I am horrified by this story. I have been struggling to make sense of it, to resolve it in my mind. Meanwhile, others are trying to resolve it in their minds too. There are some who are blaming the woman for using this hook-up app. They are saying that when you make sexually immoral decisions, this is the consequence. Thus it was her fault that she was killed. She got herself killed by her choices. That’s one way to resolve it. Say, she got what was coming to her.
But I can’t think that way. I think evil happens to people that may not be doing everything right but the level of the bad consequences certainly is not balanced with their incorrect choices.
So I’m saying that there’s this whole world of people out there who try to resolve the revulsion they feel when things like this happen with an imbalanced way of judging. They like to blame the person who had the bad thing happen to them in a way that resolves the revulsion. They like to say this awful thing happened to her because of her sins. This way of thinking seemingly protects them. They think this awful thing won’t happen to them or their loved ones as long as they don’t do what this woman did. But we know that bad things happen to good people.
I’m so sick of the judgmental attitude some people have. Not only are there people within my church that have this attitude, but there are also people in other churches and people who don’t belong to any church that have it. When we judge like this it prevents us from having to mourn with the family of those who have suffered this grief. It prevents us from realizing that something is inherently wrong with our society in general if it's breeding an increased number of murderers.
To choose to connect up the cause (the victim's choices) with the result (the victim's consequences) in these situations doesn’t work. Jesus Christ said that even though the tower of Siloam fell on some people, it didn’t mean they were all sinners. And even though Pilate killed those other people, it didn’t mean that it was a consequences for living a bad life (Luke 13:1-5). Instead, He said that bad things can happen to good and bad people. To swing around our judgement in false ways is dangerous, not only to our community, but also to ourselves.
This is one of the reasons it is dangerous: There is another group of people that takes their cue from these judgmental people. This other group doesn’t like this unfair way of judging. They know it is wrong. So they use it as a way to justify their continuous poor choices. They say there is not any connection whatsoever between the bad things that happen and our choices. They believe they can live in any way they want and it has no connection to the general consequences in society or their specific life trials.
But we know we can’t live however we want because the murderer was following that rule. The result was that he wasn’t happy. He hated himself. He hated people. The reports say he had lived for quite some time entertaining homicidal and suicidal thoughts.
My thoughts are that everyone makes bad choices sometimes, including me. That doesn’t mean it’s a good, productive thing to do to criticize others. It does not promote compatibility in relationships to ostracize and condemn others in order to punish them. It is not correct to conclude that the bad things that happen to people are always connected to a specific choice they make.
But we do promote compatibility in relationships and sustainable joy by generally figuring out and talking about the laws of cause and effect. Joseph Smith said, “I teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.” Governing also includes that judgment of connecting up cause and effect.
That said, in regards to bad things happening to us in general, I have learned that it is an objective fact that danger and evil exist independent of God. There are entities that act independent of him. They have their own will. We have our own will. We have been given the agency to use it. People have been given the agency to do good and and evil or a combination of both.
If we want to increase our protection from danger and evil, we can do our best to learn more about the general rules of cause and effect and apply them to our specific choices. But that doesn’t mean bad things will never happen to us. They still do. So what is the benefit of figuring out the laws and striving to live them if bad things still happen?
In black and white judgment, there doesn’t seem to be a benefit. But in a careful analysis of the variables, we can see that many of the bad things that could happen to us because of our poor choices would not happen. We can actually reduce the number of bad things that happen by learning and keeping certain laws. In fact, many bad things don’t happen to us because of the countless people who have sacrificed their lives for us (and others who continue to do so) in establishing the physical and political freedoms we have in our country.
Additionally, I have found it very useful to learn to differentiate between the results that are good, better, and best. To increase my ability to judge more accurately I have spent a lot of time thinking about what is most valuable to me. For example, there have been some bad things happen to me in my life. From the perspective I stand in now, I am thankful for them. Without these trials, I would never be able to have the relationships that I have now. The level of sustainable joy I live in now is directly related to the struggles I’ve had to work to endure and overcome.
I’m saying that even though we have adversity, which is usually categorized as a very bad thing, the end result, because we have it, work through it, figure things out, gain knowledge, become more than we would have, and develop relationships, is more valuable than the results we would have obtained had we never had to deal with it.
One very obvious example of this that has been a big part of the development of my understanding is physical exercise. It is painful to lift weights, to run, or to hike up a mountain, but the long-term benefits of incrementally sacrificing in this way has built muscle and increased my cardiorespiratory health. I also experience a level of satisfaction, motivation, and spiritual intensity that I have not been able to obtain in any other way. I’ve found that this part of the sustainable joy equation can’t be obtained by eating more, giving myself more stuff, sitting around more. I actually have to sacrifice, work, face the trouble, learn, endure, and overcome.
So what does this have to do with some of the awful, horrible things that are happening in our society today, like this senseless murder in Layton, Utah?
I think I was talking about dealing with our evaluation of someone who had bad things happen to her. I was talking about how misjudging these kinds of things can perpetuate the problem.
But how can anything good come of this awful thing? What is the purpose for it happening? What am I supposed to do with this story? How can I deal with it? I’m mourning for her family. I’m mourning for our community. I want to help prevent these kinds of things from happening. Is there some way to do that? But I also want to know if there is anything that can be done now -after the fact- for our community, for this family, for this young woman who died, and for justice and mercy to be done.
I feel like the best thing I can personally do after balancing out my own way of judging the bad things that happen, is to proactively love and support the members of my family and community. I’m realizing I can’t be neutral in the way I interact with people. I don’t want to entertain negative thoughts if I can help it. Instead, I need to fight for the good thoughts and actively use my agency to control them. Proactively love other people. Proactively allow them to figure out the cause and effect of their own choices and stop busying myself with doing that for them. I have enough of my own causes and effects to worry about. In this way, I provide them with a portion of the spiritual nourishment (love) they need, which prevents them from needing to seek it from conflicting sources that might entrap them and hurt them.
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