We have learned in just the past several decades that it is the cover-up that will get you in as much if not more trouble than the thing you are trying to cover-up!
I’ve heard stories of spouses saying that the lying about an affair was worse than the actual affair.
Nixon was only the weeks away from impeachment when he resigned. He did not participate in the break-in at the Watergate hotel, and in fact did not even know it was going to happen. But when it went wrong, and he found out some of his aids were behind it, the cover-up began. There was audio recordings of Nixon conspiring to cover up the crime.
Bill Clinton was not impeached because he was having sex with an intern in the Oval Office. He was impeached for perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice. One could argue that the impeachment would not have happened if Clinton had been truthful and admitted to the sex. It was not against the law to commit adulty, as JFK proved over and over. [1]
I think this is human nature to cover-up a wrong doing or an embarrassment from out past. I see that in my toddler grandkids. They will lie (cover-up) a misdeed without a second thought!
Should we hold our church leaders to a higher standard than my four year old twin granddaughters? There are plenty of documented cases of the church covering up something from its past. Mostly it is embarrassing history. Hiding things in the First Presidency vault, like the 1932 version of the First Vision, which was actually cut out of the original document, or the seer stone which I wrote about here.
So lets look at this from a another view. Is it moral for an organization to hide or cover-up facts about itself that would hurt that organization? Lets limit this to things the organization did that were lawful, not breaking any law, but might cause embarrassment. I think this organization does not have a duty to trumpet these embarrassing things. But is it moral to mislead through omission about these embarrassing facts? What about outright lying to keep them covered up? I think this crosses the line where the cover-up (outright lying) is worse than the embarrassment (Joseph stuck his head in a hat with a rock to translate the Book of Mormon).
Does spending tithing money on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) so that when somebody types “Seer Stone” into Google, the first full page is faith promoting web site, and the “anti” web pages are on the second page constitute a cover-up, or just smart business?
What are your thoughts? How much duty does an organization have in revealing embarrassing history? Does it change if this organization is a church? Is it moral to make this history hard to find because it is not faith promoting?
[1] remember this was years before the “me too” movement, where a supervisor/subordinate sexual relationship could be considered wrong, even if was consensual because of the power dynamics. And it doesn’t get more powerful than POTUS and an twenty something intern!
Wheat & Tares 
For me personally the greatest cover up was the LDS baseball program and its successors. It affected me (and thousands of others) more than any of the other LDS institution missteps and the apologists spin on the facts. Knowing that the church knew of the problems and allowed the patterns to repeat themselves for decades is the greatest sham.
I went on a mission in the late 1980’s. Excited to go out and “share the gospel”. I had all positive experiences in the Provo MTC. Upon arriving in the mission, I felt many bad vibes. It was numbers, numbers and more numbers associated with abuse. Yes, most of us went through that. My mission President took it to another whole level. He had a sick child and he made an Abrahamic pact with God that if God would save his son, that the Mission would baptize 100%. I could tell hundreds of stories of abuse he personally put on the missionaries and members, but I will try to explain the extent with a few highlights. In summary, he personally broke every rule in the White bible and any other church handbook to maximize our work efforts.
There was a stake conference where they had a all 17 year-olds sit on the front row of conference and there on the spot commit them to start their mission within the next month. One young man was disabled and walked with loft-strand crutches. He felt the pressure and within 2 months was working in our mission. Then 2 months later was sent home, because he was too slow walking and was not productive enough for the numbers. I had a companion who was sent home because he was too fat. Many missionaries were sent home, some for law a chastity, some for rules, but if you did not produce you were not needed.
I wanted to be obedient to God/rules/Prophet but not to him. I worked very hard on my mission. I was fortunate enough to have a baptism, every month; except one. I say fortunate, because it kept some stress off and kept me out of his dog house. However, the stress to baptize was super intense. There was no love. There was no God or Jesus Christ. The one month I did not baptize was self-inflicted. Our only solid investigator was a mentally retarded 20 year-old. She was kind to listen to us, but did not understand the lessons or the commitments. We taught her in part to achieve the “charla” quota. Toward the end of that month, the ZL’s came calling asking who were we going to baptize. I told them we only have the girl. They said baptize her. In good conscious I said “no”. They got angry. They called the MP. He called me and put pressure to baptize her. Again, I refused. He took no action toward me at that time, but I went on his “black list”
A few months toward the end of his time as MP, he pushed us harder than ever. 2 weeks into the his one of his final months, he said we would work all P-days until we had a baptism. My companion and I had a scheduled baptism on Tuesday. I refused to work on P-day. I was tired and had literally given it my all in the 84+ hours that week. My MP then called me and threatened to send me home if I did not go work. I reluctantly went, but it was a waste of time.
We were told how in Guatemala, Chile, Nicaragua the missionaries were baptizing many more than us. My MP insulted the members, missionaries, and people saying we did not have enough faith and were prideful. In the mission I had heard somewhere, that missionaries in Guatemala were cheating the system and writing names off cemetery tombstones. I know that missionaries in my mission were partially cheating the system but baptizing solely 9-12 year olds.
The last month of the MP’s 3 years, he demanded in 100% baptisms, no exceptions. So, once we had a baptism, we were pulled out of our area and went to work in one without a baptism. The last week of that month, every zone would have 16 missionaries working in the sole remaining area without the check mark. He did not care about convert retention, he did not care about the missionaries. He wanted to send that report to SLC and complete his “covenant with God” of 100% baptism. He was protected by SLC because his MP was a GA.
When I came home I wanted to tell my story. I tried to tell my Stake President, he did not want to listen. I wanted to talk to other missionaries, but they had drank the “kool-aid” A year later at my employment, I met a church VIP (not GA) and he asked who my Mission President was; I did not tell him any of my story. He said, oh we heard about him. I finally concluded that I had bad luck and just was misfortune to have had a “bad” MP. But the church is True , right ?
Over the years, I remained active and even a TBM in many aspects until I ran into stake leadership (president and many) who were more spiritually abusive and manipulative than others I found the prior 15 years.. However, now with the internet the information is out there. I found John Dehiln, and his missionary experience reflected my own. I listened to Ted Lyon and even spoke to him. I found extensive information that this story continues to repeat, thousands of times over. I learned about other MP corruption. Now we can change the experience of missionary work, to many other topics of enlightenment or historical inaccuracies. The church is more interested in its “good name” and protecting the clique than about the typical member or even missionary. In the end, I recognize that the institution can have “bad” people, but when it promotes corruption and cover up their mistakes the institution is just as bad, if not worse. I found this same pattern over the past 200 years of non-correlated church history.
Faith: Your story, sadly, will ring true with other missionary experiences, while some have had the opposite. I did not serve a mission and went into military service in the Royal Air Force. During my time in the RAF I had the opportunity to talk to friends about the Church and three were baptized. Of course, I could teach them at my own pace. Two of my friends had no missionary involvement as we were stationed on an Island , where there were none. As the presiding elder on the island I received permission to baptize them via the Swiss Mission President as we were under that mission’s direction.
I was taught the gospel when I was 16 and bapitized the day before my seventeenth birthday.
I had in the main a great time in my youth and was helped by many kind people in my church life and with my education. This was a different time. I was brought up in a Post-War World.
I was introduced to the church by a friend and I am still in touch with the missionary, who confirmed me. Over the years I have enjoyed great times with young missionaries far from home and as a family we have tried to give them some home comforts and on occasion a shoulder to cry on.
When you are young you take things at face value. You take the message that what you are taught is correct. As you mature you gain life’s experiences…..at 75 I am still learning. Then you realize that there are elements in the gospel that have been hidden or presented in a , dare I say, ‘ a sugar coated fashion.’ Then when you see things from a different perspective it can be a bitter pill to swallow, when you realize that not all is as it seems. Race and the Priesthood, Polygamy being two examples.
As Faith puts it the pressure to perform. This is one element that I kick a against. Goals. Targets. You must achieve. I am in a stake where the mantra is obedience with exactness, at all costs. This is not for me. ‘ By their fruits ye shall no them,” rings more true. The Beatitudes as taught by Jesus. To follow Him but not in a target driven way. Baptisms, home and visiting teaching figures….thank goodness that has gone. I had enough goals and targets in business. All I wanted to do was go to worship in peace. Often you would come away from church on aSunday more exhausted than refreshed.
I am not sure that the church has done itself many favours, even in publishing of the essays.
These are just a few of my thoughts.
It may make little difference, but Stan Larson reports “the missing pages were kept in the office safe of Joseph Fielding Smith” not the First Presidency vault. JFS had been Church historian for some time. He became a third counselor in the FP in late October 1965.
There are separate records in the FP office. They included, for example, record of the posthumous proxy-rebaptism and restoration of blessings of Amasa Mason Lyman, which Church historian Leonard Arrington had not known of until he went looking at my request and found the record only in the FP office and not in any other Church history department records. The reinstatement had been known to Lyman family members for decades, but was completely unknown to the Church historian’s office. I wonder sometimes how much Church-attributed “cover up” is intentional on the part of some Church leaders and how much is simply unknowing. Regardless of that question, and despite some improvement, there has been way too much intentional cover up in the past to permit the level of trust hoped for by some.
To respond to the footnote, yes it DOES get more powerful than POTUS/intern. Consider the case of a 14 year old Mormon girl and the man she has been told her entire life is a Prophet, Seer, and Revelator who speaks for God. Or, consider a 14 year old Jewish girl and the actual, literal God of the entire universe. At least Monica Lewinsky was an adult…
Had to laugh at this title because this weekend I happened to go down the rabbit hole on the Joseph Bishop / MTC sex abuse scandal cover up, which was much worse than I had realized when it all happened in 2018. You said “lawful” activity so I won’t address that one here, except to say that the way the Church handled that went beyond what I think is even reasonable for minimizing liability for criminal activity (and really, the Church wasn’t so much covering up criminal activity there but reputational harm).
I agree with you that an organization does not have a duty to disclose embarrassing facts. I don’t think it has a duty to trumpet those or write about them or promote them. I don’t even really care all that much if our institute and Sunday school church history volumes omit the bad stuff. I don’t think it’s fantastic and I think ultimately it hurts the Church when people find that stuff out on their own, but I don’t think it’s surprising.
BUT, as you suggest, the Church has gone much further than that. The Church has punished people for publishing things it later admits were true (Sept 6 ex communications). It has gone to great lengths to hide things that it perceives as threats—and then permits its own narrative to be taught again and again while knowing there is evidence to the contrary in its records (1832 first vision account — personally I’m not super mad at Joseph Fielding Smith on that one, at least he didn’t burn it, but *his* cover up has been covered up). It describes things in ways that carefully but calculatedly mislead (origins of family proc, where by the way we have conflicting narratives from Packer and Oaks, both designed to morph the proclamation into “revelation” or “doctrine” instead of what it was and to promote it as proof of their own prophetic gifts). I think the Q15 intentionally allow members to carry on believing things that aren’t really true–I think they know that a lot of members assume that as special witnesses the Q15 has seen Jesus, and they know that members essentially worship them as infallible and as totally unified because God is directing their every move–I think those things are not true, and they just let members carry on believing it because it benefits them. When they realize a dominant narrative can’t be sustained (plates translation, a ton of other crazy stuff that prophets and apostles have said previously, the “tremendous growth” of the church), rather than openly admitting to and correcting incorrect statements, they just subtly shift the narrative so that over time they can have plausible deniability “nothing to see here!” without ever admitting to mistakes having been made.
I could go on, but there are a lot of examples of overt lies and lies by omission and extreme lengths to bury unsavory facts. Enough that they don’t seem like momentary lapses in judgment by humans but like an intentional scheme by a leaders who see themselves not as servants to the members but as guardians of the corporate institution even at the expense of its membership and the full body of Christ.
But most of all, they lie about the cover ups. That’s where it goes too far. You have Elder Ballard and Oaks just plain lying both by careful omission AND directly about cover up attempts and then, even worse, gaslighting all the members and blaming *us* for not knowing this stuff. They speak to us as though it’s *our* fault that we don’t know this, that we just haven’t read and studied enough and if we had been good, committed, studious members none of this would be a surprise. That’s a lie.
At this point, we actually hold corporations whose aim is to turn a profit to a higher standard than Church. Corporations aren’t allowed lie to people before asking them for money (and in fact have a duty to disclose all of the risk factors — otherwise that’s called “fraud”). The Church shouldn’t lie to people before collecting their 10% tithing. And I don’t think it’s at ALL unreasonable to expect that a Church that tells is members not to bear false witness — and that requires members to consecrate all of their time / talents / loyalty to it — and that tells the membership “just to trust the Brethren” — it’s not at all unreasonable to expect that Church not to lie to us in order to keep us in line.
For me, the key question you ask is: “How much duty does an organization have in revealing embarrassing history?” And my answer in general would be: It depends. When regarding the church specifically, however, my answer is that the institution has as much duty to reveal the truth of its history, reasons behind change in doctrine, biographies of its leaders, etc. as it expects of us. We are told in the temple recommend interview that we’re not speaking to the person in front of us, we’re speaking to Christ. If that is so, then that means that members are held to an extremely high standard of truth. It is therefore only right that the church holds itself to those same standards. If it’s true that we should always “do what is right, let the consequence follow,” then the church should always tell the complete truth in every single circumstance even if it causes a mass exodus of members. If it doesn’t do this (and it’s obvious it doesn’t), then it has no moral authority. And if it has no moral authority, it has no power over us and if it has no power over us, we’re all pretty much on our own. I find that situation liberating, but I certainly understand how traditionally believing members would find that prospect terrifying.
But the church itself has done this. There is no way to sugarcoat the obvious. In some sense, sad though it is that the intuition that bears Christ’s name doesn’t remotely come up to his standards of truth-telling, it is now the case that we have the freedom to believe as much or as little as we will about the church and be relatively free moral agents, responsible for our own moral and ethical development. Of course, the other implication of this is that the church doesn’t really believe what it tells us. If it told the truth and was honest about everything (the so-called teaching goes), then that would lead to blessings both earthly and heavenly and the church would continue to grow in membership and prosper rather than shrink. However, the church doesn’t do this, in part because it’s afraid of losing more members/trust than it already has. I’ve heard a fair amount of leaders talk in private about how things can’t change too fast or you’ll lose people, or “you’ll damage people’s faith if you tell them the whole truth.” The fact that these considerations outweigh the importance of truth-telling (a core principle of the gospel) indicates that the church is morally corrupt; it is more concerned about numbers/attendance than it is about either truth or about nurturing and strengthening the faith of members.
Oh, and Elisa, I really enjoy your comments.
@Brother Sky thank you. And I agree with your comments.
Ironically I wrote that comment while also on a Zoom ward council meeting where the ward council was trying very hard to know how to serve and minister to our ward members. My experience locally in the Church has been overwhelmingly positive and I know so many people who are trying so hard to be loving (and obedient). And that’s why I am so furious, honestly, at Church leadership. I think they are not worthy of and abuse the trust and devotion of millions of good people.
Is the cover up worse than the crime/embarrassment? Sometimes it really is worse. Take for example the situation the church found itself in when the truth about Mark Hoffman came out. The church had been anxious to buy up the embarrassing documents that Mark Hoffman was showing them, so that it could control public access to those documents, in other words, the church wanted them so it could cover them up. This exposed a long pattern the church had of hiding embarrassing history. In fact, Mark Hoffman knew the church had a habit of hiding embarrassing history, so he handed the church more embarrassing history, knowing full well the church would pay good money, and be maybe a bit too quick to take his documents as real, without letting some nonmember historians and document experts check them. So, Hoffman used his knowledge that the church hides things against it to sell it some forged documents.
Now, a more honest church would have said, “boy these documents sure put the church in a bad light. We better make extra sure they are authentic, and if they are authentic, then the public sure has a right to know about the information.“ And the price would have plummeted. But Mark Hoffman’s documents fit right in with other documents the church was already hiding, the the church leaders were prone to believe them. If those hidden documents had been public knowledge, then Hoffman’s would have just been more of the same and no big deal. And could have gone through the nspections that would have exposed them.
It was the church’s efforts to hide the “new “ information that got it bambozzled in the first place, then exposed it as dishonest. So, in this case, the attempted cover up was much worse than whatever embarrassment the church would have faced by making the information public for the time it took for Hoffman’s plot to fall apart. By trying to cover it up, the church confirmed that this kind of crazy information existed and exposed itself as willing to lie to hide things.
You ask, “How much duty does an organization have in revealing embarrassing history?”
I’m not going to speak to the Church’s duty nor am I going to state what I believe to be right or wrong. I’m simply going to focus on what is practical for the Church to do.
The Church apparently believes that it is practical to play in the world of plausible deniability. Thus, the unsigned essays. Thus, the relationship with apologetics. Thus, the YA firesides which acknowledge but do not answer difficult questions. The Bretheren seem to believe that as long as they touch upon difficult subjects, they can inoculate faithful members. They seem to have concluded that it’s better to further alienate progressive (readers of this board) members by refusing to really develop truthful answers than it is to become completely transparent and alienate the faithful. It’s the faithful who pay the bills, so who cares if a few progressives make noise?
But in my view, the progressives will become more numerous and loud and at some point we will reach the tipping point when the Church starts to worry more about the progressives than the faithful (and I’m sorry for putting everyone in these two groups but I think you know what I mean). At some point it will no longer be practical to deny what progressives know to be true. The Internet is acclerating that timeline.
One other factor: I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that every “golden contact” will Google for answers about the Church and its history and truth narratives. That behavior is showing up in the lack of convert baptisms and it’s going to get worse. The Church runs the risk of losing credibility with everyone except the traditional faithful. And when that happens, it will no longer be “practical” to play spin control.
I’m not intimately familiar with the examples of lying and cover up that have been shared in this post. Most of them I have heard about, but I didn’t do any personal study or investigative work on them. Perhaps if I did, I would come to the same conclusion as many other members of this forum and have some of the bad or questionable feelings towards the Brethren, mission presidents, stake presidents, etc., that some of you have. But perhaps I wouldn’t.
I have a question that I think relates to some of the questions posed in this thread: If some or all of these cover ups and lies truly happened, can the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints still be the church of Jesus Christ, led by Him?
If the answer is “no”, then where does one go if he wants to follow Jesus Christ? Is there some other church? Should one abandon organized religion entirely and just make it a personal thing?
If the answer is “yes”, then why waste time focusing on them when there are other more productive and faith-building things to focus on?
Thank you, Bishop Bill, for raising a great question. Some of the comments, particularly about MP-inspired excesses, are excruciating to read.
I would like to offer another reason why organizations like to avoid publicizing embarrassing truths. I saw it in 40-plus years of working in the federal government, and I have seen it in the Church: no matter how noble the goals, no matter the real good that is done, an organization‘s primary goal inevitably morphs into preserving the organization, and almost all the people who lead organizations, no matter how good they are as people, succumb to that tendency. Why was Christ perceived as revolutionary? He saw that the scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, and Elders had succumbed to what I call leader-itis. I am sure I would have the same weakness.
In the Church, I believe the great majority of leaders want to do the right thing — but unfortunately, they fear that acknowledging fault and error might hurt the organization.
This is part of the basic human condition. How many of us try to hide unpleasant truths about our family? In my case, it was my father‘s alcoholism. Both his alcoholism and our cover-up caused real damage. But I still loved him, and remember him fondly.
As to toxic missionary experiences.I was very blessed with a MP who emphasized doing the right things for the right reasons. My daughter started out her mission in a toxic environment a little less awful than what Faith described. Fortunately, the old MP left two months after my daughter arrived, and the new MP had a completely different, more Christ-like approach.
Ian Redpath said it best: to follow Christ but not in a target -driven way.
In the hope of presenting what I believe is a happier version of a difficult mission. I had two incredibly love centred mission presidents. They appreciated the difficulties of our mission. Baptisms were few and far with someone having baptised 3 people in their mission being perceived as a champion. Our moonshot target was 100 baptisms for the mission.
Fortunately the mission presidents didn’t take this too seriously and focused on how we could bring the incredibly Orthodox community closer to Christ in whatever way we could. They counted every conversation as a success in helping the lives of others.
There was a GA that came to SHAKE up the mission. He would hurl abuse and get in the grill of missionaries. When he was gone, the MP told us to not worry about that and to reach out with love.
These were leaders you could follow.
Just as Anna mentioned, the cover up in some cases is much worse.
Brother Sky – I am with you (I think that is true with just about every comment you make). When someone actually did ask me why I lost my belief in the truth of the church, I said, “I was raised as a Mormon and I found that the top church leaders clearly and repeatedly failed to live up to the standards I was taught.” I certainly can accept that at times some individuals will make mistakes, but to me it seems clear there is knowledge of issues and strong overt action has been taken to keep things covered up – some of which I don’t think are all that bad.
Elisa – My experience with individuals in the church has generally been very good also. I am about to have to tell my bishop (something of a friend for 20 year) that I will not be renewing my recommend. He is a GREAT guy, but certainly a bit on the “church broke” side of the scale. It actually makes me a bit more upset at the church leaders setting us up to have such a conflict.
I was reading a book from Brene Brown I think it was during the Pres. Bishop scandal was just exploding. I remember reading the following, thinking how true this statement was, then realizing that I felt like it described the top leaders of my church.
“When the culture of any organization mandates that it is more important to protect the reputation of the system, and those in power, then it is to protect the basic human dignity of the individuals who serve that system, or who are served by that system, you can be certain that shame is systemic, money is driving ethics, and that accountability is all but dead. This is true in corporations, nonprofits, universities, governments, faith communities, schools, families and sports programs.” -Brene Brown, Braving the Wilderness
It seems to me that someone that had REAL faith that God was in charge would not be scared to just be honest and tell it like it is. It doesn’t mean that the Mountain Meadow Massacre needs to be covered once a year in Sunday school, but just come clean (and MMM is probably one of the better cases were they finally at least somewhat apologized).
I was listening to the Mormon Stories podcast the other day and the guest was someone that imitates top church leaders voices. Of course he did some bitingly sarcastic comments in the voice of some of the recent church leaders. But he also did one with Pres. Hinckley where he admitted the cover-ups and did an apology for doing this. I was working in the yard and I had to stop as it brought tears to my eyes. Oh how I wish my church leaders could be humble and come clean.
@Happy Hubby my critical comments on this blog notwithstanding, I really do try to apply the things I’ve learned from people like Brene Brown about vulnerability to myself and not weaponize them to judge other people. That said, try to identify a vulnerable statement or moment during General Conference this weekend. If it’s anything like previous conferences, the won’t be but a few (if any). It’s pretty striking.
@Faith, your comments break my heart, and yet I find you credible through my own personal experiences which have shown the veracity of the warnings found in D&C 121. By chance, did you serve in Arcadia, California?
bwbarnett: Personally, I think one of the most thrilling questions a person can ask themselves is “what if a man-made church is truly not needed in order to follow Jesus Christ?”. When asked, the mind and spirit explode with endless possibilities that cause the “Mormon Checklist” and “LDS Performance Toll-gates” to disintegrate under the weight of divine reason….Just saying….It’s working for me.
@Bruce Hanks and @bwbarnett I would add that there may be good reasons why a person who doesn’t believe the church’s truth claims (such as literally being Jesus’s church, which btw he didn’t really come here to set up a church) would still find value participating in a church congregation. Unfortunately our church isn’t super welcoming to people who don’t believe all the right things but it can still be a good spiritual community with opportunities for service and connection with God and one another.
As for whether you could believe leaders are led by God if they lie all the time – I dunno. I will give leeway for a lot of mistakes as we are human but at some point one must wonder. At the very least I don’t feel compelled to believe them if it doesn’t sit right with me. Either way, I don’t find it unproductive or a waste of time to take a hard look at truth claims and misconduct in our leaders.
On the subject of toxic missionary environments that exert extreme pressure to baptize, baptize, baptize:
In a goal-oriented church, we easily become bewitched by high numbers, to the exclusion of all else . Many MPs fall into this snare IMO because high numbers look good on statistical reports. The people they report to on up the Church chain tend to not get skeptical until things get really out of hand—I.e., the extreme pressure to baptize gets so high, that missionaries start breaking mission rules to reach the goals, and word seeps out, and the Church has a problem on its hands. The Japan Tokyo South Mission baptism scandal (1979-1981, if I remember correctly) is, IMO, the most obnoxious example.
So, would we rather have 50,000 quality baptisms per year, in which the people baptized are genuinely converted, or would we rather have 300,000, the vast majority of whom quickly exit the Church? Many people would choose the 300,000 option!
I served as a Ward Mission leader in Maryland in the early 2000s, and lived in that Ward for 18 years. Most of the MPs were fine, reasonable men. One was a zealot who harvested statistics, not souls, and dealing with him was awful. He was both not interested in, and incapable of, listening to feedback that his Mission’s baptisms were mostly
devoid of conversion.
David O. McKay, the prophet of my boyhood, said that any communication with the intent to deceive is a lie. Coming to the realization 50 years later that so much of the church’s narratives are lies broke my heart.
Dishonored trust demands that issues either be closely examined or completely ignored. For me, what remained after rigorous examination was mere gossamer. Anything of substance and value also exists independently of the church. Holding to things like “community” and “it does so much good” left me feeling compromised and, in some ways, dirty.
Truth is boldly independent and does not need to be propped up by lies – it stands on its own in the full light of day. If institutional sins are revealed, let the light be an antiseptic that brings healing.
Only pride and fear stand in the way.
Been There: Beautifully narrated, my friend. Marvelous.
To me it’s not an issue of effectiveness or consequences or judiciousness. It’s a matter of the right and wrong of lying and why that’s even a question for a values-based religious organization supposedly following the standards set by Heavenly Father.
I served in Arcadia! Late 90s