Those who are on Reddit will recognize the acronym AITA immediately. For those unfamiliar, it stands for “Am I the A-Hole?” In this discussion forum, people post personal stories of conflicts in their life and ask commenters’ opinions about whether they are in the wrong or not. There are three buckets of responses:
- YTA. “You’re the a-hole,” or the commenter thinks that the author is in the wrong.
- NTA. “Not the a-hole.” The commenter thinks the author is not in the wrong and may identify other bad actors in the conflict.
- ESH. “Everyone sucks here.” The comment then points out all the various bad motives and behaviors they see at play in the conflict.
These things are pretty addictive as online rabbit-holes go. Sometimes the posts are pretty ridiculous, like a bridezilla who makes completely outrageous demands of her friends and wedding guests, then gets mad that nobody is making her feel like a princess on her special day. Or the dad who treated his daughter like Cinderella, forcing her to pay for her own extracurriculars while his son didn’t have to pay for his because “football could lead to a scholarship,” while he also made her cook all meals, do all cleaning, and pay for her own feminine hygiene products because he found them disgusting. That post sounded frankly made-up it was so outlandish. Some of the other posts appear to be written by people in abusive relationships whose abusers have trained them to internalize unearned blame for conflicts.
Usually, the answers are pretty astute and often entertaining. That’s not to say that the wisdom of the crowds is perfect. The discussion forum feels a little younger than average to me (at 54, groups of people are starting to feel that way). I’d guess there are a lot of 20- and 30-somethings commenting, and some of their conclusions feel a little generational to me. There’s a tendency, for example, to advise people that situations or people are “toxic” and to cut them out of your life rather than trying to resolve conflicts or to let people have a bad day. This is especially common when the conflict is in the poster’s family. It seems a little bit “trigger happy” to me, pun slightly intended.
Isn’t part of the point of families that we didn’t choose them, and that sometimes they are (and we are) a-holes? Being in a family can teach us how to appreciate weirdos that we would literally never associate with if we weren’t related, right? As the poet Robert Frost put it, “Home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” If we had chosen them, they’d be friends, not family.
I’m certainly not saying that we should give families a pass for truly damaging, abusive, or toxic behaviors. I know people whose families have literally stolen their savings, rendering them homeless. I knew quite a few women at BYU who were victims of parental incest where their mothers sided with their fathers against them. I know someone whose father tried to physically force him to donate an organ. Some families have disowned their own children for being queer, as we are all aware, particularly in the Church. There are definitely lines that once crossed may make it impossible to have a relationship with that person again without a real road to Damascus change on the part of the a-hole.
But there are also generation gaps and political divides that may feel important but not really be as important as we make them. Sometimes parents say insulting things. Kids make ultimatums or reckless choices due to a lack of experience and maturity. Our significant others may reject or undermine us openly or covertly. We think we’ve been treated unfairly when we compare ourselves to others in the family. We may disagree over care for a family member or how a will is written. These are the stuff of life. These situations aren’t great, nobody enjoys them, but we can find a way to work through them with time and patience.
I was thinking about a few of the stories I’ve heard shared at General Conference that sound like YTA issues:
- A boy wants to marry his girlfriend until he notices that she has not removed a second pair of earrings. Instead of talking with her like a normal adult human being, he passive-aggressively breaks off the relationship because she does not act like an automaton in “following the prophet.”
- A husband’s wife has painful cancer, so he saves up for a year to buy her an ironing machine, begging the questions: 1) who was ironing those shirts with tears running down her face during that long year, and 2) what is wrong with the men in this family being unwilling to iron their own damn shirts?
- A father explains to his gay son that even though they love him, he and his partner will never be allowed to stay at the house or to join in family meals with them or be acknowledged in any way as a couple.
These stories which were told to laud the person in the story as a hero and exemplar, definitely sounded the opposite of what they perceived when I heard them. That’s the beauty of the AITA forum. Individuals often hear things hidden in the story that just don’t quite sound right, that raise some questions about the motives or actions of the individual.
For example, there was a recent AITA about a woman who said she had a bad relationship with her brother-in-law who sued her, but she didn’t want to get into the details. Her sister had recently died, and she had invited her nieces to live with her family, but not their father, and the father was separated from his children. She mentioned she lives in the house their mother used to own. Because she deliberately avoided explaining the lawsuit, the AITA community’s spidey senses were tingling. Many of them were lawyers who were raising questions about whether the house really belonged to the poster or did she basically cut her sister’s family out of their rightful shared inheritance. It was a twist I admit I didn’t really see coming, but I’ve never been involved in an inheritance conflict, so it went right over my head.
Which brings me back to the above “Church-sanctioned” scenarios. While I personally find it very easy to see wrongdoing in all three of these situations, they also point out the blind spots of the individuals sharing the stories. If you think that it’s obvious that you should immediately sever ties with anyone less orthodox, less blindly obedient than you are, then you won’t think twice about the first scenario. It may not even occur to you to wonder why someone considering marriage to another person could be so easily swayed by a pair of earrings that he wouldn’t even have a conversation about it, instead waiting and watching to judge her behavior and dump her if she doesn’t do what he thinks she should. That’s a guy nobody should marry. Future incels of the world, unite! This is your story!
In the second story, if you heard this story growing up and you know your father to be someone who tenderly loves your mother and would willingly sacrifice for her, the idea that the simple solution of ironing his own shirts never occurred to him might slip past your notice. Or you might assume that your mother refused any help, despite the crippling pain, believing it to be her sacred duty or some such. Stories we hear as children are often prone to blind spots like this. Only an outsider hearing them will question the narrative.
In the final story, if you believe that “acting” on one’s homosexuality is a sin that is contagious to other family members, particularly impressionable children, well, you’re an idiot, but you’re not the only one. Apparently a majority of Floridians agree with you. Maybe you’re just too old to be living on this earth in 2022. If you further see yourself as knowing the will of God more than anyone else on the planet, you just might have a blind spot when it comes to empathy for queer people and a whole lot of other things. As humans, it’s hard to be objective. Personal growth is also harder the more successful you’ve been without it.
Here are a few more historical and church-site AITA scenarios I thought of:
- I’ve been secretly marrying my wife’s friends (I have my reasons, not going to get into that here), but someone started publishing a paper criticizing me for it. Since I’m in a prominent position, this put me in danger, so I destroyed their printing press. Now they are coming after me. AITA?
- My wife said she wanted a divorce, so I said go right ahead, but she’s not getting a dime from me if she does, and I pride myself on not knowing all my wives’ names anyway, so what do I care! I can easily replace her with two younger, hotter wives. AITA?
- My science teacher was teaching about evolution, so I said I believed in the seven day creation story in Genesis. My teacher disagreed with me, so I bore my testimony which shut him right up. He was impressed with what I had said, and he told me he respected me for my beliefs. AITA? (Actually this is just more of a conservative Christian wet dream rather than anything that realistically happened).
The original AITA is a question most of us will be familiar with: “Lord, is it I?” You don’t have to be Martin Harris or one of the original twelve apostles to benefit from a little humility and introspection. I was delighted to find a talk by E. Uchtdorf in 2014 on just this topic, something we all would benefit from hearing more about:
“In these simple words, ‘Lord is it I?’ lies the beginning of wisdom and the pathway to personal conversion and lasting change.”
He told of a research experiment in which scientists had college students participate in a series of tests on various life skills and found that the students who performed poorly were the least accurate in evaluating their own performance, some of them estimating their scores to be five times higher than they actually were.
“The study has been replicated in numerous ways, confirming over and over again the same conclusion: Many of us have a difficult time seeing ourselves as we truly are, and even successful people overestimate their own contribution and underestimate the contributions that others make . . .”
https://www.thechurchnews.com/2014/10/4/23212361/president-dieter-f-uchtdorf-lord-is-it-i
Something I like about the AITA forum is that no matter the outcome, the outside perspective provided by commenters often points to blind spots, giving people new ways to view their own behavior and the behavior of those around them. At its worst, it can lead to a lot of clamoring about toxic “others” who need to be cut off, sometimes for infractions that may be simplistically understood at best (or are being misrepresented by the one writing the post). At its best, it can help people change their own problematic behaviors, get out of their comfort zones, understand their family dynamics with fresh eyes, or get out of abusive situations.
- Do you think we need more “AITA” introspection at Church?
- Are there other Church stories you can think of that you doubted were as clear cut as what was presented?
- Can you think of a time when outside feedback completely changed your perspective on a situation? Please share!
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Great post. It’s always a good exercise to ‘read against the grain’, not only in the texts that we read (especially the scriptures) but also the stories we hear (especially the ‘faith promoting ones’ given over the pulpit). Two come to mind:
https://www.ldsliving.com/sister-rasband-walked-in-late-read-president-nelsons-sweet-and-instructive-reaction/s/10335
This experience was dressed up as a very odd life lesson about “standing up and being counted” and “serving in a higher and holier way”. No explanation was given by RMN as to why it was so important for Sister Rasband to sit at the front of that meeting, apart from a “thank you for being obedient”. So just a prophetic power play then? Gotcha. And linking where you sit in a meeting to levels of holiness….didn’t Jesus have something to say about that? I had to scroll back through messages to dig out my friend’s alternative take on that story:
“I turned up late to the meeting for personal reasons and instead of being allowed to quietly slip in, the meeting chair had me do an embarrassing walk of shame to the front while everyone silently watched. Then, to drive the knife in more, I was thanked for my obedience in turning up at the point when I was contemplating if staying away would’ve just saved me the embarrassment of being the object lesson for timely meeting attendance.”
Power in that pointing finger? Yeah, no thanks.
RMN….YTA or NTA?
A few years back President Eyring gave a conference talk on the blessings of tithing. It seems he and his family were really in some financial dire straits causing a lot of worry and stress. Something many of us can relate to. But miraculously in the 11th hour, they found out that a property they owned on the other side of the country, which they had been trying to sell for a while, had found a buyer…and all their financial problems were solved. Something many of us can also relate to, I’m sure. Praise be!
Okay, so not so much a AITA scenario, but definitely highlighting the personal and cultural blind spots in some of the stories that are shared to a worldwide church, many of whose members live in poverty and most (I assume) don’t happen to own multiple properties that can come to the rescue when needed. Out of touch? Just a little.
Hawkgirl, I am the same age as you are and I just want to comment that I am also bothered by the “toxic people” who need to be completely cut off phenomenon. Not you main point but it does sometime seem that just completely severing relationships is an overused response to difficult people. Great post as always.
“Or the dad who treated his daughter like Cinderella, forcing her to pay for her own extracurriculars while his son didn’t have to pay for his because “football could lead to a scholarship,” while he also made her cook all meals, do all cleaning, and pay for her own feminine hygiene products because he found them disgusting. That post sounded frankly made-up it was so outlandish.“
I find it very interesting that you read that story and you felt that was outlandish.
That story was not too far from how I was raised.
The girls were expected to be self-supporting by around age 12. The thought was that we could do babysitting for local families and other such work to earn money. School activities, all clothes including very basic clothing items and entertainment was all supposed to be self-funded. The boys? Nope. We were told that boys mature later than girls and so they were not held to the same standard.
Cleaning? The girls. Cooking? The girls. Scouting. The boys. Deep Sea fishing trip? Special activities? The boys. Mowing the lawn? Mom.
Why? Something. Something. Priesthood.
My father was a fully functional and healthy man when my mom gave him a bell. She wanted him to use the bell when he needed something — so that he didn’t have to tire his voice. If that bell rang, mom or the girls were supposed to run and check on him. He used the bell.
Such family dynamics do exist.
We need more introspection, but also, we need church leaders who are humble enough to run their talks though sensitivity readers before they give them, members who work with GAs who aren’t so starstruck or scared or prone to leader worship that they are willing to point out the issues with a draft talk, and a racially and gender diverse priesthood leadership so that talks are coming from more than one (elderly white heterosexual male) point of view.
@Damascene – I’m sorry for your growing up years – sounds infuriating.
@Simon C – the story about Sis Rasband made me want to barf. So many other layers to that story too.
@Hawkgrrrl – great post.
At the risk of being called an a-****, I will give a real AITA scenario involving myself that I honestly don’t know the answer to, so I’d love to get some help.
As background, I live in a wealthy ward. I know that “life happens”, even in our ward, but for the most part, people are living very comfortably. The stake president has told us that our ward has a quite sizeable excess of unused fast offering funds at the end of each year. Also, both my spouse and I work professional jobs, and up until a few months ago when our last child left for college, we were busy raising kids with all of the time commitment that entails.
Here’s the scenario:
A family in the ward is expecting a child. The RS contacts our family asking us to provide a meal for the expectant family on a specific date. While we don’t know the exact financial situation of the expecting family, most people in our ward are wealthy. Besides, we are asked to do this a handful of times every year–the ward is basically providing this service for all expectant families, and we know that most of them don’t need financial help. In short, most of these families can afford to buy their own meals for a week or two after having a baby. We live in an area with a large selection of restaurants and grocery stores nearby selling many different kinds of food at various price points. All the meal delivery services (Door Dash and the rest) are available in our area as well. I’m sure that most of the families in our ward that receive meals in these situations are grateful for the meals. It probably fosters some sense of unity in the ward.
The majority of weeknights my spouse and I prepare a pretty simple dinner for our family–something that our family likes, but that might not be viewed as acceptable when providing a meal for another family. Our family could afford to eat out for dinner every night if we wanted to, but we don’t because it’s unhealthy, expensive, and we are fond of our own favorites (that others may not appreciate).
Most of the time when our family is asked to provide meals like this for other families in the ward, we just go and buy it at a local restaurant and deliver it to them. We’d often prefer to use DoorDash to just have it delivered, but we fear that might not look too good to the receiver of the meal. We’re often just too darn busy and tired to provide a homecooked meal that we feel is good enough to deliver to another family.
I don’t believe our family has ever said no to providing this service–we don’t want to be “that one family who refuses to help”, but we typically complain a little bit and do this a bit grudgingly each time. We just think to ourselves, why doesn’t that family take 20 minutes to go pick something up at a local restaurant (or 3 minutes to order something on Door Dash)? We know that is exactly what most of these families would do if the RS didn’t just automatically provide this service for each birth in the ward. It’s not like we’re living in pioneer times out on the frontier where no one had money and there with no stores or restaurants in sight. We’d honestly feel a whole lot happier about donating the money for the meal to a service that provides meals to people who can’t afford them than we feel about providing a meal to a random wealthy family in the ward who doesn’t need the help.
OK, that’s the scenario. AITA for my bad attitude about providing this service?
Suppose that we change the scenario to tell the RS we are no longer willing to provide meals except in cases where there is true financial need. AITA?
Side note: When my spouse and I had our first children, the ward we were in had started the process of collecting arranging meals for us (they didn’t even ask us if we wanted this–it was just standard procedure) before we decided to politely ask them to not arrange any meals because we were capable of providing meals for ourselves. It just didn’t make sense to us to accept meals when we could so easily provide them ourselves.
A couple of other similar scenarios:
1. We have people moving in to multimillion dollar mansions in our ward requesting moving service help from the EQ. That is a very dumb financial decision since the EQ are not professional movers, and we’ve seen the EQ damage these expensive homes when moving things in and out–the damage done in some cases has exceeded the savings by not hiring professional movers. AITA for my bad attitude about having the EQ provide free moving services to people moving into multimillion dollar mansions?
2. My spouse and are are so busy with family and career that some weeks we don’t do a very good job of cleaning our own house. When I don’t show up to help clean the chapel those weeks, AITA? Should “God’s house” have a higher priority than my house?
@ mountainclimber479
I agree that does sound like a pretty ridiculous scenario to always provide meals in that particular dynamic. I appreciate the system we have in our RS that when there’s a need they don’t assign but send out emails and notice to FB group to invite people to volunteer..I do wonder if they get the same folk doing most of the volunteering but at least there’s a sense that you can choose to serve. I don’t know how others feel about it but I don’t provide meals to get a pat on the back but no one ever seems to send a thank you these days – even just a text message? Perhaps I’m showing my age. I’m unwell myself right now but seriously don’t want any meals and am blessed to have family close by.
As for elders moving company – definitely not to wealthy mansions. The menfolk in my family have done lots of this in the past and some still do on occasions but my feelings are that unless there is a financial constraint it shouldn’t happen. Our most recent moves have been been handled by family andmoving companies.
A week or two ago I remembered that horrible talk about the ironing, and I looked up the talk to see if it was awful as I recalled (it was!) and read it out loud to my non-member husband. He was horrified at all of the aspects of the story, and the kicker is that the title of the talk is, “Let Us Be Men”. We both agreed that this was a kind of man neither of us wanted him to be.
@mountainclimber479 agreed on meals and moving. Some people really like to provide meals, and sometimes it’s an act of service to just let them provide the service, but, in my opinion, it should be voluntary, and it should be something the people being served approve and want. It would make much more sense to ask the new parents if they would like meals and at what frequency rather than just have a bunch of people assigned to show up at a particular day or time with food that may or may not be welcome. With moving, I’m definitely of the opinion that if you can afford movers, then you should hire movers. I hired movers for my most recent move and never even considered asking people to help. (In my younger days, the proper etiquette was to help your friends move and ask them to help you in return and then buy pizza — and perhaps beer, depending on the friends — for the helpers, but the social contract is that pretty much ends by the time you hit your late twenties, and then you pay for movers.)
mountainclimber479: I have totally been in the same exact situation you are describing. I always shake my head at these kind of requests because of the wealthy wards. In short, my view on your three scenarios:
1) NTA. I don’t see why ordering DoorDash is a problem either. People will appreciate it, I’m sure. We just get stuck in a rut when it comes to expected service, but I also think you’re right that it can create more ward unity. But as empty nesters and working professionals, we don’t do big home-cooked meals either. It would be ridiculous!
2) NTA. I am so irked when people moving into mansions don’t hire a moving company! I’m honestly surprised there aren’t more lawsuits over the volunteers either breaking stuff or being injured in moves. I know the RS usually won’t do certain activities (e.g. caregiving) if they’re smart because you know for a fact that someone’s going to get injured trying to help someone, will accidentally damage their carpet cleaning, or will give them the wrong meds. There’s a reason that INSURED companies do this stuff. Why don’t we use ward funds to pay a service?
3) NTA, but hey, I’m beyond over the fact that we need to pay professional janitors again. We are counting the weeks that our sunbeam cheese-cracker-laden carpets have not been vacuumed.
But, I do think there’s some sort of value in community building through service. Maybe it’s better if we apply that service outward in the broader community and not just to other Mormons.
I couldn’t resist adding a few Church history stories…
1. A BYU professor gave a little talk about an eternally progressing God as taught by Joseph Smith in the King Follett Discourse. My son, also a BYU professor, publicly denounced this professor while name dropping his relationship to me, an apostle. I then gave a speech at a BYU devotional where I called this professor a heretic, but I totally didn’t use his name, so I thought it was OK. I just can’t understand why Pres. Kimball called me into his office to tell me that my speech sucked. Thank goodness he didn’t tell all the members that he hated my speech. Anyway, this professor then wrote me a very polite and sincere letter to discuss his thoughts and our differences of opinion. I started off the reply to this letter with some sweet opening sentences, “This may well be the most important letter you have or will receive.” and “I want you to know that I am extending to you the hand of fellowship though I hold over you at the same time, the scepter of judgment.” I then denounced the professor’s ideas which are completely based on Joseph Smith’s own teachings by quoting my own talks which are totally better and throwing Brigham Young under the bus. Finally, I cleanly wrapped things up by writing, “It is my province to teach to the Church what the doctrine is. It is your province to echo what I say or to remain silent.” AITA? (Bruce McConkie is the apostle, Eugene England is the BYU professor).
2. I promised the Willie Handcart Company that God would protect them and that no one would be harmed on the journey across the plains. I rebuked Levi Savage for warning against making the trip, saying it was too late in the season, and the Saints would suffer. So what if he’d made the journey before, what does he know? Didn’t he learn anything about faith–he was returning from his mission in Siam when he joined the company after all? Doesn’t he know I’m an apostle? Yeah, some people died, but those that didn’t had an experience that they never forgot. AITA? (Franklin Richards)
3. I wrote a book trying to be as true to Church history as possible even though I felt that I wouldn’t “be surprised to be cut off right below the ears when this [Mountain Meadows Massacre] thing is finished.” Even though, to my surprise, I wasn’t excommunicated, my religious community largely ostracized me because I acted on the feeling “that nothing but the truth can be good enough for the church to which I belong.” So, yeah, I brought the truth to light, but it did make the Church look pretty bad. AITA? (Juanita Brooks, and I can’t resist stating my opinion that Juanita Brooks is NTA. When I think of Mormon heroes, she is high on my list.)
@Simon C: The linked article does say that the front row seat was reserved with her name on it, so I can imagine that RMN was just trying to let her know that she didn’t have to sit all the way in the back, there was a seat waiting for her up front. What makes it a story about obedience is that by obeying RMN, she got to sit up front, which was apparently a Good Thing. That’s my easygoing positive take on that story. But yeah, it’s a bit of an awkward story and it doesn’t give me super good vibes either.
I just wanted to say that this…
“I’ve been secretly marrying my wife’s friends (I have my reasons, not going to get into that here), but someone started publishing a paper criticizing me for it. Since I’m in a prominent position, this put me in danger, so I destroyed their printing press. Now they are coming after me. AITA?”
…is an amazing way to tell this story. Thank you, hawkgrrrl.
“My granddaughter-in-law was struggling because despite her fervent fasting and prayer, her father was dying. She was grieving the potential loss of her father and scared she was losing her testimony at the same time. I told my wife to tell her one word: myopic. I know the Savior wept with Mary and Martha even though He knew Lazarus would be raised from the dead, but I didn’t think that was necessary in this instance. I later told this story to a very large gathering of people to make the point that my granddaughter-in-law wouldn’t have struggled if she had an eternal perspective, and some people are upset at my story, that I didn’t ‘mourn with those that mourn.’ AITA?”
mountainclimber: I totally thought your #1 was George Pace rather than Gene England, but either way, the AITA was indeed BRM. I had classes with both George Pace and his son (in the French dept).
Witnessed this last night – “Performed a ‘ring ceremony’ for a young couple sealed in the temple earlier that day, but reminded everyone at the 2nd ceremony that the most important part of the day happened at the temple. AITA?”
One more example from Ahmad Corbitt’s talk, “Activism vs. Discipleship” a few weeks ago (https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24159863/Brother_Corbitt_Chaplain_seminar.pdf):
“A recently activated brother protested my teaching of The Family: A Proclamation to the World. He very publicly and obviously walked out of sacrament meeting during my talk. He also failed to sustain his leaders at various levels. As his stake president, I counseled him about the impropriety of his method and helped him understand the prophetic principles he had misunderstood. I might add that although his conduct was inappropriate, Church leaders continued to help him financially support his family and regain employment. We recognized who he really was, overlooked his lapse in judgment and taught him.” AITA?
First of all, Corbitt was teaching The Family Proclamation, and that alone should automatically make him ask himself, AITA? But there’s more to talk about with some nuances to consider…
The recently activated man apparently made a bit of a scene when he stood up and walked out of sacrament meeting. Part of me wants to say, “Good for you!’ I have this glorious vision in my mind of what might actually happen if every member that disagreed with the Family Proclamation walked out of any Church meeting where it is mentioned. That show of dissent might actually lead to much needed changes. That said, I don’t know that I want the Church to acquire of habit of making a show of walking out of every talk where there’s a part that someone doesn’t agree with.
There’s a lot of glossing over things, but it sounds like Corbitt “taught” the man to basically accept whatever his Church leaders say and not to walk out of any more meetings. It certainly sounds like the teaching done was probably a one-way street–I rather doubt that the man had a chance to “teach” Corbitt why The Family Proclamation is evil in return. To be fair, Corbitt did say in his talk that it was OK to privately raise concerns with Church leaders, so that was probably “taught” to the man as well.
Apparently the man was receptive to Corbitt’s message. As a result, Corbitt was gracious enough to continue providing the man with Church financial assistance. However, one wonders what would have happened if the man had not fallen in line and continued to state opposition to the Family Proclamation or walked out of a talk again. Would Corbitt have cut off the man’s financial assistance if that was the case? The text doesn’t say for sure, but I get the sense that’s exactly what would have happened because the man is said to only have had a “lapse in judgment” which sounds like a one-time event to me. Different wording would likely have been used if the man had continued the behavior over a period of time after being “taught” by his leaders. Corbitt says he could “overlook” a one-time “lapse of judgement”, but I doubt that he would have overlooked something more than that and cut off the financial assistance. Should the Church cut off financial assistance to people that publicly express disbelief in uncanonized teachings like The Family Proclamation?
Finally, if this man made as big of a show as Corbitt says he did, I’m guessing that a lot of people back home would recognize who this man is if they read Corbitt’s talk. Did Corbitt get permission from the man to share this story? Furthermore, did Corbitt get permission from the man to tell everyone that he had been receiving Church financial assistance? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want this story told about me if I were the man in the story. Do you think Corbitt asked the man for permission to tell this story?
I always insist that everyone use my middle initial whenever they refer to me, as a sign of my authority and their deference. AITA?
@mountainclimber479 I always thought the new baby meals were in recognition of the fact that dads couldn’t be expected to vary their schedules at all or pitch in around the house when a new baby arrived so if mom had new baby and other children at least she didn’t have to think about dinner for the week..
@Di, @Deborah, @Angela C: Thanks for the feedback. I like Angela’s idea of finding a way for wards to build community through service in the broader community where there are real needs rather than providing service internally in the ward when it isn’t actually needed.
@Angela C: George Pace did indeed have a similar encounter with BRM. Pace ran afoul of McConkie for promoting the idea that people should attempt to develop a relationship with Christ (yes, you read that correctly). In Pace’s case, I’m not aware that letters between BRM and England were leaked as happened with Gene England, though. The letters are very much worth reading (England to BRM here: http://www.eugeneengland.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/EE-to-BRM-Sep-80-Combined.pdf and BRM to England here: http://www.eugeneengland.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/BRM-to-EE-Feb-80-Combined.pdf). Interestingly, both England’s and Pace’s ideas were published by the Church after BRM’s death (BYU Studies for England and Deseret Book for Pace. I think Deseret Book literally republished Pace’s book that McConkie criticized so harshly under a new name although I think Pace may have made some modifications), so apparently their ideas weren’t that heretical after all. Janey recently had a few posts on theology, the nature of God and man, etc. A few people, including myself, commented that they personally don’t place a lot of importance in the details of the theological debates (for example, the Trinity in traditional Christianity and 3 separate beings in the Godhead for Mormonism just doesn’t matter to me). Janey rightly pointed out that some people care deeply about theology and were willing to kill for it in the early days of Christianity. BRM seems like a prime example of someone who cared very deeply about having the “correct” theology. I could totally imagine him literally going to battle (like with a sword) for his position if he had lived when the debates over the correct beliefs in early Christianity were occurring.
@swimlikeabrown: You are sadly completely right about that. I’ve often wondered how far back in time this tradition goes. This sort of thing makes a lot more sense to me in pioneer days: no restaurants, everyone made homecooked meals, men and women performed manual labor from dawn to dusk, etc., so I’ve always imagined that this is when this whole thing started. Times have changed, so it seems like it’s time to reconsider this tradition. A few years ago the RS somehow dropped the ball and didn’t arrange meals for an expecting family, and let me tell you that woman was *irate*. The family could definitely afford to order Door Dash, but she really felt that she was entitled to home-delivered meals from the ward and gave the RS an earful about it.
@ mountainclimber 479
Your last anecdote reminds me of when I had just birthed twins with 2 other children under age 4 1/2. The only other family living close by was my MIL. The new recently called no nonsense RS president decided they didn’t want to set a precedent by arranging for any meals so my two good friends organized meals for a few days. I have to say that was hurtful but was grateful for good friends. This was back far enough when our circumstances were more humble and fast food options not close at hand.
Could not love this post more. Laughed at the examples. Bless you Angela.
Some AITA I’ve heard:
-Anytime a former bishop laments about how a woman in his congregation was unable to forgive an abuser despite his counseling and her lack of forgiveness ruined her life
-Anytime a ward member speculates about the reasons that someone they know got divorced
-When RMN tells women they need to speak up more in meetings, during a conference session in which only 3 women speak
I’m sure there are many more.
I Iove the idea of interchanging AITA with “Lord is it I?”
I have mixed feelings about bringing meals to new moms. Yes, it’s a total nod to our man-babies who can’t possibly take over meals for a week, but my husband was/is one of those man-babies, and I struggled to feed myself with my first 2 babies. At one point I remember living off expired eggnog all day. My husband would come home and ask if there was anything to eat, then sigh and click his tongue that there wasn’t. In hindsight I could have afforded take-out or delivery, but it seemed like too much of an indulgence to me. A couple ward friends brought over meals, and those were greatly appreciated. With my 3rd baby the ward organized meals, but my two older children snubbed them, and I ended up having to come up with different foods for them. Interestingly, my 10YO son was more helpful than my husband had ever been, following my instructions to make fish sticks or mac and cheese while I held my newborn. (For the record, my husband was in an intensive graduate program by then and was barely eating himself at the time.)
I’m sure Reddit would advise me to divorce his “toxic” !$#, but elsewhere on the internet an LDS blogger with a moderate following shamed me (without knowing or naming me) for an interaction she observed of me snapping at my husband in public. I watched the post go viral among my unknowing friends and learned that in Mormon public opinion I was DTA (definitely the A-hole) in the marriage. So there’s that. (In my defense, there was a lot of built-up resentment over his constant excuses to not help with the baby that went into that public snap.)
I’m in a ward where everyone can afford to order their own takeout and just finished a stint as Relief Society President. People in my ward don’t ask for help in general. We continued the tradition of taking meals to new parents. Honestly I think it’s sexist to assume that the mother is the one who was in charge of meals and now that she’s out of commission the husband can make them. They are both capable of cooking dinner, yes, but they are both new parents who could maybe use some help. In the case of my ward they are both probably capable of ordering food instead of cooking. I see delivering meals as a way to show love and build community. It’s also an opportunity it be present and possibly observe other service that may be helpful. So that’s plug for continuing these kind of traditions even when there isn’t a “need”.
Re: mountainclimber479‘s meal-providing AITA scenario: My mother was Stake RS President for years. Her attitude which she shared with the RS presidents in our stake was, “The birth of a child is generally not an emergency; in most cases, the RS does not provide meals for a birth. There are lots of other times meals might be warranted (extreme sickness, death, etc.).”