The unprecedented public discussion of LDS garments in General Conference by Sister Dennis and President Oaks has legitimized public discussion of LDS garments — and wow, people have a lot to say, don’t they? Good intentions, meet unexpected consequences. Furthermore, there are so many issues in LDS doctrine and practice that intersect the topic of LDS garments that there is just a lot to talk about. I’m going to talk about one sentence in the updated paragraph that is sometimes read to those renewing their LDS temple recommend.
Here is the sentence in the new paragraph, which, along with updated temple recommend questions, was attached to a First Presidency letter sent to thousands of LDS general and local leaders following General Conference. It has not yet been publicly posted at the Newsroom as the previous 2019 version was, but it is widely available online. Regarding the LDS temple garment, it says:
Wearing it is an outward expression of your inner commitment to follow him.
Here is the language from the 2019 version of the paragraph:
It is a sacred privilege to wear the garment and doing so is an outward expression of an inner commitment to follow the Savior Jesus Christ.
Most of you probably think it is the inner commitment that is really important. I’m sure most LDS leaders would agree with that as well. Yet it is the outward expression that garners most of the attention, discussion, and encouragement/enforcement. Why? I doubt a friend, family member, or ward busybody has come up to you and said, “So Brother X, how is your inner commitment to follow the Savior Jesus Christ doing today?” But it is quite possible a friend, family member, or ward busybody saw you in the store and asked, “So Sister Z, uh, looks like you just visited the gym (wink, wink).”
Here is my contention: There are no inner commitments. Or, if you prefer a softer statement rather than a bold claim, the existence and role of inner commitments are vastly exaggerated. I think this inner commitment we talk about is much more tightly linked to outward expressions, practices, habits, and behaviors. I think the inner commitment is throughly integrated with outward practices. So tightly linked that it is superfluous to talk as if there is an inner commitment that is a real thing and that is separate from the outward practices.
A quick example. Let’s say I have an inner commitment to get fit and lose ten pounds. My outward expression is to go to the gym three times a week and, on the other days, do some cardio at home or outside (on the stationary bike or taking a 30-minute walk). A month from now, when I have given up going to the gym or doing any extra exercise, does it make any sense to say, “My inner commitment is still secure, I’m just not getting that outward stuff done at the moment.” My suggestion is we *talk* about this inner commitment to make ourselves feel better, but it’s not really there. It was never really there.
Flip it around, different scenario. Two months later, I’m still doing the gym and extra exercise. I tell my friend, “You know, I really don’t have any inner commitment to this stuff anymore. But it seems to be working for me and I enjoy the sense of accomplishment I get. It’s just the way I live my life now.” Does that make any sense? To paraphrase a Jedi master, “Do or do not. There is no inner commitment.”
So if all this inner commitment talk is just fluff, just verbal packaging designed to make us feel better about ourselves and our actions, why all the talk? A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Daily exercise is a grind for many people, but wrapped in a “I am getting fit and living a healthier life!” package it is easier to keep doing. Wearing LDS garments is a a drag for many people, but wrapped in a “I am showing my commitment to my Savior Jesus Christ!” package it is easier to keep doing.
As a mental trick we play on ourselves, it is not necessarily a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with looking for motivation to do the right thing. Absent some sort of motivational context, many practices, actions, and projects are hard to engage with or continue. But it’s not just a trick we play on ourselves. Companies, schools, governments, churches, and every other institution we are part of or affected by uses the same set of tricks that they play on us. We fall prey to this stuff even when the causal linkage is transparently phony. “Take [health supplement brand] twice a day and [health benefit] will increase by ten percent or your money back, guaranteed!” As a manipulating institution, all you do is verbally link something you want (buy my entirely ineffective pills for $20 a bottle) with something the target consumer wants (some health benefit). Buying my pills is an outward expression of your inner commitment to better health.
Summing up, my sense is this LDS inner commitment talk is just a smokescreen for getting you to do what they want you to do. We could talk about *why* they want you to do this, and there are a lot of institutional benefits we could talk about, but that’s a separate discussion. And it’s not like most leaders are particularly self-aware. Point out the several institutional benefits to the garment compliance business to an LDS leader and most would reply, “Well, maybe or maybe not, but it’s just a coincidence if the Church benefits. We stress this because it is a good thing for the individual member; it is an outward expression of an inner commitment to Jesus Christ and it strengthens that commitment.” They will say that even when there is no connection at all between garments and Jesus Christ, just like there is no connection between the average health supplement pill and better health (they even add disclaimers to their ads and their bottles!).
Winding up, there are two sides to this discussion. On the one hand, “inner commitment talk” is something we do with ourselves to create context and motivation to do some of the things we need or want to do. These can be good things. We’re not robots, just executing a program. We need a context, a story, to justify, motivate, and explain our actions to ourselves and others. But in the end, either we do or we do not. There is no real entity labelled “inner commitment” that propels our actions. There is no inner commitment switch we flip. We do or do not.
On the other hand, our life is filled with institutions that use the same algorithm to try and get us to do their will. Doing X will show your inner commitment to Y. Yes, I want to show my inner commitment to commendable goal Y, so I will do burdensome action X! We need to think a little harder about these claimed but often spurious linkages. Putting in an extra unpaid hour after work shows your commitment to the success of the company. Contributing $100 to our charity shows your inner commitment to fighting world hunger. Wearing the LDS garment shows your inner commitment to following Jesus Christ.
Reflecting on this discussion, are there any practices in your life, whether Mormon ones or life in general ones, that you suddenly see in a different light?
Have you perhaps been bamboozled a time or two and only now recognize what was going on?
Update (on 4/18/24): The Church News has published the text of the First Presidency cover letter at the following link, and in that post is a link to the publicly accessible LDS Handbook section that includes the text of the updated LDS temple recommend questions. Notice that in the URL address they misspelled “garment.”
Wheat & Tares 
It’s quite remarkable how so much of our lives can hinge on very small beliefs and how easily we outsource our thinking, actions, and behavior to tradition, culture, or the beliefs of our society without critically examining them. Your post reminds me a bit of this joke:
Let’s flip your example. Let’s say I have an inner commitment to get fit and lose ten pounds. My intended outward expression as dictated by my trainer is to go to the gym three times a week and, on the other days, do some cardio at home or outside (on the stationary bike or taking a 30-minute walk). A month from now, I have only been to the gym twice and done some cardio a couple of times, but I have carefully modified my diet and got in a number of FIIT workouts which better suit my lifestyle and available time. I have lost five pounds and I’m feeling pretty good. Does it make any sense to say, “My inner commitment is still secure, I’m just not getting that outward stuff done at the moment.”
On this hypothetical, yes it does make sense to say my inner commitment is still secure even though my outward expression as predetermined or dictated by others is a near total failure.
In other words, I would contend that the inner commitment is the real thing, and it’s the outward expression that is in some important senses arbitrary and variable.
And yes, I do mean what it seems like I mean about wearing garments.
I disagree. I have an inner commitment to follow Jesus Christ. I feel deeply convicted that Christ fed the hungry, healed the sick, mourned with those who mourn, and comforted those he could comfort, and I follow his example.
I personally don’t exactly regard my garments as connected to this inner commitment, in the sense that I could lay aside my garments and keep my commitment to follow Christ. I also could wear my garments and not follow Christ. As Anna expressed clearly, many people who wear garments do not follow Christ.
I think the temple and the garments have been expressed to me as a commitment to the church. I feel a commitment to the church as a community (not as a patriarchal system to obey). I have my own autonomy and spiritual compass.
I wear my garments because it feels right for me at this time. That could change if I felt it should change for me.
I do evaluate others in how they follow Christ, but I don’t look to the garment for that evaluation. I look to see if they value and respect other people to see if they follow Christ.
I wish the church used this same valuation. I express what it means to me to follow Christ at church regularly. I am doing my part, but I don’t get to decide for others.
If wearing garments actually helped people be truly Christ like that would be dandy.
Like others so far, I’m not fully convinced that there’s no difference between inner and outer commitment.
I know people who have stopped going to church for health reasons, but still fully believe in the church. From the outside, they don’t look any different than someone who stopped going due to apathy or faith transition, but their inner commitment remains.
I love rock climbing, but lately have been too busy with work to go as often as I’d like. Inner commitment remains, outer commitment doesn’t.
I have a friend who converted to Islam. He said he converted internally in high school, but didn’t start to practice until several years later. During that time, I would think it’s fair to say his inner commitment was strong while outer commitment was not.
OP example of losing weight works only because there isn’t really an inner commitment portion of losing weight, you can’t think your way to weight loss. Belief systems definitely involve inner commitment, though.
I disagree not because I disagree with your argument, but because I do not think a commitment to follow Jesus has anything at all to do with my underwear. So, OK, if that means I don’t think the temple has anything to do with Jesus, well, that’s because it doesn’t. Jesus said that anything added onto the gospel principle he taught was not of him. So, show me anywhere that Jesus taught any of the stuff in the temple. He didn’t. Either we are the church of Jesus Christ, or we are the church of whatever our president says. Me, I am going back to the church of Jesus Christ.
P.S. lws is right. The endowment teaches a commitment to the institutional church. We promise to give all that we have or may have to the church. We never promise to follow Jesus. That is baptism. Not temple.
Setting the garment issue aside, I think your whole premise is wrong. The entire Atonement is based on the notion the the “spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The idea that if I really want to get something done, I will do it is pure poppy cock. I used to use that Yoda phrase with my sick father all the time. ”Drink your Ensure Dad.” ”I’ll try.” There is no try, only do. Nope my mistake. He tries to drink it and ends up puking.
I never paid attention to this phrasing about the garment. So now I am puzzled. What exactly is the “outward expression” of the garment? Am I supposed to make my garments visible for others to see? Am I supposed to make certain that people know my white undershirt is a church garment? Am I to suspect that church leaders are making an assessment of my clothing in order to detect if I am wearing the garment?
I believe wearing the garment is a personal, private, physical reminder of one’s religious commitment. I find the notion that leadership believes the garment serves an “outward expression” of faith to be troubling. They seem to be confusing the wearing of the garment with modesty. Dressing modestly is an outward expression of one’s values. Proper wearing of the garment promotes modest dress. But the garment itself should not be the “outward expression”. I always thought the point is to dress so the garment remains unobserved and unremarkable.
@lws329 I agree with your comment. As much as leaders would like to make a connection between garment wearing an inner commitment to follow Christ, there is no connection in my view. Wearing the garment is an outward expression of an inner commitment to wear the garment. In other words, it is a self-referential act. If anyone is making personal meaning out of it based on church teachers and finds value in it, then that is good for them. But it does not logically follow that wearing the garment would, in and of itself, lead one to be more Christlike. I would actually argue that it might prompt some to be less Christlike in their comportment as they might assume that the act of donning the garments are an act of doing the will of the Father and then use that as an excuse to not actually do the will of the father.
Not every one that asaith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. -Matthew 7:21
Since Dave talked about this in the context of working out and healthy eating, I would suggest that garment wearing might inadvertently lead to a form of “moral licensing.” Moral licensing is mental phenomenon or cognitive bias that occurs when someone justifies bad decisions with a preceding good one. An example would be someone eating starting to eat unhealthy because they started a new workout regime. This happens all the time. “Oh, I ate a salad, so now I’m going to have a huge desert as my reward.” My worry is that when people view garment wearing as an end in and of itself, they will think they have already done something good, and it will lead them to justifying sins of ommission or commision.
Dessert, not desert! Sigh, I really need to run my comments through a spell checker before I hit submit.
I kept attending and following all of my commitments for a long time after my inner commitment was broken by my loss of faith. The most I had done was to drink tea once when I was traveling for work to the UK. I wore my garments even. Taught elders quorum, directed the choir, led the 11 year old boy activities on Wednesday.
But inside I was quite apostate. My temple recommend interviews were long because I just couldn’t just say yes and no when prompted. I had concerns and question for years that finally eroded my inner commitment but was mostly contained and rarely was on display except when I was asked to teach about tithing right after the Washington post wrote about Ensign Peak.
I think your premise is wrong and I offer this as a counter example. Outer commitment that lasted years while my inner commitment was nonexistent.
This feels like a reductive argument about orthodoxy vs. orthopraxy. We tend to think that our inward commitment leads to our outward actions, but the outward actions require psychological justification that can change our inward beliefs to conform to our actions. In enforcing visible actions (like garment wearing, which is orthoprax whether it’s visible or not), the objective is to increase inward commitment, but realistically, the commitment is (as Jacob L astutely points out) self-referential. We justify in our minds the thing we are doing to explain our actions to ourselves (and to others if asked). There is no inward commitment that would lead to garment wearing in a vacuum. The commitment is to do as we are told by the organization: to trust and obey their will over our own.
If we read carefully the Sermon on the mount and Paul’s writings, they quickly become a thorn in our modern made LDS religion.
Matthew 6 begins with this little challenge to the OP’s claim. “Be careful not to perform your righteous acts before men to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.” Paul continues throughout his writings to make his distinction between “Faith” and “Works”. He, like Jesus, continually pushes back against the works side, which were the perfunctory rituals that instead of being symbols, had become equated with righteousness itself. Neither ever said we have nothing to do, only to be very cautious about confusing means with ends.
Paul makes this stinging remark in Galatians 5 that ought to make our leaders wonder whether they would have been part of the status quo, upper leadership, chanting for Jesus’ demise. Paul says, For through the Spirit we eagerly await by faith the righteousness for which we hope. 6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. Paul forthrightly and boldly states that circumcision is useless. He easily could have said; 6 For in Christ Jesus neither (wearing garments) nor (not wearing garments) has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love. So, I say, go ahead and wear your garments if you want, but don’t think for a minute that whether you do or don’t you are more or less righteous. And be careful, upper leadership, to perform your righteous acts before men to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. Those are Jesus’ words, not mine.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding (entirely possible), but I feel like I have a number of actions in my life that are outward expressions of an inner commitment. A few examples…
I’ve been an active person my whole life. I love outdoors activities: hiking, backpacking, running, skiing, etc. What don’t I enjoy doing? Strength training in an indoor gym. In fact, I loathe lifting weights. When I was younger, I competed in some of my outdoor activities. I had an “inner desire” to get better so that I could outperform my competition. In order to do this, I understood that I needed to spend some amount of time in a gym lifting weights. Now that I’m older, I don’t really care about competitions, other than my competition against aging (a competition that I know I’ll eventually lose). Again, even though I still hate lifting weights in a gym, I understand that doing so is likely to allow me to age more gracefully. Even after all of these years, every time I go to the gym is literally a struggle for me. I never want to go, and sometimes I just don’t, yet I oftentimes still choose to go because of what I would call my “inner commmitment” to outpace my competition (when I was younger) or to age gracefully (nowadays). Without this inner commitment, I would literally never go to the gym.
I love my wife. She has many great qualities. However, she has some characteristics and behaviors that I dislike (and I know the feeling is mutual). I have long given up on trying to “fix” these things–it was never my role to do so, and it was just a bad idea to try in the first place. Instead, I’ve consciously made an “inner commitment” to try to be a good partner that accepts my wife just as she is, including any perceived flaws that I see in her. I’m not perfect at following this inner commitment. Sometimes, I may still say something unkind or try to correct my wife, but I think I have reason to believe that over the years, I have become better at following by “inner commitment” to be a better husband by being kinder, biting my tongue, looking the other way, and just generally accepting my wife as she is. Many times, I am truly thinking of this “inner commitment” that I’ve made to myself to be a better husband to my wife when I am deciding how I am going to react (or not) when she says or does something like I dislike.
This inner commitment to be a better husband is linked in my heart and mind, for me personally, to my desire to be more Christlike. When my wife does or says something like I don’t like, and I choose, because of this inner commitment to follow Christ, to respond to my wife in a Christlike way, I feel like this is an outward expression of my inner commitment to follow Christ. Like I said, I don’t always succeed at this, but over time, I think I have improved, and in those times that I still do fail, it doesn’t seem like it means that I really don’t have this inner commitment to follow Christ/be a good husband at all.
I don’t think that Yoda was telling Luke that an inner commitment was not good or necessary. I think he was telling Luke to always act on his inner commitments. In other words, Yoda would have me consistently go to the gym and always be perfectly kind of loving to my wife. As a human, I fail at both of these inner commitments at times. Yoda is just telling me to lean in harder to these commitments.
For me, wearing garments is simply not an outward expression of an inner desire to follow Christ. What are outward expressions of following Christ to me? Being kind, weeping with those that weep, helping the poor, downtrodden, and marginalized, loving my enemies, turning the other cheek, etc. I don’t think Christ cares one bit whether I wear garments or not. I don’t even think Christ was involved in the garment idea in the first place (I think Joseph Smith got excited with masonry in Nauvoo and subsequent Church leaders made things worse). In the sense that Christ chastised many people, especially Church leaders, of His time against outward appearances of righteousnees, garment wearing even seems in some ways like an Anti-Christian expression to me (it doesn’t have to be that way for everyone–I can accept that other people find meaning in wearing them, but I do not).
In my mind, this is the “money quote” from Oaks’ recent GC talk. He basically gave his whole talk, just so he could say these words:
I’d like to make a comparison with Oaks’ words to the “No true Scotsman” fallacy here. As a reminder of what the “No true Scotsman” fallacy is, here is an example:
Person A: No Scotsman dislikes bagpipe music.
Person B: I have a neighbor down the road who hates bagpipe music.
Person A: No true Scotsman dislikes bagpipe music.
It’s a logical fallacy since the neighbor down the road is clearly a Scotman even though he dislikes bagpipe music.
Here’s how this can be applied to garments:
Church for many decades: Mormons wear garments because they are an outer expression of an inner commitment to follow Christ.
Many (younger) Church members: We’re Mormons. Tried garments, didn’t like them, so we stopped wearing them. Besides, loving my neighbor, visiting the sick and marginalized seem like better outward expressions of our inner commitment to follow Christ to us.
Dallin Oaks at last General Conference: No true Mormon/follower of Christ wouldn’t wear their garments.
Of course a person can follow Christ without wearing garments when one truly thinks about what an outward expression of an inner commitment to follow Christ really looks like. When viewed through the lens of the “No True Scotsman” logical fallacy it seems even more ridiculous to believe otherwise.
I rather like this premise, but I think the challenge that some are finding with it is that (*puts on math nerd hat*) the relationship is neither one-to-one, nor onto. I less mathy terms, we rarely do things for only one reason, and our reasons rarely drive us to do only one thing. (That’s the one-to-one part.) Also, sometimes an inner commitment may not have a reasonable actionable outward commitment. (It’s not onto.)
In Brian’s example, he kept doing the Mormon Church Things, even without an inner commitment to the truthfulness of the Church. But he kept doing the Things. Why? (I don’t know Brian, but I’m guessing that . . .) He kept doing these things for other reasons. Maybe it was family, or friendships, or fear of change, or just habit. None of those are inherently bad reasons for Brian to do stuff. And at some point he decided his inner commitments no longer drove him to keep doing the Things.
Jacob L (and a lot of other commenters over the last week) have pointed out that people have different reasons for wearing garments. And christiankimball pointed out that an unchanging inner commitment can manifest itself in different ways, and that even for an individual, those actions may not be the same over time. (Just finished your book, by the way, it was great.) At times we may be like Charles’ Muslim friend who felt internally committed but not externally acting perhaps because of negative externalities he anticipated in his life if he openly converted. (That’s me heaping an unfounded supposition on that story.) Trying to simplify things to “if you are committed to X, you will do Y” is rarely going to work. Similarly, “if someone is doing Y, they are doing it because they are committed to X” is often going to be inaccurate.
I’ll also add a vote for A Disciples point that it is weird to call wearing garments an outward expression of anything when the church has kept them super secret for so long. (They’re a bit less secret in recent years.)
To me, the biggest conflict in this area is that the church is attempting to both define the action AND the reason for doing it. It is very tricky to hand someone something, tell them it is symbolic, and then tell them what that symbol is supposed to mean to them. If a symbol is going to be deeply motivating, that connection to the symbol needs to be personal, and for me, at least, that doesn’t happen easily when the meaning is assigned by someone else.
Ooh, great discussion and good questions.
I might be misrepresenting the basic premise, but what I’m hearing is “If you really want something, you do it.”
Like others, I see it as WAY more complicated than that. I’m working on a Masters in Special Education and just finished a course looking at all the different theories of why kids behave the way they do. Lots of brain science, the latest understandings of trauma, mental health, neurodivergency, resilience, and cognitive load. So this lens obviously informs my viewpoint.
There are many, many reasons why an inner commitment doesn’t always translate to action. And it’s also true that it’s not a one-way thing either. Because neuroplasticity continues throughout our lives, our actions have the potential to change our brains ie. affect our inner commitment.
Brains are a massive calorie suck. Habits are a neurological shortcut to consume less calories. (Remember the concentration it took to learn how to drive? And the concentration isn’t needed now?) Our brains resist change because it takes more energy. It’s a lot easier to create a new habit if we do it in a way that minimizes the energy needed for the change.
Telling someone who simply does not have the mental and cognitive capacity, for a myriad of different reasons, that if they really wanted something they’d do it…. Sometimes, sure. But definitely not always, and I think it’s actually dangerous to believe that if it affects how we judge other people.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Nice discussion.
I should probably have separated two different lines of thinking in this post, possibly as two separate posts. First, one might assume the reality of inner commitments as somehow explaining some of the decisions we make, then talk about how institutions (including the Church) hijack those inner commitments by tying them (often spuriously) to their institutional objectives. That seems relevant to the garments discussion. That general point and its garments application deserve more discussion and I suspect many commenters would have agreed with me on that narrower point. Maybe I should have stopped there. But I didn’t. Oh well.
Second is my claim that, while we talk about “inner commitment” as if it explains things, it doesn’t really explain anything. This ties to the scientific and philosophical bias against appealing to unobservable and possibly non-existent entities to explain anything. Take these three claims.
You probably agree that Claim 3 doesn’t explain my decision to go to the gym. My point is that Claim 2 is a lot like Claim 3 in that an appeal to “inner commitment” doesn’t explain my decision any more than an appeal to Xera. Both Claim 2 and 3 appeal to unobservable and possibly non-existent entities that are not needed to explain the decision or act. I know you think your inner commitment explains why you decided to go to the gym. But there are people out there who have a strong feeling that Xera’s benevolence and care explains why they decided to go (or Apollo or Allah or Yahweh or the Holy Ghost, pick your own benevolent diety).
If that line of thinking offends your belief in your own inner commitments … whatever. It’s not that big a deal. I’ve read more than a few books by cognitive scientists who look in great detail at the brain processes that are involved in human decision-making. The underlying brain processes seem to have little to do with our own personal sense of why we do things. I have not come across any discussion of an inner commitment module or algorithm. That’s folk psychology. It is folk psychology that we find very appealing. It seems to help us understand and even motivate ourselves. It can also be (as noted in the OP) useful in persuading people to do things you want them to do. I just don’t find that appeals to “inner commitment” (or Xera) explain anything about our actual decisions, even if we sometimes think they do.
I am a bit confused on the “outward expression” angle on this garment-wearing discussion. In my neck of the woods, we have been wearing garments under our clothing. Have we been doing it wrong?
I’m not sure if this is what Dave B was getting at, but to me there are neither inner, nor outer commitments, only commitments or not commitments. That being said, it seems to me that commitments are some relative and nebulous combination of both intention and action. Both are necessary components of commitment, but how much of each is needed is hard to nail down. If I intend to have a beautiful green lawn this summer, but don’t do any of the work necessary to make that happen, then I clearly wasn’t committed to it. If I only water but don’t aerate and fertilize or water too little, or too much (which is more common), was I really committed to it? I really don’t know. I do know that if I do none of the tasks listed above but I still somehow end up with a green lawn, I wasn’t really committed to it. I just got lucky. And honestly, sometimes that happens. Sometimes you have a perfect combination of sun, shade and soil type and maybe over spray from your neighbors sprinkler system. You get lucky sometimes. Maybe you cheated and put in fake grass. But someone driving by might assume you had worked my butt off on your lawn all summer. Garments-wearers could be diligent gardeners, apathetic gardeners, or cheating gardeners. You never really know. I suppose wearing the garment could be a reminder of one’s inner or stated intention to follow Christ (I think it’s a stretch, but I’ll concede), but so could wearing a crucifix or looking for an image of Jesus in your toast every morning. Besides, isn’t that what taking the sacrament is for?
Ugh…Another post about garments. I think this is so overblown. Look at it this way… I’m a loving father and I just have two rules in my house. #1 Love your parents #2 Love your siblings and be kind to them.
But whenever I get a babysitter, I always make my kids swear a death oath that they will obey the babysitter, and I have them wear jumpsuits to remind them of that inner commitment. Do you guys not do that?
Sacrilegious Scotty: I laugh snorted
I have a similar rule to Scotty, except at my house the first rule it to love only me; my wife is too special to ask my kids to love her. (Okay, that was too close to home. Still, though, it needs to be said.)
I think the OP nailed it with this line, “Our life is filled with institutions that use the same algorithm to try and get us to do their will. Doing X will show your inner commitment to Y. Yes, I want to show my inner commitment to commendable goal Y, so I will do burdensome action X!”
Why can’t we just show our commitment to Y by doing Y? Like others have commented, I think the best outward expression of following Jesus, is just by outwardly following the things that Jesus taught (e.g. see the sermon on the mount).
Scotty: Very funny, and I get that you’re joking. But it would totally be your right to do that with your children if that’s what you choose. But can you imagine the following scenario?
Imagine you just had the two rules. But then you hire an overeager babysitter who really wants to make sure your children are well-behaved, so the babysitter makes your children swear a death oath of obedience and wear jumpsuits. And then the babysitter tells your kids that you’re going to be mad at them if they don’t wear the jumpsuits and follow a whole bunch of extra rules.
I’m sure that would be confusing and upsetting for the kids, especially if the babysitter convinces your kids that they speak for you. What I know, is that as a parent I would not care one bit if the kids wore the jumpsuit or not, even if in a moment of duress they had promised to wear it. I would just hope that the kids continued to be kind to each other, even with an overbearing babysitter trying to tell them they had to act in certain ways. I would love my kids who were just doing their best to be good and followed the babysitter’s instructions, and I would love my kids who lived true to themselves and told the babysitter “Actually we just have two rules in this house, so I’ll just follow those rules.” (Honestly, I’d love all my kids, no matter what they did.)
On the one hand, a wedding ring is also an outward manifestation of an inward commitment. Can people still break their wedding vows while wearing their ring? Yeah, happens all the time. Can two people also be in a committed relationship without rings at all? Yes, absolutely. But a ring does still signify what the current level of commitment is, at least aspirationally; and if someone is clearly not wearing their ring anymore, it’s safe for one to wonder how their marriage is doing.
(Note that I’m not at present equating temple garments with wedding rings; only observing that our society already has common examples of outward expressions of inner commitment.)
But on the other hand, I’m still sympathetic to the op’s thesis, because Frederich Nietzsche (an important influence on Jean-Paul Sartre) famously argued that a fundamental flaw in Western thought is that we write sentences like “Lightning flashes.” Lightning doesn’t flash, after all: lightning IS the flash. That is, we don’t DO actions, we ARE our actions. It is unintelligible to speak of ourselves as distinct from what we do. We are in fact indistinguishable.
Speaking of indistinguishable: What worries me more about the rhetoric of outward-manifestation-of-inward-commitment is that it’s identical to that of Evangelicals. They also explain baptism and even good works (since good works are irrelevant to salvation) as mere outward manifestations of an inward commitment. Without getting too much more into the weeds, I’ll just say that I served my mission among southern Evangelicals, and whether you identify as orthodox or progressive, I can assure you: Evangelicals are not our friends, and they are emphatically not who we should be ingratiating ourselves with, nor emulating.
“But a ring does still signify what the current level of commitment is, at least aspirationally; and if someone is clearly not wearing their ring anymore, it’s safe for one to wonder how their marriage is doing.” JB
But is it “safe” to complete that wonder? I don’t think so.
I think that it is “safe” to assume that there is at least reason (probably a deliberate one) why the individual in front of me is not wearing their ring period.- but attribute 1 specific reason as a default “unhappy marriage” as the motivation behind the choice shuts down other reasons.
Reasons for not wearing a ring may include an “unhappy marriage” (and that may even be a main reason for most non-ring-wearing individuals) and/or “current physical activity” and/or “current health (swollen fingers)” and/or “rings are missing and haven’t been replaced” and/or “rings pending re-size” and/or “ring worn around neck on necklace, not on finger” and/or “couple decided not to follow that tradition for reasons” and/or “reason undefined”.
I think I’m with mat and Jacob L. My reading was essentially we lose the ‘inner commitment’ part and reframe the issue as either commitment or no commitment. Are you committed to Christ or are you not? This may seem too binary in our nuanced world but of course the next question is: What, then, does commitment to Christ look like? And then the fun starts.
I suppose most will agree that commitment to weight loss will require some form of action that is proven to bring about weight loss. I think most Christians will agree that commitment to Christ will mean some form of Christlike life, full of Christlike acts. I think most will also agree that wearing the garment is not in and of itself a Christlike act – unless Jesus himself had to suffer through those long Galilean summers wearing them. But on the other hand they can of course have the potential to help people be more focused on living a Christlike life. I guess the OP was also saying: ‘but no one can make that connection other than you.’
As a final thought, the whole discussion around the relationship between outward symbols/actions and inner reality is really a fascinating one. As both Paul and Nietzsche have been mentioned, I just want to give a shout out to Philo. Philo was the great allegorizer of the Jewish religion and the Jewish scriptures. He found a deeper symbolic meaning to everything, a lot of the time based around Platonic ideas of mind/body, intelligence/passions, etc, etc. But despite his explication of what he saw as the ‘true’ meaning of things, at no point did he advocate casting off the outer symbols and performances once someone had become enlightened. That would have made no sense to him, nor to most of his co-religionists then or since. The act and the meaning were inseparable and part of the whole deal. So I think he was close to Nietzsche in his own way, that Jews don’t perform the law as an outward expression of an inner commitment, rather that they should embody the law, and the law is God-given. The embodiment is key. Paul, of course, with similar materials and thinking, chose another path. Once he had understood what he believed to be the true meaning of things, he wanted to cast off the outward symbols and performances as redundant, especially circumcision. He was overall quite ambivalent toward the practices of Jewish converts, but vehemently opposed to Gentile converts taking up redundant practices. And certain circumstances really brought him out swinging, such as in Galatians.
None of this is really a comment on whether you should or shouldn’t wear garments. More an appreciation that this sort of debate has been going on for millennia!
JB – “and if someone is clearly not wearing their ring anymore, it’s safe for one to wonder how their marriage is doing.”
So, by extension, this logic also means if someone IS wearing their ring, it’s safe for one to assume that they have a great marriage. It seems quite reasonable then that the symbol is not so much about the inner commitment, but more to appear committed. And the symbol really becomes a tool of judgement for onlookers, allowing them to draw conclusions about the health of someone’s marriage based on their wedding ring. That seems really risky. I know you made it clear that you don’t intend to equate wedding rings with garments, but that is kind of what the Church is doing. I don’t have any issues with these symbols, I actually find them useful and personally meaningful, I just think it’s quite possible and maybe even inevitable that the symbol of the garment, as the Church is now prescribing, turns into another way to hide from the vulnerabilities of life, to add to the stress of persistent image management where it’s more important to appear good than to be good. Like the wedding ring, the garment runs the risk of being a good Mormon, while hiding the struggle to be a disciple of Christ. I think we need more learning and understanding about how we can share our weakness together, rather than find more ways to silently communicate that all is well. We need deeper community connection, which is detrimentally affected by providing ways to show up as half a human.
Simon C – Wow, I loved your comment above. I think, for me, one of the biggest issues with the wearing of the garment, as prescribed by the church is its tie to “worthiness” (probably the word I hate most in our lingo). Tying it to worthiness suggests that the wearing of the garment, as you stated above, is a Christlike act itself, which erodes the value of the symbol.
Thanks for the comments and continuing discussion, everyone.
For me, the interesting contrast that has emerged here is between outwardly visible markers like wedding rings or a priest’s collar, which let everyone know something about the one who wears it, and partially hidden (like LDS garments) or completely hidden markers. These two things serve entirely different purposes. Fully visible markers identify the wearer for everyone who sees them. Largely hidden markers (like LDS garments) can’t do that.
Which makes the analogy LDS speakers are suddenly eager to make between religious clothing in various religions and LDS garments largely misdirected. It shows the leadership hasn’t really thought about what garment-wearing does or means. It is different rather than similar to the way other religions use religious clothing.
The LDS case is so interesting because it straddles the line. Other LDS who know about garments can, if they look carefully, see whether another Saint is wearing or not, so it is a visible sign or marker to other Mormons. But not to the general public, who aren’t trained to pick up the reveals that you or I are aware of. This also makes the statements made from time to time telling LDS *not* to inspect and judge other Mormons about whether they are wearing or not rather questionable. Everyone does it. It’s part of being LDS. Leadership just doesn’t want to acknowledge (1) that everyone does it (too culty) and (2) that the peer pressure and shaming that accompanies the check-out-your-neighbor garment system is not a flaw, it’s the primary purpose of the system.
Dave B. ,
I think you have a point. I remember when my husband and I moved into a new area with few members and hadn’t been to church yet, we went to Jack in the Box and I saw a family with three children that looked LDS. I walked over behind them just to see if I could see garment lines, which I did. I was excited to identify members of the community we were joining.
I think garment lines identify us to each other, whereas people outside the community can’t quite put their finger on this difference. It was a way Mormonism, as a small minority that felt excluded and oppressed, identified other members without drawing attention to themselves to the outer community. However, that particular utility has passed.
I am just going to add one perspective as a longtime lurker. The value of the symbol as embodying a deeper commitment or value is going to vary by individual. In someways I find symbols and their importance to people fascinating, mostly because on a personal level I find them completely baffling. It seems to be a nearly universal human trait, to transfer meaning and emotion of one thing onto a completely unrelated object, and for some reason I just do not get it. I suppose because our brains our wired for words, which ultimately are symbolic representation of ideas, we are also wired to see physical symbols in the same way. My brain is simply not wired that way, so I find it all so interesting that so many people do. I think, just as verbal languages are learned, physical symbols are learned, and as society changes the symbols that have power to change and affect people will change as well. As I have gotten older I have learned to respect the power of symbolism to change people’s behavior, actions, emotions and beliefs. I believe there is real power there, but that power will vary by individual. As for wedding rings, when I was dating my husband I made it very clear, that I did not want a diamond ring. Instead, we put that saved money on a down payment on a house, which was a great decision for us. We did get simple wedding bands, but he quickly lost his, and my hands became swollen when I got pregnant so I stopped wearing mine. We are many years happily married, much happier than many people I know who dutifully wear their rings, and neither of us have worn rings through most of our marriage. Neither of us conflate the health of our marriage with the wearing of our rings, and I forget that some people actually do that. Personally I find that weird, but I can imagine if you do, removing the ring would be a powerful statement on the status of your marriage. But, the wearing of a wedding ring only shows that you want people to think a commitment of some sort is there, it does not say anything about the actual health of the marriage. Although it may confuse outsiders, our marriage is happy, and I don’t need to a ring to remind myself of that, and I don’t care enough about what others think to put on a physical symbol that is uncomfortable to advertise that fact. Anyone who sees us interact, can hopefully tell that we love each other. I think garments are much the same way, they are powerful symbol for many, but I suspect there is a growing segment of the population who simply can’t wrap their mind around seeing their garments as a symbol of their commitment to God. I am not sure if you can force the power of such an intimate symbol on someone , and make it change them for the better.
The offering of a broken heart and a contrite spirit is all about inner change–or so it seems to me. Maybe that’s different from inner commitment–but a commitment of sorts typically arises from that offering nonetheless. The same sort of thing happens when we take the sacrament. When we participate in the outward ordinance of receiving the bread and water we are demonstrating our *willingness* to follow the Savior. And that willingness has something to do with the preparation of our hearts and minds. And the same sort of thing happens when we receive our initiatory ordinances. It’s all about cleansing and anointing our inner vessel and then clothing it in the veils of the upper world–the garment signifying our being “hid in Christ with God.”