The last time I went to the temple on a Saturday was the last time I went to the temple on a Saturday. I have experienced few things in my life more Spiritually murderous than having a great experience in an endowment session, then having to push through a throng of selfish, loud, and contentious people all pressed into the entrance of the temple waiting for a newly wed couple. By the time we exited the mosh pit of glares, under-the-breath commentary, and complete rudeness of people refusing to move even with a request, all spiritual good feelings had turned into a desire to lash out and harm these people.
Great, celebrate the marriage of your friends or family, but the temple is a place of reverence, not a gym for parties. If you are preventing the easy entrance and departure of people not there for your couple, you are diminishing and destroying the very purpose that these people are coming – to get closer to God. You are being irreverent and dismissive of the sacred nature of the temple grounds.
It seems to be a growing problem, rife within the church, that people are completely oblivious to. More and more I hear bishops asking people to talk quietly and take their seats. More and more I hear temple patrons and matrons asking people to be reverent in the chapel and even in temple sessions. Sacrament sounds like lunchtime at an elementary school because parents aren’t training their children to be reverent. People are loud and speaking in conversational voices in the chapels of churches and temples, throngs of badly behaving people mob the entrances of the temples to party with a newly wed. Kids are running up and down aisles with impunity.
We have a crisis of reverence in our church. A crisis of reverence that comes from only one place – the selfish obliviousness to those around us. The decrease in reverence is both a symptom and a cause.
The lack of reverence is a symptom of people’s increasing sense of selfishness and a lack of awareness of those around them. Parents whose children are yelling and playing loudly in the sacrament meeting and don’t take them out are demonstrating a lack of awareness. How can you not think that giving a child keys to play with would not be disruptive? How can you not hear how loud the sound of the foil wrapper on the Cliff bar you handed the three year old is in the otherwise quiet of the chapel? There are times when I cannot even hear myself bearing my own testimony for how raucous the children are and how oblivious their parents have become. By the way, “SSsshhhhhh” has NEVER worked in the history of children. NEVER. Just stop and take them out.
“Well, kids can’t control it…” some will say. Maybe true, but that’s what the parents are supposed to do. It really isn’t that hard. You don’t give noisy objects to kids in sacrament. Unwrap noisy food before you come to church, and you train your kids that it is safer and they have more freedom inside the chapel, rather than outside.
I have kids. I trained them early that they would prefer the calm quiet of being in a pew in the chapel rather than outside in the foyer. How? if I took them out in the foyer, it was worse for them. I would sit with them, keep them wrapped and bound by arms on my lap, give a low growl in their ear “You will behave in the chapel,” and hold them there until they stopped fighting. No running around the church. No toys in chapel or the church, and definitely less freedom outside the chapel.
After two times each, they preferred to be in the pew being quiet to being restrained with a seemingly angry father outside of it.
You cannot teach reverence if you are not being reverent yourself, though. YOU need to stop being loud and irreverent. YOU need to take your seat or have a conversation outside of the chapel. Or wait until the end of church.
However, the biggest shock and horror for me is how people behave at the temples. I am seriously surprised that the leaders of the church or of the temples have not nipped this in the bud. it baffles me how people think it is okay to block entrances, glower at temple goers, and refuse to move out of their way. It confuses me how people don’t know it isn’t appropriate to carry on a “catching up gossip” session in the chapel of the temple, in very loud whispering tones.
The complete lack of respect for others and the temple grounds stuns me. But it has one source – selfishness. They somehow have this idea that their being there to cheer a marriage is more important than those going to the temple for peace and contemplation with the Spirit. Your daughter’s masters program is not more important than being in the temple chapel – this chatter conflicts with the reverence of communing with the Spirit for everyone else in the chapel. The House of the Lord is not the local dive bar or stadium where these are appropriate.
I believe that the decrease in reverence at our houses of worship is in direct correlation with people leaving the church and with the rise of anger and rage in the world. How can we have a safe place to commune with the Spirit to counter the effects of this world if we are taking the world’s irreverence and lack of respect of holy places with us into these holy places? If we treat our holy places as any other building or place to gather, they become just another place, and the Spirit leaves.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is about serving others. It is about awareness of the suffering of others. It boils down to being aware of our impact on the spirituality of others more so than our own self-interests. The least demonstration of this is through reverence of our holy places. If you are not contributing to the reverence of a holy place, you are actively diminishing it.
We need to first increase our awareness of our behavior on others and, simultaneously, be reverent in our behaviors and attitudes in places of worship. The world is already a loud and chaotic place, our churches and temple grounds should be the opposite.
