No One is All Good or All Bad. But What About Institutions?

From the Vault: Re-posting my 2021 essay called "It's Complicated" and adding my 2023 thoughts.

I’m going to try to take this Substack a little more seriously. I’m gonna give posting on a more regular schedule a go. I’m shooting for a once a week publication coming at you every Thursday at noon.

To avoid overwhelm, I had a sit down with myself and reminded myself “Self, you do not have to reinvent the wheel every week. You have a back log of dozens of decent thought provoking essays.”

Sometimes my self is pretty smart. So, once a month or so, I’m going to post a “from the vault” post with an essay I’ve written in the past.

However, since I change my mind about everything every month or so, I will also include my current thoughts on my past essay. Stay tuned after this essay to read my updated thoughts.

This week’s from the vault essay is titled “It’s Complicated.” It was originally posted on my Instagram on January 21, 2021.

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It's complicated

I remember when we first watched The Greatest Showman as a family. It was family movie night, we were all snuggled on our red couch. The kids and I were INTO it (in subsequent months, Rich would especially appreciate how we overthrew our Spotify algorithm in our Greatest Showman fervor).

After the movie, Rich says, "You know he was a horrible human, right? He took a 90 year old woman, told everyone she was Abraham Lincoln's 150 year old nanny and made her sit for hours every day while people paid him to see her."

I love my husband but sometimes he can be a bit of a killjoy.

Anyway, it sparked an interest in me- like a puzzle I wanted to solve- who was P.T. Barnum? Egotistical spawn of Satan or savior of the oppressed?

After reading two different biographies, I came away more confused than when I went in. There were many people who said that P.T. Barnum literally saved them from starvation- that he picked them up off the street, gave them a home, gave them an income, and gave them dignity when they had none.

Others who say just the opposite- he was exploitative and greedy. He had affairs and took advantage of his employees.

Which was it? Good guy or bad guy? Hero or villain?

Around this time I was flipping radio stations in the car and a story on NPR caught my attention.

A victim of sexual assault was speaking about her court case. The defense was calling on witnesses to tell about all the good her assaulter did in the world. He donated thousands of dollars to children's charities. He volunteered at homeless shelters helping teenage boys with their homework. He helped their neighbor with their lawn. Evidence after evidence. This man was good.

He DID do those things this lady said.

AND he sexually assaulted me.

He's done many bad things and good things both.

The good things don't cancel out the bad. Same as the bad do not cancel out the good.

No man is all good.

No man is all bad.

No person's character can be defined and summed up by the worst thing they've done. Or the best.

We're all just a jumbled mess of good and bad co-existing together in the same person in the same hour.

Our brains want so badly for there to be good people and bad people because it takes so much less effort to categorize.

Our brains really want to do this with religion too.

After I watched the movie Spotlight, I felt sick to my stomach. 289 Catholic priests who committed sexual assault in Boston ALONE?! And the high ups KNEW ABOUT IT?!!? And kept those priests practicing while paying off their victims to keep quiet?!?!?

Clearly, this church must be BAD, capital B.

But then, I think of my next-door neighbor Lynn growing up. She went to mass every single day. She had 5 kids. And she made me feel so loved, so welcome, so whole, that even typing her name makes me nostalgic for her smile.

I think of Father Richard Rohr, whose words provided me a path forward spiritually when I could see nothing but darkness. Who warmed me to my past instead of despising it. Who brought back Jesus and scripture to me when I was ready to discard both.

I think of Father Gregory Boyle, who founded the world's largest gang rehabilitation program in the world, whose example of showing the gang members of LA their own unconditional worth helped me to find my own.

I think of the Catholic homeless shelter in Ljubljana, Slovenia where we volunteered every Thursday on my mission. It was the only homeless shelter in town. How needed it was. How good and kind the workers were.

If their church is BAD with a capital B,  how could these good fruits have come from it?

The Catholic Church is good. And the Catholic church is bad.

It's good parts don't cancel out the bad, same as the bad parts don't cancel out the good.

It's a jumbled mess of both co-existing at the same time.

My Instagram feed (and the people in my life) often seem to be at war. One side says "The LDS church is TRUTH. It is the kingdom of God on earth. It is ALL GOOD." The other side says, "The LDS church is false. It is racist, sexist and homophobic. It is ALL BAD."

I fully recognize that for some it IS all good. For some it IS all bad.

I don't think either is lying about their experience.

For me, it is a jumbly mess of both.

It has provided me both my happiest memories and my darkest.

Its shown me love, it's shown me fear and shame.

Just because it has brought me a lot of pain recently, doesn't mean it didn't bring me a lot of joy.

Just because it brought me a lot of joy, doesn't mean it doesn't now bring me pain.

Often there is so much pressure to "discover the truth" or to pick a side, that there seems to be no room at all for holding both the good and the bad at the same time.

I'm trying to make that room.

I'm trying to make room for the people in my life who believe it's all good. I'm trying to make room for the people in my life who believe it is all bad.

And I'm trying to make room for myself, who believes it is both at the same time.

In the words of one T. Swift:

"There'll be happiness after you.

But there was happiness because of you.

Both of these things can be true."

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Ok, now for my current thoughts.

The tone of this post irks me. It’s giving “eh, the church is both good and bad. Equally. So who cares?”

Well, I care. And I don’t think it’s equally good and bad.

Back in 2019 when I was sitting on the fence post of “it feels impossible to stay and equally impossible to leave the church,” I did what any sane person would and called up my favorite spiritual thinker/podcast host Richard Rohr and asked him if I should leave the Mormon church (you can listen to that episode here, (it’s called “Emotional Buoyancy” on the podcast “Another Name for Everything” I come on at about the hour mark).

His response was, “We can’t solve this on the personal level. The personal level appeals too much to shame or heroism.” He said we must zoom out of the personal realm and try to view it from the societal/global level.

He asked, “Collectively what is my church doing for history? For society? For other world religions? For people on the street? For the least of my brothers and sisters?… Is it moving civilization forward in the ways of love and peace or is it just creating a tribe?”

I have very different answers to this question now than I did in 2019. Or in 2021. But in 2023, unapologetically I think the fruits of the LDS church on the world are net negative. There are some positive fruits on the individual level for sure: community, purpose, friendship, service.

But the exclusivity, the shame, the judgment, the perfectionism, the LGBTQ+ bigotry, the rigidity, the superiority complex, the “my way or the highway” attitude, the exclusively male Godhead and priesthood, the misogyny, the extremely racist scripture doctrine and culture, the lack of accountability for all harms all outweigh the individual good fruits.

When I left, I assumed my negative thoughts about the church would ebb and flow with my anger. I assumed at the time of leaving I was peak anger, so I assumed my thoughts and feelings about the church would only improve as my anger dissipated.

Well, my anger has dissipated. I no longer feel like a red hot poker is jabbing me in the heart when I come across a general conference clip for instance.

But.

Even though my anger no longer burns red hot, my thoughts on the institution of the church have gone nowhere but down year after year.

It’s not this huffy, defensive thing, it’s more like, just the way it is.

I do, however, try to make a distinction between the institution of the church and the members of the church.

I’ve found its not very functional for me to view members as if I can judge their net goodness or badness.

I don’t want to hate members or judge them or belittle them or write them off as stupid sheep. I don’t want to think of my past self that way either.

I’ve experimented with it, and the fruits of judging them taste bad to me.

I want to hold them in compassion and respect. I don’t want to blame them for being handed a script when they were born saying this is THE script of THE right way to live and think and then understandably following that script throughout their lives.

I’ll hold the institution handing them the script responsible rather than the people just trying to follow the definition of good and right they were handed.

In sum: people are complicated…. institutions less so.

But those are just my thoughts. I’d love to hear what yours are. Do you distinguish between people and institutions? Have your thoughts about this changed through the years?