Gordon Monson: Why this LDS General Conference talk stands out — in all the right ways

Maybe those of you who are followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints don’t really know all that much about Tamara Runia, first counselor in the church’s Young Women General Presidency. I certainly don’t. I do know that I once interviewed her husband, Scott, who was a guard with a sweet jump shot on Brigham Young University’s basketball team back in the late 1970s.

Scott seemed like a smart, with it, cool dude back then.

But not as smart, with it, or cool as Tamara seems now.

Her speech in the Sunday morning session of General Conference was, by my reckoning, exactly what so many Latter-day Saints need to hear. It wasn’t just the message inside the talk, it was the way she gave it, speaking plainly, in language a regular person might use when passing along meaningful information. Her words spoken, her points made, were words and points you wouldn’t mind hearing from an old friend you run into while walking your dog or sitting in a lounge chair on a beach somewhere.

Her manner of speaking, in and of itself, shouldn’t have stood out, but it did because … well, anybody who attends or regularly watches or listens to conference knows why. It was unlike the more typical, automaton-ish reverent whisper so common among church leaders in that setting.

It was … real.

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Perfect message for imperfect people

And more significantly, the content of her sermon refreshingly healed listeners more than it hurt them. It’s notable that Christian preachings sometimes can cut as much as they cure. They emphasize commandments and covenants, obeying and complying with them. Yeah, they mention Jesus Christ’s love but not without reiterating that only if believers keep God’s commandments can they be blessed from on high with spiritual power and celestial and temporal favor. All of which might have value, but that might also have the effect of making imperfect humans feel even more imperfect. Not just imperfect, but shameful, dark and unrighteous.

Runia’s talk deftly addressed that effect and attempted to do away with it.

She, in so many words, reminded the body of the church and its leaders that they, as followers of Christ and children of God, are held in unchanging and high worth by the Almighty, regardless of where they are on the worthiness scale. She said that she makes mistakes, just like other folks do, and that as she does, she repents, asking God for forgiveness. That, more than the committing of bits of sin along the way, is a more authentic manifestation of one’s faith in Christ and position before God.

“Heaven isn’t for people who have been perfect,” she said. “It’s for people who have been forgiven, who choose Christ, again and again.”

She also said: “Today I want to speak to those of us who sometimes feel ‘repentance and forgiveness seem to be working for everyone but me,’ those who privately wonder since I keep making the same mistakes maybe this is the way I am, those who, like me, have days when the ‘covenant path’ feels so steep, it’s almost a ‘covenant hike.’”

And she added that she once “measured her relationship with the Savior by how perfectly I was living. … I thought an obedient life meant I would never need to repent. And when I made mistakes, which was every single day, I distanced myself from God, thinking, ‘He must be so disappointed in me.’ That’s just not true. I’ve learned that if you wait until you’re clean enough or perfect enough to go to the Savior, you’ve missed the whole point.”

She said that repentance doesn’t burden Jesus Christ, it brightens his joy, and that when people repent, God forgives without shaming anyone. And that people’s worth isn’t tied to obedience; rather that their worth is lofty and constant.

God even loves ‘Bozos’ — like us

OK, that’s good stuff, especially for Latter-day Saints who are told week after week after week at church services, in one way or another, that obedience to commandments is the key to getting back to heaven and that failing that kind of strict compliance, they might just be what amounts to spiritual toast.

Last time I checked, to err is human. That’s not an excuse; it’s an explanation.

To have a church leader speak out in such friendly terms at General Conference, acknowledging that, uh-huh, you Bozos are going to screw up at times, that that’s simply a part of the human condition, and even if you repeat the same screwups over and over, if you get on your knees and repent, you have good reason to hope for forgiveness.

She didn’t come right out and use the term, “Bozo.” That’s on me.

But God loves Bozos, too, and Jesus’ Atonement works for everyone, clown or otherwise.

It’s a long-standing issue/debate among church members, and even some of their leaders, as to where Christ’s grace ends and righteous comportment begins. Falling short of the latter has caused some believers great consternation and pain, eventually pushing some away from not just the shame they’ve been made to feel, but also from the church as a whole.

Hearing a straightforward message of hope, like this one, throws a lifeline to all Latter-day Saints, especially to young people. They sometimes hear the emphasis over the pulpit to keep the commandments, keep the commandments, keep those qualifying commandments. They hear that as though it were shouted through a bullhorn, while the repentance and forgiveness and Atonement parts are uttered so often in hushed tones.

Tamara Runia picked up that bullhorn and shouted Jesus Christ’s enabling mercy, loud and clear.