As Man Now Is, God Once Was: Did God the Father Ever Sin?

The Noble and Great Ones by godwinthescribe

So the idea that there is a progression from humans into gods/becoming like God came about in the day of Joseph Smith, showing a pattern that would happen often. Someone would come to Joseph with a question or suggestion, he'd embrace it, and then more of the idea would be fleshed out over time as the need for knowledge related to the subject would become necessary for the Saints as a whole. This theology is an example of that pattern.

Here's a brief chronology. And here are the source texts of the King Follett discourse from the Joseph Smith Papers.

The King Follett Discourse is where I'm going to take the core of my answer from because of the explanation Joseph Smith gives in it for how this progression works.

Lorenzo Snow was the first one to approach Joseph with this idea that "As man now is, God once was; as God is now, man may become."

Joseph then went on to teach in the King Follett sermon (which was at a funeral) this same idea, and that it could be reasoned out with Scripture.

There's nothing else beyond those limited comments that have ever been revealed since then. So what I'm giving is pure speculation, but it's based on the comments Joseph made.

Joseph said that in everything Jesus did, he was doing what he had seen the Father do. Joseph then pointed to the council in Heaven and revealed what has become our beliefs about the preexistence. So in the very act of becoming the Messiah, atoning for humanity and bridging them to God by being the demands of divine law, Joseph is suggesting that Jesus was doing something in the act of atonement that has been done before.

If we take this as truth, it suggests one of two origins for God the Father:

1. He was an imperfect human in need of atonement, same as us, and that atonement was provided for by someone else who was the equivalent of Jesus to him.
2.  God our Father WAS a previous Messiah/Christ who atoned for his brothers and sisters, and Jesus was chosen to follow that pattern for us. This would mean that God the Father had to meet the same perfect standards that Jesus did in being sinless to perform this sacrifice. In which case, he would've been capable of sin but resisted all temptation for his entire mortal life. 
   

Based on what Joseph explains in the King Follett Discourse, I personally lean towards the second. I could see this pattern of the Firstborn atoning for the siblings in the divine family being the order that Godhood follows, that Christ is a priesthood office and atonement is an ordinance that has redeemed many before us and will be the pattern of how redemption works into all eternity.

But all of that is pure speculation. We could end up with an answer to this that says something else entirely. I will point out that I've only ever had one other conversation about this with anyone in the Church in almost 18 years. It was with one of the nephews of D. Todd Christofferson when we were in the same student ward together at BYU. I walked into the middle of a very intense conversation between him and some other guys in my ward about this. They got to the notion of "Grandfather God" and he could see the 404 Error screen all over my face. He was very kind in telling me none of this was important for me to worry about and they were just messing around and speculating. You have to be a theology and Religious Deep Lore nerd to even end up here. 

"I can barely handle worshiping one God. I don't need another," is what I said then. And in the end, I think I stand by that.

Holy Week: Atonement

A section of the modern garden in Gethsemane

 

I've been in interfaith spaces enough to know that Latter-day Saints have a different relationship with the Atonement of Jesus Christ than the rest of Christianity. While the idea that Jesus sacrificed himself to meet the demands of the Law of Moses, what the Book of Mormon calls "the great and last sacrifice," we have a different understanding from the rest of Christianity of when that happened. (See Alma 34:13-16)

In every other Christian tradition I've seen and interacted with, the belief is that Jesus died on the Cross for our sins. In Latter-day Saint tradition, we believe that this act of intercession and our Savior's achievement of perfected compassion in the Garden of Gethsemane. Note these verses from Luke 22:

41 And he was withdrawn from them about a stone’s cast, and kneeled down, and prayed,

42 Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

43 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.

44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

For us, this is the Atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ. This is what it meant for him to be the Messiah. It wasn't a physical rescuing, although he did that for many throughout his mortal ministry. It was the defeat of loneliness, the conquering of sin, and deliverance from evil that defined Jesus Christ as our Savior. The blood he shed during that moment of intercession for the entire human family—past, present, and future—that would crown his ministry as the Only Begotten Son of the Father.


For me, this dual emphasis on Gethsemane and the de-emphasis of the Crucifixion is one of my favorite aspects of my faith. It allows me to have a more expansive view of Atonement that transcends sin. Our scriptures teach of the intercession of Jesus as an act that grants him perfect access to perfect empathy with each of us, in every experience I will ever face.

Some examples of that perspective from the Book of Mormon: 

• 1 Nephi 19:9
• 1 Nephi 21:16
• Mosiah 14:10
• Alma 7:11-13

In contrast, the Crucifixion to us is a tragic miscarriage of justice, a product of Roman brutality in capital punishment. That Christ was willing to suffer that is significant, but the Crucifixion itself has no inherent holiness to us—let alone being the focal point. That is why Latter-day Saints, for the most part, don't give emphasis to the Crucifixion in our iconography with crosses. Having spent my early years going to Catholic Mass with my mother and seeing the large Crucifix with an emaciated Christ carved and hanging from it at the front of the room, I do prefer my current traditions over the fear and guilt that inspired in me as a child

When people have asked me about why the pain and anguish of Jesus Christ was necessary, it has usually come from people in other Abrahamic faiths outside of Christianity. Why is that level of suffering required to appease God and to meet the demands of divine law?

When the Atonement of Jesus Christ is reduced to the legalistic demands of sin and its consequences, I can understand the confusion. It's not a satisfying explanation to point to the depravity of human kind and say "It was necessary to fix that." I’ve particularly had wise Muslims ask me how a totally innocent person suffering the consequences for a guilty person could ever possibly be just. And when your understanding of the Atonement of Jesus Christ begins and ends with sin, it's hard to know how to respond.

Latter-day Saints have an understanding that would say instead that Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice simply because he wanted to. He didn't want any of us to be alone in all the struggles we would ever face. It's not just for sin—it's for every heartache we will ever experience, including those we haven't even come to yet. The total defeat of evil and its power over our lives. He has a perfect knowledge of every need we will ever have, and has received that knowledge into himself so he knows how to comfort and guide us. He was the only one who could do that for the human family. Such access requires "an infinite and eternal sacrifice," and Jesus Christ was the only one who was willing and able to pay the price on our behalf. (See Alma 34:9-12)

That's what makes Jesus Christ special to me: he can see the worst of what humans can do to each other, bearing the collective burden of all of our pain, and survive it without succumbing to hopelessness and despair. He isn't a convenient scapegoat, or (even worse) an enabler. He is a friend to the friendless, the hope to the hopeless, and the last resort to someone who would otherwise be left totally alone and defeated in this world.

I have never been to Gethsemane. I wasn't there when Jesus did this for me. I can't prove to anyone else that it was real or that it happened. All I can do is be the living witness of that kind of love, health, healing, and wholeness in my own life because that's who Jesus Christ has been to me.

Everyone needs that kind of friend in their lives, especially when they don't deserve it. Each and every one of us, no matter who we are or what we've done, have that kind of friend in Jesus of Nazareth.

Holy Week: The Cleansing of the Temple

Jesus Cleansing the Temple, Carl Bloch

I have seen multiple people on Instagram talking about Jesus cleansing the temple in the final week of his ministry and misinterpreting the motive Jesus had for doing it. So let's talk about the details we can glean from Scripture to better understanding this story.

The temple complex had merchants who would sell animals to people they could use for sacrifices. The law of Moses in Leviticus 5 (see also Leviticus 14-15) talks about how the sin offering involves sacrificing a lamb or a kid goat. In the case of extreme poverty, two doves were the acceptable alternatives. These offerings would be bled on the Temple altar and burned.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves. —Matt 21:13

The act of selling these animals was not the problem. It was a necessary part of the temple functioning, especially as people traveled from far distances to participate in temple worship.

The problem that caused Jesus to walk through the stalls turning over tables brandishing a whip was price gouging. Theft, of both money and access to God.

Everything that happened in the temple complex was under the direction of the high priest, the most important figure in Judaism at the time. The animals provided would've been inspected and assured that they would meet the requirements of the law. In a world where various monies were in use, weighed with scales to meet the established exchange rates, nothing would've prevented the high priest from requiring bribes from the privilege of operating in the temple market. Nothing would've prevented the scales from being turned against those who price gouged the public to provide for those bribes, as well as to line their own pockets. All of this happened at the expense of the people who were required by divine law to make these sacrifices to achieve forgiveness of their sins.

Throughout the New Testament, Jesus repeatedly demonstrates his disdain for the senior-most leadership of Judaism in his day. He had condemned the love of money and status over people so many times. He had disrupted ceremonies and insulted the priests to their faces. He had criticized their poor understanding of the law and their duties to others in their community. He had called them hypocrites, a den of vipers, vessels that were clean on the outside but filthy within, whited sepulchres full of dead men's bones, predators akin to wolves in sheep's clothing, and unprofitable servants. And here, he engages in his most pointed and unapologetic criticism yet for those in power:

And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. —Matt 21:13

The agitation of Jesus Christ culminated in this exact moment, where he struck back against the Establishment not only in thought, but in their pocketbooks. In the destruction of the temple market, he restored access to the ordinances for all by front the animals to those who were present. He liberated the money to the oppressed in society by flinging it outside the reach of those who had taken it from them. He upturned the power structure and social order which placed the high priest as a wealthy superior over, rather than a humble servant to, the Jewish community.

Make no mistake: Jesus was a Jew. He loved his community and his faith. He loved God. He respected the law, which called his people to be the best versions of themselves to serve God. But this love didn't stop him from publicly criticizing and condemning moral failure in the leadership around him. Love does not enable abuse. And it was abuse that allowed Jewish leadership at the time to limit access to the most important, the most sacred ordinances in Judaism only to those who were willing and able to pay enough money.

What do we learn from Jesus, from his destruction of the temple market?

That some evil forces in society cannot be reformed. Reasoning with abusers in ways they don't have to acknowledge, that doesn't cost them anything, isn't a solution for the powerless. That people are more important than money and the economy. That there is restorative justice waiting for the oppressed, in the form of destruction for their oppressors. And when this happens, a greater increase of faith, healing, and power from heaven will follow.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. —Matt. 21:14

This Easter season, this is the hope and prayer for many: that God will remember those who have been shut out of their communities because of the exorbitant prices set by their leadership for their participation. That God will restore access to the holiness and forgiveness that has been stolen from them. That there is still a Savior, a Deliverer from the greed and pride that drives this world. And most of all, that there is healing and rest for those who have been exploited against their will, that all that has been stolen will be restored to them one day.

Reconciliation: the Rejection of Penal Substitutionary Atonement in The Book of Mormon

"So you're telling me that Jesus Christ is there to save you from what God is going to do to you if you don't repent?"

I've encountered this worldview many times throughout my life. Sometimes from those of other faiths outside of Christianity who don't understand the purpose of the atonement or the need for a Savior. Other times, it's from atheists or disaffected members who give it as a justification for their non-belief. The Book of Mormon contradicts penal substitutionary atonement and its underpinnings in some pretty significant ways, so I wanted to lay those out. The portions that went into this particular take down are in 2 Nephi 2 and 9, as well as Alma 12 and 34.

In this worldview, divine law and sin exist solely as the mechanisms for being punished and rejected by God. The atonement of Jesus Christ, as a result, saves people not from sin or Satan, but from a God who is tallying our wrongs to exact a punishment. The only thing stopping this God is the mercy of Christ, who nullifies the consequences of our actions through his own torment and suffering. We learn nothing, Christ suffers, and a violent God is appeased by watching an innocent man die.

Let's unpack all of this so we can throw it away because it's inaccurate theology that misunderstands and taints pretty much everything it touches.

Divine law does not exist to catch us in wrong doing, to provide the rules by which God can punish us without restraint. That's a projection onto God from the experience of dealing with horrible people. They may do this to us, but God does not.

A great way to prove this is to look at what sin actually is. Something doesn't become sinful "just because God said so." Sin, by definition, is anything that causes "temporal death" or "spiritual death." If it doesn't cause physical harm or distance us from God, it's not a sin. This is actually a really good standard for discerning and judging whether something that is being called sinful comes from God or not.

Murder? Physical harm. Sin.

Idolatry? Spiritual harm. Sin.

Refusing to ever identify myself as a Mormon or LDS again, even though they're accurate labels for myself, because of concerns and scruples I don't care about, and for a spiritual benefit that is dubious at best?

Am I saying that prophets and members of the Church have so polluted the notion of sin with their own prejudices and biases that what makes something sinful has completely gotten lost in a sea of crap that was never sinful at all?

Yes. Yes, I am.

Why is this important for answering the question of whether we have a vengeful God and a pushover Christ?

Because it means that the laws and standards by which we're trying to judge the motivations of God have been polluted by human nonsense. It means that the transactional relationship where God and Christ fight over us using fine print and technicalities is as broken as it sounds, and we're not bound by anything that relies upon that as a justification because it just isn't true. It means that if this dysfunctional relationship is what you were taught by family, church leaders, and other members of the Church, you've been taught blasphemy that doesn't even come close to being accurate.

It's impossible to repent of something that isn't sinful. That's why no matter how much you do it, it will never bring peace.

So if transactional atonement is the vestigial anxieties of Calvinism being passed along through generational trauma and it belongs in the dumpster, how should we view the atonement of Jesus Christ instead? What are God's motivations towards us if not to cause misery through setting impossible standards we'll never be able to meet?

God sent us here, in a variety of circumstances, to learn one lesson: to obtain knowledge of good and evil. More specifically, we're here to learn good from evil, and to consistently choose that which is good. We're here to have free will, to use and exercise agency. God gave us the ability to make our own choices, to know ourselves and to seek our own joy.

That's it. That's the plan.

Why is Jesus Christ necessary for God's plan? Because giving self-determination to the entire human family inevitably leads to suffering that we cannot overcome or undo the damage from on our own. We need someone to teach us how to be reconciled to God and to each other.

To put it simply, we have a Savior because we need him. We need him to teach us how to choose between good and evil in a way that no other person can. We need someone who can teach us to right wrongs, to heal wounds, to break generational curses in ways only he could do. He's not an enabler or a pushover. He is the one we depend on to teach us reconciliation. This isn't making that which is wrong or evil magically disappear. It's to resolve conflict and to be fully received again in love.

God is love. Love permeates everything God does. If love is absent, or needs to be redefined or contorted into something that neither looks nor feels like love, then it's not love. And if it's not love, then it's not from God.

Jesus Christ is the embodiment and evidence of God's love for us. That's it. There is no other reason or motivation for us to have a Savior. He doesn't just deliver us from sin. He delivers us to a greater capacity to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. He brings peace to us, the spirit of reconciliation, to everything we do.

Another Easter During COVID-19

Arm of Mercy, Kevin Figueira

The same family that took my family's sacrament access away, with their ultimatum to return in person or go without, used the pulpit today during Easter to chastise those of us who continue to social distance by admonishing us to return.

One of the costs of being in community with others who are seeking divinity is having your worship, your communion with God, the prayers you were looking to have answered, derailed by others who place their own issues in your lap.

Especially from former leadership who will not fight the compulsion to steady the ark, to relinquish authority they no longer possess to correct the congregation, this can be especially difficult. It can leave you asking, "Why do I bother to try?"

Here is the answer I find myself giving today on Easter Sunday: because sin is not the only thing I need Jesus Christ to save me from. And it is was always part of the divine plan for me to pray for my God to also save me from anything that devalues my safety and threatens my peace, including this.

The Saints in the pews beside me are not my judges. They do not know my heart or my circumstances.They have not seen what disease and illness has already done to my family throughout the pandemic. They do not know our risks. They do not know our struggles. It is not for them to read irreverence or disobedience into my motives. It is not for them to decide that my worship, my contributions, or my offerings in my home are subpar in comparison to theirs because they attend Church in person and I don't.

That kind of behavior is the real irreverence. They've distracted themselves from their own worship to worry excessively about the behavior of others. That is not what church meetings are for.

So on the day when I needed God to assist me in deepening my love, patience, and desire to serve those in my family whose behavior in life made them difficult to love, I now have to spend time dealing with this. 

My Easter message is: Never be the person who does this to others. Celebrate the power, the majesty of Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice by never becoming the opposition someone else needs to pray to be saved from.  

And if you find yourself in that position today, I pray in the holy name of Jesus Christ that we can receive the spiritual gift of faith sufficient to be unbothered, undisturbed by such people. May we be blessed not to believe what those fools are gonna say about us today. May we find and claim the comfort and peace that passes all understanding. It's what we all need and what you deserve, no matter what anybody says.

Happy Easter, my friends.

God's Love IS Unconditional

Image courtesy of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

In my younger years, I attempted to excuse myself from fully buying into the notion that God truly intended me to love all people. Surely he didn't mean for me to love people I have good reason not to trust, those who show animosity towards me and would do me harm if they got the chance. And certainly there was no obligation for me to love the people who had already intentionally and maliciously hurt me. 

A God who truly cared about me wouldn't put me in that position... right?

This was part of a prolonged, circuitous effort to justify myself in refusing to forgive several of the most abusive people in my past. I could "forgive" them in a way that was effectively meaningless, as long as I didn't have to love them. It was a rationale that came from a deeply hurt and fearful place.

As I continued to heal and reached a place where I was ready to handle the answers to these questions, the truth slowly coalesced in my own mind through the influence of the Holy Ghost.

Jesus said love everyone...

To love my neighbor is a commandment that Jesus Christ teaches consistently throughout the New Testament, through just about every imaginable lens.

And in one of my favorite sermons in all of scripture, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught that I am to love my enemies.

So between loving my neighbor and my enemies... who is left?

There is no one else left. Jesus Christ, and our Heavenly Parents who sent him, never intended to leave us any room to make exceptions. The love they intend to teach us is universal, meaning without limits or exceptions.

It's through this same logical progression that I want to discuss why I believe, with every inch of my soul, that divine love is truly unconditional. I will also discuss why I'm deeply mistrustful of anyone who presents any vision of divine love that isn't unconditional.

One of the scriptures that has been in my life the longest as a disciple is Romans 8:38-39. It's probably the one I've reached for more than any other in my seventeen years of church membership, including now:

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I don't have to be a Biblical literalist to understand that these verses are describing a love that is infinite and eternal in nature. It does not end. It never changes. The love of God transcends all human weakness to encompass the entire human race. And to someone who is determined to make this a description of universal love again, they just stop there.

Read it again.

When it says that nothing and no one, including "any other creature," can separate us from the love of God, that includes ourselves. The literal meaning of these words is that nothing we will ever do will remove the love of God from us. By the time God's love is universal in all the ways that the scriptures describe, it's impossible for that love not to also be unconditional.

And treat them kindly too.

Why is this important? Because it's impossible to fully appreciate the motivation of Jesus Christ during his atonement in Gethsemane without it.

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:6-8

That's what Jesus Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane. That was the reason he bled from every pore. It wasn't to set some impossibly high standard of righteousness he knew no one else would ever be able live up to. It wasn't to position himself as a superior to the rest of the human race. It was to make sure that no mistake any person would ever make would prevent them from re-entering the presence of our Heavenly Parents. His sacrifice does not exist as the ultimate condemnation of sin. It's the unconditional love he showed to all of humanity, including to those who would never choose to believe in him. It was the ultimate act of unconditional love.

The prophet Abinadi in the Book of Mormon taught that when Jesus Christ was making that sacrifice, he saw his seed. I've heard some go so far as to suggest that he saw each and every person individually for whom he was making that sacrifice. I'm inclined to agree with that interpretation. (See Mosiah 15:10)

Abinadi then goes on to define exactly who the seed of Jesus Christ is. And as it turns out, it's not those who obey the laws of God with exactness. It's not the whole who need no physician. It's those who look forward to a remission of their sins, who are fully aware they are imperfect human beings who require grace to be made whole. As always, it's the harlots and publicans, the strangers and outsiders who go into heaven before those who find themselves thinking, "the world would be a better place if everyone in it were more like me and approached God exactly like I do." (See Matthew 9:12-13, 12:42, and 21:28-31. See also Jacob 3:5 and Helaman 7:24)

As I recall, that was the sin that got Lucifer cast out of the presence of God. He attempted to put himself between us and our Heavenly Parents with a plan that never would've allowed us to experience that divine love ever again. He, not Jesus Christ, is the one who wanted to make divine love conditional upon his own standard, which he intended to implement by force. He sought to make himself, not God, the object of our worship, the receiver of our love. (See Moses 4:1-4)

Why am I mistrusting of anyone who rejects divine love as being unconditional? Because my soul has been rejecting that plan since the very beginning. I don't trust anyone who views it as their right to stand between our Heavenly Parents and their children, interrupting the loving exchange between us and them. My Savior died so that no one would ever be in a position to do that. I reject the idea that any other intermediary belongs there, deciding how much divine love anyone else is entitled to experience.

When your heart is filled with love, others will love you.

Why would someone put themselves in that position? The same reason I did all those years ago, in my own very human way: to justify myself in withholding my love from someone I didn't want to acknowledge was deserving of it. I wanted to abandon the second great commandment to love my neighbor, when I already knew there was no way for me to do that without utterly breaking the first. That is, to love God.

If you don't believe me, you don't have to take my word for it. 1 John 4:20-21 says the same exact thing:

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

This is as true for God as it is for us. Our Heavenly Parents have set no standard for us that they are not equally bound to follow. They have taught us to have universal, unconditional love for each other because it's how they live. It's the only way we can truly become like them.

And while we (and they) are fully aware that we will stumble along the way, I believe they would rather watch us stumble along the path of loving unconditionally than being perfect at withholding our love from those who just don't deserve it. Especially if we're going to point to them as a justification.

Real Talk about Tithing

No matter how strained my relationship with the Church has become, no matter how much or how little I've had at my disposal, I have always paid a full tithe. There are people in this world, particularly disaffected former members of my church, who take personal offense at that. 

Why would anyone else care about what I do with my own resources? Why would the money I give in tithing ever be offensive to them?

Because they haven't even begun the process of deconstructing the impulse, especially present in certain LDS families, to be a relentless scold. They don't know how to interact with people beyond being a self-appointed measuring stick for the ethical behavior of others. I have to remind myself that only hurt people do stuff like this, and it truly has nothing to do with me. But the urge to be petty and ask them when the last time they bought something from Amazon was gets hard to ignore.

Another component to this is not understanding that there are legal limitations to how the Church can spend tithes and offerings, as opposed to philanthropically donated lands, funds, stocks, and estates from families like the Marriotts. Philanthropically-donated wealth paid for City Creek, not tithing funds. It's a private investment that has never been touched by tithing dollars. Anyone who doesn't know the difference is unprepared to have an intelligent, good faith conversation about what they're trying to criticize.

In all likelihood, my tithing money is paying the basic operational budgets for congregations outside of the United States. I'm paying electric bills for members of the Church in Europe. I'm paying for the disinfectants to clean the toys in Primary in New Zealand. I'm paying for basic, mundane, lifesaving things to people I don't know and will never meet. The money I give as tithes and offerings to the Church overwhelmingly pays for back to school clothes, puts food on tables and in pantries, gets medicine and wheelchairs to people in developing countries. I'm paying for youth camps in Brazil, temples in Africa, chapels in the Philippines, and for all the infrastructure in the lives of those Saints that come with them that wouldn't be there without my contribution, small as it is. 

My tithing is never going to be some life-changing amount of money, in terms of total monetary value. But Christ himself taught in the lesson of the widow's mites that it's faith and generosity, not money, that matters most to him. (See Mark 12:41-44) Jesus, who taught his people to "render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s, and to God the things that are God’s" and pulled a coin from the mouth of a fish doesn't need money. (Mark 12:14-17, Matt. 17:24-27) Rather, he needs to know whether I will place the lives of others above and beyond the value of money. I pay my tithing to demonstrate to God that there are more important things to me in this world than money.

I don't take criticism on this aspect of my faith from folks who have never heard of D. Michael Quinn, let alone the work he did to privately verify that church finances are largely boring and unremarkable.

And to show, in good faith, that I'm not some rube who truly believes no tithing dollars are ever wasted, here are some of the things I would never spend another dollar on if it were up to me. 

1. BYU and CES 
2. Kirton McConkie 
3. LDS Family Services

The Church isn't perfect. But to sit here and say that the Church hasn't done any good at all with the money in its possession, that the ownership of those wrongs belongs to the members who gave that money in good faith, is totally asinine and disingenuous.

 

If the people making these assertions were purely interested in ethical consumption, rather than setting up others to fail moral standards they themselves could never meet, I'd take their criticism more seriously. But given that people complaining about tithing on Twitter from their iPhone, in line to buy coffee from the Starbucks inside of a Target before taking their Amazon return to the UPS store have no sense of themselves as they're going through space. They can take an entire stadium of seats.

As I Have Loved You, Love One Another

One of the most heartbreaking verses in all of scripture was the moment when Jesus brought Peter, James, and John with him as he entered the Garden of Gethsemane. It was to be the contest in which Christ made himself an offering for the entirety of the human family before all the hosts of heaven, the most difficult test he had ever endured. It would push his body and soul to the brink of oblivion, beyond what any individual human had ever suffered. To make intercession for every soul who had ever or would ever live.

 

Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, Robert Walter Weir (1803-1899)

Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

"My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me," he said to Peter, James, and John.ⁱ A plea from a human heart that doesn't want to suffer, especially not alone. No different from any one of us.

We don't have to imagine his fear and trepidation in that moment. The scriptures tell us that Jesus Christ fell on his face before his Father and begged that "if it be possible, let this cup pass from me."ⁱⁱ A plea from a human heart that doesn't want to suffer, no different from any one of us.

"Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou will."ⁱⁱⁱ Willing to undergo the suffering and pain to teach the world, by example, the cost of unconditional love. The price to be paid for eternity. The very best trait any of us in humanity has to offer: the willingness to show mercy and compassion, especially to those who will never reciprocate.

They slept. The most important moment in his life, the entire reason he was sent to earth, and his brothers slept right through it. He came to them repeatedly and asked for them to watch with him. Each time, they fail. "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?"^iv How difficult it must've been for him to recognize that in a few short moments, everything he had built would be entrusted to them, and they were already asleep at the helm.

Peter, James, and John would spend the remainder of their lives trying to be equal to the moment that had already passed them by and found them wanting. They represent the challenge that remains for anyone who calls themselves a Christian: to be equal to the mandates Jesus Christ left behind for all of us, to become the manner of humans we ought to be. "Verily I say unto you, even as I am."^v

Asleep at the Helm

To be distracted and unfocused in a moment when we are being entrusted to minister to, or even just to sit with someone who is in pain, is not a sin that is unique to Peter, James, and John. In many respects, the modern Church has a similar issue in how it collectively confronts current moral failures among its membership. With sexism, racism, and the treatment of LGBTQ members in particular, there are too many times when the suffering and violence faced by those on the margins, including from those within the Church, has silent witnesses who close their eyes to it instead of helping.

The practice of Latter-day Saint parents abandoning their LGBTQ+ children and youth is especially heinous. To reject anyone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, to say nothing of forcing them onto the streets and into homelessness, is an evil with no place within the Church. It's an evil that exists openly, with too many Church and priesthood leaders who know about it without holding the parents to account for their actions. In too many cases, these leaders ARE the parents who are putting their children in danger by turning them out onto the streets. Any amount of this in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is too much, and we have too much. When Jesus taught that ours was the responsibility to take the gospel message into the world, violence against and the rejection of the marginalized is not what he meant.

I could sit here and spout of verses to prove this point all day long. I could quote Matthew 25 about how those who fail to feed and clothe God's children do that violence to Christ himself.^vi I could quote 2 Nephi 26 when the prophets taught that Christ sends no one away who is in need. I could quote the parable of the man with 12 children from D&C 38 where God rejects any parent who would willingly deny their children the sustenance that they need and still claim to be a good parent.

Seriously. I could sit here and come up with more of these all day long because I know the God I serve. At no point did God give any injunction or license to do violence towards or to ostracize the LGBTQ+ community among us. So for now, I will settle for the warning that Jesus gave in three different places in the New Testament about the consequences to those who hurt any of his children, especially when the victims are children.

"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."^vii

The problem here is not that the scriptures were vague or inconsistent. Jesus Christ was perfectly clear about how he expects all of us to treat each other. The problem is that too many of us don't want to listen. We want to join into the violent scapegoating of the Other because that's what the rest of The World, and by that I mean too many others in Christianity, are actively doing. It's easier for fundamentalists to accumulate social capital by doing violence and spreading hatred than it is to genuinely "do good unto all men."^viii Just because the others engaging in that behavior are other Christians doesn't make it right. It just means everyone involved has every reason to know better and do better.

Jesus of Nazareth has born the griefs of every soul who has ever lived. He knows the pains of LGBTQ+ people who have lost everything they once held dear. He can say together with LGBTQ+ people that he was also "wounded in the house of my friends."^ix Which I don't say as any kind of injunction for them to worship with us ever again. No one has any obligation to return to a place of violence that has made them unsafe. That's what the Church has been for too many of our own LGBTQ+ people.

To any and all within the reach of these words who prides themselves on doing violence to God's children because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation, my message to you this Easter season is simple: Stop it. Find something better to do with your time. 

In the time it takes to make someone else's difficult situation even worse by dehumanizing them, we could do what Christ did and love them instead.

iMatt. 26:38

iiMatt. 26:39

iiiIbid.

ivMatt. 26:40

v3 Ne. 27:27

viMathew 25:35-40

viiMatt. 18, Mark 9, Luke 17

viiiGal. 6:10

ixZech. 13:6

The Good Shepherd

Let's talk about sheep.

Jesus taught that we are his flock of sheep. And the likes of Greg Olsen have made that sentiment way more endearing than I think it was intended to be. When you actually know something about animal husbandry, his meaning changes from the way we typically understand it.

If you had to describe sheep, here are several words and phrases you could use:

• helpless 
• vulnerable 
• fragile 
• able to be injured or killed remarkably easily, especially by accident

I'm learning animal husbandry for my certification as a veterinary nurse. Sheep scare the shit out of me. Handle them wrong and you can literally snap their necks. Their skeletons are fragile. They can't regulate their body temperatures much beyond 50°F. If you handle them roughly, you can break their back legs. You can't grab them by the fleece because you can permanently ruin their skin. They can't jump especially well. They have no natural defenses of any kind. If you remove a baby from its mother before she can bond with it, even to save its life, she will abandon it entirely. Touch them wrong and you could do irreparable harm to them.

 

There's no such thing as a little "oops" with sheep. Every sheep has to be treated like the slightest injury is a big deal. There's no such thing as being too sensitive or too careful with sheep. Their feelings matter because they are incapable of withstanding any kind of violence. There is no place for violence in a sheep herd. 

 

The shepherd's biggest worry for the sheep isn't just that a predator could come and wipe them all out. It's also that he could literally kill them by accident through bad husbandry.  

 

If you fancy yourself any kind of shepherd like Jesus Christ was, in any kind of ministering capacity, you need to recognize that one of the greatest threats to its survival isn't wolves. 

 

It's you. 

 

Specifically, you assuming you know what you're doing whenever do not. Because in that scenario, it's not a question of if you will do irreparable harm to some of the sheep in your care. It's when and how.

 

To be a good shepherd is to love sheep in all of their "I'm allergic to tap water" glory. To care enough to know how to handle them with love, meeting all their needs, no matter what they are.

 

When we talk about Jesus being the Good Shepherd, that's what that means.