The Reverend's Sabbath Sermon
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 4:28 am
I was contacted last night by an irate and righteously indignant apologist who decided to take me to task for my activities and arguments on this board. As you know, I have received similar communications in the past. Hopefully I will not receive very many in the future. It was a very sad letter, and very difficult to read, because it brought home to me once again why this strife continues at great cost to so many people.
What you are about to read does not reflect the exact contents of the email, but rather my impressions and views as I read it. I will not post the email, and I will not provide it to anyone upon request. At the same time, it caused me to reflect on all of the ugliness that has unfolded over the past month and I felt it was important to respond in some way.
At the outset, this person identifies me clearly as his enemy in no uncertain terms. He then quotes my words selectively, ignoring every single conciliatory, humane, or reasonable thing I may have written to take aim at those things that evidently particularly offended him. In becoming this bullseye, whose words only reach the level of conscious consideration when they offend, I am further distorted into the caricature of a semi-human being that he suggested I was at the opening of the email.
I am also told about how wrong I am, and that the LDS folk who have been criticized by apologists were merely being called out for what they "really are." They may appear to be decent people, but they hide behind a nominal membership in the Church waiting to destroy the testimonies of others and evade punishment for their damnable crimes. These bad eggs are outed so that innocent members will not be deceived. Who am I to criticize this important work and misrepresent it?
Then, ironically, I am castigated for my anonymity. Shut up or take your "review" like a man, I suppose.
What do I say to such things? Here we have someone who evinces no ability to see his opponents as human beings who have struggled mightily and suffered in trying to make sense of their spirituality, their Church, and their God. We are wrong, and if we don't understand that we are wrong, we need to be quiet until we figure out how we are wrong and repent of it. How many different ways does my guilt by association need to be reiterated before they are satisfied they have made their point? How many times will the distinction between disillusioned member and anti-Semite be conveniently overlooked to accuse opponents of being monsters?
I lament for all of us. I lament for Daniel Peterson and this person. I lament for you and for me. We are in a very dangerous place. When everyone is convinced they are righteously right, and are on the verge of giving up hope for any humane dialogue--when they see each other as delusional, insane, possessed, deceived by Satan, or what have you; you know we are marching toward some kind of massive eruption of ugliness and violence. I am not saying when it will happen, but the signs are there. It is in our politics, our religion, and our anti-religion. And we will rue the day we abandoned our humanity in order to be "righteous" judges.
I am reminded of Sophocles' Antigone, which tells the story of the woman Antigone, whose two brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, fought each other in civil war to take full control of a kingship they were supposed to have shared. They killed each other, and the man who became king denied Polynices burial, while performing full burial rites for Eteocles. Antigone, finding it intolerable that she should be denied her right and sacred duty to see her own kin buried, broke the law and buried Polynices herself, resulting in her own punishment of being walled up to starve to death, and then suicide by hanging.
Haemon, the king's son, betrothed to Antigone, comes to reason with his father (before Antigone's suicide), and an argument ensues:
Creon: Is what you do to have respect for rebels?
Haemon: I would not urge you to be scrupulous toward the wicked.
Creon: Is she not tainted by the disease of wickedness?
Haemon: The entire people of Thebes says no to that.
Creon: Should the city tell me how I am to rule them?
Haemon: Do you see what a young man's words these are of yours?
Creon: Must I rule the land by someone else's judgment rather than my own?
Haemon: There is no city possessed by one man only.
Creon: Is not the city thought to be the ruler's?
Haemon: You would be a fine dictator of a desert.
Creon presses on, confident of his own rightness, relenting only after it is too late. The suicides of Antigone, his son Haemon, and his wife Eurydice follow. The Chorus sings to him as he mourns: "I think you have learned justice--but too late."
As long as we are completely convinced of our rightness and seek nothing less than strict justice for the perceived crimes of our foes, we will press on to that empty place Creon found himself at the end of the Antigone.
I don't accuse one group over the other. All I know is that I don't want to end up where Creon was. I think it would be far better for all of us if we would open ourselves up to the possibility that our opponents, no matter how wrongheaded they seem to us, are still human beings, still deserving of compassion, and that being rigid and intractable in our sense of our own rightness will only lead to sorrow in the end, because we will have cut ourselves off from others in preference of being right--dictators of our own private deserts.
What you are about to read does not reflect the exact contents of the email, but rather my impressions and views as I read it. I will not post the email, and I will not provide it to anyone upon request. At the same time, it caused me to reflect on all of the ugliness that has unfolded over the past month and I felt it was important to respond in some way.
At the outset, this person identifies me clearly as his enemy in no uncertain terms. He then quotes my words selectively, ignoring every single conciliatory, humane, or reasonable thing I may have written to take aim at those things that evidently particularly offended him. In becoming this bullseye, whose words only reach the level of conscious consideration when they offend, I am further distorted into the caricature of a semi-human being that he suggested I was at the opening of the email.
I am also told about how wrong I am, and that the LDS folk who have been criticized by apologists were merely being called out for what they "really are." They may appear to be decent people, but they hide behind a nominal membership in the Church waiting to destroy the testimonies of others and evade punishment for their damnable crimes. These bad eggs are outed so that innocent members will not be deceived. Who am I to criticize this important work and misrepresent it?
Then, ironically, I am castigated for my anonymity. Shut up or take your "review" like a man, I suppose.
What do I say to such things? Here we have someone who evinces no ability to see his opponents as human beings who have struggled mightily and suffered in trying to make sense of their spirituality, their Church, and their God. We are wrong, and if we don't understand that we are wrong, we need to be quiet until we figure out how we are wrong and repent of it. How many different ways does my guilt by association need to be reiterated before they are satisfied they have made their point? How many times will the distinction between disillusioned member and anti-Semite be conveniently overlooked to accuse opponents of being monsters?
I lament for all of us. I lament for Daniel Peterson and this person. I lament for you and for me. We are in a very dangerous place. When everyone is convinced they are righteously right, and are on the verge of giving up hope for any humane dialogue--when they see each other as delusional, insane, possessed, deceived by Satan, or what have you; you know we are marching toward some kind of massive eruption of ugliness and violence. I am not saying when it will happen, but the signs are there. It is in our politics, our religion, and our anti-religion. And we will rue the day we abandoned our humanity in order to be "righteous" judges.
I am reminded of Sophocles' Antigone, which tells the story of the woman Antigone, whose two brothers, Polynices and Eteocles, fought each other in civil war to take full control of a kingship they were supposed to have shared. They killed each other, and the man who became king denied Polynices burial, while performing full burial rites for Eteocles. Antigone, finding it intolerable that she should be denied her right and sacred duty to see her own kin buried, broke the law and buried Polynices herself, resulting in her own punishment of being walled up to starve to death, and then suicide by hanging.
Haemon, the king's son, betrothed to Antigone, comes to reason with his father (before Antigone's suicide), and an argument ensues:
Creon: Is what you do to have respect for rebels?
Haemon: I would not urge you to be scrupulous toward the wicked.
Creon: Is she not tainted by the disease of wickedness?
Haemon: The entire people of Thebes says no to that.
Creon: Should the city tell me how I am to rule them?
Haemon: Do you see what a young man's words these are of yours?
Creon: Must I rule the land by someone else's judgment rather than my own?
Haemon: There is no city possessed by one man only.
Creon: Is not the city thought to be the ruler's?
Haemon: You would be a fine dictator of a desert.
Creon presses on, confident of his own rightness, relenting only after it is too late. The suicides of Antigone, his son Haemon, and his wife Eurydice follow. The Chorus sings to him as he mourns: "I think you have learned justice--but too late."
As long as we are completely convinced of our rightness and seek nothing less than strict justice for the perceived crimes of our foes, we will press on to that empty place Creon found himself at the end of the Antigone.
I don't accuse one group over the other. All I know is that I don't want to end up where Creon was. I think it would be far better for all of us if we would open ourselves up to the possibility that our opponents, no matter how wrongheaded they seem to us, are still human beings, still deserving of compassion, and that being rigid and intractable in our sense of our own rightness will only lead to sorrow in the end, because we will have cut ourselves off from others in preference of being right--dictators of our own private deserts.
