When the Lens Is Dirty

This blog started as a photography blog.

I used to write about light, lenses, composition, and the quiet joy of noticing things most people walk past. I don’t photograph nearly as much anymore, but photography still gives me language for things that are sometimes hard to explain.

Lately I’ve been thinking about lenses.

In photography, even the most beautiful scene can look distorted if the lens is dirty. A smudge bends the light. Dust creates spots where there shouldn’t be any. The scene itself hasn’t changed. The mountains are still there, the light is still beautiful – but the lens alters what the viewer sees.

What is captured isn’t the truth of the scene. It’s the distortion created by the lens.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is beautiful. I believe that with my whole heart. I have a strong testimony of it. The teachings of Christ – charity, humility, forgiveness, lifting the weak, loving our neighbors – are things I will always believe in and strive toward.

But sometimes the lens gets dirty.

Sometimes the way people treat each other distorts the light of the gospel so badly that what others see no longer resembles Christ at all. Gossip. Quiet cruelty. Exclusion. Speaking kindly in public but tearing someone down when they are not in the room.

When that happens, people don’t see the beauty of the gospel. They see the distortion.

And it drives people away in droves.

Scripture actually warns about this pattern. Over and over again we read that when people prosper, pride quietly creeps in. Class divisions grow. Kindness fades. The humble are pushed to the margins while people convince themselves they are still righteous. The Book of Mormon describes it plainly: when the people began to prosper, they also began to be “lifted up in the pride of their hearts” and to look down on others (see Helaman 3).

It’s a cycle that appears again and again in the record – – – prosperity, pride, and then the slow erosion of charity. Mormon wrote about people wearing costly apparel and separating themselves from those they considered less than them, forgetting the very things they had once been taught.

Lately I’ve realized that what I’m seeing isn’t new. It’s the same human pattern that has always existed among religious people.

The hard part is seeing it through the eyes of my daughters.

One of them is still in high school. Both of them are thoughtful, compassionate young women who genuinely try to build people up. They notice when someone is alone. They look for ways to include people. They think about how their words affect others.

Watching them navigate this has been heartbreaking at times. I’ve seen the courage it takes for a teenage girl to walk into a room where she knows she may be ignored, talked about, or quietly excluded. I’ve seen how careless words can linger long after an activity ends. And I’ve also seen the contrast of how easily kindness comes to them, and how naturally they try to lift others even when they themselves have not always been lifted.

When they look at environments that should feel like spiritual homes but instead leave them feeling anxious, sad, or angry, it raises difficult questions.

As a single mother who has already watched marriage break under betrayal, it is not easy to explain why a place that hurts them is also supposed to be a place where they feel God.

What makes it even harder is watching people work so hard to invite others to come unto Christ while at the same time pushing those who are already here quietly out of the fold. Invitations lose their power when they are not matched by kindness. The message of Christ is hard to hear when the people delivering it are wounding each other along the way.

I still believe in the gospel. Deeply.

But I also believe that the way we treat each other matters more than we sometimes realize. Our words, our gossip, our quiet exclusions. Those things become the lens through which others see Christ.

Moroni taught that charity – the pure love of Christ – is the thing that must never fail.

If the lens we offer the world is clouded with pride, judgment, or cruelty, the light of the gospel becomes distorted.

And when people walk away, it may not be because they rejected the light.

Sometimes it’s because they were never allowed to see it clearly in the first place.