The Fire of Faith

This post addresses my thoughts regarding, not only the recent policy clarifications in Handbook 1, but the overall nature of the doctrine of Christ, our place within it, and what we can expect as disciples of the Sacrificed God.

It is not meant to be kind, or empathetic, or consoling. It is an exploration of Christ's doctrine as I understand it. I hope it can help someone, even though I expect it will be harsh in places.

In watching (mostly) the discussions going on about the policy changes, one thing is clear. So very, very few of us understand doctrine. I'm not claiming to any special understanding, but I have studied the scriptures long and hard, pondered them, and applied them to times in my life that nearly broke me. So I do know a few things about struggling to reconcile my life with God's word and the policies of the Church. I'm going to get a bit personal here, in the hopes that my experiences can inspire someone to seek understanding, rather than justice.

Abomination of Desolation and a Little Fig Tree

Before you try to read into what I'm about to say, and boil my words down to a "HATEZ TEH GAYZ," I'm going to fully admit that my words are about the legal ratification of gay relationships (vis a vis gay marriage) BUT that they are about much, much more than that. Most of you who read this will call me a bigot, insist that my opinions come from hatred, and soon (once you have power to do so) you will probably physically revile and attack me and my family.

So be it. I hope that when the time comes, I will be able to face it with courage and kindness.

For a long time, I have been fairly silent on the subject of gay marriage/civil unions. I probably will be again, once I've posted this. The only chance I had to vote on it so far, I voted to support gay marriage/civil unions. But my opinions have changed since then, and I become more sadly convinced of them as time goes on. My opinions haven't changed because of gay marriage, or gays, or aversion to homosexual attraction. They have changed because I've been taught of a much larger picture of the role of religious beliefs in a public sphere, and it is that larger picture I wish to address.

A Glorious World

When I was no more than seven, I remember gently removing the shed skin of cicadas from the slat-wood fence in my parents' backyard. We would gather roly poly bugs and watch them curl and uncurl. One of my greatest ambitions was to find a queen fire ant, so I could have my own colony. I kept a careful eye on the date tree in our front yard, finding out that coconut trees and date trees were very different things.

I asked millions of questions, and stored the answers in the back of my mind. I climbed olive trees and dreamt of dinosaurs flying overhead. I read every book I could get my hands on, immersing myself in the stars, in the layers of the earth, in learning about peach trees and honey bees.

When we visited my grandparents, I followed one around and fed his calves and goats. The other taught me about herbs and roses. I learned that spiders love grape arbors, and that dog food doesn't taste good.

Later, I looked into the maw of a dormant volcano, smelled the sulfur pits, watched humpbacks dive on the horizon. I gathered and preserved sea urchin, learned about man o' war jellyfish, and how to pick blackberries with minimal scratches. Everywhere I lived, there were new explorations and always, always more to learn. What I could not learn by experience, I learned from books. Sometimes, I feel as though I have lived dozens of lives in my short years here.

"It's Personal"

Like everyone who wants to do better, be better, I sometimes struggle with my relationship with divinity. I have been amply blessed in a myriad little ways. Nothing major, until recently, but repeated small nudges to say something or check on something that ended up saving me just enough to keep me sane. Some days, it has felt like I'm barely holding on with torn and bloody fingernails, but have been touched with just enough extra energy to keep holding on. It is like I'm part of a vast chorus where, hoarse and broken, my voice does far more to create dissonance than beauty.

Recently, the hand of the Lord has been much more obvious. For the last month or so, I have been attending a ward temporarily while I am in transition from one house to another. This ward has several women who are going through divorce. As I've learned of them, and heard some of them speak, I felt prompted to bear my testimony in Fast and Testimony meeting.

This was a difficult proposition because my testimony, as I have said before, is not smooth and pretty, cut to show light and sparkle. It is cracked, crazed, with deep inclusions. It's a bit off-color. The deliverance I've prayed for over the last several years has been slow in coming. Most days are beautiful, but I still sometimes crack under certain types of pressure which I feel ought to be long gone. I'm still triggered, sometimes, over silly things.

I've been in a liminal state for some time, but it is a liminal state where I feel unseen things are happening, that I am being pruned and developed for some specific purpose. I am changing in ways I can't quite see, let alone quantify. I have started several drafts for blog posts but never finished them. I find myself with few comments to make on others' posts. Whatever changes I'm going through don't fit labels easily. I am becoming, but I'm not becoming anything.

Polygamy: My Internal Evolution

I have never written my feelings on polygamy on this blog. Probably, in part, because it is such a hot-button topic with so many emotions in so many people. And certainly, in part, because polygamy is largely irrelevant to me. I have so many immediate points of doctrinal practice that occupy my mind, a large part of me is happy to relegate polygamy to the realm of "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.

But, perhaps shining a little illumination on my thoughts will help others of you who find this a louder dissonance figure out a way to navigate through your struggles.

The Nature of God

There is a great deal of speculation about the nature of God. Some time ago, Clean Cut posted his view of the nature of God in several posts, and it was mentioned that I ought to do the same when I asked for post suggestions.

Some questions which people like to discuss include whether or not the Lorenzo Snow couplet based on the King Follett discourse is true ("As man is, God once was; as God is, man may become"), whether or not God and Jesus are one as in one person, not just one God, and just what exaltation means in an LDS context.

I've pondered and read some about this, and will continue to do so, since I don't feel complete in understanding. Though there is much I consider too sacred for an online forum, there are some things I know about God which I would like to share here.

The Seventh Day: Eternal Life

"On the seventh day of Christmas,
my true love gave to me
seven swans a-swimming."

Eternal life is a tricky one. Most of us think of it as something we will get in the future, like an ultimate prize for righteousness. We love to joke about how much we can get away with and still "get into" heaven. Even within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we often talk about "making it" to the Celestial Kingdom.

Eternal life is more than just living forever. It is living as God lives. Eternal life is His life. To live as God lives we must be willing to be what He is. That is not some prize to be won, it is something to become. And face it, we don't know all that much about God.

What we do know is nearly impossible to understand.

The Fifth Day: The Book of Mormon

"On the fifth day of Christmas,
my true love gave to me
five golden rings."

I don’t often bear testimony of the Book of Mormon because we members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints often bear testimony of little else. But I am so thankful for the Book of Mormon. There is no end to the stories I could tell about how the words and meanings in that book have supported me.

I love the Bible, and the Doctrine and Covenants. But there is something about the Book of Mormon and the stories of the people that lived then which calls to me. They seem more personal, somehow. Often, the Bible seems to moralize, every story has a purpose. Even the D&C often has a specific point to each revelation. But the Book of Mormon is about life, about the principles of the gospel in the rough and stark lives of the people.

The Family: A Damaging Doctrine?

I have noticed a growing trend in various LDS blogs of referring to the "centrality of the family" in the LDS Church doctrine as damaging to the value and self-esteem of singles.

I don't buy it.

The doctrine of the family is multi-directional. Everyone, everyone is the member of a family, whether or not you have married and had children. And being the child of parents does not make you a child insgesamt or as a whole.

The doctrine of the family has everything to do with tribal bonding and non-sexual intimacy and loyalty, and very little to do with saying "I do".

Granted, the doctrine of the family, like much doctrine, is largely misunderstood, but to me that is a problem in application, not in doctrine.

Dr. Oz and the Science of Cheating: Are Men Worth It?

If this is how men really are, I don't want one.

I don't usually watch Dr. Oz, but a lazy day off contributed to more TV time than normal. I only caught about half the show before I couldn't handle it any more and I switched channels. The topic does seem to be rather out of what I thought were his usual healthy lifestyle tips, however. Basically, the essence of the show was that men cheat for two main reasons: 1) they have a gene that predisposes them to it and 2) they don't feel appreciated at home.

The other crux of conversation was how a woman can tell if her man is lying to her, involving detection of various body language cues, and summed up by claiming that a woman's gut intuition is the best indication, putting responsibility for detection on her. My stomach wrenches literally even now when I think about it. I am surprised by my emotional reaction to this. Normally I can just shake these sorts of shows off my back.

I admit that I am particularly sensitive because of a relationship where I suspected cheating at various times over six years, and looked the other way because I believed that if I only gave him time and space, he would realize his errors on his own. I also believed strongly in making my man feel appreciated, and ripped myself to shreds trying to do just that, with the end result that nothing I gave was enough. He was convinced he was both underappreciated and worthless (a strange dichotomy!) and nothing I had to say on the subject mattered or was even heard by him. I faced many accusations of not being there enough, and so I'd try to "be there" more . . . until there was little "me" left in the "being there."

Add that his "gut intuition" was convinced I was cheating on him, despite his being horribly wrong—a gut intuition which eventually contributed wildly to the destruction of my marriage—and no wonder I have severe reactions to this idea of a suspicious and fact-checking relational climate.

At any rate, I don't normally post this sort of topic here, except that in struggling with this issue I came to something that I thought of some eternal worth.

I feel the Spirit brought to my mind Jacob's speech to his priesthood brethren. Perhaps there is something to the studies Dr. Oz quotes that roughly 54% of men cheat because they have a gene, because they are just naturally more prone to that behavior, (which also brought to mind the online outcry against the tendency of Conference talks to praise women's righteousness.) In verses 31-33, Jacob quotes the Lord as saying,

"For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people . . . because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands. And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people . . . shall come up unto me against the men of my people . . . For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction . . . ."

For nature is no excuse. This is just another iteration of argument that demonstrates the insidiousness of "my genes made me do it" approaches to human behavior. There are many people with a genetic predisposition to anger. This does not mean that murder is okay. And yet, so many people seem to believe that if they have a gene which predisposes them to promiscuity or a host of other traits, that somehow Nature's seal of approval justifies them. And yet, both the Bible and the Book of Mormon teach that nature is unable to receive God . . . in fact, that nature is an enemy to God. Because of the Fall, nature leads to sorrow and sin, rather than lasting pleasure, eternal pleasure.

And, as I struggled with a surprisingly strong cacophony of emotions, I realized that this is part of Satan's great wedge driven between the genders and through families. After all, if most men are unfaithful, and if that is justified in their eyes, what is the point of having men at all? Why should women even bother with men other than on a very limited, physical basis, when their real, emotional needs are ignored and trampled to the ground by them? Why?

Because I have to believe God when He gave the priesthood to men. I have to believe that there are still men out there who honor Him and their priesthood. I cannot believe that God would give His authority to a people so wholly undeserving. There must be men who love Him the way I am learning to love Him—perhaps not perfectly, but wholeheartedly—men who seek the Lord and "take delight in approaching to God". Even if He never leads me to such a man in marriage in this life, I have met a few such men, men who do not look at scientific studies to excuse behavior, but lift their eyes to that Savior who gave them life. I know they exist, and for that, I am grateful. Further, I have to believe that God's promises to me regarding such a marriage will be kept. I may have no evidence of such a relationship for me, but I have faith.

And faith trumps Dr. Oz and all the studies in the world.

Rated "R" for "Rather Not, Thank You"

Thank you to those of you who have posted feedback in my previous post. I'm working my way up the comments, because of the complexity of some of the topics. Know that I'm not ignoring them, just having to ponder more deeply. My view on media watching, however, is something I've had to exercise many times and therefore it is rather well formed.

Originally, I had a rather loose view of movie-watching. I saw one or two R-rated movies, and several PG-13. When I was about 15, I discovered that I was somewhere I did not want to be, spiritually, and decided that I wanted to change my life. After prayer, fasting and pondering, I felt impressed to offer a symbol to the Lord of my desire to change: I would not watch any movies rated PG-13 and above.

In the years after that personal covenant, I forgot why I had made it, though I did not forget my resolve. Most of my friends ridiculed me for that decision at first, but eventually came to uphold it, generously changing their plans to accommodate my oddity. There were a couple of times I was told a movie was PG, only to find it rated PG-13 after beginning to watch it. At one point, I remember going home from a night out because I knew Monty Python and the Holy Grail was most certainly not a PG movie once it got to the Castle of Anthrax, despite what I had been told.

At any rate, despite feeling stupid on multiple occasions, I managed to live by my decision. It wasn't until a few years later while I was serving a mission that someone asked me why I did not watch PG-13 movies. It set me back for a few minutes, because I did not remember. Then it came to me, the moment I had covenanted with the Lord that if I did this, He would help me change my life.

The feeling was incredible as I reviewed my life and the direction it had taken since I chose to make that small offering to the Lord. Although I had not remembered the covenant, the Lord had upheld it so richly. I knew I had been blessed beyond measure for this comparatively tiny effort.

In addition to no longer watching PG-13 or above movies, I no longer had the desire to watch television or listen to the radio much. Movies themselves were not even that important to me. I still enjoy a movie now or then, or the chance to relax in front of the television, but the media in general were not nearly the hub of my schedule the way they had once been.

All that being said, I think that the choice to watch or not to watch is entirely between an individual and the Lord. For me, the things I was watching were taking me away from Him one chip at a time. Another person may not be so affected. I have no desire to preach my way as the right decision to make for everyone. In fact, I find it interesting that the new Strength of Youth pamphlet makes no specific recommendation for ratings-watching. It summarizes by giving the One True Standard of Discernment:

[I]f you have any question about whether a particular movie, book, or other form of entertainment is appropriate, don't see it, don't read it, don't participate.

This is the key, in my mind. As I have lived this principle, I find myself better able to discern what media brings me down, and what is uplifting and/or productively instructive. I have even found myself walking out of PG movies, at times. The Lord has blessed me beyond all expectation for using this standard in conjunction with my own personal covenant, and that is all I can say.

Now, I find so many wonderful things to do, even average-to-good television and movies often seem a waste of time. Even my reading has been tempered by my gradually growing dislike of time-wasting through various media (and I'm a confirmed bibliophile.) There is a time, place and purpose for entertainment, but it is a relatively small one when seen within the framework of all the productive, creative, beautiful things there are to do. How much more wonderful is it to stand over a weeded garden, share my testimony in blogging, admire a completed quilt block, or listen to my daughter flawlessly recite her colors when compared to switching off the television before going to bed?

There really is no comparison.

I Believe in Agency and Consequence

Articles of Faith #2
[I] believe that [I] will be punished for [my] own sins, and not for Adam’s (or Eve's) transgression.

Many Christian churches believe that we are being punished in our mortal life as a result of Adam and Eve's choice in the Garden of Eden. When I was young, and investigating many other religions, one thing that drew me quite strongly to the LDS faith was the understanding of individual agency. Rather than denigrating Eve, we venerate her for her bravery. Rather than believing this earth is a punishment for someone else's choices, we take responsibility for our own behavior. We are not ones to claim "the devil made us do it" or to blame Adam for our own misery.

I learned from LDS doctrine that woman does not hold the guilt of the world on her shoulders. Rather, informed or not, she made a conscious choice to embrace pain in order to learn joy. She chose to experience the full depth of depression in order to more perfectly see beauty. She chose to learn from her own experience to know good from evil. She explained to Adam, and he chose also to eat of his own will and they became partners in mortality.

I found this empowering not only from a female perspective, but from a human one. By our parents' choices, we have been given power to make mistakes, to think, to analyze, and to change. We can exercise our intelligence and choose our own path. We have truly gained the potential to be better, like our Father.

As a mother, I have felt this even more empowering. My children have their own lives to live and their own choices to make. So long as I do all I can to love them, teach them, and bring Christ into their lives (and mine!), I may leave their guilt between them and their Savior. I do not have to live vicariously through them. I am liberated from responsibility for their choices. Watching my beautiful daughter begin to exercise the agency given her in part by Eve's choice, but feeling the precariousness of her mortality, I begin to catch a little of the feeling God must have as He watches me struggle, agonize, and learn. Eve's choice is echoed every time we women face mortality, pain and death to bring life into this world. I would never dull that experience and the ones after it, nor dull the deep connection and love I enjoy with my children as a result.

My experiences with this principle have drawn me closer to my first parents. Whether they were apprehensive, frightened, or faithful when they took their first steps into the harsh world, I honor their bravery and the price they paid to give me agency. Rather than severing my connection with them, freedom from their choice has left me able to thank them for it.

The Search for a Mother

I understand the desire to know a Heavenly Mother. When I was exploring religious options I became very close to the concepts in Wiccanism. There are many varieties of Wiccanism (including the gothic dancing in the park variety, though that wasn't the one that resonated with me.) All varieties, however, worship a Lady to some extent. As a self-hating girl, this was one of the things that appealed to me the most. Perhaps through the worship of the Lady, I could come to know, understand and love myself better. As time passed and I prayed to know the truth, I received confirmation that God led the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints and not Wiccanism. This doesn't mean that I understand all things about the Church and its doctrines. I have seen many conversations in the Bloggernacle, especially on the more pro-feminist sites, that discuss the Church's doctrine of a Mother in Heaven. Most of the time, they express dissatisfaction in the Church's dealing with and practical acceptance of this doctrine. "Why can't we pray to Mother?" seems to be the greatest of these complaints. Most of those who address this have varying reasons for (or accusations against) this doctrine.

As we grow as children, we go through phases where we are closer to our mothers and phases where we are closer to our fathers as we learn who we are in this world. A theory that once occurred to me ("cute" though it may be) is that in the pre-existance, we had our Mother-time, and now we have our Father-time. Thus, we now pray to our Father where we once communed more with our Mother. As mortals, we only see the here and now and often forget that our existence stretches beyond our memories. We see this small moment in our beings as unfair because our Mother isn't here. With a truly eternal perspective, I suspect that we will understand the greater picture of our Heavenly Parents.

One of the more interesting arguments as to why the active worship of a Mother in Heaven is allowable under the true, original gospel is to put forth Asherah of Old Testament infamy as Heavenly Mother. If this is the case—not only that the worship Asherah was pagan, but that it originated in revelation from God—than it illustrates poignantly why that worship is not currently allowed. The worship of Asherah was shockingly lewd. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say that it was a wild brand of fertility worship probably dating back to the worship of the Mother Goddess of prehistory. This sort of worship violently opposed chastity, modesty, family and propriety. It spawned (or was closely associated with) Molech sacrifice. It encouraged idolatry and dichotomized worship of the God of Abraham. Many of the more obscure tenets of Moses' law were framed to outlaw Israelite worship of the Mother goddess as inherited from their Egyptian masters.

Naturally, many who argue for the reinstitution of Mother worship also disregard the importance of chastity, modesty, family and propriety as outdated, patriarchial concepts. In this sense, as for me and my house, I prefer the Lord of Israel's way.

In addition, a greater Church encouragement of knowledge of and prayers to our Heavenly Mother would lead to a division of worship. Truthfully, Mother and Father in Heaven are inseparable. They are One, unified. As mortals, we find it nearly impossible to understand this concept, especially in this Age of Individuality. We worship the Self, we venerate independence. Obvious worship of a Mother in Heaven in our weak understanding would most likely lead to a division in the Church. Some would lean towards Mother, others towards Father. In our ignorance, we would create "sides" and then believe that there was something vital to be gained from one side or the other. It already happens, even without Church-sanctioned prayer to Heavenly Mother, as evidenced by the number of people who (mostly anonymously) admit to praying to their Mother. Most of them see themselves as more spiritually progressed than their siblings who do not pray to Her. The concept serves to divide, not unite. It does nothing to help us prove our obedience and dedication to the Lord. I suspect that any further knowledge of Mother is suspended until we are ready to worship both Her and Father properly.

Furthermore, we pray to the Father, not to Christ. I reiterate that we, as mortals, have almost no ability to truly understand equality. We continually conflate it with sameness or wander into superiority of one kind or another. (Use the feminist movement as an example. Very few, if any, feminists truly believe in equality. Most believe either in sameness—that there are no differences—or in swinging the pendulum to the side of female superiority. We seem unable to truly understand different-but-equal in any practical sense.) Therefore, in our mortal doctrine, Christ is spectacularly subservient to the Father. The hierarchy of Heaven is made obvious to us, so our mortal minds might understand what is necessary to return to God (namely, the sacrifice of His Son and all the doctrine associated with it.) If we included a more active role of Mother, how would the Church present this heirarchy? Either Mother would in some way seem subservient to the Father, or the Father would in some way seem subservient to Her. Neither eventuality contributes to the purpose of our mortal lives. At present, all we can do is speculate on how our Parents could be of one mind, and pray and wait patiently until we know the truth.

In the end, the only real answer is one most people will hate: we don't pray to Her because we have been commanded not to. We don't know the reason, but we will, given time. Patience is a virtue that is becoming rarer as this world winds into the final Act, but it is vital in the search for humility and exaltation.