How I Became a Reluctant Radical

When we hear this parable, the faults of the servant seem so obvious to us.

How could he be so careless, so unaware of his need for mercy and grace? Unfortunately, all of us, at different times in our lives, seem to find ourselves in the servant’s place. As I was asked to share thoughts about ministering in our community, some of my own experiences, where I began to see how I had acted like this servant, came to mind.

I remember, for example, how bad I felt when, as a new kid in my elementary school class, nobody had prepared valentines treats for me, but as I think about it now, I also think of how little concern I had for the absent kid whose valentines treats they ended up giving to me instead.

Sometimes we inherit prejudice from our culture and upbringing.

“And that wicked one cometh and taketh away light and truth, through disobedience, from the children of men, and because of the tradition of their fathers” (D&C 93:39). One of the amazing things about becoming converted is that it sometimes works too well. We want the gospel to conform comfortably with our culture and worldview and stop there, but it often seems to invade further than we wish it, to infect more thoroughly than we had in mind, smiting our conscience in ever new ways. Teach kids about the importance of truth, justice and mercy, and watch out, for some of them will actually believe you.

On one occasion, I remember watching my dad turn down a beggar while we were on vacation in California, and how he and Mom afterwards told me that the beggar would probably not have used the money well if we had given it to him. Imagine my surprise when I later read King Benjamin condemn this very behavior! Setting aside the fact that there are more effective means of receiving help than panhandling, this experience marked me, and helped me realize that the culture of my upbringing wasn’t always aligned with God’s will.

Once in my house, the subject of interracial marriage came up, and how my parents thought it was a bad idea, and told us how President Kimball and other church leaders discouraged it. I took their word for it at the time, but later on felt differently when my friend’s sister married a black man and experienced ostracism from fellow church members for it. Another friend told me of how his parents were ostracized by their Salt Lake City community for being interracially married during the civil rights era, and eventually left the Church.

Hearing these accounts caused me to feel more compassion for those who were different from me, and realize that despite the goodness of the Church, we still had a serious need for improvement in some areas. I continue to encounter blacks and other ethnic minorities who struggle to feel a sense of belonging in our Utah Mormon culture, who regularly encounter people trying to justify the former priesthood ban even after the Church has published an essay on its own web site repudiating these justifications and saying that the policy emerged during a period of “profound racism” in our country. In addition to these more serious theological difficulties, converts from other cultures face arbitrary restrictions on what forms of sacred music and worship are appropriate, as though our heavenly parents actually care what instruments we use to praise them with!

“But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye [also] were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).

Recent trends in American culture have led to a resurgence of nativism, or fear of immigrants, especially those with different religions from ours. At times a city on a hill, a welcoming refuge for the “wretched refuse of [other nations’] teeming shores,” lately we have shut our doors to these brothers and sisters in their time of need. Unfortunately this is a perennial problem, and it is a near perfect example of the parable of the ungrateful servant, since hardly any of us can call ourselves true natives. Growing up listening to one of my favorite music groups, the Indigo Girls, was the first time I seriously considered the radical notion that “we were on the same boat back in 1694.” My mission in Brazil and later interactions with hard-working Latino immigrants here in the US further cemented for me how important these cultures are to us. In addition to profoundly enriching the patchwork of American culture, many of these immigrants are the only thing propping up entire industries, the only ones who are still willing to provide much manual labor that we depend on for the very food on our tables, as well as the tables themselves!

When you seek to minister to your community, sometimes the real needs aren’t the same popular causes you hear in the news, or there may be special ways that certain issues affect your community.

For example, during my mission, a young man whom I baptized experienced serious mental trauma and tried to commit suicide twice while I was there. It took way too long for me to get a clue, but after conversing with him many times as one friend to another, he finally got the courage to admit to me that he was gay, and I realized that all the advice, explanations, and Ensign articles I had shared with him on that topic weren’t helping him, and were even making suicide seem more appealing, since rather than acknowledging him as an individual of worth as he was, they described his condition as abnormal, a trial of mortality that would eventually be healed. It wasn’t until I let go of my need to justify my own worldview and beliefs and simply tried to love him that I could even begin to help. After that I came to realize that every ward in our Church had at least a few people with similar experiences.

I used to have very little patience with those who expressed doubts or concerns about the Church, shunning and dismissing them, until I started experiencing it myself. Back when I was in high school, before the Internet had really gone public, there was much less access to detailed information about church history and difficult topics, but after my mission, as a software engineer with frequent access to the exponentially growing information on the web, and with a thirst for light and truth that had been imparted to me from my conversion, I soon became aware that some of the simplistic narratives that I was raised on were more nuanced than I had realized. This faith crisis and reconstruction process helped me not to assume so much about my fellow saints who struggle, having experienced it firsthand, and this also helped me to be able to minister to others who were experiencing something similar. Another recent reminder of the danger of judging others happened to me when I read Educated: A Memoir, by Tara Westover, about a woman who grew up in a LDS family with fundamentalist leanings that did not believe in seeking medical attention for injuries. Her story was so different from mine, so unusual and so poignantly told, that I felt filled with compassion as I read it and vowed to be at least ten times more careful in assuming anything about anyone in the future.

As we are exposed to other people’s suffering we are given an opportunity to take up the prophetic mantle and advocate for them.

Renowned Jewish scholar Abraham J. Heschel described a preoccupation with injustice as a hallmark of the Old Testament prophets:

The prophets’ preoccupation with justice and righteousness has its roots in a powerful awareness of injustice. That justice is a good thing, a fine goal, even a supreme ideal, is commonly accepted. What is lacking is a sense of the monstrosity of injustice. Moralists of all ages have been eloquent in singing the praises of virtue. The distinction of the prophets was in their remorseless unveiling of injustice and oppression, in their comprehension of social, political, and religious evils. They were not concerned with the definition, but with the predicament, of justice, with the fact that those called upon to apply it defied it. (The Prophets, 260)

The striking surprise is that prophets of Israel were tolerated at all by their people. To the patriots, they seemed pernicious; to the pious multitude, blasphemous; to the men in authority, seditious. (The Prophets, 23)

I hope that these glimpses into some of my own experiences have helped explain, even if they may not fully justify, what makes brother Youngblood so weird. I’ve gotten to a point where I simply can’t stand idly by when I see an underdog getting picked on. I feel compelled to stand up for the underdog. This sometimes makes it seem like I pick the opposite side of every argument, but I’ve always felt like when we get together as a group, our time is best spent talking about what we can do better, not what other people can. “For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?” (Matthew 5:46-47)

We run a serious risk as religious people. It can be tempting for us to dwell on the glory of the past or to look for deliverance and correction of wrongs in the future. Heschel warns us of this:

“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion⁠⁠—its message becomes meaningless.” (God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism)

We assume and tell people that their trials and sufferings will eventually be relieved in the afterlife, when actually God is calling us to relieve them now. We assume that all the problems in the environment will be fixed when Jesus comes, when He is actually calling us to fix them now. We assume that all the messed-up politics and international intrigues that the world now experiences will be resolved when Jesus returns, when he is actually calling us to resolve them now. We assume that we need to simply follow orders and leave the prophesying to those in charge, when in fact God has called all to prophesy. This deliverance won’t come in an afterlife. This world is the one that is going to be renewed, not some other. Let us do all we can to prepare this world for this future, “while it is day: [for] the night cometh, when no [one] can work” (John 9:4). In the name of Christ, amen.