The How To Stay Article: Accepting Imperfection

[Anonymous]

I wanted to talk about this piece from the How To Stay Article as I was meditating on it this morning.

Quote:

Accepting Imperfection

First of all, remember that losing idealistic perceptions or expectations, and replacing them with more realistic ones, are two very important components of human maturity. For example, our parents are much more limited in their capacity than we thought they were when we were children. The same is true with our teachers and leaders.

The founding fathers of the USA were much more complex than we were taught growing up: Jefferson held slaves and may have fathered children with a slave, Benjamin Franklin was a philanderer, etc. Corporations can do both great and terrible things. The same applies to governments, schools and even charities. The world is imperfect. Any organization that is comprised of imperfect people is going to have flaws. The bigger the organization, the more likely mistakes will happen and the more serious flaws can become.

Even though it might strike really close to home, it’s a fair question to ask: why should it be any different with religions or with religious leaders, past or present? If perfection, or anything close to it, is the standard for all organizations or individuals, who will ever measure up? No one will. If you already find yourself severely disappointed with or even disaffected from the LDS Church, it should be completely logical for you to no longer expect perfection from it in any real sense. You can simply drop this unrealistic, unhealthy expectation.

After a year of posting and such, I finally realized that this is part of the heart of my problems with the Church right now — my early faith in this organization as something different and better than any other organization on earth. The Church (its leaders, doctrine, the D&C) makes these grandiose claims of absolute truth, leaders who are implied to talk with Christ, “the Church is perfect but the people aren’t”, and strong claims about miracles, huge and sometimes immediate, visible blessings for righteousness in the sciptures. and something in which “God is well pleased” with a divine Being at the helm. AT times, they behave in ways which makes me wonder if they really believe their own divine claims, or if they are there simply to get the members behaving and serving and giving, with little accountability.

Without going into details, regularly, I find policy and leaders terribly harsh or even wrong in their actions. And this, hurts my commitment and at times, my faith.

So, to provide some counterpoint to the How To Stay article which asserts:

Quote:

Even though it might strike really close to home, it’s a fair question to ask: why should it be any different with religions or with religious leaders, past or present?

My answer — because OUR organization claims to have all the truth, divine being at the helm, and priesthood leaders who have special witnesses and access to God who routinely act on inspiration from God. I think holding the Church to the same standard as for-profit corporations, or its leaders to the same standard as the founding fathers is a pretty lame way of justifying the inadequacies of the the LDS Church. None of these organizations claim to have divinity at the helm. None of these leaders ever claimed to be inspired, so comparing our Church to these organizations is a cop-out in my view.

Comments? I’m not trying to be offensive by the way….but as I was reading over the How To Stay Article these thoughts came to mind. That paragraph, referring to the idealism-realism gap speaks to the heart of my feelings about the Church, but it’s arguments come up pretty weak in my view.

In fact, I think I’d have an easier time in a Church that doesn’t claim to have divine roots, a corner ALL truth, because the gap between its claims and its behavior would be far smaller.

[Anonymous]

I agree, SD. It is the gap between the “should” and the “is” that causes the most difficulty – and the resulting “could be, if . . .” only exacerbates it. I let go of being upset that the gap exists a long time ago and focused instead on what I can do in “my church” to bridge it bit-by-bit – without any expectations of what the result would be. That has been the key for me – and the way I read Jacob 5 (that there will be bitter fruit in the Church right up until the very end) really helps.

I wrote a post back in September 2009 that addresses unrealistic expectations. You weren’t here then, so I am providing the link if you want to read the thread:

“Understanding Disappointment: The SHORT Answer” (http://forum.staylds.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=865&hilit=unrealistic) – 28 comments

At the core, my personal view is that “The Church” is a group of people; people are imperfect; thus, “The Church” is imperfect – inevitably; fighting the inevitable only has one outcome – disappointment.

[Anonymous]

I read through the three pages of things people had written. It got a bit academic for me, but the core of the discussion seemed to come back to this statement from yourself:

Quote:

The only thing that can cause disappointment is unrealistic expectations.

My issue with this is that the very nature of our missionary discussions and the claims we have as a Church tend to raise the expectations to really high levels. I had no such high expectations for born-again Church I grew up in. In fact, it was the claims to a divine commission and such that really attracted me to Mormonsism — the faith promoting stories about people who acheived great things for the Church etcetera, the story of Nephi and the plates. Then, the behavior of Church leaders really shattered the reality of those stories and beliefs when they seemed to see only the temporal side of things, or acted in ways that made me question if they themselves believed in the miraculous.

So, for me, lowering expectations means a lessening of the whole attractiveness of the organization as a whole, and also, learning to love the whole experience in spite of these huge gaps. And that’s a bit of a challenge for me really. A big challenge.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

My issue with this is that the very nature of our missionary discussions and the claims we have as a Church tend to raise the expectations to really high levels.

I agree. That’s why working out an individual faith and not having to rely on the “institutional myth” is so important to me. I understand the need for the institutional myth as a foundation, but for those moving past that foundation an individual faith is critical, imo. It’s really hard to let go of the myth, but . . .

[Anonymous]

I would take issue with the assertion the church claims to have all truth.

The whole principle of continuous revelation is based on the fact we do not yet know all things, and God will yet reveal many great things. There are mysteries the church recognizes, and tries to provide reassurance that when we need to know those answers, they will be made manifest through living prophets, seers, and revelators.

Often church members take it that we have all truth, but it is counterintuitive to the revelation claims the church is built upon.

Therefore, we are really asked to accept imperfection in the church (Brigham Young often emphasized this in the leadership), but I think the hope there is less imperfection has often turned to the false sense of security of no imperfection, and God reminds us frequently that ain’t true.

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