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.

The Story of Prophetic Fallibility in Acts 15 Everyone Skips

There are many different ways to read and study scripture. There's the daily devotional style the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has recently adopted from the rest of Christianity. There's the various reading challenges that have been established and invoked, particularly relating to the Book of Mormon. There are topical studies, which focuses the study on a theme or subject of personal importance to the reader. I've always favored topical studies over consecutive study in my personal worship. It's what makes the use of scripture to me feel personal, rather than scholarly or historical.

The weakness of that approach is that I can go decades in the Church without encountering a story that doesn't get emphasized in Church curriculum or in my personal study. I just encountered such a story in Acts 15.

Past and present church materials focus on the Jerusalem conference, in which the church leadership had to settle arguments and contentions that were occurring about whether Gentile converts needed to be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses in order to be accepted into the Church. The church leadership met together and determined that this wasn't necessary and put an undo burden upon new converts that wasn't adding anything of value to their faith. They then determine what standard of observance they wanted to keep and adapt from the Law of Moses to be followed by the disciples of Christ. It's a valuable story about how what it looks like to worship God can change over time, but the true spirit of worship never changes. An important step to having that spirit of worship is settling disagreements and laying aside preconceived notions of what worship has to look like based on the past, making space for what worship can look like in the future.

However, that's not the story I'm talking about. I'm talking about the explosive argument between Paul and Barnabas about whether or not to take John Mark with them on their travels.

Verse 38 gives the explanation for the conflict as one where Paul doesn't trust John Mark because he left them in Pamphylia and refused to work with them. But how much of this is from the earlier stages of this conflict that Paul may have caused by creating a hostile environment towards the assistants who traveled with them? The fact that Barnabas is still willing to work with John Mark, whose name is on the gospel of Mark, says we don't have all the details of this story, and not all the issue centered on or was caused by John Mark.

Verse 39 tells that "the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other." Barnabas took John Mark and went to Cyprus, leaving Paul behind. It's the story of a conflict that arose in church leadership, largely from Paul's refusal to work with someone he didn't like, that remained unresolved as they continued forward in their ministries.

It's not the picture perfect image of total unity and fellowship between church leaders, who are able to lay aside their differences and preferences to work with each other through disagreement. I imagine that's why this story has been left out of the Church curriculum for some time.

Reviewing the Sunday School manual that was in use before Come Follow Me, nothing about this conflict was mentioned. Come Follow Me not only doesn't use this material, it seems to be actively trying to conceal it by focusing on a discussion topic (Line Upon Line) carefully crafted not to use any of that material. It also isn't included in the targeted reading, which invites members to read Acts 15:1-25. Anyone following along solely with the emphasis given in Come Follow Me isn't going to come into contact with this story.

I think that's a real loss to our community, if I'm honest. There is no sin in recognizing that church leaders are human who don't always get along with each other, who can exist in a state of ardent disagreement with each other while still accomplishing the work God has sent them to do. They can be staunchly in their own opinions about someone else, which are later proven to be wrong. (See 2 Tim. 4:11 and Col. 4:10) In their own human frailty and weakness, they can completely misjudge someone else's character and potential. Their stewardship over the Church does not give them perfect knowledge about people and who/what they have the capacity to accomplish.

It's an important lesson for understanding conflicts and dissensions that happen later to the Church in Missouri, where several members of the Quorum of the Twelve leave the Church and have to be replaced. (See D&C 114 and 118) While many of the narratives (and curriculum) relating to this time period attribute apostolic fall to sin and disloyalty, it's more accurate to say that these divisions arose from conflicts that church leadership at the time were unable to resolve.

Church leadership in the time of Acts couldn't perfectly resolve conflicts within their ranks. The restored church is no different. If we avoid and conceal prophetic fallibility continuously, we fail to prepare our people to know how to handle it and move forward through it.

If we want our people to be able to move forward in faith like John Mark when confronting that fallibility, it will help greatly if we tell that story in our classes and learn from that choice.

On Women Being Absent from Scripture

I read this post from The Exponent this morning, and I related so profoundly to what the author was describing in how we teach a male-centric view of scripture in the Church. From that place of frustration, I went to the scriptures on my own in search of women and their stories. 

Women are present in the scriptures, especially in the Old Testament. Women are not named in scripture at the same frequency as men. That's isn't the same issue as the women not being present, or being actors in the stories, especially in stories where men in those collectives also aren't named. The Book of Mormon especially is a text that focuses primarily on community impact and reactions. Women are present in every story that it tells of crowds, tribes, multitudes, and factions

We could blame these factors for why don't talk about or study women in any detail at Church, at least not to the same depth or degree that we have studied the lives of male prophets, living and dead. But when you realize the multitude of women whose lives and experiences are recorded in scripture, that's not enough of an explanation. The women's lives and experiences are there. So the questions we have to ask ourselves are: 

• Who taught us to look at a collective of people in scripture and assume the audience is dominated by men, or that men are the actors in the stories and women are passive? 
• Why aren't we teaching from the lives and experiences of women in the scriptures that do exist? 

There are answers about men becoming the default, specific moments in time we can point to that has had this impact, regardless of what the Church's intent was. The Topical Guide and footnote references for the 1981 edition of the scriptures were created by a mostly (if not all) male team of returned missionaries under the direction of Bruce R. McConkie. These are the same references in use today. The perspective they teach from is ignorant of, if not hostile to, the spiritual needs of women. Any woman who has ever seen the Topical Guide entries for Birth Control and Interracial Marriage, or has gone looking for an entry on Infertility, has felt that hostility.

We project what our lived experiences are in church onto the scriptures we read. We also view our scriptures through the examples we use and emphasize to teach various principles. There are plenty of scriptures featuring women that get no play time in church for teaching the principles they represent. Sometimes, this is because a man's story gets emphasized for that same principle instead.

But more often than not, I think the male default in curriculum happens year after year because the stories starring women make men uncomfortable. In many cases, they exist to detail the disrespect and violence that men have shown to women throughout time, and how God rejects and punishes men who abuse women. Some of these stories are graphic in nature, featuring sexual violence against women as a key feature. It would be impossible to study these stories without confronting those elements. 

So if you don't know that there is a story in the Old Testament where God nearly destroyed the entire house of Israel because men in the tribe of Benjamin brutally raped and murdered one woman, there's a reason for that. (See Judges 19-21)

The Levite of Ephraim, Alexandre-François Caminade

Stories featuring women in scripture often exist, at least in part, to condemn the selfish, inexcusable behavior of men. That's why men don't tell those stories. In many cases, they've never heard of them. The ones they have heard of, such as David and Bathsheba, they've grossly misinterpreted. They've been raised on a steady diet of church instruction that emphasizes the stories that entrench their own roles instead. That's all they know.

When you sit down with the standard works and read them through the lens of actively searching for women, you start to see them everywhere. They're not absent. There's a filter over the scriptures and how we've been taught to read them that makes women disappear that has to be dismantled.

When the Bishop Becomes a Stumbling Block

So, it has been several weeks since my Bishop initiated his ultimatum to force me to come back to church in person to get the sacrament. He has also discontinued all communication with me on the subject.

In the meantime, I've been reflecting a lot on what this means for my religious life in this moment. At a time in my life when I find myself wanting God and craving peace, I'm being shut out of the place I was always supposed to be able to find it.

 

Waters of Mormon, Lina Curley Christensen

In prayer, I've found myself repeatedly coming back to the scriptures from Romans 8 I had taped to my wall when my mother would forbid me to go to church as a new convert. Also in the story that was my first spiritual experience with The Book of Mormon: Alma 32. Where the people in power decided to expel the undesirables from their congregations. They were not allowed to worship in the churches they helped to build.

I feel that in my soul, in ways I've been struggling to fully accept. I gave my life for this church. I have given time, money, literally years of service to it because it is my spiritual home. 

 

I have forgotten how to find God outside its walls.

The power of Alma's message was tremendous the first time I heard it. The Book of Mormon testifies of a God who has no respect for the walls humans build between each other. A God who cannot be contained in mortal boxes.

 

I need to find my way back to my God and my Savior again, separate and apart from the people in this stake where I now live who do not mean me well. 

 

These are the prayers I've been saying. Prayers I thought I would never say.

The answers are coming slowly, mostly because I am already exhausted. But I have not been left comfortless. The way forward is becoming clear.

 

I am not dependent on these men to receive all the blessings of God. They are mine to claim, anywhere and at any time I need them. 

 

Faith. Joy. Rest. Holiness. Gratitude. Love. Healing. Dignity. 

 

They are my new focus. These are mine to claim. They belong to me. No one can take them away from me. They are the blessings I will give to myself through my personal devotion and worship.

 

The ordinances of the Church augment my search for these things. They can't replace it. That is the lesson I am learning right now.

Is the Holy Ghost also Heavenly Mother?

Some of my dearest friends believe the Holy Ghost and Heavenly Mother are the same. It's a valid question and discussion, and I thought I would share my perspective and reasoning for why I disagree.

You may think differently after all this. You may still think Heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost. That's cool. I like being able to reason together, based on what we know and have personally experienced. You don't have to change what you believe based on what I've said. My purpose here isn't to say to anyone "You're wrong." It's to add another way of thinking about things to the discussion. Add what makes sense to you to your cafeteria tray. Or don't. It's your call.

The reason I don't share this belief is because the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit without a body, as described in D&C 130:22. That's how they can perform the essential functions of the Holy Ghost. D&C 130 explains that for the Holy Ghost to perform the function assigned to them by God, being disembodied is a crucial part of that.

Heavenly Mother is a resurrected, exalted being. For her to be a co-creator, equal with God and in full possession of her powers, she must possess a perfected body. 

One of the unique messages of Mormonism is that exaltation is inseparable from having a resurrected, exalted body. From D&C 76 and its descriptions of "bodies celestial" to the description in Abraham 3 of those who "keep their second estate" having "glory added upon their heads for ever and ever." Removing Heavenly Mother from her embodied physical state would put her into an unequal relationship with our Father in Heaven, incomplete and subject to him. That's why the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "all beings who have bodies have power over those who have not."

He, She, or They?

This point, however, does raise an interesting question I've never considered before. Is it appropriate for someone who has never received a body, and therefore never experienced gender in the flesh, to be assigned as male?

The Gift, Walter Rane

 

I've explored the relationship between biological sex and gender before. Being familiar with that perspective will help elaborate my comments here.

I know what the family proclamation says about gender being eternal. The language being used there has expanded and changed since 1995 when the family proclamation was given. When they said gender is eternal, they were referring to what we would now describe as biological sex. The family proclamation asserts that biological sex is eternal.

Gender is completely separate from biological sex. Gender is a social construct that is shaped by our own responses to our biological sex. Does our sex match how we perceive ourselves and our lived experiences in our own bodies, or are they incongruent with each other? That's not something that can be determined just by looking at someone. While leaders and the authors of scripture in times past have seen the Holy Ghost in vision, described him as male, or quoted Christ in teaching the Holy Ghost is male, these are secondhand accounts. I don't consider them definitive sources

Some of my dearest friends believe the Holy Ghost and Heavenly Mother are the same. It's a valid question and discussion, and I thought I would share my perspective and reasoning for why I disagree.

You may think differently after all this. You may still think Heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost. That's cool. I like being able to reason together, based on what we know and have personally experienced. You don't have to change what you believe based on what I've said. My purpose here isn't to say to anyone "You're wrong." It's to add another way of thinking about things to the discussion. Add what makes sense to you to your cafeteria tray. Or don't. It's your call.

The reason I don't share this belief is because the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit without a body, as described in D&C 130:22. That's how they can perform the essential functions of the Holy Ghost. D&C 130 explains that for the Holy Ghost to perform the function assigned to them by God, being disembodied is a crucial part of that.

Heavenly Mother is a resurrected, exalted being. For her to be a co-creator, equal with God and in full possession of her powers, she must possess a perfected body. One of the unique messages of Mormonism is that exaltation is inseparable from having a resurrected, exalted

Some of my dearest friends believe the Holy Ghost and Heavenly Mother are the same. It's a valid question and discussion, and I thought I would share my perspective and reasoning for why I disagree.

You may think differently after all this. You may still think Heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost. That's cool. I like being able to reason together, based on what we know and have personally experienced. You don't have to change what you believe based on what I've said. My purpose here isn't to say to anyone "You're wrong." It's to add another way of thinking about things to the discussion. Add what makes sense to you to your cafeteria tray. Or don't. It's your call.

The reason I don't share this belief is because the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit without a body, as described in D&C 130:22. That's how they can perform the essential functions of the Holy Ghost. D&C 130 explains that for the Holy Ghost to perform the function assigned to them by God, being disembodied is a crucial part of that.

Heavenly Mother is a resurrected, exalted being. For her to be a co-creator, equal with God and in full possession of her powers, she must possess a perfected body. One of the unique messages of Mormonism is that exaltation is inseparable from having a resurrected, exalted body. From D&C 76 and its descriptions of "bodies celestial" to the description in Abraham 3 of those who "keep their second estate" having "glory added upon their heads for ever and ever." Removing Heavenly Mother from her embodied physical state would put her into an unequal relationship with our Father in Heaven, incomplete and subject to him. 

That's why the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "all beings who have bodies have power over those who have not." 

body. From D&C 76 and its descriptions of "bodies celestial" to the description in Abraham 3 of those who "keep their second estate" having "glory added upon their heads for ever and ever." Removing Heavenly Mother from her embodied physical state would put her into an unequal relationship with our Father in Heaven, incomplete and subject to him. 

That's why the Prophet Joseph Smith taught that "all beings who have bodies have power over those who have not." 

of this information because they weren't written, preserved, or translated by impartial bastions of gender equity.

Because the Holy Ghost has never had a body, they don't know what their gender is. This is why we refer to the Holy Ghost as a personage of spirit, rather than a person. It's also why I think the most accurate pronoun to use for the Holy Ghost is "they," rather than "he." There are too many ways that biological sex and gender can manifest in humans for me to ever assume I know what it'll be for someone who has never even been mortal before. That's a decision the Holy Ghost has to make for themselves once they receive a body. 

So what is it going to take for me to feel like I know the Holy Ghost enough to definitively assign pronouns to them? The same way I do with anyone else: by having the person introduce themselves to me and tell me firsthand what pronouns they prefer.

We don't have anything like that from the Holy Ghost. It's unwise to misrepresent the scriptures we have as if they are. And if the idea of the Holy Ghost deciding, in the actual experience of being embodied, to come out as queer bothers you, it might be time ask yourself why.

Having Faith in the Book of Mormon

A friend of mine was recently answering a question about the historicity of the Book of Mormon, the reality of the people mentioned within it, and whether it's necessary to prove that. We agreed that the historicity of the Book of Mormon isn't necessary, and I wanted to share my breakdown as to why that is.

To insist that the Book of Mormon be viewed as a historical text means opening the record to scrutiny and standards of proof it will never be able to meet. It's completely contradictory to the development of faith. Faith, in its most fundamental form, always comes back to a belief in events and stories that aren't knowable through evidence. No amount of historical analysis into the Book of Mormon will ever change the fundamental nature of believing as an act of faith, rather than empirical knowledge.

The purpose of the Book of Mormon isn't to provide a historical record for us to intellectually prove or disprove. The text itself points out that there was a historical record upon which the Book of Mormon is supposed to be based, and we weren't given any of that because that's not the purpose of this record.

The purpose of the Book of Mormon is to testify of Jesus Christ. It accomplishes that purpose though faith, not intellectual certainty. There is no scholarship, no physical evidence, no probative inquiry into any of the historical elements of the Book of Mormon that can replace the personal experiences Latter-day Saints have with in pursuing that purpose.

So when I say I only care about the Book of Mormon because of what it has to say about Jesus Christ, that's truly the only reason it matters to me. It serves no other purpose in my life, including as a source of historical truth. I don't care about Book of Mormon geography, the debates surrounding horses on the American continents, the Nephite coinage system, or about proving the literal existence of anyone in the text. That simply has nothing to do with the value the Book of Mormon has had in my life.

The first time I read the Book of Mormon, I had a transformative spiritual experience in which I felt like God and I were communicating, openly and uninhibited, for the first time. That's why I believe in it. It's not because of Joseph Smith, what he said he saw in the First Vision, the divine authority he claimed to have, or what he claimed the origins of the book are. Joseph Smith, has no bearing on why I believe in the Book of Mormon.  

That doesn't mean I disbelieve Joseph Smith. I just fully embrace the fact that I'm never going to know, empirically and with absolute certainty, whether what he experienced and described was literal or not. My belief is an act of faith that doesn't need to be justified by historical evidence in order to exist. It's the same allowance that exists in every religious tradition. For me to say historicity isn't central to my decision to believe, I think, acknowledges that reality.

If the only truth someone gains out of the Book of Mormon is historical proof that Joseph Smith was a living prophet and Russell M. Nelson is his modern successor, I can't imagine a more wasted opportunity. This is why I've never supported the logical progression in the missionary discussions that assert if the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith is a prophet and the Church is true. 

Why?

Because it completely distracts from the fact that Jesus Christ acts, appears, and speaks within its pages. To choose to focus on anything else, to me, is to miss the most valuable thing in the text.

A Lesson in Scriptural Literacy: Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Reading

Let's talk about something that has been on my mind since the last time someone brought up racism in the Book of Mormon in my mentions on Twitter.

There are two types of scripture reading: descriptive and prescriptive. Prescriptive reading is when we look at the text, and in an effort to apply it to our lives, we ask it to tell us what to do and think about a variety of subjects. This is in contrast to descriptive reading, which is when the text is simply telling you what happened, independent of what the human author/God intends you to take from it in terms of your actions.

This may be obvious, but not everything that happens in the scriptures is good. We're not intended to copy every single thing that we see happening in them because the scriptures are not a purely prescriptive text. So just because there were petty, judgmental, and racist characters in the Book of Mormon, that doesn't give license to us to be petty, judgmental, and racist in our day. Rather, their inclusion is a descriptive warning about the moral rot these forces caused an entire civilization.

To interpret everything that happens in the scriptures as instantly transferable lessons into absolutely any situation, with no independent thought whatever, is to ignore the endowments of intelligence and common sense God has given to us all.

If I have to explain to anyone that you're not supposed to look at the racism in the Book of Mormon and think "surely THIS is the salient information God intended for me to take from this text and apply to my life," it's because you don't understand critical reading. You're also probably a little bit racist and looking for reasons not to deal with that. And honestly, I don't think there's a worse text to justify that, because d'you remember what happens to all the racists in the Book of Mormon?

They die. Bloodily and meaninglessly.

Which is why, for most lessons in the Book of Mormon, there are prescriptive and descriptive passages that teach the same lessons. 

Sermon on the Mount/at Bountiful? Jesus is telling me exactly what he wants me to do. Prescriptive.

The moral inventory in Alma 5, where I'm supposed to engage with every uncomfortable question about the impact of my actions on others, with no appeals to my good intentions? Clearly prescriptive.

The rapes, genocide, racism, sexism, classism, dereliction of duty, slavery, exploitation of labor, addiction, prejudice, and hosts of other depraved human behavior? The scriptures do not give license for these things to exist just because they're in the record. These things are in the record to describe how they happen. They're the harm and injustices of living that we need God to save us from. They're the punishable offenses we have God's solemn oath he will punish us for if we don't repent.

 

These things exist in the scriptures because they exist in our lives. These are the testimonies not just of God's power, but of ours: to be better than we often choose to be. To give into our better natures in resistance to evil. To do the right thing, even when it's hard.

 

So the idea that there is racism in the Book of Mormon shouldn't surprise anyone. The Book of Mormon wouldn't be of much value in speaking to the evils of our day if it didn't.

Sex and Gender Identity in Scripture

One of the reasons people in the Church give for not wanting to affirm transgender, intersex, gender fluid, and non-binary members of our community is because of how these perceptions of gender allegedly conflict with scripture. So, let's take it apart, starting with some of the important terms on this front it will be helpful to define.

As I looked at each term on their list, I paused on the definition they've given for Binary: "The gender binary is a system of viewing gender as consisting solely of two identities and sexes, man and woman or male and female."

Maybe this is obvious to other people, or has been covered elsewhere before. But seeing male and female vs. man and woman written like that caught my attention. These terms are separate. They refer to sex and gender distinctly, separately.

You know what else does that? The creation story of Adam and Eve.  

Notice how Moses 2:27 refers to sex, male and female.

Gender isn't introduced until the next chapter, when Adam names Eve, "Woman." Which, yeah. How are you going to have gender before the first woman has even been created? It's a distinction and separation that is also maintained in the Genesis accounts of chapters 1 and 2.

Here's the interesting part. Nowhere, is any of this exchange, does God state that sex and gender are intrinsically tied together—that they must or will always line up as male and man, or female and woman. It's not a necessary part of the story as written.

Adam and Eve, the record makes clear, are cisgender. But there is no scriptural imperative of any kind to assume that this is the immutable order of things for all creation, according to God. There is simply no evidence for that assertion here.

I've read these stories countless times, heard them recounted countless times in the temple as both a patron and an ordinance worker, and I've never seen those layers of meaning before. It's a good reminder of what my husband says to me all the time: God can't steer a parked car. Until we ask for these insights, we may never see them on our own.

 

But wait! There's more.

Look at D&C 93:29. In our pre-earth life, we were spirit beings, living in the presence of God. And we were made of "intelligence," right? 

 

Notice how it says intelligence can't be made or created?

Hold that thought, and go back with me to Genesis 1.

 

What does it say God did with it biological sex? What's the verb? 

 

Created.

 

He made us male and female. But D&C 93 says intelligence, the substance from which we're made, cannot be formed or made. 

 

What does this mean? What does it tell us?

 

It means intelligence, like priesthood, has no gender. 

 

It means our biological sex begins when we are organized out of intelligence.

 

We are eternal beings, but biological sex and gender are not eternal.

"But Sister Collins! The Family Proclamation says the opposite!"

Yes, it does. It's almost like the Family Proclamation has been superimposing evangelical Christianity's political interpretation of gender and sexuality on the human family that isn't supported by scripture. And in a choice between evangelical Christianity and the health and safety of our own members, it's pretty clear whose side we should be taking.

But I'm just a returned missionary who has been a Sunday School teacher more times than I can even count. What do I know?

Be One

I was thinking about D&C 38:27 while I did the dishes earlier. I learned something really important from the Spirit today.

D&C 38:24-27

 

The injunction from Christ to "be one" is probably my favorite in all of scripture. If I had to sum up the gospel of Jesus Christ in two words, I don't think I could choose two better ones.

What the Spirit told me today is that the injunction to be one is not an injunction to be the same. That's not how we create unity. I realize, in hindsight, that I thought they were the same for a long time. I would belong and experience unity only when I could make myself acceptable, and acceptance came easiest with sameness.

But this isn't what God needs or wants because it's nothing but a pretense. It isn't real. He doesn't want me to pretend to be someone I'm not. He wants me to be visible and feel loved as I am. 

Real unity happens when we don't expect others to be like us before we will accept them. That's what Christ taught. That's what he wants. 

I felt that profoundly in my kitchen today. I'm not sure why. But it meant the world to me and spoke to my heart.

The Family Proclamation is NOT Scripture

The only way to think it is comes from not being familiar enough with the procedure by which past writings have (or have not) become scripture.

Not everything prophets and apostles do is instantly canonized as scripture. They and their positions are not the ones who determine what becomes scripture and what doesn't.

For something to become actual canonized scripture, it has to be presented to the Church for a sustaining vote for that clearly stated purpose. Reading it in general conference is not enough. Putting it in a manual is not enough. Even printing it inside a triple or quadruple combination isn't enough. That's why the Lectures on Faith used to be published with the Doctrine and Covenants and they aren't anymore. The Lectures on Faith never received a sustaining vote.

The Family Proclamation wasn't submitted for a sustaining vote when it was read for the first time in general conference. It wasn't even written in consultation with the female leadership of the Church. The general Relief Society presidency were not included in the drafting of this belief statement. They, and by extension the women of the Church, had no representation or input into its content.  

Read Chieko Okazaki's comments on this some time if you don't believe me. She was in the general Relief Society presidency at the time and didn't like the way the situation was handled at all. Had they been consulted, she said, the Family Proclamation would look very different than it does. It was presented in the Relief Society general session, which was somehow supposed to make up for their exclusion. But reading something in a Relief Society meeting doesn't compensate for the lost value of what their contributions would have been.

Having something like the Family Proclamation is important enough to do it right. Part of that process has to include consulting with and receiving input from the female leadership of the Church. They receive revelation in their stewardship that male leadership will never be able to access.

"Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man in the Lord." 

Do we really believe this, as much for our leadership as we do for our families?

When God gives scripture to the Church, it will be given to the entire church. Not shoehorned into a Relief Society meeting against their will to provide legal standing for a court case in Hawaii.

So what do I think about the Family Proclamation?

It's a really good example of how it's not a perfect, errorless thing to speak for God in the Church. Those who do it make mistakes. They have agendas. They also change and grow with time and experience, which allows them (and those who come after them) to see old words with new eyes. A separation of distance and time gives us the opportunity, as a church, to see the fruits of a piece of writing before we decide together to canonize it.

I don't think the Family Proclamation will survive that process, the same way other pieces of writing have not. I don't see that as a bad thing. Whether people want to admit it or not, the Family Proclamation has a significant body count, in terms of LGBTQ+ members who have been rejected, disowned, murdered, and committed suicide because of it. As more and more of the original authors of the Family Proclamation pass away, that body count is going to become harder to ignore.

If we're going to attempt to the scriptural canon, I simple believe that with the power and access we have to Jesus Christ, we can do better.

What "Shaking at the Appearance of Sin" Means

I can't sleep because menstruation is terrible. Let's play with complex ideas until I give up on ever sleeping again.

I've always found that last question in 2 Ne 4:31 to be very brave. I've asked it many times in my prayers, and I'm never prepared for the answers I get.

In hindsight, I realize I thought I would be reinforced with a comfortable feeling of superiority over those who didn't keep the commandments. The joy of the moral high ground. I didn't realize I was asking for my heart to shake at ALL sin, with no knowledge of who my teachers would be.

It's one thing to look upon someone who isn't on a level playing field with me, and congratulate myself on my performance for living the commandments. It's another to receive that correction from people on their territory, where I was at the disadvantage.

Twitter has played a very big part in this. 

I would learn about the sins of racism from Saints of color. Learning to shake at racism meant engaging with people I used to avoid.

I would learn to shake at the sin of sexism by engaging with women I once had no respect for. I listened to their stories, and realized I had judged them falsely. 

I would shake at the sin of prejudice by engaging with LGBTQ+ Mormons. The first time I ever spoke to a transgender Mormon was on Twitter.

I prayed to shake at the sight of sin because I thought it meant the sins of other people. I didn't realize I was asking to shake at the sins in my own heart. Racism, sexism, and all forms of prejudice are sins. I didn't realize they were there inside of me. But God did and has given me opportunities to change. My prayers were answered, not in the way I expected, but in the ways I needed most.

Reflecting on this has made me reconsider how I interpret verse 32, and leaves me with questions I can't answer. If shaking at the appearance of sin is about MY sins, and not someone else's, what does it mean to be strict in the plain road?

I realized that my understanding of being strict always seemed to involve correcting, controlling, or avoiding other people whose lives were different than mine. I asked for the blessing of correction, and I got it. I lost respect for the person I used to be. I am now changing myself, with the hope of being able to say one day that I have changed.

My heart grew to love different people. Now I can't bring myself to make anything else about their lives any harder. Especially not their religious lives, which were big enough to include me long before I could do the same. I'm not interested in being the person who aggressively, and with personal knowledge of my own hypocrisy, points out the flaws in my neighbor and threatens them with the view of damnation.

Being strict in the plain road, to me, doesn't mean being exacting or demanding of the people around me anymore. That's not who I want to be. I don't want to see this in myself anymore. The nearest I can come to making sense of it is only being strict with myself. To be consistently true to my own values in all the ways they change and grow. I'm also not interested in the messages of any person who tries to entice me to act in any way that resembles this person. Her behavior is inconsistent with my values. I won't do it anymore.

It's absolutely no coincidence that I'm reading this chapter right now and getting this from Nephi. I'm in a very similar emotional place. For years, he has felt physically, emotionally, and spiritually responsible for leading his older brothers. This is his recognition that it's coming to an end and he can let it go. I feel this same way about breaking with my old ways, and conservative elements in my own faith that want me to continue in it.

I need to make peace with myself about how my conscience is breaking with some in my own faith. I need to let my desires carry me into my work and purpose. It's not my job to live the gospel the way others want me to live it, or to live it for others. I need to be secure enough in my own heart to let God work in it, whatever that looks like.

Whatever goodness springs forth from my heart, God is in it. That's what I learned from Nephi today. And I don't need to concern myself with how other people would do it differently. Their experiences and advice are for them. Mine are for me. And they don't have to be the same for us to both be right.

Bullet Journaling for My Scripture Study

Daily scripture study is not an easy habit to maintain. You'll recall I did a previous post about my scripture study bullet journal, where I said I was making some great progress with consistency. But there were quite a few things in my approach that I didn't like, so I stopped doing them. And once I stopped planning, my study became inconsistent again.

So I sat down and decided to deconstruct what was working for me, and what wasn't. What came from it has me really excited, and I think will allow me to zero in on what was working, and to ditch everything else that was needlessly taking up time and space.

The only thing I need my bullet journal to do is to help me study the scriptures, prepare lessons, and take notes in my various meetings. That's it. I don't need it to be a calendar, a planner, or a place of endless doodling. All of that stuff, as trendy as it is on all of the Pinterest boards for bullet journaling, is a distraction to me. I don't have time to replicate via hand drawn calendars what my cell phone can do in a matter of seconds. So I'm not going to do it anymore.

Instead, I'm going to focus my spreads purely on planning my scripture study. I wanted something simple that requires very little set-up time. With my new daily spread, I feel like I've achieved that goal:

DAY		TOPICS/CHAPTERS/TALKS, ETC.
Monday (or date range for prolonged study)		Faith, Alma 32, Moroni 7, Holland (April 2016)
GOALS
Find verses for lesson, talk, discussion, etc. Personal goals for daily scripture study Reading material for classes to be taught on Sunday Receive answers from the Holy Ghost to a specific question
CHAPTER : VERSE	NOTES
Alma 32:1
:2, 3, etc.
Moroni 7:1
Bednar, Topic	Include any direct quotes, personal impressions
New verses on multiple days for prolonged study	Add additional cross references and notes.

I'm excited to try out this daily spread to see how I like it. I like the elements here, but I could see myself continuing to perfect the formatting until I'm completely satisfied with it. I'll be sure to keep you posted as I find what works best for me here.

In terms of a weekly spread, this really is the full extent of what I need, in terms of long range planning. If I plan my scripture study topics too far in advance, they become too far removed from what my present needs and questions are. So in terms of nailing down exact topics, I'm sticking to a basic weekly spread. I've laid it out to fit the tall, narrow pages of my current journal. But I'm sticking with keeping Sunday as the largest day. That way, I can not only plan for how I plan to keep the Sabbath day holy, I can also jot down ideas during sacrament meeting of topics or questions I want to study in the coming week. These are easy enough to use the typical arrows, to indicate ideas that need to be migrated into an upcoming spread.

MONDAY	TUESDAY
Include built-in spaces for FHE, family scripture study, family councils, etc.	Plan for individual study, with topics, chapters, goals, etc.
WEDNESDAY	THURSDAY
Schedule study for upcoming meetings, lessons on whichever day works best for you (For me, it's always Wednesday_	Schedule study before you attend the temple
FRIDAY	SATURDAY
Plan to record promptings you receive, scriptures you study at the temple	Schedule spiritual preparation for the sacrament Finalize prep for Sunday meetings and lessons
SUNDAY
Plan to make the study of scriptures, general conference talks, devotionals, etc. a part of your Sabbath day observance Note scriptures you want to use in meetings, councils, or lessons for the day → Indicate topics or chapters to be migrated with arrows

If you're feeling super proactive (or especially bored during testimony meeting or dry council Sunday) you can set up your weekly spread for the coming week, then fill it in. A sacrament meeting speaker may not be holding your attention, but getting something out of it anyway is a conscious choice. I've learned some amazing lessons from the scriptures in meetings like that, because the spirit of revelation is still there. Carrying that spirit into the rest of my week in what I study helps me to see the thread of revelation running throughout my life.

Because I don't find it especially productive to do monthly planning, I'm not going to do it anymore. The only part of that I found to be constructive was the goal setting, creative brainstorming, and personal reflection. So that's what I'm keeping. Instead of calendaring a bunch of stuff that far in advance, I'm going to stick with a list format to help me think of things to study. I can draw from it for my weekly planning if anything catches my fancy. I can migrate anything to next month's list that I still think is important, and add page numbers to the ones I do study.

• Goals
• What is working well in my scripture study, and how will I continue doing it?
• How can I improve my study? What obstacles do I need to remove?
• Topics
• What is my least favorite or least frequently studied topic in the scriptures?
• Break down larger questions into its fundamental gospel components, and study them
• Reading Goals 
• Example: Finish the Book of Mormon by the end of the month
• Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly Reading Goals (with trackers)
• Lesson Topics
• Come Follow Me
• Gospel Doctrine/Principles
• Teachings of the Prophets
• Teaching in the Savior’s Way
• Questions
• Honest
• Interesting
• Personally relevant
• Follow Up on previous topics/questions
• Is there more the Lord wants to teach you on a subject you have previously studied?

By simplifying the way I plan my scripture study, I will make it easier for myself to follow through. Instead of managing my study as an event, I want to facilitate the best possible experience for myself, based on what I need most in that moment. What this looks like changes for me so often, I need to more fully embrace the variety and depth that's truly available to me. I'm looking forward to how these new changes will help me to do that, and I'll continue to post updates here as I make these tools and techniques work for me.