LDS theology doesn’t accept original sin. Adam and Eve didn’t commit a sin in the Garden of Eden; they committed a transgression. Throughout the mainstream Christian world, the sin in the Garden of Eden has been interpreted to mean that we all are born in sin. That’s where the doctrine of infant baptism came from – babies must be baptized because they inherited that original sin.
Rejecting original sin allows the LDS Church to teach that babies and children who die without baptism are saved in heaven. However, once a child reaches the age of accountability, they commit their own sins and have to be saved from those sins. Instead of original sin, the LDS Church teaches that the “natural man is an enemy to God.”
That teaching comes from Mosiah 3:19, which says, “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”
The “natural man” still gets linked back to the fall of Adam. That’s when we entered mortality, and all mortals sin once they reach the age of accountability. “All are hardened; yea, all are fallen and are lost, and must perish except it be through the atonement which it is expedient should be made.” (Alma 34:9).
Before we talk about how we’re all doomed, I want to share an anecdote from college. We had a professor who was universally held in contempt. Why? She bragged about how students had a 60% failure rate for the final exam. Yes, that’s right, after a semester in her class, 60% of us would fail the final. The only reason anyone passed the class is that she graded on a curve, so that D- was the highest grade and became an A and the rest of us straggled into passing grades from there. The general consensus among the students was that if you were such a bad teacher that 60% of your students failed your final exam, then you shouldn’t be bragging about it. She was proud of the fact that we all failed. Her students thought that was the sign of a sucky teacher.
All of us fail the test of mortality. However, we don’t blame God for being a sucky God. Why? Because the whole point of mortality is to fail. The real test isn’t passing the test (keeping all the commandments perfectly), it’s what we do when we fail. Do we turn to Christ and accept him as the Savior? That’s the real test we have to pass.
Unless God is a sucky God.
C.S. Lewis, in his essay “God in the Dock”, explained the difficulty in teaching non-Christians to accept Christianity.
The early Christian preachers could assume in their hearers … a sense of guilt. … Thus the Christian message was in those days unmistakably … the Good News. It promised healing to those who knew they were sick. We have to convince our hearers of the unwelcome diagnosis before we can expect them to welcome the news of the remedy.
One of the barriers to Christian conversion is a person who doesn’t feel bad about who he is. The natural man has to be taught that he’s an enemy to God.
What is natural? Every human society, whether Christian, pagan, or whatever, naturally has music. Music is a natural human activity. So is dancing. Telling stories. Cooking. Someone on the internet pointed out that the only thing that humans do that no animals do is cooking, Cooking is what really sets us apart from animals. We want our food to taste good; that’s natural.
None of those activities make us an enemy to God. They’re joyful activities; they build community.
Other, less savory activities, are also natural. When resources get scarce, we feed our families first and push out strangers. We “other” people so we can treat them badly. Adults abuse and abandon children. People in power abuse that power. I’m sure you could add to the list.
Let’s narrow the focus of this post. Examples of society-wide behaviors that make God weep abound, but let’s talk about ourselves as individuals, and me specifically (since obviously I’m not going to speak for you). Am I an enemy to God? Are you an enemy to God? One of the biggest steps for me in overcoming the damage of LDS thinking was to conclude that my natural self is NOT an enemy to God. I don’t need a threat of hell to keep me from being violent and abusing authority. My nature is not violent, and I think long and hard about how I use my authority at work. I have zero desire to commit sexual sins. I voluntarily donate money to good causes and treat the people around me well. I apologize when I screw up. I like to be busy. I don’t spend my days playing violent video games in my mom’s basement and wearing crocs at the honky-tonk; I don’t even want to do those things.
In sum, I don’t believe that I’m an enemy to God.
Furthermore, the teaching that we’re all fallen and lost unless we’re saved by God and the Savior is … not a good example to follow in mortal relationships. From the earliest Primary lessons, we’re taught to follow Jesus’s example, and Jesus followed God’s example, and if we follow their examples, we’ll be good people. But if you get into a relationship with someone who convinces you that you’re a pathetic, evil, weak person who is a lost cause unless you let them save you, you’re in a bad relationship. Someone who wants to persuade you that you have no other options (“Lord, to whom shall we go?”) because you’re naturally bad and should feel like scum because you’ve failed God and deserve to go to hell, isn’t somebody you’re supposed to trust. In mortal relationships, anyway.
In general, the way many people cope with fundamentalist guilt is to reject that view of God. The fear-based notion that we’re damned by our human nature doesn’t create strong testimonies; it creates neurosis, scrupulosity, and a whole lot of suffering. Then when you find out you don’t have to feel that way, that’s what feels like being saved. You’re saved FROM your testimony, not BY your testimony. People who have been through this sort of faith crisis may come through it with a more expansive view of God’s love, and a reduced focus on exact obedience to rules.
According to Christianity, God set up a test that he knew we would all fail, despite all we learned in the premortal existence. Then, we need to feel guilty and damned in order to welcome the news of a Savior. Stay far away from those dynamics in mortal relationships, but for some reason, those are good relationships to have with God and Jesus, so follow their examples in other ways but not in setting up that kind of dynamic in a mortal relationship because that’s emotionally abusive and creepily manipulative.
Coming Next Week: What Actually Happened When I Surrendered My Entire Personality to God and Made Fundamental Changes Through the Power of the Atonement (hint: I did not become more submissive, meek and humble)
- Do you, personally, believe that your natural impulses make you an enemy to God?
- What if we didn’t teach people that they were guilty and damned? What if we just taught people to treat others well because we want to be part of a happy community? (*cough* The Good Place *cough*)
- Do you believe living a moral life is possible without feeling like you’re in need of a Savior?
- Other religions don’t require a Savior. If you sin, you repent, make amends and change and move on with your life. God’s son doesn’t have to bear the weight of your sins. Do you believe that repentance and change are possible without Christ? Meaning, do you think non-Christians can repent and change through secular means?
- If you answered yes, what does that do to the holy pronouncement that, “every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ”?
Wheat & Tares 
You’re right, Janey, that we teach that Adam and Eve transgressed but did not sin. Yet we read in 1 John 3:4–“Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.” That verse has no JST. Can one transgress but not sin? Perhaps, as there are some exceptions in the law: children to whom transgression is not counted as sin, and people will be judged by the law that they have, which also means that they will not be judged by a law that they do not have.
A big problem with guilt isn’t our teaching about sin, but it is how we teach repentance. Repentance should be fairly easy: one turns from his old ways, period. Sorrow, restitution, and confession are not the inseparable constituent parts of repentance, at least not as used in the New Testament. In 1557, the English translators in Geneva translated “repent” in Mark 1:15 as “amende your lives.” In Acts 2:38, in Geneva, Peter told the people to “Amend your lives, and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Iesus Christe for the remission of synnes.” (Original spelling maintained, but not orthography.) This concept existed in the Old Testament, too, as in 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” Massive guilt, restitution, sorry, and confession were not required, but humility, prayer, seeking God, and turning from our wicked ways–this is biblical repentance, and God forgives those who do these things. Notice no mention about restitution, confession, or sorrow. These things have their place, but to repent is to change, not to weep. Paul repented after the road to Damascus, in that he amended his ways, but we read nothing about him going back and paying money or asking forgiveness of the people whose murders he had participated in.
1. Yes. But we make ourselves the enemy, not Him. We leave Him, as the prodigal son considered his father an enemy and fled to a far away city where he could commit his iniquity away from his loving Father. When the son was finished with being the enemy, he came home, and his father accepted him, for the son was never the father’s enemy.
2. We could just be a social club teaching nice manners, but if we don’t teach faith in Christ, then our teaching won’t bring people to faith and to salvation, and we would still be lost.
3. Yes, I think that non-Christians can lead very moral, decent, and good lives, full of love for their neighbors. But if they don’t find faith in Christ, they can’t be saved by their great number of their own good works. Christians do not have a monopoly on goodness.
4. Yes, repentance and change are possible without Christ. A bad person can become better for a multitude of reasons. Some people change for the better to be seen of men as doing good, or to avoid jail, and I don’t think that this is proper fruit of true faith.
You write: “According to Christianity, God set up a test that he knew we would all fail, despite all we learned in the premortal existence. Then, we need to feel guilty and damned in order to welcome the news of a Savior.” I don’t see Christianity that way, although I agree that some do. I see Christianity inviting people to have faith in Christ so that we can return to God. Christ did not come into the world to condemn the world, but to save it. He invites and pleads with people to follow Him, but a true Christian, in my opinion, invites, implores, encourages, and tries to persuade men to voluntarily come to God from love, and that persuasion is done with kindness, love, gentleness, and meekness. There may be a time for strong words, but that is rarely our business.
Sin is sin, no matter what we call it. I am reminded of a story supposedly about Abraham Lincoln, who would ask, “If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?” “Five,” his audience would invariably answer. “No,” he would politely respond,” the correct answer is four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.” We can call evil good, but this does not make it so, and we can call good evil, and this does not make it so. But here’s the good news: you have sinned, and so have I. We have both sinned and have both fallen short of the glory of God. We both need the same solution, or the same medicine, which is God’s forgiveness. I should not throw stones at you for your sins, when I have my own sins. Our sins might be different in some ways, but they are identical in that they both result in our separation from God, and they are identical that we both require the same medicine. A problem is that too many people, including those who call themselves Saints and Christians, are obsessed with the mote in their neighbors’ eyes, when they should be more concerned about the beam that is in their own eyes. Our missionary call should not be calling people wicked and vile; rather, it should be that God loves you, and wants you to return to Him, so believe in Christ and amend your ways, and you will be forgiven.
The more I have to confront my loss of faith the more I don’t feel like being and feeling broken is some grand divine plan. Humility and introspection – yes. Grace and kindness I can get behind all day long. Learning and growing -sign me up.
On my mission I used to modify the charlas a little and used so say something to the effect that God is our father and like our earthly parents he wants us to be like him and return to him. To grow up to be like him. When I became a father I realized these kids of mine already were pretty amazing already and watching them grow into adult versions of themselves was a great joy. I can’t imagine now thinking that they were an enemy to god or that they were in some fallen state from the beginning.
Now that I am kind of apostate and trying to figure out fatherhood without the church I find this easy to leave behind. When we did leave this was the question from family though – question the church, ok. Christ? The atonement – they wanted to know that we were holding to that part of the faith at least. The truth is that, as they feared when we let go of the church, we also let go of the doctrine.
I think Mosiah was in a really bad place when he wrote that. Certainly hadn’t had sex that day. I
don’t think that ideahas anything to do with God.
I believe we will be judged on who we have become. If we are judged at all. Not on how much we repented.
I can’t think of when anyone in my family have sinned. And we have done a lot of good things to help our neighbours.
I trace the beginning of my faith transition to being unable to stomach the idea of an innocent suffering unimaginable torment in my place, willing or not. That seemed so very, very wrong. I believe in empathy. I believe in sacrifice. I know there are hard choices. I’m a mother. But I would never, ever condone or agree to the premises of the atonement as taught by the Church. I wasn’t on board with that Plan.
Evil is real, but not especially common in my experience. Most people I know are trying and succeeding at being good people. They make mistakes, they get misled, they make the wrong calls sometimes. Are they sometimes damaged? Yes. But wow, are they trying. I just can’t look around me and see many enemies of God. At all.
I also think the reason religion is loosing credibility is the disconnect between religion and morality. This is so obvious when religion is connected to the right of politics.
In Australia the biggest thing politically at present, is that we will be voting to recognise our indigenous people in the constitution and set up a way that they can have a voice to parliament and the executive. Aboriginal people have been asking for this for years, so they can advise how best to help their people, who have worse outcomes on health, education, employment, and imprisonment rates than the rest of society.
Most members associate themselves with the right of politics, who oppose the voice, on spurious grounds.
I have been convinced for a while now that one of the reasons Christianity (including Mormonism) induces such powerful spiritual experiences in people is because the Elevation emotion is triggered by acts of moral beauty and Jesus’ sacrifice is taught to be the greatest act of moral beauty imaginable.
But…
The problem with this is that the moral beauty of Jesus’ sacrifice is directly proportional to our wretchedness. The more wretched we are, the greater Jesus’ love and the more awe-inspiring his forgiveness. “That he should extend his great love unto such as I… I stand all amazed.” The church is well-incentivized to teach us to be ashamed of ourselves and feel wretched.
Shame has great social utility. It keeps us from doing things that will get us kicked out of our communities and made to face the saber-toothed cats alone. Shame is also terrible for our mental and emotional well-being. That people feel shame just for existing or just for having sexual impulses etc. is a terrible hallmark of Christianity.
The good news is that Empathy is, shall we say, a more excellent way that makes shame unnecessary. Empathy achieves the same positive social utility as shame without the negatives.
So no, I don’t believe it’s necessary to rely on a Savior or see yourself as an enemy to God in order to be a good person. You just need empathy. And, fortunately for Christianity, Jesus had empathy in spades.
Maybe Joseph Smith was projecting on to mankind when he wrote scriptures like this that said we are enemies of God. He knew how honest he was or wasn’t. He knew how moral he was or wasn’t. My reaction is: speak for your self Mr. Smith.
First, I thought you were about to head into a troubling narrative in the Church: men are not punished for Adam’s transgressions, but women *are* punished for Eve’s. But since that’s not where you went, I’m happy to go where you did.
This is actually something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. There are two ways in which I’ve been observing that Church is like alcohol: 1) it is (often) both the cause & cure of what ails you, and 2) it doesn’t really change who you are; it amplifies your personality. To add to my second hypothesis, Church really does bring out some good things in some people (service, thoughtfulness, listening, self-reflection), and some incredibly awful things in others (judgmentalism, anger, tribalism, hate-mongering). Sometimes it seems to make some people smug & superior, while it imbues others with shame and guilt. The response it creates doesn’t seem to have much to do with actual sinfulness or merit. It’s really just the type of person. And plenty of people have noticed that some ex-Mos exhibit the same poor behaviors that they decry among Church members: sexism, proselytizing, hyperbole, judgmentalism. I was recently at a dinner with several of my HS friends (non-LDS), most of whom quit attending Church years ago, but they are truly still the kindest people, good listeners, very thoughtful about others. They just didn’t feel that Church was worth their time.
“1. Do you, personally, believe that your natural impulses make you an enemy to God?” I tend to think Victor Frankl got it right, that humans always have the choice to do good or to do evil, that at any moment, we can do the better thing or the worst thing. But in general, I don’t think my natural impulses are worse than average. Belonging to a group or community or family has the benefit of making us want to conceal our anti-social acts and thoughts to receive the benefits of belonging.
“2. What if we didn’t teach people that they were guilty and damned? What if we just taught people to treat others well because we want to be part of a happy community? (*cough* The Good Place *cough*)” The ending of the Good Place was my idea of heaven; honestly, it’s not that far off the universalist strain in the Church (that it feels we are further and further from under the current administration).
“3. Do you believe living a moral life is possible without feeling like you’re in need of a Savior?” Without a doubt. There are many non-Christians and atheists who understand morality better than many Christians do. When people say “Oh, so and so left the Church and immediately starting cheating on his wife/taxes etc, but what do you expect?” I just think that’s the dumbest rationale I’ve ever heard. Most ex-Mos I know are basically living life the same way they did as Mormons. (There are exceptions, but mostly that’s people who are working out their own trauma in unfortunate ways).
“4. Other religions don’t require a Savior. If you sin, you repent, make amends and change and move on with your life. God’s son doesn’t have to bear the weight of your sins. Do you believe that repentance and change are possible without Christ? Meaning, do you think non-Christians can repent and change through secular means?” Yes, repentance just means change. To the extent that humans can change, whether or not they hold religious beliefs has no bearing on it so far as I can see, except in amplifying their own tendencies. Personally, I find more meaning in the teachings of Jesus than I do in the concept of a Savior as a behavioral motivator.
As a missionary in Russia, I was frustrated by how Preach My Gospel treated guilt and shame from sin as inevitable. It says things like “Although they [investigators] may not know why, they need relief from feelings of guilt that come from mistakes and sins” , “Those who break this law [the law of chastity] are subject to a lasting sense of shame and guilt that burdens their lives.” My reaction – um, no they don’t? Most people had little interest in religion and frolicked in their honky tonks like crazed weasels, without one moment of guilt. I was spending a lot of time trying to make people feel guilty and it wasn’t working! Where was the PMG lesson on how to make people feel more guilty when I needed it?
Your #3 question is something I have been talking about with my husbnd a lot these last few weeks for some reason.
“Do you believe a moral life is possible without feeling you’e in need of a Savior?”
Speaking just for myself and my beliefs I would say yes.
But I have several Hindu and Buddhist friends who live what we would describe as very moral lives and they do not teach in their religious beliefs the doctrine of a Savior.
There are about 500 million Buddhists and 1.2 billion Hindu’s in the world who live very moral lives without a Savior, it is done all the time all over the world.
Very thought provoking essay! Thank you.
About Adam & Eve and the Garden of Eden I find it curious that the LDS version is the same as the traditional Bible story. Are we to believe that when many great and important truths were taken from the scriptures that the account of the Garden of Eden was unblemished?
LDS scriptures elaborate on the mortality of Adam & Eve and their life after leaving Eden. And LDS scriptures expound on the necessity of mortality and the Fall using the example of Adam & Eve. But the LDS scriptures and the LDS Temple provide no help on providing understanding of what transpired in Eden.
I puzzle about this mainly because the traditional Adam & Eve story conflicts with LDS doctrine of Agency, Premortality and the War in Heaven. LDS doctrine is we lived prior to birth as spirits and we engaged in a great conflict -the War in Heaven – where we chose the Fathers Plan. This Plan is what we now know as the Gospel or the Plan of Salvation or the Plan of Happiness.
The puzzle is if we – all beings who would come to earth -made this choice in premortal life, why does that Plan hinge on Adam & Eve and why the Garden of Eden? My understanding of one theological argument is that God can not make bad things. God could only create a perfect world and so Adam & Eve – imperfect beings – had to be the ones to initiate the Fall from God’s perfection. However, the idea that God can only create perfect things is at odds with the observation that in the creation of the Solar System God created a bunch of stinker planets that are wholly inhospitable to life and are otherwise imperfect. But enough of that theology.
Perhaps as it concerns Adam & Eve they had to begin in a Paradise. What seems inconsistent is why must Adam & Eve be naive and clueless about what is happening? The LDS Temple instruction is illustrative. Adam & Eve resist Lucifer’s solicitation to eat the fruit. Then Eve is persuaded. Then to persuade Adam to also disobey God, Eve introduces the argument that they must be together to have children. There were no children in the Garden of Eden and there had been no conversation between Adam & Eve about this. And then suddenly Eve wants children and Adam is like, ok, I’m cool with that.
It is not clear to me if the LDS Temple version of the Garden in Eden wants to show that Adam & Eve were deliberate in their choice to eat the fruit. If the choice were deliberate than it would be made independent of God & Lucifer. Adam & Eve would hear the recommendations of both and they would choose for themselves. But that is not what is portrayed! What is shown is the traditional Christian story where Eve is deceived and she and Adam disobey God and are forced out of the Garden.
LDS doctrine really wants to make Adam & Eve out as heroes. But because LDS teachings accept so much of the traditional Bible story, the LDS version of Adam & Eve is morally incoherent. An incoherence illustrated by the twisting of the words transgression and sin.
You could call this a tangent, and I apologize for it, but did I miss some kind of boat with the usage of “honky tonks” somewhere along the line? I know there is another commenter that would have statements about sinners going to their honky tonks (which I can never tell if he is being serious or tongue-in-cheek when saying it), and now I’m seeing it crop up more from others. Is that a form of jest/winking at the silly use of honky tonks by the other one, or is this some in-joke in general that I’ve just missed?
I think the Mormon teachings and doctrines can be quite harmful for many followers. If we look at basic cognitive distortions, they are responsible for much of the pain and inability to enjoy life as imperfect human beings. The standards of perfection make people ill.
1. All or nothing thinking – you sin, especially sexual sin (the culture is obsessed with this), you are unworthy and must be put in a corner where you can’t hurt others with your behaviors. Your 99% good life as parent, employee, church member don’t matter.
2. Mental filter – we learn to dwell on that single event (sin) and see our lives in a distorted way (enemy to God). Similar to a drop of ink in a glass of water. Obsess over one sin, ignore all the great qualities and achievements. Leads to discouragement or worse.
3. Discount the positives – good behaviors don’t count. We are working our way out of unworthiness; We might do good works but it’s never enough.
4. Magnification – this goes with ‘enemy of God’ – exaggerate importance of problems/weaknesses and minimize positive qualities, natural talents, etc.
5. Emotional reasoning – big one in LDS culture. Feelings are often seen as inspiration or revelation. So, when we feel guilty we must be guilty. If we feel anxious, danger must be around the corner. I feel ashamed so I must be bad. Reality – We often feel guilty or ashamed because of impossible standards and sex shaming. It’s not bad to want sex or have sexual desires! It’s our biology. To act on these is a different matter but even if we do, it’s not a leader’s place to shame; this heaps more shame on an already morally conflicted person. It also doesn’t work! Best thing religions can do is use their platform to teach intrinsic worth and the grace of God. Shaming is manipulative and these feelings invite more soothing behaviors (sins) as well as resentment toward leaders. LDS ‘prophets’ should understand basic cognitive science.
6. Should statements – directed against self cause self-hate. ‘I should live all the LDS rules’ (impossible). ‘I shouldn’t masturbate’. Directed against others causes anger. ‘He shouldn’t argue with the prophets’ !
7. Labeling (my favorite) – He’s unworthy! Instead of making a mistake (behavior, choice), the person becomes ‘unworthy’. The label can become a very unproductive self-perception that leads to discouragement and self-esteem problems.
8. Personalization – instead of looking at all potential causes of a problem (sin, marital problems, excommunication), we take on all the blame! If a member cheats on a spouse, everything becomes their fault. No other factors are considered, including the fact that the Bishop didn’t have to excommunicate them or shame them. It can excuse abusive leader decisions, factors that led up to the cheating, behaviors of the other spouse (not that they ’caused’ it), and pressures that put the person in a state of complete overwhelm and discouragement.
Just a few potential ways misguided thinking, not ‘the natural man’ create problems and pain. Teaching people they are guilty and damned is highly discouraging. Shame comes with fear, anxiety, and anger at self or others. Teaching intrinsic worth is much more encouraging and healthier.
This is why I believe the LDS gospel of legalism (I know they teach grace but it’s often not experienced when members need it the most) is so harmful. We are not our mistakes and inside-out change based on conscience and chosen values is much more effective than outside-in tactics of threats of punishment (excomm., Hell, social shunning). Grace is about love, understanding, living one’s potential, etc. Legalism is about living up to standards to earn approval of others and God. Works that are freely chosen because we feel valuable and loved and ‘want to’ do the right things for love – that is a totally different life experience than ‘have to’ do the legalist checklist in order to earn a higher social status and place with God.
I do believe we need a Savior – we all have drives and needs based on our physiology. We often violate our own values and have internal conflicts. We get discouraged and struggle with emotions and habits. The divine is a higher way of seeing life and purpose; it’s bigger than our limited minds and experiences. It enlightens us at times and pulls/encourages kinder, outward behaviors. Healing is the purpose, not compliance with organizational standards. The church is so different than a Savior. It’s not transactional but transformational at varying degrees of progress. People can be very selfish and destructive – I think we need a source of love and forgiveness to be able to do the same with ourselves.
Great post Janey.
1. This gets complicated depending on the definition of natural man as you’ve illustrated. If natural man means desire to sin then we have to define what it means to sin and then we get into who is defining sin which ends up taking god out of it entirely. I guess I would answer no, natural impulses don’t make you an enemy to god but could make you an enemy to other humans.
2. Imagine all the people, living life in peace. John Lennon had it right. It would be beautiful if we taught that it was all about treating others well.
3. Yes it’s absolutely possible to live a moral life without a savior, Again, John Lennon had it right.
4. Of course, when we know better we do better. I learned more from secular means that people are often quick to forgive when you sincerely repent. I mostly felt judgement and punishment from the church when I followed the path they prescribe for repentance.
4a. I now believe we’ve made god in our image rather than vice versa so… no, I don’t think the god of Christianity is going to require us all to bend the knee.
Great post, couldn’t agree more. In my view the idea of worthiness is in the top 5 worst doctrines of the LDS church, after polygamy and priesthood ban and maybe a couple of others.
The idea that I’m inherently an enemy to God is pernicious and shapes our foundational view of a Heavenly Father. Instead of innate worth as an offspring of a loving god, I’m born broken and undesirable. I didn’t ask to be born and didn’t ask to be imperfect – I was created this way in spite of all the LDS doctrinal protests that we don’t inherit Adam’s sins. If we’re born enemies to God without choosing to be so, we’re getting it from someone.
It also speaks to the need (or lack thereof) for an atonement which is kind of a messed up doctrine once you dig into the details. Our view of needing an atonement is based on a whole lot of other Christian baggage in and prior to JS time and isn’t nearly as clean as we learn at church.
I am worthy because I exist. I don’t have to prove worth to anyone. I do not want to live with anyone that I have to prove that I’m worthwhile. A truly loving parent would welcome me back without hesitation unless I had been truly vile. This view of my inherent badness has shaped my view of myself in a very negative way and will take years to unlearn. Thank you LDS doctrine. And Im not even female, I can’t imagine taking the idea of being naturally an enemy to God and then piling on superiority of maleness.
Janey, I appreciate you confronting the toxicity in LDS teachings. All my life I have grappled with strongly believing some parts of what is taught, but at the same time knowing other things that have been taught are just wrong. So am I a cafeteria Mormon? You bet. I simply cannot eat everything they are offering and if I tried or thought I had to it would definitely make me ill. The more you try to believe in an impossibly perfect church, perfect teachings, perfect prophetic words, absolutist narrative, the more ill you will get. In fact, I would say adhering to all of what is taught in an all or nothing way, to me, meets the terms of the meaning of “evil”. In other words it can do great harm, just as the Pharisees teachings as eschewed by Jesus did.
I really like the book “All Things New” by Fiona and Terryl Givens. They explain a lot of the history of these toxic protestant concepts that filled Joseph’s brain. He was inspired but the words he started with were those toxic Protestant words like “sin” which he manages to change to “woundedness” in some parts of the BOM, and “salvation” which becomes “healing” in places. They go through all those toxic words and paradigms and go over the various translations and history and conflicts of it all. They provide the paradigm of a loving Heavenly Family (mother, father, brother) and encourage us to forget anything that conflicts with this paradigm and believe in those things that show we are loved. Sold in Desert book.
Another good book on your topic is “Original Grace” written by LDS theologian Adam Miller. Adam takes Jesus’ teachings and shows how they support the idea of returning good for bad instead of a punishment based penal system of mercy vs justice. He points out that we teach this mercy vs justice penal system that simply isn’t supported by the things Jesus said. I love this book.
I agree that following the example of a Savior can be a toxic concept. For instance this concept has been pointed to by black members as a concept sometimes misused by members of the church as we condescend to others and reach out to “save” them. This concept was twisted and misused by christians to support slavery at one time.
I have a deep commitment to follow Jesus Christ in my care for other people. I see Christ as a healing influence for good. I don’t believe in a prosperity gospel gospel where you do what’s right and nothing bad happens to you. We are here to experience the bad stuff and the good. Mistakes are what we are here to experience. The atonement is there to bring things back into balance in the end.
I would always be Mormon even if I left. It’s who I am. I choose to stay with my church and try my best to improve it and remove any toxicity I can with whatever small influence I have.
Thanks to all of you for sharing your thoughts on this post. I enjoyed reading all of it.
Oops… Really, Deseret Book. Spell check is determined to make it about the dry country.
@ Adam F. Look at previous comments over the past year or two from John Charity Spring and yes, you’ll see where the references to honky tonks, crocs and basements and a few other cultural markers began. His comments are definitely worth reading!
I haven’t read the other comments so this may be redundant but you leave out the complementarity of “natural man” and that is “born again”…except in quoting Mosiah 3:19. From your own description of your behaviors, sounds to me like you are born again. So why worry about “natural man”? There has to have been a Fall for there to be a need for a Savior…the Fall isn’t original sin…it was the Fall to get us to a Savior to get us back home to Heavenly Father. Being born again is that process. Focus on that process, not why it’s needed, and your concern or angst or whatever it was that pushed you to address this topic should disappear.
+1 to lws329’s recommendation of Miller’s “Original Grace.” This is really an essential re-interpretation of the Garden of Eden that we desperately need as a church to consider, in order to deal with the incoherent and problematic notions described so well in the OP and comments. Please gift a copy to the each of the Q15.
In my TBM years, while studying the New Testament, I realized that the worst things that Jesus went through were inflicted on him by his Father. If all that was God’s will … well, like Margie, I got really uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus suffering because of me. Then I read a history of the New Testament and started to ponder the fact that the Gospels and Epistles were written decades after Jesus had died, and mostly by people who never knew Jesus. They were writing down stories and legends. Those aren’t eyewitness testimonies.
I’ve been gravitating towards empathy rather than righteousness. As Kirkstall notes, empathy gives us both compassion for others, and motivation to do better ourselves. You can find this in or out of religion. Angela’s right that some people develop their best tendencies in the Church, and some develop their worst tendencies. Does believing that we need to be saved from our sins make us more empathetic or more self-righteous? It depends on the individual. kamron’s story was funny, but it also goes to show that feeling shame for acting like a human being isn’t natural — shame has to be taught.
(Adam F – the references to honky tonks, Dairy Queen and wearing crocs is a wink at the commenter who holds up honky tonks, Dairy Queen and wearing crocs as undesirable behavior. I’m not actually sure what a honky tonk is, tbh.)
docjohn – you made a great comment. At then end, you say we need a Savior because we violate our own values and have internal conflicts. How would you set that against Chloe’s observation that so many people live moral lives and work out those issues without a Savior? I’ve relied on the idea of a Savior too, but what I’m rejecting is the idea that he suffered infinite suffering because we’re all broken and lost. Can a Savior help us without necessarily experiencing that level of torment? Christianity is the only religion that teaches that we need a suffering Savior.
lots of great comments anyone. Thanks for such a thought-provoking discussion.
Hey – has anyone else heard this story? When I was in high school seminary in the 1980s, there was a story going around about a seminary teacher who picked an athletic young man and asked him to do push-ups for donuts. This young man had to do 20 push-ups for someone to get a donut. The teacher started going around the class. The first row of kids was all, “yeah! make him do 20 push-ups for my donut!” and it was all very funny. As it went on, the young man started to get tired. He would just lie on the floor between sets of 20. He started to really struggle, and his classmates felt bad. One girl said she didn’t want a donut. The seminary teacher said, “young man, would you do 20 push-ups so this young woman can have a donut she doesn’t want?” The young man struggled through the 20 push-ups. By the end of the story, the young man had done something like 460+ push-ups and was wrung out and hurting.
The spiritual lesson was about the atonement. Christ suffered, and he suffered whether or not we want the donut/salvation and so we may as well make his suffering worth it by accepting the donut/salvation.
It was a vivid object lesson (I didn’t see it, just heard a story about it, maybe no one ever did this at all), but my feelings were mixed. It was kind of a creepy feeling. The seminary teacher made a young man suffer so other kids could have something good. I just … I dunno. It feels manipulative but I can’t really explain why it made me so uncomfortable.
Janey,
As it concerns descriptions of good and evil and heaven and hell I have come to appreciate from a philosophical perspective what the prophets are trying to teach. Jacob of the Book of Mormon is one of my favorite prophets of my older years, that I found dark and discouraging in my younger years. A taste of Jacob’s dramatic flair is 2 Nephi 9:10 “O how great the goodness of our God, who prepareth a way for our escape from the grasp of this awful monster; yea, that monster, death and hell, which I call the death of the body, and also the death of the spirit.”
The grasp of this awful monster … Wow. Jacob continues his sermon pronouncing wo and warning of the awfulness of transgressing God’s commanments. But Jacob also celebrates the goodness and mercy and grace of God. Jacob is teaching that there is a difference between heaven and hell and that our choices determine where we will be.
One of my favorite Messianic stories / films is The Shawshank Redemption. Marvel that this story was written by one of America’s most renowned and prolific writers of horror, Stephen King. Of all writers, King knows how to write about hell and evil. The prison is hell. The prison warden is especially evil, as are some of the guards and demonic inmates.
We must understand the hell of the prison and prison culture to appreciate the divine benevolence represented by the innocent man Andy Dufresne. Andy’s grace is shown in scene after scene. But the power of Andy’s goodness is captured in the redemption of fellow prisoner Red. There are several key scenes showing Red’s redemption. One is in a parole hearing where Red finally accepts accountability and his fate for having killed someone.
Red is paroled but his hell continues. He finds life as a free man to be confusing and lacking purpose. He now understands why fellow inmate Brooks Hatlen took his life after being paroled. Red is tormented. And here we get one of the most profound lines of the story:
“There’s a harsh truth to face. No way I’m gonna make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole, so maybe they’d send me back. Terrible thing, to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won’t have to be afraid all the time. Only one thing stops me. A promise I made to Andy.”
I don’t know if King intended to write a Christian story. But what he writes here is The Christian Gospel. No way can we make it in this world. It is at best empty and meaningless and we are inclined to regress to a worst state. But a more perfect person gives us hope and has provided us a way. This person asks us to promise to follow him, and if we keep that promise we can find the peace – the heaven – that we desire.
Does a person have to knowingly embrace Jesus Christ to be good? No. But it definitely matters that a person identify a higher ideal and have a personal commitment to live up to it. The Christian message is that the better way of living is the ideal provided in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. And the Christian perspective is that absent the commitment to follow Jesus we are in hell, either stagnant in a “natural” and meaningless existence or regressing to worse.
A Disciple–I love your use of pop culture, modern literature to help paint a clearer picture about the structure of reality. Thank you.
As is the case with all scripture, there are multiple ways to read and interpret Mosiah 3:19, which I have a couple I prefer, however, our preferred public vernacular tends to claim the literal reading, of which is easiest to take issue with and criticize. I tend to believe these days that Jesus’ own explanations of the gospel are the very best ones, I know, that seems just crazy, but incredibly helpful as we try to make sense of linking other prophetic ideas to Jesus’ own words. The Sermon on the mount is perhaps the greatest scriptural canon by which to measure all other canon. Jesus said in Matthew 5:43 Ye have heard that it hath been said,, which is to say, I know what you have heard, but it’s wrong. Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; 45 That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
Jesus has just revealed the nature of God and the extent to which his care reaches, which includes even enemies.
The challenge with the Christian story is not the incorrect diagnosis of the fundamental human dilemma, but the confiscation of that dilemma as leverage to manipulate co-dependency instead of freely chosen interdependence. The Christian story invariably has a 180-degree directional problem. It somehow, beginning with the tale of Adam and Eve, proceeds by making mortality an error in human judgment, and then seeks to correct that problem by providing some mechanism to make mankind acceptable to God again. The mechanism being some combination of our own efforts (obedience) with the transacted sacrifice of the innocent one (Jesus) to satisfy the demands of our inevitable disobedience.
This story however is backwards and portrays God as the supreme narcissist. It’s like me throwing my 2-year-old into the deep end, knowing she will drown, and then jumping in to save her while claiming to be the hero. Religion, sadly, has become the self-obsessed practice of making oneself acceptable to God again. But it’s not God’s mind that needs to be changed about his children, rather the need for us to change our minds about God.
The problem with this narrative structure is that it sees imperfection as the problem instead of the solution. Life is a mess, in the words of Matthew Kelley, “The mess is not the problem. The problem is our erroneous belief that everything should be immaculate, orderly, neat, tidy, and in its place. The problem occurs when we try to live as if it isn’t so.” It often appears that we have made the gospel an effort to perfect the imperfectible. The brilliance of our mortal experience is found in its imperfections, those are the very crucibles that draw out our capacity to become like God. It’s not meant to transform people into being’s worthy of love. On the contrary, it’s the perfect environment to teach us to love as he does, not because things are perfectly lovable, but precisely because they are not.
Christ, for me, is the revelation of God in the flesh, not as a way to clean up the mess, but to enter into it “with us”, as the term Emmanual means “God with us”. Redemption, Salvation, Eternal life, exaltation, etc. are the religious words we use to describe what God means by the “Good life”, it’s life like him, where we learn to care for even the least of these. The plan of Salvation, in spite of what we are taught, is not God’s cosmic evacuation plan, not the way to escape need, and sin, and suffering, but instead the way to respond to it.
The Natural Man is or is not an enemy of God based on who the man (or woman) is around and who is making the judgments.
On my mission, I lived in an apartment with 6 elders because it was so expensive in this particular area. Five of the elders would “cuss” all the time with the S word being the most often used followed by D or H and even the occasional F word. Nothing was ever said about it. It was just a part of the apartment life that I didn’t participate in. Well, one day it went too far and I said GD it, shut up. You would have thought from the reaction of the other elders that the world was going to end right there. It was the first time I said a “swear” word but it was obviously the wrong word to say at the time. But as I’ve thought back on that experience, I’ve come to realize that it was probably either all bad or none of it was bad. I was just what people made it up to be with exceptions for themselves and judgments for those that were different and then calling it God’s Will.
I think the ultimate test for the Natural Man is, what is that person with or without God. In other words, does that person have to have God to be good or can they be good without a God because they just are good? Who a person is without believing in a God or that there is a God is really as important or maybe even more important than who they are believing in a God. Are we a good person because we are a good person or because we fear God? The Natural Man who only follows God because of Fear is the real enemy of God.
Todd – that was a really thought-provoking comment. I’ve been pondering about perfection in the afterlife, and your words helped define some ideas for me. The goal isn’t to have perfect people in a perfect society, not even people perfected in Christ. It’s to have imperfect people dealing with their imperfections and accepting and loving others. Room to grow. Room to learn.
Instereo – I saw a screenshot of a tweet or whatever that said something like, “if the only reason you don’t rape, steal and murder is because you believe God will punish you, then you’re not a good person.” It was worded much better. But yeah, whether I believe in God or not, I don’t want to hurt people. It’s not because I’m afraid of God punishing me, it’s because I can see the humanity of other people and I don’t want to add to the amount of pain in the world.
Disciple – what you said was interesting, and I thought hard about it. I took issue with the description of “the natural man” in this post, and you kind of side-stepped that but still got to the same idea about everyone being fallen, lost and hopeless without a Savior, except you focused on the world instead of the individual.
These words: “No way can we make it in this world. It is at best empty and meaningless and we are inclined to regress to a worst state. … And the Christian perspective is that absent the commitment to follow Jesus we are in hell, either stagnant in a “natural” and meaningless existence or regressing to worse.”
I disagree with this characterization. You changed the natural man from being an enemy to God to just being hopeless and lost. The world is not empty and meaningless without Christ. Plenty of people live good and moral lives without Christ. Moral people don’t regress to a worse state without Christ in their lives. the Church (and other Christians) want everyone to believe that, but there are good, moral people who don’t believe Christ is their Savior.
Janey–your comment above to Instereo made me think of a couple things. First, we repeatedly read and even teach the idea that God’s plan is for US to be happy. No where in scripture do we ever see commandments given for the purpose of us keeping GOD happy. To refrain from rape, theft, and murder, if only out of fear of punishment or the possibility of economic reward, then the law is not really about love at all, it’s just a utility, a tool I can use to get God to do what I want. This, I think, is what is meant in scripture by our faith maturing from the law being written on stone to being written in our hearts. God’s law is always relational and my choice to NOT steal, like you said above, is an act of love, an act of seeing the value of another person and refusing to take for my own gain. If the law is not grounded in love, then it all quickly devolves into a cheap sales pitch. Even our service turns into self-service, not doing good for its own sake but only for what it gets me. That is not salvation.
I think a lot of this subject has to do with problems related to the naturalistic fallacy, and ideas of essentialism.
Hi Janey,
I experienced the donut pushups in 10th grade Seminary. It was the first class of the day in my case and the kid that did the pushups was dripping with sweat. I think he left school after the class and I don’t remember him coming back to seminary for a long time after that. He got kind of crass as he was going through the push ups but he did ten pushups for all the students in the class (30-40 students I would guess). When it came to my turn he told the teacher “He can do his own damn pushups” but then he did them for me anyway. Some people left the class to avoid being counted but the teacher made him do pushups for them as well. I thought of the donut as sin rather than salvation and I took from the lesson that Jesus suffered not only for actual sin but also for everyone’s potential sin. It was quite thought provoking and I imagined all the other people on all the other inhabitable planets in the universe and their potential sins for which Jesus supposedly suffered in addition to the entirety of the human race. For me It really gets to be incomprehensible beyond the surface level understanding of how the atonement is supposed to work. It Certainly was a striking object lesson though.