Those were the words that came across the lips of our 18-year-old foster son after we watched 8: The Mormon Proposition together on DVD last night. There were parts of that documentary that made both of us cry. Sometimes Glen got so angry, we had to stop the video and discuss it together. During and after the film, he would look at me with a kind of desperation and ask, "How can you want to have anything to do with a church like that?"
The film did not, oddly, make me angry. I expected to be indignant after watching it, but I wasn't. Not even a little bit. It did bring me back to a moment in time, in the immediate aftermath of Prop 8's passage on November 4, 2008, when I was feeling not only angry but very much in pain. I found my own personal resolution to those feelings in prayer. And the peace that I found and the affirmations I received through the Spirit have sustained me from then until the present. I think I have lots of things to contribute to discussions about Proposition 8, but fortunately anger isn't one of them.
I also remembered a conversation I had with my dad about Proposition 8. It was so very simple. My dad asked me how I was holding up. I told him I wasn't afraid and I wasn't angry, and I knew that everything would eventually work out. And Dad said simply, "They just don't understand." No tears, no anger, no fretting. Just trust in God and in the right. That is what carries us forward.
I woke up this morning thinking more about the film, and about my response to it. Among other things:
The LDS Church is not a monolith. Mormons do stress obedience, faith and sacrifice, and that does make them effective at organizing collective action. Those are virtues we appreciate when the LDS Church is working for us -- like when it helped clean up the aftermath of the flooding in North Dakota and Minnesota a couple years back. But Mormons don't all think alike. They are not all unthinking or unfeeling. They are not incapable of reason or kindness or generosity. Quite the opposite.
The documentary's goal was not to reach or persuade faithful LDS. It was to mobilize political opposition, to solidify commitment among those who are already persuaded that Prop 8 (and the Church) are wrong. And the documentary's primary tactic was fanning the flames of self-righteous anger.
But faithful Mormons didn't liquidate their kids' college funds or their own retirement accounts because of what they're against. They did it because of what they're for. Because they really believe that faith and family are against the wall here.
Getting angry at the Church doesn't make me hopeful. It doesn't inspire me to action. And it doesn't help me talk to my loved ones and friends in the Church in a way that will help them to do the one thing they actually need to do: see me and my family in a different light. It does the opposite of all those things.
What does make me hopeful, and inspire me, and help me talk to my friends is waking up each morning to a good-morning kiss in my husband's arms (coming up on 18 years this August!). It is my memory of the ways he was there for me when I struggled with depression after grad school. It is the thrill I felt when we finally found his birth certificate, and when I saw him hugging his father for the first time, and when we set off on our great adventure last summer. It is the excitement (and nervousness! and joy! and longing!) I feel for our son as we contemplate his coming years in college, and all the hard (and good!) lessons he will learn. It is the hugs he gives me as he tells me he's afraid for how things will work out, and I can assure him we'll be there.
It is the belief that we can win this without having to vanquish our foes; that the best way to win is to work toward the creation of a community where we understand and care for one another across our differences, where we stand united in the belief that our differences actually make us stronger and richer and better, where we learn from and teach one another the best ways forward.
Last night, I shared some these convictions with my son. I gave him a hug, and I told him, "Your dad is working on this." And he told me he knew, and he was proud. That will help keep me going as well.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
When He Ariseth to Shake Terribly the Earth
Has anybody else noticed the slight correction 2 Nephi 12 makes to verse 9 of Isaiah 2? The 2 Nephi text reads:
This is significant, because of the picture Isaiah paints here of universal haughtiness. Here, the rich man is not humble, but neither is the poor man. Everyone -- everyone -- is lifted up in strife, one against the other. "O house of Jacob... ye have all gone astray, every one to his wicked ways" (v. 5).
Isaiah is speaking here, of course, to his own time. But in typical fashion, the prophecies aimed at his own time and his own people blend into future time and a universal judgment, into the "last days," the days when the Lord will come to "judge among the nations" (v. 4).
There's something else here that has struck me for the first time in these verses, and it has to do with the nature of God's judgment upon the nations, described in verse 4:
This makes all the more sense when we read this verse against the larger context of the chapter as a whole. Isaiah 2 / 2 Nephi 12 is a jeremiad against pride. Look at the imagery in this chapter, "the cedars of Lebanon" and "the oaks of Bashan," "the high mountains" and "the hills," "the high towers," even the masts of "all the ships of the sea"! Every one and everything that is "high" shall be brought "low"!
Pride is, after all, a root cause of war. But so is idolatry, the other great evil Isaiah promises here that the Lord will "utterly abolish" (v. 18). You don't have to -- it should be obvious -- own any actual graven images to be an idolater. There seems to me to be a parallel in this chapter between the "silver and gold" which the "land is full of" (v. 7) and the "idols of silver" and the "idols of gold" (v. 20). Idolatry and the pride of wealth are twin sins that both prosper together and fall together. They're the twin evils of our own civilization.
Isaiah doesn't seem to offer much hope that we will save ourselves from these twin evils. Verse 4 does say that the Lord shall rebuke many, implying that not all will be in need of rebuking. It does say "every one who is lifted up... shall be brought low" (v. 12) implying that those who are not lifted up need not be. Still, Isaiah also says "ye have all gone astray, every one to his wicked ways."
That is why, I think, the judgment described here is universal. The text says, "the fear of the Lord shall come upon them and the majesty of his glory shall smite them, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth." You shake someone when you want to wake them up. And the Lord is going to shake the entire earth.
So there is a sense in which, I believe, that none of us knows the truth, none of us fully understands the Gospel. We understand it in our own way. We have our own appreciations of it, through a glass, darkly. But we cannot understand it in its fullness until the Lord completes this work himself, until he rises up to shake the entire earth.
This shouldn't surprise us. This is the way the Lord works. None of Jesus' disciples, not even the beloved one who lay nestled in his breast at the last supper, fully understood Jesus' work until after the resurrection. At his last supper, he announced to them, "All ye shall be offended because of me this night." Judas betrayed him. Peter denied him. Everyone fled. No one fully understood until after Christ had died and appeared to them again.
So it may be, that none of us will fully understand until we "shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matthew 24: 30).
And I believe that for that time, the only adequate preparation we can make is to humble ourselves, soften our hearts, and be kind to one another (for kindness is the practice of humility). And to pray for that day, when the Lord will make this great work complete, when God will reign on earth as he rules in Heaven.
And the mean man boweth not down, and the great man humbleth himself not, therefore, forgive him not.The "not's" are missing in Isaiah.
This is significant, because of the picture Isaiah paints here of universal haughtiness. Here, the rich man is not humble, but neither is the poor man. Everyone -- everyone -- is lifted up in strife, one against the other. "O house of Jacob... ye have all gone astray, every one to his wicked ways" (v. 5).
Isaiah is speaking here, of course, to his own time. But in typical fashion, the prophecies aimed at his own time and his own people blend into future time and a universal judgment, into the "last days," the days when the Lord will come to "judge among the nations" (v. 4).
There's something else here that has struck me for the first time in these verses, and it has to do with the nature of God's judgment upon the nations, described in verse 4:
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks—nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.The immediate, direct consequence of the Lord's judgments and rebukes is that "they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks—nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Is it that the wickedness that the Lord finds it necessary to correct here is our hatred of one another? Our incessant warring against our own brothers and sisters?
This makes all the more sense when we read this verse against the larger context of the chapter as a whole. Isaiah 2 / 2 Nephi 12 is a jeremiad against pride. Look at the imagery in this chapter, "the cedars of Lebanon" and "the oaks of Bashan," "the high mountains" and "the hills," "the high towers," even the masts of "all the ships of the sea"! Every one and everything that is "high" shall be brought "low"!
Pride is, after all, a root cause of war. But so is idolatry, the other great evil Isaiah promises here that the Lord will "utterly abolish" (v. 18). You don't have to -- it should be obvious -- own any actual graven images to be an idolater. There seems to me to be a parallel in this chapter between the "silver and gold" which the "land is full of" (v. 7) and the "idols of silver" and the "idols of gold" (v. 20). Idolatry and the pride of wealth are twin sins that both prosper together and fall together. They're the twin evils of our own civilization.
Isaiah doesn't seem to offer much hope that we will save ourselves from these twin evils. Verse 4 does say that the Lord shall rebuke many, implying that not all will be in need of rebuking. It does say "every one who is lifted up... shall be brought low" (v. 12) implying that those who are not lifted up need not be. Still, Isaiah also says "ye have all gone astray, every one to his wicked ways."
That is why, I think, the judgment described here is universal. The text says, "the fear of the Lord shall come upon them and the majesty of his glory shall smite them, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth." You shake someone when you want to wake them up. And the Lord is going to shake the entire earth.
So there is a sense in which, I believe, that none of us knows the truth, none of us fully understands the Gospel. We understand it in our own way. We have our own appreciations of it, through a glass, darkly. But we cannot understand it in its fullness until the Lord completes this work himself, until he rises up to shake the entire earth.
This shouldn't surprise us. This is the way the Lord works. None of Jesus' disciples, not even the beloved one who lay nestled in his breast at the last supper, fully understood Jesus' work until after the resurrection. At his last supper, he announced to them, "All ye shall be offended because of me this night." Judas betrayed him. Peter denied him. Everyone fled. No one fully understood until after Christ had died and appeared to them again.
So it may be, that none of us will fully understand until we "shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matthew 24: 30).
And I believe that for that time, the only adequate preparation we can make is to humble ourselves, soften our hearts, and be kind to one another (for kindness is the practice of humility). And to pray for that day, when the Lord will make this great work complete, when God will reign on earth as he rules in Heaven.
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