One-by-One,-by-Walter-Rane
“One by One,” by Walter Rane, depicts the Nephites coming one by one to meet the resurrected Savior. 2025 by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.This story appears here courtesy of TheChurchNews.com. It is not for use by other media.
By Aimee Cobabe, Church News
Editor’s note: This is part two of a four-part series on recent research related to toxic perfectionism. Part one on “Latter-day Saints’ unique outlook” is here.
Perfectionism can have a profound impact on faith and faith can have a profound impact on perfectionism, according to Michael Goodman, professor of religious education at Brigham Young University.
“Toxic perfectionism is poison to religious faith,” Goodman said.
He and other professors and mental health professionals wrote about the impacts of toxic perfectionism in the December issue of BYU Studies. Goodman used data from a six-year study of over 2,000 teens and young adults (about half members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, half not). They looked specifically at how toxic perfectionism and religious beliefs impact one another.
Goodman was most surprised to find that individuals with higher levels of toxic perfectionism were twice as likely to leave their religious denomination than those with low levels. Perfectionism preceded drops in attendance in those they studied.
On the other hand, those who regularly attended church had lower levels of toxic perfectionism.
Goodman is clear that toxic perfectionism is not the same as having high standards. He defines it as “how you feel about yourself when you don’t measure up to your high standards.”
The study also revealed that valuing faith for its own sake was associated with lower toxic perfectionism, while practicing religion for external rewards is associated with higher toxic perfectionism.
The Impact of the Grace of God
Grace is a gift from Heavenly Father given through His Son, Jesus Christ, according to the Topics and Questions guide in the Gospel Library and on ChurchofJesusChrist.org. It continues: “Through His grace, the Lord … enables those who live His gospel to repent and be forgiven.”
In his research, Goodman was able to differentiate between two types of people — those who view their religion as having a “strict, literal or excessive conformity to the law;” and those who view their religion as offering grace. He found that those who focused on grace had less toxic perfectionism.
“It’s pretty hard to have a relationship with a lightning-bolt-throwing God, who every time you make a mistake is mad at you,” Goodman said. He added that religious people in general have lower toxic perfectionism partly because those faiths teach that one is redeemable when mistakes are made.
“The very Atonement of Jesus Christ is evidence that God actually thinks we’re quite redeemable and shouldn’t see ourselves as lost,” Goodman said.
Impact for Teachers
The knowledge of how some people incorrectly view God’s love of needing to be earned can be especially important for gospel teachers, according to Goodman. He is in a branch presidency at the Provo Missionary Training Center, where he’s seen a lot of missionaries struggle with feelings of guilt.
He suggests emphasizing both the importance of divine law and the Atonement of Jesus Christ. For example, if teaching the law of chastity, Goodman said a teacher could focus on how damaging violating that law can be on a person’s divine worth and also point to the Atonement of Jesus Christ as the way to move on.
“It allows individuals … to see a possibility of instead of internalizing their mistake with this law saying, ‘this makes me bad or makes me damaged,’ it then turns to ‘I made a mistake, but I’m capable of moving forward and God will help me move forward,’” Goodman said.
There are many examples of such teaching in the scriptures, explained Goodman. He points to Alma’s teaching of his son Corianton.
“He was pretty blunt in Alma 39,” Goodman said. “But then he took the next few chapters to teach about the Atonement and try and help Corianton see that ‘listen, you’re not permanently stuck.’”
Another scripture that Goodman points to that teaches this same principle is Romans 8:38-39: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Said Goodman: “The more we help individuals see God accurately, understand the Atonement of Jesus Christ accurately and see their identity as children of God accurately, that’s going to help people whose thought processes may veer towards toxic perfectionism.”
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