Love is the gift
Affleck, Afton Grant. 1977. Love is the gift. Bookcraft.
Rating:
2
Summary:
The book combines stories about what the author considers to be three types of love and responsibility (direct, peripheral, and panoramic – based on three types of vision) with her thoughts on love and responsibility along with scriptures and advice from Mormon General Authorities.
The three types of love/responsibility are:
-Direct: responsibility to members of the immediate family.
-Peripheral: responsibility to friends and neighbors ‘whose needs are revealed through the light of the Spirit’ (p. 8)
-Panoramic: responsibility to all spirit brothers and sisters who have ever lived, who now live, and are yet to live (paraphrased from p. 8; underlining mine because it is a pivotal point).
Review:
Precursor to Chicken Soup for the Mormon Soul?
As the book began I was actually thinking that it wasn’t going to be too bad, but by about halfway through I was beginning to see some very serious problems with the book and the slant given to the stories.
The first problem is that the author explains the altruistic behavior of the people in the book by calling it ‘love’. I guess in a sense you could call it that, but in many cases I think the better explanation is the genetic one outlined by Dawkins in ‘The Selfish Gene’ – at times being altruistic is more beneficial for the survival of our genes than is being selfish (see chapter 2, page 6).
The second problem with the book is the strong sense of religious superiority. As you read the book (especially if you are not a Mormon or a believer in god or religion) you get the distinct impression that the only good people in the world are those that fear god (spirit brothers from above). If you don’t then you are inherently a bad/unhealthy person. The author accomplishes this by always trying to draw connections (often the connections don’t actually exist) between people changing their unhealthy lifestyles or addictive behaviors and their conversion (or re-conversion) to Mormonism. What the author conveniently leaves out is that there are a lot of healthy, non-religious people in this world. She also does not address the idea that perhaps people can become healthy without a belief in god or religion. She essentially argues that all things that are unhealthy equate with sin, including misbehavior (often times related with foster children that have been abused). At the end of the book you can’t help but think the author is espousing elitist ideology and claiming that if you aren’t with her (a god-fearing Mormon or Christian at least), then you must be strongly against her and are therefore unhealthy and sinning.
Some of the stories are also quite offensive. Chapter 10 illustrates Native American Indians as all being illiterate farmers with no civility. The author shows an incredible lack of understanding of different cultures, which (hopefully I don’t offend anyone by saying this but I probably will) seems to me to be fairly typical of a lot of religious groups that believe everyone should convert to their way of thinking. By thinking everyone should think like they do and behave like they do they are essentially saying that other ways of life are wrong or less advanced. I find that utterly offensive.
Chapter 15 also attacks notions of equal rights for men and women. The author essentially argues that women shouldn’t/don’t really want equal rights because they will cease to be different from men. She also attacks anyone that would even consider questioning the authority and dictates of the Mormon General Authorities. And, on top of the other things, she also equates beliefs in equal rights with hippy-like behavior and drug use. As a former Mormon who left the Church for some of these exact reasons (equal rights and questioning authority) I found this chapter to be particularly offensive and naive.
But I think the boldest and simultaneously the most ridiculous part of the book is a brief section in Chapter 17 (p. 84 to be exact) that advocates a worldwide Mormon theocracy. “Charlie Stewart’s desire was to involve people in the process of strengthening their brothers and sisters. His vision encompassed the whole world of man – Church members and nonmembers. He realized that the actualization of the vision must begin within the Church – the gospel of Jesus Christ must be accepted and lived. This would make possible ‘the placing of all known resources for the benefit of man under priesthood direction, a legal administrator, that the needs of all could be met in the Lord’s way.’” I know this idea was very popular among the early Mormons and that as part of their temple ceremony they still agree to give everything to their religion, but this is tantamount to political treason and, well, ridiculous. They are claiming that the ideal way to govern the planet would be to put everything under the control of the Mormon Church. Admittedly the Mormon Church would deny this adamantly, but it is somewhat inherent in their beliefs to convert the entire world. If you have ever been slightly afraid of the goals and aims of Mormonism, I think this chapter is a good reason – they have every intention of eventually converting the entire world to their way of believing and living and then governing it as theocracy ruled by a bunch of old white men.
I should also point out that despite trying to group the stories into the above mentioned categories, the book format is pretty inconsistent. Some stories are a page long, others are 15. Some chapters are just thoughts by the author, others are stories told by a contributor. As a result of the loose format it is kind of hard to really grasp the intent of the author at the end.
Despite all of the problems there are actually a couple of good things in the book that would definitely attract Mormons. There is a chapter (23) about Michael McLean and his early musical career. Most Mormons would find this chapter interesting. There are also a few good quotes:
-p. 22 “He remembers that Greg pointed out that unacceptable actions can be symptoms of need rather than of meanness.”
-p. 107 “None of us ever arrives at a place where we don’t need encouragement and honest approval.”
-p. 120 “We can in no way judge what a child’s needs are unless we have a pure knowledge and are nonjudgmental of the factors which made him the way he is.”
Overall, I found this book to be, like many other non-official Mormon books, somewhat naive and very elitist (i.e. Mormons are the best and everyone else sucks). I’m sure the author didn’t really want her book to come across that way, but given Mormon theology and the format of the book, I don’t think there was anyway around it. Mormons may get a kick out of a book that reinforces their notions that Mormonism is a cure-all for every ailment under the sun, including alcoholism, homosexuality, disbelief, abuse, and drug abuse. But for anyone with a little bit of experience with psychology or sociology, they would easily see through the baseless claims and recognize that this book is Mormon propaganda and nothing more. I don’t recommend this book for thinking people.