The Primary Voice and the Ascended Ones

By Matt Palmer

There is a phenomenon in Latter-day Saint culture known as the primary voice. The primary voice refers to the style of public speaking common among women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We all know it when we hear it. The primary voice is a treacly, lilting cadence, as if always speaking to small children, always through a wide smile, and always attempting to communicate a form of unsurpassed joy that comes from obedience to the church’s law.

Lest I seem to be critical of the women, I view the primary voice as just one manifestation of a culture in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that holds christian living out as an unadulterated joy in which all trials are overcome, and temporal happiness is found, through strict obedience. This view largely eschews portrayal of sorrow and struggle in favor of a sterile brand of corporatized and highly scripted teaching from the pulpit. Official church teaching is always squeaky clean and carefully curated. Despondency and pathos are object lessons. Even the tales we are told about people burdened heavily in life are carefully chosen and delivered through teleprompters by general authorities, who are widely considered to be living the gospel well and are generally financially prosperous, well-educated, and very polished. Even the “face to face” productions with apostles, in which the brethren meet with the general membership to discuss their concerns, come across as scripted and pasteurized, with perfectly racially balanced audiences asking very safe and clean questions for the cameras. 

The presentation of the general authorities of the church is an important rhetoric about how the gospel is and ought to be experienced. The primary voice is representative of a kind of pharisaism where living the law of the church is viewed as the path to perfect happiness and prosperity. It’s the Sanhedrin meets the Stepford Wives. General Conference is largely viewed as a window into the pinnacle of gospel living. It’s where the general membership goes to receive personal revelation, as though the voice of God is unattainable outside of the mediums at the pulpit. General Authorities are presented as the strictest followers of the law. As one president goes and another comes, they will speak of the new President’s good deeds and exactness and encourage the viewers to follow his example. Here, here, and here. The closer one is to the President, the more they are regarded as an example of Christlike living and true spirituality, and the more their impressions are regarded as the imprint of the mind of God. Just think of the times you have heard one say something to the effect of, “my friend heard from a general authority . . . ,” as though they are about to impart the real scoop. 

As a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have had private conversations with my fellow members on many occasions about the divergence between what we see in General Conference and how we experience life. Many seem to simply believe that they just aren’t living the law as well as the speakers in General Conference, where frustration and doubt only appear as a story about someone to whom a faithful member successfully ministered. I propose that this frustration is a product of the way the gospel is presented in church culture as something administered only by the pure and joyful. 

There is a form of ignorance in this rhetoric. The idea that one’s grin only widens as they approach the Savior is mere public relations. The idea that christian living produces primary voice happiness is false. Mary Magdalene did not teach in the primary voice. Mother Mary did not teach in the primary voice. The prophets of old did not employ public relations teams to sanitize and curate their appearance to the world. These people suffered intensely under the oppression of this wicked world, and their eyes were wide open as they soberly fulfilled their life missions.

Mother Mary bore the shame of being pregnant and betrothed with bravery. (Matthew 1:18-20). She was a refugee who fled to a foreign land to escape the murder of her son. (Matthew 2:16-21). Around thirty years later, she stood and watched that Man bleed through the nails in his hands, wrists, and feet as He spent His last mortal moments completing that ministry under a state-sanctioned act of murder. (John 19:25). After He died and was resurrected, His followers were violently persecuted. Among them was Peter, the chief apostle, who was crucified upside-down, as the legend goes, and sealed his testimony with his blood, along with nearly all of the rest of the twelve. 

Mary Magdalene stood next to Mother Mary and watched the Christ die. (John 19:25). Far from the submissive Primary President in the church today, Mary was a fierce defender of the Kingdom who stood shoulder to shoulder with the apostles. She is sometimes called “the apostle to the apostles” for her role in witnessing the resurrection of the Savior. However, I contend this moniker also captures something about her connection to the Savior’s inherent authority and His status as the master teacher. That this has been scrubbed from the scriptures does not make it any less true. Consider the resurrected Savior’s words to Mary as recorded in the gnostic text Pistis Sophia:

It came to pass then, when Mary had heard the Savior say these words, that she gazed fixedly into the air for the space of an hour. She said: ‘My Lord, give commandment unto me to speak in openness.’

. . . .

And Jesus, the compassionate, answered and said unto Mary: ‘Mary, thou blessed one, whom I will perfect in all mysteries of those of the height, discourse in openness, thou, whose heart is raised to the kingdom of heaven more than all thy brethren.’ (Chapter 17). 

After Mary discourses on some mysteries of the kingdom, the text records: “[I]t came to pass then, when Mary had finished saying these words, that [H]e said: ‘Well said, Mary, for thou art blessed before all women on the earth, because thou shalt be the fulness of all fulnesses and the perfection of all perfections.’” 

A friend of mine recently used the phrase “toxic optimism” in conversation. By that, she meant an outlook that denies our need to work out one’s own salvation with fear and trembling. (See Philippians 2:12). Instead, the toxically optimistic disregard and shrug at the grit of life. Everything is always fine, they tell themselves. All is well! Peace and good tidings! 

This mentality, however, can distance us from our personal connection with the Savior. It tends to orient people much more to church tradition and culture than the Godhead. What is the alternative? Turn to Christ and speak the words of the Holy Ghost with openness and sincerity. If you teach, teach from the heart, and don’t eschew vulnerability. Look at the lives of your heroes in the scriptures and pay attention as they wrestle with their sins, failures, and uncertainty. If humility born from pain and anxiety is becoming of them, there is no shame in it for you.

The ascended ones have no place for toxic optimism. Their ways come from the heart, and their trust is in the atoning grace of Jesus Christ. Their sobriety is bought through hard experience in opposition to Satan’s kingdom. Tribulation is not a sign that one is not living the gospel well. Inclusion by Babylon was never the product of seeking to overcome the world, and Zion will not be built by the grace of a zoning board. 

The truth is that the higher we ascend, the lower we must descend, until we become like Christ, who descended below all things. (D&C 88:6). Pain is not incidental to ascension. Pain is the way. The great and noble ones lived lives of tribulation. And the Greatest of the noble ones was coronated beneath a plaited crown of thorns. 

As the Spirit teaches me more of the lives and history of the Elohim, I understand that one does not get to where They are without first having sinned and repented, having one’s heart broken, lost loved ones in mortality and to perdition, and passed through the ordinance of martyrdom. They have been betrayed, bled, and condescended to suffer for their betrayers and friends alike. Consider God as He spoke with Enoch from the heavens, weeping as He watched the wickedness of this world. He tells the incredulous Enoch:

Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency; And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood; And the fire of mine indignation is kindled against them; and in my hot displeasure will I send in the floods upon them, for my fierce anger is kindled against them.

Behold, I am God; Man of Holiness is my name; Man of Counsel is my name; and Endless and Eternal is my name, also. Wherefore, I can stretch forth mine hands and hold all the creations which I have made; and mine eye can pierce them also, and among all the workmanship of mine hands there has not been so great wickedness as among thy brethren. 

But behold, their sins shall be upon the heads of their fathers; Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom; and the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of mine hands; wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?

But behold, these which thine eyes are upon shall perish in the floods; and behold, I will shut them up; a prison have I prepared for them. And that which I have chosen hath pled before my face. Wherefore, he suffereth for their sins; inasmuch as they will repent in the day that my Chosen shall return unto me, and until that day they shall be in torment; Wherefore, for this shall the heavens weep, yea, and all the workmanship of mine hands. (Moses 7:32-40).

Does Man of Holiness, Man of Council, Endless and Eternal sound like He has any need for pretenses? Are His eyes not fully opened? And what would qualify one to become as He is? If we are to do the works Christ has done, as Christ has done the works Father has done, we will not be able to bring to the highest kingdoms a false sense of holiness and purity, as we will have been covered in filth and had it washed from us enough times that we may ultimately wash others clean when called to do so. That is the way of the Gods and Goddesses.