I’m Thinking About Becoming More Active In Church

So what I would like to know is how can I become more without letting these things get to me so much that I become depressed, burnt out, or have anxiety or panic attacks. Any thoughts, comments, suggestions?

Sustainability through boundaries.

I try to ask myself what I can potentially maintain indefinitely. Tithing is an easy example for me. I think I could maybe manage a payment or two. I also could pay a donation to the church that I feel is fair based on my share of the building costs etc. However, that would be looked down on at tithing settlement and would cause me to have negative feelings about the church. From a sustainability perspective, it is safer to not make payments.

Another example is that I avoid Sunday School. Sunday School has class participation. This can lead to feeling isolated because it is easy to feel ganged up on as more and more people express opinions that you disagree with. I have also made comments in Sunday School that were rebuffed (sometimes gently and sometimes not gently) and those experiences were negative for me.

As you may have deduced, my sustainability boundaries make me LESS active in the church. The church has a smaller footprint in my life.

I still need community and spirituality. I try to diversify. This is harder because I need to put in efforts for involvement in multiple organizations. However, I am more in the driver seat and can reduce or even stop my participation at any one of them as needed.

In summary, my advice is to weigh what activities in your LDS ward you most enjoy (or least dislike) and then do those. For me personally, that equates to Sacrament Meeting and helping out at YM/YW activities.

Sustainability through boundaries.

Thank you very much, Roy. With everyone you said, that would probably work for me. It’s just difficult at times in the work with so many members and leaders that are so fully in that equate, or seem to, equate everything with the Lord. Drives me nuts, but then even members that are completely in can’t do everything all the time. I have some friends in the ward and I get along well with pretty much all of them, so I’ll just have to be honest with my boundaries when I need to.

A) I think that features of the environment include “equating everything with the Lord” and “an implicit competition to score as many righteous points as possible” – my best guess is it’s a community hierarchy thing.

Boundaries are useful here – I think you will get more mileage from the positive side of them “I am focusing on this” instead of “I won’t do that”. It’s a lot harder to argue with someone who isn’t arguing with you:) Also, it shuts the conversation down sooner because we explicitly teach that everyone has the gifts they need to focus their lives.

I try to extend grace to the leaders because I believe most of them are in a position where they’re attempting to support people that are experiencing something that they’ve never experienced for themselves.

Yes. Ironically, I feel like I have been in a similar place to where they are now. Therefore, I have an obligation to monitor my response to my leader because I have the capability of seeing things from his perspective. Whereas, my leader is often incapable of understanding things from my position.

Parsing the exact language of the verse, I don’t see it saying that Jesus experienced our infirmities to simply “remove” them from us. He experienced our infirmities so that he’d gain experience he needed to support us when we experience infirmities.

I think we sometimes see the word “infirmities” to refer to ailments and sickness. Another definition simply refers to weakness. I like to think of Jesus taking care of a group of toddlers and saying to himself that they are so weak and helpless and funny in their attempts to assert independence. Sometimes they even hurt each other. Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

Let us know how it goes. As someone who also isn’t participating currently I’m curious.

I do think the “church” has made some headway, at least in rhetoric, with being more inclusive. I don’t think what many of us experience is actually the church, it’s people who are misguided. Don’t take that the wrong way, because from one point of view the people are the church, and I agree that most of them (leaders included) are trying to do the right thing but end up doing it wrong because they don’t know what to do. Their intent is not generally malicious, but with some individuals it can be whether they intend it to be or not – and perception is reality.

Just wanted to mention that I went to church finally. A good friend of mine that’s the ward mission leader gave me a ride to and back from church. I work with him anyway since I have a calling as a ward missionary. I’m friends with his son who’s only a year or two younger than me. He’s a bishop now, too. Haha. Time goes back fast.

Anyway, it went okay. A ward member’s second wife gave a decent talk how they went when his first wife was dying with cancer. Family history and temple work had to deal with the topic also. The second talk was kind of boring. A member of the stake presidency gave a talk on the Come Follow Me scripture study program. Part of the reason it was kind of boring was because of the fact that too many leaders of the church feel that it was a prophet is really trying to act as much than they can never be wrong. Well, I’ve been praying about the patience to deal with it and it’s getting somewhat easier. Fortunately, the one thing I did like about his talk was that in the talk he would often use the word guidance, advice, and recommendations. That made it little easier.

Gospel doctrine went okay. The woman teacher, the wife of my ward’s former bishop, does try to get people to think out of the box a little bit.

Overall, church went well. I was a little worried about coming back. But I think I’ll be all right. A lot of the things that bothered me about the church when my faith in it first shifted don’t seem to bother me now. Unfortunately, I don’t know what to make of how the church deals with sexual abuse, but then the issue is being covered by another discussion on this site. I pray that God will help the leadership straighten this issue out in this life. Just a minor complaint about my ward, though. I wish our didn’t have to start at 9 am. I hate getting early for church. Haha.

I’m reminded of the scripture Alma 7:12

And [Jesus] will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

Parsing the exact language of the verse, I don’t see it saying that Jesus experienced our infirmities to simply “remove” them from us. He experienced our infirmities so that he’d gain experience he needed to support us when we experience infirmities.

That’s a different model than the one I often see on display at church. Church is more focused on making sure everyone is on the same page when defining infirmities and the focus is on infirmity avoidance. There’s not much support for people experiencing an infirmity. Perhaps because we don’t feel safe enough to put our infirmities on display, making people unaware of the needs of the community.

Some of it comes down to all the focus on infirmity avoidance. With that focus there’s more worry over a failure to be infirmity free. Maybe so much so that people feel the need to put up a façade. Once that façade is up, it’s harder to get help because of a lack of awareness of the need for help.

Defining infirmity is a whole other can of worms. This probably goes with any group, but sometimes we define an “infirmity” as deviance from the expected norm. Drives me nuts, but that’s enough of a tangent.

I hope your return to more activity is a good experience for you. It requires patience and grace, extended to both self and others.

I will step fully and completely into your tangent:)

A) Infirmity = Deviation from Norm = Everyone & Everything the Same (same end goal, same mechanisms etc.).

Lip service is given for “different goals” and “different mechanisms” – but it tends to “what do you need to experience what we experience?”

– Which is great for some diseases, replacing organs, etc.

But what if you refuse to see your deviation from what is expected as “being infirm”? What if you don’t want to be “healed”?

Infirmity = Momentum Breaker

There is innate validation seeing people do what you are doing when you are doing it. It builds community and energy that eventually moves into momentum to do things.

– People who can’t/won’t/don’t do what you are doing challenge/break your momentum – and that sometimes needs to happen more than it does. But no one likes the momentum breaker (well, occasionally – but not the community).

c) Infirmity on the Purity Scale

– Most diseases are either biologically or culturally “un-pure”. It is a pragmatic legacy from being in disease-ridden spaces without being rich enough to remove the dirt

So, there is the bias that if you can’t do something, there must be decision made that got you there, made you “un-pure”. Which isn’t always the case.

AmyJ, thanks for what you said about infirmity, even if some of it’s a little over my head. Haha. It’s okay, though. I think I get what you were trying to say. Yes, many people, especially communities, don’t like momentum breakers. There are times when I’ve had a great momentum going on when doing certain things and something would happen that would break that momentum. More often than not, I just get annoyed. And you offered some good questions on that: “But what if you refuse to see your deviation from what is expected as “being infirm”? What if you don’t want to be “healed”?” Those are some things to think about.

I ran out of time before I got my thoughts correctly corralled in the post.

MOMENTUM BREAKER EXAMPLE:

Any activity/tradition that keeps going… until it stops.

– I used to religiously watch “Charlie Brown Christmas” as one of my Christmas Devotionals. I (severely afraid of using the telephone at the time) actually called Blockbuster to see if they had a DVD (20+ years ago) when I realized I had missed the usual TV showing. Then my faith transition hit – and suddenly, it wasn’t something that inspired me at Christmas. I no longer had the momentum to watch it, to share it with my kids, or even pull out the Bible to read the Christmas Story.

– My husband gets annoyed – because now he has to make a decision of whether to remember to do any of that himself or just let it slide (and feel guilty). He HATES that I changed my choice.

Momentum breaking is great when the activities of the group may lead to poor judgement and/or unsafe situations. There is a reason why taxi services amp up availability for New Year’s Eve, why chaperones at high school dances (and other large teenage entertainment events) are by and large a good idea.

Momentum is great though – it’s what funds blood drives and drives drives people to springboard making good choices after the start of making 1 good choice (like quitting 1 bad habit makes it easier to pick up 1 good habit and vice versa).

INFIRMITY = SHOW OF IMPURITY (What did you Do to Get That?)

– The entire conversation involving the blind man and his parents and the questioners.

– OT teaches that God wanted “the best of the best” unblemished lambs in terms of sacrifices.

a) So if you are “infirm” – does God still want your sacrifice?

– That’s behind the “cleansing” offerings post-childbirth (among other things).

– If you are “infirm” – and we take care of you, what will happen to us and our community?

a) Not a bad question due to how diseases were treated/spread for thousands of years.

b) It’s still a question being asked as hospitals are shuttered due to funding issues (which stem from too many “poor/insolvent patients” and not enough “rich patients” as well as variables in government funding, community involvement, services offered issues… etc.).

c) That’s at the heart of Social Security (in US) debates. The ratio of retired individuals (who paid into the system and the community has an obligation to) to working individuals (who are paying into the system) is shrinking – and that is in part driving questions of solvency (there are a whole lot of other questions and side antics and forecasting).

– If you are “infirm” due to “impurity” – what obligation do we owe you and you, us?

a) This is usually exploited as a loophole to prevent paying for services (in one way or another) – it’s behind the “pre-existing conditions” stuff that was outlawed in the US a while back.

b) It also is a valid question in its own right – if you participate in behavior that you know is unhealthy for you (like smoking) – how responsible should you be held for taking care of your lung cancer infirmity?

FINAL NOTES:

– Buying in bulk (products or services) to satisfy a common need is a known thing. However, the only way it works is if there are enough like-minded individuals that make it worth the administration costs to provide the product/services. To a degree, the church gets “bulk discounts” (spiritual mostly) in having like-minded, less-diverse members to serve. There are fewer opportunity costs of time and thought (because everyone’s needs are the same and well-known), and fewer surprises. You don’t have to spend the time on harassment training or diversity training. You can manipulate the administration costs by “creating service opportunities” instead of “creating career opportunities” and other tweaks.

– Infirmity is a game-changer. Member behaviors (linked to Infirmity and Disease) can be progressive (the individual progressively needs more and different services/products), disruptive (anyone who cannot confirm to cultural expectations), and pervasive (a lot of people deal with a lot more diseases/disorders and who knows what else then the community admits to).