Frustrated

I believe I have mentioned how lately with conferences I watch until someone says something that makes me mad, and then I back away until the next session. (Though yesterday we went on a family outing, so I really have no idea how this session is going.)

I wasn't always like that. Growing up, conferences were days off, but shortly after graduating from high school I started watching and reading. Yes, I might have to take notes to keep myself awake, because it is a lot, but I enjoyed it and I got fond of all of the apostles and many of the seventies, whereas previously they were just names.

My scripture study this year has led to me reading old church magazines, and I just finished up the Ensign with the talks from the October 1992 conference.

I remember this conference pretty well. I was working to save up for a mission, but had two terms of college done. Boyd K Packer's talk about how not everyone could go to BYU felt very affirming for a Duck. I remembered being glad for it then, and surprised to learn later (at the MTC) that it made a lot of people mad. There needed to be room for their kids at church schools. They were not willing to accept otherwise.

That was interesting to me because it seemed like a stupid thing to feel rebellious over, though I did kind of have some understanding that it was because it didn't apply to me. The Packers had their own tradition of going to church schools that they were letting go of, so clearly you could find it more meaningful and still make peace with it, but some people had a hard time. (Honestly, it still seems like a lot of the youth here cannot conceive of not going to a church school.)

I remembered a few of the other talks too, especially the one by Glenn L Pace. I didn't have any specific memories of David B Haight's talk, but it bothered me this time.

First off, I should probably confirm that I have found this issue more annoying than I found it twenty-six years ago. It is not too terrible, but generally the thing that gets me is the judgment and the isolationism - the same issues I have now, really, but I didn't notice them then.

I am not thrilled that Elder Haight quoted Pat Buchanan, but my real problem was this quote from Chicago Tribune  writer Michael Hirsley: “the nation’s most widely accepted prejudice is anti-Christian.”

That is such a falsehood.

No, I don't think he meant to lie - he was a good man - but that just wasn't true, and the only way you can think it is true is to be ignorant of the world at large.

I suppose the idea is that you may get criticized for saying racist things or sexist things. Fine, but that ignores all of the homophobic things that were said in that conference. It ignores how people would tell you that racism was bad, but that this is three years before John Dilulio was pushing his super-predator theory and two years before The Bell Curve, and there was a lot of racism cloaked as science that has since been debunked. This was during the time that Lily Ledbetter was working for less pay and not being told. I could keep going.

One thing that has frustrated me in previous historical reading is how the Catholics and Jews were doing so much during the Civil Rights Era. You don't hear that about Mormons. It probably would have seemed hypocritical, given where we were, but that is a result of complacency. We didn't need to know about it, so we didn't care.

I know we have made progress on homosexuality, and that there is still room to go. However, I know that the progress we have made has come from listening to people instead of just assuming how corrupt they must be. Is that becoming of a saint?

The thing I notice now that I didn't think of then is how many references there are to the wicked world. I am seeing a wicked world where there is oppression of marginalized people, and where we could be working together to fight that and make this a better world. Many people are seeing this wickedness as more about personal immoral behavior that they need to distance themselves from lest they get some of it on them.

Here's the thing, as Elder Haight concluded his talk, the protections he spoke about were all personal things that we can do while still being aware of the world. We can attend our meetings and study the scriptures and attend the temple. It doesn't matter how many non-members you talk to and listen to, they cannot prevent you from doing that. That we are able to do these things, and that you can pick up a set of scriptures anywhere, in multiple languages, even getting them on your phone -- those are all signs that we aren't being particularly persecuted here.

We are still far too good at shutting the world out, but we need to think about what it means.

The restored gospel is a great gift. It brings with it opportunities for guidance and strength and so many resources.

We are not living up to that if we are not helping the downtrodden.

We are living against it if we are finding ourselves to be downtrodden when we can't make other people live the way we think they should.