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.)