Lesson 5

Title:  Finding Joy In Our Divine Potential

Objective: Each young woman will understand her divine potential and learn how to find joy in it.

Key Point: “The gospel guides and blesses our lives by helping us understand our divine roles and potential as women.”

Lesson 6

Title:  Finding Joy Now

Objective: Each class member will feel the joy of being a Latter-day Saint young woman.

Key Point: “Happiness does not depend on what happens outside of you but on what happens inside of you.” (Why such an ominous quote from Church President Harold B. Lee?)

Lesson 7

Title: Homemaking

Objective: Each young woman will better appreciate the joys that can come from homemaking. (This is easily the most scripted lesson of the group.)

Key Point: “Homemaking is one of the responsibilities we have been given. Heavenly Father wants all men and women to give their greatest priority to their homes, their spouses, and their families. Our families are part of our divine mission.” (Now we are starting to get the point of Lesson 6, right?)

Lesson 8

Title:  Attitudes About our Divine Roles

Objective: Each young woman will develop a positive attitude about her divine roles of wife and mother.

Key Point(s):

“Do not … make the mistake of being drawn off into secondary tasks which will cause the neglect of your eternal assignments such as giving birth to and rearing the spirit children of our Father in Heaven” (This is a warning from President Spencer W. Kimball.)

“The worldly view of women’s roles is false partly because it is selfcentered. It focuses so much on a woman’s rights to receive that it almost ignores her opportunities to give.”

“By cheerfully and enthusiastically supporting our husbands and by bearing, nurturing, and teaching righteous spirits, we can experience the greatest fulfillment.”

“A woman should never minimize the tremendous power of being a comfort and help to her husband. He may have need to be comforted and encouraged to perform his roles as husband, provider, leader, or teacher.”

“Young women should plan and prepare for marriage and the bearing and rearing of children. It is your divine right and the avenue to the greatest and most supreme happiness” (Another admonition of President Spencer W. Kimball.)

I think we find, in Lesson 8, the “divine potential” of young women in the LDS Church: “wife and mother“.  All of the lessons leading up to Lesson 8 are carefully crafted to prepare the young women to hear the difficult truth about their destiny within the Church, which is limited to finding and serving a husband, bearing children, and managing a household.

I don’t have a problem with a woman getting married, having children, and choosing to be a homemaker (from among a whole world of options).  I have a big problem with the tripartite “wife/mother/homemaker” option being the only valid one for a woman to choose.  Men in the LDS Church are not limited in this way–sure, they are expected to be husbands and fathers, but they are also allowed to freely choose a career outside the home, and their identity and purpose aren’t bound up in their biological functions.  As a result, young men in the Church do not need a group of manipulative lessons like the young women receive, prodding them into compliance with the Church’s expectations.

These expectations were recently illustrated very efficiently in a disturbing little story told in an April 2011 General Conference talk by Elder Quentin L. Cook (who apparently thinks it’s cute for a group of people to dig through and comment on the contents of somebody’s lost purse).  I will close out this post with his (incredibly condescending!) words:

When I was recently assigned to a conference in the Mission Viejo California Stake, I was touched by an account of their four-stake New Year’s Eve youth dance. Following the dance, a purse was found with no outside identification. I share with you part of what Sister Monica Sedgwick, the Young Women president in the Laguna Niguel stake, recorded: “We didn’t want to pry; this was someone’s personal stuff! So we gingerly opened it and grabbed the first thing that was on top—hopefully, it would identify her. It did, but in another way—it was a For the Strength of Youth pamphlet. Wow! This told us something about her. Then we reached in for the next item, a little notebook. Surely this would give us answers, but not the kind we were expecting. The first page was a list of favorite scriptures. There were five more pages of carefully written scriptures and personal notes.”

The sisters immediately wanted to meet this stalwart young woman. They returned to that purse to identify its owner. They pulled out some breath mints, soap, lotion, and a brush. I loved their comments: “Oh, good things come out of her mouth; she has clean and soft hands; and she takes care of herself.”

They eagerly awaited the next treasure. Out came a clever little homemade coin purse made from a cardboard juice carton, and there was some money in a zippered pocket. They exclaimed, “Ahh, she’s creative and prepared!” They felt like little children on Christmas morning. What they pulled out next surprised them even more: a recipe for Black Forest chocolate cake and a note to make the cake for a friend’s birthday. They almost screamed, “She’s a HOMEMAKER! Thoughtful and service minded.” Then, yes, finally some identification. The youth leaders said they felt greatly blessed “to observe the quiet example of a young lady living the gospel.”

This account illustrates the commitment of our young women to Church standards. It is also an example of caring, interested, dedicated Young Women leaders all over the world. They are incredible!

- Quentin L. Cook, LDS Women are Incredible!, April 2011 General Conference

-PWM

You may have noticed that the names of these two organizations are not symmetrical. The boys’ organization is named after the priesthood–the power authority to act for God–bestowed upon the boys at that age in a religious ceremony that the whole family and friends in the congregation attend. The girls’ organization, on the other hand, has a generic name, because girls are bestowed with nothing of any spiritual or doctrinal substance at that age. There is no formal rite of passage for girls who turn 12, or 14, or 16 comparable to the advancement in the Aaronic Priesthood organization the boys experience at those ages.

Thus, there is a subtle (and sometimes not subtle) set of messages LDS boys and girls receive through personal experience in the Church, from at least the time they turn 12. Boys have authority in the Church hierarchy, and girls do not. Boys are natural leaders, and girls are not. Boys have clear evidence that God accepts them, and girls do not. Boys have a special connection to God, and girls do not. If a girl wants any of these things, she needs to marry a boy and get it vicariously through him.

These messages (and the psychological baggage they carry) form the focus, in one way or another, of much of the Young Women (YW) and Aaronic Priesthood (YM) programs’ respective curricula and activities. Some of the messages are countered and their effects mitigated (to an extent), while others are basically supported and reinforced. I will discuss this further in future posts.

-PWM

Mormon Woman Wondering asked:

Please help me understand how you bore the gut-hole created by losing your faith.

I am not sure I understand what “gut-hole” means in this context. I have some guesses: Is it the psychological turmoil a person goes through when the philosophical basis for her lifestyle and choices is revealed to be deeply flawed and unreliable, and needs to be replaced? Is it the anxiety that accompanies the realization that she doesn’t know what to replace it with? Is it the nagging worry that she has set her children up to fail–to trust people and ideas that are not trustworthy? Is it the disappointment at finding that so much of her life has been spent earnestly pursuing and investing in what is ultimately a high-stakes fantasy?

I think I relate to each of these possibilities, but the intensity of my experience has probably been tempered by the fact that I could never really fully commit to the social aspects of the LDS Church. I grew up in Salt Lake City, but never went to a stake dance, never attended a single’s ward, and never had friendships that started at church. In fact, a large proportion of my friends were not active members of the Church, and I spent my weekends with a mother who left the Church when I was four years old. The social experience was not why I went to Church every week, so changing my mind about Mormonism didn’t require much of a change in my lifestyle (i.e., I didn’t lose any important social outlets, business relationships, etc.). As an adult, I went to church in an effort to test and prove Mormonism as an exceptional and holy way of life–I lived my life as if Mormonism was everything it claimed to be, but I never forgot that I was making assumptions about it that needed to be confirmed. I also took a few years to gradually scale back my participation, and I left while my kids were small (all below 5 years old). I think all of that has taken an edge off of the angst that other people who stop believing have to deal with.

Even if my angst was tempered by the happy accident of my personality and life circumstances, I’ve still had my share of inner turmoil as I considered my terribly flawed reasons for making huge life decisions (marriage, kids, career, etc.), and the likelihood that they would turn out to be bad risks and huge mistakes. I’ve found a bit of comfort, however, in a very strange place (for a Mormon). In high school, I read Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse, and a central theme of the novel has always resonated with me: paths we take in life, things we commit to, choices we make, situations we find ourselves in, even if they end in disaster, are experiences that give us more insight into reality. Thus, neither successes nor failures are wasted experiences–we gain wisdom and understanding from both.¹ Once I accept that idea, it’s hard for me to get too worked up about having spent a couple of decades in an authoritarian religion. The experience taught me valuable lessons that apply to broader aspects of humanity (business organizations, government, etc.), and have helped me better understand how the world works.

-PWM

___________________________

1. Mormonism actually teaches a species of this concept too, in D&C 122:5-7.

1. there are circumstances in which it is necessary for an LDS Church member to approach his or her local Church leader, seeking something that only the leader can provide;¹ and
2. the Church rules governing such circumstances are usually unclear or unknown to the Church member.²

Situations like this are the norm in the LDS Church. Non-leaders are not supposed to have much (if any) access to the Church’s rules and procedures. The Church publishes a rulebook for select local leaders called the “Church Handbook of Instructions” (the “CHI”).

The CHI sets forth the Church’s official rules regarding a variety of topics, as well as the official Church doctrines under which many of those rules arise. For example, the CHI explains why Church members are disciplined by the Church³ for committing serious transgressions. The purpose of discipline is three-fold: “1. to save the souls of transgressors, 2. to protect the innocent, and 3. to safeguard the purity, integrity, and good name of the Church.”⁴ The CHI provides that formal discipline is mandatory for murder, incest, child abuse, apostasy, serious transgression while holding a prominent church position, a transgressor who is a predator, a pattern of serious transgressions, or a transgression that is widely known.⁵ Formal discipline is sometimes necessary for “serious transgression”, an abortion, or a transsexual operation.⁶ The concept of “serious transgression” is defined to mean “a deliberate and major offense against morality”, including, but not limited to, “attempted murder, rape, sexual abuse, spouse abuse, intentional serious physical injury of others, adultery, fornication, homosexual relations, deliberate abandonment of family responsibilities, robbery, burglary, theft, embezzlement, sale of illegal drugs, fraud, perjury, and false swearing.”⁷

When I was a 19 year-old missionary standing outside of that MTC classroom/confessional, fretting over my fate, it would have been nice to have known that “masturbation and/or viewing pornography in years past” was not included on the “serious transgressions” list. In fact, that bit of information would have probably spared me a sizeable portion of the angst and personal torment that hobbled my spirituality, not to mention my social life, during my teenage years.

But keeping Church members informed is not how the LDS Church uses the CHI. In fact, the Church zealously enforces its copyright with respect to the CHI when anybody attempts to distribute it to unauthorized recipients.⁸

I don’t know exactly why the Church keeps its rules such a big secret, but the effect of the secrecy is clear: (1) It gives local Church leaders an informational advantage over the rest of the flock, which creates or augments an aura of authority and wisdom; (2) it makes local Church leaders almost wholly unaccountable to the members they serve for the decisions they make, and for the quality of their leadership; and (3) the combination of 1 and 2 above leaves members in a position of subservience and vulnerability in nearly every interaction they have with local leaders (the higher-up the leader, the greater his dominance). It is a formula for maximum control over members of the Church by local leaders.

If those are the Church’s reasons for secrecy, then I get it. I just strongly disagree, on ethical grounds.⁹ Basic fairness demands that people be allowed to know the rules for which they are to be held accountable. Even if the Church’s policy in this regard has been adopted with the best intentions, it has the real-world effect of being unfair, oppressive, and enabling ecclesiastical abuse of powerless members of the Church (the very people the Church should be trying its hardest to protect). 

-PWM

______________________

1. When I met with a counselor in the branch presidency, I was seeking a way to be forgiven of my sins; when my mom met with her bishop, she was seeking cancellation of her temple marriage
2. Neither my mom nor I had a clear idea of what kind of process to expect, or what would be required of us by our Church leaders in connection with our respective request.
3. i.e., put on probation, disfellowshipped, or excommunicated; see CHI p. 109
4. CHI p. 105
5. see CHI pp. 110-11
6. see CHI p. 111
7. CHI p. 110
8. A full copy of the latest (2006) CHI has been made available on Wikileaks, but to avoid a cease-and-desist letter from LDS Church attorneys, I won’t directly link to it. Just google it.
9. As an aside, the Church’s expectation that it is inappropriate for Church members to ever criticize a Church leader (even if the criticism is true) makes its policy of withholding the CHI from the members (and therefore removing a key means of formulating criticism) understandable, though cynical, unethical and self-serving.

“Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it.”

Now, that’s pretty high praise coming from a Christian. Maybe a little too high? It is probably fair to say that this statement is just soaring, sentimentality-soaked hyperbole penned by someone mourning the loss of an admired leader and teacher.

At the same time, however, it is also fair to say that the LDS Church, by adopting the statement into its scriptural canon (see Doctrine & Covenants Sec. 135:3), singing hymns about Joseph Smith (see official LDS Hymns #26, Joseph Smith’s First Prayer, and #27, Praise to the Man), and extensively focusing on the favorable mythology surrounding Joseph Smith (see e.g., the Joseph Smith birthday commemoration web page, linking to an elaborate website dedicated to Joseph Smith), has elevated this sentiment to the level of mainstream LDS religious belief. This common belief is substantiated by the teachings of Brigham Young , which include the following (possibly also sentimentality-warped, but nonetheless extant and never officially disavowed) statement:

“…no man or woman in this dispensation will ever enter into the celestial kingdom of God without the consent of Joseph Smith. From the day that the Priesthood was taken from the earth to the winding-up scene of all things, every man and woman must have the certificate of Joseph Smith, junior, as a passport to their entrance into the mansion where God and Christ are—I with you and you with me. I cannot go there without his consent. He holds the keys of that kingdom for the last dispensation—the keys to rule in the spirit-world; and he rules there triumphantly, for he gained full power and a glorious victory over the power of Satan while he was yet in the flesh, and was a martyr to his religion and to the name of Christ, which gives him a most perfect victory in the spirit-world. He reigns there as supreme a being in his sphere, capacity, and calling, as God does in heaven. Many will exclaim—’Oh, that is very disagreeable! It is preposterous! We cannot bear the thought!’ But it is true.”

(JD, Vol. 7, p.287)

Unfortunately, mainstream members of the LDS Church not only feel pressure to believe that Joseph Smith is the greatest-man-ever-next-to-Jesus (and the gatekeeper of heaven), but also, for those who attempt to learn more about Joseph Smith through studying history, to reconcile that belief with growing evidence that Joseph Smith was a man of very questionable personal morals and ethics, willing to use the beliefs of others (particularly regarding eventual rewards in the afterlife), as well as his own position of ecclesiastical power, to further his personal interests.

For many members of the LDS Church today, this conflict over the character of Joseph Smith extends also to current leaders of the LDS Church, who claim authority–through Joseph Smith–to speak for God. As authorized spokesmen of God, the current LDS prophets and apostles, whose words and actions are often ethically and morally questionable themselves, are simply not (religiously) accountable to members of the Church. In fact, as Apostle Dallin H. Oaks has taught, LDS Church leaders are never to be criticized publicly by members of the Church. The only redress against abuse is to privately contact the offending apostle himself, or go over his head and privately contact the prophet about it. Not much of a feedback mechanism there (particularly if it is the prophet who is behaving badly). In the end, I suppose, these men eschew accountability to Church members for their actions because they feel they are called of God to interface with the people, not elected by the people to interface with God. (Also, they don’t want accountability because they are typical self-interested human beings, and they are lucky enough to be able to indulge that preference. JMO.)

However it technically works, the result is to place sincere, faithful members of the Church in the difficult position of excusing or ignoring nearly all of the bad leadership and abuse that they see perpetuated by these men in the name of God. Even for abuses perpetrated by middle managers in the Church organization (Stake Presidents and Bishops) there can be tremendous cultural and official pressure to just let it slide. For a particularly glaring example of this, CLICK HERE (long version) or HERE (short summary in last two paragraphs). The moral crisis this creates in the minds of members of the Church becomes a catalyst for apostasy, as people who have always cared deeply for, and taken very seriously, the Church, its leaders, and its teachings, are not able, in good conscience (and sometimes despite their sincere desire), to continue participating in the LDS faith community.

-PWM

There are so many programs run by the LDS Church (in other words, run by the people in each LDS Church congregation, using curricula, guidelines, and financing supplied by Church headquarters in Salt Lake City) that full participation can take up a significant amount of a person’s free time, particularly for families with children, which are a key focus of Church programs.

For Mormon families, the Church forms a support system–a virtual village–in which people help each other out with babysitting, nursery school, packing and moving, meal preparation, house cleaning, and other day-to-day activities, as the need arises. In my opinion, this trusting, give-and-take environment makes it possible for Mormons to have bigger families and to otherwise live the lifestyle of conservative values for which Mormons are well known. (It also, in my opinion, enables the questionable multi-level marketing companies and fraud victimization (e.g., THIS, THIS and THIS) that Mormon communities are also increasingly becoming known for. ) The interconnected nature of Mormon communities means that when a family–or even one member of a family–decides to withdraw, it affects (and inconveniences) everybody in the community in some way.

But the “virtual village” aspect of Mormon social life is not the main reason why leaving the fold is such a big deal. The main reason is that Mormons believe that the act of leaving is a sin against God, to whom every baptized Mormon has promised to “mourn with those who mourn, and comfort those who stand in need of comfort” (in other words, to form and participate in a virtual village). It is morally wrong to sin, and therefore morally wrong to leave. This legalistic concept of promises (or the more common Mormon term “covenants”) made between a person and God is a central motivation for much of what Mormons do and believe. Here, the concept of “covenants with God” changes the choice to stop participating in LDS Church programs from a simple matter of personal taste (or scheduling) into a grave matter of personal morality–effectively raising the stakes for a Mormon who is considering deviating from community norms of participation.

-PWM

What lesson does this song teach? Well, the central message appears to be that everything the narrator did to help the beggar actually earned the narrator serious capital in the economy of the afterlife; he is now destined to be a big shot–the ruler of a kingdom in Heaven. The song, of course, does not present this lesson in so many words. It is actually a first-person reformulation of a lesson Jesus is reported to have taught (in Matthew 25:31-40), which culminates in the famous line, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” This lesson establishes that Christian behavior, however uncomfortable or difficult to engage in, will be richly rewarded in the afterlife.

This song was a favorite of the Prophet Joseph Smith–the founder of Mormonism (and the LDS Church’s ultimate big-shot). The song was sung a couple of times, at Joseph’s request, on the day of his 1844 murder. It’s no surprise that he liked it, given its central message, which Joseph used to great advantage in motivating the Latter-day Saints to action (or submission) during his time as their prophet and leader.

Okay, maybe the connection to Joseph Smith is just trivia, since it’s not really why I picked the hymn for the name of this blog. The reason for the name is that this blog features an author who isn’t the most attractive person to devout Mormons. I imagine his lack of faith and generally negative attitude toward the doctrines and certain cultural features of the LDS Church (which he was raised in) probably permeates the air of Mormon religious and social gatherings, in the same way the stench of a homeless person or a leper (true “poor wayfaring” folks) would. Maybe I’m not right about that, but I think the spiritual “illness” that afflicts me is considered every bit as scary and dangerous for a faithful Mormon as leprosy used to be for the unafflicted. The fact that I don’t really have any friends in the Mormon community where I live seems to support my theory. And the fact that people who I do interact with have never even come close to inquiring about my…er…shaken faith syndrome or any other reasons for not going to church on Sundays, seems to lend further solid support, but I admit I’m working with limited data here, and could be wrong.

As someone who grew up in Mormon culture, who has always been fascinated with Mormonism’s history and teachings, I have not found it easy to just disengage completely from the topic (as many mainstream Mormons would prefer). Also, my wife and kids are active participants in the local LDS community, so I am interested in finding ways to explain my own perspective and personal choices to them without being insensitive to their point of view. This is part of what I plan on doing with this blog.

It may be easy to see this collection of thoughts as yet another faceless unorthodox Mormon blog. Maybe I look like just one of many anonymous strangers wandering the wild internets, panhandling for your attention. But give this Poor Wayfaring Man a chance, and you just might get a little something in return. (You never know–I may actually be a big shot, giving you a chance to earn some heavenly real estate for yourself.)

-PWM