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

As an example of this, I will use Lesson No. 5 in the current YW Lesson Manual 1, titled ”Finding Joy in our Divine Potential“.  Here is the stated objective of Lesson 5:

OBJECTIVE:  Each young woman will understand her divine potential and learn how to find joy in it. (emphasis added)

Clearly, a young woman’s “divine potential” (whatever that happens to be) is not something she would be happy with naturally.  The Church recognizes that she needs to be persuaded and taught, from a young age, how she can adjust her thinking to eventually feel okay about it.  

What is this “divine potential”?  Amazingly, despite the clear lesson objective stating that each young woman will understand it by the end of the lesson, the “divine potential” is not actually explained or defined in the lesson materials.   The only way for a young woman to understand her divine potential is to draw inferences from whatever is presented to her during the course of the lesson.   Here are some clues from the manual:

PREPARATION:

1. Invite an exemplary sister (preferably one who has married in the temple and has a family), who has been approved by priesthood advisers, to speak to the young women about the joy of being a woman.

2. You may invite a grandmother, mother, and young married woman, who have been approved by priesthood advisers, to briefly express the joys of womanhood they are presently experiencing.

3. If it is possible and you wish to do so, prepare a copy of the message from the Young Women general presidency [comprised of four women appointed and supervised by the President of the Church] for each class member and guest.

(emphasis and bracketed explanation added)

Note that the messages above are supposed to be delivered by women (i) who are married in the temple and/or have children, and (ii) who have been specifically approved by the priesthood (i.e., male) leaders.  Apparently, in the Church’s view, the only people qualified to teach about the “divine potential” of young women are married mothers who say what the local male church leaders want them to say.  So perhaps it’s fair to infer that a young woman’s “divine potential” is related to being temple married, having children, and being approved by the priesthood.

The message from the Young Women general presidency referred to in Item 3 above provides clues about how to obtain this elusive “divine potential”:

Our Heavenly Father knows…you. He has confidence and faith that you will use these years of preparation in being an obedient child of God who can be molded and shaped for the special mission and destiny he would have you fill. Pray always, know your Savior Jesus Christ, study the scriptures, and think of specific ways you can apply the teachings in your life. Live to be worthy of the blessings of the priesthood, be happy, and walk tall with joy and thanksgiving in the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. (emphasis added)

So, a young woman’s “divine potential” is achieved through learning how to be an obedient child of God who is molded and shaped for whatever purpose God would have her fill.  To do this she should obey the teachings of Jesus Christ and “be worthy of the blessings of the priesthood.”  Of course, in practice, all of these things (i.e., God’s special purposes, Christ’s teachings, and her personal worthiness) are delivered, interpreted, and judged within the Church by male priesthood authorities.  Thus, a young woman will be on the path to realizing her “divine potential” when she obeys and defers to the men of the Church and is joyful and thankful in doing so.

It is no wonder that finding joy in being a young woman in the Church is an acquired skill.  The confidence and will that she was born with must be broken (i.e., “molded and shaped”) somehow, so the men of the Church can take control.

And that’s the end of this lesson.  The concept of a young woman’s “divine potential” is not analyzed or explained, but the means of reaching it (obedience and subservience), and the results of reaching it (joy) are directly spoon-fed to the girls.  As a result, they may walk away from the lesson not really knowing their “divine potential”, but they certainly do know that the Church expects them to be submissive and happy.

Note that there is no similar lesson in the YM curriculum.

-PWM

Example 1:  Elder Poelman’s View of Divine Love:

About a month after McConkie’s speech excoriating George Pace for promoting the concept of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, Elder Ronald E. Poelman, a fairly new member of the First Quorum of the Seventy (one level below the apostles in the Church hierarchy) gave an address in General Conference which appears to have been carefully worded to imply the existence of a personal relationship with the Lord, without crossing any of the lines that McConkie had drawn.  Elder Poelman’s talk included the following statement:

By disobeying the laws of God and breaking his commandments, we do offend him, we do estrange ourselves from him, and we don’t deserve his help and inspiration and strength. But God’s love for us transcends our transgressions.

–God’s Love for Us Transcends Our Transgressions, General Conference speech, delivered April 3, 1982

It’s possible that I am reading too much into Poelman’s choice of words in this talk, but I note that he used concepts commonly reserved for personal relationships, like “estranged”, “reconciled”, “God wants us to return to Him”, and “God’s love for us, his children”, without using the actual word “relationship”. He also used the words “Lord” and “God” interchangeably, blurring the line between “God the Father” and “Jesus Christ”, a line McConkie had been very careful to draw in his BYU smackdown speech. Poelman suggested a concept of God’s love that was like a parent’s love: liberal, unconditional, and independent of any sins or disobedience we may engage in. This concept effectively takes God’s love out of the control of the Church by removing the possibility that conditions could be placed upon it by Church authorities.

If George Pace’s experience is any indication, Elder Poelman was skating on thin ice with this concept. But would Poelman’s status as a General Authority of the Church (rather than a religious educator) save him from the harsh correction of the top leadership? Well, McConkie didn’t crucify him for the speech, if that’s what you’re wondering about.  Years later, however, Poelman’s concept of divine love as unconditional in nature was definitively superseded by a 2003 article written by Apostle Russell M. Nelson, which places God’s love back in control of the Church by explicitly conditioning it on obedience:

While divine love can be called perfect, infinite, enduring, and universal, it cannot correctly be characterized as unconditional.

***

Why is divine love conditional? Because God loves us and wants us to be happy. “Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God.”¹

–”Divine Love”, Ensign, Feb 2003, p. 20 (emphasis added)

I’m not saying that Elder Nelson’s article was specifically prompted by Elder Poelman’s view of God’s love (I don’t think Poelman’s 1982 talk was especially influential in 2003), rather, Poelman’s view is symbolic of the very common belief among members of the LDS Church that God has unconditional love for them. They aspire to model their own love for others based on this unconditionality. The persistence of that belief is what, I think, prompted Elder Nelson’s article, which puts an official stamp of disapproval on the concept, reclaiming for the Church (and its leaders) its traditional place between the Latter-day Saints and God.

Example 2:  Elder Poelman’s View of the Gospel and the Church:

On October 7, 1984 (an appropriately Orwellian year), Ronald E. Poelman’s General Conference talk became the most famous casualty to date in the ongoing battle for control over the lifeblood of the Church.

His talk was titled “The Gospel and the Church”, and it was about recognizing distinctions between the Church and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Poelman emphasized, among other things, that following the Gospel makes members of the Church less dependent on the Church for fulfillment, and that concepts of Mormon “orthodoxy” and conformity should be founded on the eternal laws of God, like free (moral) agency, rather than the institutional Church.  Prior to publication and distribution of the talk (in print and video format) to members of the Church worldwide, the talk was drastically rewritten, and the new talk was refilmed (and spliced into the conference program tape as if originally delivered there).  The edited talk now focused on the harmonious “essential relationship” between the Church and the Gospel, and it emphasized the members’ dependence on the instruction of the Church and its leaders in order to correctly follow the Gospel.  The original version of the talk, as far as the Church was concerned, disappeared down the memory hole.

Fortunately, however, people had recorded the original television broadcast of the talk (see [Part 1] and [Part 2]), and in November 1984, when the Church published the altered version of the talk, people transcribed the original talk and compared the two versions.²  For a side-by-side comparision of the entire talk, Click Here.  Below are some highlights:

1)         Original quote (deletions marked):

As individually and collectively we increase our knowledge, acceptance, and application of gospel principles, we become less dependent on Church programs. Our lives become gospel centered.

Edited quote:

As individually and collectively we increase our knowledge, acceptance, and application of gospel principles, we can more effectively utilize the Church to make our lives more gospel centered.

2)        Original quote (deletions marked):

The conformity we require should be according to God’s standards.  The orthodoxy upon which we insist must be founded in fundamental principles and eternal law, including free agency and the divine uniqueness of the individual.

Edited quote:

Therefore, as we live the gospel and participate in the Church, the conformity we require of ourselves and of others should be according to God’s standards.  The orthodoxy upon which we insist must be founded in fundamental principles, eternal law, and direction given by those authorized in the Church.

3)        Original quote (deletions marked):

When we understand the difference between the gospel and the Church and the appropriate function of each in our daily lives, we are much more likely to do the right things for the right reasons.

Edited quote:

When we see the harmony between the gospel and the Church in our daily lives, we are much more likely to do the right things for the right reasons.

4)        Original quote (deletions marked):

Institutional discipline is replaced by self discipline.  Supervision is replaced by righteous initiative and a sense of divine accountability.

Edited quote:

We will exercise self discipline and righteous initiative guided by Church leaders and a sense of divine accountability.

The details of how a completely new version of Poelman’s talk came about are not publicly known, and it is doubtful that the folks involved in the censoring will ever explain what happened, as Elder Poelman was, and continues to be, a loyal General Authority of the Church.  Clearly, however, the edits made by the Church to Poelman’s talk demonstrate Church leaders’ insistence on asserting themselves into the middle of the relationship between Church members and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  By doing this, the Church leaders retain control over Hope, the lifeblood of the Church system.

-PWM

_________________________

1. As an aside, this statement quoted by Elder Nelson comes from a letter written by Joseph Smith to 19 year-old Nancy Rigdon, in an attempt to persuade her to be his secret polygamous bride, using the rationale that anything God commands is automatically moral and right. She was ultimately unconvinced, and showed the letter to her father, Sidney Rigdon (Joseph’s second-in-command). Joseph allegedly told Sidney that the letter had just been a test of his daughter’s virtue. The episode remains one of Joseph Smith’s creepiest alpha-maleish abuses of power.  With that context in mind, Elder Nelson’s use of the quote raises questions. What kind of “happiness” was Elder Nelson thinking of? The kind that comes only through fully submitting to the authority of Church leaders? Very clever, Russ.
2. The incident was reported in Sunstone Magazine.

In the early 1980’s, a BYU professor named George Pace had previously given speeches and written a book promoting the idea that people should “center their lives on Christ and…develop their own personal relationship with Him.” Even though Pace was simply echoing ideas recently taught in General Conference by then-apostle (and future First Presidency Counselor) James E. Faust, his “taking out the middle man” approach to interacting with the Savior prompted a humiliating public rebuke from Apostle Bruce R. McConkie, which included the following counsel:

The proper course for all of us is to stay in the mainstream of the Church. This is the Lord’s Church, and it is led by the spirit of inspiration, and the practice of the Church constitutes the interpretation of the scripture.

And you have never heard one of the First Presidency or the Twelve, who hold the keys of the kingdom, and who are appointed to see that we are not “tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14)–you have never heard one of them advocate this excessive zeal that calls for gaining a so-called special and personal relationship with Christ.

***

I wonder if it is not part of Lucifer’s system to make people feel they are special friends of Jesus when in fact they are not following the normal and usual pattern of worship found in the true Church.

–Our Relationship with the Lord, BYU Devotional speech, delivered March 1, 1982

George Pace’s idea had (inadvertantly or not) removed the Church and those leaders “who hold the keys of the kingdom” from their position as mediators between Church members and the Savior, and in doing so, had given Church members a means of independently obtaining Hope, through their personal connection with Jesus Christ. Elder McConkie put Pace, and the rest of his Lucifer-inspired (possibly unintentional) populists in their place. In McConkie’s view, only the prophets and apostles have the right to a special or personal relationship with Christ. Only the prophets and apostles have the power to prescribe the proper way for mankind to approach God and obtain salvation.  Hope is managed and apportioned through them.

After McConkie’s rebuke, Pace apologized for his impertinence:

I mean to stay in the mainstream of the Church, urging any with whom I have influence to listen to the words of our leaders, to pray earnestly for guidance, and to grow spiritually in our capacity to be obedient to the will and mind of God for us, giving full and appropriate reverence to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

-PWM

____________________________

This can be seen, for example, in an organism, which is a living system made up of highly specialized components (subsystems, cells, symbionts, etc.). These specialized components have certain needs that are outside the scope of the functions they perform themselves, and they must therefore rely on other components of the system to meet those needs. The paradigmatic example of this phenomenon is blood, a system component that performs oxygenation, nutrition, waste management, temperature regulation, immunological response, communication, and other functions for the specialized parts of the organism, enabling those parts to spend their time making unique contributions to the whole. Blood is a key part of the system, because most other components rely directly upon it for continued existence.

Higher-level systems, like business organizations or religions, are made up of individuals that aren’t as fundamentally dependent on the system as the specialized parts of an organism, but there are analogous “lifeblood” elements that keep individuals engaged in, and contributing to, the system.

A business organization’s lifeblood element is money. Money, like blood in an organism, is the key medium through which the individuals in the system are able to meet the needs they must set aside in order to participate in the system (e.g., they buy food instead of spending time hunting it, buy clothing instead of spending time making it, etc.). Money is also the central incentive motivating people to contribute to the system, because money allows them to eat better food than they could come up with on their own, wear better clothing than they could make on their own, etc. The top managers of a business organization perform the important function of determining how the money earned by the organization should flow through to the different parts of the system. More important individuals generally get more money, but everybody gets something–enough to keep the system intact.

The LDS Church (at least the religious wing of the organization) has a lifeblood element, but it is not money. The lifeblood of the Church is hope or reassurance about one’s eventual salvation in the Celestial Kingdom (I’ll call it “Hope”). Like business organizations, the top managers of the Church exercise control over how the lifeblood of Hope flows through the system to nourish and motivate the members of the Church. The strength of the Church system depends on how effectively Church leaders manage the distribution of Hope.

I started to see the Church in these terms during the early days of renegotiating my relationship with it. I noticed that the LDS apostles and prophets usually make sure to place themselves and the Church between God and Church members, in a position that allows them to meter out and control Hope, and therefore control the members. The more a Church leader’s personal interests are aligned with the interests of the Church organization, the more of an interest he has in controlling the means by which Church members can obtain Hope.

Church leaders at different levels of the hierarchy have butted heads over this issue. Sometimes a lower-level authority or academic will advocate for a view of salvation that allows for Hope independent of the Church hierarchy. Such populism-flavored views are usually corrected by the top leaders of the Church, sometimes in particularly nasty ways. I will give examples in future posts.

-PWM

Mormon Woman Wondering asked:

Please help me understand how you…speak with your children, with integrity to your beliefs and with sensitivity to their need for something to hold onto in this world.

This is a tough question, particularly for somebody like me, with a spouse who is active in the Church, and who wants our kids to be active too. Obviously, my solution is a compromise, and could possibly have been different if she felt differently.  But I think this solution does take into account the potential need for kids to have something to hold onto as they develop their own worldview.

As background, I think it is useful to note that my wife and I share the opinion that childhood is a key time for a person to learn basic lessons about how the world works, and the older a person gets, the more costly those lessons will generally become (e.g., getting caught cheating on a test when you are eight years old is less costly than getting caught cheating on a final exam in college).  As parents, we have a chance to control, to a significant extent, the circumstances under which our children get their lessons, in order to best help them prepare for adulthood and the real world.  The issue my wife and I are dealing with, then, is deciding which circumstances are best for teaching our kids the lessons.

My wife believes that going to church is a good way for the kids to get some of those lessons, and at the age the kids are at right now (5-9 years old), I agree.  At this age, the church teaches kids simple lessons about gratitude, sharing with others, respect for other people, honesty, obedience, and other basic concepts that help them get along in society.  The fact that these lessons are often taught in the context of myths and legends about Joseph Smith, or characters in the Book of Mormon or Bible, is not that big of a deal to me.  I think children are well-equipped to learn through stories that are presented as true, whether they actually are or not.  It is not much different to me than using any other more conventional fairy tales to teach morality and ethics (i.e. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, or Santa Claus), so I have gone along with the process, limiting my input to questions meant to gauge their understanding of the lessons they learn in church.

I don’t go to church, and my kids notice that.  But just like times when they notice that Santa doesn’t being me very many presents, I refrain from completely leveling with them.  My response so far has been to say that I have graduated from church, just like I graduated from school.  I can say this with sincerity, because it is the truth, from my perspective.  It works as an answer for my kids and my wife, because, just like school, I am not giving them a reason to give her trouble about staying home.  They go and learn their lessons, just like their mom and I went when we were their age, and they will have a chance to “graduate” when they are old enough to make that decision.  We have stayed vague about the details of graduation.

Of course, as our kids get older, the focus of the lessons taught in the Church will gradually change from teaching them basic moral and ethical concepts to indoctrinating them into the LDS worldview (regarding gender roles, sexuality, sin, Truth, religious authority, non-LDS beliefs, etc.).  I do have serious concerns about that, but my wife and I haven’t formally developed a game plan for dealing with it yet.  I might write more about the issue in a future post.

-PWM

I have been wondering recently, however, if jumping to that conclusion about people in the Church is really warranted. Could I be exhibiting an error in judgment? Some bias buried in my all-too-human psyche? I think it’s possible.

Okay, probable.

As humans, we make judgments about other people. But we know that we shouldn’t judge people unless we’ve “walked a mile in their shoes.” In other words, it’s important to thoroughly understand their point of view. But what happens when we don’t know enough about the other person to truly comprehend his or her point of view? Well, in order to make our judgment, we have to make assumptions. One assumption that Americans (and other western cultures that cherish individualism) often make is that the other person’s behavior has more to do with the other person’s innate character than any outside influences that may exist.

Thus, if a person is fat, it is probably because of slothfulness or gluttony and not a lack of healthy food options or genetics. If a person is poor, it is probably because of stupidity or laziness, not bad luck or hardship. If a person is a thief, it is probably because of selfishness, not desperation. If a person is an LDS bishop threatening a heretic with Church discipline, it is because of arrogance, not CHI requirements.

Interestingly, when evaluating themselves, people make sure to give full weight to the outside circumstances that influence their own behavior. Obviously, then, most people would acknowledge that environmental factors affect behavior, and that they can limit a person’s options in significant ways. Unfortunately, outsiders can’t always see those limitations, and they make unflattering assumptions about the things they can see.

So, I am acknowledging this phenomenon (which is called fundamental attribution error) as it relates to me and my own perspective. It has affected, and continues to affect, my judgments about the motivations behind the behavior and life circumstances of other people. I’m not saying that innate character traits don’t also have a significant effect on behavior, I’m only saying that it is tremendously difficult (and often impossible) so sort out which of the two is at play in a given instance. I am trying to adjust my assumptions accordingly.

(By the way, because LDS Church leaders and members are also human, fundamental attribution error causes them to regularly misjudge the motivations and personal character of apostates and heretics like myself. The Gift of the Holy Ghost does not make them immune. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a person who believes him or herself to be immune from these kinds of errors will probably suffer through a lifetime of misunderstandings and bad interpersonal relationships.)

-PWM

_______________________

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.

As a new missionary, I was in the (common?) position of having never really leveled with my local bishop back home about grave sins like masturbation and/or looking at pornography. Before the MTC, I had convinced myself that looking at my dad’s erotic photography books (or Showtime: After Hours) in the privacy of my own bedroom (or mom’s TV room) and/or masturbating, was a victimless crime–if a crime at all, and certainly not something that required shouting from the rooftops, for goodness sake. After a couple of weeks in the MTC, however, I was convinced that I had to confess my adolescent sins to somebody with authority from God to make the sins go away. I tried to find an opportunity to discreetly meet with a member of my missionary branch presidency, and found that there was a line of male missionaries waiting, outside an empty classroom, for a meeting with him. I decided that I would just blend in with them and wait my turn.

While I stood there, my mind began racing. “What if I what I’ve done is actually really bad? Have I broken my temple covenants? What will happen to me? Can I be sent home from my mission for this? How will I face everybody back home? What will I do? Is confession worth it? I definitely won’t ever masturbate again–do I even need to confess? Should I just get up and leave?”

Too soon, it was my turn. I entered the classroom to find the first counselor in the branch presidency waiting for me. He was a tall skinny man with wire-rimmed glasses, completely bald on top. He seemed like a nice enough guy. He exuded confidence and wisdom. He seemed comfortable talking to me, but I was not comfortable. I was worried that my life was going to suddenly go sideways, spinning off in the wrong direction.

He made an attempt at small talk. He asked how I was doing, whether I was used to the schedule, learning a new language, getting along with my companion. I played along. After a minute, he asked me why I wanted to meet with him. Was there anything he could do for me?

I was brave. I didn’t cry or anything. I confessed to (most of the) bad stuff. He asked me how often I had masturbated. I told him. He asked me if the pornography and the masturbation had ever happened at the same time. I told him yes. I braced for the consequences of my awful deeds.

He smiled and told me that he was glad I had confessed. He told me that he generally considered habitual masturbation or pornography viewing to be sins requiring confession to a church leader. He told me that when masturbation happened while viewing pornography, that was a sin that must be confessed, even if it happened only once. He told me that my repentance was now underway, and that the next step was to never do it again. I told him I was already there.

I walked out of the meeting feeling light and happy. I wasn’t going to be sent home, humiliated. In fact, I was now actually worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. It was now possible for me to be a decent missionary. I would never masturbate again.

(And I didn’t do it even once for the balance of my mission. Two+ years of perfect sexual “purity”. Been there, done that.)

-PWM

1. God (a.k.a. “Heavenly Father”) exists.
2. Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of humankind.
3. The LDS Church is Jesus Christ’s one true church, comprising his only authorized franchise for teaching people the essential doctrines and administering the rituals (commonly called the “ordinances”) necessary for salvation in the highest kingdom of heaven. (These doctrines and ordinances are collectively referred to as “the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”.)
4. Joseph Smith was a prophet, chosen personally by Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to be given the authority to act and speak on behalf of God (the “priesthood”) and with that authority to restore Christ’s true church and the fullness of the Gospel, all of which were briefly in the possession of the early Christian Church after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but were lost shortly thereafter (in an event and period of time called “The Great Apostasy”).
5. The current head of the LDS Church is a prophet of God–a legitimate successor of Joseph Smith’s priesthood authority.

While the above facts form the minimum foundation for a testimony that an orthodox member of the Church must profess to have, a Mormon can have a testimony of a lot more facts than that, including (but not limited to) any of the following:

• My life has a purpose.
• I am a child of God, who loves me.
• God wants me to take a certain course of action (i.e., take a this job, move to this city, invest in this cousin’s multi-level marketing company, marry this person, have another baby, etc.).
• Drinking caffeinated soda is forbidden.
• Drinking caffeinated soda is not forbidden.
• Paying 10% of my gross (rather than net) income to the LDS Church is the correct tithe.
• Pornography is bad.
• Evolution is a false theory of men–God created Earth and everything on it in a period of six thousand years or so.
• Evolution is the mechanism by which God created Earth and everything on it over a period of billions of years.
• A member of the LDS priesthood can anoint my head with consecrated extra virgin olive oil and pronounce a special prayer to heal me from any illness.
• Birth control is wrong.
• Birth control is right.
• God wants me to go visit this person.
• God wants me to say this.
• Gay people should not be getting married to each other.
• Polygamy is a true principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
• Events described in the Holy Bible literally happened, for the most part.
• The Book of Mormon is the most correct book on Earth, and everything described therein literally happened.
• People of Semitic descent populated all of North and South America for a thousand years, from around 600 B.C. to around 400 A.D.
• People of Semitic descent lived in a very limited geographical area somewhere in South or Central America for a thousand years, from around 600 B.C. to around 400 A.D.

The list could go on and on. You will note that some of the items on the list are contradictory, which might cause you to conclude that a testimony is a strictly subjective thing, unrelated to objective reality. You would be wrong, however. In Mormonism, a testimony is actually considered to be a means of confirming and understanding objective truth–a shortcut for those who can’t (or don’t want to) make the observations and tests necessary to establish a fact. In fact, a testimony is considered to be even more accurate or essentially True than scientific observations made through the five senses.²

With that in mind, the inconsistencies in the list above can be explained by differences in people’s capacity to read or understand communication from the Holy Ghost. A person who is accurately receiving and understanding the Holy Ghost’s messages is said to be “in tune”. Theoretically, if everybody were truly in tune with the Holy Ghost, there would be no contradictions on the list.

-PWM

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1. Apostle Gordon B. Hinckley said: “I would like to say to you, that is the strength of this cause, the individual testimony that lies in the hearts of the people. The strength of this church is not in its buildings, in its chapels, in its offices, in its schools; it is not in its programs or its publications. They are important, but they are only a means to an end, and that the end is the building of the testimony – a conviction that will weather every storm and stand up to every crisis in the hearts and lives of the membership.” (Gordon B. Hinckley, Area Conference Report, August 1971, Manchester, England, pp. 160-161. As quoted in Testimony, pp. 8-9)
2. “Remember that faith and doubt cannot exist in the same mind at the same time, for one will dispel the other…Should doubt knock at your doorway, just say to those skeptical, disturbing, rebellious thoughts: ‘I propose to stay with my faith, with the faith of my people. I know that happiness and contentment are there, and I forbid you, agnostic, doubting thoughts to destroy the house of my faith. I acknowledge that I do not understand the processes of creation, but I accept the fact of it. I grant that I cannot explain the miracles of the Bible, and I do not attempt to do so, but I accept God’s word. I wasn’t with Joseph, but I believe him. My faith did not come to me through science, and I will not permit so-called science to destroy it.” (Thomas S. Monson, “The Lighthouse of the Lord,” New Era, February 2001, p. 4)