The last few weeks I’ve been in kind of a funk since Elder Nelson’s comments at CES devotional. I thought I’d made peace with the policy existing and found a path to move forward, but his comments really tripped me up and I found myself trying to avoid energy-draining conflict. At church I’ve wandered into nursery to volunteer as I’ve started trying to avoid the classes and comments from my Rexburg ward. Seeing that they didn’t need my help in nursery on Sunday I ducked into the last 15 minutes of Sunday School just to hear the lesson on Nephi and Lehi’s vision being taught specifically as a type and shadow of how we must always trust our current leaders, no matter what, because they eventually lead us to the promised land. Not exactly the well I would have chosen to drink from just now, but it gave me a bit to think about. I consider myself a believer, and I believe that I love, respect, pray for, and support my leaders in their callings. I don’t think I can say I necessarily trust them right now, or that sustaining requires me to always obey.
Christian Harrison has already more eloquently addressed this topic two years ago in a guest post here at W&T, with the applicable part under “Disagreement & Defection”:
The principle of sustaining our leaders is often coupled with the principle of obedience. It’s natural for leadership to feel sustained when they observe obedience… but this is an error of perspective. When I raise my hand to the square to sustain someone in their position — regardless of whether it be the President of the Church or the person who prints the ward bulletin — I’m not promising to obey them. I’m promising to sustain them.
The term “sustain” is rich with meaning. Food sustains us. Love sustains us. Unblinking obedience does not sustain us. My sustaining vote is evidenced and manifest when I pray for their success — when I’m rooting for them and helping them to magnify their calling. And, like food and love, the act of sustaining is reciprocative. My sustaining vote is accepted when those I sustain embrace and facilitate me in my work as the sustainer.
And when we disagree — and we will, it’s inevitable — we’re not called upon to simply succumb to the demands of begrudging obedience, which is a destructive act; we’re called, instead, to the godly and creative act of loving someone despite their failings. This is at the heart of the weighty calling of sibling-ship.
About this same time over the last month I’ve been reading the memoir of Armand Mauss, Shifting Borders and a Tattered Passport: Journeys of a Mormon Academic. It was a fascinating look into the life of an inside outsider – one who has never worked directly for the church but has been involved and been privy to a lot of details from the inside. I loved his description of pre-retrenchment church, his life and work, and especially the inside info. One of my favorite stories is when he was part of a group who’d been hired to do some surveys and statistical analysis (before the church started their own department) and during a presentation to GAs mentioned their stats showed Mormon boys had the exact same rate of marijuana use as the general population – and the GA in charge immediately shut down the presentation and didn’t allow the group to say anything more about their study or recommendations. I don’t know why that was so hilarious to me. Anyways, I also loved his succinct conclusion to the book. One of the things I hope to learn, remember, and apply from him is paraphrased below:
My relationship to the LDS Church as an institution has evolved in ways that are rational as well as emotional. I would summarize by saying that it had been one long process of disenchantment to which the changing ecclesiastical culture has contributed but not caused. Note that I use the term disenchantment and not disillusionment. I mean only that for me, the institutional church and its leaders no longer embody an otherwordly mystique, as they did when I was a young man. I confess that sometimes I miss the sense of security and certainty about church leaders that I had as a youth, when I saw LDS prophets and other leaders as virtually infallible spokesmen for Deity. Whatever part Deity played in its origins, the church soon came to operate and develop a lot like other human institutions and organizations. Therefore …it can be understood through sociological analysis. The sociological view is necessary. It was my understanding of this reality that gradually brought my disenchantment.
I am as offended as other intellectuals when I see policies and practices in the church that I consider harmful, or just plain wrong. Yet I have always understood the nature of LDS ecclesiastical polity: I know the church is not a democracy and does not claim to be one. It is a corporate, centralized bureaucracy, in which change occurs slowly.
So it is that I have continued to value my membership in the LDS Church and kingdom and to give it my voluntary loyalty, even when I have believed church policies to be in error in certain respects. Yet — and this is important — it has been precisely my disenchantment that has inoculated me against disillusionment, because of the concomitant reductions in expectations. That is, an understanding of the church and its leaders as human and mortal has kept me from holding out unrealistic expectations for their performance. This has left me free to offer them my own support, loyalty, respect, and appreciation as fellow laborers in the vineyard, but not as contingent on an inerrant execution of their duties. This kind of emotional detachment has left me free to express myself in respectful terms without an accompanying anger that might have led to my departure from the church.
I guess one could say that I have always tried to look on the church and its leaders with faith, hope, and charity, even while keeping my expectations modest. I suspect they might say the same about me.
So I guess that’s the space I’m claiming. I’m disenchanted as hell right now. Over the past few years there has been a lot regarding the church and my discovering its history that’s caused me to be disgruntled and upset. My fear has always been that I’ll stop caring and turn into an emotional zombie about everything and just phone it in the rest of my life. But maybe developing a healthy level of emotional detachment is key. Does this lead to acceptance of really low (Mauss uses “modest”) expectations? Things are just going to be a hot mess no matter what and I need to accept that, right? Is this the key to avoiding angry disillusionment?
Wheat & Tares 
Very thought provoking post.
After experiencing years of disenchantment with the church myself, including elements of church history, I reexamined my priorities. Was I unwittingly elevating “the church” to a pedestal that was rightly only the Lord’s alone? Should the church and its doctrines and weeding out truth vs. tradition involve more of my spiritual energy than figuring out what Christ wants me personally do with my life?
I can’t answer for anyone else but I have been down that road and focusing on “church” and “doctrines” and what was true vs. what wasn’t led me to disappointment. To be honest, there is much that rings true to me about the doctrines of the LDS church, and much that doesn’t.
Eventually I realized something. I only have so much energy. And the more energy I expended in worrying about my doctrinal issues with the church—the less I had for other areas in my life. Finally I came to a decision. If some of the doctrines of the church were making me disappointed, then maybe it was because I was taking on too much, when God simply wanted me to place my focus on my relationship with Him, and loving my neighbor.
Of course I may be wrong. But I have found far greater peace and joy focusing day to day on deepening my relationship with Christ and serving others with love. My relationship with the church is secondary at best.
This was really great. Thank you for sharing Br. Mauss’ wisdom and for placing it within your own (and many of ours) context. This really encapsulates much of my own feeling, and while this faith, hope, and charity requires patience, it certainly has allowed me to retain my love for the gospel, my fellow saints (including my leaders), and for the expansive potential of Mormonism.
Kristine A,
This post really resonates with me. Mauss perfectly sums up my relationship with the church and its leaders. This post also recalls a conclusion I’ve come to recently, which is that faith and reason really cannot peacefully co-exist. Each makes demands on a person that really, eventually, force one to choose whether one will follow the dictates of logic and reason or the dictates of faith. Many LDS folks I know insist that reason and faith can be harmoniously wedded, but that’s not at all been my experience.
I think, too, that one of the difficulties I’ve faced (perhaps this is a version of your own claims at the end of your post) is that I never thought that the church itself would become a chief obstacle in my getting closer to God and Christ. We Mormons talk a lot about how mortality is rife with tests and challenges and it’s ironic to think that the church itself is creating challenges and obstacles for people in spaces similar to you and I. That’s disheartening, to say the least.
In the end, I’m with Cindy: The church and its rules and strictures and morally unsupportable doctrines and policies became an obstacle to me becoming more Christ-like. I now invest a minimal amount of time sweating concepts like “perfect obedience brings perfect blessings” and instead invest most of my time in other people, both inside and outside of the church. The energy I spend on helping people pays me back a thousandfold. The energy I used to spend on worrying about whether I was following all the rules/policies, etc. merely exhausted me. I suppose that means I’m still disenchanted with the church, but I’m energized by doing the things I think Jesus would want me to do.
Great post, and love the quotes. I couldn’t believe that Shakespeare would have said “Expectation is the root of all heartache” so I looked it up. The actual quote is:
“Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises.”
I agree that unrealistic expectations cause a lot of heartache, and I’m personally struggling with the concept of expectations, and how important they really are in life. I think they ARE important to a certain extent. I love the quote from Victor Frankl, who said: “If we take man as he really is, we make him worse. But if we overestimate him … we promote him to what he really can be.”
I think this is as true for the church as it is for people, that we should have SOME kind of expectation. This is why that General Authority shut down the presentation on marijuana. But like Victor Frankl, we should expect people (or churches) to fail us. But this doesn’t necessarily mean we should alter the expectations.
We have the scripture “be ye therefore perfect,” which basically enshrines a Platonic idealism into our doctrine. But I think we should remember that this perfection will NEVER be achieved. It is there as a goal, a potentiality, a fulness of our own identity, and the identity of the church. But we will always be in the process of becoming, working towards it.
Yeah, I figured that probably wasn’t word for word Nate – but it just got so perfectly :). Thanks for finding the real one.
I like the added angle of Frankle: hope for better from people (but maybe not expect it?).
As for the perfection part the last few years I’ve chosen to interpret it as “made whole through Christ.” So I struggle w perfection discussions and didn’t think I was expecting perfection of the Church/leaders….,but obviously I was expecting more than this. It’s like the game of limbo, each time something happens it’s like I’m being trained to keep my expectations lower and lower. What is left by the end?
Re: Sky, Leonard, Cindy:
I really like the focus of putting energy into personal relationship w Christ and helping others. In fact it reminds me of Andrew’s post last week about faith transitions as social movements (Physical/intellectual/relational).
I guess I just felt stick because a lot of my “helping people” role comes in the form of faithfully agitating for change. Or at least raising a believing voice on behalf of the marginalized. I still think that’s what I’m being prompted to do. Esp since I recently had some close friends come out of the closet to me and thanked me for my faithful example. This is what it feels like to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Raising a believing voice on behalf of the marginalized is an exhausting and worthy goal in itself. You just don’t tend to see the positive effect you really have.
Kristine,
I second Mary Ann’s comment. You’re dong important and worthy work. It stinks that in our church, speaking on behalf of the marginalized means being ostracized and regarded with suspicion, but I don’t see that changing any time soon. As a teacher, I just try to throw myself into helping my students every day in every way that I can and that seems to take a good deal of the sting out of the fact that I’m an outsider at church. I think what’s really important in all this is not letting bitterness towards other people at church thinking/believing differently outweigh the good feelings I do have. I’m in a very conservative area of the east coast and it’s easy for me to get snotty about “conservative Mormons living in a bubble” etc. In those moments I try to work hard to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and to realize that none of us really have things figured out and that it’s okay if some people find different solutions to living the gospel than I do.
Your quoting of Armand tipped me to the point that I just ordered the book as it has been on my “to order once I read the stack of books I have”. Now it will be on my “stack to read” and I hope it does not fall over! 🙂
Great comments Mary Ann and Brother Sky.
Excellent post. I don’t think, however, that “[t]hings are just going to be a hot mess no matter what.” Sometimes the powers that be will get it right, and all will be harmonious. Sometimes they’ll get it right and you’ll be wrong. We’re all human, is the point.
I’m beginning to realize how fortunate I was to come to my investigation of the church as an adult, and from a place of doubt and deep skepticism. It helped me both to have human expectations, and even to appreciate that aspect of church leadership, and also to be exposed to 100+ years of anti-Mormon arguments in the space of about two months.
Kristine,
I kind of wish I could take Br. Mauss’ position. There is much to recommend it. My biggest stumbling block is honestly that leaders and institution itself refuses any real sense of humility in this regard. It is Elder Nelson’s talk raising policy to doctrine, invoking apocalypse and then asking for unbending obedience of millennials. It is the church PR department releasing simply fallacious statements that the church has the “gold standard” in abuse prevention practices (in 2010 or now, who cares). It is the curriculum choices to turn EQ/RS into one long cherry-picked, historically challenged, proof-texted paean to imperfect men, and deciding to run an entire year of SS not on scripture but a one-page lawyer produced “guideline” that they kinda, sorta tried to raise to the status of revelation. It is watching too many kids march in lock stop to “Follow the Prophet”. It talk after talk after talk about “obedience”. It is two talks in general conference based on the 14 Fundamentals of following the prophet. It is the cult of obedience and infallibility that many swaths of members have created around the institution and leaders (here’s looking to you Mormon Women Stand!) that are at very least NOT discouraged and at worst actively supported. It seems the predominant weight of the church is now hell-bent on violating D&C 121 admission that no power should be exercised through priesthood position alone. If I saw the brethren out there trying to fight this tendency instead of riding it I would be so much more inclined to be appropriately disenchanted but all this together feel so *disingenuous” on their part I can’t bring myself to pitch in my oar anymore. And now I have kids I got tired of trying to fight the obedience indoctrination pushed on them at every turn. We live in Benson’s church now. Would that it were Hugh B. Browns. Of course it wouldn’t be perfect but at least it would feel humble and honest.
These are just my feelings and processing. I am so glad many great people make it work for them.
rah – Your comment of, “We live in Benson’s church now. Would that it were Hugh B. Browns.” rings a bit to true. I am >50 and until I got into church history (outside of Deseret books) did I even have much of an idea of who Hugh B. Brown was.
It is sad when someone’s expectations of someone else are not realized — and it is even sadder when the first then dislikes the second because of those unmet (and probably unrealistic) expectations. How did Higgins ask it in My Fair Lady, “Why can’t she be like me?” When we treat the Church as a consumer or like politics, well, that’s the wrong way to approach it. I’m generally content to let others try to magnify their large callings while I try to magnify my small calling — it works for me. Maybe it’s more like a family — I wish some things were different, but I am so very grateful for the (imperfect) family that I do have and I really don’t want to force them to change to fit my expectations if that would essentially change who they are — I love them as they are and want to peacefully walk with them. A different perspective that might be helpful to some reader…
Kristine, Thankyou for the insight. Not sure it can be done when your immediate leaders still see their superiors as speaking Gods words, without exception.
rah: “at very least NOT discouraged and at worst actively supported”
This is indeed the troubling thing, that interferes with ji’s approach for me. At what point is enough enough?
Here in the United States the political landscape has become increasingly polarized as well, so I feel that reactionary groups (like MWS) reflect that general trend. People don’t seem to tolerate any compromise anymore – you’re either with us or against us. (And seriously people, Follow the Prophet is popular with kids because it’s upbeat and fun to dance to, like Scripture Power. Most of the verses are about OT prophets, and most adults and kids still don’t give a crap about the Bible no matter how many times they sing that song.)
When you pull back the curtain on leadership there will inevitably be things that you don’t like. There will also be things you do like, and wish they’d been incorporated into the public image the leadership has decided to present at this time. Regardless, nothing leaders say can interfere with your personal relationship with God, and there will be many times you’ll have to rely on that relationship when the decisions of others make an environment very difficult (whether those decisions were inspired or not).
I feel like Mauss is saying that you shouldn’t let your frustration with leadership overshadow the principles that attracted you to the gospel taught in this church in the first place. You are still an instrument that God can use to accomplish a lot of good, through service, speaking for those who feel incapable speaking for themselves, or otherwise.
In addition to helping others and deepening our relationship to Christ, another particular joy of this gospel can lie in our eternal relationships. When I was visiting with our Stake President and telling him that I no longer linger in the Celestial Room of the temple because it is too painful, he told me to have an expectation that I would see my departed loved ones. It was, however, along those lines of that failed expectation and the pain/loneliness associated with my loved one’s earthly presence that was the source of my pain. Here are some quotes from the blog aftertheyaregonecom that helps reframe the nature of my expectations and validates experiences of gospel joy I have had outside of the walls of the temple. These are the words of Craig Jenkins, who lost his wife Lorna to cancer:
“Monday evening, I was visiting with some friends who had stopped by when our Stake President with his wife rang the door bell. Katie, our youngest daughter, answered the door. She asked him for a blessing. They stepped into the office and he gave her a blessing. He told her that it was her mothers time to go, that she could have chosen to stay, but in Gods plan, it was her time to go. (In a blessing to Kurt her brother a little later in the evening, Kurt was told that his “mothers ability to bless her family was now uninhibited”.)
Toward the end of Katie’s blessing he told her that “your mother is in the room with us”. He then closed the blessing, told her to stay there and he and his wife stepped out of the office and closed the door. Katie was left expecting to “see” her mother. After a minute or so she asked out loud if she was going to “see her”. In her mind she heard “no, there’s a veil.” She then looked up to the ceiling and asked if she was “floating”, in her mind, “no, I don’t float”. Katie, “will I feel your hugs”. Lorna, “no, I don’t have a body”. Katie, “how will I know”. Lorna, “I will speak words to your mind, and my Spirit will enter your body””
I like that comment about her mother’s ability to bless her family being ‘uninhibited.’ You could think of that lack of inhibition referring to some of the emotional or authoritative inhibitions described in this post.
I have been blessed to have a few similar experiences, though in moments of disenchantment, it can be difficult to recall and reverence them. Craig refers to these as ‘love notes’, and he keeps a journal of them. Though the adversary loves to remonstrate feelings such as these are purely physiologic responses to emotions, grieving, or stress, I would challenge the disenchanted to continue seeking these. And if you can’t find them in the temple, like I am having trouble doing right now, perhaps you can find them in other places.
I do find myself able to draw from the counsels and faith experiences of those who are not disenchanted–my current bishop, for example. He is one of those that feels there is no time for reading things that do not contribute to the building of faith and sustaining the prophets. Yet, I learn and grow spiritually from interacting with him. Also, for every personal negative message I find from Elder Packer’s talks, I am able to find a memorable positive.
correction: my loved one’s earthly absence.
As the church continues to grow and the world continues to go away from the things of God. (We should remember that the world has changed creating potential issues the church has to deal with which by the way has been prophecied.) We should not be surprised by things that happen such as this.
It is also important to remember that this life is supposed to be challenging. We will have trials of our faith. There will be times we will have to seek comfort from the Spirit. Of course of leaders are imperfect. So? We should seek the Spirit in all things. The Church is true and will go forth whether or not we will follow our leaders in faith.