The Problem
The difficulty inherent in the issue of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints approaches the advent of gay marriage in the world is enormous and fraught with strong emotions and legal ramifications. Many people have struggled with this issue and many will continue to struggle with it as time goes on. They do so for many reasons; the greatest of which, in my view, is because it brings into seeming conflict two of the great pillars of Christianity. It pits love against law.
Over the past six months I have reflected a lot about the legalization of gay marriage and the ensuing actions taken by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, including helping to pass fair legislation that protects both the LGBT community and religious freedom in Utah and adding some clarifying language and policies to the Church leadership handbook. Throughout this time I have asked myself, Why do so many people come to the conclusion that the Church’s position on homosexual couples and the children that grow up in their homes is incompatible with the principles of love, kindness, and inclusion? Why can the two not coexist in the minds of many people? Often people have voiced their feelings about the matter in essentially these words, “If I am going to be for love, kindness, and inclusion, then I must reject the Church’s stance and perhaps the Church itself.” These feelings occur for many reasons, but it seems to me that, for many, it is because they do not understand the nature of God and thus misunderstand those that act in His name on the earth.
The Doctrine
The very concept of God under Christian theology has always brought these two seemingly conflicting positions together. God has always been put forward as being able to love his children perfectly and yet not being able to include all of them in everything that He would want to. During our premortal life, when one third of His children chose to support Lucifer's plan, God did not yield, though it broke His heart to see so many of his children excluded from the blessings of a second estate (Rev 12:3-4, Abraham 3:26). Jesus loved all people perfectly and invited everyone to follow Him, but He made no pretense about where He was going (Matt 5:48, 3 Nephi 12:48) and it broke His heart when people decided that they would “walk no more with him” due to the “hardness” of what He said (John 6:60-68). But he did not decide to require less of them, and that decision did not diminish His love for them.
Many people say to themselves, some in the back of their minds, “God’s commandments are His. He made them up and can surely change them or fudge on their enforcement when needed. Surely He loves us enough to adjust things when the requirement to keep his commandments makes us suffer for a time; after all, that suffering may be an entire lifetime for some people. I can’t imagine a loving God that would require that of His children.” The fundamental flaw in this kind of thinking is the idea that the commandments are merely a product of God, a set of rules He made up to govern His children on earth. They are not.
God is bound by law. He cannot do anything that He wants to and yet remain God. The Book of Mormon teaches that God cannot turn “from that which is right to that which is wrong” and that if He were to do so, He would “cease to be God” (Alma 7:20; 42:13, 22, 25; Mormon 9:19). Joseph Smith taught that God “institute[d] laws whereby [the spirits that He would send into the world] could have a privilege to advance like himself” (Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, pg. 210). President Lorenzo Snow taught that “As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be” (Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow, Ch 5).
In the Doctrine and Covenants we learn that the word “eternal” as used in the scriptures is a descriptor that means “God’s version or kind of something” (D&C 19:4-12). Thus, when God gives a mission statement like this, “this is my work and my glory--to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39), He means that He is trying to bring to pass our living His kind of life. This can only be done through the same laws that brought Him to an Eternal Life (D&C 93). It is the laws He lives that makes Him an Eternal Being. Thus, the commandments are not just rules He made up that He thought would be useful here on earth; rather, they are Eternal Laws to which He, Himself, is subject, as is any other Eternal Being and anyone who hopes to become such. Thus, you might as well ask a cow to fly from one mountain peak to another than ask God to abandon an Eternal Law, both of which would cease being what they are if they tried.
Thus, when the scriptures speak of the justice of God, they are not saying that He relishes in bringing down the heavy hand of punishment on all who would dare step out of line. They are saying that He must obey certain laws if He desires to remain an Eternal Being. And so, when one of his children yields to temptation, he must uphold the law until the conditions are met to allow Mercy to overcome the demands of Justice. And though his great heart may ache with the kind of sorrow that produced the scene that Enoch witnessed (Moses 7:28-35), He cannot ignore Eternal Law.
His Law is Love
During this time of year we often sing the Christmas song “O’ Holy Night.” One of the lines in this song that I find very significant is the line which says, “His law is love and His gospel is peace.” Our first inclination, as Christians, upon hearing that line is to think that it refers to the commandment to love others as Jesus loved us. This is not surprising, as the hallmark of Christianity is supposed to be charity for all—though people often seem to forget that Jesus taught that the commandment to love God ranks higher than the commandment to love others (Matt 22:36-40). However, another way that “His law is love” is that His commandments and the requirement to keep them is a deep and powerful manifestation of the magnitude of His love for us.
Any parent, sibling, friend, or any other loving relationship wants their child, sibling, or friend to be happy; and not just comfortable and enjoying themselves, but truly happy. They want them to grow, to improve, to succeed, to progress. God, as our Father, feels this same desire to bring to pass our happiness, likely to a greater intensity and depth than we mortal parents are able to understand. With such devotion to our achieving true joy, God will let us pursue our own desires (Alma 29:3-4), but He will always be found inviting, urging, guiding, and promoting the path that He knows will lead to real and lasting happiness. He has instituted the “plan of happiness” (Alma 42:8) for the express purpose of endowing us with joy (2 Nephi 2:25). The Book of Mormon teaches that the capacity to receive happiness is directly proportional to how much our natures are changed to be like God’s nature (Alma 41:10-11). Thus, no matter how much we want to take joy in other things (Mormon 2:13), only learning to put on God’s nature is consistent with the nature of happiness.
God’s nature is a product of His choice to obey Eternal Laws consistently over time, truly showing why “wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10). Therefore, if our joy is inseparably connected with and proportional to our obedience to Eternal Law, God would do us a disservice if He did not ask us to keep those laws. Yes, God’s love for us would be far less meaningful and potent if He did not demand our full compliance to the commandments He has passed along to us from Eternity. Thus, “His law is love.” And, this is the reason why God’s prophets and the Church that is supposed to be the Kingdom of God on the earth cannot and will not yield to any social pressures whose aim is to abolish the commandments or to minimize the importance of obedience to them. Such a course, though possibly making some people more comfortable and happy for a time, will not lead them to Eternal Happiness, and it would be doing them a harm to pretend otherwise. In this way, more love is manifest by asking people to keep the commandments, than by passively letting them do as they please, not wishing to offend them or hurt their feelings. Yes, sensitivity to feelings is important when loving others, but not more than truth and the invitation to obey.
Mercy
Knowing that our obedience to the laws of Eternity would take time to perfect—maybe even eons of time—God included in His plan the means to bring into effect another Eternal Law, Mercy.
There are many blessings that God pours out on both “the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45) simply because of His love for them. However, God’s greatest blessings, His choicest and most valuable, are conditionally given. Forgiveness of our sins is one such blessing—and here we must not think of forgiveness as the letting go of hurt feelings, bitterness, and anger; that is mortal forgiveness, and it is not in God’s nature to harbor such feelings; rather, we must think of forgiveness strictly as restoring a person to a state of innocence before the law and freeing them from the penalty owed to justice.
The Atonement of Christ makes forgiveness a possibility, but the scriptures repeatedly teach that forgiveness can only be extended “on conditions of repentance” (Alma 42:13-15, one of many possible references). Because of Eternal Law, and God’s obligation to it, Mercy can only be brought into effect when the conditions required by that Law are met. Having an infinite atonement made through a Savior is one of those conditions (Alma 34:8-16), and the true repentance of the sinner is another—again, do not think of forgiveness and mercy in terms of love and emotions, God’s love for the sinner is ever unchanged and He harbors no ill will. When real repentance has taken place, including sincere sorrow for the sin, then mercy can hold sway.
After a person has exercised enough faith to truly repent and mercy can be exercised in their behalf, then they are offered the opportunity both to make, or renew, covenants of obedience to God—which, if they honestly strive to keep, will give them access to the companionship of the Holy Ghost (Articles of Faith 1:4, one of many possible references)—and to enter into the Kingdom of God through baptism and confirmation. And if they endure through repeated recurrence to faith, repentance, covenant ordinances, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, the development of an Eternal Life is eventually brought to pass through the grace of Christ (Moroni 10:32-33). If we understand God’s mercy in this way, we see that it is not the same thing as His love or His help or His kindness. It is simply a formal pardon from the requisite debt owed to justice and the return to a state of innocence. His love is constant and his kindness is present throughout all our lives in many ways, without condition.
However, other important blessings are also conditional upon our obedience. This conditionality is not to serve as a litmus test to earn God’s love and good graces, but it flows directly out of the nature of Eternal Laws. When they are obeyed certain positive consequences issue out of them to the person who obeys (D&C 130:20-21), a greater measure of the Spirit and an enlarged capacity for joy being common to the adherence to all Eternal Laws. When we choose not to obey and therefore do not receive the blessings, it is not because God wants to spite us. Rather, it is because He is not at liberty to bypass Eternal Law and issue the blessing without obedience, no matter how much He may want to. Blessings received upon the demonstration of certain behaviors also serves as a divine form of operant conditioning, making it more likely that we will engage in that behavior again.
Ultimate Resolution
There are many things in this life that are unfair. There are many people who suffer by no fault of their own. There are wars, dictators, diseases, and murders. There is inequality, rape, famine, and slavery. Many people have looked at a world full of injustice, as ours is, and have decided that no loving God could allow these things to happen. And, having lost their faith in God, they proceed through life with only the hope of human devices to keep the future alight—the same human nature that created the injustice in the first place always present and powerful.
In order for God to establish an environment in which our natures can be changed to become like His (Alma 41:10-11), we must be allowed to choose to act as we please. Only in this way is it possible for us to choose to do the works that will develop within us the attributes of God. True, it also means that we can choose to do that which is wrong, but God still must hold human agency inviolate if the possibility for good, and therefore, joy is to exist (2 Nephi 2:13). And so, for the time being we are to live in a world where injustice, unkindness, suffering, and sorrow abound for a time.
Very often, amidst the hardship and difficulty of life, we tend to forget that God's Justice and Mercy are not bound by time. One of the major reasons for Christ’s Atonement was for Him to experience all that we would experience, enabling Him to be a “righteous judge” (Mosiah 3:7-10) in the day of judgment. His unique understanding of the individual burdens we carry allows Him to be “filled with compassion towards” us (Mosiah 15:1-9), and that compassion will inform both His mercy and His justice and will surely impact the course of events at the day of judgment. His promise is that all things will be set right in the end; that Mercy and Justice will be done to us all in perfect balance (Mosiah 16:1) and that He will wipe away all tears (Rev 21:4). Nowhere in the scriptures, however, does He promise that the resolution of all things would happen during mortality. His promise is for ultimate resolution, requiring faith to “wait upon the Lord” for things to be made right in the future (D&C 98:1-3). We are to try to do good, to love others, to seek for justice where possible, but it is not up to us to right all wrongs. That responsibility rests with Him alone who has the power to do so.
In Conclusion
I know that God is our loving Father. As the great head of our Eternal Family, He seeks tirelessly our progression and happiness. That happiness finds its fullness under the enlarging influence of Eternal Laws. God, though never forcing us, will always be found trying to shepherd us into and along the process of learning to live these Laws until their natural fruits become etched into our souls and our natures become like His. Thus transformed, we will be endowed with the capacity for the kind of joy that God possesses, and God’s love for us will have accomplished what it set out to do.
In this process of perfecting as many of His children as will come, God is obligated to keep and sustain the Laws that govern the Eternal World. The family is one of those Laws. It is as integral a part of the Plan of Happiness as is faith, and God is just as likely to abandon the principle of the family as He is to abandon the principle of faith. All possibility of giving his children Eternal Happiness would be abolished if either were to be removed from what God requires of us. Gay marriage and homosexuality are diametrically opposed to the family and thus opposed to Eternal Life and everything for which God has worked and suffered. I know that that will be a hard thing for many to read and that there are some who will be hurt by what I just said. I assure you that it was not meant in harm.
Struggling with homosexuality, as with any other sin, does not make a person evil or of any less worth than any other soul (D&C 18:10-11). However, if it is given free reign within a person or within a society, it will lead both away from God by supplanting the natural family and its role in changing our natures to be like our Father in Heaven. And though they may experience some level of happiness for a time (Mormon 2:13), it will lead to misery as surely as the night follows the day (Alma 3:26-27, 2 Nephi 2:10-13). God’s love for those that struggle with same gender attraction will never allow Him to let their surrender to it become acceptable, and His kingdom on earth will follow the same course.
What of the changes made to the Church leadership handbook? Many feel that they surely demonstrate discrimination and hatred against the LGBT community. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints must exist under the umbrella of both divine law and human government. Inasmuch as there is a way to keep the laws of both systems of government, the Church will seek that path. Certainly the age of eighteen as the requisite age for baptism of those raised in a homosexual household was chosen for legal reasons, as well as out of a desire to give children as much solidarity as possible at home during their formative years. What about making them renounce the homosexual lifestyle before baptism? Given the discussion of the principles above and given that the Church is supposed to be the Kingdom of God on the earth, was there any other choice that the Church could make?
The Church is not saying by its policies that homosexuals and the children they raise are not welcome in the Church. Rather, the Church is saying, “Come and be with us, worship with us, learn with us, and when all of the necessary conditions are met to protect the Church under the laws of the land and to fulfill the requirements for entrance into the kingdom of God on the earth, then we will all rejoice in seeing you baptized and confirmed a member.” Some people will feel that the Church is being bigoted and exclusionary under any circumstance short of full acceptance of any lifestyle and any behavior not deemed by society as criminal. Others who are offended by the Church's stance either don't fully understand the doctrine behind it or don't want to understand it.
If homosexuality is not endorsed by God, nor in accordance with with His plan, then Why does a significant, a small but significant, portion of the population struggle with it? I don't know. Why does a portion of the population struggle with any sin? Why do some struggle with theft? Why some with alcohol? Why some with anger? And why some with promiscuity? I don’t know. But we do, and every person's circumstances are unique to them. However, we are all still under the same obligation to learn to keep Eternal Law if we hope to obtain the happiness and the Eternal life that they produce.
I will not pretend that same gender attraction is not an extremely difficult challenge to live with in a Church community and culture. The magnitude of the difficulty and sorrow they face I will likely never understand in this life. Also, I am absolutely aware that some church members do not treat those who struggle with this as they ought. Do I feel compassion for them? Certainly. Do I feel sorrow for the suffering they endure? Absolutely. Do I want them to be in Church with me, next to me on the pew, working on their sins as I am on mine? No question. But I would be ashamed of myself if I led people away from the pathway of obedience in the name of easing their suffering for a time. Such an action would be evidence of less love for them, not more. And, it would be a mistake to misinterpret my feelings of compassion and sorrow as spiritual promptings that the Church has been led astray on this matter.
I fully understand that if you have not come to know for yourself through the Holy Ghost that the principles and doctrines appealed to above are true, then this treatment of the topic is likely not to offer you any significant solace or sustaining concerning the matter. If that is the case, my purpose in writing this was to share with you some starting points to prayerfully study out in your own mind and seek a confirmation of their truth through the Spirit. If at this time you are not interested in studying out the principles for yourself, then my purpose has been to illustrate how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, it's leaders, and its members can hold the position they do and still stand for the principles of love, kindness, and inclusion. Hopefully, you have been able to see that a person, or institution, that believes these things to be true can still love a homosexual person, can still think of them in kindness, and can still want them to be around and to include them in their lives, both in and out of church.
It was not my wish to offend anyone, though that is likely not possible to do in these matters. I express my love to you and I hope this has been of some value to you. May God bless you with happiness and all the good that you seek.
