[NOTE: That was the official title...some license was exercised in the application of this lesson. However, I feel it still worked toward the stated Purpose, which was: To help class members recognize the importance of living according to the doctrines of the gospel and receiving priesthood ordinances.]
The week before I taught last, I scanned Brother Carlson’s lesson to see what he would be teaching. Was immensely relieved to see that he was scheduled to cover the subject of immorality and infidelity. Hurray! Was really happy to dodge that bullet. Then, predictably, Brother Carlson ran out of time. It was hard to be sad about that because his lesson was so interesting and well presented. But at the end of the class and throughout the week, I was given to know that I should cover that treacherous topic after all.
Two articles came to mind as I prepared. One was Chapter III from The Screwtape Letters. The other was a very powerful sermon (in the classical sense of the word) from President Spencer W. Kimball. I am copying both of those over to the blog. (Please let me know if that arouses any copyright concerns.)
Both of these articles created some consternation for me in the past. I began reading The Screwtape Letters but had to give up part of the way through. I was having too much trouble turning everything around 180 degrees to find out what Lewis was really trying to teach us. However, my Sunday School president pointed out that there were indeed some truths in what Screwtape was presenting. Just like his master...he mixes in a little truth with a lot of lies. Note that sometimes the proportions change. Nevertheless, I believe I was supposed to read at least Chapter III as it teaches a very critical lesson in interpersonal relationships.
I also have a love-fear response to President Kimball’s teachings. I have yet to read The Miracle of Forgiveness because I dread finding out how much I am sinning or have sinned in the past. But I have always felt that his counsel to those within a marriage covenant is of great value. For those who are not within that covenant, this provides some wonderful advice about the attitude with which the covenant should be approached.
On the available bottom of the page, I scribbled down the thoughts I had had while preparing the lesson. Some of them we didn’t discuss in class. But I’ll go ahead and share them all with you with perhaps a few comments where necessary.
First, the quotes:
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The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis, Chapter III
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
I am very pleased by what you tell me about this man's relations with his mother. But you must press your advantage. The Enemy will be working from the centre outwards, gradually bringing more and more of the patient's conduct under the new standard, and may reach his behaviour to the old lady at any moment. You want to get in first. Keep in close touch with our colleague Glubose who is in charge of the mother, and build up between you in that house a good settled habit of mutual annoyance; daily pinpricks. The following methods are useful.
1. Keep his mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind—or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself ,which are perfectly clear to anyone who has over lived in the same house with him or worked the same office.
2. It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very "spiritual", that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother—the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment's notice from impassioned prayer for a wife's or son's "soul" to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.
3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that. Bring fully into the consciousness of your patient that particular lift of his mother's eyebrows which he learned to dislike in the nursery, and let him think how much he dislikes it. Let him assume that she knows how annoying it is and does it to annoy—if you know your job he will not notice the immense improbability of the assumption. And, of course, never let him suspect that he has tones and looks which similarly annoy her. As he cannot see or hear himself, this is easily managed.
4. In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face. To keep this game up you and Glubose must see to it that each of these two fools has a sort of double standard. Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at their face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging all his mother's utterances with the fullest and most oversensitive interpretation of the tone and the context and the suspected intention. She must be encouraged to do the same to him. Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or very nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent. You know the kind of thing: "I simply ask her what time dinner will be and she flies into a temper." Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken.
Finally, tell me something about the old lady's religious position. Is she at all jealous of the new factor in her son's life?—at all piqued that he should have learned from others, and so late, what she considers she gave him such good opportunity of learning in childhood? Does she feel he is making a great deal of "fuss" about it—or that he's getting in on very easy terms? Remember the elder brother in the Enemy's story,
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE
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Marriage Requires Total Allegiance and Total Fidelity
Spencer W. Kimball, 2007 RS/PH Study Manual
There are those married people who permit their eyes to wander and their hearts to become vagrant, who think it is not improper to flirt a little, to share their hearts and have desire for someone other than the wife or the husband. The Lord says in no uncertain terms, “Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else.” (D&C 42:22.)
And, when the Lord says all thy heart, it allows for no sharing nor dividing nor depriving. And, to the woman it is paraphrased: “Thou shalt love thy husband with all thy heart and shalt cleave unto him and none else.”
The words none else eliminate everyone and everything. The spouse then becomes preeminent in the life of the husband or wife, and neither social life nor occupational life nor political life nor any other interest nor person nor thing shall ever take precedence over the companion spouse. We sometimes find women who absorb and hover over the children at the expense of the husband, sometimes even estranging them from him.
The Lord says to them: “Thou shalt cleave unto him and none else.”
Frequently, people continue to cleave unto their mothers and their fathers and their chums. Sometimes mothers will not relinquish the hold they have had upon their children, and husbands as well as wives return to their mothers and fathers to obtain advice and counsel and to confide, whereas cleaving should be to the wife in most things, and all intimacies should be kept in great secrecy and privacy from others.
Marriage presupposes total allegiance and total fidelity. Each spouse takes the partner with the understanding that he or she gives totally to the spouse all the heart, strength, loyalty, honor, and affection, with all dignity. Any divergence is sin; any sharing of the heart is transgression. As we should have “an eye single to the glory of God,” so should we have an eye, an ear, a heart single to the marriage and the spouse and family.
I plead with all those bound by marriage vows and covenants to make that marriage holy, keep it fresh, express affection meaningfully and sincerely and often.
Husbands, come home—body, spirit, mind, loyalties, interests, and affections—and love your companion in an holy and unbreakable relationship.
Wives, come home with all your interests, fidelity, yearnings, loyalties, and affections—working together to make your home a blessed heaven. Thus would you greatly please your Lord and Master and guarantee yourselves happiness supreme.
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Notes:
Most important unit in society. (family)
Most important relationship within that unit. (husband-wife)
Media is attacking mercilessly. (Men made to appear foolish and inept; infidelity everywhere.)
I was 18 when I became a member of the LDS Church. I was 33 when I got married. During those intervening years, I had tried very hard to become a faithful Latter-day Saint. The thought of giving up the complete supervision of my own spiritual progression was a bit unsettling. {Second thought...I didn't mean to imply that I completely gave up responsibility for my own spiritual progression, just that once I married I became part of a team which was led by my husband. So he would naturally assume some responsibility as the head of our family. I recognize that I am still responsible for my individual faithfulness.} One of the sisters in the past always talked about how much she struggled with the principle of submission. So it was important to me to know that my choice was a wise one. (As I said in the class, with my husband present, it was a good decision.)
Prince/Princess Charming have no warts. I had previously listed “Twilight.” I know nothing about that except what I have read in social media comments, but from that perspective alone I have felt some uneasiness.
Goethe said (paraphrasing): The debt a husband and wife owe each other is so immense that it will take all eternity to discharge it.
Be careful about social media. A sister posted how surprised she was at how fast her husband could bathe the three kids when there was a BYU football game coming up. And now that she knew... I was kind of disappointed, because she could have so easily made that into a warm fuzzy for her husband instead of kind of a mild rebuke. It would have required only the addition of a phrase like, “How much I appreciate his doing that service for our family.” Well, you get the idea.
If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, that means you haven’t been tending your side very well.
Encouraged us all to be more sensitive in our relationships...increase compliments (should have added service, but didn’t...I’ve been amazed at how much difference it makes when my husband gets himself a bowl of his favorite ice cream and takes the time to bring me a bowl of my own preferred flavor...of course, the scales aren’t appreciating the thoughtfulness!).
My husband works very hard to maintain our household. I remember his observing that no one paid very much attention to his consistent efforts to care for the lawn. And I thought that he did deserve it; I just hadn’t been paying the compliments.
So for those who are challenged at finding something about which to compliment a family member, I recommended the story about the mother whose son was out of control. The psychologist strongly encouraged her to build up his self-esteem, to look for something about which she could sincerely compliment him. Well, she went home and watched and waited and observed, but nothing was showing up. Finally, she hit upon something. “Son,” she exclaimed, “you’re doing a really good job of breathing.”
Try it...it does make a difference with any relationship.
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