I'm a nuanced, or non-traditional Mormon. No secrets there. (No secrets, because I religiously blog post my spiritual impressions and beliefs, so that I don't feel so guilty about never journaling. Ooops.)
Last Sunday was a regular Sunday for me. Sacrament Meeting consisted of entertaining two toddlers. I believe the theme, last week, was train stickers, if I'm recalling correctly. Train stickers, returning crayons to their rightful owners, going potty a couple times, you know the drill. Toddlers - the reason young mothers are spiritually starved for a good quiet, sit down, learn something moment to themselves.
After dropping children off in nursery and Sunbeams - they both went happily! - my husband and I parted ways for our respective classes.
And I struggled. To the outside observer, I probably looked like I deserved to struggle. I was on my phone - watercolor painting, Pokemon Go, surfing Facebook? All of the above? I don't remember. I probably looked, and you could accuse, like I wasn't getting anything out of the lesson, because I wasn't bringing anything either. But for me, it wasn't that simple.
I'd just sat through a Ward Conference where the only female on the stand was the woman who gave the closing prayer. A baby was blessed, and her mother wasn't mentioned. I was covered in train sticker remnants, and I just wasn't feeling it. I was tired, I desperately wanted some life, laughter, or even rejoicing in the room, and I already knew it wasn't going to happen. Yes, again, you can accuse that I didn't bring that to the table, so why would I expect to get it in return, but I didn't have it in me. My qualms with equality in the church were weighing heavily on my mind from the previous week, and they were cemented in during Sacrament Meeting, and I felt no bold, strong women standing and asserting their absolute right to be there and "play with the big boys," or even, merely, to be happy.
So I sat on my phone.
The lesson was on becoming more holy. The tears were flowing. The confessions of our own fallen, sinful natures were borne, again and again, as sisters put pencils to paper to write out their lists on what personal holiness looked like, and then verbally drew conclusions on how they didn't match up.
God loves me, so he sent me my son, Julian. He needed to go potty again. I shrugged my apologetic, "Oh, toddlers," gathered up all of my belongings and left. After taking Julian to the bathroom and returning him to Sunbeams, I began my search for a comfortable couch in the lobby. The first one was taken. I walked around the church to the other lobby, and found that couch unoccupied.
I listened in on the Sacrament Meeting which was being broadcasted through the speakers. Someone was giving a traditional "on my mission" story. I sat, water-coloring this time, for about five minutes, enjoying the quiet. (I'm a mom. That quiet is not to be underestimated, sacred space.)
The bishop passed through the lobby, not seeing me, and poked his head into a classroom to talk to one of the primary teachers in there. Now, I know this probably says loads about me, but I didn't want the bishop catching me looking only too happy to be sluffing class there, on the comfy couch. I didn't want that conversation, where I knew I would probably say something inappropriate, like, "Seen more life at a funeral!" when he asked how Relief Society was.
So I quickly stood up and darted out of the lobby, making my way towards nursery. Five minutes until the top of the hour, and church would be done. I figured I could bum out in nursery for the last five minutes without making a scene. (I didn't make a scene. Dexter was happy to have his mom with him, and a little girl there was very happy to have another adult to fawn over her coloring.)
It's been eating me up all week, that Sunday has.
I've been beating myself up about what I could have done differently. Should I have tried harder to engage in Relief Society? Could anything I could have said even have helped?
I listened to a podcast, The Third Hour, my cousin is a part of, this week, and he'd said something in the podcast that stuck out to me. I'm too lazy to look up the direct quote, but he'd said something along the lines of: There are two lessons we can take from the Fall. (Adam and Eve.) The first, is that we are fallen and sinful. The second, is that we are capable.
That Relief Society lesson on Sunday was a little too "fallen and sinful" takeaway message, and not enough "capable" message. I could have said something like that. I could have tried to turn the direction of the lesson from more tears and talk of how we can be
more holy, how we can do
better, and all the dwelling on weaknesses into something a little more positive and affirming. I could have commented that reminder that we are extremely capable, and God knew better than we do that we wouldn't be perfect in this life, and that that, in fact, was never the goal. That, in fact, the goal is that "they might have joy."
Could I have been that strong woman with the happier, more positive comment in the classroom that I was looking for? Not really, no. I'm a nuanced Mormon, so everything I say has to be taken with a grain of salt. I had the audacity to be wearing pants as well, which would have turned off a large percentage of the room from listening to anything I had to say in the first place anyway.
But then I started thinking. What if I hadn't run away from the Bishop in the lobby. What if I had been willing to engage in a conversation in which I reported my dislike for Relief Society and the general attitude of helpless, never-good-enough weeping that goes on in there, and how soul crushing that is for this little feminist, wishing she had a place to worship her God in Happy Heaven.
If the Bishop had been in Relief Society, if the Bishop had stated my comment, would they have listened? Would they have taken it seriously? Would they have been a little more optimistic? Naturally, this resulted in my grumping about the fact that women's voices aren't taken as seriously as men's voices, but then I realized... perhaps it's not men versus women. Perhaps it's just the fact that I don't have a calling worth listening to, like the Bishop does.
Because authority. Mormons love it. We love to listen to people in authority. There are plenty of prophets' quotes encouraging us to find truth wherever it is to be found, but I know from personal experience that teaching the principles of Zoroastrianism will never get you quite as far as a prophet quote saying the same thing would in a Mormon congregation. Mormons hunger for men in suits and ties to teach them what to think, say, and do.
That's a broad stereotype. I'm aware. But it also makes sense. The Church teaches the value placed on authority - priesthood authorities passed down in unbroken chains linked back up with Christ Himself, through the Restoration. Other apostles making statements such as, "When the prophet speaks, the debate is over." Or "It is my province to teach to the Church what the doctrine is. It is your province to echo what I say or to remain silent.”
I, personally, disagree with these statements, but the cultural attitudes are still ingrained there for many. Most have not deliberately thought about it, to be honest. They reside in a culture that works well for them. The authority teaches something that makes sense and is comfortable for them, and so they continue their appeals to authority, and they are happy, not having to do the uncomfortable emotional work of digging into what they actually believe, and acting on it, even if it rubs some the wrong way.
Surely, however, I didn't just describe you. No, never. Right?
That's what they all say.
Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment in 1961, studying obedience to authority. With the Holocaust on his mind, he wanted to know if it could reasonably be said that the Nazis of Germany were simply following orders. Could people genuinely harm and kill others, simply because they were following the orders of authority? Or rather, should they all be deemed to be accomplices?
If you're not familiar with the experiment, it's quite intense.
Summarized:
"At the beginning of the experiment, they were introduced to another participant, who was a confederate of the experimenter (Milgram).
They drew straws to determine their roles – learner or teacher – although this was fixed and the confederate was always the learner. There was also an “experimenter” dressed in a gray lab coat, played by an actor (not Milgram).
Two rooms in the Yale Interaction Laboratory were used - one for the learner (with an electric chair) and another for the teacher and experimenter with an electric shock generator.
The “learner” (Mr. Wallace) was strapped to a chair with electrodes. After he has learned a list of word pairs given him to learn, the "teacher" tests him by naming a word and asking the learner to recall its partner/pair from a list of four possible choices.
The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).
The learner gave mainly wrong answers (on purpose), and for each of these, the teacher gave him an electric shock. When the teacher refused to administer a shock, the experimenter was to give a series of orders/prods to ensure they continued.
There were four prods and if one was not obeyed, then the experimenter (Mr. Williams) read out the next prod, and so on.
Prod 1: Please continue.
Prod 2: The experiment requires you to continue.
Prod 3: It is absolutely essential that you continue.
Prod 4: You have no other choice but to continue."
So what happened?
It was predicted that no more than 3 out of every 100 participants would deliver the maximum shock.
In reality, 65% of participants in Milgram's study delivered the maximum shock.
Milgrim summed up the findings in a wonderful way:
'The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations.
I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist.
Stark authority was pitted against the subjects’ [participants’] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects’ [participants’] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not.
The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.'
That is terrifying, and not something I would say happens in Relief Society on a regular basis. That is not at all what I am trying to get at.
What I want to get at is peace. What kind of authority figure does it take for someone to allow themselves to be at peace?
I inserted several pictures of one of the participants of Milgram's study. He was someone who was obviously VERY uncomfortable with what he was being asked to do. But he did it anyway. The videos made of this study are painful to watch. I'd highly recommend them! Men squirming in their seats. Turning around, begging the authority to listen to the screams of the man in the next room. Then, when simply told, "The experiment requires you to continue." they did. Because the man sitting at the table behind them was wearing a white lab coat, and looked like he knew what he was talking about.
What do we know about God? We know that God loves us, and wants us to return. We know that God loves everyone else, too. We know that God knows us better than we know ourselves. We know that God created a plan, a plan that would help us progress through mortality, using our imperfections to learn how to better ourselves and make ourselves into holier people. But mostly, we should trust on God's love.
I would postulate, for our purposes, that the man in the chair being shocked, and the man in the chair doing the shocking, could be the exact same person.
What kind of authority does it take for us to allow ourselves to be at peace?
"Be still and know that I am God." is a powerful Bible verse. It's the Bible verse that encouraged my mother to finally get baptized. But "be still" doesn't mean "be quiet." It means "let go." Let go of your pain, let go of your self-flagellation, let go of your fretting about your imperfections, and know that God is God, and God knows what to do with you. Every little thing you screw up, God's got a plan for it, and it's okay to let go, have a little faith, and find peace.
Too often, in our church, it's easier to consult the suits and ties, and see them as our authorities. We listen to them, because it's easier than listening to a still small voice. I'm not saying our church leaders are bad. Not at all. But God is far more timely, and knows what you need to know in that moment, whereas the assigned talk for RS that week doesn't know what you need like you and God do.
Too often I see women beating themselves up over their imperfections, because that's what they think the authorities want them to do - constant vigilance and perfectionism - because some scriptures and some talks say that's what you're supposed to do. But those scriptures and those talks directly contradict the talks that tell us to find joy, to be still, to have faith and hope. How are we to know what is truth?
They both are. They're both true. You're supposed to try harder to be a kind person, and ALSO, you're supposed to calm down and recognize your own nothingness, and isn't that grand?! Don't just listen to the authority that tells you to have a hard time. You have to listen to the authority that also tells you to rejoice and have peace.
I'll never be an authority. First off, I'm a woman. Second off, I'm a sinner. Third off, I'll never have plastic surgery. (Don't tell the general church ladies I said that!!) Fourth off, I make judgmental comments like that to make sure I'll never get in. But I'll never be in a position of authority in this Church, which is fine with me. I don't want that kind of responsibility.
But even though I'm not an authority figure, I hope someone is willing to listen to me say, anyway, that the authority figure who knows you best, who you should always listen to first, is God.
And that's why I skipped Relief Society on Sunday. Sorry Bishop.
