This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 451st week, and we’re covering the priesthood session of the April 2006 General Conference.
This session is a good followup to last week’s session, where I talked about Latter-day Saint masculinity and it’s emphasis on the welfare of women and children. Patriarchy, at its best, is not about policing women. It’s about men policing other men for the benefit of women. Such as when you have the leader of an organized religion lament “hatred… closer to home” with one and only one concrete example: “fathers who rise in anger over small, inconsequential things and make wives weep and children fear.”
He had more stern words for men and fathers later on, as well, condemning capable men for “refusing to work while their wives are compelled to spend long hours providing for their households.” According to him, “no man can be considered a member in good standing who refuses to work to support his family if he is physically able to do so.” You just can’t ready the words of General Authorities for long without realizing that these men have deep, abiding concern for the women and children of our faith.
President Hinckley also strongly condemned “racial hatred”, including specific examples that some right-wing-curious Latter-day Saints really needed to hear over the past couple of years. President Hinckley would have had none of it: “[N]o man who makes disparaging remarks concerning those of another race can consider himself a true disciple of Christ.”
He also spoke out against intolerance for those of other faiths, giving a long and poignant example of a young man who learned to hate the Book of Mormon because of how poorly he was treated by Latter-day Saints when he grew up (as a non-member) in Utah. Ultimately, he was won over, but not until meeting new Latter-day Saints who no longer “belittled him, made him feel out of place, and poked fun at him.”
I am anti-anti-niceness. I don’t like the way swaggering, irresponsible, decadent versions of masculinity have crept into Latter-day Saint communities. Twenty years ago, so-called “pick up artists” were still niche, but now we’ve got figures like Andrew Tate who command the loyalty of millions of young men, and it’s impossible not to see some of their philosophies leaking into the membership of the Church.
Of course there is a kernel of truth to anti-niceness. Niceness and kindness are not actually one and the same. Niceness can often be a superficial veneer that hides contempt or dishonesty beneath the surface. I acknowledge the point. But at the same token, I don’t think–certainly, not outside the Wasatch Front–that the world has a super-abundance of even superficial niceness. Instead, what we have is far, far too much contention and mockery and derision. In that context, it’s hard not to see anti-niceness as a cover for unkindness.
Let’s just look at what President Hinckley is actually concerned with. Going back to the Latter-day Saint youths who mistreated their non-member acquaintance, he called out the fact that they ” “belittled him, made him feel out of place, and poked fun at him,” saying that they had treated him in a “sorry manner”. Let’s not invest too much in fine distinctions between niceness and kindness. Let’s just have less of belittling, ostracizing, and mocking.
Or, in President Hinckley’s own words:
Why do any of us have to be so mean and unkind to others? Why can’t all of us reach out in friendship to everyone about us? Why is there so much bitterness and animosity? It is not a part of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I’ll just wrap this post up with his conclusion:
There is no end to the good we can do, to the influence we can have with others. Let us not dwell on the critical or the negative. Let us pray for strength; let us pray for capacity and desire to assist others. Let us radiate the light of the gospel at all times and all places, that the Spirit of the Redeemer may radiate from us.