A while back I had one of those insight moments, you know the ones, when it feels like you’ve been gathering a bunch of puzzle pieces and suddenly it all coalesces and you really see the picture, solve the problem, that moment changes you somehow. One thing that often strikes me about these experiences is that the “profound insight” that I felt in the moment is so hard to explain to others. And when I attempt to explain, it often comes out in as a platitude or cliche, like “it really is all about the journey.” And yet the emotional experience and insight felt so real and meaningful in the moment.

So all of this is to say that this insight that I’m going to share, I am struggling to find the words, and none of the words I am writing really seem to get to the heart of what I’m really trying to say. But it is related to the way I view my faith and my Mormonism (which is obviously not your standard issue Mormon faith view).

I was reading the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, I wish they would teach this book in every kindergarten class (and then every year after that too). The premise is that most of our communication is about needs I have needs that I am trying to meet, you have needs you are trying to meet, and if we attempt to look under (the often problematic) things we say to each other and try to understand the needs then we can “create a quality of communication in which everyone’s needs are met compassionately.”

Rosenberg was talking about how many of our deepest basic needs relate to human connection, we are communal beings, solitary confinement feels like torture to our bodies and minds every bit as painful as more physical punishments, in fact, most of us would choose a lot of physical pain rather than choose to lose our connections to our loved one. We need to love and be loved, we need to feel like we are important to our people and we need to feel like we contribute to the well-being of the people who are important to us. I actually saw a study that showed that 70% of our communication is interpersonal (gossip!!).

He then goes on to talk about how *moral judgment* (I call this type of judgment “judgmentalism” and outline the difference from “wise judgment” here) is the root of human disconnection. The moment we label someone bad or good, we create distance or a wall between ourselves and them. I know I have felt this, I know I want to withdraw when people label me as lazy or selfish or bad. But it also applies to being labeled “good” because I have to keep “earning” and never “fail” and not do anything “bad” or that “good” label can be taken away. Why would I share my weaknesses and be real about my failings if the result will be that I’ll be labeled selfish? . . . And there is the wall.

Connection and love and joy require vulnerability. And moral judgment kills the space in which we can nurture vulnerability and connection. Basically Jesus was on to something when he said “Judge not”. I’ve heard this interpreted to mean that God will judge us by the measure we use to judge others, but the truth is, we don’t have to wait that long, Judgmentalism creates distance and separation and “solitary confinement” and loneliness right now. We don’t have to wait for a final judgment from a divine being, we’ve already created our own painful lonely prison with nothing more than than a bucket load of “shoulds” and the labels good and bad, righteous and evil, worthy and unworthy.

And it clicked in my mind that the way I was taught to view the idea of Celestial Glory was to see it as the place where we are sealed (connected) to our loved one forever. Whereas the way I was taught about the non-Mormon version was that the “Good” people went to heaven and “Bad” people went to hell. (In fact it wasn’t that long ago that my kids came home from the neighbors house having learned that since we are Mormons we are going to hell, and I told my kids that they could tell the neighbor girl that Mormons don’t believe in hell, so we will welcome her in heaven. That relationship went downhill from there. Distance.)

This opens up a whole new way within my Mormon context to view the basic goal of being alive. Instead of it being about performing a list of random-seeming rules (the temperature of my caffeine seriously? Why does that matter?) I can measure my choices through the very useful rubric of “does this behavior draw me closer to or push me away from connection”. Perhaps it is neither nor right or wrong to drink coffee, but that our agreement to adhere to certain rules is about a marker of shared meaning, a marker of connection, and we feel closer when we follow this silly rule. And further, if we grow our ideas of connection beyond just “my forever family” to “the human family” (as our brother Jesus said to do) then the moment I judge others as unworthy, deficient, or bad for drinking coffee I have destroyed the space where we could perhaps have built upon some other common goal.

And ironically the ways that we discuss the idea of forever families or celestial glory is chock full of judging who is or isn’t “worthy” of the celestial kingdom, that moral judgment hurts ourselves and those we love, and that judgment then creates the very distance, the very walls, the very prison of loneliness that we are so desperately trying to avoid. I’d like to repeat that: Our moral judgments CREATE misery and pain and loneliness. When we are trying so hard to be “good” to be “worthy” that we create misery and rejection in those we are supposed to love the most? I think we’ve been doing this wrong.