This.
This was written by a Mormon man. It was spoken in Church one Sunday recently. It is brilliantly, lovingly written. Beautifully articulated. For those of you who aren't Mormon, don't exit out of this post quite yet, please. This applies to any situation in our lives. ANY! This does not just apply to our religious or political views. This does not just apply to what we choose to do in our spare time. This does not just apply to those who see things differently, who have addictions, who do things differently than perhaps they were raised to do. This applies to everyone. In any situation. I plead with you, as you read this, to do two things: 1) Recognize that if you feel isolated or marginalized, that you are not alone. That there are thousands of people who feel the same way you do, who perhaps keep it quiet. 2) Take a minute and look at yourself and determine if, perhaps, you are someone who isolates and marginalizes. I think that all of us could admit to doing this at least once. We need to do better.
When my wife and I were in college, we became close friends with another couple from our stake—Rich and Angie [Note: Names changed for privacy reasons]. I had met Rich through work, but we became fast friends and ended up in the same stake as them, and our friendship grew closer and closer over time. Eventually they moved away after graduation, but we kept up a tradition of spending Thanksgiving with them for many years afterwards. One year, as Rich and I were watching a movie late at night, he told me that he had been struggling with his relationship with the church for some time, asked me if I would be willing to talk about it with him. I was happy to, of course, and he explained how he no longer believed many things he previously believed, and that he didn’t really know what to do about it. He asked me why I believed some of the things I believed.
We talked about a number of options, and at the end of the conversation, he thanked me for listening said he hadn’t expected that. I was a bit confused by this, but he explained that he had previously tried to speak with his brother in law—with whom he was very close—and that his brother in law had listened for a few moments before stopping the conversation and requesting that Rich never bring it up with him again; he had, for whatever reason, been very uncomfortable discussing a person’s doubt or lack of belief, and felt threatened by it. Rich said that he had also tried to talk with his wife Angie, but that she too was reluctant to discuss it. He had tried to bring up his faith crisis with people closest to him, and they had shut him down. And he understandably felt pretty isolated.I assured Rich that I would always be happy to listen or talk with him, and that it didn’t affect our friendship.
This story doesn’t really have an especially happy ending, though. I’m still friends with Rich. I’m still friends with Angie. But they’re not really friends with each other. Rich and Angie continued to…”Not talk about it” and grew increasingly isolated from each other. Rich stopped attending church entirely. It created an even bigger wedge between them. Eventually, they separated and then divorced. It’s sad. Lots of stories end this way.
There are a lot of people in the church who feel very alone and isolated in the church. It is difficult to talk about this subject, because these folks are not identical and end up on the margins of the church for different reasons.
Throughout my life, I have been blessed (or maybe cursed?) to have been a magnet for these people. I have, through my callings and through some websites I’ve administered, listened to and taken part in more conversations than I can even begin to count with people who, after a long period of activity and participation in the church, come to the realization that things just aren’t working for them very well.
Although there are differences in the stories and backgrounds of these folks, there are also similarities. One of the similarities is marginalization—when you find yourself increasingly isolated and alone and on the outside looking in.
I’d like to use an example from one of my favorite TV shows—Parks and Recreation–to illustrate the idea of marginalization. If you haven’t seen Parks and Recreation, then maybe consider repenting and being a better person, I guess?
Anyway, in this TV show, there is a recurring joke involving a Shetland pony named Li’l Sebastian. Every time Li’l Sebastian appears, all of the characters, including the rough and gruff and cold ones, just instantly melt and begin praising him. They just really love this horse, and think it’s the greatest thing on earth. But there is one character—Ben Wyatt—who didn’t grow up in the community and for whatever reason, doesn’t see what everyone else seems to see. Upon seeing Li’l Sebastian and other peoples’ reactions, Ben innocently tries to ask what the big deal is. The reaction from everyone is a sharp rebuke and just more insistence that Li’l Sebastian is amazing. They shut Ben down.
Over time, Ben Wyatt realizes that asking questions about why everyone is so thrilled with Li’l Sebastian just gets him in trouble, so he stops asking and just begins smiling and nodding. Later in the show, he even buys Li’l Sebastian shirts for himself and his wife—the biggest Li’l Sebastian fan of all. And yet, each time this sort of thing happens, the camera will cut away to Ben’s face, and he’ll give a look that says, “Yeah, I still don’t get it.”
In other words, he fakes it. Now, faking it is funny, because we’re talking about a little horse, right? Also, it’s just TV.
But faking it isn’t funny when we’re talking about matters of faith and belief and membership in an actual community.
For many members of the church, things are easy—the gospel is simple and clear and everything just works. Prayers are followed by feelings of peace; the temple is wonderful; families are happy; the priesthood is powerful; General Conference is amazing; it all just…works. But for some members of the church, the experience is a little bit more like Ben Wyatt and Li’l Sebastian: meetings filled with heartfelt and genuine testimonies or praise for teachings, doctrines, and ideas that, to them, seem a little bit foreign or off. Sometimes, they even feel wrong or incorrect.
The reasons that people struggle to relate and feel marginalized vary. Sometimes people feel alone because of life stage; they are single or divorced in a church where, goodness gracious we just cannot shut up about family and marriage and children. Sometimes its’ political; sometimes its theological. Sometimes, like when we are talking about LGBTQ issues, it is a mix of politics and theology.
Anyway, the causes of marginalization vary, and I don’t want to dwell on any particular cause because that is not fair, but the resulting isolation leads to tragedy. And it is about that “tragedy” that I want to talk about now.
I don’t know what happens when we die—I don’t have any clue, to be honest, and I don’t think anyone really does. We have some scriptures that give us some ideas, but really they don’t tell us the nuts and bolts of existence in the afterlife.
But if I could express a hope, it would be—first—that heaven exists, and second, that I get to go there. And finally—and I apologize for the heavy reliance on pop culture, but I hope that Heaven is like it is in the movie Coco.
If you haven’t seen Coco, the movie is about a family and takes place around the Mexican festival of the Day of the Dead. We see this family struggling to stay together, but what is great is we see that struggle taking place on both the side of the living and the side of the dead. But what is so great is that Heaven in Coco is shown as, basically, a big family dinner. Brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, moms and dads, grandparents—and still with all the personalities. People tease and joke and get angry and are still…just family.
I hope that is really what heaven is like. I hope that heaven is a family dinner with my actual family members—not angelic beings in white robes singing praises and reciting scripture, but my actual family with all of our irreverence and quirks.
And perhaps I hope for that, because frankly, family dinners are really my view of heaven on earth, as well—a big family dinner. I can think of no greater success in my life that a vision, 20 or 30 years from now, when my wife and I are gathered around our dinner table. Our three children are there. Maybe they’re married. I hope so. And I hope they have kids, too. And we’re all laughing and joking and arguing and debating and teasing and sharing, and being a FAMILY.
We love the church, right? We think it offers something special, and we want to share it with others. We hope they see what we see, and when they don’t, it is sad. It hurts. And it hurts even more when the people we share it with are important to us—especially when its family.
Statistically, some research shows that we lose 50% of millennials—these are people roughly my age and younger. That means that, if you have two children, odds are, one of them will, at some point, disaffiliate from the church. That is a bummer. It’s really sad. I wish it wasn’t the case.
That means two things. First, it means that we have a duty and obligation to try and prevent it. We should teach our children and family members the gospel. We should share it and live it as best we can, and hope that it sticks.
But it also means that we cannot stick our heads in the sand and pretend that it is impossible that, one day, one of our family members will decide that the Church is just not working for them. Many of them will, one day, look around in Sacrament meeting, and overwhelmingly feel like “These are not my people.” And it’s not just in the future—there are people who experience that in the present—today, probably in this room.
If and when that day comes, we must be willing and able to talk with our children or spouses or siblings and our friends and fellow ward members. Because if we are not and cannot, if we silence them or refuse to engage with them, we isolate them. And that isolation is the enemy of community, and when belief falters, and there is no community or ties to the community, the feeling that “These are not my people” will become the truth, and they will have no reason to stay. And we will, as a church and a community, be worse off.
But the real lesson from Coco is not just about what Heaven looks like—the great Family Dinner. It also has a profound lesson on what it means to really, truly die—the real tragedy I keep alluding to. In Coco, people only really, truly die when their family ceases to remember them—when they are forgotten.
When a child or sibling or spouse loses their faith or rejects the gospel, that is sad, and we are right to wish it wasn’t so. We are right to mourn, and to fret, and to pray for a change of heart. But rejection of this or that belief or the loss of a particular faith is not the great tragedy.
The dinner table—the great family dinner, we hope that all of the seats are filled. But sometimes they won’t be. Maybe someone had to work and couldn’t make it, but they’ll be there next time. Maybe someone won’t ever be able to make it because of death. Death brings sadness, of course—but it is part of life and understandable, and we know from Coco that they’re not actually missing dinner—they’re just at the dinner party with the rest of the extended family across the veil. And soon enough, we’ll be there to attend dinner with them anyway.
The tragedy, brothers and sisters, is when a chair at the family dinner table is empty because someone didn’t feel welcome or wasn’t invited. Because they were isolated and marginalized and silenced and unwelcome. Because they were ignored and, in their minds and hearts, they were—or at least felt—forgotten. Being marginalized is the great tragedy, because it is self-reinforcing—it perpetuates itself both in this life and in the next.
We talk about seeing people as God sees them, and I think we often mean something related to divine potential and maybe that’s true, but I mostly think that isn’t a very helpful or useful interpretation. I think a better way of thinking about it is to remember that everyone is a child of God. So they are part of God’s family. And therefore, and therefore they are our extended family—our cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. This is important, because it means our tragedy is not just an empty chair in our home because a family member didn’t feel welcome. It is not tragic in the church when someone believes or feels differently about doctrine X or Y or Z, but instead when the reaction to that belief leads to marginalization and isolation and eventually to an empty spot in the pew because they felt that they weren’t welcome in the community.
If you are here today, and you feel like you don’t belong, like something about the church doesn’t “work” for you, I am sorry. That stinks—it is just the worst. I have felt that way, many times. If you have questions or doubts, I totally get it. I have questions and doubts, too, and it is just the worst. If you’re here and are just bored—I get that, too.
And I want you to know you’re not alone. You’re absolutely not alone—there are lots of other people, far more than you think, who also get it and know what you are feeling. You’re not alone.
And if you need to talk, please talk with me. Talk with my wife. Talk with us. We’ve seen some stuff. We’ve heard some things. We will listen, and will not ask you to be quiet or be different than you are, or condition our friendship on belief. We won’t make you wear a Li’l Sebastian shirt.
You are welcome—here, in our pews, but also in our home and at our dinner table. You are our people.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
