Is this Christ my Christ?
Emaciated, spectral
lusting for divinity
A figure in bloody majesty
preaching to the dead
whitened ashy crowds
Not one who heals
but a sword
reminding of darkness
when all is light.
Are violence and weightlessness
my sure foundation?
Can this be my rock
divine form barely restrained
from flight?
I was quite refreshed by the tone of the General Relief Society meeting this year. Just naming the hymns alone will make quite a statement: "Redeemer of Israel," "High on the Mountain Top," "The Lord is My Light," and one more that I can't remember of similar active vein. It was nice, for once, to actually have to think during a GenRS meeting
Not that the talks were stunning. I could feel the list of three things in Sister Beck's talk coming from a mile away--but it had good moments too. I confess that I found Sister Allred's talk slightly boring, although I did enjoy listening to her accent a lot. Sister Thompson carried that day with an interesting hybridization of gospel truths and worldly experience.
But in spite of their flaws, the talks had real substance. They weren't the pat on the head talks that have become the butt of so many GenRS vs. GenPriesthood meeting jokes.
Apparently though, the Church just can't win when talking to women. Katherine wrote a post complaining how either it's patronizing us with how great we are, telling us not to be depressed, or it's how we need to be the best, telling us to do better. Neither mode is satisfactory. But is there a point in the middle? After reading Katherine's post, I was left asking, "Well then, if they can't tell us we're good enough and they can't tell us to be better, how can the Church talk to women?"
If we have to pick between the two, I'd personally pick the latter--like Sister Beck said in her talk, the best cure for loneliness and depression is the get out and do something. It seems to me that the reason for the first, conciliatory mode of speaking is solved by the second--action. It seems to me that the recent move towards coddling has been mostly due to increased awareness of depression in the Church (and perhaps the Church's hyper-reaction to the problem--it has the same flavor of over-correction as affirmative action). Maybe this is just because I've found ways to deal with my own feelings of inadequacy through moving forward.
But in actuality, both the conciliatory and the active roles are parts of the gospel. The repentance process can be distracted by a perversion of either. Satan tries to convince us that we are flawed beyond hope or that we can perform our own salvation. But actual salvation needs the true nature of both. And perhaps so does the attitude of Church speakers toward their audience. Too much condemnation or acceptance is stifling to eternal progress. We must make the gospel something within reach, which is perhaps why President Hinckley's "small steps," "stand a little taller" motif works so well--it promotes action, but makes it reachable rather than hopeless.
This Easter weekend has been an interesting one for me. On Good Friday, I watched The Passion of the Christ for the first time ever. I'll leave you to your own decisions on whether to watch it--it was a very overwhelming experience, and at least this first time, I felt more shock than spiritual uplift. The discussion it incited was certainly enlightening, but I'm not convinced that it's something everyone needs to experience. (If there's interest, I can blog more about this, but I'm sure it's pretty much been worked to death, no tasteless pun intended.)
I've also been enjoying the Holy Week poetry over at BCC. I especially liked the John Updike poem they chose for Easter. Now that's what poetry's supposed to be--not obscuring things but simplifying them to the point where emotions are undeniably shared.
Incidentally, the whole Holy Week thing is another part of that sense of tradition--which I've determined should be more properly termed ritual--that I sometimes long for. This is something I meant to blog about a long time ago--at the beginning of Lent, actually--but never really got around to it. I've noticed at BYU that a lot of Mormon young adults (particularly the more liberal leaning types) like to practice traditions that belong to other religions. My freshman year, I remember there being a craze with the idea of Lent. I mean literally half the ward was giving up something for Lent, without any particularly organized prompting to do so. And then you have the annual Passover celebrations/demonstrations at BYU, the huge groups of students attending activities at the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork, the world religions classes which require students to attend the worship services of other faiths. One friend of mine finds it particularly amusing that he's skipped sacrament meeting three times this semester to attend mosque.
And I wonder what this fascination with other religious traditions means. Is it simply missionary curiosity, wanting to know how others think about God in order to better engage them in theological discussion? Or (as with Passover) is it doctrinal curiousity, the need to put our beliefs into context? Is it the same desire for a sense of oldness, of ritualism and formalism that I've been feeling? Or is it a symptom of widespread dissatisfaction with the "cold, corporate" feeling of the Church? I've been thinking about this last question for a long time, ever since reading about Katherine's experience with Evensong in Cambridge. I've sometimes felt the way she describes about sacrament meetings--that I've built up a resistance, that it's so familiar that it means nothing. On the other hand, I don't think worship services necessarily ought to be aesthetic experiences--the appreciation of beauty is one of those feelings which becomes too easily confused with the Spirit. Beauty, while a part of religion, is not precisely what religion is. And I sort of like the fact that sacrament meeting usually yields only what you put into it.
I used to be very against Mormons usurping other religion's holidays. Sometimes, I tell myself that it's because it feels disrespectful. Practitioners of other faiths really believe in their rituals; it seems rude of me to participate in it like a tourist experiencing the native culture. I mean, do I want someone who doesn't believe in Mormonism participating in our sacrament? Perhaps the analogy works better if you think of the temple--we limit its use to committed members because it's something serious and sacred. To allow participation by non-believers--or even casual believers--would cheapen it, would imply it's not real. Isn't it disrespectful of me to do that to another's religious services?
But sometimes I feel my real reason went something like this: we're the true Church; why should we need to borrow worship practices from false (though virtuous) religions? It felt something like idol worship, perhaps, or "Christianity and water" (to steal a term from C.S. Lewis, but change the definition). To my mind, somehow borrowing traditions somehow implied the Church was less than true. I was quite appalled at the Lent craze my freshman year. Passover I had less resistance to, so long as it was done in a purely academic manner.
Oddly, I've become less opposed to it over time, which I'm not sure is a good thing. I even thought about giving up the snooze button for Lent this year. But then something inside me said, just five more minutes . . . .
So I figured out why I had a sudden influx of random people a few weeks ago: I was highlighted on The Archipelago Digest, an LDS blog review/digest cool-thing. Well, belated hello to you all (assuming some of you are still reading). I'm not sure I like the pressure of being classified as part of the Bloggernacle, although I guess I self-sorted anyway. I feel like I should be blogging about more church topics, when lately my blogging has been skewed towards writerly topics. I guess I don't like being confined to one subject area. Well, take me or leave me, I guess. :D
As a result of finding the Archipelago link, I've renewed my attempt at being more involved in the Bloggernacle. And when I say "involved" I mean "added a bunch of random feeds to my Google reader to see if I like them." (I'll post some sort of review in a few weeks.) One post on Zelophehad's Daughters caught my eye: Why I Hate Mormons. If that provocative title doesn't get you to read it, it's basically a discussion of dealing with the imperfection of Church members, and particularly Church leaders. Since I've been meaning to deal with this topic anyway (as part of my Problem of Perfection mini-series-whatever), I thought I'd post my discussion here. Mostly, I'm just wanting to organize my thoughts before treading into the comments section, where there is no edit button.
First off, although it's bad form, I'd like to start with a disclaimer. This is a big spherical chicken. Like, KFC family meal size. There are tons of situations where what I'm saying would need severe modification, especially in instances of abuse. But, as is usually the policy on this blog, try to ignore the exceptions and focus on the general philosophy instead. Good? Good. Moving on.
Okay, so I don't know anything about the author of the post--as I said I'm new to following this blog--but to me, the story sounds little lopsided and out of proportion. I try to be objective when I write, but I know that I color my actions a little, especially when I write rants against other people. It's natural to want to make ourselves out to be innocent--it makes for a better case. When I read this woman's story, I get the feeling that there's a definite amount of bias, probably because of the lack of admission of possible fault in the author. But, as I said, I don't know the details, so I can't really talk about the specific matter.
What I can talk about it this: I find it interesting that we (members of the church generally, and so-called liberal Mormons specifically) seem to think it's okay for us to condemn others for condemning us. The normal kinds of mistakes, we expect others to tolerate and be patient with, but the sin of intolerance is an automatic out. It's as if somehow intolerance is less important for us to forgive than more conventional faults like lying, cheating, and stealing. Which is clearly ridiculous. The atonement, and its corollary that we are required to forgive all men, covers both active sins and faults of character, like closed-mindedness and discrimination.
Just because you get called to be a bishop or Relief Society president doesn't make you perfectly capable. Theoretically, the further up the "chain of command" you go, the more nearly perfect the people are. But I would be cautious about saying even that much. Take Hugh Nibley's grandfather, Charles Nibley, who was the Presiding Bishop. Arguably, that's high up enough to hold him to a pretty high standard. Yet, on his death bed, he told Hugh if an angel came through the door, he would jump out the window because of the things he had done in order to be successful in business. Clearly, the Lord's standard for calling people is not ours. Of course it's not. It seems to me that this idea of a "minimum standard" of perfection for Church callings is largely illusory, or at least considerably lower than most of us set it.
And this difference in standards causes problems for us, because people in Church callings, even those of high authority, are far from perfect. This often causes pain. I'm not saying that it shouldn't. Imperfection hurts, especially when it comes from people we expect to be able to love or trust. The only place it hurts worse than in Church leadership is in our own families, as CS Lewis discusses in The Four Loves: because our families and our leaders theoretically love us and have stewardship over us, we grow to expect a sort of mind reading, unfair though it may be, and when we don't get it, we get hurt.
However, as I see it, there are two ways of looking at the imperfection of people in the Church, and for that matter in the world in general. Either you can say, as Lady Amalthea seems to have, "These people are wrong, ignorant, and stupid. They're hopeless, and if they are the best the church has to offer, it's unfortunate that I have to be a part of it. How can God allow these people to do these things as his representatives? Wouldn't it be much better to have the Gospel without the Church?" For me, this way seems extremely unhealthy, because it implies that idea of a "tolerable level" of perfection, when in fact, from God's perspective, even the best of us make very little progress in this life.
Here's my counter-statement to the above attitude. I can't claim to always apply it, but I try to remind myself of it whenever I am offended by someone's imperfection. "These people have probably never dealt with someone like me/a situation like this before, so I can see how it might be hard for them. Even though these people hold offices in the church, that doesn't mean they are perfect. God does believe in agency, after all: theirs and mine. He will call them, but He will also allow them to make the choices. I need to help them understand and communicate with me so that they can better deal with these situations, and I can better learn why they act this way. From this problem, we can all progress as children of God. "
In other words, we should look at the imperfection of the saints as a tool rather than a problem. Our intolerance of other's intolerance merely throws into relief our own intolerance. We need to bump up against these problems in order to grow in godly patience and love ourselves. The imperfection of the people in the Church is not an obstacle to the gospel. It is the gospel.
(For related thoughts, see Paradox of Tolerance, or posts tagged "tolerance.")
In my reading of Wuthering Heights for my study abroad class, I've been thinking a lot about the nature of personality: what is it exactly, how much are you born into, and how much can you change? Quite a few of the characters in WH (Heathcliff and Catherine, in particular) seem to have decided that they would not fit in in heaven because their nature is inherently contrary to it. They've seen their society's vision of heaven (the Lintons), and they don't like it, so they aren't going to even try for it.
I see people in the Church sometimes making this mistake, apologizing for the fact that they don't fit the Molly Mormon/Peter Priesthood cast that they assume will be those going to heaven. Whether by virtue of their past experiences, their political party, or their hobbies, they set themselves up as outside those who can expect exaltation. Even worse is when we place others into these categories. We assume that in order to become like Christ, we must lose our individual nature, our personality.
A couple reasons why this is bad: First, it places a limitation on the Atonement which doesn't actually exist. Second, it denies the individual worth of each soul. God created us to be unique from each other. What would be the purpose of doing so if life was supposed to smash that uniqueness out of us? But more concerning than either of these, it implies that the gospel creates a bunch of cookie-cutter people, that you have to be a certain type of person to participate fully in the gospel. Of course, this is true to an extent. We have to do a lot of the same things--you must be keeping the commandments and doing your best to grow closer to God--but I personally believe there's a lot of room in the gospel for personality.
My conclusion about personality is an echo of Plato's allegory of the soul. Personality traits are neither good nor bad. They just are. Or rather, they are both, having both a good and evil aspect plus a will to direct or choose between them. The gospel is not about choosing between being yourself and being Christ. It's about choosing which version of yourself to be. This, to me, is the meaning of "making weak things become strong." Our weaknesses, our personality flaws, are not to be removed by the atonement, but transformed into what they were always intended to be. As CS Lewis says in The Great Divorce, in seeking for heaven, we find fully realized the spark that we thought was worth clinging to in hell. And again, in Matthew 16:25: if we are willing to let go of what we think of as ourselves, we find that we become more unique, more infinitely personal. But in clinging on to the shreds of our self, we lose virtue and uniqueness until at last we are dully all alike in the gray coating of vice.
. . . or several problems rather, but I like the singular title's parallels to CS Lewis' The Problem of Pain. In many ways, the problems with pain and perfection are similar. Here are some specific issues of perfection I've been thinking about. Any commentary would be helpful, as I'm still undecided on most of them.
1. Perfection and the atonement: I finally got around to watching States of Grace the other week. Very interesting movie. Not quite how I would have done it, but then I didn't do it so I suppose I should expect that. Anyway, the critical point I got the first time through the movie was this: do we really believe in the atonement? In the Church, it sometimes seems that we are extremely comfortable with the idea of the atonement helping us with our weaknesses, our imperfections, and our minor mistakes. But when it comes to the truly awful sins, we seem to have a harder time of it. When we pass the threshold from careless mistakes into truly bad sins, it seems we would rather die than work it out--better to be dead than dishonored. We know we were wrong, but it seems now impossible to live down the fact that we made the wrong decision. We expect a certain degree of perfection out of ourselves. It's as if, past a certain point, we don't really believe that God could remember our sins no more. Or perhaps it is our neighbors we are worried about more than God.
One particular example is the idea we encourage in the Church that all women should marry an RM. (That's returned missionary for the two non-LDS readers I might have.) Now, of course I'm a fan of missions, and telling the young men they must go on missions or the girls will never marry them perhaps adds additional motivation (though probably not the most noble one). But after 19, when the mission was either served or not served, is this a fair requirement to keep holding up? Where does this leave men who were not worthy to go on missions? Do they become forever the social outcasts because at one point in their life they weren't worthy?
It's my belief that young women should search for someone who's worthy now, regardless of what they were doing at that point in their life. Not serving a mission doesn't necessarily indicate their current personal state, just as a past mission doesn't guarantee their righteousness. It seems to me hypocritical to say the atonement can change us, and yet to set our standards for people somewhere in the past. Which is why RM is only on my "would be nice to have" list and not my "must have" list, which instead has "worthy, faithful priesthood holder."
Then again, past behavior can sometimes be an indicator of future problems. Do you see my dilemma? Where do we draw the line between being forgiving of mistakes and being careful not to be burned twice?
2. Perfection of the Church as an institution: Are we as Church members are we required to believe the Church as an institution is perfect? I'm not certain as to the answer to this question. There are different levels at which we could criticize the Church. The first would be criticizing the doctrines of the Church, which for me is pretty easy to throw out as unacceptable. But just down from that we have criticizing the GAs. My opinion on this is less solid. Obviously, where it coincides with criticizing doctrine, it is dangerous. Still I'm not convinced that because God will never allow them to lead us astray means they are infallible. (Hopefully I'll be able to clear up my opinion on this when my Hugh Nibley class gets around to reading his article "Criticizing the Brethren.")
Just down from this level, we have criticizing the programs of the Church. For example, I am really not a fan of the Young Women's program. In fact, I pretty much think the personal progress program is absurd, possibly immoral. It seems to me like it's only real purpose would be to force spiritual growth in the youth, which we know is impossible. So it ends up just being a set of hoops to jump through so you can have your spirituality recognized before the rest of the ward. Can we say scribes and Pharisees? I know I grew a lot spiritually during the YW years of my life, but little of that growth was connected to the program. It was too restrictive, too generic, and too artificial. And yet, my mom still feels disappointed that I didn't get the YW medallion, even though I arguably knew a lot more about the gospel than some girls who did. (Gosh, that sounds prideful. Please don't take it the wrong way.) I just didn't feel the need to jump through the hoops to obtain a necklace as proof that I had a testimony. It just feels all wrong. (I'll make a similar argument against the scouting program.) But is it wrong of me to make this criticism? I don't think so. Church programs change all the time, and we sometimes forget that. They are not (at least in form) necessary to salvation.
And what about criticizing Church business deals? I regularly ridicule Deseret Book, and I am extremely suspicious of their buyout of Seagull--a monopoly on LDS merchandise can only lead to roads I hope we don't go down. What about the City Creek Center deal?
In general, the gospel is perfect, but people are not. The Church seems to be somewhere in the crossroads between the two. God will not allow the church to be led astray, but does that mean the church will always be perfectly correct or does this mean that in overall doctrine we will always be safe?
This is getting too long, even for me. Expect problems 3 & 4 in a little bit . . . .
Too lazy to write anything new today, so here's an poem thing I threw together for the Christchild Fireside our ward had last night. The idea was to make something using your talents that you would give to Christ, then exchange the gifts with people in the ward. I hope I would do better than this if I was actually to write something for Christ, but this will have to do for now.
Sorry about the two days of poetry. I'm in an obscure mood lately. I've also become fairly obsessed with allusions to the scriptures. Is there a genre of poetry for people who simply rearrange and juxtapose preexisting scriptures? (Perhaps similar to this song?) If so, I have a great one involving John. I apologize for this being a really rough draft--I only had an hour to write it. It sounded better in my head, I think. The punctuation needs work. (It feels odd to say that, and actually mean it too.)
In welts rising--
from thrown stones
or stinging lashes.
Not in a lavish house or fine linen
but in a finger writing sins in the dirt
and washing them away with tears.
In those yearning to brush a hem,
looking down in shame
bound in chains,
Plucked from a bed of sin
straightway leaving entangling nets
beginning to till hardened souls,
Leaving the dead to bury themselves
in whitened sepulchers
and untended sheepfolds,
As disciples, ascending the mountain,
find more than a teacher
ready to lift and be lifted
On a tree--
a rain of blood
baptism to my soul.
The crown
plaited from
thorns of my flesh.
The vinegar
disappointment
and bitter loss.
The dice
of random fate
parting all.
The words:
"The King of the Jews"
interred under stony weight.
An angel rolls it back.
A scent of lingering spices:
He enters
In my heart--
a gentle whisper
salve of peace.
For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy Redeemer.For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee.
- Isaiah 54:7-8,10
