When Mormon's Sin

Not too long ago I listened to this podcast which is a recording of a presentation by Dr. David Christian, a licensed clinical psychologist practicing in Utah, and thus pretty well versed in treating Mormons. Incidentally, he is also no longer an active, practicing Mormon. In this podcast, at least, he criticizes the church on the way it tends to deal with those who sin - basically all of us.

One of the arguments he makes I want to take on directly. He feels the church behaves in absolutist all or nothing teaching that gets some of its members into trouble. He refers to it as a virgin thinking, where committing a sin once is just as bad as doing it over and over again. You are no longer a virgin when you slip up and have sex with one person, so what's the difference if you have sex with nine more. Obviously there's a big difference between messing up one time and becoming entrenched in bad behavior, and it is unfair to claim that anyone in the church believes the two are equivalent. But I can see why, given the way that these messages are sometimes taught, someone may get caught up in this kind of thinking. Once you sin once, when the stakes are high, you feel terrible and ashamed, your feelings of self worth plummet and it's much easier to just to do it again and again, and perhaps fall into addiction.

And I'm sure this is a more of a problem for those within the church. He backs up his claims with plenty of statistics.

He uses an interesting analogy to illustrate the problem with this. When you apply vertical pressure on a credit card it bends pretty far one way, and the more pressure you apply the farther the card bends. Let's say bending the card one way is analogous to being righteous and sinful if bent the other. So, if at first your pressure forces the card over to the good side, things are great. But if something happens and the card is pushed against the vertical pressure toward the other side, not only are you switching from the good toward the bad, you are moving much further to the other side and it's much harder to move the card back. It's very hard, living under this kind of pressure, to mess up one time, someone who falters, tends to falter pretty dramatically.

Here are some of the statistics he sites. Once a Mormon partakes in alcohol, they are far more likely to become alcoholic than a non-Mormon. Utah has the highest rates of on-line pornography use in the country. I think it was Italians he said who have among the highest percentage of people who drink alcohol, but also have much lower rates of abuse.

All of this makes sense as far as it goes. If you engage in absolutist thinking, you increase the pressure, and if a slip is made, it has a far more significant consequence on your emotional state.

I can't disagree with this.

But is this the church's fault? I think where most critics of the Mormon church stumble is they fail to fundamentally understand what the church is all about. Admittedly, this is my understanding of the church they are misunderstanding, and my perspective is also flawed, but let me explain why I disagree with Dr. Christian. Let me also try to point out how I'm trying to raise my children as Mormons in a culture that gives them every opportunity for someone to commit sin.

I think the biggest difference between the Mormon church and many of the other churches out there is that we expect much more out of our members. I think this goes without saying, but let me dig deeper because it's fundamental to what our church is all about.

I think, in some ways, the Mormon church is a little bit like Google in the technology industry. The church has no paid clergy. Instead, we are all clergy. Every single position in the church is not only important, but vital. When someone joins our church, they are not only becoming a member, but essentially, they are its clergy as well.

I love the scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants that brings this point home:

D&C 18: 14-16

14 Wherefore, you are called to cry repentance unto this people.

15 And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!

Not only is every soul precious, but every position in the church is important. My two year old is attending nursery every week during church and is being cared for by under-appreciated nursery workers who are introducing her to gospel principles. My older kids are listening to the testimonies of primary teachers helping them to develop the foundation for their faith in God. I know we as parents are important to their success, but so is the broader community they participate in and the church is there to help them with that. Their souls are important to us. I am thankful for those people who believe the same thing. And they show this by their sacrifice. They willingly volunteer their time to help our children grow in their faith.

I compare my church to Google because Google hires engineers who are committed to the industry and each employee is expected to produce at a high level at every level. The company strives to have a bottom up development approach. Every person matters and is important and has a voice. The company innovates because each of its employee's are allowed to innovate.

In the same way, all members of the Mormon church are asked to contribute at every level in the effort of bringing souls to Christ. The church is trying to do something difficult and members of this church are being asked to engage in that effort. The biggest difference between our church and Google, is that Google tries very hard to hire only highly qualified people by making it very hard to pass their interviews. The church's by contrast simply says that if you have a desire to serve God you are called to the work. If more companies hired based on desire, our unemployment rates would shrink and our recession would disappear, sigh.

But as members of the church, we are definitely called to work and to sacrifice. So, yes, there can be pretty intense vertical pressure and yes, it can cause problems.

But there is another way.

In a television interview some years ago, the then prophet and president of the church President Gordon Hinckley was asked about this. He was asked about how he avoids sin, and was it difficult. He said matter of factly that it's not difficult for him at all because he simply does not spend much time thinking about sin. He found a way to remove the vertical pressure on the credit card completely. He learned to change the game. Rather than applying pressure on himself to avoid sin, he spent his life anxiously engaged in improving the world around him. His focus wasn't on sin, his focus was on being engaged in goodness.

I think this shift is vital, especially in a world where it's increasingly easy to get hooked into alcohol, drugs, pornography, and other kinds of addictions. This is the approach I want for my childen. Let them find ways to engage in flow enhancing activities. The world has really opened up in this way. We live in a world filled with teachers, really we all should be teachers. It's becoming easier and easier to learn just about anything if we have the dedication and patience to do so. Learn a language, find a league in almost any kind of sport, or learn a musical instrument.

As my children reach high school, I hope they can find a passion that consumes a lot of their energy. I don't much care what it is, just something that gives them plenty of opportunities to experience flow, activities that are challenging and fulfilling, activities that will help them develop an expertise in something, something that brings them joy. If they can leverage this passion to benefit the community in some way? So be it, you don't have to be old to change the world.

And sure, they will be young, and their bodies will one day be surging with hormones, and temptations will be all around them and mistakes will be made. I hope as a parent I can be loving, understanding, open and forgiving. I hope they will be able to feel that deeply. I hope that no matter what happens they realize in a deep way they are valuable and valued and have an almost unlimited potential to do whatever they set their minds to do.

I think in all of those ways, the vertical pressure of the credit card is released. Instead of being worried about moving this way or that way across an imaginary line separating sin from righteousness, the entire card is shifted, their entire perspective about who they are and what they can achieve changes. This is probably a lifetime endeavor, but as Christians, this is what we are trying to do. We are trying to raise the bar. We are trying to be like Jesus and that is a high standard.

Well, I don't know, but some people think so, but only with a mighty struggle.

The problem, here, can go both ways. You have mainstream, traditional Mormon's who have conflated Mormon theology with the conservative wing (is there any other wing these days?) of the Republican party. When conservative views get sprinkled into church talks over the pulpit or gets used in Sunday lessons, this can make those with different political views uncomfortable. Because Mormon's tend to be almost uniformly conservative, this kind of thing can happen with some regularity. But obviously, it can go the other way. I tend to live in a more liberal than average part of the US and sometimes we get someone saying something more squishibly liberal over the pulpit.

Much of this is unavoidable. We are all human beings and it's hard to draw a hard line between our religious, political and all of our other points of view. These thoughts will blend together and sometimes inappropriate things will be said. Part of being a member of the Mormon church is recognizing this. We have no professional clergy - we are the clergy, and we need to be hyper-willing to look past other people's mistakes and flaws.

But the church is not a political party and religious faith and political beliefs are not the same thing. They both are important. We are members of our community and duty bound to make a contribution, to be informed when we vote, and to help solve the problems we face. We are also spiritual beings who are striving to be guided through a very difficult and uncertain world in hope of a better one. In Ether 12:4 it says:


"Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God."


This is the purpose of faith and religion. Look at the words used: "believeth, hope, faith". These words, in part, point toward something more emotional then mental, a connection to something big, too big to express succinctly, we just don't have the vocabulary to describe our faith. The closest we can get is through abstractions using poetry or music to brush up at it.

But politics and science and economics are all different. We are put on this earth to develop ourselves and to grow. Part of our growing is to try to make sense of the world around us, to solve the problems we face, and to do the best to get a long with others. Engaging in our communities, working within our governmental institutions, voting are all essential parts of this. Of course, we don't develop our political views in a vacuum. Our religion and our politics intersect and contradict all of the time.

But I believe one essential part about being a human being is to be able to deal with these contradictions and ambiguities. One essential tool to do so is to realize how limited we as human beings are in both the physical and spiritual worlds. We know nothing which is why we live by faith. We are striving to know more which is why we have an intellect. Both our important and inform one another.

In The Social Animal David Brooks says:


"Wisdom doesn't consist of knowing specific facts or possessing knowledge of a field. It consists of knowing how to treat knowledge: being confident but not too confident; adventurous but grounded. It is a willingness to confront counterevidence and to have a feel for the vast spaces beyond what's known."


And the vast spaces beyond what's known is unbelievably vast. But to do anything in this world, we have to proceed with "confidence but not too much confidence". It's a balancing act every single day of our lives.

Listening to the poscasts on Mormon Stories or Mormon Matters, you get the point of view of liberals struggling being Mormon.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Why Aren't more Mormons Democrats?

I know the reason, of course, its largely abortion and gay and lesbian marriage. And of course, there's something appealing in the Republican ideology of individual responsibility and economic liberty. But, there's some messiness in this thought as well, and darn it, the Mormon church has, in my humble view, been thrown under the bus by the Republican party lately.

Lately, the party has been marginalized largely by its own self-inflicted mistakes, its own corruptions, and misdeeds, and an overly-simplistic ideology that has been shown in the real-world to be horribly flawed. But this marginalized party has also thrown the church under the bus, because large segments of the party's power base has a hateful and hurtful view of the Mormon church - yes I'm talking to the southern evangelical belt of the Republican party. The same part of the party that could not stomach nominating Mitt Romney as their presidential candidate, the person that really should have been the nominee, someone about 100,000 times more qualified to be president than John McCain and certainly Sarah Palin. (Now my views on Romney are based on his record not his rhetoric. He said some insane things in his attempts to win the nomination, but as governor of Massachussetts, he seemed to be a thoughtful, pragmatic moderate. And I think he would have returned to that if he had won the presidency . Of course he had no shot at Obama, but considering the train wreck McCain's candidacy became, I found myself longing for Romney.)

But now that Obama has nominated a supreme court justice, and there's a ton of talk about the Constitution and its interpretation. And with all of this debate about Obama and the economy I've been having, I've been thinking about this a bit more. It seems to me that politically speaking, Mormons tend to think more like Baptists than Mormons.

Let me explain, but first let me point out that I have nothing against evangelicals as a whole, actually I respect their institutions. I do think that a certain number of those who have used the religious platform to push a political agenda have done so in very non-Christian ways.

Ok, I have many conversations in my life (serving my mission as I did in Alabama), with folks who believe themselves Bible literalists. Their faith and their religion is based on a literal acceptance of the Bible as the word of God, perfect and unchanging, and that it is not subject to individual interpretation. Of course, this leads to the very real problem that many Christians have very basic conflicts in how they interpret the Bible, and some faiths, of course, claim theirs is the right interpretation, and others are simply misguided. But mostly, many people get by this problem by boiling down their core beliefs to the most basic Biblical message - faith in Jesus as the Savior and Son of God, through whom salvation comes. That churches on the earth are man-made and flawed, but individual faith is what matters most.

That is a nice belief to be sure, but what I found interesting is that the prophets and apostles of the past are given much more authority over doctrine than pastors and ministers of today. The Bible was written 2000 years ago, and scripture writing has since stopped. Prophets no longer exist. We have clergy today, who although called of God, are left to try to make literal interpretations of this scripture in its application to our day.

Ok, get ready for the stretch...

Republicans today have a very similar point of view. Reverence for our country's founding fathers, I find very similar to the reverence shown toward the original twelve apostles. The Constitution is revered as near scripture, an inspired document. And, in their view, today's political leaders should focus primarily on capturing the original intent of the Constitution and certainly should not add to or take away from this sacred document.

Do you see the parallel? The Constitution, politically speaking, has become biblical in a very evangelical Christian sort of way. Similarly, we have a ton more faith in the country's founders than we do in the politicians today.

But Mormons really should not follow suite. The great revolutionary message of Joseph Smith is that revelation has not ended. That God can call prophets and apostles today, equal in both stature and authority as those called in Biblical times. And, most controversially, these prophets have the authority to write new scripture. Not something that preempts what was written 2000 years ago, but to complement it and have the ability to write and speak to the issues of our day.

The documents of the past are still studied and adhered to, but we as a faith have learned to look to modern day authority figures for direction in a confusing world.

The tenants of the Democrat party fall in-line. Democrats believe that government can be a force for good. That when democracy works, when government is accountable and the voting public is educated, we can elect good men and women into office who can and do work toward our good. Not that they are perfect, not that our government wreaks with corruption. But also note, that our early government was also flawed. We had institutionalized slavery, and we massacred our Native Americans. We had scandal from the beginning. Nothing has changed here. Our founding fathers are revered for very good reasons, we had some incredible men who sacrificed and worked to create something quite literally amazing. But at the end of they day, they were men, with flaws and shortcomings. And we have some pretty remarkable and equally inspiring people living today. Who says that we cannot rise to today's challenges like they rose to theirs.

To say that government has no role, or a very limited one in facing the challenges of today, is simply wrong.

The problem with the political discourse today is that its filled with strawmen. Republicans have historically characterized the Democratic party as socialists in love with the idea that government can solve every last problem. But that is a mischaracterization (although some in the party may believe that). And that certainly doesn't describe our current president.

Becoming a Democrat, I was surprised to learn that many Democrats are truly capitalist and love freedom. Imagine that! They just believe that the government has a role to play both to keep the free market free and to step in when the market systems fall short, and they do fall short more often than Republicans like to admit.

I do realize the reason Mormons tend to flock toward the Republican party is deeper than the issue of Constitutional literalism, and I bet that abortion and gay and lesbian marriage has a lot to do with it. The hopes of this argument is to give some just a little nudge, another reason to reconsider.

Finally, I may be dreaming, but it seems like Obama is trying to make political room for Mormons to join the fold. He chose Huntsman, the Mormon governor of Utah, as his diplomat to China. Huntsman was considered to be one of the Republicans that may have been (and may still be) in the hunt for a future presidential nomination. He's also more pragmatic and moderate than the evangelicals probably want (and of course he's Mormon)... But it was good to see Obama choose him to an important position.

Also, I think that Obama's decision to de-emphasize cultural war issues like abortion and gay and lesbian marriage has a lot to do with allowing room for those of faith, to widen the tent and make space.

Something That Really Bugs Me

On occasion I get in a little e-mail debate with a ultra-right conservative member of my church, and it really bugs me. Too often, they use scripture or quotes from leaders of our church, or the church's now well publicized support for the marriage amendments on the ballots in California, Arizona, and Florida as a reason to vote Republican down the ticket.

Indeed, if you look at the electoral college map, you see Utah as one of the darkest red states out there, the most consistently conservative state in the union. This bugs me because it seems to imply at least culturally, to be Mormon you have to be Republican. Or they will try to equate liberalism with sin and conservatism with righteousness. This bugs me in so many emotional ways that I can't fully explain, but I absolutely know this is not how our church leaders want it.

There is a reason why, except in very rare cases, the church stays politically neutral. Actually, I believe there's absolutely really good reasons church neutrality is crucial. And I feel many evangelical churches hurt themselves really profoundly when they take sides. Why? Because the Republican party is ultimately secular, man-made, and dizzyingly flawed, ideologically and otherwise.

You do not want to build your foundation on that, because as the scriptures say, you're building your foundation on a house of sand, be prepared to watch it get washed away. And that's exactly what we're seeing right now. The Republican party has washed themselves out of this government.

Unless something fishy happens, there is no way McCain wins. And on top of that, they should lose more seats in Congress. The reason is that they have literally backed themselves into a corner ideologically. The only sensible debates right now are between different factions of the Democratic party and a quickly shrinking population of sensible conservatives.

Consider this quote from a conservative commentator, in this blog post regarding all of the accusations on Obama's tax plan as socialism:

"Another thing on this subject - is opposition to wealth-spreading in principle really now a litmus test for being a conservative? I thought that being on the right meant that you wanted a welfare state that's small in size and limited in scope - that's what I signed up for, at least - and the most just and reasonable way to shrink and/or restrain the American welfare state that I can see is to make it more redistributive, rather than less so. To quote William Voegeli quoting Paul Pierson in a fine essay on the dilemmas of small government conservatism: "If conservatives could design their ideal welfare state, it would consist of nothing but means-tested programs." In other words, a conservative welfare state would eliminate our current network of universal entitlement programs, and replace them with cheaper, means-tested programs that, well, spread the wealth - that spend your tax dollars to provide temporary assistance to the unemployed, underwrite health care costs for the aged and very poor, set an income floor underneath American seniors, and so forth, rather than taking money from the middle class with one hand and giving it back to them with the other. "

It's fashionable among the far right to call everything Obama and the Democrats propose as socialist.

What exactly does the Republican party propose in opposition to it? They keep reciting the mantra: cut taxes, small governments, strong military.

But what's behind that? Sure, cut taxes, but to what rates? What governmental programs can we realistically cut? What programs should we cut?

Do we really want a country without a safety net at all? Without programs for the elderly (those who can't work)? For the poor? For the unemployed or under-employed?

Do we really want to live in a society where the hungry aren't fed? Where the affordable housing is not available? Where health care is not available to everyone?

Please, I want healthy debate between the two parties on how best to achieve objectives where more people have more? Not mindless accusations and misguided name calling.

And please, please vote yes for 102 in Arizona or 8 in California. But do not, I repeat, do not use that as a reason to vote for McCain/Palin or any other Republican. Vote for the best person and the best ideas.