Of attitudes

 The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

John Milton

The longer I live — and I’ve lived a very long time; North America has moved roughly three quarters (3/4) of a meter to the southwest since the fateful day that I arrived on the planet — the more illustrations I’ve seen of this basic principle.

My father was fond of a little story:

An old man used to sit outside the gate of a city, basking in the warm sun.

One day, a traveler came along.  “What are people like in this city?” he asked the old man.  “What are they like in the city you’re from?” responded the old man.  “Oh, they’re terrible people,” replied the traveler.  “Unpleasant, unreliable, stupid, and boring.  I’m glad to be rid of them.”  “Well,” the old man said, “I’m afraid that you’ll find the people here exactly the same.”

The following day, a second traveler came along.  “What are people like in this city?” he asked the old man.  “What are they like in the city you’re from?” responded the old man.  “Oh, they’re wonderful people,” replied the traveler.  “Always pleasant, trustworthy, highly intelligent, and unfailingly interesting.  I was deeply sorry to have to leave them.”  “Excellent!” the old man exclaimed.  “You’ll find the people here to be exactly the same!”

When I was young, I thought it merely an innocuous little tale, of no great significance.  But I’ve long since changed my mind and recognized the simple wisdom in it.

I recall, for example, a former colleague who was always angry at the BYU administration, and always cynical.  Even when old friends became department administrators, they suddenly became the enemy.  Finally, he left the University.  I ran into him in an out-of-state airport several years later, and, making small talk, asked him how he liked the school where he now taught.  Well, it turns out that the administrators there, too, were evil, small-minded idiots.  Somehow, I wasn’t surprised.

Likewise, in more than a few cases, I’ve spoken to people whose marriages have ended in bitterly angry divorces.  Sometimes they’ve told me that they never really loved their former spouses.  But I’m sure that they once did.  They’ve simply forgotten.  Their minds have re-written their pasts in the light of their current attitudes.  (I take no stance here on whether or not those current attitudes are justified.  Sometimes they probably are.  But their re-writing of history is a distortion.)

I’ve seen some really spectacular illustrations of this principle among disaffected critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Some of them will eagerly tell you that they always thought the temple ridiculous, the Book of Mormon silly, their ward members idiots, and Church leaders irritating.  And maybe they did.  But, if they did, one wonders why they were ever active in the Church once they escaped their (often stupid, narrow-minded, and oppressive) parents.  Color me skeptical.

More to the point, perhaps, I read descriptions of my religious community from some especially bitter and alienated critics that often leave me scratching my attractively bald head:  Life in Mormonism is hellish.  Our whimsically irrational leaders oppress us.  When their lips are moving, they’re lying.  Our bishops are apparently selected for their sheer foolishness.  Our sacrament meetings never mention Jesus, but are largely devoted to preaching far-right politics and hatred of blacks and gays.  We’re not allowed to read or think, and any deviations are punished.  Almost everybody in every local congregation is a brain-dead automaton.  The Church is essentially fueled by fear and guilt, and motivated by greed.  The four temples announced yesterday (in Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, and Zimbabwe) are shamefully designed to extract tithing revenues from desperately poor people, thus revealing the Church’s exploitive avarice and its heartless contempt for the poor; if no such temples were built, that would demonstrate the Church’s heartless contempt for the poor and its supposed belief that only the rich deserve the ordinances of exaltation.   And so on and so forth.  It’s a relentlessly hostile Bizarro world version of the faith to which I actually belong, and of the church services that I actually attend.

Truly,  “The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”