There is a strong emphasis given by church leaders to avoid even the appearance of sin, and members take this very much to heart, sometimes to the exclusion of showing Christlike love. I mentioned that in my last post, and it was brought to my attention that people may not understand what I mean. So let me provide an example.
Suppose a member of the church admits to a second member that their orientation is gay. The first question the second member asks is "but you surely don't act on it, do you?". The church has a policy that a gay orientation is not a sin, only acting on it is. So that second member is deciding how to interact with the first based on whether or not they are sinning. That second member wants to make it abundantly clear that they don't approve of sin. It can seem so important to them to make sure nobody thinks they approve of sinning that they make sure that anyone who knows they befriended the first member also knows that the first member was not acting on their orientation.
Do we do this with other sins? When we interact with other members, do we make sure to let them know that our member friends do actually obey the word of wisdom? If a friend introduces their spouse and children, do we ask whether the children were born in wedlock so we can properly make it known that we disapprove of having children out of wedlock?
Avoiding the appearance of sin is important. We should not be skirting the line, pretending for social reasons that we are happy to share a drink with friends even if we slyly avoid actually drinking. Taking a bold stand is good. But that's dealing with our own choices. When we take it to the extreme of shunning others to appear to disapprove of sin, then we are out of line with the teachings of the Savior.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Sunday, February 23, 2020
Raw Honesty
Before I begin, let me make one thing clear. I love my wife and my family and I do not want to do anything to lose them. That being said, life can be very difficult. I feel the desire for the romantic love of another man every single day. It's something that remains painfully unfulfilled in my psyche and I have no hope of ever being able to fill that void.
Why, you may ask, would I choose to go the route that I did? I had male friends my age who left the church to satisfy their desire to develop relationships with other men. I have friends and family recently who, despite not being gay themselves, have left the church because of its stand against gay marriage. Believe me, I get it. I feel it every...single...day. It doesn't go away.
I choose to stay in the church because I have had powerful spiritual experiences from a very young age. I'm not talking about some burning in the bosom. It's not something that was prompted by a church lesson or a leader. It was just me pleading with the Lord. And my prayers were answered in a powerful way. I know the church is Christ's. But it's still so hard.
The church doesn't minister to me. How can it? I can't tell them about my struggles because I fear the judgments of the members. My ministering brothers occasionally might ask how I'm doing and I tell them I'm fine. What else could I say? But I feel extremely lonely. Who else living in this sphere can I confide in? I can talk about it with my wife, but not really with anyone else. And as much as I feel loved and supported by her, it's hard to feel truly understood.
And there's nobody else.
Am I the only one? I can't imagine that I'm this rare special flower and there's almost nobody like me. But those who are like me are probably just as secretive. So the church can't minister to them, either. As long as there is such a powerful stigma against gay oriented people in the church, it will fail at its mandate to minister to the members who need it. As long as the rhetoric is so much on avoiding the appearance of evil at the expense of lifting the hands that hang down, the church will fail its gay oriented members.
We are here, but nobody wants to know. We have testimonies of the divinity of the work. We want to help build the church. But we can't let anyone know about our struggles.
Why, you may ask, would I choose to go the route that I did? I had male friends my age who left the church to satisfy their desire to develop relationships with other men. I have friends and family recently who, despite not being gay themselves, have left the church because of its stand against gay marriage. Believe me, I get it. I feel it every...single...day. It doesn't go away.
I choose to stay in the church because I have had powerful spiritual experiences from a very young age. I'm not talking about some burning in the bosom. It's not something that was prompted by a church lesson or a leader. It was just me pleading with the Lord. And my prayers were answered in a powerful way. I know the church is Christ's. But it's still so hard.
The church doesn't minister to me. How can it? I can't tell them about my struggles because I fear the judgments of the members. My ministering brothers occasionally might ask how I'm doing and I tell them I'm fine. What else could I say? But I feel extremely lonely. Who else living in this sphere can I confide in? I can talk about it with my wife, but not really with anyone else. And as much as I feel loved and supported by her, it's hard to feel truly understood.
And there's nobody else.
Am I the only one? I can't imagine that I'm this rare special flower and there's almost nobody like me. But those who are like me are probably just as secretive. So the church can't minister to them, either. As long as there is such a powerful stigma against gay oriented people in the church, it will fail at its mandate to minister to the members who need it. As long as the rhetoric is so much on avoiding the appearance of evil at the expense of lifting the hands that hang down, the church will fail its gay oriented members.
We are here, but nobody wants to know. We have testimonies of the divinity of the work. We want to help build the church. But we can't let anyone know about our struggles.
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