Stupid Mormon Tricks - Dissent

I can't find the original blog post, but there had been one some people were sharing that was a "humorous" response to ordain women. It was taking the track that if we are going to talk about equality, let's talk about how they have better chairs and tablecloths in Relief Society, and went on in that vein. It was stupid and condescending enough that at the time I though it should be it's own "stupid Mormon tricks" post, but I had other things I needed to get through. Today seemed like time.

I have my own Women and Priesthood post, and I don't intend to rehash that, but other things I have read have made me think that it is important to cover how we handle disagreements.

For the one writer's specific points, there is nothing stopping any teacher or presidency member in the Elders Quorum from bringing a tablecloth. It doesn't happen because no one finds it that important, so equating that to Ordain Women is a trivializing thing. For women who truly feel that not having the priesthood makes them less, mocking those concerns is not going to help.

I think there are a few wrong types of thinking that can contribute to this. One is that if something does not cause me inconvenience or pain, it is not a problem. That is an issue of awareness and sensitivity, but it allows all sorts of institutionalized inequality to flourish. By that token it is fine if some places don't serve people of color, or there are no ramps or wheelchairs for the physically disabled. To only care about that which affects you personally is the opposite of Christ-like.

Building upon that, it is not uncommon for many people to respond with anger to any challenges to the status quo. I suspect that anger is based in fear, especially for those who do well under the status quo, but we have to remember how much is just tradition.

I know that when the first women started wearing trousers, or wearing their hair cut short, it was taken as a sign of something horrible, whereas now it is no big deal. There was never anything inherently evil about women with short hair in pants, people just weren't used to it. They adjusted and the world kept turning.

So it's worth pointing out that there is no rule about what women wear to church. It is a tradition that we dress nicely to show respect, and it is tradition that nice dress for women is skirts and dresses, but when investigators show up wearing jeans, or short skirts, or things we don't normally see, we accept that, and if some women who know the traditions want to wear pants, that is pretty minor. There are much more important things to worry about.

The other thing I saw was someone whom I love angry at these women because he felt like they were giving the church a bad name, and it might make it harder for him to share the Gospel. I do sympathize with that, because there are certainly members of the church who make me cringe. However, we need to have confidence in the truth of the Gospel.

There is already plenty of controversy, and there is no reason to expect that to decrease. Our faith needs to be strong enough that we can say that we believe in prophets, even if we don't understand why they said certain things. If the Gospel was going to wilt under a little bit of hardship, it wouldn't be very useful.

We believe contention is bad - that is true - but the presence of disagreement does not have to automatically mean contention. I can think that you are wrong, and still love you. I can also think that you are wrong about what needs to happen, but correct that there is a problem, and caring about that is much more likely to result in harmony than the majority shouting down the minority.

We all have room for plenty of repentance and growth, and sometimes the first step to finding that is to quit writing off the people you just know are wrong.