The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

"I promise you that if we will do our best to restore the correct name of the Lord’s Church, He whose Church this is will pour down His power and blessings upon the heads of the Latter-day Saints, the likes of which we have never seen." (President Russell M. Nelson, October 2018)

I reluctantly took up the challenge to try and use the proper name of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints more. My initial thought, I confess, was that there just seemed to be so many more important things going on than our name.

I thought I understood the reason, three years ago. I get it, President Nelson. It helps us focus more on the Savior and our identity as Christians. It helps others understand who we are, and gives Christ the center stage. "But," I protested, "how we act should already be doing that, more than what we call ourselves." The ensuing rollout of that initiative that kind of turned our name into a marketing tool annoyed me, because I thought we need something so much more than marketing PR project to fix the shenanigans and what I saw as decidedly un-Christlike behavior going on in my church.

But thinking and engaging with that request to use the full title taught me something unexpected. I feel differently about it now, and not for the reasons I thought I would. For me, focusing on our name brings to the forefront a tension that just fits the latter-day saint experience.

The tension is not just because it is so dang long to say, though there is that, but also because there is an obvious conflicting claim in the name itself. The little preposition "of" in the title suggests ownership. "Of" can be possessive. In Spanish, which is my mission language, we don't say, "John's house." We say, "The house of John." So the name of the church claims that the church "belongs to" not only Jesus Christ, but that it also belongs to the saints.

So, whose is it? Is it the Church of Jesus Christ or is it the church of the latter-day saints? How can it be both?

Jesus taught, "And how be it my church save it be called in my name? For if a church be called in Moses’ name then it be Moses’ church; or if it be called in the name of a man then it be the church of a man; but if it be called in my name then it is my church, if it so be that they are built upon my gospel."

And yet, for some reason, the church has our names printed right alongside Christ's.

I have often heard it said that "The church is perfect but the people in it aren't." But that doesn't make any sense when you think about it. The church is definitely not perfect. The policies, the teachings, the structure, even the ordinances are sometimes changing and adapting, and certainly the church as an institution makes plenty of mistakes along the way. I literally can't think of anything about the church that I would feel comfortable calling, "perfect." President Nelson even quoted Joseph Smith in the last conference regarding temple ordinances saying, "This is not arranged right, but we have done the best we could under the circumstances in which we are placed." You could say that about a lot of things in the church. "This is not arranged right." While it is the Church of Jesus Christ, it is at the same time also the church of a group of very flawed latter-day saints.

The title of the church suggests that the tension is not really between imperfect saints and a perfect church, the way we often frame it, but rather between imperfect saints and a perfect Christ. We both claim ownership in this wild experiment that is the church. What happens when you become co-owners of a church with a literal God, with Jesus Christ Himself? What drama unfolds when you frame our relationship to the church this way? What happens when Christ shares His responsibility and priesthood with imperfect women and men, and lets them learn to practice His power to heal and bless? What chemical reaction happens when Christ is connected and paired, for better or for worse, with a group of deeply flawed men and women? What happens when He asks weak and simple people to be His hands?

Well, looking back on the past 200 years, a lot of stuff happens. Not all of it good. It's perhaps like teaching a five year old how to drive a car. We spend a lot of time in the ditch. But with Christ in the front seat directing things, we can expect to see good things. Like growth and learning. Repentance. Change, albeit at a glacial pace. Certainly not rapid growth, especially with such a large, international, and diverse group that are not always listening to the teacher. But steady growth.

I believe and have a testimony that this is the Church of Jesus Christ, but I also know it is, right now, also the church of the latter-day saints. That combination is complicated. Christ has made an ancient promise to gather Israel in the last days, and He is doing it through an imperfect group of people, and not always even the most qualified ones. Sometimes even fairly stupid ones, like myself, who perhaps most need this opportunity to grow up.

Accepting the invitation to be co-owners of this church makes it inappropriate for us to sit back and "let Jesus take the wheel" while we just keep showing up and let things happen on their own. I can't rely on others, either, even if I really like them. If this is really my church, too, it should not be a passive experience. Our actions truly determine the direction this ship goes. We can speak up and act and engage, and most of all, learn to love and include and minister to the marginalized. We must learn to serve in all the ways Jesus would.

And that is really hard to do.

A Wrapping Paper Church

I am terrible at wrapping presents. I really am trying to be better, but sometimes it feels like such an unnecessary hassle, and for that reason I have been known to bypass convention and just skip that part. It's just wrapping paper, right? My lame present is thrust into the receiver's lap (sorry Becky) and they look at it and say thank you and that's it. That's the present. There is no performance, no ritual, no expectation, and no mystery. They either like it or they don't. It takes seconds to decide. Sometimes I go so far as to leave it in the plastic bag with the receipt in case they want to take it back to the store. We don't actually need wrapping paper or any of that commercial crap anymore. We're beyond that. Right?

Well, it turns out, gift presentation is actually a bigger deal than I thought, and I'm coming around to this truth. I have learned that you lose something when you take that presentation part away. The magic just isn't there. The way in which a present is given can be as much a part of the gift as the gift itself. Especially for the kids.

Case in point: last month, my in-laws gave my son his birthday present in a gigantic box. It was pure genius presentation, and walking through the door with a box that barely fit through it was a major part of the thrill for him. He whooped and danced and pranced around it, and thus the ceremony of opening his present had begun. When he tore the wrapping off the box and opened it, there was another box inside it. And then another. The comedy and build up of getting to the real present through a series of well-taped, sealed up boxes held marvelous tension and expectation for this boy. Would the present at the end be worth all this work? As the boxes became smaller and smaller, I could see doubt creep into his face, and sometimes even a hint of frustration that he hid well with a forced smile for Grandma (particularly when he got to the final envelope layered with packing tape!) and I could sense his growing question—what if what's inside is a huge let down? What if he keeps opening and opening and the final gift isn't worth it? Or worse, what if when the last box was opened, there is nothing in there at all?

Luckily for him, it was worth it. It was an Amazon gift card buried and sealed at the end of all those boxes, and he whooped for joy again because that was exactly what he wanted. (Thanks Mom and Dad.)

God gives us gifts like that, I think, where the wrapping is a part of the gift itself. He knows a lot about giving "good gifts" and that involves providing us with good wrapping paper. Christ comes to us in layers, revealed to us over time as we grow, like a series of nesting dolls. 

Jesus taught, "If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?" (Luke 11:11) In truth, Christ is the good gift from the Father. In fact, He is every good gift. He is everything we can ever get from the Father, be it stone, bread, fish, or serpent. Or how about all of them put together? Jesus Christ is the bread of life, but he is also the "stone of stumbling and rock of offense." (1 Peter 2:8) He is the fish that breaks our nets to overflowing, but he is also the serpent on the staff. He is everything we could ever want, and everything we never knew we needed.

Christ reveals Himself not in a plastic bag with a receipt still attached, because His cost is truly beyond our comprehension, neither is His gift something that can be returned. He is not presented to us already reaching His full stature and glory on our baptism day. He is carefully wrapped, with layers of meaning and a lifetime of ritual. He is cloaked in a multitude of religious tensions and contradictions that alternately comfort and provoke us as we grow. This is as much a part of the gift as He Himself is. He is both the process and destination, the Alpha and the Omega. He is form and substance, both the wrapping and the gift. He reveals Himself to us most fully in His church, the Church of Jesus Christ with all the wrappings. He is found buried within a priesthood structure "after the order of the Son of God" that He specifically organized when He was on the earth, and that He chose to restore again through Joseph Smith. For whatever reason, He chooses to present Himself to us in the symbolism and layers of interpretation as found in priesthood ordinances and covenants. "In the ordinances thereof is the power of godliness made manifest." (D&C 84)

A significant part of the wrapping is the church. This is a wrapping paper church consisting of the international body of Christ made up of its imperfect members. It is designed to match a spiritually diverse people and a broad spectrum of maturity and immaturity. For better or for worse, it matches us today. Christ presents Himself as the individualized unopened gift to every person who takes upon them His name. He matches our understanding and our yearning, and He grows only as fast as we do.

My kids, when they were babies, always liked the wrapping paper best. They crinkled the paper and toddled off with the box, and sometimes the present itself was tossed aside or lost in the thrill of the tissue paper. What did they know about the cost of that Fischer-Price playset, or the possibilities of a remote control airplane? They were content with just the box.  But as they grew older and matured, the expectation and joy over what was in the box grew, too. That is not unlike our experience with the Church of Jesus Christ. The box and wrapping that Christ reveals Himself in can be our initial intrigue, we might love the church before we love the Son whose church it is, but it is meant to point us to the real gift of Jesus Christ inside. Making the church the focus of the gift is a sign of spiritual immaturity.

More and more, I am learning that our experience in the church of Jesus Christ is like unwrapping a present. Traditionally, we are a people who love ritual, tradition, and culture. In other words, we love the wrapping paper—the ward potlucks, the classic jokes over the pulpit, the holy foyer banter, the suits and ties and the big hairdos, the roadshows and dances, and all our recipes for green jello and funeral potatoes. Digging deeper we get to a more meaningful layer of the gift—our sacrament meetings, inspiring talks, and beautiful hymns; and a lifetime pledged to serve and minister "to the one" through countless callings and assignments, both formal and informal. But as my son learned on his birthday, we must keep unwrapping. As wonderful as it is, or as important as each box is, we are not at the gift yet. There are many more layers to go.

Lately, we have been forced in this pandemic to peel the church back further and focus on the basic ordinances and covenants of our faith, even if it is just pieces of bread and cups of water on a paper plate in our living rooms while church meetings are on hold. But even those things, as sacred as they are to us, are only another layer of wrapping paper still to be removed in order to reveal what the gift truly is. Beneath the swaddling clothes and lying in the manger of all our sacraments, and waiting for us on the other side of that slightly parted veil that separates us like wrapping paper, is the final gift. The gift is Jesus Christ Himself.

In the last year and a half, I have been unwrapping this present with renewed vigor, maybe even with some degree of desperation at times and because of some galling questions. We all have been forced to do this, I think, in one way or another. The church has been peeled back, and then it was peeled back some more. The time spent in our chapel-sized box was reduced, then taken away completely. The giant box we loved to play with has been unwrapped a little more and now the gift looks smaller and perhaps even unfamiliar to us. More simple. Less pomp and more circumstance. We are left with the expectation, the tension, and perhaps even the discomfort of wondering what might be left at the end of all this, how much further the unwrapping will go, and what will be revealed as the ultimate heart of our faith.

The tension of opening yet another layer can be painful, especially when we need more than just showy wrapping paper and another box to get us through our trials. Some have gotten to this point—yet another box within a box within a box—and wondered if this process of unwrapping the Savior in the Church of Jesus Christ is really worth it. Who wrapped this thing, anyway? And why can't we just skip to end? Let Him appear to us now; we don't need Him to reveal Himself by degrees and clothed in ritual and metaphor. Sometimes, I admit, I just want to see Him. Yes, I have found some of His boxes beautiful, like that one experience I had at a youth camp, or that one lesson that was just what I needed to hear on that particular day, or my mission miracles, or that opportunity to serve that created a bond of love with someone completely unexpected. These are some good boxes. But as I grow, I know I need more than that. "Ask and ye shall receive." Turning my focus away from the wrapping paper and onto Christ has helped deepen my faith in the gift wrapping of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My faith has grown in both the wrapping and in Christ as He reveals Himself to me in this church. He has helped me find joy again in it.

I recognize that I am the type to pause and get caught up in admiring the shiny paper and beautiful patterns. In my discipleship, I know there have been times when I have focused so much on the wrapper and the pretty box that I forgot to keep on digging for the gift. Sometimes, like my kids used to do, I have toddled off with a piece of wrapping paper and called it Jesus. At least, I thought it was until I realized the wrapping I was holding wasn't enough to get me through a particular trial or question, and I had to go back to opening the gift further to find more.

While some things about this church are beautiful and inspiring, we all can recognize that there are some boxes, cultural boxes, ones that are not divine but have been added by men to the unwrapping process. Others maybe weren't wrapped very well, like of the way I wrap a present with bulky corners and crooked paper and an ugly tape job. Some boxes are completely unhelpful. Learning to separate the godly from the ungodly, the good boxes from the bad in this church, is a part of the process.

Sometimes we get to a box like my son did, and it is labelled Fischer-Price and we are turning 11 and we hate baby toys, and we wonder why Grandma and Grandpa would get us such a stupid present. Sometimes the gift wrapping of the church can feel like that, especially when we all parrot off baby milk questions, the kind we already know the answers to, and shy away from the harder, meatier questions that would make us grow and extend the margins of our understanding of who Christ is. I have even balked at boxes within boxes that I have come across labelled homophobia and patriarchy, as well as messy church history, and have almost stopped digging when I found them, because I couldn't imagine a Savior coming out of those particular boxes.

But with faith and determination I still keep showing up. I keep unwrapping this gift I was given, and I keep finding more boxes. Some of those boxes are taped up tightly, impossibly so, like that envelope my son found at the end that was layered in packing tape. Because of the stubbornness of our traditions I am learning that some boxes, like patriarchy, aren't going to open until we are collectively trying to open them, and are collectively ready for them to open.

But going through the process of unwrapping Christ with my questions has helped me grow. Most importantly it has connected me to someone who knows more about injustice and suffering and bureaucratic red tape than I ever could. I still feel powerless and without scissors to cut my way through these tightly sealed boxes, and sometimes I wonder if this must be it, the present of the Church of Jesus Christ is done giving. It can never open any further. And then I want to weep because sometimes the crinkling of opening this gospel gift has lost its joy and it sounds more and more like the crinkling of disillusionment, and I wonder why I wasted so much time opening this box labelled baby toys. Or maybe, as some warn me, it's anthrax. 

But we are not done unwrapping this gift yet. I have evidence based on the scriptures and on my own past experiences that there are so many things more beautiful and more healing to come, and in the latter days we need to work together to get to the end.

I have discovered beauty and meaning in some wrapping paper I previously could not understand, or was even repulsed by. Truth grows by degrees, and so does light. I still have confusion with some of the wrapping, and some boxes I am convinced should never have been there in the first place. But this is not the end. The restoration is ongoing and the complete body of Christ is still making itself manifest, both in us and through us. And sometimes the wrapping paper is more like a mirror, a way to learn difficult things about ourselves.

I am reminded over and over that the wrapping paper itself is not the gift. Even the most basic doctrines, the most essential ordinances from baptism to temple, are still just the wrapping paper to the eternal gift of Jesus Christ. How long does it take to get to the bottom of this? Will it ever end? Are we going to be stuck singing the millionth verse of "If You Could How to Kolob" forever because "there is no end to unwrapping?" Is the gift worth the struggle of opening it? And always there is this nagging question, "Will I leave this world having wasted my time on an empty box?"

The most important thing I have learned as I persist to unwrap this present is that I am not only unwrapping my Savior, but I am also unwrapping myself. I am making discoveries, often painful ones, about who I am, and about my weaknesses and strengths. I am also learning my limitations, and how much I need Christ. I see myself reflected in the patterns, some that are ancient and others that are entirely new. I have found myself in the wrapping paper in ways that are sacred to me.

Like the time I saw myself dressed in white with Becky in the temple, and we saw ourselves reflected eternally in those two mirrors on either side of that beautiful box that is a sealing room. We opened the box almost 15 years ago and learned, to our chagrin, that it may or may not have belonged to Pandora. We can never unopen that box—it has changed us forever in painful yet meaningful ways. As it turns out, it has not only been about getting to know Christ, but also about getting to know ourselves. It has been about learning love. It has been about finding connection to the Savior, less through joyful experiences than the painful ones, the kind that point me to His tokens of suffering and help me to hear, as Joseph Smith did in his hardest trial, a voice whispering to me, "Art thou greater than He?"

Christ's gift to me is not just Himself, but what I can become through Him. The gift is Christ, but only as far as I allow Him to be made manifest in me. "Now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." (1 John 3:2)

He is the good gift from the Father. The best gift, in fact. I know that sometimes we wonder why this box we are unwrapping is labelled a stone when we asked for bread, but as we keep going we may find out how much we needed a stone, too. We might give a little shriek to find a serpent box when we were really just hungry for fish, but then again we may learn how much we needed a serpent. As John teaches, the most surprising part of the gift may be to see ourselves reflected in it, that we will reflect His light when we finally get to the end of opening this thing. We will see Him with our own eyes and touch Him with our own hands, and it will be all the more glorious because of all we had to go through to get to Him, because when we thought we were unwrapping Him, we were also unwrapping our best selves. 

That is the best part of the gift.

Let There Be Light

"Love is a spectrum

of refracted light—

not sorting the world

into black and white."

We live in a world of dappled light. Nothing is ever perfectly bright, nor is it ever completely dark. It is a world of shadows, of waxing and waning cycles, of sunrises, of days that get longer and shorter, a mixture by degrees. I think it is also that way with ourselves. No one is completely good, nor is anyone ever completely bad. Nothing is ever black and white in a person. We are all a spectrum of light, and we fluctuate in cycles of increasing or decreasing light all of the time.

“Let there be light.” Separating the light from the darkness is a work that began at creation and is ongoing. I believe we are meant to be a part of that work with God today. Where do we start? Of course, we must start with ourselves. We begin by accepting that we are not all good or all bad, but that we are all growing, learning to differentiate the dark from the light by experiencing opposition in all things, and exercising our agency in order to discern better the light. Like the stones of the brother of Jared, we can sanctify and refine ourselves through repentance to better reflect the light of Christ. We make choices that can give more light to those around us, or take it away. Our choices are the prism that either lets the light through, or blocks it out.

Therefore, I believe it is no skill to point out the darkness in another person, since it exists in all of us in obvious ways. We are invited by Christ to withhold judgement against another, since we all live as creatures of darkness as well as creatures of light, and focusing on anothers’ mistakes usually makes us blind to our own. In a world of shadows, motes can look like beams, and beams can look like motes. Categorizing another person, especially ourselves, as either good or evil can cause us to lose focus on Christ, and all the ways he works through the shadows in us, separating our light from the darkness in our hearts. For that reason, it is dangerous to categorize even the most depraved person as entirely evil, neither can we consider the most righteous apostle as entirely good. Doing so minimizes the role of Jesus Christ. With Christ as our model of perfect light, we can all sort the light from the darkness around us.

Elder Holland’s recent talk at BYU has given me the opportunity to consider his light and mine, and sort out all the degrees of truth and error that exist inside both of us. It has made me recognize my need for more light in my discipleship, as I struggle to feel charity for people whose perspectives are different from mine, including the perspectives of many who have expressed their polarizing opinions about what he said about SSA on social media. And it has also caused me to consider how Elder Holland, in my opinion, imperfectly reflected the light of Christ in his words.

There has been a flurry of reactions across social media as people rush to either defend or demonize him because of what he said. From what I have seen, most people are determined to take his talk and categorize it as inspired word of God come down from Sinai, or as hateful spite. As light, or as dark. But I see his words as neither. I have read his words and see some light in them, as well as some dark. Some of the things he said did not give light to what it means for me to be a gay latter-day saint. Some words were clumsy at best, and hurtful at worst. But what can I do when I find the words of an apostle troubling, or when I find myself disagreeing with him? Is it allowed to disagree with an apostle?

I believe our task is to use revelation, not to blindly accept everything, nor to reject it entirely, but to wrestle with what he said in order to find truth, and to separate the light from the dark, and to do so in a way that allows us to continue to love and sustain those imperfect people who are called to represent the Lord.

On many occasions, I have felt light and truth in the words of Elder Holland. Once, eleven years ago, my wife and I sat in his office in Salt Lake City by his invitation to share our experience about same sex attraction. We felt of his love and light. Since then, many of his conference talks have filled me with feelings of light. I personally believe he is a seer and revelator, and special witness of Jesus Christ. But that doesn’t mean I believe everything he says is insightful or prophetic. In his recent address at BYU I felt his genuine love and concern for those with SSA, but I also found some words that did not fill me with light, some things that in fact felt very dark to me, and that I disagreed with based on my personal experience with SSA. 

Disagreeing, in this instance, does not mean I must throw away all the good things I know and have felt from him in the past. I know that he is not perfect, nor does he claim to be. Why would I try to join the clamor in social media that has chosen to create simplistic narratives of this apostle in order to categorize him as either the infallible prophet, or as depraved hater of gays? He is neither. He is a mortal man chosen and ordained to testify of Christ, and I believe he is doing his best. I choose to sustain him, and I forgive him for the same reasons I have to forgive myself—so that Christ can continue to work through flawed servants, that the light in both him and me can continue to grow. As Elder Holland said, “Imperfect people are all God has ever had to work with. That must be terribly frustrating to Him, but He deals with it. So should we.”

Elder Holland continues to explain: “And when you see imperfection, remember that the limitation is not in the divinity of the work. As one gifted writer has suggested, when the infinite fulness is poured forth, it is not the oil’s fault if there is some loss because finite vessels can’t quite contain it all. Those finite vessels include you and me, so be patient and kind and forgiving.”

I believe in the “divinity of the work” because I know that there is room in Christ for me. At times many of us, especially LGBT members, may feel like a drop of oil that is spilled from the sides of the imperfect vessel that is the church of Jesus Christ, its members and leaders. The darkness of homophobia and misunderstanding is difficult for many members and leaders to understand because most members and leaders do not know what it feels like to be gay. But over and over again, I have found that in spite of the limitations of the members in this church, there is room in Christ for me. There is room for you. I have a testimony that we can all fit in with Christ because of the bonds of perfect love, forgiveness, and infinite atonement. 

For anyone who has felt like the finite vessel of the Church of Jesus Christ doesn’t contain them and their life’s experiences, I believe that as you share your light, like the stone touched by the finger of Jesus in the barges of the Jaredites you can help illuminate the shadows that persist in His church. You can make the broken vessel of His church more whole. The church can expand to become more inclusive—and is prophesied that it will; it will fill the whole earth. We have seen it happen, even in our lifetimes. The tent of the gospel will grow, but only as far as we, the marginalized, are able to stay in it. You can help others see what you see with the light you have worked hard to find. In my mind, that is the best way to “deal with it.”

I choose to continue to love and accept others in the LGBT community, exactly how they are, even when I disagree with some of them. I choose to love and accept myself, exactly how I am, even when I don’t always measure up. And I choose to love and accept Elder Holland, exactly as he is, even when he makes mistakes. We are all imperfect vessels trying to hold the light of Christ, and sometimes we spill, but we always have the potential to increase in our ability to shine the light of Christ and love others better and better “until the perfect day.” 

I will also continue to sustain Elder Holland as an apostle by adding my light to his, and by shining my light on any dark he might have by sharing my experiences as a gay latter-day Saint as best I can, and in a way that works for me. To me that is what sustaining means. We all have something to share, a light that is uniquely ours, and by abiding in Christ it will grow until there isn’t any darkness left in this lonely, complicated world of shadows we live in.

The Prophet Said to Plant a Garden

When I was growing up, every spring there was a family home evening in which we would get dragged outside to plant a garden. Our opening song, of course, would be, "The prophet said to plant a garden so that's what we'll do!" And we really had no other explanation except for that.

The way we talked about it, I used to think it was about preparing for the Apocalypse. We had to learn to grow a measly row of potatoes and onions in case of a future famine, war, or some other physical crisis. It was always a little awkward when we tried to salvage a survivor bean or raspberry and realize we were toast in an actual famine. But as the world becomes more uncertain, institutional safeguards fail, and especially as climate change becomes more and more obvious, I don't discount that explanation at all.

But since I have started picking up the gardening tradition again the past couple of years (I am not an expert gardener yet, by any means) I have decided that for me, gardening has been more of a protection against spiritual disaster than a physical one.

I have learned things digging around in the dirt. I have learned about living sustainably, and most difficult of all, all the ways I need to repent. I have learned about diversity. Respect. Humility. I have learned about the conditions required for abundance. I have seen how our spiritual pollution accumulates until it manifests as physical pollution, and how toxins build up over time until they make us sick. I have learned that you reap what you sow. Most of all, I have learned that all life is a miracle. Even weeds.

I confess that these lessons are not easy for me to hold onto in a world hell-bent on depleting every resource available for a dollar, and exhausting every speck of my energy to be a consumer of products. I know that I am complicit in all kinds of devilish systems, and I feel powerless in the face of them. But for me, for a few months of the year at least, I garden. I defy the wasteland and pluck peas. I believe President Benson was right, but not for the reasons I though, or perhaps even the reasons he thought. We need more gardens. It is healing. It is connection. It is hope.

In the end, I believe we are not all that different from a carrot or a strawberry. "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." I believe that we are actually just complicated plants that once broke free from the dirt and are now stuck walking, rooting our way back to earth, severed from the womb until we eventually wilt and withdraw back into it. The harvest is a part of that cycle. So is the burning. But spring comes again.

Spiritual Scientist

Like many latter-day saints, I was taught in the church that the way to know if something is true or not is if it feels right. In talks and lessons I was told that the Holy Ghost speaks with a voice that we feel more than we hear, and so I learned how to "listen with my heart" and to trust my feelings. I believed that I could feel my way back to Heavenly Father. Growing up happy in the gospel as an easygoing and sensitive young boy, I quickly felt that the gospel was true, and that was enough. It was, I suppose, a great way to start learning about faith.

However, by the time I was a teenager, I started having some new feelings. These were confusing feelings, because they went against the teachings of the church, the scriptures, and the covenant path that I was expected to follow. These feelings were sexual attractions towards men. If feelings were really the way back to God, what on earth was I supposed to do with these ones?

I soon found myself at a crossroads between two contradictory feelings:  my love for the church on the one hand, and my desire for a same-sex relationship on the other. Choosing between them was excruciatingly difficult. The two feelings seemed irreconcilable. How could I choose which feeling was right? Finding a way forward meant I had to look for a different path to find truth besides relying solely on my feelings to point the way.

I was just starting seminary when all this happened, and in the scriptures I made a surprising discovery:  they didn't teach me to rely on my feelings. The scriptures did speak about feelings, of course—the "gospel of peace" (Ephesians 6) and the "happy state of those who keep the commandments" (Mosiah 2:41) 'the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace" (Galatians 5:22) etc. But those feelings corresponded to a confirmation, one that generally comes "after the trial of thy faith." (Ether 12:6) Feelings from the Holy Ghost can be a part of the process of learning truth by faith, but spiritual feelings are not the process itself.

So what is the process?

In the scriptures, I read that God invites me to "prove [Him] now herewith" (Malachi 3:10) and to "experiment on the word" (Alma 32:7) in order to find out for myself "if these things are not true." (Moroni 10:4) The invitation to find spiritual truths sounded not all that different from the scientific method I was learning about in high school.

I began to realize that living by faith is not always the same as following your heart. While expressing and receiving validation for my feelings in healthy ways was and is an important part of my mental health, it is not the way to accurately measure spiritual truths. We are taught that God speaks to us in our "mind and in our heart (D&C 8:2) and both methods are sources of external evidence that go beyond regular and expected human emotions. I read that faith is "the evidence of things that are not seen." (Hebrews.11:1) Faith is the "substance" of my hope, not merely hopeful feelings that come and go. 

In saying this, I don't mean that faith is meant to invalidate our feelings, but to contextualize them, to help us to see ourselves beyond what we may feel at a particular moment. To a teenage boy, all this pointed me to evidences outside of myself, and motivated me to seek for faithful ways to reconcile my testimony with my sexuality. I did not have to choose one over the other. This empowered me at a time when I was trapped in a cycle of crippling fear and anxiety about who I was.

I have now come to believe that we do a disservice when we tell members who are struggling with their faith to simply follow their feelings. What if they deal with depression or anxiety? What if they feel like there is no place for them in the church? What if they feel like Heavenly Father couldn't possibly love them because of something they did? What if they feel not good enough? What if they feel disillusioned when they read criticisms about the church? How do we help each other reconcile feelings when they conflict with the gospel of Jesus Christ?

I believe that we must do better at teaching what faith really is—that it is not a feeling. It is a proactive choice to move forward in the dark, often without a clear witness of what the outcome will be. It is not about requiring or expecting a particular emotion as we do this. Sometimes we feel nothing, or even negative emotions as we move forward in the gospel—at least initially. While we should find ways to work through our feelings, whatever they may be, and seek to validate them as needed, sometimes with the help of a mental health professional, we can and must also learn to separate our mortal, transient feelings from our faith. When spiritual questions arise, as they are bound to do, God's invitation for us is to become a spiritual scientist with Him, and to engage directly with the evidence for ourselves. Like science, questions without answers is how the process of faith begins.

C.S. Lewis wrote that faith is "the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods." This is good counsel, especially for me at a time in my life when my feelings were frequently tied to my hormones. My feelings about God and His love for me, or that my church is guided by revelation, or that keeping my covenants is worth it—all of these have fluctuated greatly. The strength of my faith is not measured in my ability to feel blissful about something indefinitely. I am a human being. Even now, sometimes my testimony burns brightly within me and I feel it strongly, and other times it dims down to almost nothing. My feelings can be easily affected by what I read in my social media feed on a particular day, or by the actions or doubts of those close to me. But as I consider the evidence, giving it more weight than I do my unstable feelings and mortal biases, my perspective changes. I go from passive feeler and consumer of faith to an active participant in my own spiritual experiment—changing from an object to be acted upon, to an agent to act. (2 Nephi 2:26)

I believe strongly that science and faith are both evidence based belief systems. The evidence is measured differently of course, with faith being the gathering of "evidence of things not seen"—the kind of things that may end up in a personal journal, as opposed to observable results that may end up in a scientific journal—but they both take us outside of our own bias, attempting to suspend our own preconceived ideas in order to measure the results that come only after rigorous testing. Furthermore, faith and science both invite others to replicate the experiment to determine the validity of the findings.

In both science and faith, evidence is not the same as proof. This is an important distinction, because they can be easily confused. It is neither the intent of science nor religion to prove anything. Anyone looking for proof in either the scientific world or religious one can lose their way in the experiment, and usually end up relying on simplistic narratives, avoidance of difficult questions, and a reliance on prepackaged platitudes and dogmatic certainties. This happens when we fall off either side of faith, as either rigid non-believer or rigid believer.

The underlying cause for demanding proof is always pride, and both disciples and scientists are vulnerable to it. If you refuse to change your mind or your heart in spite of growing evidence, you are no longer participating in the experiment with the humility that both discipleship and scientific research demands.

Nothing is ever settled, and one always recognizes the possibility of human error, but just as a scientist cannot throw away the weight of centuries of scientific evidence to make his own way, neither can the faithful treat lightly the weight of the recorded scriptural evidence from the great spiritual scientists: Moses, Isaiah, Nephi, Joseph Smith, and of course, the teachings of Jesus Christ.  There is unity in their theories and incredible evidence to their works, and to ignore them in order to create one's own theory for living is the spiritual equivalent of dismissing Einstein as irrelevant in order to write your own equations and develop your own theories of moral relativity.

In my experience, when there are contradictions in faith, as there always are, this is an indication there is a need for further testing and experimenting. I have dealt firsthand with many troubling things in the church, and I have grappled with uncertainty and inconsistency for many years. Everyone must address them in their own way as they come up in their own lives. For me, these inconsistencies and contradictions are an invitation to move out of the classroom and into the laboratory. Go to it, Christopher. Try the Lord. See if He delivers on His promises. 

These crises of faith may even be a sign that God believes in you enough to go beyond the theory of the classroom in order to do your own fieldwork. After a long struggle, the moment when we get to shout "Eureka!" for ourselves after grappling with a painful question becomes even more sweet and meaningful than if the answers were handed to us without ever having to engage in the process for ourselves.

The scriptures and living prophets provide us with the evidence we are asked to consider. It is the "evidence of things not seen." It isn't just whether we feel it is true or not. It is a matter of historical record. For example, the Book of Mormon itself is adamant that it is not just a book about feelings. It was extracted as tangible evidence written on gold that God remembers to keep His promises to gather His people. While we can believe or disbelieve the evidence, we cannot discount its existence.

I worry sometimes that many, especially faithful church members, talk about the whole gospel experience as some kind of "feeling" rather than simply accepting faith for what it is: an invitation to engage head on with the spiritual evidence offered to us. Faith is step 1 in the gospel, to study and "experiment on the word. The feelings and witness of the Holy Ghost do not normally come until step 4. This is a cycle that repeats itself with every new hypothesis that arises in our lives.

I also admit to feeling alarmed, even more so lately, that the religious people around me have even gone so far as to make their feelings the measuring stick for scientific claims, and even the key to interpreting current events. There is a reason why church members are frequently duped by baseless nutrition fads, vaccine hesitancy, and conspiracy theories. More than ever before, evidence is losing its importance in our society as we learn to filter it through our feelings and preconceived beliefs, preferring to believe only in the things that resonate best with us and rejecting the rest. Perhaps this is because we have been taught at church to believe that our feelings have more weight than the evidence. But how a person feels about controversial topics such as vaccines, or the presidential election, or a piece of spurious Mormon folklore, church history, or whether the earth is flat or round, is irrelevant. Spiritual truth, but also and especially scientific and historical truth, is ultimately determined by evidence, not by our feelings.

For my part, I take seriously the evidence of the historical record in the scriptures. I have read the witness of those that handled the golden plates and I believe their words have weight that cannot be dismissed. I also have read the written record of my grandparents and other ancestors who have gone before me, men and women who have tested the theories of the gospel against all odds and found them to be good, and wrote about their experiences. I have the monthly witness of people who live in my little neighborhood who get up on fast and testimony meeting to (hopefully) share real evidence from their own lives the truths they have learned in their own spiritual experiments. When my experience contradicts their evidence (which it does more than a few times) I can do my own fieldwork and find out for myself "whether it be from God, or whether [they] speak for [themselves.]" (John 7:17) Sometimes I change my mind, and sometimes I have to wait for others to change theirs.

For me, being gay and a faithful member of the church has been a very tricky experiment. I learned early on that while I do not necessarily need to follow my feelings, they cannot and should not be ignored. My attractions to men have not changed, and likely will not ever change as long as I have a mortal body to feel them with. To be clear, I am not advocating that anyone stuff away their feelings in order to live by faith. These feelings are what make us human, and denying them can lead to very real psychological damage. But, for me, there is always a way to keep my feelings "within the bounds the Lord has set."

By following along in this gospel experiment, I have learned that there is a kind of freedom that comes from "schooling my feelings" rather than letting them take control of my life. I interpret that phrase to mean I can take my feelings to school with me in my discipleship classroom in order to study them. I can be curious about them, let myself feel them without feeling shame, and I read in the scriptures and from the words of living prophets about other similar tests of faith, and see how my "truth" fits into the other truths I am learning about in the gospel. I have discovered some surprising results.

The first finding is that the church, speaking both generally as a culture and also ecclesiastically is, most definitely, not always right. Leaders and even prophets themselves can sometimes go amiss, especially about secular things—things like the age of the earth, the origin of man, or the origin of sexual attractions. We don't believe in infallible prophets, but for some reason we act like we do. 

Instead, I have learned that God will "yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God." That means that incorrect doctrines, beliefs, and traditions will necessarily fall away and be replaced with more revealed truths. I do not have insight on what those changes will be, but I do believe this will be a painful process, and pride exists now in the church as it has at every other time when God has had a people. We cling to false gods and wicked traditions of our fathers as much as any other Israelite nation, and God will teach us, one way or another, how to repent. Refusing to give up these "wicked traditions" will scatter us as it always does, and regrettably it usually ends up hurting the most vulnerable. At times, they have hurt me. The church's policies, and especially the cultural practices in the church about homosexuality, past and present, have sometimes been wrong. There is clear evidence to support that. And so there is no reason to believe that we have it all figured out now.

But I have a growing body of evidence, supported and cross referenced by the literature, that I truly have a resurrected Savior who knows how to succor His people. I have evidence that God does His work of salvation in this church in spite of the imperfect people who run it. I have evidence that the "power of godliness" is manifest in the ordinances of the priesthood. (D&C 84:20) I have the witness of many miracles in my own life that I have recorded and refer to when my feelings try to take me away from my covenants and my Savior. I have a considerable amount of evidence, from my own life and from the records of my ancestors, that keeping temple covenants brings blessings. I have a growing witness that I am truly a son of God, and that I fit into His divine patterns of family even with my same-sex attraction. 

On the other hand, I also have a large body of evidence that not everyone in the LGBT community finds their place in this church. In fact, most do not. Right now, the evidence suggests to me that this is not due to Christ's failure as a shepherd, or due to the lack of faith of latter-day saints with SSA or are transgendered (the faithfulness of our LGBT members who try their hardest to stay is overwhelming) but it is mostly due to our faith communities' lack of charity, our many insensitive cultural practices and teachings, and, regrettably, our persistent, lingering homophobia.

All this is based on my own experience. I recognize that there is enough evidence for another person to arrive at a different conclusion. There is more experimenting to be done. But I think, for now, God is content to leave some things open to interpretation. Too much evidence one way could be taken as proof, and this would remove our need to exercise faith and be tested, and the way we interpret and interact with the evidence often says more about us than it does about the evidence itself. The evidences we choose to ignore or step over in order to support our own ideas can condemn both the believer and non-believer equally well. I also recognize that as a gay man who has chosen to marry and been able to stay committed to his wife and children, I have considerable bias that shows up in my findings.

My feelings, all of them, are still an important part of who I am. I am grateful for the problem that brought me to test my initial hypothesis, which was to find out if a gay person like myself can belong to the body of Christ as much as a straight one. Nothing is proven yet, but I have more evidence now than I did when I started. I also have evidence that the church will need to make adjustments, some of them major ones, in order to make this happen better.

But in the end, Christ's invitation is always for all to "come and see." Come see the bubbling test tubes of a consecrated life, and look into the microscopes of His laboratory for yourself. Take samples from your own soul and bring them to the lab to decode them and decipher and see how they fit into Christ's tapestry of atonement. Read deeply and consistently from the published and peer-reviewed literature of the scriptures, whose authors "delight in plainness." They are written for us to understand. Come fit your story into the greater gospel conversation, and see if it broadens your understanding of eternal truths.

Whether it is same-sex attraction, depression, anxiety, or any other lens that comes with a particular set of feelings that affects the way we see the world, we always need more spiritual scientists. I believe that taking our place as scientists of faith will help us reconcile every valid and human feeling with the gospel of Christ to create a more perfect and inclusive theory of faith, one that will lead us toward greater unity.

There are some clinical trials that seem to test us beyond our mortal limits, but I have personal evidence that we are working under our Savior Jesus Christ, who is the greatest scientist of all, the Creator of the world. He has already worked out for each of us the unique equations in Gethsemane, and He won't give up on any of us until we all get it right. I believe this with all my mind, and also with all my heart.

Hiking after the Fire

The first thing that hits you is the silence. There is no buzzing, no nattering or background chirping. The trees might as well be posts in the ground. Even four years later, they are locked in a silent scream. The experience is inorganic. It could be the moon. It is the silent numbness that comes before the mourning. It is apocalyptic, like the eerie silence after a nuclear bomb, of twisted metal and melted glass.

It is hard to describe the difference between this kind of silence and the one that existed before it, the quiet growing. It is a sound that is felt more than heard. How does one measure the decibels of a thousand inaudible conversations between trees, or the quiet construction sounds of light being framed diligently into lumber? How might you record the sound of a butterfly's wings as it zips from flower to flower in the dappled light of a meadow? Or calculate the silent tension of animals hiding in the thick undergrowth, watching and waiting? All I can say is you notice it when it's gone.

I wander off the path for a while and note that, even now, it is like walking through an ashtray. My son takes considerable joy out of kicking the soot up, and it follows behind us like a mist. The delicious smells of decay and growing, of sharp pine and humus, are replaced with stale memories. All oxygen that flows into our lungs is imported. The air is without satisfaction. The welcome shade of the trees is gone, and we are exposed to the scorching sky.

I think to myself, How impatient, how unyieldingly cruel is a forest fire! I see how it leapt from tree to tree, sparing none, no time to fully consume any of them. It leaves them all behind, humiliated and with their skin still burnt and hanging. It has no regard for centuries of painstaking labor. It is a stone through a stained glass window, an arsonist let loose at an art gallery, a pillager without mercy. It takes so little time, so little effort to undo all that has been done here. Entire ecosystems falter to its destructive power, and the wildlife dwindles. Fireweed rushes in like a uniform to cover the shame of the naked earth that was once teeming with so much diversity. A forest in a fire crumples like a Rembrandt or a van Gogh.

But a forest is not really a piece of art anyway. It is a drama. Every child knows that both failure and redemption is written into the storyline. You can't have a good story without the struggle and the setback. Every villain has their day, every forbidden fruit is eventually eaten, and every child of God will yield to the animal inside them. But with fires so in life, there is always a resolution, however long or painful it might be.

Time is grace, and seeds that lay dormant for years awake to weave new tapestries out of ancient patterns. Saplings rise all around me directly beside the bones of their ancestors, and old things are made new. Nutrients that were locked away in the forest canopy are returning again to the matrix of the soil to give life back to the young. Earth proves her power once more because in a forest there can be no real Armageddon. Only rebirth.

You can always find hope in a forest.

Nevertheless, it has taken me four years to write down the nagging question I have held onto ever since I beheld the aftermath: What if this is all more than metaphor? The Kenow fire in Waterton was caused by chance lightning that fell from the sky, but I still remember how dry it was that year, and how long the clouds held onto the rain. What if the fire wasn't meant to be? What if it was our fault? This year is already so dry. Record breakingly so. Is there a lightning bolt from heaven in store for us? Do fires, floods, earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars, seas heaving themselves beyond their bounds always come as part of a natural cycle? Are we following a natural course? When will my forest fire come?

The whole world feels like kindling now, and all around me I see sparks. We know the world is getting warmer, but even more than this I fear indifference, hubris, greed, and our insane divisions that are more persistent than ever as we retreat more and more to our fortresses. The world is drying up. Our abuses toward the earth, toward each other, could be reaching a point of no return. What happens when we no longer see the forest for the trees, when our collective spirit fades? Will rebellion always be given a second chance? Is it already too late to stop the blazes?

I know I am prone to melodrama, and not everything is as it seems. A fire is, after all, just a fire. Life heals itself. I return home sunburned and filled, hug and kiss my kids who race to meet me at the door, and run for my son a bath. Everything looks like it will be alright. But even here, safe in our fire-insured home, I can picture a lightning storm in a dry space, see it strike in my own dry heart, and I wonder if I am really trained to put out this kind of fire.

Where, When I Languish

 

lan·guish verb

1. 1.

   (of a person or other living thing) lose or lack vitality; grow weak or feeble.
2. 2.

   suffer from being forced to remain in an unpleasant place or situation. (Oxford Dictionary)

Like many people I know, I have been languishing. I have been "lacking vitality, growing weak," and "suffering from being forced to remain in an unpleasant situation."

For the past few weeks I had been coping by finding purpose in one of the few refuges I had left, my garden. Having it all buried in snow, even though not unexpectedly (after all it happens just about every year) feels poetic. Every perennial I have nurtured over the years is left hanging in uncertainty, and now I wonder which ones will withstand the long freeze. I wonder that about other things in my life, as well.

So yeah, this pandemic has got me languishing. It has cancelled many things that made life meaningful for me: family gatherings, making plans for the future, little outings with my kids, vacations. It put a halt to church meetings and forbade me to sit elbow to elbow with people I love and respect, making it hard for me to feel belonging in my community of saints. It even cancelled the temple, which was my monthly lifeline for many years, connecting me to God and my family and giving me perspective and divine strength in my trials. 

For me, isolation is something I don't do well. Every apologetic attempt to gather in order to find strength and connection from loved ones is tainted by guilt, anxiety, and often brings with it less connection and more disconnection—a feeling of division with others who either believe the restrictions are a total conspiracy, or else they are an unbending standard. I have found myself feeling frustrated and angry with people I once respected and loved, both the rigid and the lax, something totally new for me who once saw only good in everyone. It has shone a light on my own surprising lack of charity, and on my own unwillingness to build Zion with people who see things differently from me.

This whole thing—the pandemic, but also the entire political and social landscape of my church and community—has gutted me. Watching setback after setback has filled me with doubt. For my whole life I have been a diehard optimist. I was always cheerful in difficulty. I possessed a curious reserve of faith and hope in even the most difficult situation. I always thought I could do anything. The past few years have tested me in heart wrenching ways, and I have simply come up insufficient. I now have to live with that about myself.

Parenting, of course, has taken me to a new level of Dante's inferno. I don't need to go into details about that, the failures, isolation, and frustrations of parenting in a pandemic. Talk about "being forced to remain in an unpleasant place or situation." My poor kids.

I have learned before about mental illness, specifically depression and anxiety, from close family who battle this kind of thing every day. They are veterans in this feeling of being stuck, this emptiness, this languishing. I feel newfound respect for them. For me, this is a new experience. It sucks.

In the hymn, we sing:

Where, when my aching grows, 

Where when I languish,

Where in my need to know, where can I run?

Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?

Who, who can understand?

He only One.

Lately, I have been wondering what Christ knows about languishing. Does He, a God, really understand about uncertainty, about our mortal limitations and constant "need to know?" Does He understand what it's like to know what you should do, but are unable, for whatever mental and emotional reasons, to actually do it?

I don't know the answer, but I do have enough faith to believe that Christ does understand uncertainty. I believe He faced it in the garden. I believe He continues to languish under the load of our collective uncertainty, as well as our stagnation, sorrow, and sin. I do not believe Christ was an omniscient being when He entered Gethsemane. He does not enter Gethsemane, either His or ours, as the triumphant Son of God, but as a sensitive, anxious, frightened mortal being. The voice I hear as He asked, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me" is not one that knows exactly how His trial will end, or how long it was meant to last, or if He could even perform the task at all. In my mind, it was a voice that trembled with bone breaking doubt. That vision of Christ is relatable to me. The record says He fell on His face under the weight of it all. He knows what it is like to be totally alone in that feeling, to have disciples falling asleep at the crucial moment He needed them. He knows what it is like to feel "exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death." (Matthew 26:38-39)

I don't know how much longer this pandemic will last. I don't know how much longer the other garbage my life is throwing at me will go on. And I have learned a bitter truth that some trials in life do not have a foreseeable mortal end. For all I know, they may go on forever.

However, I believe Christ knows about the trials that feel neverending. Christ continues to suffer with us to this day, 2000 years after His Gethsemane. He has yoked Himself to us, even now, treading the winepress alone until every grape is turned to wine, and every dredge from our bitter cup is drunk. I have to believe He knows how to succor His people in their infirmity. (Alma 7)

As I languish "in my Gethsemane," I want to believe that He knows how to "reach me in my reaching." Looking out my window at the snow falling again, I believe that "spring has to come." I don't know what damage this long freeze, metaphorical and literal, will have on us all when it's all over, but I believe life is always strong enough to heal and prevail. I want to believe God will prevail in my life. I want to believe that this languishing must end.