Are you a Zealot or a Gamer? You’ve had this conversation before: Iron Rod versus Liahona, Conservative versus Liberal Mormon, and so forth. But I have a different angle to pursue. This started while reflecting on a post a few weeks ago, and I apologize that I can’t remember which post or which comment spurred my thinking. I ended up with the idea that the millions of people who engage directly with LDS Church do so with one of two rather different mindsets: some with the firm conviction that their choices, actions, and even words will determine their eternal future and likely their present-day happiness as well (the Zealots). Then there are those who either think their eternal reward or lack thereof turns on aspects of life not related to Mormon rules and precepts, or who doubt the reality of any kind of afterlife that will grant some eternal reward or punishment. These folks, as explained below, I’ll call Gamers.
Zealots take seriously the burden of following Mormon commandments, rules, and precepts. They do so with the conviction that such an approach to life wins God’s favor and blessings, as well as gaining the approval of one’s local leaders and various LDS family members and friends. There is a personal payoff as well, having a clear conscience and going to sleep at night knowing you did what (in your understanding) you were supposed to do. The quiet pride in a job well done, if you will. At the personal level, it’s the same sense of satisfaction you get by 100% following that post-holiday diet for a day or a week or from completing that challenging household project you’ve been putting off.
But there’s a twist. Zealotry focuses on the implicit evaluation a person has of the various requirements or suggestions that comprise the Mormon Way of Life. It doesn’t mean you are a 100% achiever. There are some Mormons who take a cup of coffee now and then, who only manage 4% tithing or none at all, and who regularly turn down callings. They are still Zealots because they do still firmly believe that all of this Mormon stuff really does, in the end, affect one’s eternal reward. Call them Lazy Zealots, if you want. Maybe they are secretly hoping that, despite being a Lazy Zealot, God will dish out an extra dose of mercy and forgiveness at the Last Judgment. Maybe they plan to clean up their Mormon act someday, just not this week. So being a Zealot here is not about how obedient one is (in Mormonspeak), it’s about what one believes in the cosmic religious sense.
Now if you do engage directly with the LDS Church, but you think the hereafter is rather different from the Mormon schema and that one’s place in the hereafter does not depend on how compliant you are with Mormon rules, then what are you? I think you are a Gamer. That is, you are engaging with the whole Mormon system not in the mindset the system wants you to have, internalizing it as a Real Thing, but essentially as a game. You are playing this game not because you hope that you (or you and your family) will one day sit on shiny thrones in the Celestial Kingdom, but because … well, why? If you are not playing the Mormon Game to win on its own terms (salvation, exaltation, and all that) then what exactly is your goal or purpose in playing the Mormon Game? How energetically do you play? Who benefits, and how? These are deeper questions than might first appear. Essentially, this is reflection on how you live your life, how you *choose* to live your life, and why.
I’m going to skip a discussion of economic behavioral games like the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the kind of board games and online games you are more familiar with (possibly obsessed with) and just jump right to a discussion of how the gaming metaphor maybe helps us understand why some continue to engage with the LDS Church even while rejecting the Zealot mindset. There are different kinds of Gamers.
Family Gamer. You continue to engage with the Church because it keeps the spouse, the parents, and the rest of the Mormon family happy. Maybe it’s the path of least resistance. Hey, keeping those around you happy is not a bad choice most of the time. There are worse things than sitting through a dull two hours once a week (God bless smart phones).
Stubborn Gamer. Having been a Zealot for half your life, you don’t want to give the critics in your life who have teased you about the Church for years the satisfaction of seeing you exit. Or you identify strongly with Mormons as your tribe and, Zealot or not, you’ll die on this hill just because it’s *your* hill, not because of a celestial reward. You play the Mormon Game while, in your understanding, knowing you can’t win that game on its own terms (salvation, exaltation, eternal family and a few extra wives, etc.). Nothing wrong with having a tribe and sticking with it.
Christian Gamer. You don’t buy all the Mormon stuff anymore, but you’re okay with God (the Christian God) and the Bible. You figure being a good Mormon checks all the Christian boxes anyway (although most Zealot Christians would not agree with that) so you figure being a good Mormon will still get you Christian salvation, whatever that turns out to be. And being a Christian Gamer within the LDS Church avoids the tough decision of actually choosing a different Christian denomination or megachurch to engage with. How a Mormon picks a new Christian church to attend or formally join — that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.
Rational Gamer. Apart from the above approaches, there are still rational reasons one just sticks with the program, the Mormon Game, even if one is no longer a Zealot (no longer truly believing a throne awaits in the Celestial Kingdom if you do all the required Mormon stuff). Mormons can be good friends and you like your Mormon friends. It’s nice when five guys show up to help you move a piano. Your kids have good Mormon friends. Who wouldn’t rather have their teenage daughter go to the Mormon party after the football game on Friday night (featuring cupcakes and a movie) rather than hang out with a different crowd at some kid’s place with the parents out of town that week? Maybe you like teaching Sunday School or Primary. If you’re not a Zealot, deciding to continue associating with the Church and paying some tithing can be a lot like deciding to continue your gym membership and paying monthly dues or any other club/job/relationship you stick with.
A few final observations. First, there are a lot more Gamers than you think. I’m guessing maybe a third of active Mormons, those who go to church most of the time, don’t really think there were Nephites swarming across the continent two thousand years ago with a few of them etching characters on metal plates; don’t think God cares in the least about who drinks coffee; and don’t think God sends people to the Good Place or the Bad Place depending on whether some Mormon took their name through the temple on their behalf. I think some people are Latent Gamers — they go through the motions of Mormon activity out of habit without ever really confronting themselves with tough questions. I think some suddenly discover their Gamer status only when a significant life event, a shock, awakens them: a child moves in an LGBTQ direction, a divorce happens, a near-death encounter causes deep reflection, and so forth.
Second, I’m a bit unsure how all this relates to Cafeteria Mormonism. Sure, if you become a full-blown Gamer, you may very well reject a few Mormon rules and habits. But so do plenty of Zealot Mormons. The cafeteria approach operates on a different axis than Zealot-Gamer. I think a newly minted Gamer is likely to consciously go through a cafeteria phase (Wow, you mean I get to choose?) whereas a continuing Zealot generates rather different reasons or excuses to make similar choices and rejections. At some level, all Mormons are Cafeteria Mormons.
Third, and I’ll wind up with this observation: If treating one’s continuing engagement with Mormonism or the LDS Church as a game strikes you as flippant or dismissive, consider how many parts of your life are likewise an awful lot like a game. Your career? Work hard, please your supervisor, stay late on a project, you might get a raise or promotion. Support your favorite local nonprofit with contributions and helping out when you can, they put you on their Gold Team or send you a certificate of appreciation, duly noted in the monthly newsletter. Or that old saying, he who dies with the most toys wins. If life’s not about accumulating possessions and toys, what’s your suggested alternative? The positive payoff here is to say: If this is a game, why am I playing? What is my life goal in playing, apart from the in-game goal of winning the game as defined within the game? You may discover that while doing what you are doing, you are not in fact doing what you thought you were doing.
If that last point seems a little abstract, reflect on how you probably play a board game with a small child, a kid or grandkid. You are helping them learn the rules while you play. You probably play the Death Card on another adult, not on the eight-year-old. You don’t feel bad when Junior plays a Treasure Card and takes all your money, in fact you enjoy the thrill he gets from it. When you play with your adult siblings, you might be hyper-competitive. When you play with young kids, you might be completely different, just playing along but not trying to win or even trying hard *not* to win. Zealots and Gamers are playing the same Mormon Game, but in a sense they are playing different games.
Okay, ‘nuf said. I expect you have a lot to say about this. I’m not even going to make a list of prompts. Feel free to mention your favorite board game that you probably just played over the holidays. I’ve moved on from Dominion to Splendor, the game where at the end everyone feels they were just one turn away from winning themselves.
Wheat & Tares 
I’m having a really hard time categorizing myself as either a Zealot or a Gamer, although I’m definitely a cafeteria Mormon (both as to beliefs and as to practices). I love a good game of Dominion but my current favorites are Wingspan and Ark Nova.
Interesting thought experiment. I am not sure how much I agree.
I am thinking of all the women who have ever been willing to be completely honest with, first themselves, and second others, who flat out think “Mormon Heaven” is really hell for women. I haven’t ever even found one who thinks the CK as described by our dear leadership will be something they want. If you ask any random woman, they may say it sounds great, but then dig deeper and they are really thinking they will be a god creating a world in total partnership with a totally equal husband. Get then to actually *listen* to the endowment and the differences and oh, opps, they have been listening to what is promised to men and never really noticed that it is not the same. They describe things like their husband “standing proxy” for God. Um, nope. Your husband gets promoted to God, and THEN he brings all of his wives through the veil. But the women are never made gods. The women do not inherit “all that God has”. They are just married to a guy who does. It is like we are back in the 1800s when women could not inherit, could not own land in their own name, could not have money in their own name unless they were officially a spinster or widow. The temple shows spiritual coverture of the wife. And since no woman gets into the CK without a husband taking her through the veil, there will be no spinsters who have anything in their name. Most women don’t even know what coverture is. They have never considered themselves the property of their husband. They don’t realize that in the temple ceremony when they “give” themselves to their husband that it is quite literal. They become property of the man and give up their own identity completely. Why do they think the old system had her take her husband’s name and become Mrs. John Smith, and do not even have a legal identity separate from their husband. They are nothing but John Smith’s wife. The church even used to officially use “Sister John Smith” as her church identity. Still women’s tithing is not recorded separately from her husband. I have worded this as we women are not daughters of God at all. We are his daughters in law. THAT is Mormon heaven for women. To disappear behind their husband. Even without polygamy. Women are nothing but wives belonging to God’s sons and the men inherit but we women are not able to inherit. On the feminist blogs they complain about how we know nothing about our Mother in Heaven. Of course most of the women who talk about it use capitals but we are NOT supposed to even capitalize that as if it were a title. And Oaks just reminded us all that we don’t even know if there is one mother or if God has a gazillion wives because women are too unimportant to even wonder if God has a gazillion wives or only one.
So, what I am saying is that 90% of women don’t even understand the game enough to know if they are playing the game or not. The real game is never explained to women because any self respecting woman would walk out if she really understood that she is really a celestial breeding cow. With no more importance than a cow.
This actually brings to mind another one of your past posts that I’ve referred to once or twice before (On Becoming a Pragmatic Mormon) where you wrote, describing a Fully Invested Mormon, “A FIM has internalized LDS institutional goals and priorities as their own goals and priorities.” As I was thinking about my more defined conversion points and moments of revelation over the years, I was more inclined to say “A FIM has realized most LDS institutional goals and priorities line up with their own newfound goals and priorities.”
To me, so much of LDS theology, when you throw reason and the Spirit together, feels like a whole other world has opened up, to the point that I initially feel I’m gaming life in general. My thirst for knowledge has grown, the way I see others shows increased love, and whatever desire I had to grow and improve, and improve the world around me feels greatly augmented. It’s as if the game has given new life, and you sometimes have to watch somewhat helplessly as others struggle with the rules or have no realization the game is going on in the first place. And yet we send thousands out to invite them to the game. As time goes on, you slowly realize the game is really what life is supposed to be all about, and others are are attempting a pale version in comparison.
But to use the analogy as you do, I do think zealots understimate the number of gamers out there, but I still tend to think the bloggernacle overestimates the amount of gamers there are too. Gamers often stay quiet so as not to rock the boat or offend. I’ve noticed an increasing number of zealots who do the same for the same reasons. Not sure if that changes their zealot status somewhat or not.
“So, what I am saying is that 90% of women don’t even understand the game enough to know if they are playing the game or not.”
I know as a white, male, Xennial, priesthood bearer my opinion is virtually meaningless here in this regard, but I can’t help but feel this is a lower opinion of women than anything I’ve been taught, or have come to believe on my own.
Eli, no, your thinking this reflects poorly on women is proof only of the fact that you blame the victim. Saying the church treats women like crap should make you question your church, but like an idiot male, blame the victim. In everything you read, you only saw, “women must be stupid!” My god. Reread that and see what my opinion of the scumbag church is. It should state a lower opinion of the church for outright deceiving women by covering up, disguising, and just never saying it as it is. I was probably about 65 when I read something that carefully analyzed the endowment. Women are plenty smart, but they tend to be trusting. Now, to most that is something very good about women. Being trusting is more virtue than vice. The real vice is in those who take advantage of that trusting nature. And those happen to be mostly male, or in the service of men.
I have a sweet daughter that has repeatedly gotten into relationships with men who abuse her. Who is at fault? My daughter sees the best in people. Always she is looking for their good qualities. Only later when they start shoving their cruelty in her face does she see that she was wrong and she dumps them. So, who do you have a low opinion of. My daughter, or the men who have hit her or called her names?
This is between the loving trusting nature of women and lying men who run a dishonest church. I think it is the church that is a lying, cheating scoundrel.
The game is rigged against women and that is not the women’s fault. The women have just never had things pointed out, and because they trust the men they love they don’t see that those men see them as less, or they just refuse to believe that the men they love wouldn’t protect them from a lying, cheating scoundrel of a church.
After I read that careful analysis of the endowment, I asked my husband, and yes, he had seen bits of it. But he had not thought it through from a woman’s perspective. He saw women as different from men, so of course they don’t mind being treated as different. And then he actually thought it through. But see at 19 when I got my own endowment, there was a lot that felt wrong. Very wrong. I felt like I had been sold down river. But when I tried to ask questions, I was assured and told to trust. When I pushed and insisted on answers, I was told we can’t talk about it outside the temple. So, my trusting husband who understood the questions enough to wonder, but really didn’t have answers made an apointmentwithatemplepresidentso I COULD ask my questions. After stumbling around, the temple president got huffy because he obviously didn’t have half descent answers either. When I just kept pointing out how his answers amounted to “God doesn’t love women as much as He loves men,” the temple president told me my attitude would take me straight to hell.
So, like a good Mormon girl, I stuffed it deep inside. But I kept watching and never trusted a man to give me an honest answer.
The endowment ceremony is given for men, and women have to read themselves in between the lines. This is never explained. You have to carefully watch for differences. You have to research how things used to be worded. You have to research Brigham Young’s attitude toward women and keep in mind that he wrote down the first version of the endowment. You have to find out what is in the second anointing and then read between what is said for how it applies to women. Then it falls into place that the Mormon church respects women about as much as it respects cows. But it needs calves and there is only one way to get calves.
“proof only of the fact that you blame the victim.”
This gets so overused so as to render meaningful conversation inert, but I’m sure even this statement further bolsters the claim in your mind.
I will not discount your experience Anna. It’s real. I cannot, however, discount the experiences of the women closest to me. Their experiences are real too. Either I believe the women closest to me who very clearly seemed to have shared the deepest parts of their soul, or they are gaming me and the church far, far, more than than I either you or I give them credit.
I guess that remains to be seen, but I find either option more believable than the idea that 90% of women don’t even understand the game enough to know if they are playing the game or not.
Eli, just because an argument is common does not mean it is invalid or over used. It may just prove to be a common problem humans suffer from. And after 5 years of studying psychology, I would say that blaming the victim as a way of not having to do anything to help is a very common problem. So, yes, you are victim blaming. It is just poor logic to claim an argument is invalid because it is common. Do I need to accuse you of faulty logic as well as victim blaming?
Second, this is not about my experience at all. It is also not about your loved ones or my feelings. You are dodging what I am even saying. And maybe too much of it is stuff we are forbidden to talk about because it has to do with the temple. It is about what the endowment really means and I do not think many Mormons dig deep enough into church history or listen closely enough to what it say about men but not about women to really realize that they never do explain what any of it means for women. So, it is about understanding church history and stuff the church has forbidden us to talk about, like the second anointing. And I still think I am correct that most Mormons do not dig that deeply into what our deeper doctrine is. In church they keep claiming that men and women are equal and that isn’t about feelings either. Facts say that women are not equal.
I see over and over even on the feminist blogs about how the woman’s husband “stands proxy for God” or how women should know their husband’s new name. This is just one example of how women misunderstand what goes on in the endowment. They hear what is said out loud in the endowment and assume it applies to them, when it only applies to the men. But what does apply to the women never gets explained. So, the women assume they are included. That is not their fault.
But last I am going to say on the subject.
I’ll try to categorize myself. I was a zealot as a teenager (although a relatively mellow zealot, as I didn’t genreally try to impose my values/beliefs on others) who transitioned to a gamer post-mission, before graduating from BYU. In fact, certain aspects of BYU’s environment—particular devotionals, bishops/stake presidents, religion classes, and rules—that BYU hopes will solidify young adults as zealots only served to accelerate my transition to gamer faster than might have occurred otherwise.
I’m now a strong “family gamer.” My wife is a committed, believing member, and while I think she’d eventually accept a new norm if I completely stepped away, she wouldn’t like it, and the transitional period could be long and painful for both of us.
I have active adult children as well. They aren’t yet married, so staying a family gamer to attend temple ceremonies remains a factor—but as soon as they’re married, that motivation vanishes. A stronger motivation is simply not causing them undue stress or confusion. I helped raise them in the Church, taught them about the controversial issues and problems, and patterned a way to remain despite those issues. I did this genuinely—I felt more strongly that the Church was good for me then than I do now—and I’m not sure I want to unsettle their young adult faith by publicly leaving.
I’m not a “stubborn gamer.” I truly don’t care what others think, aside from close family members.
At one point, I fit well as a “Christian gamer”—embracing the New Testament Christ while rejecting most Mormon modifications to core Christianity. I still resonate strongly with Christ’s teachings, so perhaps that label still applies, though I now seriously question whether any of the supernatural elements attributed to Him are real, including the atonement and resurrection (though I do retain a belief in life after death).
I’ve been a “rational gamer” at times and still am to a lesser degree. I was mostly glad the Church encouraged my kids not to drink, do drugs, have teenage sex, get tattoos, or date before 16—and glad it provided wholesome activities and taught good values. There’s plenty I wish the Church hadn’t done to them, but I appreciated these things. Many members in my area are genuinely good people and pleasant to be around.
The “family gamer” motivation is so strong that it’s not useful for me to weigh stepping away versus continuing based on “Christian gamer” or “rational gamer” considerations. Without the family constraints, I’m fairly certain I’d just step away. I doubt any religious organization fits a hopeful agnostic with humanistic ethics (and my limited exposure to unitarians makes me think that’s not a good fit, either), so I’d probably stop participating in organized religion altogether and remove myself from the gamer/zealot framework entirely.
I really like your relating being a zealot/gamer to other aspects of life. Some people see jobs as a means to an end (gamers), while others feel called to their work (zealots). Even among people who don’t feel called, it seems like there are varying levels of how much employees of a company will buy into the ideas and general culture that the top brass at the company might be trying to push.
In the context of the Church, your framing kind of makes me wonder if I was kind of a latent gamer (great term!) from a young age. I feel like even as a kid, it seemed obvious to me that the things I was learning in church were less serious or true (really? the belly of a whale? for three days?) than the things I was learning in school, even when it was largely with the same peer group (I grew up mostly in Utah Valley).
FWIW, I can’t say the zealots characterization is all that useful. It says, in part, that zealots “do so with the conviction that such an approach to life wins God’s favor and blessings, as well as gaining the approval of one’s local leaders and various LDS family members and friends.” Are there people like that? Of course. There are others that “take seriously the burden of following Mormon commandments, rules, and precepts” not for the performative aspect, but because they sincerely believe that doing so helps them “become” (to borrow President Oaks’ parlance). That is, they believe or at least hope that taking the burden seriously will help them to grow personally. This zealot/gamer characterization does not seem to account for that. From just outward acts of following commandments, it would be hard to tell – but just assuming all are doing it for the sake of performance (or, as said in the post, to win God’s favor) is quite the cynical view and, I think, not accurate. Some people really do believe that following the commandments is not to “win” favor with God, but rather to grow in ways they believe doing so will support.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Anna, it’s hard for me to discuss the female or feminist perspective. Thanks for the discourse. I wonder whether your comment on the temple experience, where women tend to take all the instruction and empowerment directed to men and apply it more or less to themselves, also applies to the Book of Mormon. Which is full of men but almost no women.
mountainclimber, that’s a fairly detailed application of my half-baked ideas to your personal experience. I’ll bet a lot of people could do a similar exercise. I’m still struck by the contrast between the board games we are familiar with, that have explicit victory conditions spelled out, and the various “life games” referred to in the OP and in the comments. Maybe life is more like that state fair ride where 50 or 60 people climb into the middle of a big stationary circular disk, then it starts spinning. One by one, people slide off from the center to the edge and off the disk. Some games are just about staying on the disk and not get ejected. There are lots of people who, in various aspects of their life, are just trying to hang on.
Ziff, apart from the company scenario, I also thought of the military, but didn’t put it in the OP. Think of the average WW2 or Vietnam movie or novel, or even MASH (for younger readers, that was a popular comedy TV show about Army doctors set in Korea but plainly about the Vietnam experience). There were some hero/patriots who would do their duty and willingly die for their country, and may we all praise them. But there was a large contingent of the soldiery whose goal was simply to avoid getting shot or bombed, and on a day to day basis were concerned with securing goodies (cigarettes, alcohol, candy) and avoiding the various tasks assigned to this or that soldier or airman. That’s zealots and gamers.