Exponent II's Blog, page 36

Does a Temple Recommend Mean You’re a Good Person? (Nope, So Stop Worrying About It.)

Have you ever felt bad (or had someone try to make you feel bad) for not having a current temple recommend? I’m sorry if that’s ever happened to you, especially because I don’t think your temple recommend status has anything to do with what kind of a person you are.

Chad and Lori Daybell both had active temple recommends when they committed their murders. They’d attend the temple together before each killing. Incarcerated Jodi Hildebrandt attended the temple and received a blessing from the St. George temple president while simultaneously abusing children in her basement dungeon with fellow abuser Ruby Franke. Sterling Van Wagenen, the director of the set of temple movies still in rotation in 2019, was arrested for sexual abuse of children, so the church had to pull those films and replace them with a slideshow.

I think a temple recommend has little to do with a person’s character, and everything to do with how well they conform to rules and/or lie to their leaders.

Here’s a list of people who have been denied a recommend:

-A caring mother in Texas who wears a tank top in the summer. -A widower in a nursing home who spent his life in church service but can’t afford to pay tithing on his small social security check.-A pediatric nurse who drinks coffee to stay awake on long overnight shifts caring for sick children.-A firefighter who risks his life to save strangers’ lives, but views adult content on the internet.-A woman with three callings, fully active, a near perfect visiting teaching record, who publicly said on Facebook she supported women getting the priesthood (okay, that one was me).

Here’s a list of people who passed the temple recommend questions with flying colors:

-A racist woman who treats minorities at her work like second class citizens but wears the right underwear.-A misogynistic man who treats his wife like a personal slave but only drinks herbal tea.-An ex-husband who gets out of paying child support by remaining purposefully unemployed but pays tithing.-A mean woman who gossips and lies about the people in her ward, but believes Joseph Smith was a prophet.-Senior church leaders who ran a multi-decade illegal scheme to conceal the massive wealth of the church from members but sustain their Priesthood leaders (which is themselves).

Some of the worst humans I have ever encountered held a temple recommend for decades, while some of the kindest and most caring people couldn’t qualify. Once I was sitting in a temple session and looked around the room. It occurred to me that I wasn’t with the most Christ-like people on earth – rather I was with the people who were willing to jump through the most hoops and follow the most rules (including myself!).

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with choosing to follow the necessary rules to obtain a temple recommend. Don’t drink coffee, wear garments, pay tithing, attend church meetings – no problem! Those are not things that harm anyone else.

Just please don’t assume that your recommend makes you morally superior to someone else who donates ten percent of their income to a food pantry instead of the church and takes their grandkids to see a movie on Sunday. If you happen to think that God favors you over them, I think you’ll be disappointed someday to find out how wrong you are.

*****
For me personally, there was a moment in the spring of 2014 when I realized exactly how little a temple recommend had to do with a person’s worthiness or their relationship with God. My temple recommend had been taken away at the end of 2013 when my bishop disapproved of my profile on the Ordain Women website. A few months later, a new bishop took his place and offered my recommend back, saying he felt I was worthy of it. (Thanks, second bishop!)

My worthiness hadn’t changed at all, only the man assigned to give me the recommend had. Sometimes a temple recommend is just a tool in the arsenal of a priesthood leader to control someone’s behavior. Following my own conscience over my bishop’s demands is something I remain very proud of myself for. (And to those who choose to give in to a leader’s demands in order to keep your recommend – I don’t blame you at all! This is an impossible system.)

This Inauguration Day, We Need a Little Christmas

It feels both overwhelming and anticlimactic, the grey of January after the twinkle lights of December. Other than a few stacks of gifts that haven’t yet been assigned cupboard space and a Christmas throw pillow or ornament overlooked in the frenzy of boxing up, my house is back to normal. The kids are back in school. Life has picked up again, and I’m staring down the barrel of a new year.

Despite the mild winter, January feels particularly dreary this year, made heavy by the weight of a broken world, the inauguration of a divisive president, and the stress of personal resolutions and failings. The magic of Christmas, which made the seasonal cold and dark and even stress bearable, is gone. If December was largely a reprieve, from these cares at least, January is a reckoning.

The universality of post-Christmas letdown was probably part of the inspiration behind the poem The Work of Christmas by Howard Thurman:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.

Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was one of America’s greatest mystics and activists. He was an African-American theologian, a gifted educator and author, and a prominent civil rights leader, mentoring many of the civil rights leaders of his era, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was Thurman who introduced nonviolence to the civil rights movement as a response to racism and brutality. 

Howard Thurman

When I feel despair at the civil rights ground we’ve lost recently, ground that was gained through the work and sometimes blood of people like Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King, I remind myself that even though things feel bleak, they are nowhere near as bleak as they were in Thurman’s time. He knew, in a way I will never know, what it was to look hate in the face and choose love. He knew the work of justice was hard and sometimes backfired, and he did it anyway. He knew progress moved slowly, when it moved at all. He had every reason to preach retribution or sit in despair, but he didn’t. He chose hope. 

The words of Thurman’s poem lodged deep in my heart this Christmas season as I contemplated my impending annual January malaise, compounded this year by the distress of another Trump presidency. Phrases from the poem floated through my mind unbidden like gentle directives. As inauguration day crept closer: Rebuild the nations. As quiet panic over New Year’s resolutions set in: Heal the broken. As I felt rising insecurities and aimlessness: Feed the hungry. As I was overcome by helplessness at the scale of injustice and suffering in the world: Bring peace among the people. As I grappled with despair that so many people idolize Trump and what he stands for: Make music in the heart.

These next four years, I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to fall prey to the outrage bait of “can you believe this shocking/false/offensive thing Trump said” because of course I can believe it, and I can finally see that it doesn’t matter because it’s all a distraction meant to keep us so keyed up in righteous indignation that we become unable to act. I am going to focus on outcomes instead of bombastic red herrings and do what I can in my own sphere to mitigate harm to vulnerable populations.

There is big irony and pain in Trump, the dismantler of DEI initiatives, the fomenter of racism and xenophobia, being inaugurated on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It feels like acid in an already raw wound. But it also feels like a reminder: the marginalized groups living 60+ years ago alongside Howard Thurman and Martin Luther King had it much worse then than they do today, and they had it much worse 60+ years before MLK’s time than they did in the tumultuous 1960’s. Despite the ground we’ve lost, despite the additional ground we may lose in the next four years, Black people and other people of color, LGBTQ people, women, and others have had it worse, much worse, in the shockingly recent past. The US has faced injustice and hate and devastating setbacks before. Today feels dark, but it is not even close to the darkest days this country has seen. Trump and his ilk are a step back, but perspective shows us, and I believe Howard Thurman would tell us, we have a robust precedent for hope.

The Christmas star is gone. The song of the angels is stilled. The shepherds are back with their flocks. The world feels lone and dreary without the lingering light that suffused the Christmas season. But the work of Christmas has just begun.

To learn more about Howard Thurman, you can watch the 2021 PBS documentary Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story.

US Capitol Photo by Heidi Kaden on Unsplash

Photo of Howard Thurman from Smithsonian Digital Archives via Wikipedia

Doctrine Would Change if Women Were Equal

Photo by HONG SON on Pexels.com

If women at church were equal to men, what doctrines would we have about birth? (I didn’t realize how little there was in the scriptures.) What might be taught at church about abortion? Or Heavenly Mother? What would it be like to have scriptures written by, for, and about women? The way we teach the law of chastity would definitely change. What else? Janey over at Wheat and Tares wrote a powerhouse of a blogpost exploring these ideas and more in her recent post Doctrine Would Change if Women Were Equal.

Our Bloggers Recommend: What is Intuitive Eating?

Do I trust my body? Do I listen to my body? I’m asking myself these questions as I’m listening to “We Can Do Hard Things” this week, when hosts Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach speak with intuitive eating expert Evelyn Tribole. As Glennon, who has been diagnosed with and in treatment for first with bulimia and then anorexia since she was a child, and Abby, who spent most of her adult life as a world-class athlete (well, she is still world-class but no longer playing), share their thoughts and experiences, they keep repeating the need for trust in oneself–and how dangerous it is to not trust yourself and your body to make good choices. Glennon, who grew up evangelical, discusses how she was taught not to trust her body, how being given rules set her up to have a poor relationship with her body and not trust it to send her the signals that she was full.

The Exponent II did a series on being fat and female last fall, and as I listened to this podcast I kept thinking about my own relationship with food and my body (neither is good or intuitive) and how being told I needed to follow certain rules to be “good,” even though most of those rules weren’t related to food, could have affected me without knowing about it. By internalizing the need to trust and obey with question external forces, even if it conflicted with what I individually felt, did I learn not to trust myself?

Terrible Allies

I only know
The inconsistently virtuous
The intermittently thoughtful.
I do not know anyone whose choices
Continually align with their values.
Quite frankly,
I don’t know anyone who can manage
Goodness
Most of the time.

The people who think they are
Winning that game
(This was me)
Are telling themselves half truths
And it is only a matter of time
Before that white/straight/cis savior
Is outed as a terrible ally
A label they will
Resist and thus become
A terribler ally.
It is terribly predictable.

I know plenty of people
Who want to do good
But forget that desire
When the moment of true potential arises
And the fear takes over.
It is easy to forget to tell about the fear
In stories of virtuous disruption.
It is easy to forget that goodness
Can feel terrible in its enactment.
The truly terrible are ordinarily
Defensive of their sins
While refusing ownership of them.
How do we reconcile the gap
Between our commitment to high-mindedness
With our quotidian self interest?
What do we do
When we are always or occasionally
Terrible allies
Rarely breaking that pattern?

Our oldest stories speak
Of a man who blamed his wife
And a God who cursed her for his sake.
No solidarity there.
God authored the first injustice.
A truly terrible story of perfectly terrible allies.
Perhaps we get it from our creator,
An excuse that condemns us all.

We must abandon our commitment to the
Vanity of our own goodness and
Trade it for less glamorized versions.
Do that courageous thing
When no one important is watching
And the cost to ourselves is high.
We will challenge ourselves and our systems with our honest truths
Knowing that even when we are trying
We will do this terribly
But learn to strengthen our muscles of apology and
Relationship repair.

I Would Do Anything for God (But I Won’t Do That)

Remember when Meatloaf famously teased us with the addictive lyric, “I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that”? For years, the common question of this earworm chorus remained, “But what won’t he do? Meatloaf won’t do what for love?!”

In a 1993 VH1 Storytellers, Meatloaf solved the riddle for fans. Apparently the answer was there all along, hiding in the syntax. The line before each repeating chorus lays out what the committed lover will never do. That is ultimately:

Lie to youForget the way you feel right nowForgive myself if we don’t go all the way tonightDo it better than I do it with youStop dreaming of you every night of my lifeSee that it’s time to move onBe screwing around

The song is ultimately one of commitment between one lover promising fidelity to another who’s clearly been scorned. The promise of the song declares that love won’t require cheating, lying, being unfaithful, or leaving (mentally, emotionally, or physically). That isn’t real love and he won’t require her to endure those things in the name of love.

It seems fitting, then, that I’ve lately heard the lyric, “I would do anything for God, but I won’t do that” repeating in my head. This began after seeing the new children’s D&C curriculum released by the LDS Church, which explains how the story of polygamy is a beautiful lesson of obedience. In this story, God commands through a modern-day prophet and his followers obey. You see, they would do anything for God.

These lessons, accompanied by child-friendly drawings, absolve Latter-day Saints of any issues, questions, or lingering ick they may feel regarding polygamy. Faithful members can continue to separate themselves from that unsavory practice and ignore its sordid history. They can even act offended when comedians rely on it for an easy laugh, calling it a low, cheap joke that is irrelevant to Mormonism (ahem – I mean The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) today. Except, the LDS Church isn’t that old. And they are using polygamous stories of a man considered a modern-day prophet to teach about blind obedience in 2025.

This raises an important question most mainstream Latter-day Saints would like to side-step: If God commanded his followers to practice polygamy through a prophet today, would you obey?

The common response: That part of the restoration is fulfilled. He would never do that. Yet, people place themselves in the shoes of scripture characters, asking:

Would I decapitate Laban?Would I sacrifice Isaac?Would I have sex with my wife’s handmaiden to conceive a child?

The scriptures repeatedly require us to participate in moral bargaining sanctioned by a God who requires proof of our love and devotion. We are told of moral absolutes in one moment, then given morally ambiguous stories that require giving up those absolutes in favor of higher laws of faith and obedience. Perhaps this is why I’ve never found their stories particularly comforting or their lessons clear-cut.

Even at my most conservative and believing moments, I know this: I would do anything for God, but I won’t practice polygamy. And God should never ask me – or anyone else – to practice it.

Frankly, I don’t want to follow a God who places such high value on obedience over conscience, love, fidelity, and honesty. The polygamous stories are messy because the practice is not of God and it will never be of God. I sincerely hope my children never view polygamy as anything but an ugly blight on Mormonism. From my perspective, polygamy (practiced by my forbearers) is a strange obsession and desire for dominance over women that a few men presented as God’s command. You can’t clean it up. You can’t ignore how it negatively impacts the character of men such as Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

As I’ve wrestled with real-life dilemmas without clear-cut answers from simple scripture stories or sanitized versions of LDS history, I feel as if I’ve had a call-out with God similar to the lovers in this song. We, of course, know that moral choices are not always as clear as they appear in this song. But I think it can still work.

While there is comfort and security in simple obedience and unwavering faith, doesn’t God want us to mature and grow in our faith? Shouldn’t faith help us truly move through the complexities of life, the moral ambiguity, and the conflicting choices by building a robust conscience, learning to think by the spirit, and by constantly developing compassion, empathy, and love?

How can we evolve in our faith if we swallow these lessons of obedience without question? Why won’t we wrestle with our history? Why won’t we disavow, even apologize for, some of it? If we allowed this, then the fear and resistance around substantial change and new questions might lesson. Perhaps, then, we’d be ready for new revelation.

I would do anything for God, but I won’t:

Ignore my conscienceGive up my integritySacrifice the mental, physical, or or emotional well-being of my childrenAccept inequality in God’s nameGo along with practices that are racist, sexist, or homophobic in God’s nameMake “The Church” synonymous with “God”Ignore Heavenly MotherDo whatever a prophet/priesthood leaders says God commandsLose the ability to hear my own conscience and moral compass because someone else says their word is God’sStop asking questionsPlace any other commandment above “love”

I would do anything for God (but I won’t do that). And He shouldn’t ask me to.

Guest Post: Losing Our Agency as We Work at BYU

by Anonymous

I am a BYU employee, but I don’t feel like I can write much without revealing too much beyond that. It’s of utmost importance to me that my identity isn’t revealed, and that I would feel this way says volumes.

I will say that after reading this article it angers me that a faculty member would buy into the idea that there are professors and staff who are actively trying to undermine students’ faith. In my very long experience with BYU staff and students, this is simply not the case. College is a time of exposure to new, uncomfortable ideas — both those learned in class and those learned outside of class. A time of growth and questioning. The open cultural age in which we live makes this even more true. Even professors whose faith is complicated, even broken, do their best to support students’ emotional wellbeing and spirituality as they confront these new ideas. They would do this even were their employment not threatened if they acted in any other way, because they value their students. To insinuate that BYU professors are somehow responsible for purposefully influencing students’ choices to distance themselves from the church ignores valid concerns these young people have with church history, leadership, and theology. It also echoes recent right-wing mistrust of higher education, with an LDS twist.

Recent requirements to perform church membership in specific ways honestly remind me of Satan’s plan to take away people’s agency. I know families who are one sympathetic bishop’s release away from disaster. I know people seriously considering career change and people who have already left. People are afraid to support their LGBTQ family publicly; I know people who have suffered career consequences for doing so. I know an employee with non-LDS family who was terrified someone would see beer cans in her garbage can and think they belonged to her. Faithful faculty members trying their best, even those who are quite orthodox, are afraid they’ll be perceived as not being quite orthodox enough. And everyone is afraid to talk about their fears with each other or their leadership, not knowing who they can trust.

Gilbert, Baughman, and others who say that employees who don’t conform should go elsewhere ignore the fact that jobs in higher education are extremely difficult to find, effectively forcing employees to perform their faith in prescribed ways — whether they agree with the policies or not — or face job loss. People end up having to choose between losing their jobs and performing in ways that feel dishonest to them. Our Heavenly Parents knew that forcing conformity results in stunted spirituality, but church education administrators seem to have missed this Sunday School lesson.

My Story of “Radical Kindness” (And Common Sense)

Guest post by Amy. Human Being. Mother of Two. Deep Thinker. Granddaughter of a Philosopher.

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted…” – Aesop

My story of “Radical Kindness” is about “being kind to myself” in a foundational way.  Changing my narrative to be “kinder” to myself was both very, very radical (coming of age as a hyper-religious LDS female in the late 1990s), life-encompassing, and life-giving. This story is very “I-centric” because it is my story – but it is not arrogant because I literally didn’t have enough space to be concerned about myself to be actually arrogant.

I stared at my phone, dumbfounded. There, in black and white – some random individual had just passed this gem of wisdom along the internet like trash (and messages in a bottle) washed up on shore. 

“If we don’t say “Yes” authentically, we say “Yes” resentfully, and that leads to far more problems than if we’d said “No” in the first place” – Nat Lue

Saying Yes Resentfully = More Problems [I already had the laundry list of problems, no thank you].Saying Yes Authentically = Less Problems [How? Just How?]

I knew for myself, within myself, when it felt like my decisions were authentic decisions and when they were “performance” decisions foisted on me like a blackmailer’s bid for a precise, parsimonious payout to be doled out slowly, impartially, and scornfully in an inhumane transaction. 

After reading this meme, I kept a mental tally of the times I was “Performing the Yes’s” (with varying degrees of resentment) and actually “Saying Yes” because I meant it. While I didn’t have a notepad where I was busily entering tallies into a “Comedy” or a “Tragedy” column like Harold Crick did in Stranger than Fiction – I was that diligent and methodical about making observations and passing them along to myself. 

About Me:

My attention was divided like light exploding out of a prism in all directions by a job, a house, a parade of 1-2 pets at a time, a husband, 2 kids, 2 callings, some volunteer work, poorly managed postpartum anxiety, and a carpetbag of unprocessed trauma, I knew when I could say “Yes” and I could say “No” on a fundamental level.  

At the time, I was about 10 years into our marriage.  In all compassionate honesty, I was so far into burnout that the entire house should have been on fire. My husband was in a confusing and painful physical health space that required more mental health resources and creativity then he had access to, so he was burned out too.  Our oldest at 8-9 years of age was disconnected from herself, from us, and from humanity in general – and was dealing with a scope of problems we were beginning to find a framework for. Our baby was around 20 months old. 

We were in the “phew, – the worst is over – holy cow, what’s that?” cycle. We had our heads above the metaphorical waterline, but just barely and we knew it wasn’t sustainable. My immediate family was in a dynamic space of diagnostic work to figure out “What was wrong with us” which actually kicked off a chain of events more accurately labeled, “What accommodations and strength-based tactics are life-giving for us in a sustainable niche lifestyle?”. 

What Changed?

Some “Yeses” were required – people need calories that they can eat, our house needed to pass basic standards of cleanliness, I needed my job.  But I could no longer afford all the additional “Yes’s” being assigned to me because “I gave a care” and they didn’t, and it was showing. 

I immediately stopped doing the unsustainable “Performance Yes’s”. You know the ones – that one if you do “that one thing”, you immediately long for a hole to fall into, a teleportation circle to “elsewhere” and a new life in the witness protection program (not knocking it – in a sense this is a request to be protected as “someone else” actually).  I started curating my attendance to activities in the community and requesting that more information be sent my way via email then phone calls.  I started to be honest about the times when “saying Yes” would cause me personal resentment at home. I started to be more upfront about what I “could give”, what the “upper limits” of my participation budget was. 

My volunteer experience shifted from healthcare support and church callings to mock interviews and church-related service projects – and it was good:)

What Happened?

The sky didn’t fall down entirely because of my decisions. The universe didn’t collapse on itself (mostly because it wasn’t actually balanced on my shoulders – who knew?).  Some of them shifted into the “Good Enough Performance Yes’s” (like when you shove everything into a cute bin because someone is invading your house as an act of social charity and connection, and you want them to be there AND you want them to think that you aren’t a disorganized mess.  There may be recovery ice cream in your future after they leave.) Our situation had acquired enough luck, desperation, poverty, privilege, good sense, or love that my marriage survived (and eventually thrived because of) the radical compassion I applied to myself. 

There was an immediate outpouring of anger though.  I got angry at myself for “being a doormat” at times. My family got angry at me – they had gambled on me saying “Yes” in different ways for so long that they had to scramble to adapt.  I got angry at them too for feeling entitled to rely on me for physical, mental, and emotional labor without contributing. I got angry at the situation where it was more cost-effective for me to solve their problems and clean up their situations rather than assigning me a role as “mentor” to provide information and moral support in a space where they practiced solving their problems or “expert mourner” sitting with them in discomfort and suffering. Again, my situation had enough luck, desperation, poverty, privilege, good sense, or love that the physical safety and main mental safety of each family member was mostly protected. 

“And They Lived Happier-ly Ever After”

However, within weeks of starting to say “Yes” authentically, I started thinking about looking for a counselor for us because of the anger in the situation and I didn’t want to “push our luck” from a literal perspective. It took another year of sitting in an “almost healing but also self-destructing” space before we got into family counseling, and then individual counseling for the 3 main family members. We spent 4 years in that counseling space, veering away from annihilating each other and our relationships over and over again as we eased into to using different ways to access, perceive, and collaborate on each other’s narratives. 

“Saying Yes” without resentment eventually led to me demanding “Win-Win” situations where I have to “win” something for myself too. It has led to situations where I argue with my girl- children when they leave their “winnings at the table” and try to martyr themselves to prove a feminine point. My husband and I wound up creating an entirely different framework for our relationship because we both needed the “Wins” – the accommodations, compassion, and authenticity that resentful decision-making had been robbing us of.

Pro Tips:

If you are going to start this radical kindness of “Saying Yes Authentically”, stock up on food and drink staples first.  When you start to do the “emotional work” of personal reconstruction (which this a core feature of) – you need the food, possibly the ritual (if cooking is a life-sustaining/meditating ritual for you), and the relationship protection that throwing food into a situation brings (seriously, my teenager cannot argue with me nearly so well on a full belly – it’s magical). So many fights are triggered needlessly by being “hangry” that protecting yourself from that is a pretty useful short-term tactic. 

I’d also recommend using the “Tree of Contemplative Practices” to figure out what you as a person says “Yes” authentically to so that you recalibrate your time/attention/resources budget to reduce “Yes with Resentment” waste. If your family members would like it and/or can be compensated fairly for devoting attention and mental resources towards it, I’d share it with them too and start those conversations.

The Tree of Contemplative Practices

Find external support/” your tribe” for this endeavor sooner than later.  I regret not finding a professional counselor earlier than we did to help me with this.  I found a collection of memes, research, and women’s support research that acted as a north star to guide me.

*Photo by Drahomír Hugo Posteby-Mach on Unsplash

7 Reasons Biblical Pharisees Would Love Latter-day Saint Garments

Jesus Christ denounced Pharisees for wrongheaded strategies that sound eerily similar to the garments mandate of my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), especially in the midst of a recent retrenchment campaign by church leadership.

Adult members of the LDS Church are required to buy long underwear from the Church called garments and wear them under their clothing every day, in every climate, during virtually every activity. In 2019, church leaders quietly rolled out a kinder, gentler approach to the longstanding garment mandate, removing the requirement to wear garments “night and day” and suggesting members might “seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit” to determine how and when to wear garments.

But in Spring of 2024, church leaders made a hard U-turn on garment policy. The “day and night” language came back and “seek[ing] the guidance of the Holy Spirit” was deleted in favor of inflexible rules. President Dallin H. Oaks announced during General Conference that LDS people would be required to “wear temple garments continuously, with the only exceptions being those obviously necessary” and condemned anyone who would “take a day off to remove one’s garments.”

Much like the First Presidency’s efforts to ramp up the rules around garment-wearing, the Pharisees would “reduce religion to the observance of a multiplicity of ceremonial rules.” Enforcing a bunch of rules did not help Biblical people remember Jesus Christ, which is the stated intention of recent efforts to enforce stricter garment-wearing rules, but rather, “they were a major obstacle to the reception of Christ and the gospel by the Jewish people.” (Pharisees, Bible Dictionary, LDS Gospel Library)

7 Reasons Biblical Pharisees Would Love Latter-day Saint GarmentsPharisees wore garments as “an outward expression.”Pharisees placed burdens on people’s shoulders. Garments do that literally and figuratively.Pharisees barred people from entering the kingdom of heaven, like the garment mandate is used to bar people from entering modern temples.Pharisees created burdensome extra rules that went beyond the commandments. The LDS mandate to wear garments “day and night” is an extra rule never mentioned in temple ceremonies.Pharisees took advantage of women in poverty. The financial burden of garment compliance also disparately affects women.Pharisees really liked to be in charge of other people. Through the garment mandate, LDS leaders demand authority over some of the most intimate and private aspects of life.Pharisees focused on the wrong things. Likewise, focusing on garments distracts from “weightier matters” of the gospel.Pharisees wore garments as “an outward expression.”

In the latest version of the garment statement, we are told that “wearing the garment is an outward expression of your inner commitment to follow Him.” But based on what Jesus said about the Pharisees, wearing garments to show off your religiosity outwardly is inappropriate. Jesus said of the Pharisees, “But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments.” (Matthew 23:5)

Jesus pointed out that displaying their religiosity by garment-wearing did not actually cause the Pharisees to be more righteous: “Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” (Matthew 23:28) Why would the modern church choose a strategy that Jesus Christ has already condemned as a failure?

By the way, that bit about “enlarging the borders of their garments” particularly bites for short women. There are recurring reports of church garment designers lengthening petite garments, possibly motivated by a desire to thwart tall women from getting away with wearing stylish shorts by buying petites but simultaneously making garment-wearing even harder for short women, who find themselves wearing ever longer “petite” garments that fall well past their knees.

Pharisees placed burdens on people’s shoulders. Garments do that literally and figuratively.

Jesus said the Pharisees “bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders.” (Matthew 23:4)

Depending on body type, activity levels and climate, 24/7 garment-wearing can be a heavy burden for many people. And while Jesus was referring to figurative burdens Pharisees placed on people’s shoulders, it’s interesting that our modern church has a literal requirement to cover the shoulders with a bulky garment.

Pharisees barred people from entering the kingdom of heaven, like the garment mandate is used to bar people from entering modern temples.

Jesus said, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.” (Matthew 23:13)

Likewise, modern LDS church leaders have set up an enforcement system for the garment-wearing mandate that bars noncompliant LDS people from entering the temple and participating in ordinances that, according to LDS doctrine, are required to enter the kingdom of heaven.

LDS church members must report their compliance at temple recommend interviews with male priesthood leaders, a particularly distressing requirement for women, who must disclose their underwear choices to someone of the opposite sex. The temple recommend script devotes 144 words to garment compliance, compared to an average of 25 words for each other topic addressed. If the interviewer stays on script, nearly a third of the temple recommend interview is devoted to listing, explaining and enforcing rules about garments, which leads me to the next item on this list.

Pharisees created burdensome extra rules that went beyond the commandments. The LDS mandate to wear garments “day and night” is an extra rule never mentioned in temple ceremonies.

Unsatisfied with simply keeping the commandments as written in the scriptures, Pharisees “made a fence or hedge about the law by adding numerous rules” that made “the wholesome requirements of Mosaic law…burdensome.” (James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ, chapters 6 and 15)

Jesus responded to the Pharisees’ fence laws with a targeted campaign of civil disobedience. (Matthew 12:10-13; Matthew 15:1-20; Mark 2:23-28; Luke 11:38-42; John 5:1-16) When Pharisees accused him of breaking the Sabbath because he was ignoring their rules, he said, “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

LDS Church members are told to wear garments as part of the temple initiatory ceremony, with wording indicating that garments, like the Sabbath, are made for man: “Wear the garment throughout your life and it will be a shield and a protection to you.” How to wear garments “throughout your life” could be as open to interpretation as how to keep the Sabbath day holy. “It’s good to exercise throughout our lives, but that doesn’t mean we exercise 24/7.” (Jana Reiss, Religion News Service)

The words “day and night” do not appear anywhere in the temple ceremonies (as of the time of this writing. I hope this article does not give church leaders any ideas!) Neither do the temple ceremonies include any other rules about how and when to wear garments, but LDS church leaders have built a Pharisaical fence around garment-wearing, adding rules about garments to the temple recommend interview script, the General Handbook of church policy, General Conference talks, and church magazines.

Like the Pharisees, the LDS Church has even institutionalized an oral tradition for passing down additional unwritten rules. When church members complete the temple initiatory for the first time, they attend a learning session where temple workers speak off script about garment-wearing rules they may have heard throughout their lives. Some members never realize they are strictly obeying garment-wearing rules that do not apply to other church members who heard a different speech from a different temple worker.

By the way, whether garments are also “made for [wo]man” is more of an open question, since they are patterned after men’s underwear and may negatively impact gynecological health. Speaking of the impact of garments on women…

Pharisees took advantage of women in poverty. The financial burden of garment compliance also disparately affects women.

Jesus condemned Pharisees for taking advantage of financially vulnerable women. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses,” he said. (Matthew 23:14)

Garment wearing is expensive for women. Most female garment wearers, unlike their male counterparts, must layer secular underwear with garments (bras to support breasts and panties to secure winged menstrual pads), so garments may more than double a woman’s total underwear budget. Garments are designed to accommodate most styles of men’s outerwear, but are incompatible with many styles of women’s clothing, so women also shoulder an additional financial burden for buying and tailoring custom clothing to cover the garment.

The LDS Church has imposed ethically questionable rules mandating that members purchase garments from a monopoly supplier, which happens to be owned by the LDS Church itself, ensuring that revenue derived from enforcing a garment mandate makes its way back into the church’s own coffers. Arguably, the monopoly may be more about controlling clothing choices than about money, but even if so, that leads me to another point Jesus made about the Pharisees.

Pharisees really liked to be in charge of other people. Through the garment mandate, LDS leaders demand authority over some of the most intimate and private aspects of life.Rabbi by Jan Styka, 1892. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Jesus chastised Pharisees for their addiction to power. He said Pharisees “love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.”(Matthew 23:6-7)

It seems like LDS church leaders love power, too, because with the 24/7 garment mandate they’re imposing their authority over some of the most intimate and private aspects of daily life. Going well beyond requiring garments as a uniform members wear during religious ceremonies in temples and churches, they extend their authority into the privacy of church members’ bedrooms by regulating daily underwear. Church leaders thus exercise authority over church members while they are asleep in their own beds or even engaging in foreplay with their spouses.

Pharisees focused on the wrong things. Likewise, focusing on garments distracts from “weightier matters” of the gospel.

According to LDS church leaders, the purpose of garments is to remind us of our temple covenants and Jesus Christ. Ironically, for many people, wearing garments all day everyday leads to health problems, psychological distress and logistic challenges, distractions that may make it harder to focus on gospel principles.

Jesus condemned Pharisees for focusing on distracting minutia instead of gospel principles. “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:23-24)

In the first few months after LDS Church leaders announced intentions to strain at the gnat of garment compliance, I counted seven local church meetings where underwear was a main topic of discussion. Then I quit counting.

But hear me out, what if we remembered Jesus by actually talking about Jesus, instead of diverting worship time away from Jesus Christ and His gospel to focus on rules about underwear?

I Don’t Want Kingdoms, Thrones, or Dominions

In one of my memories of Primary, I’m around ten years old sitting in a square, windowless classroom. The teacher, Brother L, gestures with his hands in front of the brown chalkboard like he’s a Marvel superhero wielding magic.

“You young men,” he says, “will one day create earths! You’ll take matter from this and matter from that and fuse them together. You’ll have unlimited priesthood power to manipulate elements and build earths!”

I raised my hand. “What will girls get to do?”

Brother L thought about it for a moment, then said carefully, “Earths need flowers. Girls will come up with pretty things and their husbands will make it.”

Boys get all cosmic power but girls get to make eternal pinterest boards for pretty flowers. Sounds about right.

This was far from my last encounter with Mormon men and their subtle power-obsession.

As a young adult, I attended a local fireside with Elder Bednar. At the end of the Q&A meeting, we all stood as we usually would after a church meeting. A huge stake center full of 18-30 year olds did what 18-30 years olds did–we chatted. Gathered our things. Made after meeting dinner plans.

Suddenly, Elder Bednar stood and the organ postlude music cut off. He grabbed the microphone and spoke in an angry voice I’ll never forget.

“How dare you. How dare you all stand and be so noisy after an apostle of the Lord has just spoken with you and left you with his apostolic blessing.”

We were rebuked into immediate silence. He then directed us to sit back down. We rose again after he stood and filed into a quiet line to walk up to the podium and shake his hand before exiting out the back door. You could have heard a pin drop in that chapel. I’ll never forget shaking his hand and feeling a strange sense of disappointment and coldness.

Bednar clearly felt that his status and authority warranted our silence to show respect. He didn’t hesitate to wield his church-given power to admonish us for what he deemed irreverence and for daring to stand before he did. (And I’ve heard through the internet grapevine that this is a typical move for him when members or even his own wife stand before him.)

Through actions and lessons like these over a lifetime, I’ve realized that these are not isolated incidents.

In the 1840s in Nauvoo, Joseph Smith expanded not only his theology, but his kingdom. This was arguably his most fruitful period of religious and political creation. The temple ceremony, plural marriage, revelations, the Nauvoo Legion, running for president––Joseph was busy. After years of being chased from state to state, losing everything, and facing threats on his people and his person, I believe Joseph saw Nauvoo has his redemption.

The new temple rites initiated his inner circle into his loyal court. Plural marriage gave him power over families and women who would bear him posterity. The Nauvoo Legion appointed him a Lieutenant-General, the highest rank possible, held only by George Washington. The Council of Fifty declared him king of the world. Joseph even ran for president in 1844, which they believed would lead to a political kingdom of God.

It makes sense to me that after over a decade of running from the law and mobs that Joseph and many early Saints would crave some power and control over their turbulent lives. I think this was a huge motivation for his actions in Nauvoo, particularly the temple rite. Joseph’s trauma over losing and desiring so much is the bedrock for our dogmas.

At the heart of the Mormon temple rite, both then and today, is a quest for power. It’s a desire for certainty not only in personal and familial salvation, but also proof that we will ultimately triumph over earthly enemies and partake in God’s enormous power ourselves.

It’s about obtaining promises of kingdoms, thrones, powers, dominions, and principalities. It’s about becoming gods and goddesses. It’s about building new worlds and creating never-ending posterity. It’s about ruling and reigning over the house of Israel.

In short, it’s about Joseph finally getting to best the enemies and mobs that took everything from him and the Saints. It’s about men like Bednar feeling secure in their priesthood authority and control over others. It’s men like Brother L building whatever they want with their awesome power.

I’ve heard countless men in the church in both small and big ways declare their thirst for eternal power: temple sealers who go on about the promises of principalities and thrones in the sealing ceremony; bishops at the pulpit preaching about the majesty of becoming gods; Sunday school teachers lecturing on the powers of the priesthood like they’re magic.

It’s interesting to me that I’ve never once heard a woman in the church talk about getting kingdoms, thrones, and dominions like men do. I’ve never heard them wax on about bringing matter together to create a world or gleefully envisioning ruling and reigning forever. When women speak of eternal blessings, they speak of family relationships and eternal love, not kingdoms or godhood.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I’m not saying all Mormon men are power-hungry, but I do think that hunger is written into the DNA of our doctrine and taught to our men as acceptable. I don’t think most women engage with the Mormon power narrative in the same way because it was never designed for them.

And when I really sit back and think about it, I wouldn’t even want Joseph’s definitions of power if it was offered to me as a woman.

I don’t want the priesthood man’s ideal of eternal blessings. I don’t want kingdoms, thrones, or dominions. I have no desire to spend eternity ruling and reigning over anyone. I don’t want principalities or the ability to create earths. I’ve no interest in greatness and glory, powers and priesthoods, worlds without end.

I want to spend eternity with everyone, living equally side by side. I envision a world of beauty and personal creation that has nothing to do with superhero-like priesthood powers. I see myself in a small cottage where I love all for who they are, where we work and cry and share together. There are no kingdoms to rule or thrones to sit on. No priesthood men to build the cosmos while I design flowers. There is no hierarchy of leaders that demands my respect without earning it.

Instead, we are all sitting down in the kingdom of God together, as one.

If the Celestial Kingdom is Joseph’s fever dream of ambition and power, then maybe I don’t want it. I don’t want Bednar’s stern rules or Brother L’s small vision of creation. Instead, I set my hopes and faith on a truly equal eternity where there are no titles, no hierarchies, no separations; only Christ-like love.