(Transcript of a talk Thummim gave)
The Good in "Church Culture"
Topic from Bishopric member: “How fellowshipping with other disciples of Christ blesses us individually and collectively”
"Fellowship" Always Leads to Good Feelings?!
The term “fellowship” has been particularly important to me recently because I was recently returned to “full fellowship” in the church after a time period of being “disfellowshipped.”
So, being allowed to give a talk is a pretty big milestone in that process!
The main question that came to my mind after considering this topic, to be 100% honest and considering my recent experiences feeling somewhat marginalized in the church, was: “Does associating with church members always leave me with a positive ‘blessed’ feeling?”
My immediate response was “heck no!” - sometimes I feel judged, sometimes ignored, sometimes misunderstood, sometimes disappointed, sometimes frustrated, sometimes bored, sometimes angry, sometimes ashamed, sometimes I’m left feeling like there’s something wrong with me.
There were many awkward, uncomfortable, embarrassing, and offensive experiences while I was disfellowshipped (and after!). One example is when a bishopric member showed up at my house very excited about extending me a new calling and, after he had expressed his vision and how inspired he felt the calling was and extended the invitation, I had to explain my situation. That was a tough one!
Another time, my wife and I had a difficult conversation and she vented her frustrations to her mother (my mother-in-law). My mother-in-law called our bishop who contacted my wife's "ministering sister" (visiting teacher), who then came to our doorstep feeling an "urgency from the Spirit." She then forced her way past me into our house after I'd expressed appreciation for her care, told her it wasn't a good time to visit, and that my wife was safe. After my wife confirmed to this anxious sister that everything was ok, the sister and I had a truly-awkward conversation about how forced-entry into our home was not appropriate.
If you served a mission, I’m sure you can think of that one companion (or in [redacted Bishopric member]’s case his first 3 or 4 companions) that consistently clashed with you.
My internal discussion eventually boiled down in my mind and heart to pinpoint “church culture.” I know the term “church culture” is loaded nowadays and some people hate when it’s used, so I want to briefly define how I’ll be using it:
To me, simply, "church culture" is the set of practical outcomes that arise from our beliefs - be they “good” or “bad.”
Using "Church Culture" as More Than a Defense (An Expanded Definition)
The term “church culture” is usually used defensively, as a way to distinguish the purity of church doctrine from the stumbling way we all go about understanding and trying to implement those ideals. D&C 1 speaks of the ideal church, but adds the caveat that the perfectness mentioned is spoken of “collectively and not individually.”
So, when someone is insensitive, or uninformed, or deliberately ignorant, or confrontational, or cliquey, or shaming, or just downright rude. We can ease our own (and any onlookers’) minds by invoking the healing balm of “Oh, that’s just a church culture thing.” Or, if we’re more scripturally inclined, we can quote D&C 1 and say “well the church is only perfect collectively, not individually.” We might even quote Jeffrey R. Holland and say “Imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we.”
However, I believe “church culture” shouldn’t only be a negative term. There are real, good, healing, helpful, building, educational, and beautiful things that get expressed through our “culture” too! It’s a distorted point of view to think that “church culture” is exclusively negative.
To be honest, the practical, rubber-meets-the-road, lived “culture” that arises from our doctrines, teachings, history, and scripture, is a pretty mixed bag, especially when it’s piped out through human beings. It would be grossly inaccurate to say that we humans have got this “living the gospel” thing wholly figured out.
Dualism, Opposition, Yin & Yang (Good in the Bad)
So imagine the conundrum of “church culture” represented as the ancient Chinese yin and yang symbol. The white side represents the “good,” the black side the “bad.” They flow into and around each other but, in the main mass of each, the other side is surprisingly-represented by a contrasting dot (the black in the white, and the white in the black) Or the good in the bad and the bad in the good.
The Wikipedia definition of yin and yang is profound: “Yin and yang is the concept of dualism, describing how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.” Let me re-read that […]
This concept might feel familiar to you if you know Lehi’s words in 2 Nephi: “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, […] righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.”
What is helpful to me is to step outside of the strictly black vs. white, good vs. bad, argument and consider what good is in the bad (the bad in the good is a topic for another day...). To find the white dot amidst an apparently black swirl. This expanded perspective can transform what was originally considered as a “bad” experience to become building blocks for learning and growth. I believe this is part of what God was teaching Moroni when he said “I give unto men weaknesses that they may be humble, and if they humble themselves, then will I make weak things become strong.” Sometimes we have to dig around a lot to eventually see the white dot swirling around in an immense black pool, but that digging is part of the solution.
I would like to take this idea of “positive in the negative” one step further and propose that the offense we give and receive, the hurt feelings, the misunderstandings, the boredom, the judgement, the disappointment, in sum “the failures of each of us to live the gospel as it should be lived” is a deliberate and intentional part of the Plan of Salvation.
A "Feature" Not a "Bug"
How nice it sounds, on the surface, to live in an idyllic paradise where we never hear any ideas that rub us the wrong way or stir up our defensiveness or clash with long-held ideals. Where "time doth softly, sweetly, glide, hate and envy ne’er annoy, roses bloom beneath our feet, all the earth’s a garden sweet, making life a bliss complete" (as one hymn puts it).
But, where all thoughts and feelings are convergent, there can be no growth. That’s what Lehi just told us. Tension is integral to the whole, without it, the system would fail.
If you’ve ever read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, there’s a REASON Elizabeth finds most men boring - they’re so annoyingly... agreeable. Throw a Mr. Darcy in the mix and suddenly every aspect of Elizabeth’s life is MUCH more interesting because of the opposing point of view he introduces.
In fact, the statement about perfectness being applied to “the church collectively and not individually” has this conclusion already implied within it... How can you speak of the perfectness of a whole while disparaging its parts? This is illogical… unless it’s possible that the collective is “perfect” due directly to the “imperfectness” of the individuals… that imperfection is a desired property of the system as-designed.
To put it in programming lingo: “It’s a feature not a bug.”
Marriage as a Metaphor for Activity/Fellowship In the Church
The old nursery rhyme says “First comes love, then comes marriage” - but Martin Luther wrote “Marriage is the *school* of love.” Meaning that, what leads us to marriage is usually a poorly conceived, probably naive, shadow of love, and what comes out of the tension of a marriage is the true definition of love. The church and the relationship between its members can be compared in this way to a marriage. Michael Novak, a Catholic writer, wrote about marriage:
“Marriage (aka: Church Membership) is an assault upon the lonely, atomic ego. Marriage is a threat to the solitary individual. Marriage does impose grueling, humbling, baffling, and frustrating responsibilities. Yet if one supposes that precisely such things are the preconditions for all true liberation, marriage is not the enemy of moral development in adults. Quite the opposite.
Being married and having children (aka: being active in the church) has impressed on my mind certain lessons, for whose learning I cannot help being grateful. Most are lessons of difficulty and duress. Most of what I am forced to learn about myself is not pleasant. . . . My dignity as a human being depends perhaps more on what sort of husband and parent (aka: a Church member) I am, than on any professional work I am called on to do. My bonds to my family (aka: my church) hold me back from many sorts of opportunities. And yet these do not feel like bonds. They are, I know, my liberation. They force me to be a different sort of human being, in a way in which I want and need to be forced.”
Constructive Tension, Confrontation, & Opposition are Gifts
I’ll end with a few quotes from one of my favorite talks by Eugene England called “Why the church is as true as the gospel:”
“Just before his death, Joseph Smith […] wrote, “By proving contraries, truth is made manifest.” By “prove” he meant not only to demonstrate logically but to test, to struggle with, and to work out in practical experience. The Church is as true—as effective—as the gospel because it involves us directly in proving contraries, working constructively with the oppositions within ourselves and especially between people, struggling with paradoxes and polarities at an experiential level…”
“It is in the Church especially that those with the gifts of vulnerability, pain, handicap, need, ignorance, intellectual arrogance, social pride, even prejudice and sin—those Paul calls the members that “seem to be more feeble”—can be accepted, learned from, helped, and made part of the body so that together we can all be blessed. It is there that those of us with the more comely and world-honored gifts of riches and intelligence can learn what we most need—to serve and love and patiently learn from those with other gifts.
But that is very hard for the “rich” and “wise” to do. And that is why those who have one of those dangerous gifts tend to misunderstand and sometimes disparage the Church— which, after all, is made up of the common and unclean, the middle-class, middle-brow, politically unsophisticated, even prejudiced, average members. And we all know how exasperating they can be! I am convinced that in the exasperation lies our salvation, if we can let the context that most brings it out—the Church—also be our school for unconditional love.”
Here’s hoping we can expand our definition of what the “blessings” are that arise from "church culture" and the fellowship we share with the wide variety of individuals we rub up against here. As the Psalm says:
Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.
