Posted by:
Brother Of Jerry
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Date: October 06, 2021 01:43PM
https://religionnews.com/2021/10/04/mormons-make-strides-in-discussing-mental-illness-is-it-enough/From the article:
RNS) — Elder Erich Kopischke’s candid General Conference talk hit me in the gut this weekend. He spoke frankly about his family’s struggles with a son who returned home early from a mission because of mental health problems. The son thought seriously about suicide.
In the talk, Elder Kopischke gave assurances that many Latter-day Saints have longed to hear from the pulpit:
“Challenges often indicate a need for additional tools and support and are not a character defect.”
“Focusing on growth is healthier than obsessing about our shortcomings.”
“Open and honest discussions with one another will help this important topic to receive the attention it deserves.”
“We must love one another and be less judgmental — especially when our expectations are not immediately met.”
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And in recent years the church has, like the rest of society, begun to slowly remove the stigma it once attached to mental illness. Elder Jeffrey Holland and Sister Reyna Aburto have discussed depression in General Conference, and as a people we’re now exhuming the story of George Albert Smith’s yearslong treatment for serious mental and physical illness when he was an apostle a century ago. The church buried that story for years, making no mention of it whatsoever in its Teachings of the Presidents of the Church volume on him.
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On the hindrance side, however, the church’s approach to the gospel often adds to my exhaustion. Elder Kopischke’s straightforward and loving General Conference talk is a balm to my soul, but it floats on a river of constant rhetoric about how human beings must “qualify” for exaltation, and how God’s ultimate approval is conditional based on what we do (or fail to do) in this life. Even in this same General Conference, we had a talk about how no unclean thing can dwell with God in heaven, a warning that people who don’t attend church risk losing blessings in this world and the next, and various reminders to improve ourselves.
If I’d never had a mentally ill loved one, I would probably never have questioned those ideas. (I’m a One on the Enneagram, for heaven’s sake: We love things like self-improvement and predictable if-then patterns of behavior and consequences!) But my encounters with mental illness have made me far less sanguine about the universality of one-size-fits-all standards.
The idea of qualifying for blessings works great — unless you’re mentally ill.
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The church has always put great stock in correct behavior, so much so that our evangelical friends have sometimes accused us of believing in “works righteousness.” That’s an oversimplification of what we believe about the interplay between faith and action, but it’s certainly true that we believe our choices have consequences, even eternal ones. But lately, it has felt to me like we are ramping up our focus on righteous behavior and certainly on the idea that God’s approval is conditional. The word “qualify” gets a lot of play these days in General Conference, as does the all-new buzzphrase “covenant path,” which was not mentioned a single time in Conference until the 21st century.
If we are serious about becoming more compassionate about mental illness, we need to do the painful work of examining our assumptions about personal righteousness. It’s vital to acknowledge not everyone gets all the tools they need to make the decisions we consider to be righteous and correct.
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I of course did not hear Kopischke’s presentation, but it sounds like it brought up two important topics - dealing with mental illness with compassion and love, or even admitting the existence of mental illness, and openly admitting that General Authorities have serious family difficulties. That took some courage, in a church so focused on appearances and putting up a good front.