Finding the Defiance in Turning the Other Cheek

Angel of Empathy, J. Kirk Richards

Part of how I'm navigating this current era of watching the most conservative apostles die on every untenable hill is by shifting my focus to female leadership, members, and their perspectives. What this looks like is getting their books from the Church's thrift store, Deseret Industries. I live in an area where this is very easy to do. Curating my library of church books to be predominantly written by and focused on women is something that brings me joy. 

So of course, some dude had to come and interrupt it.

Around the same time I picked up Rosie Card's book from the shelf, one of the employees came over to stock more books. Apropos of nothing, he tried to engage me in a conversation about the SEC fine, with the opener of "Did you know our church is the richest one in the world?"

Now, the trouble with doing this to strangers is you have no idea who you could be talking to and what their lived experience has been. I could've said absolutely anything back to him, much of which could've hurt his feelings. But I didn't. I was not having this conversation with a stranger in DI because it's not my job to help him manage whatever combination of feelings was going on inside of him to make him approach me like this. So I ignored him.

He didn't take the hint, so I said as gently as I could, "Yes, sweetheart. I'm aware."

He didn't expect that. He didn't know what to do with it. It confused him enough that he disengaged. He then left me alone to do my browsing.

Just because a person refuses to engage in a dialogue about the failures of the Church with you doesn't mean they are ignorant about the situation, or deluding themselves into apologetics to soothe themselves into pretending it isn't happening. Sometimes, the exact opposite is true. They know just as much, if not more of the details of the situation than you do. They know people involved whose names you don't even know.

The world of the Church is small like that.

When you come at someone sideways, in inappropriate times and places, with assumptions and accusations, you put yourself into a position where the only version of a story you will hear and can accept is the one being passed around by people in that exact frame of mind.

Why?

Because folks with the details you don't know aren't interested in having an argument, especially not with a stranger. Silence is how they protect their peace. It's not complicity in wrong-doing. It's the refusal to engage with someone who lacks tact and self-control. That behavior creates an echo chamber of its own in which no one involved actually arrives at a full vision of the truth.

Anyway, here's my haul from yesterday:

•  A Woman's Reach, Belle S. Spafford
• Model Mormon, Rosemary Card
• Women Testify of Jesus Christ, Elaine Cannon
• Women I Have Known and Been, Carol Lynn Pearson
• Why the Church is as True as the Gospel, Eugene England
  

I'm going to make a Goodreads bookshelf of my finds to share what I've found so far since people have asked. You can also find what I'm currently reading in the Goodreads widget in my sidebar

I also got Becoming by Michelle Obama. Anyone insulting me for including her memoir will be reminded that she has never had to pay a $5 million fine to the SEC.

 

P.S. If you think "turning the other cheek" in Matthew 5:39 means passively letting people hurt you, let me relieve you of the burden of that false interpretation. Turning the other cheek is an act of defiance, the refusal to surrender your own dignity to the person trying to deprive it from you. That's what Jesus taught.