The Manipulation Pattern

When I was serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Church was using a pinkish, spiral-bound book that contained some training to help young missionaries learn how to interact with people better. The book contained some instruction on how to help people make and keep commitments to change their life. These commitment aides were collectively known as "The Commitment Pattern." Mention that phrase and thousands of former missionaries across the world will give a loving little chuckle.

As you learned about The Commitment Pattern, the book would give you various little vignettes that demonstrated "effective" and "less effective" examples of using the principles taught to help people change. One "less effective" example came to be known to me and my fellow missionaries as "The Manipulation Pattern." In this example the missionary was trying to help someone make a commitment to be baptized into the Church. The missionary in the example says something like this, "You love God, don't you? You want to do what He asks of you, don't you? God wants us all to be baptized. Will you be baptized on such and such a date?" Clearly "less effective." The missionary manipulates the person by first presenting things that any religious person would answer yes to. Then he attaches those first two ideas to the action that he wants the person to take, using guilt to pressure them into acquiescing and belittling their God-given dignity and freedom to choose.

The Manipulation Pattern is alive and well in today's world. There are so many different schools of thought or institutions that enter into the media, the public square, or personal conversations looking for coverts to their cause. They use statements or concepts that nearly everyone would agree on, then they attach those things to their cause. Here are just a few examples:

1. You care about freedom, don't you?
2. You care about the poor, don't you?
3. You care about the environment, don't you?
4. You care about fairness, don't you?
5. You wouldn't judge anyone, would you?

They then go on to say in effect, "We care about 'principle X.' So, if you care about that, then you will agree with us and our ideas. And if you don't agree with us, then you are a bad person that does not care about 'principle X'." Be wary of people who try to guilt you into agreeing with their position on a given issue or topic. The Manipulation Pattern is as wrong now as it ever has been.

On Number 1 and Number 2

When asked which of the commandments is greatest in the law, Jesus responded by saying "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. The second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matt 22:35-40). The Savior taught several truths it this short encounter with this lawyer. He taught that there is indeed a hierarchy of commandments, where some are of greater importance than others. This asserts that there will likely come times when some commandments must take precedence over others, such as when Nephi slew Laban (1 Nephi 4:6-13) or when Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Moses 5:10-11). Jesus also taught in His answer where our ultimate loyalties should lie. He taught that we are to love God above all other things, and to put Him and His commandments and teachings first in all situations.

Jesus also taught that we are to love and care for others as much as we do for ourselves. This is right and true, but neither ourselves nor our neighbors, family, or friends are to be loved more than God. In our world, where political correctness and other social pressures reign supreme, we can easily, and often inadvertently, switch the order of these two great commandments. In an effort to love others and not to hurt anyone's feelings, we often keep silent on pressing issues of our day and do not speak up to defend God and the standards of right and wrong that His commandments establish. Instead, we lie low and let the moral foundations of our country and constitution and the preeminent role of religion in our society erode away. All in an effort not to offend anyone or to stifle their ability to do as they please. Satan often manipulates our desires to do good to benefit his causes.

Jesus never failed to speak up in order to not hurt the Pharisees' feelings. He never let the truth give way to political correctness. He did all that He could to live peaceably with the people around Him, but He never chose the peace that keeping silent offers when He had the moral obligation to stand for truth. For Him, loving God always came first.

In the tumult of the last days, we are to follow the Savior's example to put God first. This will likely mean that we will offend people in our efforts to do so, just as others were often offended by what Jesus taught. This, of course, never gives us license to be unkind or disrespectful to others. We are still under the commandment to love others as Jesus did. Thus, we are to have "kindness in the communication, but firmness in the truth" (Elder Oaks, Truth and Tolerance). In reality, we show them a greater act of love and kindness by speaking up for the truth, showing that we care more about people's eternal souls than we do about hurting their feelings in this life. It shows that we care more about preserving our nation as a bastion of freedom for the world than we do about being in the good graces of all people everywhere. In the end, the world will hate us because we are not of the world, just as they hated Jesus before they hated us (John 15:18-19). We will likely struggle to stand as witnesses for God (Mosiah 18:9) if we are not able to be okay with being hated by many in the world.

May we love God first and foremost and stand up for His commandments. May we love others with the same sincere love and devotion that Jesus did. And may we never knowingly or unknowingly switch the two commandments out of the order that Jesus gave them.