So I’m thinking about this issue after having watched Netflix’s documentary on Jodi Hildebrandt, “Evil Influencer”: what’s up with Mormons doing criminal and immoral things under the belief they are inspired by God?
Such acts, of course, are pretty rare, but at this point it’s feeling a little disconcerting for it to appear that a seeming high percentage of such concerning cases happen among the Mormons.
I wrote a post in response to chat around Under the Banner of Heaven that it’s pretty clear from the historical record that those willing to make great personal sacrifice to follow the spirit have been a tremendous force for good in human history, so let me just say right off the bat that claiming to fix these problems by rejecting all spiritual promptings doesn’t appear valid to me. The atheist communists killed around 100,000,000 people in the 20th century.
But some of the cases of Mormon inspiration having gone bad are truly horrifying. Not only Hildebrandt, but Chad Daybell and Vallow killing Vallow’s kids under the belief they were demon possessed is really hard to fathom. I note some other cases in that post like the Laffertys.
In the many discussions over Mormon uneasiness over Nephi being commanded to kill Laban, I remember an old BCC post encouraging anyone feeling such a prompting to seek psychological help. I did a post on the question of “other impulses” related to the spirt, noting this can be tricky, but what happens when the psychologist IS the one getting problematic promptings like Hildebrant?
I also recall an old post from Lynnette at Zelophehad’s Daughters noting a session where the therapist gave the patients permission to be angry at God and Lynette writing in the post something like, “Isn’t it problematic for therapists to make such claims of religious authority?”
Either way, I don’t think such advice to seek therapy would have stopped Daybell/Vallow, and again, Hildebrandt WAS the therapist. Lots of us I’m sure are happy to have religion AND the mental health industry, but many religious people would balk at replacing religion with that profession.
Elder Renlund proposed that the safe-guards to spiritual experience are the brethren themselves, citing DC 28:2. Elder Renlund gave an example of getting a call “from an individual who had been arrested for trespassing,” who told Elder Renlund, “it had been revealed to him that additional scripture was buried under the ground floor of a building he tried to enter.” Elder Renlund noted that the man’s intention of finding new scripture for the church was outside the proper church structure, but the nature of the story also suggests the man acting in ways that most people would take as delusion whether church members or not. Just about everyone else on the planet would have been skeptical of the man’s claims regardless of our church’s structures around the nature of revelation.
Likewise, all humans would advise Daybell not to kill his step-kids and Hildebrandt not to abuse Ruby Franke’s kids. That is, I’m not sure the church’s structure of leadership over revelation would have had any more effect on stopping Daybell or Hildebrandt than general public opinion.
Tim Ballard also claimed some revelatory pretensions and had enough connections with Elder M. Russell Ballard. My point isn’t to attack Mormonism or our leaders, but only to note the concerning mess these stories suggest. Listening to our leaders and therapists ARE generally good things, but I’m not sure they are absolutely foolproof.
Again, I do think that empirically those who made great sacrifices to follow the spirit have done overwhelmingly more good than harm in human history, but cases of harm do exist. I do see Mormonism as a wonderful community, but are Daybell, Hildebrandt, and Tim Ballard simply unfortunate side effects of our generally very good community?
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