not holding grudges and moving on can break down in more extreme scenarios.

Especially with the highly objectionable idea that the person who does not forgive is worse than the person who hurt them (something that I strongly object to as destructive doctrine).

The only way that I can see any truth to that would be in comparing a person that makes mistakes but is quick to repent, make amends, and apologize and a person that holds grudges and is generally bitter and vindictive. It would seem that the first person would be on a path of self improvement and would be building and nurturing relationships with those around them. The second person might become more bitter as time goes on and they collect resentments. The relationships they have may become more and more strained as offences happen and there is no real mechanism to deal with them and move on. Therefore, I do believe in forgiveness for the benefit of the forgiver (including appropriate boundaries and distance as needed).

In a way, the church cheated on the membership in not being honest about objectionable parts of our history — particularly when people are making big marriage, financial and lifelong commitments as a result of the information the church provided.

I suppose that a better analogy might be that the church misrepresented certain facts before we became fully committed to them. We have discussed before here the betrayal of discovering an undisclosed secret from a spouse’s life prior to ever meeting you. Everyone puts their best foot forward with a potential love interest but is there a point where full disclosure is appropriate? Thinking on that analogy, I can imagine the church/spouse to say, “I was worried that if I told you all about my warts and all past you wouldn’t love me anymore. My past doesn’t define who I am and the life we have built together. That was like a different lifetime for me (long before I even met you) and I am not the same person that I was.”

Even here, I believe that it can be important for the spouse with the secret history to finally come clean. I suppose, in a way, the church can be said to be doing exactly that with the essays and JS Papers project. I guess it is up to each one of us to process the withheld information and address the ongoing relationship as best we can.

Even here, I believe that it can be important for the spouse with the secret history to finally come clean. I suppose, in a way, the church can be said to be doing exactly that with the essays and JS Papers project. I guess it is up to each one of us to process the withheld information and address the ongoing relationship as best we can.

When I hear that, I’m reminded of decades ago when I came home with flowers for my wife one evening. I had previously mentioned emphasis was on being kind to our wives as a topic in Stake Priesthood Meeting. When my wife saw the flowers, she didn’t seem impressed. When I asked why she replied “you only did it because they mentioned it in priesthood meeting”. At first, I felt discouraged. But I now realize her comment showed an unmet need — a need to feel loved without any external prodding or forces encouraging such expression.

I guess I feel the same way toward the church — they only came clean because, as someone said earlier, they’d already lost that ground. If the internet didn’t shout the church’s past sins on the rooftops, would we have the gospel topic essays and JS papers? I think not. And it was a long time in coming too — after years and years and years of the truth being leaked on the Internet.

It makes it hard to trust them (along with other experiences I’ve had). And doesn’t to me, point to character change. It was damage control.

If you want to link it to past GA talks on motives for obedience, the lowest level is fear of negative consequences, then it rises to the expectation of reward, and then for social approval, and finally pure love. Nothing but the highest level (pure love) is permanent and indicative of character change in the absence of external influences.

What would it take to show such character change? I think disclosing things the Internet doesn’t know that were objectionable, even at the risk of hurting members’ faith would help. Admitting the history wasn’t forthright, and expressing sorrow would help. And then, other kindnesses even when such kindnesses put the church’s naked interests second. The only time I think I ever heard church leaders apologize was DHO over the Mountain Meadows Massacre. And even then, he said “there’s no doubt MEMBERS OF OUR CHURCH were involved”, sidestepping the likely command from a leader in authority. How else would 60-100 men, seeking righteousness, willingly massacre that number of men in lockstep??? They must have been acting on the strength of a command from an “inspired leader”. But I still felt some emotion that a notable leader actually attempted an apology. But it was a guarded one, for sure.

On the other hand, lest I be too negative, the church DID show a character change in the two-hour church, changing that awful HT program to something more practical and kind, combining the priesthood quorums, and making a concerted effort to lessen unnecessary burdens on church members. For those changes, I think there can be forgiveness for the years of not listening, or being arrogant about suggested change as challenging revelation, etcetera. I think that if such kindnesses continue (such as regular listening posts, openly administered) about the experience of being a Mormon, with continued, true, responsive change, this could mitigate the way were mislead for so many decades when information didn’t flow as freely as it does now given the internet.