“For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” Mosiah 3:19

This is a very impressive verse from the Book of Mormon. It singlehandedly made ‘natural man’ a part of Mormon vernacular. ‘The natural man is an enemy to God’ is a line any Mormon would recognize. And its implications are tremendous. In simple terms, it is taken to mean the following: There is a part of every person that prompts them to do evil—this is ‘the natural man’. We, as humans, all have this germ of evil inside and we must ‘put it off’ or else risk being God’s enemy forever.

So which human impulses can be attributed to ‘the natural man’ inside each of us? In my experience, the influence of the ‘natural man’ boils down to the seven deadly sins, distilled from the Bible and codified by Pope Gregory 1: wrath, pride, lust, gluttony, sloth, greed, and envy. We all feel the impulse towards one or many of these several ‘sins’ on a regular basis. Some of us act on these impulses. The ‘natural man’ is understood to the part of our psyches that is wrathful, prideful, lustful, gluttonous, slothful, greedy, and envious, among other things. To be a ‘saint’ is to be free of such impulses—to have essentially killed, exiled, or otherwise neutralized the ‘natural man’ within us. The verse informs us that we can become saints through ‘the atonement* of Christ the Lord’.

*This is a mormonism (read: mormon-ism) in itself—‘the Atonement’ is uniquely emphasized in Mormon doctrine and essentially represents the power that Christ attained through his sacrifice to cleanse us of all human malady and provide ultimate forgiveness for all sins we have committed. ‘The power of the Atonement’ and other similar phrases are like ‘the power of this super-bleach’ in that you can ‘use’ it to remove the stains of sin from your life. This deserves its own post. I’ve always wondered what the real significance of the semantic differences between Mormons and traditional Christians is on this point. Traditional Christians will say ‘Jesus saves. Jesus has the power to cleanse you of your sin and heal your wounds if you will come to him.’ Jesus is the actor here and the focus of the sentence. Mormons will say ‘You can be saved and cleansed through the power of the Atonement’ as if the ‘Atonement’ were a tool used by you to cleanse yourself. In this case you are the actor and the subject of the sentence and the ‘Atonement’ is the object. Jesus is understood to be the owner of the ‘Atonement’ tool you utilize but is rarely mentioned as an actor. So that’s interesting. But returning to ‘the natural man’…*

What Mormons understand from this verse in Mosiah is that we are born with evil inside of us and that we must put it off. Jesus and the Atonement can cleanse us of this evil and make us into true saints. We are primed by this verse to recognize the impulses of the natural man for what they are and to check ourselves, putting them off in the quest to not be evil. If unchecked, we understand that these impulses could transform us completely into an enemy of God—a disastrous outcome to be sure. 

Like many elements of Mormon doctrine, this seems fine and useful as long as you don’t think about it too much. As long as you don’t take it *too* seriously. I loved the concept as I aged into Mormonism, served a mission, and embarked as a young adult on the path to sainthood. ‘The natural man is an enemy to God’ is just a really nice phrase, and it has easy, intuitive bridges to behavior. ‘I recognize this flash of anger as an impulse of the natural man. The natural man is an enemy to God. Therefore I ought to fight this impulse and not act on it, thereby scoring yet another victory in my internal battle between good and evil.’

Despite its appeal, I don’t think this is a suitable frame for human behavior past a certain age. Its simplicity is outgrown by the complexity of life—the complexity of the human psyche itself. As I’ve observed with increasing precision the behavior of new and old adults close to me, and as I’ve entered deeper waters in my own psychological life, I’ve become convinced that ‘the natural man’ concept is not only insufficient in the quest for ‘sainthood’, it’s actually inhibiting. Though it may steer you away from vices in your early life, it will then steer you away from true self-mastery once you’ve outgrown it. Like a pair of training wheels on a bicycle, it provides stability early but makes more complex maneuvers impossible. If life was a mountain biking course, it could be said that there are certain sections where an inability to maneuver freely—to lean heavily into sharp turns for example—will take you off course. Allow me to explain.

My position is as follows: rejecting the natural man is a mistake. It is impossible to reject a part of yourself and be psychologically healthy in the long term. I believe that the ‘natural man’ is analogous to ‘the shadow self’ in loosely Jungian terms. The goal of every person should not be to reject or destroy this part of themselves—that’s a disastrous course of action. The goal should be to healthily integrate the shadow, to accept it fully for what it is. To stop fearing it, stop fighting it, and learn to work alongside it. Make it a part of yourself, not an antagonistic force to fight against. Integrating the ‘natural man’ is the path to true virtue, to true sainthood. I believe this truth is manifest in other scriptures and is ironically acknowledged in the Mosiah verse itself. The path of integration is not the easiest path but it’s the true path. There are a couple conversations I’ve had with adult friends in recent memory that influenced my thinking on this topic. I’ll share them in redacted form here. 

James and I are very close friends. We lived together for years at college and were also mission companions in Japan. James is an excellent human being. He is extremely charitable, good-humored, and genuine in his interactions with others. He’s a devout Mormon and always has been. James married some years ago and has been tight-lipped about it since day one. I think he felt the need to shield his spouse from the scrutiny of his closest and harshest friends. Once his temple marriage was complete, it became his highest priority, and rightly so. Anything that might threaten the marriage must be carefully managed and mitigated. Naturally, James never asked for my true thoughts about his choice of spouse and I count it wise that he didn’t. This is no cause of bitterness for me—it’s simply part of life and, as I said, for James’s sake it might’ve been for the best. A couple years after his marriage James and I had some rare time in-person to talk for a few hours, and during that conversation James was extraordinarily open about his marriage. He admitted that things had been rocky but that finally, after two years of marriage, he felt he could call his wife a friend of similar standing to me and others of his best, in terms of familiarity, comfort, openness, etc. I was very glad to hear it. Conversation drifted to the sexual health of his marriage and finally we’ve come to the part relevant to this post. 

As I recall, I made some joke about him being dominant and wild in the bedroom, as we all knew James was very high libido and extremely repressed in his prior years of unmarried celibacy. James chuckled with a touch of weariness and corrected me, saying that things were actually pretty mild and deliberately so. This piqued my interest so I pressed him on it and he eventually divulged a deep fear that I had never heard him voice before. He acknowledged that the tame sexuality within his marriage was incongruous with his libido but insisted that it had to be that way ‘or else [he] might risk losing his marriage’.

‘James, what the hell are you talking about?’ was the only sensible reply. James then told me that he never let loose with his libido—never even let himself feel and act on lust without checking himself—because he knows that lust is wrong. When I pressed him on it he admitted that ‘Ok, I know lust isn’t wrong within a marriage, technically, but I just don’t want it to get out of control.’ He then explained that he felt very afraid deep down that if he let his lust ‘take control’ that it may very well carry him out of his marriage, causing him to assert himself sexually over his wife in a way she wouldn’t appreciate, in a way that might corrode her respect for him and make her resent him and whatnot, and eventually might lead him to commit adultery. He saw his lust like a fire that would immediately get out of control and burn everything down if he let slip even a little. By analogy, James was huddling in the cold trying to warm himself with a handheld lighter, afraid that if he built a proper fire—if he let the flame get any bigger—he would immediately lose control and burn his house down. 

This, to me, is a prime example of ‘rejecting the natural man’. James has held this deep fear for years that letting his carnal or ‘natural’ impulse of lust run free would destroy him. This fear has led him to essentially reject lust itself and accept sexual frustration as a necessary burden for him to bear in the marriage. Better to suffer that frustration than to risk losing his marriage, his status in the community, and his alliance with God. I think everyone would agree that this is a noble but doomed pursuit. James would be much better off trying to healthily accept and integrate his lust, not as something evil to be imprisoned, but as something inherently dangerous AND also good, like fire itself. And to trust in himself to be able to maintain control. He should discuss this fear with his wife rather than keeping it inside. To date he hasn’t because he’s ashamed of it.

The other conversation was had with a very close friend who I’ll call Holly. Holly has several children who I’ve observed her raise first-hand. Holly too is a devout Mormon and carries a cheerful, optimistic outlook on life generally. She carries it deliberately, sometimes with great effort. This too is essentially noble but has a dark side. We were talking about her kids some time ago when she made the offhand comment, ‘Sometimes it’s really hard not to get mad at them. I want to raise my voice and it’s so hard not to but I make sure not to. I’ve been pretty good about never getting mad at them.’ This stuck out to me and I had to ask about it. ‘What do you mean, Holly? Do you think it’s your responsibility as a parent to NEVER show anger?’ After some digging we finally came to the meat of it.

Holly held a deep fear that took some time for her to articulate. It essentially boiled down to this: she was deeply afraid that she might abuse her kids. She had tremendous anger inside that she was worried could and would get out of control very fast if she allowed herself to show it for even a moment. Wrath. She recognized it as an impulse of the ‘natural man’ and resolved to reject it completely by keeping it imprisoned indefinitely. She held it in and refused to recognize any of it as legitimate. She prayed to be cleansed of this anger that she might ascend into ‘parenting sainthood’. Optimal, ‘Christ-like’ parenting, to Holly, meant not just never showing anger or abusing the kids, it meant never getting mad at all. 

I think this is unhealthy both for her AND her kids. This is another example of rejecting the natural man. I think it’s just going to drive the anger deeper if it never gets expressed, and especially if she doesn’t have the psychological frame to acknowledge that anger as legitimate. Normal. Healthy. Natural. In time she will feel ashamed of herself for still getting mad. The shame and anger will feed on eachother. The pressure will build to the point that if she does let loose, it will likely be catastrophic. And thus she has made a self-fulfilling prophecy. Integrating the anger for her would mean accepting a tolerable level of expression and consciously managing it without feeling like a terrible person in the process. Without feeling like an ‘enemy to God’ and a failed saint. 

I think it’s the shame that can make these behaviors pathological. Imagine you’re a faithful Mormon following your end of covenants with alacrity. God is blessing you on the daily and the Atonement is at work on your every flaw. Except for one little thing. You’re extremely envious of your neighbor. They seem to have everything you don’t, and of what you both have, theirs is better. Every time you see them you notice something new to envy and it spoils your mood. This envy leads to contempt, for them but crucially for yourself as well. Because you notice when you feel envy and you hate it. You know that this is ‘the natural man’ inside you at work and you know that you’re losing every fight. Eventually you’ll start asking for help from God without acknowledging the problem to another human soul, not even your spouse. Maybe you can’t even consciously acknowledge that you have a problem–that you are envious–because you’re deeply embarrassed about it. You feel ashamed and sometimes it’s excruciating. You don’t want to acknowledge it as a real part of you. You insist that the envious thoughts come from a foreign intruder, this ‘natural man’, and you resolve to fight it. You’ve been promised that Christ’s Atonement can help you put off the natural man. So your prayers gain fervency and your devotion to covenants and church responsibilities heightens. Scripture study time doubles, you go to the temple more often, you bear your testimony on Fast Sundays without fail. And yet the envy remains and maybe even grows stronger. 

You respond by pushing it deeper, by just willing it to go away and asking God to make it disappear. When it doesn’t, you’re confronted with a dissonant thought. Either you are plenty righteous and God is reneging on his end of the Atonement deal, or you just aren’t righteous enough to merit God’s help. You choose to believe the latter and step out from a cloud of dissonance into a storm of shame. You’re still not good enough! You’re so pathetic and weak, you aren’t trying hard enough, you’re not righteous enough, you’re not good enough! If you were, God would’ve cured your envy by now. You would’ve already “[become] a saint throguh the atonement of Christ the Lord.” The shame and the envy burrow deeper as you resolve to correct the problem with your righteousness and the cycle continues. In time you may forget that envy for your neighbor was ever involved–you’re just caught up in a cycle of shame. Your behavior is now deeply pathological, and it all started because you tried to reject a very part of your own mind, the ‘natural’ part. You couldn’t accept it and admit it because of shame, because you saw it as evil. And the dissonance that resulted has multiplied your problems.

I said above that the true path to virtue and sainthood is through ‘integration’ rather than ‘rejection’. So what exactly does this mean? I think my understanding here is very elemental, very infantile, very limited. I’m still trying to puzzle it out and I’m sure I will be for the rest of my life. Mine is not the mind of Niesztche, Jung, Freud or Dostoevsky, so perhaps I’m eternally doomed to a sophomoric understanding. But I’ll tell you what I think about it at present. 

First of all, what is virtue? I’ve long found Jordan Peterson’s description of virtue compelling. He says, paraphrasing, that virtue is NOT the absence of vice. To be virtuous is NOT to be incapable of vice. To be virtuous is to be fully capable of vice but to consciously abstain or limit one’s indulgence. Peterson’s disdain for those say things like ‘Spousal violence is horrible! I would never! I could never!’ has rubbed off on me. Those are precisely the people most likely to commit spousal violence in the future. Their protestation does not demonstrate virtue, it demonstrates a lack thereof. The virtuous analog would be “Spousal violence is horrible! I can see a future where I do it, but I resolve to never let it happen.” This is akin to acknowledging the darkness in one’s own soul and is crucial to develop the virtue of empathy. If you can’t see yourself in the alcoholic, in the tyrant, in the murderer even, then you are not capable of empathy and you won’t recognize that you may be treading a dangerous path leading to any of the above. This isn’t to say that you should indulge in a little alcholism, a little tyranny, or a little murder in order to ‘integrate your shadow’, it’s just the first step–recognizing that the impulses that take people there aren’t alien, to them or to you. They come from within, from a part of you that is as much you as all the frontal-cortex nobility you could muster. They arise from your very humanity itself, and though you may learn to master your humanity you will never get rid of it. 

This in turn informs my understanding of ‘sainthood’. To achieve ‘sainthood’–to be a ‘saint’–is not to rid yourself of all ‘natural’, ‘evil’ impulses. It’s to master your behavioral response to them. As Peterson says, speaking about violence, ‘to be virtuous you must be dangerous. You must be capable of tremendous violence and you must know it without a doubt. Then, in the face of this self-knowledge, you must choose peace.’ To some extent I think we can all intuit this. Nothing is more noble than the trained warrior, capable of deadly violence, who chooses to not fight. The champion boxer who responds to violent confrontations by (often drunk) boastful challengers at the bar by de-escalating and refusing to fight. By exercising gentleness and ultimate restraint with those he/she loves. I believe this applies to virtues across the board, and I don’t think you can get there by ‘rejecting’ your wicked impulses–by fearing them, by seeing them as a foreign force that must be purged. And certainly not by being ashamed to be feeling them. You must accept that the saintliest of us all still feel the impulses, perhaps in equal strength, they’ve just mastered their behavior and have consciously pruned the bad behaviors.

To my mind, the doctrine of the ‘natural man’ form Mosiah tells us to reject our ‘sinful’ impulses and deny them a place in our hearts entirely. To transform into a new creature, something beyond human. Something that displays no ‘natural’ traits and suffers no ‘sinful’ temptations. Not only do I think this actually inhibits us on the path to greater virtue, self-mastery, and sainthood, and sometimes severely so, I think it’s actually incongruent with the concept of sin and perfection elsewhere in scripture. 

I can’t be bothered to present linguistic evidence for the following, I’m just going to say it flying blind. I believe that sin, as accurately translated in the Bible, doesn’t connote ‘evil’. It means something closer to ‘missing the mark’. Missing our potential. Underperforming. Falling short. I also believe that ‘perfection’ doesn’t mean ‘entirely without flaw’, it means ‘complete’. Functional. Integrated. To be a complete human, as ‘designed’, is not to be devoid of any wicked impulse. The impulses are part of what it means to be human, so to be ‘perfect’ as a human is to have those impulses but not to be ruled by them. The impulses themselves aren’t ‘flaws’ that we must get rid of in the pursuit of ‘perfection’. Ironically, rejecting the impulses and trying to transcend them ultimately takes us away from perfection-as-completeness, not towards it.

As an additional irony, the wording in the verse from Mosiah now seems to contain a subtle truth about our situation. The verse instructs us to ‘put off’ the natural man. When you ‘put something off’ in modern English, it’s akin to procrastination. It implies that you are ignoring something in the moment that is sure to pop up later. Something that needs doing eventually that you can’t be bothered to address now, you ‘put off’. If you ‘put off’ the natural man, it’s not gone. Putting it off won’t make it better. It’s coming back eventually, and with a vengeance. You have to confront the reality of it now and address it. You can’t shove it away. You have to let it be a part of you and accept it–let it into your identity–and only then can you overcome your wicked impulses. 

This correlates in my mind with another idea I’ve been passionate about for awhile: in order to truly ‘exercise agency’, you must be fully capable of making any of a range of possible choices. My previous post about ‘For the Strength of Youth’ talks about my compulsion to overcome arbitrary psychological barriers in decision-making. I felt an emotional wall preventing me from watching R-rated movies after my mission and I concluded that it was just a relic of childhood programming that, while useful in the past, was now redundant. So I cleared it with nontrivial effort. I have made similar efforts in other domains because I want to truly be free. I want to have Agency. Mormonism claims to be all about Agency but undermines it in so many ways. The whole Gospel frame of ‘The Plan of Salvation’ is built on the idea of Agency as an untouchable, inderogable sacred right. The church harps on about it endlessly then goes and programs its membership to be comically incapable of the very same. In similar fashion, it demands they aim for perfection, but attaches them to an iron rod that doesn’t actually take them there. It provides them with doctrines like the ‘natural man’ that, while suitable in small doses, can lead to pathological behavior if taken too seriously.

To the extent that you want to be virtuous, saintly, and psychologically healthy to boot, you ought not reject the ‘natural man’. It’s a part of you that, Atonement or otherwise, isn’t ever going away.

A few years ago I visited my sister who was living out of state with her husband and several children. One night we sat down to watch a movie and I witnessed something bizarre. I don’t recall what the movie was but it was rated PG-13 and there was some minor sexual content. I think it was a love scene between two protagonists. When that part of the movie came up, my sister paused, then skipped over the entire scene. I had to ask, “[Sister], why did you skip over that? If you’re doing it out of concern for me, thanks but you should know that it doesn’t bother me. I’d prefer to see the movie uninterrupted, in fact.” She insisted that it wasn’t for me, she just found it uncomfortable to watch. We resumed the movie and finished it but the whole time I was just going over what I had just witnessed. Here is my sister, 35ish-year old woman, married for several years, has had several children and therefore has certainly done the nasty at least a hundred(?) times, and she can’t see anything sexual on screen without feeling so uncomfortable that she’ll get up and make the effort to skip over it. 

If this were a particularly graphic scene, or one that depicted sexual violence, then I’d understand. But it wasn’t. The movie was rated PG-13 and this scene depicted the fulfillment of gradually escalating sexual tension between two consenting adult protagonists—pretty vanilla and not without emotional substance. After the film we had a little discussion that went exactly as I expected.

Me: “[Sister], why did you skip that scene? You know it wouldn’t have any nudity or anything graphic in it right? This is PG-13.”

Sister: “I know, I just got this bad feeling in my stomach when I saw it and felt gross. Like the Spirit was telling me to skip it. So I did.”

Me: “Do you always skip such scenes? What if it’s just you and [husband] watching?”

Sister: “Yes. It’s just inappropriate.”

Lolwut. I didn’t press this any further and instead asked…

Me: “Do you really think the Spirit doesn’t want you to watch? Why would that be? Do you watch rated-R movies?”

Sister: “I don’t know, I’m just sensitive and I don’t want my sensitivity dulled by watching graphic content. That’s also why I don’t watch rated-R movies.”

I pressed her on that a bit.

Me: “You really don’t watch any rated-R movies?”

She finally admitted with trepidation that she and [Husband] had watched a rated-R movie once, and then she proceeded to list the reasons why in a somewhat hectic manner, as if she was trying to excuse an inherently bad or at least questionable decision.

 The movie they had watched was ‘The King’s Speech’, an excellent film whose R-rating comes solely from a single expletive-laden tirade by the protagonist. She seemed anxious to explain to me how they justified watching it even though it was rated-R, and how they hadn’t watched any R-rated movies since. I sat there taken aback like “Uh, [Sister], why do you feel compelled to justify watching this film to me? Isn’t ‘We heard it was really excellent so we watched it’ enough?” It was really bizarre to hear my older sister trying to essentially prove her innocence to me about the choice to watch an R-rated film. It’s like deep down she thought that watching an R-rated film was sinful and she felt bad about it. She thought that I, a fellow Mormon, knew that watching R-rated movies was bad and that my asking about it was implicitly me questioning her worthiness, her righteousness, her ‘purity’. Her whole demeanor throughout this discussion could be described as a little ‘frenzied’, like a cornered animal. She probably felt cornered in two ways.

1. She knew her ‘rationale’ for skipping the sexy scene and not watching R-rated movies wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny.
2. Residual guilt from an earlier decision to watch an R-rated movie was undermining her credibility and worthiness (in her eyes).

As I pressed her on her categorical abstention from R-rated movies, she grew increasingly uncomfortable and eventually just exited the conversation. This is a conversation we’ve had several times since and it always resolves in a similar manner.  

The thing is, as bizarre as her behavior seems on paper, I really do understand where she’s coming from. She and I had very similar experiences growing up in Mormonism in the age of the ‘For the Strength of Youth’ pamphlet. This pamphlet is essentially a little book of rules for Mormon youth (under 18) to frequently review and follow. Copies are handed out regularly at church youth meetings, and youth Sunday school lessons will frequently consist of reviewing a chapter or two and discussing. There’s a chapter on dating, a chapter on nutrition, a chapter on media, a chapter on language, and quite a few others.

The chapter on dating has the general purpose of preventing youth from having sexual experiences as they date. ‘Appropriate’ and ‘inappropriate’ behaviors are laid out with relative clarity. Holding hands is considered appropriate. Even kissing. But it should only be a peck. No tongue, no French kissing. That’s sinful. Hugging is fine, but don’t hold it too long. And no hugging if you aren’t standing up. Anything horizontal is forbidden, as are activities referred to as ‘necking’ and ‘petting’, though church leaders rarely deign to elaborate on what exactly those are. And so forth. 

The chapter on media describes how we must be careful about the types of music, television, movies, and other forms of media we consume, because, in effect, ‘what we put in will either pollute us or uplift us’. Imagery like ‘a young man drinking a glass of crude oil’ is frequently invoked in lessons on this chapter to get the point across. (NOTE: The church, in recent years, has removed imagery like this from circulation, like the infamous ‘licked cupcake’ Mormon-ads, but we won’t forget. They’ll try to memory-hole and gaslight through it as they do with so many things but they can’t change reality.) This was an extremely effective method of instruction, at least for kids like me that listened. More like ‘indoctrination’, really. One rule in this chapter is to never watch R-rated movies.

From the time you are 12 years old you are told that the rules written in ‘For the Strength of Youth’ are essentially God’s commandments for you. To engage in behavior forbidden in that pamphlet is to commit sin—no two ways about it. I followed these rules religiously. Or at least I tried. Those I followed I felt good about, those I didn’t I felt like shit about. That’s one way to understand ‘religiously’ in a modern context I suppose. It wasn’t uncommon to have a ‘worthiness interview’ with your local Bishop and have him ask about your alignment with the ‘Strength of Youth’ guidelines. These typically resulted either in tearful confessions of misconduct or lies which resulted in even more tearful confessions in the future. The point is, I and other Mormon youth like my sister were indoctrinated to believe that certain choices, like passionate kissing or watching an R-rated movie, were BAD. This was often presented with an attempt at nuance that seldom connected. ‘Passionate kissing is BAD, but once you’re married it’s okay.’ Most of us understood that. (No such messaging on R-rated movies though–those were shown as bad across the board.) You can’t really expect a child to grasp the nuance though, however well it’s presented. For a child it’s often just absorbed as ‘this good this bad’. Regular instruction from/emphasis on ‘For the Strength of Youth’ continues from 12-18 years old (excellent time to add more shame to a kid’s life than nature already supplies /s). These years of indoctrination can create psychological/emotional blocks and pathologies and little phobias that persist into adulthood, long after a Mormon ceases to be a ‘Youth’ at all.

Let’s look at the chapter on language. ‘For the Strength of Youth’ prohibits swearing. The standard ‘swear words’, like shit, ass, damn, hell, fuck, cunt, etc., are verboten. To let them leave your lips in any context is considered sinful. Now, I think all of us in polite society would agree that children ought not to be using those words. Prohibiting their use by children is a fixture in every Western household I’ve ever visited. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be used in *any* context ever, by anyone of any age. It’s well-understood in our society that cursing is not ‘okay’ for kids but it is ‘okay’ for adults in certain contexts. Many Mormon adults might agree, even though it’s universally understood that to curse at church is any capacity is taboo. But a non-trivial number of Mormon adults would be incapable of swearing even if they wanted to because they carry a remnant of childhood guilt/fear/programming that says ‘Swearing is BAD! If you swear you should feel BAD!’ This 100% comes from instruction grounded in ‘For the Strength of Youth’.

In a recent conversation with my sister the topic of profanity came up and this point was made for me in an amusing fashion. My sister held her own in a discussion of the F-word in media and in society and was entirely coherent until I asked her to pronounce it. “Just say it—I want to make sure we’re thinking of the same word.” She wouldn’t. When pressed, she got really defensive. At that moment in the conversation we crossed the ‘blood-brain barrier’ from her rationality to her irrationality. Her ability to reason just shut off and she couldn’t even bring herself to sound it out. I think this is pretty self-evident pathological behavior. A healthy adult shouldn’t have such struggles. Again we have this internal barrier manifest: she will inexplicably feel bad if she does X (where X here is pronouncing the F-word), maybe even *really* bad, so she doesn’t even try. Even in an intellectual context. She just avoids it entirely. And on the off-chance she lets one slip in a moment of anger or panic (“Oh shit!”) she’ll feel inordinately bad about it.

I understand what the barrier feels like because I’ve confronted it. I didn’t watch an R-rated movie until I was 21. In strict accordance with ‘For the Strength of Youth’ I refused to watch them. If friends were going to the movies to see an R-rated movie, I didn’t go. At parties, if an R-rated movie was being shown, I’d sit in another room until it was done. I just made the decision that I wasn’t going to watch them. That’s not to say that it was entirely rational. Following the rules is rational. But being ‘afraid’ of R-rated movies or feeling sick when you go to watch them isn’t. When I returned from my mission I decided that I was no longer a child and I needed to face the music as it pertained to movies. The truth was apparent: movies should be judged by their content and purpose, not by their arbitrary rating. There are PG-13 movies far less worthy of a watch than certain R movies. There are certain R movies that are meaningful and rich and enlightening that couldn’t possibly be PG-13 because of the nature of the content. Ultimately, I realized that life itself is rated R and that the time had come for me to exercise my own judgement in media–to take off the R-rating prohibition like it was a pair of training wheels on a bike. I realized that’s what the ‘For the Strength of Youth’ prohibition essentially was–training wheels–and the time had come for me to remove them. This turned out to not be easy. The moment I turned on my first rated-R film and started watching (something like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ or ‘Shawshank Redemption’ as I recall), I felt sick to my stomach. I felt bad. I felt guilt and shame like I was doing something wrong. And I felt that right when the R-rating appeared on screen. It felt Pavlovian. I realized that the content of the movie could be the exact same as a PG-13 but because it had the R-rating I’d feel bad watching it. I realized how absurd that was, and I pressed on. I don’t remember exactly when the feeling was completely gone, but it probably took a few dozen films. Now it’s just a memory of a feeling–I no longer even notice what the rating of a film is. 

Mormons are taught to follow their feelings, especially the guilty/fearful/shame-y ones. They are taught that such feelings are ‘promptings from the Holy Spirit’ to dissuade them from making certain choices. Paying heed to your conscience is generally a good habit as a human. That little pang of guilt or shame can stop you from making legitimately terrible decisions. But the system can be hijacked. Those ‘conscience pricking you’ feelings can be manufactured and pathologized, and that’s what I contend is happening with so many ‘infantilized’ Mormon adults who can’t bring themselves to engage in perfectly normal adult behaviors. And I think at the core is ‘For the Strength of Youth’ and its misapplication. Or perhaps it isn’t a ‘misapplication’ at all–perhaps it is having the exact effect that was intended.

The use of shame and guilt as control mechanisms by the church is bad and deserves its own discussion but that’s not the hill I want to die on here—all I want to see is instruction given to youth and adults in the church that clarifies the distinction between ‘Things we all agree a child shouldn’t be doing’ and ‘Things an adult shouldn’t be doing’, because the line is blurred, deliberately or otherwise. ‘For the Strength of Youth’ should be taught like what it is: GUIDELINES FOR YOUTH, NOT RULES FOR ADULTS. You should understand that when you hit 18 you have essentially graduated to the higher law of ‘making your own decisions without training wheels’ and none of the things in ‘For the Strength of Youth’ have any bearing upon your personal worthiness anymore. None of the things in there (with minor exceptions) are bad! It’s okay to say the F-word. It’s okay to watch an R-rated movie! The entire point of the damn pamphlet is to shelter your childlike mind from content too strong for it to handle AT THE TIME. As a child there is language too strong for you to understand/use properly, graphic media content that you will be unable to properly process, romantic/sexual feelings you will be unable to manage, etc. As a child you can’t properly contextualize any of it and really should just avoid it. But when you’re an adult you are now capable of handling it and contextualizing it all, both on screen and in your own life. And you should! You shouldn’t keep your mind childlike forever. It behooves you as an adult to grow up and face the music of life!

Somehow a numerous host of Mormon youth went through 6 years of ‘For the Strength of Youth’ and didn’t get the memo. Probably because the memo was never circulated. In most cases it is taught badly. The occasional wise leader or Bishop makes an effort to teach it well but they don’t do so with official instruction–they do so out of their own understanding. Why isn’t it part of the official curriculum? Why isn’t it printed on the ‘For the Strength of Youth’ pamphlet itself: “EXPIRES WHEN YOU ARE 18”? By my analysis, on the whole, Mormon leadership is heavily biased towards the ‘maintain control’ side of the membership management spectrum so they aren’t too keen on changing the method of instruction. Making adjustments like that in an enormous bureaucracy like the church isn’t easy. Additionally, ‘infantilizing’ the adult membership is a net-positive in the minds of certain church leaders who view themselves as shepherds and the membership as sheep. We see this attitude plainly in the church’s strategy for dealing with its fraught history. ‘Discourage research and critical thought. In fact, stigmatize it! Encourage docility and trust, invoke shame and guilt in those who stray from ‘approved sources’’. Etc. Many of my adult relatives’ primary complaint when discovering the numerous unpleasant truths in church history was not ‘Woah how could these historical figures have done these horrible things’, it’s ‘Why did the modern church hide this from us? Did they not think we could handle it?’. That’s the infantilization. It’s insulting to say the least. 

I believe that Mormon youth are never really allowed to grow up in certain ways. They grow up like a stunted tree warped around a rigid frame. The frame is there to keep the tree steady when it’s young and serves an important role, but at some point the frame is supposed to be removed. If it isn’t, the tree can’t grow properly. It will curl around the obstacle and grow in twisted form (search ‘trees growing around obstacles’ for the visual). In virtually no cases does this make the tree stronger. I think it introduces structural weaknesses that are often profound. ‘For the Strength of Youth’ is meant to be a frame for children in the church but if it isn’t properly removed it warps their adult development. In severe cases it morphs into ‘For the Purest Among Us’ as those with a penchant for Puritanism find in it another set of ways to ‘ascend’ in their personal worthiness in the eyes of God. Talk about poorly-adjusted adults… We’ve all seen the families who won’t even allow PG-13 movies or playing cards in their homes. The pathology gets passed from parent to child…

This all underscores the meaning of the term ‘well-adjusted adult’. When you age you are supposed to adjust your behavior and understanding of the world to match your matured experience. To not make a handful of adjustments at all because you could never get over the icky feeling planted there when you were a child when it comes to things like swearing or R-rated movies… That’s the definition of not doing said adjustment. You’ll pay a social price alongside the personal price of missing out on rich parts of life. If the church did a better job of helping people age out of ‘For the Strength of Youth’ its membership would be much better off. It should be well-understood that adult Mormons who still follow those guidelines to the letter are wacko and should be ridiculed for their own sake and for the sake of the general membership. We can’t tolerate that kind of naive puritanism and we certainly shouldn’t encourage it. Let ‘For the Strength of Youth’ be what it is–a handbook of guidelines for YOUTH. And Youth only.

I’ll conclude with a bonus example of erratic adult behavior with an apparent basis in ‘For the Strength of Youth’. I’m acquainted with an active Mormon guy who is in his late 20’s and has been married for several years. During his courtship he would frequently spend time with his to-be fiancé at her mother’s house. One day, long after their engagement and about one month before the wedding date, he settled down on the couch with his fiancé to watch a movie at her mother’s house. Partway through the movie her mother came in and, beholding the scene, exploded in a rage. She screamed that they were violating their covenants, that they might not be worthy to go to the temple, that he wasn’t worthy of the priesthood, that they needed to stop immediately and go think about their actions, and that she couldn’t bear the insult. He had to immediately leave and apologize. What was the offense? All their clothing was on. Hands weren’t wandering. They were both watching the screen. The movie was PG, and the volume wasn’t too loud. But guess what? They were ‘lying horizontally’ with each other on the couch, spooning. And that’s prohibited in the dating section of ‘For the Strength of Youth’. They were both in their early 20’s. Their wedding date was a month away. I won’t even comment.