You (or I) may be the sample of one

The following letter appeared in my local paper’s printing of the syndicated Ask Amy column this week:

Dear Amy: My 26-year old daughter waitresses in an upscale eatery in a liberal college town. She has numerous tattoos visible on her arms and legs, which get a lot of attention. I don’t like tattoos, but she is my child, and I love her regardless.

A coworker’s mom, who is Mormon and visiting from out of state, sat in my daughter’s section and proceeded to tell her that she was disgusting. She said she could not believe my daughter was allowed to work there, told her not to spit in her food and said that she is going to hell.

I am seething. My religious beliefs teach love and acceptance to all, and I firmly believe that I should not judge others. My daughter treated the offender with kindness, but she was stunned by this spewing. What a perfect way to turn others against religion!

Was there a tactful response my daughter could have given to make the offender realize her behavior was wrong? – Sad Mom (emphasis added).

*sigh*

My first response was to wonder why this offending woman identified herself as LDS, and worse, why she claimed the young tattooed waitress would be going to hell?

This dear sister obviously missed all those admonitions of the Savior to love one another and not to judge one another.

I’ve spent more time thinking about this than I should, probably, but I’ve come up with some scenarios:

1. Sad Mom was aware of the visiting woman’s religion because the co-worker had mentioned it, not because the visitor had mentioned it. Sad Mom then attributed the awful behavior to the visitor’s Mormon-ness rather than to her being a crabby old lady. (This is the best case scenario.)

2. The visitor actually mentioned her Mormon-ness why chastising the young waitress about her tattoos. (Can you imagine that discussion? What do you know about the Mormons? Do you know we hate tattoos, and people who wear them? Yikes!!)

3. The young waitress embellished the story for her mother. (Can you believe what happened to me today? This woman sits in my station and goes off on my tattoos….)

The lesson that lept to mind is that whether we like it or not, we are missionaries. We are seen by others as representatives of our faith and our church. For some people, we are the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Well, of course we know there are stupid people everywhere. And the church is not immune to that condition. How sad that this LDS woman would treat a waitress the way she did and make claims she has no right in the world to make. (I have to chuckle as I think about a professor I had in college who wore long sleeves every day of the year to hide tattoos he’d gotten as young sailor. This tattooed professor was also a sealer in the temple when I knew him.)

I hope that if I’m someone’s sample of the church that I do a better job representing.

(BTW, Amy’s response was spot on: “Dear Sad: This isn’t about religion, but about rudeness….” She goes on to point out that the waitress did the right thing trying to be polite, and suggested that she could have offered to re-seat the upset woman in a different section of the restaurant.)

On inclusion

The discussion of white shirts over at Mormon Matters has gotten me thinking about inclusion. You know the deal: A number of different general authorities (including Elder Nelson and Elder Holland) have suggested it's good to encourage young men to wear white shirts while blessing and passing the sacrament. Some are ok with the idea and agree that there's symbolism in the action: white shirts mirror the white of baptism and the temple. Others are not ok, and find this another intrusive near-commandment that allows some to judge the righteousness of others.

You can guess where I stand. I'm the guy who shaved his beard happily to work in the temple. And, as I told a young friend who questioned why, I would gladly have shaved my head if they'd asked me to. Those who make those decisions can make whatever decisions they like, and I can choose to accept them, and that's ok by me. Others don’t feel the same way, and think there are too many rules.

The good news is that the tent of the gospel is big enough for both camps and more. In fact, the gospel tent is big enough for all of us, as long as we are seeking to find and follow the Savior.

Here’s an example that illustrates the point:

I was reading in 3 Nephi 18 this morning where the Savior institutes the sacrament among the Nephites, and he counsels them only to partake of the sacrament worthily, and to prevent the unworthy from partaking of the sacrament. But, he also says of the unworthy, "Nevertheless, ye shall not cast him out from among you, but ye shall minister unto him and shall pray for him unto the Father, in my name….Nevertheless, ye shall not cast him out of your synagogues, or your places of worship…" (3 Nephi 18:30, 32).

I don't mean to link shirt color to worthiness! Instead, I mean to suggest that the Lord's standard is high for believers: We should strive to be worthy to participate in priesthood ordinances, and we should be willing to include those who are not. There are those whose calling it is to judge worthiness; the rest of us just shouldn't. Period. We should love and accept and encourage and invite all to come unto Christ.

When Elder Clayton Christiansen, then an area authority 70, visited our stake a number of years ago, he suggested that the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for the righteous – and he reminded us that we were all in the former category in one way or another. Further, he suggested if we couldn't smell tabacco smoke in our meetings, then we weren't working hard enough.

Knowing that, who are we to judge another who may think or act differently than we do? Indeed we're taught to invite with "persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;
By kindness, and pure knowledge…without hypocrisy, and without guile" (D&C121:41-42).

The tent is big and there's plenty of room. Come on in!

A higher standard?

Do you hold yourself to a higher standard than you do others? Sometimes I think I do, and I wonder if I should.

I tell myself I do it out of tolerance, and in an effort not to judge. But do I?

I grew up LDS (from about age 9) in a non-LDS community. Except for my sisters, I was usually the only Mormon in my school, and the older I got, the more divergent my standards (or better said in those early days, my family's standards) were from those of my friends and classmates. Now in the professional world, I work with very few church members, so I am in the same boat.

Even among church members, some of us attend more regularly; some go to the temple more often (and some don't go); some are more consistent about holding Family Home Evening than others, and so on.

My parents never taught me to have friends only in the church. It would have been difficult to do so as I was the only boy my age at church. But even if I had many friends at church, my folks would not have wanted me to isolate myself on some Mormon social island. We have also encouraged our kids to have friends at church and outside the church. We live in a non-Mormon community, but there are more kids my kids' ages at church than I had, and they are fortunate to have good friends there, too. But they also have friends at school who aren't LDS. Some of those friends are religious in their own families and others aren't.

While I know what my standards are, is it fair or reasonable to assume those I associate with will have the same standards? In high school I was fortunate to have a group of friends who, while they did not always share my standards, at least respected them. (The weekend of high school graduation, most handed me a can of Sprite at the door, warning me that the punch was spiked.) My work colleagues are respectful of my choice not to drink alcohol. And they know better than to ask me to go places where I wouldn't take my wife. And many have learned to be more mindful of their language around me (though I've never asked them to).

Some of our children as teenagers have had friends who really pushed my tolerance envelope, however. It almost seems they sought friends who were on the very edge, and I wondered how to respond. (To tell them not to associate with those kids would have been foolhardy; by this time they were old enough to make these choices, and they were making them.) We generally tried to be gracious when these friends came by, and the friends were generally respectful of us when they were in our home. But we worried.

The questions that linger in my mind: how do we teach our children right from wrong, and still teach our children to be tolerant of others? Are my standards higher or just different? We use the phrase "love the sinner, hate the sin", but even that phrase smacks of judgment to me. Or is it my place to understand what God expects of ME (and only me) and live accordingly? Is my telling myself that I have higher (or different) standards than others allow me (or force me) to judge others in, even in some passive way? And is that ok or not?

I'm interested in your thoughts and experience.