deconstructor ( )

Date: April 07, 2012 12:41PM Posted by:Date: April 07, 2012 12:41PM

This is one of my MTC experiences, and looking back, was when I learned what "keeping and feeling the spirit" was really all about.



I was in the MTC during the start of the Gulf War in early 1991. Before the war, the MTC had an open-door policy for families and relatives hand-delivering gifts to missionaries in the MTC. But then the church decided to use the start of the war as a pretext to set a ban on accepting any hand-delivered care packages from families to MTC missionaries.



I was an AP in an MTC Branch at the time the new rule took affect.



(As a sidenote, I learned later that someone started a business just down the street from the MTC, that would take family care packages and for a fee, "deliver" them to the MTC. For security reasons, said the MTC rule, the MTC would only accept packages from couriers but not directly from family members.)



There had been a long tradition for years that every Easter Sunday afternoon, a certain member family that lived directly behind the MTC, would make tons of cinnamon rolls and hand them over the fence to missionaries. My MTC Branch roomed in one of the buildings at the back of the MTC, closest to this member family's yard, which shared a fence with the MTC.



My Branch President pulled me in early on Easter Sunday morning to tell me that under no circumstances should anyone accept cinnamon rolls from the family. He told me that the tradition violated the new rule against hand-delivered packages and he would hold me PERSONALLY accountable if anyone in the Branch broke the rule and got a cinnamon roll. He called on me to get up in that day's Sacrament Meeting and talk on obedience and warn everyone not to take a cinnamon roll "lest we lose the spirit."



The Branch President also insisted that I remind each missionary individually about the rule and admonish them not to go near the MTC fence on Easter Sunday afternoon. At the time, I was a True Believing Mormon and took the whole thing to heart, obeying the Branch President's every word in order to "keep the spirit."



Easter afternoon came and went and I thought we had made it through the day without incident. Looking out my window, the family stood at the fence with plates of cinnamon roles and nobody dared go near them.



Three days later, the First Counselor in the Branch Presidency pulled me out of my language class for a "Personal Priesthood Interview." He escorted me to the Presidency's office, where the other counselor and the President were waiting. They were all furious. Apparently one of the missionaries in our Branch was caught eating a cinnamon roll in his room the afternoon of Easter Sunday. He got caught because someone else had snitched on him in the mandatory weekly letter confessional to the Branch President.



The hard thing was, the presidency was furious with me, not the missionary who had eaten the cinnamon roll. They ripped me up one side and down the other - for not being a true leader, disappointing my family and losing their trust. I felt like a piece of shit, seriously. They quoted scriptures on obedience, priesthood authority and losing the spirit.



Worst of all, I felt like I had committed a terrible sin. I had repented for some things before my mission, but the guilt I felt for this incident was almost unbearable - worse than the guilt I had felt for other more serious "transgressions" prior to my mission. This guilt over the cinnamon rolls was the most horrible, incredible guilt I have ever felt in my life! I really feared that I had "lost the spirit" for good.



At the time, my only defense was that I didn't understand how accepting a cinnamon roll from a member family violated Christ's spirit of love. But the First Counselor cut me off, saying in a raised voice, "Elder, I don't think you can even feel the spirit anymore!"



They immediately released me as AP and gave the calling to my companion - a fate I felt was close to death. As part of my repentance, they had me write a one-page paper on why I had failed as a mission leader, which was given to my Mission President when I entered the mission field. In my written confessional-of-sorts I wrote that I had disobeyed one of the Lord's chosen leaders and therefore, had lost his spirit and "amen to my authority as a leader."



That was the low point of my mission, for once I left the MTC I felt like I had "the spirit" again. I went on to prove my obedience and priesthood worthiness in the mission field, baptizing in all of my areas and serving in several leadership positions.



It wasn't until after my mission, going through my papers that I stumbled across that confessional paper I had written in the MTC. I was so angry reading it again, realizing for the first time that they had manipulated my faith and desire to be righteous. All that guilty torment self-loathing over a cinnamon roll that I didn't even eat...



And then it hit me, the whole Mormon thing was a guilt trip! Because of my belief they could make me feel guilty for anything they wanted. Those pangs of guilt weren't coming from God, they were coming from my religious conditioning. I had let church leaders program my conscience!



If my faith in the Mormon gospel meant the leaders could make me feel guilty about cinnamon rolls, then it meant they could make me feel guilty for anything. They used my faith to pull at my guilt strings, and they were doing the same thing with things like tithing too! The whole evil control process of the church unraveled for me.



That day I decided I would never let anyone play the guilt trip game on me again. I would decide for myself, based on true ethics (not external obedience or "keeping the spirit"), what of my own behaviors were wrong or right. I would never again turn that guilt control over to someone else - especially an institution as manipulative as the church.



It would take several more years before I would eventually leave the church, but that decision helped me through all the other guilt headgames my family tried to play on me for "falling away." I hadn't fallen away, I taken control of what made me feel guilty.



I see petty rules come from the prophet against earrings, tattoos and beards and wonder how many people out there are suffering the "cinnamon roll guilt-trip" as my wife now humorously calls it.