ON 30 YEARS OF MORMON BELONGING AND NOT BELONGING...

Make Up Your Mind...

A few days ago I ran across on my Microsoft home page the below piece:

"On 30 years of Mormon belonging and not-belonging"  

Click on the link or scroll down to the end for the full article. One might do better to read that short piece first before moving on to my comments.

The writer of this unsigned piece spends a lot of time rhapsodizing about her (I think it’s a she) belief in the Book of Mormon and what the LDS Church has contributed to her life, then proceeds to crank on the church and its leaders because of the church’s doctrine regarding homosexuality and transgenderism, suggesting that those church members struggling with these challenges, because the church does not give them free rein to practice their perversion, are being discouraged from achieving a fulness of their genuine inner being - or some such silliness.

Exactly the opposite is true. The Gospel and Church of Jesus Christ encourage all who will listen to achieve a fulness of their true eternal nature and teach the path whereby that can be accomplished through faith in Jesus Christ and adherence to his teachings.

Here is my response:

The objective of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not, as this writer implies, to encourage people to fulfill the nature of their "core ontological essence" as they themselves, with their limited dim mortal lights, may suppose it to be, but to set forth the absolute, uncompromising, non-negotiable conditions and requirements whereby mankind - men and women - may be redeemed from their sins, transformed and made over into “a fullness of the stature of Christ” and one day be welcomed into the glorified, celestial life that God himself lives - or end up in some lesser condition of existence, should they so choose.  

This has nothing to do with some people telling other people what they are and what they must do with their lives, as this writer seems to accuse LDS Church leaders of doing. The restored Gospel of Jesus Christ has only to do with a description of inflexible overarching reality and how one may freely choose to orient oneself to it. There is nothing dictatorial about it. It is a simple description of reality - things as they really are and really work.

If I tell a man he'll break his skull if he chooses to smash it into a stone wall, I am not dictating to him, not seeking to control his life. I am simply offering him the opportunity to understand the unforgiving reality he faces and the choice he has to make. So it is with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, revealed to his human family by a loving Father in Heaven.

The fulness of the Good News of Jesus Christ, restored in modern times through the calling and work of the prophet Joseph Smith, clearly defines the nature of the three spheres of existence possible to mankind in the eternal realm - the Celestial, the Terrestrial and the Telestial - (D&C 76) - and sets forth the conditions to be met for each - or the differing kinds of people who will inhabit them. (St. Paul also spoke of these realms - characteristic of the varying glories of the sun, the moon and the stars - as recorded in I Corinthians 15:40-42.)

The restored Gospel of Jesus Christ having thus stipulated the respective requirements for entry into each of these eternal realms, we are then simply invited to take our pick and adopt the values and lifestyle appropriate to the quality of life we have chosen for ourselves in eternity. 

On this scale of cosmic, eternal options, the Big Brass Ring in the Sky - the Celestial Glory - life as God himself lives it - has, unsurprisingly, the most rigorous admission requirements. The conditions for entrance there never were and never will be a crowd-pleaser:

"Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it." - Matthew 16:24-25

“Deny himself… take up his cross…lose his life…” Doesn't sound fun, does it...

Strait [difficult, constricted, tight] is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life [the Celestial Glory], and few there be that find it." - Matthew 7:14   

Many goats, very few sheep...

The Gospel requirements that govern our sexual behavior - those of us who aspire to the Big Brass Ring in the Sky - are particularly strict. Speaking to the Nephite people during his appearance among them just after his resurrection, Jesus had this to say about sexual transgression in general:

“Behold, I give unto you a commandment, that ye suffer none of these things to enter into your heart; For it is better that ye should deny yourselves these things, wherein ye will take up your cross. than that ye should be cast into hell.”

- Book of Mormon, 3 Nephi 12:29-30

Hmmm… There’s that “deny-yourself-and-take-up-your-cross” business again…

But, hey! You don’t have to take the Road Less Travelled. You get to take your pick.

What’ll it be? Door #1, Door #2, or Door #3?

We are free to choose. But, again, the requirements are immutable and have been clearly set out. On the day of judgment, we won't get to sit down with God and negotiate the terms of our deal. How we, in light of the degree of knowledge each of us has been blessed with, have freely chosen to live our lives will tell the tale. Period. 

And, please, let's be precise. It isn't "the LDS Church leaders' message" that "being born gay is an abomination in God's eyes", as the writer asserts. The abomination isn't same-sex attraction - whatever its source - any more than a straight man's natural inclination to sleep with every woman he can get his hands on is an abomination.  What matters is the actual behavior - the freely chosen behavior.

As concerns homosexual practice, that was defined an abomination not by men, not recently by LDS Church leaders, but out of God's own mouth, long ago in ancient Israel by Jehovah - Jesus Christ himself - the one true God who is the same yesterday, today and forever. St. Paul, in New Testament times, reaffirmed the abomination of homosexuality:

“For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.” - Romans 1:26-27

Thus, according to that God who changes not, homosexual practice, along with all other forms of lascivious sexual behavior outside the bounds of marriage, was, is, and always will be an abomination in God's eyes. You want to find a way to think otherwise? You'll first have to flush the entire scripture-based Judeo/Christian religious tradition, ancient and modern, down the toilet. But, hey, many people these days - so-called Christians - even in the LDS Church - seem to have no problem doing that.  

The mentality of this writer, this double-minded church member, calls nothing to mind more vividly than what the Lord in the Book of Revelations had to say to the church of the Laodiceans:

“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth.”

- Revelations 3:15-16:

IMHO, the sooner the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - the people raised up out of obscurity, given the burden and opportunity of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and the restored priesthood of God, and called to establish a Zion people prepared to meet the Lord at his coming - is divested of weak-kneed, double-minded equivocators like the writer of this piece, the better...

Right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, reality vs. fantasy, order vs. chaos, law vs. lawlessness, patriotism vs. treason, liberty vs. tyranny, light vs. darkness, good vs. evil, happiness vs. misery, God vs. the Godless… 

Torquemada

Religion News Service

Follow

8K Followers

Home - Religion News Service

ON 30 YEARS OF MORMON BELONGING AND NOT BELONGING

Story by Religion News Service

 • 8mo • 5 min read

RNS) — It’s a strange thing, joining a church at precisely the time it’s busy excommunicating people who think and sound a lot like you.

That was the case for me 30 years ago. For many people in the Mormon world — and for six people in particular — September 1993 is known for the high-profile excommunications of half a dozen scholars and writers. All of them lived in Utah. Most of them had in some way criticized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly for its teachings on gender.

For me personally, living far from Utah in New Jersey, September of that year was memorable for another reason. After much study and prayer, I was getting baptized as a Latter-day Saint. 

This was awkward to say the least, since I was a divinity school student preparing to be a pastor. I had over the course of several years quite inconveniently fallen in love with the Book of Mormon. I later joked that I went to div school to become a Protestant minister and graduated three years later neither Protestant nor a minister.

It wasn’t funny, though. Becoming a Mormon not only upended my career plans but also caused tension in my family. Painfully, I lost several friends over the decision. What sustained me was a strong conviction that God had called me to take this step, as weird as it sounded. I had many questions and issues with Mormonism, particularly around race and gender, and yet there was this call. I couldn’t ignore it. I also couldn’t ignore several spiritual experiences I had at that time — events that might individually be dismissed as coincidences but that collectively served as confirmation I was on the right track.

My timing was spectacularly awful. I was baptized on Sept. 25, 1993, exactly in the middle of the firestorm of excommunications that constituted the September Six. (Although the image of the baptismal program says it occurred on September 24, that was actually a typo.) I was aware of the unfolding purge because it was covered in The New York Times.

As I went down into the water, I knew that some people in this newfound religion probably wouldn’t want me there. But God apparently wanted me there, and I decided to trust in that no matter how bananas my conversion seemed, even to me.

Through the intervening years, there have been occasional external confirmations that this was the right choice, including a bizarrely powerful experience when I had my patriarchal blessing. I’ve never regretted my decision to be baptized. So many aspects of the person I’ve become are thanks to the Church — the deep friendships it has brought into my life, the ways it has challenged me to be a better parent, even the fact that I obeyed prophetic counsel in my 20s and started putting aside a little money for my retirement. (As retirement is a whole lot closer now than it was then, I’m grateful that the Church prodded me to save for the future even while I was still struggling along in grad school.)

It’s because of the Church that I can make freezer jam and keep the attention of a class of 3-year-olds for more than two minutes. (Sometimes.) It’s because of the Church that I discovered that the glory of God is intelligence, and that any knowledge and wisdom we acquire here on earth, will follow us into eternity. Since learning has always been a major part of how I connect with God, that doctrine has been life-giving to me. Mormonism has taught me I’m a beloved daughter of Heavenly Parents, that every member of the human race is my brother or sister and that I will continue progressing and growing after my death. All of those teachings have blessed my life.  

But my faith is not the same as it was 30 years ago. I have more love and forgiveness now for individuals and less understanding for the institutions they serve. I’ve witnessed people contort themselves in terrible ways to try to fit the mold the Church was selling. Some learned to hate themselves for being born gay, absorbing Church leaders’ messages that homosexuality was an abomination in God’s eyes. Others, particularly women but also some men I know, denied their God-given individual gifts in order to comply with the Church’s mandates about what was acceptable behavior for their gender.

While many Church members are happy with those prescriptions and proscriptions, the ones who aren’t can be severely damaged if they allow other people to dictate their identity, goals and desires. I’ve never yet seen lasting happiness result from denying one’s core ontological essence. I believe there is such a thing as healthy self-sacrifice to benefit others, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking here about the kind of self-destruction that can occur when your religion tells you early and often that, say, only a limited palette of options is available to you because of the way you were born (e.g., gay, female, Black — historically, there are far too many ways the Church has marginalized various people). 

A growing number of people are leaving the Church today, and as part of my research, many of them have told me why. Much of it has to do with a crisis of authority, of finding themselves deeply at odds with what the Church taught them they had to be. I am sometimes surprised by who leaves Mormonism and why. I think they, in turn, are surprised by the fact that I’ve stayed and continue to find meaning in it.

In part, I’m able to do that because of my social location as a white, heterosexual, cisgender, middle-class American woman. Also: I’m an incurable extrovert, which definitely helps. There’s privilege to acknowledge here. The LDS Church is simply easier for people who tick those boxes. Latter-day Saints like to say the gospel of Jesus Christ is for everyone, and I believe it is. But the Church can be a very difficult and lonely place for many, and their stories are painful to hear.

I’m also able to stay because I went into this decision 30 years ago with both eyes open. There’s something clarifying about knowing, even as you’re being immersed in those waters, that your presence in that community could be temporary because of your feminism or your scholarship or your refusal to simply shut up. When you emerge from those waters, cleansed and dripping, you do so knowing six others who should be part of that community have just been cut off from it.