For those not of the LDS faith, I should tell you that there is a relatively common phenomenon in our church, and that is guilt.  I expect that is not unique to us as a people, that most Christian religions have that in common, but as I am and have always been a Mormon, I can only tell you about the view from in here, which, let me say, is often somewhat odd.

But I had a thought today that I wanted to share.

Much of the guilt centers around the idea that we have too many laws and rules and that nobody could possibly be expected to live up to all of them.  This is silly on several levels, but let’s just set that over there for a second.  Mothers – and this particular kind of guilt is heavily female – see that they are up all night with the baby, then up all day with the other children trying to keep the house clean, then they cook most of the meals, wash dishes, battle with the kids to get them to bed, grab a couple hours of sleep and off they go again.  They’re tired, and frustrated, and then they go to church and someone – this kind of insensitivity is almost exclusively male – tells them they should be going to the temple, grinding their own wheat, spending an hour a day in contemplation of the scriptures, baking bread for widows and orphans, volunteering in the community, and they should do all this with a cheerful heart and a smile.

See?  Feeling good?  No?

Well, there are a couple of things here that could make the problem more manageable.  First, for many of the women I know that get into this guilt trap, at least a significant part of the guilt relates to what other women are perceived as doing, i.e. that they are doing better at all this stuff than we are.  Two things here: 1. They aren’t. 2. Who cares?  So let’s just dispose of that first one right now.  God doesn’t care about how they’re doing relative to you.  There is no Top 25 for human performance.  There’s nobody to impress.  Just stop it.

Second, let me use an analogy: suppose you have a child going into high school.  He’s been a good student, done pretty well, you know, a B here and there, maybe a C, but nothing terrible.  For the most part, coming along, handling the work and learning things.  Then he gets to high school.  All of a sudden those cute two-paragraph papers don’t work any more.  The wonderful theorems he learned in math are great, but they’re not all that applicable to pre-calculus.  New rules of behavior.  New ideas.  More homework.  It’s hard.

News flash: it IS hard.  But which of us would expect that child to feel GUILTY for not understanding how to calculate arctangents?  Frustrated, sometimes, yes (although that is also silly), but guilty?

And since that is exactly what we are going through here, why should we feel guilty?  Truth is, you should be doing whatever you can to improve, to learn new things, to get better.  You’re not ever going to arrive, you know, not in this life.  There isn’t ever going to be a time when you’re going to look back and say “yep, I did it all.”  The more you can do, the more there is to do.  That’s the way of things.

And thank a gracious God it is so.

You probably should be baking cookies for the neighbors and you probably should be reading the scriptures more and you probably should be kinder and more loving to your family.  The math you’re doing now, the papers you’re writing for this class, they’re harder than the ones you were writing before.  You might not be very good at writing them just yet.  So what?  The idea is not to acheive, as if you were going to perform some act of galactic significance, but to become, because the person you are growing into through this process is worth all the matter in the universe.  If you were the only one here, it would still have been worth the act of creation just to produce you.

Is it any wonder, then, that we are constantly urged to greater heights?  And why should we feel guilty that we have not yet attained them?

But I love it now.  I love it for several reasons.  It makes me better.  It never fails to be directed precisely at that question I have brought and laid at the feet of the Lord, asking Him to help me understand.  So it is this time.

And in the midst of this, I confess a monumental idiocy that only the glare of public ridicule can excise from my soul.  Elder Bednar is talking about the temple, and the greatness of temple blessings, and the necessity of attending more and more often.  This is the second of these sorts of talks in this conference.  I suspect that it will have the effect of increasing temple attendance, and I have for some reason chosen to be annoyed by this.

Oh, everything they are saying is absolutely accurate.  Attendance at the temple really does make me a better person.  It really does make my life richer and fuller.  It really does consume almost no important time and gives back a thousandfold what I invest in it.  I attend the temple at least once a week, and almost every week twice or three times.

No, what I object to is that this frequency of temple attendance makes me unusually righteous, and I don’t want other people to do what I do, because it will make me less special.  And, the more people that go, the longer wait there will be for me to finish my service there and get on to the rest of my life.

I suck.  That is all.

I apologize to all of you for my selfishness, and my rejection of the Atonement as the thing that makes me truly special, and the persistent undercurrent of “I’m not really good enough” that steals the sweetness from those things I do that truly are of good character and of worth to others.

I shall repent, and do better.

Twenty years ago, approximately, I knew a fellow named Jim Hicks.  Haven’t seen him in two decades, but we hooked up on Facebook a month ago and have exchanged a few messages.  Then, yesterday, he sends me this:

Chris,

I thought about you just a minute ago when I notice about one of my FB friends joining a FB group came up on the Live Feed.

One of the things that is so shocking about this FB is seeing people become almost militant in their socio-political beliefs.

The people on my friendlist run the political spectrum from diehard christian conservative to very liberal democrat. Growing up where we did, I’m sure you’ve got as many different political beliefs represented on your friendlist as I do.

But what is shocking to me today is a guy I knew in High School (he was 2 years ahead of us on the football team) that is now living in California joining a FB group entitled “1,000,000 strong to Strip the Mormon Church of It’s Tax Exempt status” to which he comments “Bigots Suck”. I couldn’t believe it. (I thought he was a little too militant on the whole Obama thing, but this was just off the reservation).

Personally, I’m a conservative non-denominational Christian (much closer to Baptist) if someone had to brand me with a title. But for the life of me I’ve never seen this level of hate be so blatant since ….Nazi Germany, maybe?

I don’t know how aware you are of this kind of crap, I don’t even know how involved in the LDS church you are – but as one of the few people I know that is LDS, I felt led to let you know that not all “non LDS” folks are hatemongers against your church.

Truly, it breaks my heart.

Yours in Christ,

Jim

Many of you – most of you, I’d guess – know that I am a Latter-day Saint, what most people call a Mormon.  This isn’t an accident.  I profess this faith on purpose.  But as those of you that grew up with me in Virginia know, I’m a sucker for Catholic mass and a Baptist choir.  I know a great deal about “mainstream” Christianity, and respect those that profess it honestly.  I work with them and I love them for their commitment to Christ.  I also work with and love those that profess no religion, or a religion significantly different, though I don’t understand them.

There’s a huge amount of hatred in the world today.  And no matter what God you profess – and especially if you worship NO god – that’s a bad thing.  Jim Hicks showed me a ray of hope yesterday, and I won’t soon forget it.

And that’s why Facebook is so incredibly fantastic.