When I was a kid, nearly every weekend one of the four of us would spend the night at my grandparents’ house. Technically, they were Grandma Florence and Grandpa Fuzz, my mom’s parents, but we never used their names. They were just Grandma and Grandpa. Their little one-bedroom apartment smelled of bacon and coffee and cigarette smoke—never that stale, ashtray-ish smoke smell, but the fresh burning smell that wafts when a new cigarette is lit. Before I knew him, Grandpa was an alcoholic, although by the time I was aware of things like that he had, I believe, stopped drinking or at least gained control of it. Grandma drank quite a bit of tea and one of the things I clearly remember her saying often is "if the worst thing I ever do in my life is drink a little tea, I think I'll have lived a good life." As far as I know, they never went to church. Probably they came to our baptisms, but just because it was a family event and not as a religious one. I never read scriptures with them, or prayed other than over the dinner table, or talked about religion. It could be said, in fact, that they taught me absolutely nothing about religion.
But I would never presume to let these qualities of theirs, which many might see as faults, make me love them any less.
This is because they taught me something that is more important, possibly, than anything else a person can ever learn: the power of being loved. Because if there is anything I know about my grandparents, it is that they loved me. They loved and adored and cherished me, and not in a fancy, fabulous, isn't-she-perfect sort of way. They loved me for exactly who I am, no more or less. The thought of analyzing or questioning or doubting their love never entered into my head. It was just there, as much a part of the landscape of my life as the mountains, the lake, my backyard, air. It was a softness that always comforted me, even when I wasn't with them, even when I didn't think about it. They loved me, no matter what.
They loved me, and they showed me by spending time with me. What we did together wasn't amazing. I sat at their yellow kitchen table and listened to them talk to their friends. I'd sit in the chair that was next to the couch in their living room; Grandma would put her feet up on the back of the couch to help her circulation, and we'd both read. I helped her carry laundry to the little laundry room in their complex; it smelled of Pinesol and must and dryer lint and warmth. Sometimes Grandpa, who managed the landscaping, would take me outside with him while he pruned the rosebushes. They'd take me to the drugstore for a hamburger and a milkshake or to Pioneer Park to wade in the ditch. (If you are of a certain age and grew up near Provo you'll know what I mean.)
I know that my relationship with them is filtered through the lens of childhood. I know they were imperfect people because I know we all are. But even after Grandma's clogged carotid artery changed her personality entirely (when I was about ten) and Grandpa passed away (from a stroke, when I was twelve), I never stopped being cushioned by the certainty that they loved me. It is a softness I still carry with me and I still draw strength from. I would be less of a person—less confident and much weaker—without that experience of being loved unconditionally.
But this is not a paean to childhood happiness and security. Instead it is an introduction to a thing I want to say but cannot because it revolves around a story I don't own and so cannot tell. Not just one story, but several I have witnessed lately, with a basic outline like this: person A prevents someone in their life (person B) from spending time with or developing a deep relationship with someone else (person C) because person C isn't living his or her religion as person A believes they should. Or person B is eliminated altogether, and person A won't have a relationship with person C because person C doesn't ________________ or does such things as ___________.
To my mind, this sort of thing should be the eighth deadly sin: judgement. It implies that people make choices based on their badness or goodness, on their strength or weakness, which isn’t always true. It implies that person A has the right or the knowledge (or perhaps, in their mind, the obligation) to assume why a decision has been made or an action taken by person C. It is the very opposite of charity because it lacks compassion. It also assumes superiority: because person A does____________, she must be a better person than person C, who doesn't.
I suppose that if we were all photocopies of each other—if all family dynamics were identically ideal—religion could be black and white. What is wrong would always be wrong and what is right would always be right. But as none of us fully fit within the ideal (and quite a few of us are so far away from the ideal that we bear only a passing resemblance to it) ambiguity enters. Not every family is made of parents who look at all religious ideas in identical ways. Some families are made of people who have different faiths. Sometimes people's beliefs change. The same experience in a family might cause one person to stop believing in anything at all while it simultaneously deepens the faith of another. Religion, faith, belief: what we have in our hearts is malleable, changing with time, experience, and knowledge, with disappointments and losses as well as happiness. It is unique to individuals and situations.
And if I know anything at all about religion, it is that the only religious experience I am qualified to judge is my own. (If I'm even able to do that.) This is because the motivation behind what might seem to be a sin is quite often not something anyone else knows. For example, one of my close friends very rarely pays tithing, not because she lacks faith to write the check but because every time she does, her husband gets mad at her. Which is worse: not paying tithing, or having an enormous argument with her husband every payday? I know some people would say she should pay it despite the argument and that she is spiritually weak for not doing so; I know others who would say that if she is willing to pay it in the truest part of her heart, and circumstances are stopping her, it is OK that she doesn't. I know which side I believe, but I can only speak for myself; I don't know what God thinks. But what I do know is that if I thought "I can't be friends with her because she doesn't pay her tithing very often," I would be sinning because I would be judging someone who it is not my place to judge. (Not to mention, my life would be less without her humor, encouragement, and music recommendations.)
Other people's beliefs and their way of living their religion are not the measuring stick I use to determine the type of relationship I want to create. I have many friends whose faith and religious works are much greater and more devout than mine, but I'm not friends with them for that reason (even though it is something I admire about them). Nor do I think they are friends with me despite my religious shortcomings. Instead, we are friends because we get each other. Because we can laugh with and talk to and trust each other. Because we each know the other is in a different place in her spiritual progression—and that is OK. We are friends, in other words, because we love each other unconditionally.
I will readily agree that there are some relationships in my life that I put limits on because of person C's actions. But these aren't because of religious practices but safety and sanity; I limit the relationships because I need to limit the amount of toxicity I'm exposed to. I understand limiting your kids' interaction with their pot-smoking great uncle or with cousin Marge who's been known to drive drunk more than once or even with Aunt Tara who is angry and mean. There are several "person Cs" I know whom I keep on the fringes of my life because their drama is too much to mix up with my own.
But not living up to religious expectations doesn't make a person toxic. Limiting a relationship because person C sometimes drinks iced tea or coffee, goes out to dinner on Sundays, or only goes to sacrament meeting? I know that I am not the strongest, most faithful and spiritually knowledgeable person, but to me that is the opposite of what Christ taught. "As I have loved you, love one another" is the essence of Christianity. Obedience, following the commandments, keeping promises and covenants: all of these are important, but I think it is love that matters most. When we try to love like Christ loved we are working at being Christian. Christ didn't say it was acceptable to sin, but He did die for us because He knew we would anyway. He doesn't limit the relationship He has with us because we are sinners. He continues to love us and to encourage our relationship with Him. He loves us not despite our faults and sins, not because of them, but just for who we are. He loves us, in other words, unconditionally.
What if someone in my young life had said, "Amy, I know you love your grandparents. But your grandpa smokes and your grandma drinks iced tea and they never go to church, so you can only see them on your birthday and at Christmas"? What if someone had judged their religious qualities and decided they were lacking enough that the rest of it—the time, the unremarkable and yet remarkably sweet ordinary experiences, the conversations and the stories and the laughing and the tenderness—didn't compensate? What if I had never been loved in such a way? I cannot describe the desolation that thought gives me. I would be without my life's truest safe place. Not knowing that I was worth being loved for who I am would have done more damage than the coffee or the smoking or the not going to church.
Everyone needs to be loved for who they are. We all need expectations, goals, and achievements, too; of course we can't just sit around loving each other. We have to do: work, struggle, fail, try again. We have to keep trying to do better and to not let our weaknesses become excuses. But to deny or reject love because the person offering it is flawed? How can that be anything other than judgment? How can it do anything other that fracture relationships, damage families, lessen potential? I understand that person A is working from a space of wanting to teach principles and ideals. But what sort of principle is poisoning a relationship built on? And we can't live our lives only interacting with others who think the same thing we do. We are all trying, even those of us who look like we aren't. But offering love and having it rejected, especially by family members: it is a uniquely horrible sort of damaging pain, and it isn't like cancer or Alzheimer's or a car wreck. It is a pain we can avoid giving others, simply by avoiding the eighth deadly sin.
