On Members Saying That I'm Following Satan

I've discussed this in a previous blog post, but some people in our community have continued to verbally say that my family is being lead by Satan.

Some of what I write below, I've said before.  Some of what I write below is additional food for thought.

What does it mean when someone is under Satan's influence or being lead by Satan?

If I were to walk in the door of all the local Christian churches, sit down and tell the pastor about myself and be completely honest with him or her, I would be willing to bet they would say I'm not being influenced by Satan.

For me, if someone is being influenced by Satan, it means they are immoral.  Immoral, to me, means:

• committing murder; attempting to commit murder; war-mongering; genocide
• stealing, robbing, tax-evading, swindling, bilking
• cheating on a spouse; wrecking families; committing adultery
• being abusive; physically, sexually or psychologically
• lying, not being honest or truthful; intending to deceive; cheating
• embracing, supporting or giving cover to any behavior above, when you are in a position to stop or prevent it, within reason
• embracing vice; being corrupt, foolish, selfish, prideful, slothful, licentious or acting cowardly
• lacking any virtue; such as justice, wisdom, courage or temperance

I'm not perfect, but I don't have any habits of any of the above.  We all may have lied or have dabbled in vices at some point, but for me, none of those vices have turned into a habit and therefore is not part of my character.  I don't think I'm being influenced by Satan.  In fact, my striving has always been, and continues to be to:

• support life; mine, my family, those who benefit from my charitable contributions and taxes
• live honestly, in work and personal life; try to be transparent as reason permits
• being faithful to my wife and children; I've never physically abused them and I have tried to parent productively, without emotionally abusing them ... anyone can ask them how I've done and I won't be fearful of the answer
• I try to ensure justice is pursued where I can influence it; if someone has committed a crime or done something morally wrong, I try to help them or if needed, report it to the police/authorities
• I strive to live a life of virtue every day; I'm not 100% successful all the time, but I am striving to be more just, more wise, more courageous and more temperate

I think it should go without saying, but I will make it explicit.  I do not worship Satan.  I do not participate in black magic, voodoo, Satanic rituals or anything of that kind.

Now, to a member of the Church, what they mean when they tell me I'm being influenced by Satan, is that I won't believe or say that Joseph Smith was called of God or that the Mormon church is the one true church on the earth today and all other religions are an abomination before God or that the current prophets, seers and revelators of the Mormon church are the only men who speak for God on the earth today.  Because of that "thought crime" people believe and verbally say I'm being influenced by Satan.

What confounds me, though, is that there is plenty of evidence Joseph often stepped into immoral behavior as listed above.  Some members will try to ignore it or rationalize it.  This is moral relativism.  It wasn't moral in 1835, it isn't moral in 2019.  If we are going to give Brother Joseph a break, then I would suggest to anyone who thinks I'm being influenced by Satan, to give me a break too.  If Joseph passes the judgement bar, I think I will too.

Also, at the heart of this issue, for me, is trust.  I believed my leaders and teachers.  I trusted them to tell me the truth.  I believed my leaders and teachers when they said the peep stone was an anti-Mormon fabrication designed to make us lose our faith.  I believed them when they said that Joseph practicing polygamy was false and an anti-Mormon lie or that he made up the Book of Abraham.  I believed them when they said it was God who cursed wicked people with black skin.

When I later learned the truth, I realized my leaders and teachers, either wittingly or unwittingly, didn't tell me the truth.  That hurts and I lost trust in them.  How can I have faith in leaders where there is no trust?

In my search to understand why people are saying my family and I are under the influence of Satan, I came across this conference talk by James Faust: The Great Imitator.  One passage stood out to me.  I share this passage to those who think or say I'm following Satan.

Let us not become so intense in our zeal to do good by winning arguments or by our pure intention in disputing doctrine that we go beyond good sense and manners, thereby promoting contention, or say and do imprudent things, invoke cynicism, or ridicule with flippancy. In this manner, our good motives become so misdirected that we lose friends and, even more serious, we come under the influence of the devil. I recently heard in a special place, “Your criticism may be worse than the conduct you are trying to correct.”

I do not have any bad or ill feelings towards people who say this of me or my family.  My deepest desire is that they would take the time to understand what I've been through - to walk in my shoes - to ask questions and get to know me, then to exercise empathy.  If we have to agree to disagree, so be it.  But please make the effort to know me before you judge me so harshly and say that I and my family are following Satan.  We simply are not.

Engaging, Capacity to Act and Feeling Love for Others

This selection comes from this talk.

6. We need always to make allowance in the kingdom for the fact that this is a divine church full of imperfect people! Indeed, “the net gathereth of every kind.” For instance, some members among us have an unfortunate and exclusionary condescension toward others, while other members have a quiet certitude that causes them to assert their testimonies humbly because the Spirit has witnessed to them; they witness to others to maintain their integrity; they tell others the truth of salvational things “as they were, as they are, and as they shall become.” These two kinds of members read the same scriptures, but one disengages, Jonah-like, almost with delight, while the other will not leave his post in “Nineveh” so long as there are any souls to be saved. Probably the differing response is rooted in the differing capacity to love. The presence of absolute truth or apocalyptic insights in one who lacks the capacity to love is likely to produce some behavioral anomalies. Love leads us into—not away from—Nineveh: into the fray, just as Jesus was involved with mankind, for as G. K. Chesterton observed, He carried his five wounds in the front of the fray.

Some want involvement without giving themselves. Some want the wonders of religion without the work—there is no way. Others want the thrills of theology without the hard doctrines—there is no way! When we are serious about change, it is “not enough to merely leave Egypt: one must also travel to the Promised Land!”

commentary: the above speaks of commitment and engaging others.  you either engage in service and the cause of helping others, or you don't.  the gospel is about action.  and what causes you to act?  keep on reading.

7. We must make place for the gospel and the Church more generously in our lives if we are to grow in our capacity to both feel and to act. Education, the media, and what we know from the scriptures have enlarged our circles of concern and feeling. But within each of our circles of concern, there is a much smaller circle of competency, and it needs to grow too.

C. S. Lewis observed, “The more often a man feels without acting, the less often he will be able to act, and in the long run, the less often he will be able to feel.” In countless ways the Church not only enlarges our circles of concern, but it also helps us to carry out the concerns we have. Significantly, Nephi, Paul, and Moroni—cultures and centuries apart—each observed that individuals and whole cultures can, by sin, reach a point where they are past feeling. Ironically, lasciviousness, which exploits sensuous feelings, results finally in a loss of a capacity to feel. In our own society the sad consequences of too much exulting in feeling—of sex divorced from love, and the emptiness of emotion without principle—will wash over us for generations. In the declining society of Moroni’s time, citizens were described as being without order, without mercy, without civilization, and past feeling after they had “lost their love, one towards another. …” (Moro. 9:5.)

commentary: love brings about wanting and desire.  love and desire should spur us to action.  but when we disassociate love and action, we begin to lose the capacity to feel.  when we don't feel, we don't care, when we don't care, we don't act and when we don't act evil triumphs.

8. We must be more quick to realize the enormous implications of the doctrine of immortality and how our knowledge of that reality will set us apart in this era. One can’t help but admire the cosmic heroism of those decent people who persist in goodness in spite of their agnosticism, but we still should see others differently because of this doctrine. Ours is no mere biological brotherhood with life as a brief encounter, but ours is a brotherhood that is fashioned in the realization that relationships will persist a million years from now, and more. Where we do not so relate to each other, we diminish the credibility of our commitment to this doctrine in the eyes of others. For a peculiar people, our friendships should be peculiarly rich.

commentary: to me, the above really hits home and answers the question - why the gospel?  if mankind is to become immortal, do we want immortal evil or immortal goodness running the universe?

In summary, we see the world, life, and death differently. This is not a random, mutant planet with people who will be enveloped in nothingness; it is a special place, a planet with a purpose, for, as Isaiah observed, the Lord created it to be inhabited. (See Isa. 45:18.)

We are all stewards, and we ought to approach this planet and its resources as carefully as Adam dressed the Garden. In seeking to establish dominion over the earth, it ought to be a righteous dominion. Still, this earth is not a place we need to be so reluctant to leave. As G. K. Chesterton wrote, Christian courage rests on a love of life that may need to take the form of a willingness to die; it is not the willingness to die that reflects a disdain or disaffection for life.

Without immortality there can be no real and lasting meaning to life. Jesus has not only immunized us against the lasting sting of the grave, but his teachings can also help us not to “look upon death with any degree of terror.” (Alma 27:28.) The same Jesus promised us, through one of his prophets, that if we could live according to his word, we would have, in this life, a knowledge of what is “just and true and render every man his due” (justice and discernment); we would live peaceably with others (peacefulness); we would rear our families without fighting and quarreling, teaching them to love one another (the capacity to love learned in happy homes); and we would care for the needy (a program for poverty). (See Mosiah 4.) In a sense, while others have the slogans, we have the solutions that, if applied, will carry us to “a state of happiness which hath no end.” (Morm. 7:7.)