I sat in a Priesthood quorum meeting last Sunday when the question was asked: “What is repentance?”
One Elder responded that it helps him, when defining something, to consider its opposite or antonym. He went on to explain his belief that the opposite of repentance is pride. I saw a lot of heads nodding in agreement, but the comment left me feeling a little unsettled.
This is a topic I’ve been reflecting on a lot lately, most specifically wondering whether the very popular talk given in 1989 by Gordon B. Hinckley on behalf of the ill Ezra Taft Benson, needs to be examined more closely.
Neat Packages:
I believe there is a human tendency to prefer simplicity over complexity. Wrapping up complex concepts in neat little packages puts our minds at-ease and elicits a sense of peace and comfort. In the LDS faith, these feelings of peace and comfort are often taken as signs of “truth.”
Often there is a “race to the bottom” to sum up or fully enclose the entirety of an idea, process, or person in the simplest terms. Think of phrases in the workplace like: “That company is just greedy!”, “so and so is just lazy!”, “they’re just under qualified!” among these (and many other) “soundbites” in the church can often be found the phrase “they’re just prideful.”
“At the end of the day…”
“It all boils down to…”
“What we need to remember is…”
“[some authority] has already taught us that…”
“It may be simple, but it’s not easy…”
“If we step back with an eternal perspective, it’s clear to see…”
We think it elegant to reduce things to their core essence. We love to speak and think in axiomatic phrases. This can be helpful if the reduction is, indeed, true. But there is a danger in reducing things beyond a reasonable level, especially if doing so allows an important topic to forever be relegated to a particular “brain bin” without further thought or insight.
Abraham Lincoln said:
"Elegance is reducing a thing to its simplest form without divesting it of its necessary attributes"
(He didn't actually say this, but there should be some quote out there I can substitute in here that says the same thing...)
I wonder whether the typical church talk and classroom stage is un-helpfully set as a round table (or pulpit) of wisdom with the goal to “solve the problem at hand” by the end of our allotted 15 to 60 minute time block. The typical church teacher and student feel more rewarded when they leave a class with questions “answered” rather than “left on the table.” We definitely have an unspoken (and spoken) tradition of finishing everything we do with “testimony” summing up what we “know for sure” about the topics just discussed. I wonder what it might be like to end a talk or lesson with an upside-down testimony stating the things that we DON’T know…
A Wide Net:
President Benson’s “Beware of Pride” talk has always been confusing to me because of how wide a net it casts and how reductive it is to isolate “pride” as the root cause of nearly EVERY sin. I actually really like the parts about pride being “competitive in nature” (social signaling and posturing can be quite toxic) but he starts to lose me when he goes down another level and defines pride as “enmity toward God.”
First of all, not everyone believes in God. Contrary to common beliefs within the church that every atheist is actually a god-hater, some people just aren’t convinced or weren’t raised to believe in God… they’re not carrying a chip on their shoulder in regards to God (nor a dark secret that they actually know God is real, but don’t want to admit it a-la the AntiChrists in the Book of Mormon), they’re just worried about other things in life. It’s very hard for a devout LDS member steeped in Mormon culture to imagine a life that doesn’t, at its root, revolve around faith in God, but that’s a real thing!
But, you might say: “There are no atheists in foxholes!” - See? That’s a reductive generalizing statement itself (not to say it isn’t sometimes the truth).
Also, another logic breaker of this seemingly-secure axiom that “god-spite” or “fellow man-spite” is the root of ALL sin is the idea that many people sin ignorantly or curiously. People make mistakes, they weren’t “out to piss off” anyone, least of all God. It actually comes off, to me, as paranoid, that President Benson went around the world believing that when someone messes up or behaves in a harmful way to themselves or others it’s because they have beef with God (and maybe, by transference, to President Benson himself who is supposed to be God’s representative on the earth?). Believe me, my kids do crazy, stupid, harmful stuff all the time out of sheer ignorance or curiosity, not due to an “I’ll show you!” attitude (though that’s pretty common too).
Another reason people persist in sin, or don’t repent, is because of fear of punishment. This one is particularly insidious because “church culture” (which includes teachings from the scriptures and prophets) has actually reinforced the feeling that repentance is difficult and embarrassing/shameful. There’s not enough space to illustrate this point fully, but take, for example, the canonized scripture that “sexual sin is next to murder” and that only a few sins are so bad that they can’t be forgiven, murder among them (Alma 39). The fact that there is a culture that seems to actually put barriers up to repentance/change within the church should at least be acknowledged in a talk/discussion with such scope.
Sometimes this fear is merely a mask for “pride” (of a different nature: personal image preservation) but I know that those people aren’t at war with God (enmity with God) they’re actually more likely to be constantly praying and upfront with God, they’re just struggling to find COURAGE to take difficult steps with their loved ones and social circles.
Another common, non “enmity,” reason for persistence in harmful or unhealthy behavior is the belief that one is actually PROTECTING other people. Whether that protection comes from wanting the people in their lives to have pristine “hero” figures or to protect them from embarrassment or heartache, it can feel, to the offender, like a noble reason to avoid change. Imagine the extreme case of a person hiding their problems because they fear the knowledge might push an unstable person in their life toward self-harm or suicide.
An additional scenario to contradict the over-broad “enmity with God/Man” theory is literal addiction. People can be trapped in their own minds, or more accurately, “of multiple minds.” Where they do honestly want to change, but continually relapse due to chemical dependence.
One last thing to toss in for consideration is trauma. Trauma can literally rewire the brain to be more fearful, less empathetic, and more prone to self-destructive behavior and addiction. Those who engage in these harmful behaviors are often driven to do so as coping mechanisms for dealing with their trauma (this can be, perhaps, lumped in with fear and addiction, but deserves to be called out separately).
The above list is not exhaustive. Perhaps you can think of more reasons people persist in harmful behavior other than strict “pride” (as defined by President Benson)?
At The Root:
I’m going to contradict my central premise here by “reducing” all of the above reasons into one unified theory… one that I think would have been infinitely more-helpful to the human beings in the church than the blameful “everyone who disobeys resents god or their fellow man” approach and which is actually the opposite of repenting/seeking positive change:
Education.
What cures those who “sin” (engage in harmful behavior) in ignorance? Education (the opposite of ignorance/not knowing something).
What helps those who are afraid to change? Education - whether that’s to assist them in taking a longer view of their actions or to dispel unhealthy beliefs/interpretations/teachings they’ve previously latched on to.
What helps someone who believes they’re protecting others by not changing? Education. This too involves helping the person take a wider, longer-term, view of their actions and assisting them to think rationally and logically about how human relationships thrive on trust and honesty.
What about atheism? This is a tough one, but even atheists live in the same world with believers and are governed by the same social and psychological dynamics (God’s rain falls on the just and the unjust). One thing is for sure, telling them (or even believing deep down inside yourself) they’re “just mad at God” will likely be the least-effective approach to helping them make positive change in their lives.
Seeing a lack of education as the root of sin invites each of us to learn and teach and therefore grow and change… it contains a more-productive call-to-action within its premise than the dismissive allocation of all cases of sin to the “pride” bin. By not blaming the offender, our responsibility to engage in the process of help remains intact.
Where He Was Right:
I do, in fact, believe “pride is the root of [many] sins” - that most people persist in harmful behaviors (sin) due to “pride” but I define pride differently. Pride is a judgmental label that allows us to categorize a myriad of complicated factors into a “neat package” so we can divest ourselves of the responsibility to reach out and help our fellow human beings. Reducing the motive of sin to “pride” creates walls of “us” vs. “them” because, of course, “we” are on God’s side and “they” are not. If only “they” would be more humble, “they” could be more like “us!” Ironically, believing that “pride” underpins most sinful behavior encourages us to be more prideful.
Sometimes, worst of all, “pride” is a label we put on ourselves that deflects our own responsibility to “unpack” a lot of complicated experiences and feelings and go through the painful process of learning (education). “If I could just be less prideful, I’d change!” Well, it’s not quite that easy, there’s a host of work to be done and a lot to learn for long-term real change. Do we sometimes “just have a bad attitude?” Yes, of course, but what, where, and why did we end up with that attitude? Those are the million-dollar questions, and the pursuit of learning those answers is the beginning of wisdom.
Was President Benson’s intention to be judgmental or to encourage church members to be judgmental? No, I don’t think so. I think he thought he had found a deep nugget of wisdom and being able to “sum up” everything under the heading of one “universal sin” probably felt really good… revolutionary… like discovering a unified field theorem in physics or something. He was probably pretty “proud” (pun intended) to have put such a neat bow on the whole question of "motivation for sin."
Was he preaching against education/learning? No, in fact his conclusion about the antidote to “pride” is “humility” which we often define in the church as “willingness to learn.” Though I’d argue that his definition of humility is more about submission to authority and strict obedience than about being open to learning/changing perspective.
I believe the real problem with the talk is just giving everyone in the church, for many generations, a “smoking gun” for their minds to go to when assessing the “why” behind another person’s or their own harmful behaviors. There’s not much encouragement for empathy and understanding and curiosity about the unique underpinnings of each individual’s life pattern and choices.
Followup Notes:
As pointed out to me by Urim, it is widely believed that Pres. Benson plagiarized his Beware of Pride talk. Some believe from a female family member who was writing/riffing off of the writings of C.S. Lewis, but ultimately C.S. Lewis' words and ideas are echoed throughout (usually without citation).
https://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon315.htm
Also pointed out by Urim: President Benson said a lot of wacky stuff:
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/ezra-taft-benson/fourteen-fundamentals-following-prophet/
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