The First Law of Heaven

What an amazing, inspiring, and uplifting 10 hours of general conference of the Church we had this weekend! Many great talks were delivered from the Conference Center pulpit both Saturday and today, and I got to watch and listen to most all of them (I'll catch the rest when they're posted to YouTube). Some talks were even somewhat necessarily blunt, addressing more than a few of the hot topics currently being discussed among Church members.

Without going into any of these specific topics, as I have done previously, suffice me to say that an overarching theme I noticed his time around was that of: obedience.

Not blind obedience, certainly. And not because being obedient, as some critics of the Church have charged, is submitting to some sort of slave-like imposition of the Brethren's will upon mindless drones who ask "How high?" when the Brethren tell us to "Jump!" Rather, obedience is crucial to each and every one of us because it, ultimately, is what will help us to progress and grow, to have peace of mind, and to be happy.

As the old Primary song says, "Keep the commandments. In this there is safety and peace." It's all rather simple when it's broken down like that, huh?


In his Saturday afternoon message, Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said:

"At times we may be tempted to practice what I call 'natural man's obedience,' in which we disobediently reject God's law in favor of our wisdom, desires, or popularity (or) 'selective obedience,' claiming to love God and honor God while picking and choosing which of His commandments and teachings—and the teachings and counsel of His prophets—we will fully follow."

Both natural man's obedience and selective obedience sure seem to be happening a lot lately, even among those who claim to be temple recommend-holding Church members. To a larger degree, however, we are all disobedient whenever we knowingly do something wrong. And we all make mistakes.

President Ezra Taft Benson also said:

"When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power."

This is a beautifully stated quote, and one I was reminded of during the talks about obedience in conference. I could sure use some of that extra power right now, or more of it, anyway.

Stand

Earlier this week when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and refused to rule on California's Proposition 8, essentially making gay marriage legal in that state.

The AWL has recently addressed the issue of gay marriage, but I will offer one last opinion on it today.

The day before the Supreme Court issued its judgment, a friend of mine (and a member of the Church) posted an opinion on Facebook in support of gay marriage. He said something to this effect: "I want it absolutely clear as to where I stand on this issue, no matter what the court rules tomorrow."

To that effect, I want to make it absolutely clear where I stand on this issue. I sustain the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators. They are the 15 people designated to act on our Savior's behalf in this mortal sphere. That goes for both them and their revelations - including and especially the Proclamation on the Family, which states "that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God." There are no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

I believe the Lord is less concerned with what the judgments of men can do, for they are imperfect, than how we react to them. He wants to know whom we stand with and, at some future day, where we stood while all of this was going on.

Elder Mark E. Petersen taught: "If we do know what is right, have we the courage to stand up for it, to defend virtue, to declare the validity of our faith, to oppose false teachings, and to fight the unpopular battle? . . . The time has come when we must take a far more firm and positive stand than ever before. . . . We must become vigorous and enthusiastic about living our religion, for God commands that we serve him with all our heart, with all our might, with all our strength, and with the very best of our intelligence. With him there can be no halfway measures. We must be fully for him or we may be classified with those who are against him" ("Where Do We Stand?", April 1980 general conference).

Like the child throwing the temper tantrum, we mortals can often lose sight of what we need to be truly and eternally happy and instead demand something lesser or counterfeit that we think we want or deserve. Nevertheless, our Heavenly Father knows what will make us happy, and neither He nor His servants will lead us astray.

That being said, I have friends who struggle with same-sex attraction, and I believe that their struggle is a genuine and a difficult one. I believe that it is always a good choice to love these people regardless of the choices they make and that we can disagree without becoming disagreeable when it comes to discussing matters such opposition to gay marriage. Tolerance is not acceptance, and tolerance is also a two-way street.

The Man with the Plan

“As man now is, God once was; as God is now, man may be.” -Lorenzo Snow

I'm always amazed when people criticize what they claim to be this so-called "ridiculous" statement of President Snow's and of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, scoffing at the very idea that any human being would dare to claim that such might be the goal of our existence. In fact, I heard a non-LDS friend of mine say so over the previous weekend.

Very well, then. Before I go further on this point, let's take a look at the other side of coin.

What do most other Christian denominations think the afterlife is going to be like? I have been acquainted with a large number of them in my travels, and a surprising quantity, in spite of what the Bible and their churches teach, don't believe in any afterlife at all. The ones who do believe in an afterlife have broken it down into two starkly contrasted perceptions:

1) Hell: where the bad people and L.A. Lakers go to roast forever in the fires of damnation and sorrow, much like a typical August day. All the while, compounding their torture and misery, they are forced to listen to death metal and must attend planning meetings. (Well, that's hell to me.)

2) Heaven: where the good people go to get fitted with a pair of wings and a halo, then spend eternity playing a harp and walking around on clouds and . . . well, that's really about it.

I believe that the Buddhists, for example, have a much cooler belief of the afterlife than do these other Christian churches. The idea of building up good or bad karma and then being reborn into a new life or as a new kind of animal has far more appeal to me than sitting around on a cloud playing a harp all day, every day - because at least it's progression of one kind and not stagnation.

By contrast, there is a Man with a plan, and he has revealed through his Latter-day prophets that there is much, much more for the faithful to do, and there is much more awaiting them in the great realms beyond than playing stringed instruments.

Not that there's anything wrong with stringed instruments. Because there isn't.

At any rate, the LDS idea of eternal progression is a mindboggling one for me. I don't know that I fully grasp the concept at this point. Nevertheless, however long it may take - in my case, we're talking tens or thousands of years at the very minimum - the goal of each of God's children is to one day, however far off, become like him, just as caterpillars are reborn as butterflies and puppies grow up to become dogs.

Not cats, though. They belong in hell.

"The Kingdom of God or Nothing"

When I was still a relatively new missionary serving on the streets of Lima, Peru, my mission president informed us that President Gordon B. Hinckley had an announced a new revelation in the recently held General Relief Society Meeting of the Church in Salt Lake City. This revelation, we learned, was titled The Family: A Proclamation to the World, and President Hinckley, along with his counselors in the First Presidency and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, had collaborated on and signed the message. Among other things, it affirmed the Church's position that "marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God," as well as other important teachings pertaining to the Plan of Salvation.

At the time, we could not have known just how inspired the Proclamation was and the foresight that went into creating it. Our mission president gave each companionship several copies and encouraged us to distribute them in our day-to-day missionary labors. As a result, miracles occurred, and people who may not have otherwise listened to the message of the restored gospel opened their doors and hearts to what we had to teach them.

Fast forward to the present day and to the current week, in which the Supreme Court of the United States is now hearing arguments both for and against California's Proposition 8, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman. People across the country have been very vocal in their support or protest of these proceedings and their possible outcome, and among those are many friends and associates of mine. They've been particularly vocal on Facebook, sometimes changing their profile pictures to a white "equal" sign on a red background, which is akin to support for gay marriage, or by posting other messages about the case.

What surprises me is not my non-LDS friends who are calling for legalization of gay marriage but, rather, my LDS friends who call for it. On the one hand, they claim to sustain the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators - the same people who continue to avow that marriage has been, is, and always will be a sacred ordinance "between a man and a woman" - and, on the other hand, they support a philosophy that is totally contrary to this revelation.

How to reconcile these two issues? Though these LDS friends of mine have made me ponder deeply on this point all week long, today's point isn't meant to be a criticism, per se, of them, for we each "must work out (our) own salvation with fear and trembling" (Philippians 2:12). Rather, it has gotten me thinking about where I stand and whom and what I support. And it's led to me to reaffirm a few absolute truths.

If you will allow me to borrow a line from the musical Oklahoma!: "With me, it's all er nuthin'." When it comes to the gospel, there is not even one shade of grey, let alone fifty. I can either accept all 100 percent of it as truth, or it's all wrong. Joseph Smith either did see God the Father and Jesus Christ in a vision, restored the priesthood and the temple ordinances, translated the Book of Mormon, etc., or he did not; there is no third option. Because I know through the Spirit that he did, and that President Gordon B. Hinckley (now Thomas S. Monson) held those keys when he announced the Proclamation, I know that it, too, is the truth, and truth is "eternal, unchanged, evermore" ("Oh Say, What Is Truth?" Hymns, no. 272).

President John Taylor, another man who held the keys in this dispensation, had a personal motto: "The Kingdom of God or nothing."

In a week's time, we will have another general conference of the Church, during which we will, once again, have the opportunity to raise our right arms to the square, wherever we may be, and sustain the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators. When that moment comes, I know that it comes wholeheartedly and without any asterisks or except for whens.

It is, as President Taylor said, all or nothing.