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Rejoice In All Good Things: Spiritual Healing and Homosexuality
Robert A. Rees
My remarks today* are related to a scripture from Deuteronomy: "And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath given thee" (26:11). This scripture is related to the hymn we sing, "Now Let us Rejoice," with its lines, "Good tidings are sounding to us and each nation,/And shortly the hour of redemption will come." I hope that you are able to hear the good tidings of the gospel of Christ and look forward with anticipation to that hour of redemption.
It is my observation that there is a tendency among homosexual Mormons, either because they are involved in a lifestyle that is at variance with the teachings of the Church or because they have been hurt by Church members and leaders, to withdraw from the Church and disassociate themselves from the fellowship of the Saints. The alienation from the Church which many homosexual Latter-day Saints experience is profound. I am aware that this alienation causes great pain not only for those of you who are homosexual but for your families and friends as well. In counseling numerous homosexuals during the time I served as a bishop and since, I have com to understand the painful conflict with the Church that many of you experience.
Because many of you have had negative experiences with the Church, you may have a tendency to generalize that experience to the entire Church and to see it in essentially negative terms. I would like to persuade you to consider the Church's goodness. In spite of the Church's limitations and the extent to which you may personally have been hurt by it, there is still immense good in the Church. I would encourage you to rejoice in that goodness, to partake of it to whatever extent you feel you can, and, if possible, to contribute to it and make it a greater part of your lives.
Even though you may not always experience the Church in positive ways, in actuality, the Church is a great blessing in the lives of millions of people. It is a moral force for good in the world and, along with other churches and people of good will everywhere, it serves as an effective counter to the forces of darkness. This does not mean that the Church, or any church for that matter, is perfect or that in the administration of its affairs people are always treated fairly and charitably. Like all people, in our behavior towards one another, as leaders and as members alike, we fall short of the Christian ideal. However, I urge you to remember or believe that as the Restored Church of Jesus Christ, the Church has a divine destiny.
I would guess that most of you, at one time or another, could bear witness to the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and were convinced in your innermost souls that something remarkable happened that spring day in 1820 when Joseph Smith knelt in the grove of trees on his father's farm near Palmyra. Some of you still carry the imprint of that witness on your souls, but many of you do not, or you are uncertain of your feelings. For some, your uncertainty is related to the fact that your lives are not fully in accord with the teaching of the Church; for others, your uncertainty is related to the hurt and rejection you have experienced in the Church because of your homosexuality. And yet, in a way that may seem inexplicable, most of you are held by something to this gospel, this Church, this religious culture. I rather suspect that what holds you is the witness of the Spirit you once felt or some vestige of it which remains in your hearts.
Sometimes our difficulty with the Church comes from a misunderstanding of what the Church is. Basically, the Church is a rough instrument of the Lord, the primary purpose of which is to provide us a context in which we can learn to love. Because it is no better or no worse than we are, it reflects the same imperfections and weaknesses that we do. But it is also Christ's Kingdom, his "little flock" as he calls it in the Doctrine and Covenants, and while his kingdom is larger than this Church, this Church is part of His kingdom. If you don't believe that, then I suspect you are held to the Church merely by some cultural connection.
Please consider that no matter how much it has hurt you, no matter how much you have been alienated or offended by individual members, this Church has given you immense gifts and blessings. You would not be here, and you would not be who you are, were it not for the love and sacrifice of many people--not only those who made the ultimate sacrifice in establishing the Restored Gospel, or those who pushed handcarts into a wilderness to preserve it, but parents, bishops, Relief Society presidents, scout leaders, Sunday school teachers, Primary teachers, quorum advisors, and others who gave their time and energy to teach you and to touch you in ways that are indelibly printed on your soul. Most of you have received special blessings from fathers, priesthood leaders, and patriarchs. Many of you have had glorious promises made to you in the temples of the Lord.
Even in practical ways the Church has blessed you. Most of you inherited bodies that are healthier and less disposed to disease than your contemporaries because your parents and grandparents lived the Word of Wisdom. Many of you are effective public speakers because you were given generous opportunities to express yourselves in church meetings. Many of you now employ in your businesses and professions leadership and other skills you acquired by serving in various callings and fulfilling missions. Many of you are bilingual because you were given the opportunity to teach the gospel in another tongue. All of these and many others are gifts from your Church and its culture. Thus, you may leave the Church, but the Church will always be an integral part of who you are.
One of the things that happens when people withdraw from the Church, or experience the Church withdrawing from them, is that they stop keeping commandments and begin breaking covenants. Thus, when some gay and lesbian Mormons stop keeping the law of chastity, they also stop paying their tithes and offerings, stop fasting, and stop praying. They cease living the Word of Wisdom, and reading the scriptures. If your devotions no longer include these practices, I would encourage you to resume them, because they are given more for your sakes than for the sake of the Church.
These practices, even those that may seem relatively unimportant, are gifts. Each commandment, every law is designed to increase our happiness by giving us opportunities to go outside ourselves, to sacrifice for ourselves and others and thereby enlarge our hearts and souls. The result of these small sacrifices is an enhanced self-esteem as we demonstrate our ability to live more disciplined, less self-centered lives. Take the law of the fast for example. It is an opportunity at least once a month to focus on the abundance that most of us enjoy from the Lord and to consider those who are less fortunate. By contributing a generous fast offering, we make possible in a concrete way the blessing of others. Fasting enhances our physical well being and, at the same time, because it makes us weak and humble, puts us more in tune with the Spirit of the Lord, which in turn makes us joyful. Note that the Lord equates fasting with joy in the Doctrine and Covenants, where we are told that we should prepare the food to end our fast with singleness of heart "that thy fasting may be perfect, or, in other words, that thy joy may be full." (59:14) So much from so small a thing! And yet, I would guess that for most of you who have become disaffected from the Church, this is one of the first commandments you cease to practice.
My experience with homosexuals is that once they have made a spiritual break with the Church they not only stop certain positive practices but they also embark on negative ones. For instance, once they leave the Church, many LDS homosexuals begin abusing alcohol and drugs. At times this is done out of a spirit of rebellion; at others it is done out of a desire to escape pain. Although not always, the breaking of this commandment, the intent of which is to protect us, often leads to other self-destructive behavior.
As a bishop, I didn't hold many disciplinary councils. But when it was necessary to do so, I was always interested in the attitude of people who were put under Church discipline. Even when the conditions of the council forbade their active participation in Church rituals and practices, some disciplined brothers and sisters continued to live the gospel, to attend their meetings, to pay their tithes and offerings (or if the conditions of the council forbade this, to put the money in a bank account against the day their membership rights would be restored), and to keep other commandments. Others simply stopped doing these things and withdrew altogether from the fellowship of the Saints.
Observance of the rituals, practices and ordinances of the gospel is one of the ways we keep connected to God and to the body of believers of all generations. Making these things a part of our lives is one of the ways we participate in the transference of spiritual and cultural values to others, including those of the next generation. Because I believe that they have the possibility of blessing your lives, I would like to persuade you to seek for ways in which you might keep as many of the commandments and covenants as you possibly can.
One of the saddest results of the estrangement of homosexuals from the Church is the erosion of confidence in God it causes for many of them. To convince us that God does not love us is perhaps the greatest temptation of the Arch-tempter. Under certain circumstances it may seem to any one of us that there is no evidence or justification for our faith. At times it seems as if there were nothing in this world but despair and darkness. At other times, our depression may be so profound that we feel if we were living in perpetual night. But in a sense, isn't this where faith is found? As Rabbi David Wolpe says in his book The Healer of Shattered Hearts, "God is intimately tied to the night. The depths night touches, the conflicts it invokes in us, produce the curious combination of fear, passion, intimacy, and mystery that is . . . God. In the greatest dark, the dark of Egypt, redemption occurs. In the ultimate night, that of the future, redemption is promised. God moves between the poles of night, danger, and promise."1
It is in the night that some people ultimately find God. It is in the darkness that God becomes most visible. In order to see Him there, we have to believe that His light is more powerful than all the powers of darkness. Unable to see the light in the darkness, and unable to make sense out of the chaos, the evil, the seeming and sometimes actual absurdity of the world, we may conclude a Godless world. As Nickles, the demonic character in Archibald MacLeish's play J.B., says,
I heard upon his dry dung heapIn this play, the central character, J.B., like his scriptural namesake Job, loses everything he has. He is encouraged to curse God and die, but refuses to do so, saying,
That man cry out who cannot sleep:
"If God is God, he is not good.
If God is good he is not God;
Take the even, take the odd,
I would not sleep here if I could
Except for the little green leaves in the wood
and the wind on the water." 2
God is just. We are not squeezedJ.B.'s three "comforters"--a priest, a psychiatrist, and a Marxist--all try to convince him that he is not responsible for what has happened to him. The priest tells him it is not his fault because he was born in sin, the psychiatrist lays the blame on his parents, and the Marxist lays it on the shoulders of society. J.B. rejects their counsel and takes responsibility for how he responds to the injustices of his life:
naked through a ridiculous orifice
Like bulls into a blazing ring
To blunder there by blindfold laws
We never learn or can, deceived by
Stratagems and fooled by feints,
For sport, for nothing, until we fall
We're pricked so badly. (p. 120)
I'd rather sufferJ.B.'s (and Job's) message is that we may not always be responsible for our suffering, but we are responsible for how we react to it.
Every unspeakable suffering God sends,
Knowing it was I that suffered,
I that earned the need to suffer,
I that acted, I that chose,
Than wash my hands with yours in that
Defiling innocence. Can we be men
And make an irresponsible ignorance
Responsible for everything? (p. 123)
Part of the reality of our mortal probation is that we all must endure certain trials and hardships. In II Ezerus, from the Apocrypha, we read, "The entrances to this world were made narrow, painful, and arduous, few and evil, full of perils and grinding hardship. But the entrances to the greater world are broad and safe and lead to immortality. All men must therefore enter this narrow and futile existence; otherwise they can never attain the blessings in store" (7:12-14). Another way to put this is that God cannot save us from the harsh realities of this world because in doing so He would deprive us of the growth that He knows is necessary for us to become like Him. One of the tenants of our theology is that we chose to come here, knowing how perilous it might be for us, because we understood that this was the only way in which we might grow to the full measure of our divine potential.
While neither we nor God is responsible for all that happens in the world, God provides us a way to find meaning and joy in the face of absurdity and pain. He sends messages in a thousand ways to remind us of his love. And he promises us not only that the darkness will not prevail but that he will compensate us for all that we must suffer unjustly. As Isaiah says, "The Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces" (25:8).
The most important commandments we are given are those that involve love--to love Him with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength; to love ourselves; to love our neighbors as ourselves; to love our enemies. The whole reason for the gospel and the raison d'être of the Church is to teach us how to love and give us opportunities to experience the love of others.
That God loves us is the most important revelation our souls ever receive beyond the understanding that we are autonomous, unique creatures in the universe. Not only the scriptures, but also the world itself with its beauty and harmony bear witness of the abundant love of God. The scriptures tell us that God is our friend and they show us through example after example that his friendship knows no bounds. As he tells Jeremiah, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love" (Jeremiah 31:3); and as Nephi testifies, "I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love" (2 Nephi 1:15). I testify that God loves you. If you are now uncertain of His love, reach out to Him, for, as Paul says, He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:27) and waits with patience for us to open our hearts to receive Him.
Related to the love of God, but separate from it, is the love of Jesus Christ. The love of God may seem abstract at times, but in the manifestation of that love in the corporeal gift of his Most Beloved and Only Begotten Son, love is made concrete. Looking at the world at times we may conclude that it is devoid of meaning or order. Any one of us may feel disconnected from whatever powers we are told lie beyond and behind what we see before our eyes. We often doubt that God is in his heaven when we see that all is not right with the world. But then we are confronted with the love of Jesus Christ, a man willing to suffer the burden of our sins so that we might not have to suffer, and to forgive our most heinous and callous transgressions that we might be healed and made whole.
To love Jesus Christ and to feel of his love is, finally, to know the love of God, for "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son." (John 3:16) As the Savior said to his disciples, "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments ye will abide in my love . . . These things have I spoken unto you that your joy might be full. This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:9-13).
Some of you still feel connected to Christ, still claim him as your personal savior, but some of you do not. As you have separated from the Church so have you separated from Christ. I would encourage you to open your hearts again to receive his love. He waits eagerly for your return, and if you earnestly seek him, there is no power that can keep you from his love. As Paul says, "I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depths--nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 8:38-39, New English Bible, Oxford University Press, 1976).
The love of God and Christ are the greatest gifts we can receive as human beings. Knowing that they love us gives us power to transcend all the vagaries, venalities, and vicissitudes of mortality. To experience the love of God and his Son in our hearts is the most transcendent experience we can have as both mortal and diving beings. As Nephi says to the angel, in speaking of the fruit that symbolizes the love of God, "It is the most desirable above all things"; and as the angel affirms, "Yea, and the most joyous to the soul" (I Nephi 11:22-23).
One of the greatest fruits of the love of God is that it enhances our ability to love ourselves. Our self-love is so important that Christ included it as part of the second great commandment. Perhaps the primary function of the Holy Ghost is to reveal to us our inestimable worth to God, to convince us, in spite of all the messages we get to the contrary, that we are eternally lovable. Because as homosexuals you receive so many negative messages about yourselves from others, messages that you are vile and debased, and because you often are denied the love of family and friends, it is especially important that you learn to love yourselves. Some might argue that the problem with many homosexuals is that they already love themselves too much, but I would counter that only when self-love becomes narcissistic does it become negative. Genuine self-love is a necessary part of a healthy, integrated personality.
I know that it may be hard for some of you to love yourselves because you've received so many messages over the course of your lives that you are unlovable because you are homosexual. Since your homosexuality does not affect the love of your Heavenly Father, your Heavenly Mother, or their Son for you, it should not affect the love you feel for yourself. I know my telling you this does not automatically make it so for you, but I testify to you that the love of these divine beings is neither capricious nor conditional, and that it is available to you in gracious abundance.
While loving God may not be a prerequisite for loving others, I believe that feeling his love may be. Experiencing the love of God and understanding how that love is extended to all his children enhances our ability to love others. As John says, "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). I am also convinced that we cannot truly and fully love others unless we can love ourselves. It is in loving others, including our enemies, that most of us ultimately fail the test. To possess such love is what separates the true disciples from the mere followers of Christ. As John says, "And indeed this command comes to us from Christ himself: that he who loves God must also love his brother" (1 John 4:21).
For you who are gay and lesbian this means that you must get past the anger you feel for others, including your fellow Latter-day Saints, bishops, stake presidents, general authorities, and even the Church itself. Christ commands, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that you may be the children of your Father in Heaven" (Matthew 5:44-45).
I believe the experience of people of color is relevant to the experience of homosexuals. Blacks, for example, have been treated as pariahs for centuries. They have been condemned and persecuted for something over which they have had no choice; they have been excluded from society simply because of the color of their skin. Their experience may be instructive for you.
In his powerful essay, "Notes of a Native Son," James Baldwin, a black homosexual, speaks of the rage he felt as he went through a series of humiliating experiences as a young man living in New York. He was refused service in a number of restaurants simply because he was black. Finally, the accumulation of humiliations caused him to react with a kind of unconscious violence in which he threw a water pitcher at a white waitress and shattered a mirror. He immediately had to flee for his life. In reflecting on this experience he said, "I did not get over two facts, both equally difficult for the imagination to grasp, and one was that I could have been murdered. But the other was that I had been ready to commit murder. I saw nothing very clearly but I did see this: that my life, my real life, was in danger, and not from anything other people might do, but from the hatred I carried in my own heart." Later in the same essay Baldwin concludes, "In order to really hate white people, one has to blot so much out of the mind--and the heart--that this hatred itself becomes an exhausting and self-destructive pose. But this does not mean, on the other hand, that love comes easily: the white world [and here one can substitute the straight world] is too powerful, too complacent, too ready with gratuitous humiliation, and above all, too ignorant and too innocent for that....Blackness and whiteness [straightness and homosexuality] did not matter; to believe that they did was to acquiesce in one's own destruction. Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law."3
In a letter to his nephew James, written on the hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin writes, "There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it....We cannot be free until they are free."4
Have any of you ever considered that part of your work for humanity might be teaching heterosexuals how to love better? It may not be fair that you are asked to do this, but I believe that it is God's will that you do so because, like blacks and other hated groups, you have experienced the deprivation of love in a profound way, and that depravation has given you a gift which, if you will use it, can bless your life and the lives of others. Having been subject to rejection, ostracism, and even hatred, you may understand something about the importance of love which others do not. I believe that it is in rising through our suffering to such love that we attain holiness.
My experience with some Mormon homosexuals is that once they leave the Church they move into an essentially secular world. It is a world in which holiness is little discussed and little sought after. Holiness comes from having purity of heart and soul. Such holiness is incompatible with the harboring of anger and hatred, because these things wound the heart and canker the soul. Even though the hurt and anger you feel are real and may be justified, unless you can get past these feelings, they will destroy you.
You may ask how it is possible for you to forgive individuals and organizations that you experience as persecuting, reviling, and despitefully using you. How can you love those who refuse to love you? How can you return good for evil? These are among the hardest questions that as Christians we must ask ourselves. We know from human history that it is possible, though not easy, to do this. First we must be willing to try. Second, we must have faith that God will bless us to do this. Third, we must remind ourselves that those who mistreat us are, for the most part, not evil, but misinformed and misguided. More than likely, they are acting out of learned prejudice, which is itself seated in fear and ignorance. Fourth, we must remember that this is what God and Christ have done for us--forgiven us in spite of our continuing transgressions against them, loved us in spite of all the destructive things we have done to ourselves and others. How can we accept of their love and forgiveness unless we are willing to love and forgive others?
In conclusion, my dear brothers and sisters, I would encourage you to love God and to trust Him. This does not mean that you should not continue to anguish over those things that don't make sense to you. Hugh Nibley says that the ancient prophets, looking at the world around them and seeing that there was terrible suffering, questioned God about the injustices they saw, and challenged the mercy and justice of the heavens. Nibley says, "God did not hold it against these men that they questioned him, but loved them for it: it was because they were the friends of men, even at what they thought was the terrible risk of offending Him, that they became the friends of God."5 God does not expect us to remain silent in the face of injustice. As David Wolpe says, "To believe in God is not to abandon one's mind. To trust in God is not to ignore the deepest misgivings of a troubled heart."6 However, when our hearts are troubled by injustices against ourselves or others, God does not want us to counter such injustices with hatred and violence. He does not require that we remain passive, but he does ask us to have patience and charity as we work for change. So, again, I encourage you to love those who have acted toward you in unkind and unchristian ways.
I would also encourage you to love God's church, and to seek ways to serve it, even if that involves a great sacrifice for you. As I said earlier, it is a Church of destiny, a church with a divine mission. Part of that mission is to prepare the hearts of God's children for the return of the Savior. If you feel that the Church won't accept you, then you should accept the Church, and humbly teach the Saints how to love better, even if some of them refuse to love you. Love God. Love the Lord Jesus Christ. Love yourselves. Love one another. Make love work in whatever circles you are a part of.
I began these remarks with a quotation from Deuteronomy admonishing us to "rejoice in all good things." I close with three additional scriptures, two from the New Testament and one from the Book of Mormon: "Rejoice in hope" (Romans 12:12); "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, rejoice" (Philippians 4:4); "Give thanks to the Lord [your] God...who [has] taught [you] to keep the commandments of God, that [you] might rejoice and be filled with love towards God and all men" (Mosiah 2:4).
I testify to you with all of the conviction and fervor of my soul that God loves you, and that, as the Psalms say:
The Lord rebuilds Jerusalem;May he heal your hearts as you open them to receive his love and may he help you to share that love with others. I also testify that his kingdom has been restored in these latter days and encourage you to rejoice in all good things that emanate from it, including the power it has to help you find holiness. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
He gathers in the exiles of Israel.
He heals their shattered hearts
And binds up their wounds.
(147:2-3, New Jewish Publications Society Bible)
Notes
*This paper is based on a presentation given at a gathering of gay and Lesbian Mormons in Palm Springs, California, 1991.
1. The Healer of Shattered Hearts: A Jewish View of God (New York: Henry Holt, 1990), p. 24.
2. J.B. (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), p. 11.
3. Notes of a Native Son (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), pp. 94, 95.
4. The Fire Next Time (New York: Dial Press, l963), pp. 22, 23.
5. "Beyond Politics" in Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1978), p. 283.
6. The Healer of Shattered Hearts, p. 8.