It’s All About Perception

A Facebook friend asked a question about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She has a friend who has left the Church because he feels all it does is guilt people into not doing bad things. My friend, on the other hand, remains faithful because she doesn’t see any attempt at guilt, only loving encouragement to be the best person she can be. Ultimately, these alternate foci would have the same outward results, but inwardly, the directions are obviously worlds apart. Her question, therefore, is a request for others’ opinions on the subject. As my response is characteristically verbose, I figured I’d post it here. 😊

The way I see this is as a matter of perception. Allow me to share a story from my own personal history:

I joined the Church of Jesus Christ when I was 16 years old, and given my age, was introduced into a quorum of priests. Our quorum advisor, Brother Hurst, frequently taught us that despite the great power in our Priesthood office, we of ourselves were nothing. He further reminded us that women (who are not ordained to specific Priesthood offices) are in no way our lesser, that due to their innate love and spirituality, they were probably even our greater. I heard these same doctrines echoed in Sacrament Meeting, in Sunday School, in General Conference, pretty much everywhere in the Church; and the Young Women in our ward would, in their youthful innocence, often remind us that they didn’t need Priesthood ordination like Young Men did. By the time I turned 17, I felt like my accidental birth as a male made me worth less than scum—so much so that I actually considered gender transition, till an understanding bishop talked me down from that ledge.

President Gordon B. Hinckley

A few years later, I was nearing the end of my full-time mission to Spain when the presiding prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley, gave a talk in General Conference entitled Women of the Church. As in many other General Conference talks (from a variety of speakers), President Hinckley extolled the great value of women, both in the Church of Jesus Christ and generally. By the time he was done, my old feelings had returned again. I honestly believed that no matter what I did, no matter how perfect I became, I would never be worthy to lick the dog crap off the shoe of the most vile woman that ever lived. I contacted my mission president and told him I was done. There was no way I could do any more good there, and I requested an early release. Thankfully, he too was inspired and helped me see through the last two months of my mission.

Now that a couple of decades have passed, I look back at that talk and wonder what the heck I was thinking. Yes, President Hinckley extolled the value of women, but he never once denigrated men. Yes, unordained women are authorized to do millions of things that unordained men are not, but that doesn’t make men’s contributions inferior. I’ve talked to many people about this subject (and mentioned this talk specifically), and I’ve never found anyone who had the same feelings as I. But if I had abandoned my faith over this, I would still be sitting here, decades later, thinking that the Church of Jesus Christ and its members are a bunch of misandrist jerks—and probably telling others the same thing.

The point is that we are all individuals, with individual personalities and pasts and everything else that goes with it. Two people can hear the exact same words and come to exactly different conclusions. One person listens to the Prophet’s counsel and hears only love; another listens to the same counsel and hears only hatred. Why is this? It’s all in the ear of the beholder. I think the only real way to determine true intent is to ask the one who’s speaking, and I submit as my own, person opinion that most people—not just prophets, but most people, full stop—are not trying to hurt anyone with their words.