Handbook for Life
“Ask me any question and we’ll look it up in the church’s handbook to see what the church has to say.”
My dad, who was also the bishop of our ward, was sitting in front of me and all of the other young men and women for a combined Sunday School lesson. I looked around at my peers as some of their hands slowly went up, ready to begin their questions.
“What does the church believe about surrogacy?” one girl shyly asked.
“Great question!” my dad responded as he began searching through the official Church Handbook of Instruction.
“The pattern of a husband and wife providing bodies for God’s spirit children is divinely appointed (see 2.1.3). For this reason, the Church discourages surrogate motherhood. However, this is a personal matter that is ultimately left to the judgment and prayerful consideration of the husband and wife.” General Handbook
“Oh, so the church doesn’t support surrogacy?” the girl asked, unsure.
“It seems the church’s stance is that surrogacy is not the best option for a child, especially since they are not born in the covenant. But they also leave that decision up to you.” my Dad responded. “Who has the next question?”
The lesson went much the same for the next hour. All of us asking the fringe questions of our minds, things we had wondered without knowing if we were even allowed to ask about them. Each time, my dad would find the topic, open to the page, and read the church’s official stance.
I remember participating in this lesson and feeling a sense of wonder at “tapping into” this expanse of knowledge and understanding about the world. This book held all of the answers. My dad held all of the answers through having access to this book. It felt so secure to me, like being wrapped in a blanket. I didn’t question any of it. I didn’t wonder if I should have a different point of view. I soaked up every answer as if it was another missing puzzle piece to my understanding about the world.
What a thing- to have an actual handbook to life. What a blessing to have such knowledge.
And then I got older.
And sometimes, those questions would rise back to the surface, scratching at my body and mind, unsettled. Because sometimes, I needed answers that were bigger than the answers in the book. I needed to know why it mattered so much how a child born to loving parents came to this earth. Why did it matter if it was through surrogacy or IVF or adoption? Why did the church feel the need to make a statement about this at all?
Over and over I came back to that Sunday School lesson in my mind and the peace, the security I felt in knowing I had all of the answers, or at least, I had access to all of the answers. I wanted to feel that kind of security again, but each time I came up against another question, it wasn’t so clean cut. It wasn’t so easy to put back down again. There were too many why’s and the blanket answer of “just have faith” wasn’t enough to ease them back into security.
After many years of wrestling with the questions of life and in my practice as a therapist, I have come to learn that having a “handbook to life” is at best misguided, and at worst harmful to those that believe in it.
When a parent is teaching a young child to behave, they may begin by giving structured rules. “You can’t say cuss words.” Then, every time the child says bad words, they will remind them. There may even be consequences. But eventually if that child is like many children, they will ask themselves “why?” They may even challenge their parent about it or try it out in other ways when their parent isn’t around. This is healthy development, but it’s a step I don’t think enough people in the church understand or have been taught to engage in. How often are the “whys” we ask shut down with platitudes about being more faithful or obedient? We are not shown the way to wrestle with the information and find an personal answer. We are given a rule and the reason for the rule every single time will be “because the church (God, the prophet, the scriptures, etc…) said so.”
So often, a client will be sitting across from me, wrestling with their own questions in their lives. “Should I stay in this marriage?” “Should I leave my job?” “What do I need?” “Who am I?” and they look at me, their therapist, as a guide. They have parts of them that would love for me to hand them the answer. They would love for me to pull out a “handbook of instruction” filled with inspiration and guidance from some kind of omnipotent figure that will tell them exactly what they need to do.
And I understand because I’ve been there. I am there. We all crave that kind of knowing and security. Of course we do.
But I also have been a therapist for long enough to know that there is no possible way for me, someone who is not living my client’s life, to know which choice is best for them. That actually, making that choice for them or telling them what to do is one of the most harmful things I could do to them.
Because when I make a choice for someone else, I am telling them that I don’t trust they can make that choice on their own. I am telling them that somehow my access to power, or strength, or authority is better or more reliable than theirs. I am saying, “I don’t believe you can find what’s best for you.”
But when I can take a step back and say to my client, “This is so hard and so complicated. I am here in this wrestle with you. I am here to help you find the answer that fits for you because I fully and without a doubt trust you to know yourself”- that’s where the growth really happens. That’s where they learn that they had what they needed inside of them all along. That’s when they start to see their strength in finding their own answers and caring for their own needs.
I’ve come to realize that the church has an entire handbook of instruction, not because it trusts its members but because it doesn’t. These “stances” on fringe issues that have nothing to do with following Jesus come from a place of distrust, not a place of empowerment. When every stance is run through a filter of “what does the church have to say about this” before we can even question or come to a conclusion on our own, that is an outsourcing of the trust we are supposed to have in ourselves.
During my formative teenage years, I wish I would’ve known to first ask the questions of “How do I feel about surrogacy or abortion or LGBTQ issues?” instead of “How does the church feel about these things?” I wish I would’ve had someone willing to wrestle with these questions with me until I found my way to my own security rather than outsourcing that security to the church. Because once the church’s answers started to fall short, it left me with no tools and no sense of self-trust to find my way to the answers I needed.
Handbooks are necessary as guidelines to establish order and conformity to a system. They keep a ship running, but they also keep it small. There is so much beauty and expansiveness in the trust we can give to ourselves when we can take a step back and say, “I don’t know what the answer is here, but I trust myself to find it.”
