The other day I was having a discussion with a friend I’ve known since high school. We were talking about why people leave the church, and how some feel lied to about the messy parts of church history once they find out the truth. He said when he found out about all the history of the church, he didn’t feel lied to, and he said it was probably because of his profession as a criminal defense attorney.
He said with his clients, it is his job to put their case in the best light possible, and if his client has warts, figuratively speaking, he is not going to actively publicize those warts. If he is asked about them, he will tell the truth, but even then he is going to cast them in the best light possible. He told me this is what the church tried to do with its “warts”.
So, what do you think of this analogy? Does it break down if we find instances of Apostles and Prophets that outright lied about certain parts of our history, to cover the warts? Does this help us understand Elder Packer saying that “Some things that are true are not very useful”?
Being charitable is always good.
There’s a big difference between warts and crimes. (One of a defense lawyer’s techniques is to blur that difference.) We all have sins to deal with, and it’s best to have a forgiving attitude toward the church, just as we should toward individuals. However, we rightly expect the church to avoid committing crimes or really serious misdeeds. And if the church does have serious misdeeds to deal with, then repentance is a better metaphor for that process than an attorney’s obfuscations.
If the church is less than candid in dealing with controversies, it gives the impression that there’s something seriously wrong or something that needs to be hidden. That’s almost certain to be counterproductive in the long run. In that respect, religious faith is not like a criminal trial. A lack of candor might be what we need from a defense lawyer, but it’s not what we should expect of the church.
Hmmm… I can see the analogy. I think the problem with it though is that most people don’t see the church as being their lawyer. More they see the church as part family member, part life coach. It’s just a vastly different relationship and one that is supposed to be based on absolute trust and honesty.
I see the analogy and think it fits really well. And based on some of the inside accounts that have leaked over the years (I’m thinking of a few from the Leonard Arrington biography, for example), I think that’s *exactly* what some of the bretheren have thought they were doing. They felt like they had a calling to defend the faith/church, and if that meant spinning things, so be it.
But that’s precisely the problem. Take the defense lawyer example. A lot of people take what a defense lawyer is saying about his client with a grain of salt *precisely because* they understand what his job is and isn’t. They know that the lawyer isn’t supposed to tell them the unvarnished truth about what actually happened, nor can the lawyer tell the jurors what he really thinks about the case or his client’s culpability. Those things aren’t his job. Rather, we all understand that the lawyer’s job is to spin things for his client–i.e., to zealously represent his interests, not the broader interests of objective truth. And if that means omitting so much of the story that what comes out of the lawyer’s mouth is–objectively speaking–not actually the true story, then meh. Not his job. Let someone else–like the prosecutor–tell that part of the story.
This is where I part ways with the poster’s lawyer friend. To me, viewing church leadership this way makes things worse, not better. If church members become convinced that church leaders are not alwyas telling us the whole truth, but that they are instead capable of spin, then what are we supposed to do when they say or do something that doesn’t quite ring true to us?
To point to one recent example: suppose that the November policy change was (as many believe) initially thought up by some midlevel bureaucrats or even by just a handful of GA’s, but that it wasn’t actually a prophetic mandate or something approved by the full Q15. After the backlash hits, statements were made justifying it as a revelation anyway. If we think that church leadership is going to spin things if necessary to defend the institution, then it suddenly becomes possible to dismiss that justification not being the full story.
Once you start going down that rabbit hole, it’s hard to know how to stop. Forget the supposed dangers of feminists or intellectuals or “the dangerous internet” or whatever. Of the people I know who have left the church, loss of trust in the leadership seems to always be at the very top of their list. This is a serious, serious problem. For my money, it’s the most serious problem facing the church. And if the church leadership doesn’t start acknowledging it–and, very importantly, acknowledging that there is at least some basis for it–then the problem is only going to get worse.
nobody is perfect ,not even the apostles or prophets.
I was taught to always down play my own accomplishments. Most people slightly embellish theirs.
As you might suspect, everything everyone reports gets discounted. For years I got a double discount. Both my own and then the adjustment everyone got because of presumed embellishment.
The Church has always been in a similar environment.
I think we do a disservice when we abstract things and frame them otherwise.
I feel like there are other implications of this metaphor.
If the church is a defense lawyer, then that supposes that the church is defending someone or something. Let’s say this is the restored gospel.
So, who has the burden of proof? Nonbelievers will say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but if the church is on the defense in criminal proceedings, then ultimately, it just needs to introduce reasonable doubt.
This actually dovetails nicely with the conversations about apologetics, where so often, apologetics is about establishing plausibility structures. The apologist doesn’t have to establish a concrete, rock-solid case…they just have to introduce enough plausibility in the narrative that a reasonable person could have reasonable doubt toward critical claims.
One can find numerous instances where our GAs spoke and wrote about our need for truth. Very often they quoted… John 8:32:
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” It can be argued whether or not this statement by Christ applies to the subject of the OP. Regardless, these GAs were all making the point of the irreplaceable value of truth.
These are the same “authorities” (and their predecessors) that either didn’t learn the actual truth about Church history, and doctrine, or chose to edit it and spin it so as to “protect” our weak testimonies from those often challenging truths.
Much has been written, for centuries, by philosophers, theologians, and psychologists about the value and benefit in using lies (anything less than the whole truth and nothing but the truth–to quote something from the legal system used in the OP). I cannot take the position that complete and unvarnished truth is always the best in all situations. But in this instance (institutional lying about events and other matters upon which we rest our faith and testimonies), it would seem the fruits of the 180+ years of dissembling and other “faith-promoting” versions of these “events and other matters,” are proving to be VERY negative as more accurate versions become available.
I don’t particularly like this analogy because our legal system is an adversarial one. If a defense attorney is justified in withholding damaging evidence (as is his/her duty in our legal system), and the Church is functioning as that defense lawyer, then what does that say about the role of the person from whom information is being withheld? I suppose the person could be the adversary of the Church (AKA role of prosecutor), which doesn’t seem proper for a member. Or, I suppose they could be the role of judge/jury with the responsibility of rendering a judgement upon something, in which case the Church’s withholding of facts damaging to their case (why else withhold them?) prevents us from rendering a proper judgement.
Yeah, I don’t like the analogy because it pits member against the institutional Church – church vs. Church.
I think this also dovetails with Happy Hubby’s recent post on free will. One in authority must respect the agency of those over whom one has authority, primarily because that authority is contingent upon their consent. If one withholds from them information that would materially affect their consent, one is abusing that authority and usurping their agency. D&C 121 did not speak kindly of such things. It is walking dangerously close to the idea supposedly espoused by Satan, where, in the interest of saving everyone and holding onto his authority, he’d abridge the agency of everyone. It’s an argument that the ends justify the means.
Andrew I thought that was very useful. Thank you.
We are having Stake Conference this weekend. On Saturday night the Area 70 spoke about “hastening the work” he talked about the increase in missionary numbers called “the wave” , he talked about all the senior missionaries. He gave great deatail
He said nothing about increasing membership, left it to assumption, but my understanding is that there was not a surge in members. Does hastening the work refer to results or just effort.
I felt the message was deceptive. Left with less respect for leaders not more. But I guess most members don’t read blogs that tellyou that.
Today he decried the secularization of the world, and particularly the rising generation. Did not give any reason, and certainly did not accept that the churches themselves, and ourselves, might shoulder some responsibility.
In what way is there a difference between the defense lawyer analogy and the “faithful history” of the bible and book of mormon? In many instances in which leaders have been criticized for not telling the whole truth (whether rightly or wrongly), they may point to the standard works of the church as their guide to what to recount from history. Over thousands of years, there are lots of miraculous and revelatory dealings of God with mankind. If the writers of the scriptures did not promote those incidents, then the revelations and patterns of God’s dealing with man would be diluted. Focusing on the revelations and inspiration of church history is no different. Hopefully the leaders of the church know enough of the history to not lie, although the weight of the “defense argument” can sometimes feel so slanted after many years of hearing nothing else that faithful members can become disillusioned.
suppose that the November policy change was (as many believe) initially thought up by some midlevel bureaucrats or even by just a handful of GA’s, but that it wasn’t actually a prophetic mandate or something approved by the full Q15.
Much more likely from Kirton McConkie.
I do think the “best foot forward” approach of a defense lawyer is what some church leaders think and thought they are doing. There are many problems with that approach, as noted above. I would add to what’s been said the hearsay problem–that we’ve been through several generations who sift the best evidence from the best evidence from the best evidence and thereby risk moving beyond all reasonable expectations of truth telling, even if the game were explicit and accepted.
I do think this is exactly how some apologists see themselves.
However, I do not think “defense counsel” is the best model for church leaders. Rather, I would use sales and marketing as the model. On a gross level we see a similar phenomen of accentuating the positive and avoiding or downplaying the negative, and of spinning the best story. But on the margins I think sales is a better fit for what most church leaders do most of the time.
Is the analogy intended prescriptively or descriptively? If descriptively, I agree it’s a more or less accurate representation of how many church leaders see themselves.
Prescriptively, it’s a disaster.
The analogy fails when you start to cast the rest of the actors in the courtroom. To start, who is the judge? Let’s say it’s “anyone trying to learn the truth about the church.” But that’s a very diverse group of people. Perhaps the ones closest to an impartial judge would be well-educated adult investigators without pre-existing ties to the church. We don’t baptize very many of those.
Most church members didn’t encounter its teachings as well-educated adults, though. We learned them as children, before we had the critical abilities to question the evidence being presented. They were used to shape our entire world views. We were also only allowed to hear one side.
We would never be OK with a court system where the defendant gets to raise the judge from infancy and the prosecution can only shout its message from outside in the parking lot. That’s the kind of situation we put young people in, though, when we ask them to serve missions at 18 or have temple marriages in their early 20s, having never known anything but Mormonism.
The intimate relationships between the judge and defendant also make impartiality impossible. Those members who overcome the conditioning from their childhoods and begin to question the church’s truthfulness are still bound by having believing parents, spouses, children, friends, and neighbors. We’d never be OK with a real judge being married to the defendant’s sister, but that’s the position of many of the people most interested in knowing if the church is true.
Next, who is the prosecutor? One answer is “anti Mormons”. The earliest LDS apologetics seem aimed at this cohort. Another answer is “anyone who disagrees with the church’s account of the facts.” This is a much broader group, including lots of scholars who don’t really care about Mormonism but inadvertently contradict its story in the course of their scholarship. The courtroom analogy would reinforce an us-vs-them mindset that makes all these scholars into enemies. Then we end up painting ourselves into corners and defending the indefensible. That’s just the mindset that the Maxwell Institute started distancing itself from a few years ago.
But I think the biggest problem is how the courtroom analogy makes the church small. It reveals that we’re a bit embarrassed, insecure, and defensive about our past. It reveals that we don’t really trust impartial investigators to find the truth on their own. So we have to spin things, play up the positives, minimize the negatives, and push the boundaries of honesty. This isn’t what the church claims to be.
It’s a fine analogy, I suppose. The main problem is that most of the disaffected members who lose “trust” in “leadership” imagined their relationship with the church being close to that of attorney/client, with high levels of implied frankness, confidence, and honesty. These members are shocked when they find they were actually members of the jury, where spin and polish, not candor, are standard operating procedures for the defense attorney.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander. How does the leadership feel when its members lie about important things to the same degree as they have done? I guess my cousin who got caught smoking pot in grandma’s basement and who went on to get pregnant out of wedlock and then lied to get married in the temple to please her mother might be onto something. I should reframe her as a hero not the little tramp I always thought .
Anyone who can’t readily see the problems with comparing a church that claims to be led by the literal mouthpiece(s) of a living and perfect god, to a defense attorney, who is charged with doing anything permissible under the law to minimize negative consequences for his or her client, regardless of that person’s guilt or innocence, is probably going to have trouble understanding the perspective of those who find the church’s treatment of certain elements of its history disturbing and/or unethical.