Today we live in a concrete jungle. There is a growing lack of a morality or an ethical code with the rise of secular nihilism. There is less ethical norms as the idea of might makes right in a dog eat dog world is becoming more normalized. In our secular age, there are more and more unethical ruthless people who are not loyal to any higher standard or ethical code of conduct. They make up a growing number of people raised in the amoral concrete jungle of the secular world. This secular jungle is full of poisonous snakes (robbers and cheats) and vicious gangs in the form of currupt corporations or street gangs; and there's various forms of quicksand such as nihilism and the path of criminality. When you go it alone you more quickly sink for without helping Hands to pull you up you are easy prey to gangs and secular ideologies and there's no one there to remove the poison if you're bit by a secular concrete version of a snake. So in my opinion a religious culture provides an oasis from the degeneration of the secular age.
The Zookeeper Types
There are many Mormons who I think unconsciously treat the Mormon Church as if it were a Zoo and take part in the Zoo-complex: which means they think that LDS members need to be treated like caged animals, only not a literal cage but a mental cage that operates like the story of the Elephant and the rope. The Zoo-complex is held up by the Zookeeper type Mormons who seek to produce mentally confined Mormons like the Elephant and the Rope. Like the elphant in the story, LDS members are confined by the dogma and policy policers and closed-door "worthiness" interviews. The goal is to shame and tame and confine the member through the correlated material and testimony-conformity.
Then there is the LDS Zookeeper Worldview, where the human is caged and trained to do tricks for the zoo masters who hold the keys to their shackles. Like in the movie Instinct where there is a scene where Anthony Hopkins' character breaks the illusion of someone he thinks he has control. Later he points outmhow a gorilla in a cage had his will broken, losing some of his masculine vitality.
McConkie represented the best example of this zookeeper mentality in my opinion. He sought to control the membership with a heavy emphasis on right dogma and published his book Mormon Doctrine which provided “certainty” for some rigid types; with concise meanings and definitions which could be used to control and set straight lines in the sand, or "bars" keeping everyone in the metaphorical cage of “Mormon Orthodoxy.”
The two extreme vices as I see it are the amoral concrete jungle and the ecclesiastical zoo. Neither one is the most healthy environment for producing a healthy human psyche or civilized team of trustworthy loyal friends.
One way to look at the zookeeper types is to compare them to the controlling figures in the movies The Matrix, The Truman Show, The Village, and Pleasantville. The zookeeper types are the powerful controllers in those movies who wish to sheild their subjects from reality. Of these movies, the one I like best as a useful comparison to LDS zookeeper cutlure, is the movie The Village. Warning, spoiler alert, if you don’t want to know the plot of this movie skip the rest of this paragraph. In the movie The Village, the Elders of the village have good intentions trying to protect their loved ones from the grief they experienced in the “towns.” They are able to preserve a level of innocence in the Village. Yet the movie asks, how long can one preserve innocence with falsehoods? I view zoo keeper LDS leaders like the Elders in the Village. I see most of the leaders of the modern LDS church and the rank and file members allowing the zoo keepers to keep doing what they do because of a Parent to Child mentality, an atttude of the parental leaders telling the dependnent congregant how to think, feel, and behave in order to feel secure in the controlling arms of the parental leader. It is as if they want to be caged mentality by the zookeeper types, because they feel an existential security in that. Thus Mormon Culture can be at times and in certain wards an isolated culture walled in from the outside world by by the zookeeper type Mormons.
Every religion and also secular organizations have those who are stuck with a Zoo-complex. In the New Testament, Jesus himself spends much of his time criticising the Zookeeper types in his Jewish Faith, which he calls pious pretenders or fakers, "hypocrities" in most translations. They were those who preached The Tradition of the Elders that added to the Torah. See Jesus And The Traditions Of The Elders (Matthew 15:1-20) by Dr. Allen Ross.
Jesus would have said the Zookeeper types are those who burden people with a heavy yoke while being religous fakers or pious prtendenters. The KJV and other translations don't cature what Jesus is talking about with the term hypocrities in Mathew 23: 13-36. The TPT translation does a better job rendeirng it frauds and pretenders.
The LDS Farm and the Farmhands
In my view, the ideal metaphor of the LDS Chruch at its best, or any Smithian Restoration sect functioning ideally, is that it is ideally like a Spiritual Farm.
A farm is an organic place of tending to and growing things. Animals are born and raised and cows are milked. Seeds are planted and soil tilled and crops harvested. A Farm is less top-down and more of a bottom-up organic synergy as Stephan Covey would put it. On the Farm there is the family in the home and then there are farmhands. Definition of farmhand:
1 : a farm laborer; especially : a hired laborer on a farm2 : a player on a farm team
(Source)
In this metaphor, the God Farm is owned by God and LDS are farmhands, hired laborers in the Kin-dom of God which is God's Garden Realm: planting, reaping, and harvesting high-character or principle-centeredness. So farmhand types see the Church as like unto a Spiritual Farm. The Farm Mother and Father in charge of the farm have adopted the farmhands as members of the family on the same team, who are then destined to be co-heirs of the Father's Son's inheritance. No one is better than the others on the God Farm, they all just have different roles, talents and duties. Some raise the animals, some plant seeds, some till the soil, and some manage the farm's finances, etc. Everyone is free to go as they please, no one is carralled or caged; reciprocal love is what bonds them, love of the work and a good harvest, and love of Farm Life itself.
The New Testament can be encapsulated in the Gospels' metaphor about a Vineyard owner (God) who hires vine workers and rewards them for their labor for planting seeds and producing what Paul called the Fruit of the Spirit. This Vineyard mysticism is at odds with the Zookeeper mentality of the Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees: who seek to inflate their egos with fake piety and pseudo-religiosity; who sit on Moses's seat and control and manipulate with their man-made traditions.
I also like the term farmhands because it invokes the concept of unity and how many hands working together produce great things. This is what the metaphor of the "body of Christ" is all about, which is that we are all the same limbs on the same torso or body.
The God Farm represents ethical standards, commitments to the group, and loyalty to one's farm team. The best example I have seen thus far of the ideal LDS farmhand is Patrick Q. Mason, author of the book Planted. Also see Mason's talk Embracing Mormonism in a Secular Age - Patrick Mason - 2016 Fair Mormon Conference.
In his book Planted, Patrick Mason represents an organic faith as he focuses heavenly on the ideals of the Johanine Community, just like John Spong does in his book The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic. To understand how different Patrick Mason's pastoral apologetics is from the other forms of LDS apologetics in the past, see Mormon Stories #804-805: An Overview of Mormon Apologetics and Neo-Apologetics. By the way, this metaphor of the zookeeper type and the farmhand types can be applied to any of the Christian church, from the Evangelicals to the Catholics, etc.
The Controllers vs. Transformers
Another way to describe the Zoo Keeper types and Farmhand types is the Controller types and Transformative types. The Controllers seek to force a top down cookie cutter mold by controlling LDS member's behavior through control tactics and manipulation; while the transformative types seek to influence members from the inside out by setting a good moral example to imitate and being encouraging and edifying through stories and spiritual exercises, etc.
So among the LDS there are the Farmhand Mormons: who are planting seeds of inner transformation of character, meaning that they seek to transform themselves and others more and more into the image of Christ. They are spiritual planters who plant seeds by their example and embodied virtuousness; so that seeds of faithfulness will grow within those around them and in their midst.
The controlling Zookeeper types are more like puppeteers, they tend to have controlling personalities and are less interested in setting an example or having open discussions and genuinely listening and asking questions; or invoking faithfulness by their good example even behind closed doors. Instead, they tend to be pious on the outside or in public but unchristian behind closed doors where they tend to be controlling, manipulative and authoritarian and seek to pull your strings to move your mind and behavior as they wish.
If they sense any resistance to their puppeteerng or caging and controlling ways, as you seek healthy boundaries, they may appeal to their religious authority and position of power and bully you ecclesiastically which some Mormons and exMormons have complained about.
People in Mormon Culture talk of "leadership roulette" in that when you talk to the LDS leadership (who have power over you if you are an active member) you never know if you're going to get a zookeeper type or a farmhand type.
Of course, to be fair, the same types of personality dynamics exists in all organizations, like at one's job or career or business. I have dealt with zookeeper type bossess in secular jobs. The difference is that the LDS Church leaders have the power to label you "unworthy," and in the pay-to-play format (pay tithing and obey us to go to the temple), you can be told you can't be exalted basically unless you step into their metaphorical cage and let them carrall you into submission. Hence, unless you have a significant other who is completely on board with your point of view, such an Institutional system could cause a rift in any romantic relationship where one person is a proponent of zookeeper type leaders and the other is not.
So how do you avoid the concrete jungle and benefit from the God Farm? You steer clear of the Zookeeper types as much as possible and set boundaries. In the LDS system, avoiding the Zoo-mentality means putting up healthy boundaries and not giving your power away. A simple and easy example of healthy boundaries is discussed in the article, The Mormon Therapist: Neither a Sin nor a Transgression By Natasha Helfer Parker. Parker explains that a Zookeeper type Mormon asking if you masturbate behind closed doors is basically violating your boundaries when that is none of his business and he does not have the doctrinal or policy right to even go there.
When I look back at my life when I was a Mormon, I was always a farmhand Mormon and never a confined Zookeeper type Mormon. In my teenage years I would go to church but then sneak away to make out with my girlfriend. On my mission I was not a zoo minded Mormon because I would watch movies with my companions many times; unless of course they were Zooish Mormons. After my mission I went to church irregulary but regularly attended the social activities and enjoyed the goodness of the LDS God Farm culture. I enjoyed the friendship and comradery and from experience it is better than the concrete jungle in my opinion.
To be clear, I believe in Chesterson's fence and a perimeter, just as a Vineyard has fences to produce the best vine. I believe in the safeguarding of the flock from the wolves. I believe in the strong and powerful Sheepdog that protects the sheep from the wolves. But I also believe in planting seeds of faith and the harvest of moral fruition; the making of spiritual wine that floweth over from the boundles Vine of mytical-oneness; by working together and putting your shoulder to the wheel and pressing on with the interconnecting interdependence in a spiritual Farm-like community producing goodness by the barrel.
If we apply the metaphors of the jungle, the farm, and the zoo, to the times of Jesus: then we see that Jesus was not an individualist jungle dweller but the shepherd of his flock seeking to spiritually farm the kingdom-garden that was like unto a mustard seed growing into a tree. Jesus protested the zookeeper types of his day who burdened his fellow Jews with the heavy yoke of the Tradition of the Elders. Yet he also believed in the importance of guidelines and ideals and rituals. He was a Torah observant Jew after all.
Paul was a farmhand type seeking to plant and grow Christ-like holy ones amidst the jungled-ones.
So the goal for me is to benefit from the team-power of the spiritual farm and farmhand type Mormons without allowing the zookeeper-types to shame and tame and mentally cage me. The goal is not to give your power away to either those of the Jungle or to the zoo masters and fearmongers with chains in hands seeking to lure the weak and suggestible into their mental cages.
Now some reject the God Farm all together and learn to swing from branch to branch in the concrete jungle and practice the philosophy of Machiavelli and Robert Greene. All the power to them I say. Yet religion did not evolve in a vacuum but originates from the collective unconscious according to Jung, and is universal. So those who reject the God Farm and the Zookeepers and stick with the jungle often experience an underlying existential anxiety and loss of team-power without the hiving power of being a member of a tribal family.
So the balanced path, I believe, is the path of the spiritual farm while realizing the viciousness of the jungle and the mental slavery of the dogmatic zoo-comlpex; thus staying clear of those latter two extremes while joining the middle way of the organic spiritual farm.
