On Mormon Guilt

Here's another talk. I swear someday I'll write something original.

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My wife has some of the best experiences around. In comparison my life and stories are dull and uninteresting. As such I’m appropriating one of her stories for this talk.

Carolyn was at work a couple years ago when two of her co-workers came into her office and as seems to happen often to her, they started discussing something completely non-work related. The two women started discussing their upbringings. One of them was raised Catholic and the other Jewish. As if this was a bad joke the conversation became a debate. Now this was not a doctrinal debate but a debate about which was worse, Catholic or Jewish guilt. As the pair left Carolyn’s office she overheard one of them ask the other “do you think there’s such a thing as Mormon guilt?”

I bring this up because in my conversations with friends who have left the Church this is a recurring theme. They bring up the idea that our meetings are depressing and that they feel like we as a people lay the guilt on a pretty thick. I personally don’t understand this. The expectation is only that we be perfect in dress, job, family, calling, home teaching, meeting attendance, missionary work, the commandments, and genealogy. Also there’s the whole class of “fun things” we can’t do because “we’re Mormon”. That’s not too much to ask right? I certainly have never fallen short of this, ask my home teaching families….well maybe not this month.

In his first talk after being called into the 1^st quorum of the 70, Elder Neal A. Maxwell gave in my mind the quintessential talk on “Mormon Guilt”. He addressed his remarks to “those who carry their own load and more; not to those lulled into false security, but to those buffeted by false insecurity, who, though laboring devotedly in the Kingdom, have recurring feelings of falling forever short[1].”

Who are these falsely insecure? Basically all of us who ever experience that moment of disquiet coming from the buffetings of Satan. Any of us who feel that we not only don’t, but can never match up to the perfection of the ideal Mormon, whoever that is. As Elder Maxwell said: [there are many of us who], “would not chastise a neighbor for his frailties [but] have a field day with our own. Some of us stand before no more harsh a judge than ourselves, a judge who stubbornly refuses to admit much happy evidence and who cares nothing for due process[2].” In another place he said that “many times our perpetual self-condemnation is like setting up a mental video that never stops. Over again, it replays the painful past as we sink lower into despair.”

How can we reconcile this with what the scriptures teach us? Look at 2 Nephi 2:25. “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”

This, next to Benjamin’s famous quote on service, is perhaps the most quoted verse in the Book of Mormon. Yet this verse does not guarantee us joy. I think that Lehi was trying to tell us the exact opposite. The language here is conditional. The first clause “Adam fell that men might be” teaches clearly that the existence of Mankind was contingent upon Adam’s fall. We know this very well. The second clause is equally important though. Men are that they might have joy. Might have joy? Why not just guarantee joy or command us to be joyful? Perhaps “Adam fell that men might be; and men are to have a good laugh and always be happy”. The problem is that our joy is contingent upon another condition. What is that? Well I’m not going to tell you yet because I still have more time to fill.

There are circumstances in life where right choices can lead to sadness and heartbreak. Making good choices might, cost us friends, jobs, and for many converting to the gospel even family. There are a plethora of scriptural examples of men and women who though they lived right, still struggled with this part of the human condition. I could list many of them but I want to look at two cases that we don’t usually include in the lens of guilt and sorrow.

In 1 Nephi 8, Lehi famously sees a vision of the tree of life. Now there’s a lot of reason for this being important, not least that the tree of life did play a part in the earliest forms of temple worship. To Lehi, a man now exiled from his home, in a culture that said the true temple was the one in Jerusalem, I imagine this vision would have been a cause of great joy.

In any event we know the story. Lehi is in a waste, calling upon God he beholds a tree who’s “fruit was desirable to make one happy.[3]” He goes up, picks the fruit, eats it, and finding joy in the fruit he calls his family to join him and rejoice in the fruit of the tree. For Lehi the burden of guilt and sorrow lies in his inability to bring his eldest sons to experience the salutatory grace, for that’s really what it is, of the fruit of the tree.

Nephi’s vision is similar but differs in a substantive way. Desiring to know what his father beheld Nephi prayed to “behold the things which [his] father saw[4].” The Spirit came to him in the form of a man and showed him the tree and placed before Nephi in v.10 a choice, “What desirest thou?”

Here is I think a cross-roads in Nephi’s life and a great lesson for all of us (See Grant Hardy’s “Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide” for a more thorough analysis of this). Nephi could have asked to experience the vision of the tree. To, like his father, partake of the fruit and feel the joy his father felt. Instead Nephi asks, “To know the interpretation thereof.[5]”

At this point in the story, the Spirit leaves Nephi and an angel comes. I’m guessing there’s a great meaning in this, which I don’t fully understand. Nephi sees the tree and learns that it was a “representation of the love of God.[6]” Indeed Nephi sees the meaning of all the parts of his father’s vision. Yet, I believe in some ways this was a burden.

Lehi tasted the fruit of the tree and partook and rejoiced in the redemptive love of his God. Nephi saw in vision that the fruit of the love of God was the atonement of the Son of God. While this is great knowledge and important for us all, He saw the children of Israel, the people that his father had tried to save through preaching, crucify the Son of God.

But the vision didn’t end there, he saw in vision his own descendents destroyed by the descendents of his brothers. He saw all his progeny reject the gospel that he held so dear. While the sadness that must have accompanied this was tempered by the vision of the restoration of the gospel and the building up of the kingdom in the last day, I cannot imagine that the burden was any less great. Indeed he tells us as much in the last chapter of 2 Nephi, where he says that he “prays continually for them by day, and mine eyes water my pillow by night, because of them”.

Both Nephi and Lehi carried a burden, one that many of us carry, the burden of having lost family and friends who at one time rejoiced in the fruit of the gospel. Nephi carried the burden of knowing that despite all his preaching there were countless descendents of his who would never respond to the sweet fruit that his father knew so well, just as we have so many friends who will not respond to the message of the gospel. This is the burden of Mormon Guilt, where despite doing everything we’re supposed to we’ve still somehow failed.

In the end both Lehi and Nephi bore burdens that those of us suffering under the weight of Mormon Guilt would understand. They tried their best and yet fell short of the standard that is human nature to set for oneself. The standard where we expect absolute perfection in everything we do and absolute perfection. We, like Lehi and Nephi, take upon ourselves guilt for things over which we truly cannot control.

Yet despite the sadness that Nephi experienced, he did not entirely despair. Look at the exultant language of 2 Nephi 25:26.

And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.

Nephi found joy in Christ. This was one of the last lessons his father taught him. Let’s go back to that famous couplet in chapter 2 of 2 Nephi.

25Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.

26 And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. (2 Nephi 2:25-6)

The Messiah coming is the condition of joy. Only in and through the redemptive power of the atonement can men truly find the joy the Lord intends for us in this creation. Ezra Taft Benson said: “Only the gospel will unite men of all races and nationalities in peace. Only the gospel will bring joy, happiness, and salvation to the human family.” In the end only atonement brings the relief from our shortcomings those self-perceived failures we all have, and will lift away the burden of “Mormon Guilt”.

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[1] Neal A. Maxwell, Friday Morning October 1976, LDS General Conference.

[2] Ibid.

[3] 1 Nephi 8:10

[4] 1 Nephi 11:3

[5] 1 Nephi 11:10-11

[6] 1 Nephi 11:25