Blaming the Church: Learning to Live with One Arm

I do not hate the Church, nor do I blame it for everything wrong in my life.   Occasionally, however, commenters will write to say that they feel I am “attacking” the Church and/or that I am unjustly “blaming” the Church for negative outcomes in my life. 

I received one such comment yesterday which was subsequently deleted by the author.*  Among other things, the commenter suggested that I needed to stop blaming the Church and take responsibility for my own actions.  “Life is a choice,” he wrote.  “We can choose what our lives will be … When I read your blogs there is a feeling the church is at fault ... At some point Invictus you must take charge for your own actions.” 

What my “own actions” were in the mind of this commenter, I’ll return to in a subsequent post.  For now, I’d just like to share some thoughts that came to mind as I read and pondered over these comments.

First of all, some context is necessary:  I have written at various times that I do hold the Church accountable for teaching, back in the time when I got married, that homosexuality is a “choice,” that it can be “cured,” and that all would be well if I got married and applied myself “with unwavering diligence” (to use an Elder Packer phrase) to the success of my heterosexual marriage.  

This is what the Church taught.  These teachings were wrong, they were untrue, and they led directly not only to the pain, heartache and disappointment experienced in my own marriage, but to the wreck of many, many other lives and marriages.

For this, I believe it is just to hold the Church accountable.  Yes, I made a “choice” to follow the Church; I chose to get married and live the “plan of happiness” rather than embrace life as a gay man.  I was told if I made this choice, I would be happy and all would be well.  It didn’t work out this way.

As I thought about this commenter’s remarks, I was reminded of something I was taught many years ago by a very wise counselor.  I had gone to him for counseling in the wake of finally trying to address and deal with the residual effects of abuse I had suffered as a child.  We talked about what I had endured, the effects it had had on me, and how I could cope with life going forward. 

The therapist then helped me put things into perspective:  “What happened to you as a child is that, metaphorically, your mother cut your arm off.  You will never regain that arm.  You can be angry that your mother cut it off; you can grieve its loss.  But then you have to learn to live with only one arm. You will never get the other one back.” 

Did I choose to have my mother cut my arm off?  No.  I had absolutely no choice in the matter.  But I did have a choice in how I cope with living with only one arm (which hasn’t been easy). 

Similarly, I feel that to blame me for choosing to live what the Church taught was true is the moral equivalent of saying that I chose to be abused as a child.  I placed trust in my mother; that trust was abused.  She did things to me that I didn’t choose, and I then had to learn how to deal with the after-effects of her abuse.  I had to learn to live with only one arm; my lost childhood would never be regained. 

In like manner, I cannot now change what happened as a result of choosing to live what the Church taught was true.  I cannot now change what happened as a result of the inner conflict that boiled and writhed within me.  I can only grieve what happened and choose to learn to live with only one arm. 

Doing so, however, does not mean that I refuse to place blame and responsibility where such blame and responsibility is due.  It does not mean that I take that blame upon myself.  It is common for child abuse survivors to take upon themselves the blame for what happened because they cannot handle placing the blame with their parents, the perpetrators of the abuse; to do so is too painful, worse than the actual abuse, for a full realization of what that would mean to the child is too horrible to contemplate. 

But because someone must be blamed, the child – paradoxically and tragically - takes that blame upon himself.  To heal as an adult, the survivor must come to a point where he realizes and accepts that he was not responsible for what happened to him; he was the child, his parents were the parents.  He must transfer that blame and responsibility for what happened from himself to his parents.  Then, and only then, can he being the process of truly grieving what happened and learn to live with only one arm.

In like manner, I must place responsibility for the false teachings of the Church regarding homosexuality where such responsibility and blame rightfully lies.  Does this mean I blame the Church for everything that is wrong or has been wrong with my life?  No.  Does this mean that I hate the Church?  No.  Does this mean that I need to grieve what happened and learn to live with what happened (the metaphorical equivalent of losing an arm) as a result of choosing to follow the Church’s teachings?  Yes.

So, to return to my commenter’s statements, yes, at some point, I must “take charge” of my own actions.  That moment came, that process began, when President Packer made his infamous remarks during his conference address last October.  I refuse, however, to accept “blame” for choosing to follow the Church’s teachings; again, to do so for me would be the moral equivalent of saying that I chose to be abused as a child. 

Life is a choice, yes, but such choice often consists in a decision of how to learn to cope with life circumstances that were and are beyond our control, i.e., we choose to accept that we have only one arm and we must learn to live with that.

(* I want to thank the commenter for his remarks, which caused me to think about these issues and to articulate my feelings.  He went on to make other observations that I will address in a subsequent post – observations that I thought carried a certain amount of truth and which, again, caused me to reflect upon my life, both past and present.)