Potemkin Villages

 As many of you know, I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Every six months a General Conference of the Church convenes & we listen to God's word through the Prophet & other Church leaders. One of the talks that most impressed me was by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "On Being Genuine"- see link below for the full talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeMS09TSjxY

Often when talking to LDS folks, particularly those with whom I'm in counseling with, I'll make the distinction between "The Church" & "The Culture of the Church". By this I mean, the policies & proceedures of the organization, & in particular the ethic of Love that The Lord espouses to his children that informs that organization, being The Church. The human additions to The Culture surrounding The Church with in some ways overlap the organization, which in many ways oppress the members by way of the Advarsary's subtle twisting of the truth, being The Culture of the Church.

Some specific distinctions might be for example: striving to live the Lord's law of health, the Word of Wisdom & the intracacies of failing, repenting, & the love & patience which true followers of Jesus Christ would show forth (The Church), versus if someone enters a meeting smelling like cigarrette smoke, being judged as "unworthy" because of such "evidence" (The Culture of the Church). Another, more specific to this blog post might be the Church's teachings on working towards being the same in private as you are in public, versus The Culture inviting one to act one way at a Church activity towards one's family, & quite another in the four walls of your own home. The Culture invites a lack of genuineness, to construct "Potemkin Villages", while The Church recognizes these invitations, people's humanness, & invites continuous striving towards achieving Christ-like genuiness & patience with one another.

I know that this isn't isolated to the LDS Church, because I've not always been a member & I know lots of folks who aren't- I know many within & without The Church who stuggle with being genuine. The key I feel, is in the relationships we have to the values & ethics we hold dear. Daily I deal with folks who perform counter to those ethics & values, who when confronted with their behavior & words, & the real relational effects of those, they generally don't see themselves as that person. People I converse with regularly see the disparity between who they want to be & how they may be performing life. To complicate things more, we can often act very cruelly to one another (again unintentionally & counter to our ethics & values) by highlighting these discrepancies. This can assist the Adversary in solidifying an identity counter to the one folks are trying to forge for themselves in relation to their dearly-held ethics & values for living.

My hope, is that you will start to notice a discrepancy in the story the Adversary is spinning in your life about who you are & what you're about. Start looking in your life & the life of those around you, for the evidences of attempts & successes to live a genuine life. These may come up in the most surprizing circumstances, even those that may appear pathological or life-endagering on the surface. A favorite author & therapist of mine, Carl Whitaker said of problem-performances & being genuine: "Psychopathology is proof of mental health. the individual who is distorted in his thinking is essentially carrying on an open war within himself rather than capitulating to the social slavery".

In my conversations with those constructing & living in Potemkin Villages, they let me know that they feel greater agency to change their lives, both in living the same privately & publicly, as well as treating others kinder in order to help them move towards their preferred identities. How are you & those in your life, carrying on open wars against Potemkin Villages, the "Social Slavery", by instead constructing, even slowly, greater genuiness? How are you helping them in this endevor? How are you deconstructing these facades & buiding up a congruety of genuiness? How are others in your life coworkers in these destructions & constructions? How can we all encourage each other in this great effort?