Rights and Sacraments

(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 11/7/2008)

I’ve been rather amazed to watch the post-election hysteria of the pro same-sex marriage crowd, holding rallies (a little late, guys) and demonstrations against the hapless Mormon church in West Hollywood.

Their view, as presented, is that a basic human right has been taken from them.

I don’t think so. Marriage between any two humans has never been a ‘right’ anywhere. They claim that two humans who love each other should be allowed to marry, forgetting entirely that marriage based upon mutual love is quite a recent phenomenon. Even in Ancient Greece where homosexuality was about as normative as it’s ever been anywhere, marriage was something that took place between a man and a woman for the purpose of raising up the next generation, for the stability of the nation itself.

But even without focusing on the historical facts, marriage is not a ‘right’ — it is a sacrament. When Caligula ‘married’ his horse, that wasn’t a marriage, it was mockery of a sacrament.

The line gets blurred for modern humanity because 1) by and large we have so little understanding of the sacramental and 2) traditionally society has accorded certain rights and privileges to the married state (these same rights and privileges are available, at least here in California and many other states, to domestic partners). The encouragement for people to take part in the sacrament of marriage benefits the state and brings stability to the nation. In a time when women at least were mostly celibate outside marriage, a man might be motivated to marry in order to have access to his own woman, to a woman he believed would be a suitable mother to his heirs.

A right is something we have inherently: we have the right to breathe, we have to right to sleep. In America we believe in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (the pursuit of happiness and not happiness itself—). We have these rights: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to keep and bear arms, freedom to vote, etc. None of these are absolute rights: we cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded auditorium; we may need to obtain a permit in order to stage a demonstration; we now require the person buying a gun to be licensed and we limit the kinds of arms a person can bear; one must be an adult citizen (and generally not a felon) in order to vote.

Marriage is not in the bill of rights. Neither is driving. The state says that you must be of a certain age and prove a certain ability, which may include the taking of courses, in order to hold a driver’s license. Throughout all of human history the state (kingdom, etc.) has said that marriage is between a man and a woman and that they must be willing participants or their parents give consent in the case of early betrothals. With extremely rare exceptions, a man cannot capture a woman and impose marriage upon her; if he captures a woman and imposes himself upon her sexually it is rape and if he keeps her it is a form of slavery.

All of these are ways of looking at marriage and seeing how it is different from a right – but why do I say that it is a sacrament? As a Christian that’s easy: Genesis 2:24, echoed by Jesus Christ when challenged on the matter of divorce in Matthew 19:4

For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

Marriage is the first sacrament (well, one could argue that keeping the Sabbath is the first sacrament because God did it in Genesis 2:2) and its terms are established by our Creator: one male and female, each old enough to live without parents.

Throughout scripture God uses the example of marriage to illustrate aspects of His relationship with Israel and the relationship of Christ with the Church — marriage is unique among human institutions because of its use as an exemplar or type. He also uses father as a type to describe His relationship with His people (not all people but His people) — and we don’t try to redefine ‘father’ as ‘parent who disciplines’ or ‘legally responsible parent.’ No, ‘father’ isn’t even simply the sperm donor; ‘father’ is so much more than all that.

In fact, it is because of its quality as a sacrament that the gay and lesbian community fight to have marriage rather than civil unions: marriage entails a particular kind of blessing which is, by nature, sacramental.

But when a man ‘marries’ a man or a woman ‘marries’ a woman, it is like Caligula and his horse – it is a mockery of the sacrament and not the sacrament itself. We are created in the image of God; male and female together reflect the image of God; in order to reflect God both male and female are required. Two people of the same sex can have a legal partnership, a civil union, a committed and loving relationship; in some places they can even get a marriage license and ‘marry’ — but that doesn’t make it a marriage in reality. I can tie my shoe to my head and call it a hat but it’s still a shoe.

In California in particular we have a problem because the people of the state voted years ago to legally define marriage as “between one man and one woman” and then four California State Supreme Court judges decided that the people collectively have their heads up their asses, threw it out as unconstitutional and refused to hold off on granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples until after the November election. So this current legal brouhaha is entirely the fault of those four judges and the people who pushed the same-sex marriage agenda.

I am not without compassion; I understand the desire to be approved, to be accepted, to be “the same as” – but when I used to hang out with a group of lesbian musicians, I was not the same. They would joke with me and laugh with me and sometimes exert a little pressure on me – but it didn’t make me a lesbian. I finally stopped going out with them socially when they were amused by lesbian sexual harassment against me instead of outraged and protective. They proved they were not ‘safe’ people and their values were inherently different from mine when it came to dealing with unwanted sexual attention; there was a double standard.

I understand that the shoe pinches if you read the Bible and it says that ‘man lying with man as man lies with woman’ is a stoning offense (Leviticus 20:13) or it describes lesbian activity as a degrading passion (Romans 1:24); I understand because the shoe pinched me when I was living with my boyfriend, 30-some years ago. And the choice I had was to either agree with God and continue trying to follow Him, or to do what I damn well pleased. I knew I couldn’t do what I damn well pleased and pretend I was following God, once I knew it wasn’t okay for me to indulge in sexual activity outside of the sacrament of marriage. And my boyfriend didn’t want to marry me (—the fool!).

I did not, however, stage a political movement against the Church and the plain reading and historic understanding of the scripture passages which convicted me of ungodly behavior. My choice was continue my ungodly behavior because it was what I wanted to do (and it was very much what I wanted to do) or give up the ungodly behavior (repent) and attempt to live a godly life because that was more important than the desires of my flesh.

But the GLBT movement, without by and large embracing Judaism or Christianity, demands that Judaism and Christianity change to accommodate the desires of their flesh. This is not something the faithful can do, no matter how much they love GLBT family members and friends – because the choice is between God and man and those who desire to live righteous know that God must win primacy in our hearts.

What I don’t understand is this: why do you care what a bunch of Jews or Christians think? If you believe your behavior is acceptable to God, why do you care whether I agree or not?

Now I’ve heard the argument that the scriptural bias encourages hate crimes against the GLBT community. That makes no sense because those very crimes are forbidden by scripture itself. You cannot blame bad behavior on scripture when scripture condemns that behavior, too.

Anyone who thinks that GLBT individuals should be stoned (killed, abused, harassed) hasn’t read and understood the context of the scripture: that was the Law as given to ancient Israel, for ancient Israel. Israel was not supposed to impose their God-given Law upon the other nations but aliens living within Israel were held to the Law. Even in first century Judea that law wasn’t being enforced because the Jewish people had lost the power of capital punishment (this is why the Romans crucified Jesus, instead of the Sanhedrin stoning Jesus). The Law is valuable to us today because it shows us something of God’s heart, God’s direction for His people. The vast majority of the Law is detailed “live like this” instruction; a very small portion of the Law details stoning offenses — we should pay attention to stoning offenses because God apparently viewed them as destructive to the nation in a particular way, a contagious way.

We can argue with the Law, we can come up with all sorts of reasons God was wrong and we are right but we can’t legitimately equate mixing two different fibers with homosexual behavior because God didn’t equate them in the Law.

The relevant instruction, in this day and age, are the two great laws: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind' and 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' The GLBT community asks people of faith to love their neighbor (the GLBT community) more than the faithful love God; that we cannot do, we dare not.

The other relevant direction comes from Jeremiah 29, God’s direction to His people when they are living in exile: ‘Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.’

We do not live in Ancient Israel under the Torah nor do we yet live in the Millennial Kingdom under Messiah: we are living in exile. People of faith are called to embrace their faith and live their faith and put God first at the same time that we live in an ungodly world, secular communities, a nation which demands separation between church and state. But when the state steps in and tries to redefine a God-defined sacrament, we must stand up and hold fast. Happily we live in a nation which still accords us that freedom; it may not always and then it becomes more challenging.

In the meantime we cannot disagree with God in order to agree with the GLBT community; we must resist the temptation to fall into sentimentality or to bless that which God does not bless. We are told, "Don't judge!" but making a judgment includes approval, not only disapproval — in order not to judge, we must avoid approving of these changes, too. And the GLBT community may become very angry at us because of it. That makes me sad; I still have lots of friends who define as GLBT and I don’t like it when my friends are angry with me. But I would rather endure the wrath of my friends than the wrath of God.

Mythcon 39 in New Britain, Connecticut

(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 7/9/2008)

August 15-18, a very affordable Mythcon, as such things go. I’ve just started prodding local press, hoping to get some awareness - a challenge, because the committee is primarily located in NYC (and Boston–), so our site liaison is local and none other.

Still, a really quick and gratifying response from Richard Kamins in his Hartford Courant arts & entertainment blog. The man obviously ‘gets it’ when it comes to the MythSoc and puns!

On the more grim side of things, this first week in July has been dreadful for the SF community - a devastating traffic accident on the way to Westercon in Las Vegas killed Roberta Carlson, the driver, and injured the other passengers and, on the other side of the country, the very talented Thomas M. Disch committed suicide. The New York Times article gives an overview. Following Mike Glyer’s coverage in his File 770 blog and the blossoming links is pretty powerful. Disch’s own Is Thomas Disch the Right God for You? LiveJournal entry on June 24th is sad and ironic and the world is so full of pain.

Personally, a good friend’s father also died. Grab someone you love and give ‘em a hug - we’ve got to appreciate each other while we can.

Cannot Go Home Anymore

(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 6/12/2008)

Cannot Go Home Anymore

Feeling awkward and clumsy
and fallen from grace
the doors and the windows are closed in my face
I feel displaced
all the locks have been changed
and we cannot go home anymore

The woman is awkward
the child is wise
so look at this placed through those innocent eyes
they don’t see the lies
that live in the woodwork
and we cannot go home anymore

I wish that I could do without it
sing and laugh and shout about it
wish I could see through the walls
and the curtain calls
that put on this show
but no–
The lighting is different
you can see that at a glance
and, standing divided, we’re trying to dance
they’ve sealed the past
revealed at last
that we cannot go home anymore

written by Lynn Maudlin; © Moonbird Music Co. 1974, all rights reserved

When I was 22 my parents moved from Los Angeles to San Diego, selling the house I grew up in. I have faint, fleeting memories, only flashes really, of the house we lived in the first scant two years of my life so, for practical purposes, I’d lived my whole childhood in this house. I literally got married in this house, at the tender green age of 17 to my high school boyfriend; a friend of the family played the love theme from Romeo and Juliet on the baby grand piano in the living room; later we all sat down to a dinner of cornish game hens.

It was a terrific house: five bedrooms, seven bathrooms (well, five full baths and two half baths) on a corner lot in Los Feliz. Summer evening traffic was a pain because we were on the Greek Theatre route but we knew how to drive to avoid the worst of it. It was lovely to be able to walk up the hill to attend most of the Crosby, Stills & Nash concerts (Neil Young was added between the booking and the gigs), either by an employee-friend letting us in, or patrons leaving after hearing Joni Mitchell (yes, she opened for the boys), or in the trees if need be…

It had a large lot with plenty of room for a swimming pool but my parents weren’t interested. In fact, there had been a pool in the house when first built, a therapeutic pool for a wheel-chair bound owner, in the middle of the patio. We called it “the patio” in accordance with the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition:

The Spanish word patio refers to the roofless inner courtyard that forms the center of the house in many parts of the Spanish-speaking world. In English, however, the word has come to have a broader meaning and can also refer to paved spaces that adjoin a house. Patio first appears in English in the 1700s in descriptions of houses in the Spanish-speaking world.

My parents remodeled the kitchen and dining room, adding a sliding glass door from kitchen to patio as well as a wet counter with a pass-through window, making it very easy to have outdoor buffets; after that we often ate outdoors at a small table round table, even breakfast throughout much of the year.

It was a great space for parties. I remember my dad inviting many people from his work at the Naval Ordinance Test Station to watch Neil Armstrong step onto the moon on July 20th of 1969. My dad and older brother managed to lug the massive color television set up onto the roof, facing the patio, and we set up chairs and folding chairs and maybe even borrowed chairs so we could all watch that incredible event. I was already pregnant, although no one knew and I wouldn’t be sure for another few weeks.

After Pete and I got married we moved into the “rumpus room” - it was a massive room with a separate entrance and bath (–of course!); the single-story house was situated on a gentle slope so this room was on the downside at the back of the house, about two feet below ground level at its entrance and probably 6 feet below ground level at the deepest point. This made it a naturally cool room, very pleasant in the summer. My folks had a 21-foot travel trailer parked behind the house, about 15 feet from the rumpus room door and we used its little kitchen. We lived there for eight or nine months while we both graduated from high school (I skipped ahead to graduate in February, seven months pregnant, and Pete graduated, president of the senior class, in June. I brought our son to the graduation ceremony; we were a big hit). I remember timing my labor in that room, finally waking Pete at midnight on a school night (!!) to say, “I think you’d better drive me to the hospital now.” Seven hours later our son was born.

My grandparents had moved out from Iowa about 6 years earlier and bought a house a mile or so away, a “triplex” - a three bedroom house on the bottom and two one bedroom apartments upstairs; when one of their tenants moved out, we were offered the vacant apartment at no increase of rent, I don’t remember if it was $75 or $80 per month. We took it gratefully and that’s where we were living when the big Sylmar Earthquake hit in February of 1971.

I remember the sound of the timber tearing, a soft roaring sound, and of course the insistent rattling of the windows. Every aftershock brought that window-rattling and for days my adrenaline would punch skyhigh; this was my first fear-of-death experience, the first time I really believed I might die - and I had absolutely no control over it.

I couldn’t stand being in the apartment so we bundled into the car and drove up to my folks’ house, my old home. It just felt more solid (well, it was more solid) and I was there when a Navy operator managed to get through the jammed phone lines, checking on our well-being for Dad, who was on one of his frequent business trips back to D.C.

Some eighteen months later, I moved back into that house with my son and lived there for a school year (August or September to June of 1973). My folks did an admirable job of letting me have some autonomy without entirely compromising their boundaries and standards; looking back at it I’m very impressed, although I didn’t have the maturity to appreciate it at the time. I made a close friend at L.A.C.C. and we rented a bizarre little apartment together: it was the upstairs of four garages with a stairway up the middle, two large rooms on either side in the front, a small bedroom, a bathroom with no door and the kitchen on the backside. Beth took the northern front room and I took the southern front room and my son took the little bedroom; I painted a concentric rainbow on his ceiling and stippled the color gradations - it was really beautiful.

We had a wild and woolly time for a bit more than a year, as I recall, and then that same upstairs apartment in my grandparents house became available again; I moved back.

My parents owned a lot with two houses on it, maybe a mile and a quarter from their home; the long-term tenants moved out of the front house concurrent with some friends looking for a rental property so Beth’s older brother and his wife and my son and I moved into this three bedroom house and I was living there when my folks decided to move to San Diego.

It wasn’t entirely their choice; the Navy Lab in Pasadena was closing and relocating to Point Loma and it wasn’t thinkable for my dad not to go; after all, he had all those computers to move and a couple of hundred people working for him at this point. The housing market had boomed in San Diego and was soft in L.A. - it took them more than a year to sell the Los Feliz home; I remember my dad getting nervous about the possibility of not selling it within the window for the rollover capital gains exclusion (that would have been disastrous).

During this time I did some of the care of the property. My former roommate Beth’s other older brother moved into the small front bedroom of my old home and kept the lawn mowed and the house occupied while real estate agents brought clients in and out and tried to sell the place.

Somewhere early in that window I wrote this song, Cannot Go Home Anymore, with apologies to Thomas Wolfe whose novel You Cannot Go Home Again was published posthumously in 1940. Writing the song was the way I processed the loss of this massive, solid, amazing house that I’d lived in for nearly 18 years of my life and around whose gravitational pull I’d orbited in every successive and intervening move. There were nine moves in less than eight years, all but one in the same zip code.

Real Love in C.S. Lewis

(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 5/27/2008)

or Pullman be damned!

My friend Diana wrote a fabulous blog entry called Lewis the Lover at C.S. Lewis: Original works on and about C.S. Lewis, a blog sponsored by HarperOne.

I am in fact joking about Philip Pullman; I genuinely hope he isn’t damned. I just find his angry vehemence against C.S. Lewis and Narnia to be weird and poisonous; anyone who proclaims himself the anti-CSL isn’t going to have much appeal for me personally.

God's Dilemma

(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 5/15/2008)

Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel, saying, “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands.” 1 Samuel 15:10-11

How can God regret doing something?

This isn’t the first time we see God express regret; the first time is Genesis 6:6-7 which says The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” This is problematic, if one believes God (as I do) when He says, “I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’.” Isaiah 46:9-10

If God knows the end from the beginning, being Creator God outside the constraints of the time domain, why would He do anything He would regret? Would He not foresee His regret? Perhaps God doesn’t foresee His own emotional responses or, more likely, His emotional reactions are not the basis on which He makes decisions (what a thought— would that we all had that capacity).

Maybe ‘regret’ (nacham) doesn’t fully encompass His thinking, His emotions – or at least doesn’t for us. Certainly Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us that God’s thoughts and ways are not our thoughts and ways; perhaps this post is simply folly because I’m pondering things that I cannot know. At the same time, God invites us to know Him better, to enter in, to strive to come into agreement with Him.

But I think it may be related to the fact that God values freewill; He lets us make our choices even when they hurt us. He tells us what is good, what is the way of life and blessing versus the way of death and cursing, and He exhorts us to “choose life that you might live” but He doesn’t impose that choice upon us.

So, despite the fact that God sees the end from the beginning, God lets us go through the experience. He doesn’t sit at the beginning and judge humanity, choosing some and damning some based upon His foreknowledge. If He did, we would of course cry out, “That’s not fair! I haven’t done anything!” We go through the painful and joyful reality of life and freedom to make stupid and glorious choices.

This is always a poignant and delicate area for me: I married at 25 under the firm conviction that God told me to marry this man. This man wasn’t my ‘type’, this man didn’t make my heart catch in my throat or my stomach drop out from under me (those indicators I sought in the past, looking for chemistry) – but this man was a professing Christian, a virtuous man, a man who ardently pursued me (warts and all, divorced with child and all), an intelligent man, a funny man, an excellent musician with whom I enjoyed playing and performing and attending concerts. This man asked God to give me to him for a wife – and God granted that request.

Now this man might look at it and think, “why did I ever ask such a thing?” – if this man does any self-examination at all, which I suspect is not the case. But that would be his blog, not mine. I look at it and ask, “God, why did you tell me (invite me, anyway) to marry this man knowing that he would blindside me 17 years later, that he would blow up the marriage in as destructive a way as he could manage?”

And maybe, just maybe, it relates to this Saul thing– that God, rejected by Israel from being King over them, gave them Saul because they wanted a king (and Saul appeared to be kingly; he was an imposing figure) – so Samuel anoints Saul and prophesies to him and concludes with, “Then the Spirit of the LORD will come upon you mightily, and you shall prophesy with them and be changed into another man.” 1 Samuel 10:6

Saul was given the opportunity to be a godly king over Israel; God put His Spirit upon him and changed him into another kind of man, but Saul continually made choices inconsistent with God’s clear direction (via Samuel) and will (evident in the Torah) – so at a certain point God removed His Spirit from Saul (Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD terrorized him. 1 Samuel 16:14 — a truly terrifying thought) and He removed His blessing from Saul as the anointed king of Israel.

A year or so into the long, grievous divorce process God showed me that our marriage had the opportunity to be a good thing, He had a vision for our marriage – but we weren’t faithful to that vision and finally He redeemed out of the marriage that which was willing to be redeemed. Thus far that’s me. I hope one day it will include my ex – but it hasn’t yet; God has shown me specific things that will mark that redemption. Not things I’m looking forward to, btw, except in the sense that they’re signs of that redemption.

Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death; for Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel. (1 Samuel 15:35 to end of the chapter).

Tags: Bible questions, divorce, freewill, marriage, pondering

The Immorality of Narcissism: Christopher Dorner

I've been tracking this story since before we knew Christopher Dorner was the suspected killer; the first victim, Monica Quan (with her fiance Keith Lawrence), was the daughter of a fellow high-school student and our alumni community was horrified by the tremendous loss. It has only become more painful as Dorner's 'manifesto' has come out and made clear that he was targeting Randal Quan by killing his daughter. I don't want to focus on Dorner except as an exemplar of horrific morality: the morality of self-exaltation. The first example I see is from Genesis 4:23-24.

Lamech said to his wives, "Adah and Zillah, listen to my voice, you wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me; and a boy for striking me; if Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold."

This Lamech (there are several in the Bible) has exalted himself above everyone else: a man wounded him, so he killed the man; a boy hit him, so he killed the boy and he feels justified in doing it because he is of more value than anyone else.

Narcissism is our natural state; we are born narcissists and must learn that our wants and needs are not the only wants and needs. People often talk about babies as born "good" but I don't believe that-- babies are born innocent, not "good." We must be taught what "goodness" is and we must be willing to let go of some of our complete self-absorption in order to become "good."

This immediately raises the question: who is the arbiter of "good"? Or "just" or "fair" or "right"? This murderer, like Lamech, believes that he was right to murder the daughter (and her fiance) of a man who disappointed him and let him down. He sees himself as a victim in all this. I don't believe any thinking American can agree with Dorner that it's appropriate to murder the child of a man who he blames for losing his job with the LAPD because, if it is justified for him to take vengeance against an innocent party because she is related to someone he hates, then none of us are safe from such summary judgments, nor are our children.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?" I remember the first time I read that scripture and took it personally. I was in my early 20s and I rejected it completely: "not MY heart!" It took the better part of two decades to recognize the truth God speaks in that passage: our hearts are deceitful and self-serving, Dorner's heart is deceitful and self-serving-- he has habitually viewed the world as unfair to him and thus whatever he does to get back at the world is fair and killing the child of the man he blames for losing his job is right.

So, if we cannot trust our own hearts to guide us in what is right and wrong, what can we trust? What higher authority is there, beyond our hearts?

I've often heard people speak disparagingly of God's mandate-- "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" (Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20)-- as brutal and barbaric but, in the light of Lamech's narcissism, it is a law of balance: no, you may not kill a man for injuring you, you may not kill a boy for hitting you, you may not murder the daughter of the man who disappointed you in an administration hearing. And by God's law, Dorner would die for committing murder. I hope he does. I hope he meets his Maker, having repented of his self-absorption and all his sins; I don't wish he goes to hell, although he may well. It strikes me as ironic that our society is so reluctant to judge criminals, that we're so quick to listen to excuses ("bad childhood," "abuse," "psychological damage") and act like we have more mercy than God (!!) but, at the same time, we're so fast to tell people to go to hell. Better we should judge rightly here and allow God to determine the ultimate disposition of the soul.

Mormons To Christians To Jews

This is an update on a blog I wrote in March, 2009, about why John McCain became, by default, the Republican candidate for President rather than the very impressive Mitt Romney. Some folks are still angry with Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, for asking (disingenuous? I really don’t know, perhaps he was genuinely ignorant) questions about what Mormons believe.

Let me say at the outset, I don't vote based on theology and I'd be surprised if many people do. At the same time, if Mitt Romney becomes the Republican candidate in 2012, there will be a huge media storm about the LDS church and my opinion is that Mormon candidates for office would be better served by being upfront about the differences rather than pretending they don't exist.

For a lot of people, this is a ridiculous debate: “Of course Mormons are Christians! They believe in Jesus!”

But for people who pay attention to theology it’s not about the word “Jesus” or even believing that a person lived and died and rose again about 2,000 years ago – it’s about who you think that person was and what you think he did. So the meaning of the word is the critical part, not the word itself.

Traditional Christianity has embraced and taught from the beginning that God is a Triune Being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and the Three together comprise God. This is one of the places that Christianity separates from its Jewish roots: Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” and understands it to mean the Triune God but Jews focus on “one” and say, “No, God can’t be a Trinity.” Obviously, as a Christian, I believe the two can be reconciled – but that discussion isn’t the topic of this post.

The LDS don’t believe in the Trinity; they don’t believe in eternal unchanging God; the Mormons believe that God was once a man and that a perfectly realized Mormon man has the potential to become god in his own future creation. This is radically different from either the Christian or Jewish view of God’s eternal and unchanging nature, “Who Was and Is and Is To Come.”

Normative (“orthodox” with a little “o”) Christianity believes that Jesus is the second Person of the Trinity, that He has been God and with God from eternity past to eternity future, always and forever. John says it beautifully in the first chapter of his gospel:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." (John 1:1-4)

Obviously that is not the Jewish view of Jesus or God and, fair enough, they’re not Christians, of course they don’t believe what Christianity teaches. But it’s not the Mormon view, either. According to LDS theology, Jesus and Lucifer are both spirit sons of God the father (who was once a man), and each came up with a plan to reconcile fallen humanity with God, and God preferred the plan of his son Jesus over the plan of his son Lucifer, who took offense.

Now I don’t know much about what Mormons believe happened to Lucifer, after God rejected his plan, and it’s not relevant to my point. The fact that Mormon theology believes Jesus and Lucifer are equal beings prior to the incarnation makes the Mormon Jesus very, very different from the normative Christian Jesus. The fact that the Mormon Jesus wasn’t with God from the beginning makes him very, very different from the normative Christian Jesus.

Details regarding the conception of Jesus, the scope of the forgiveness Jesus achieved on the cross, and the Person of the Holy Spirit all show a significant difference between Mormon beliefs and orthodox Christian beliefs.

Simply using the name “Jesus” while pointing to the historical figure and saying, “we believe in THAT guy,” doesn’t mean we believe the same things about “that guy.” Christianity believes that Jesus is Creator and Lucifer is part of the created order; they have never been equal or equivalent beings. In and of itself, the different understandings of God and Jesus, who they are, their history and their relationship, are sufficient to mark a vast gulf between the two religions.

My analogy is that the Mormon faith is to Christianity as Christianity is to Judaism. Christians embrace the Hebrew scriptures (although, to be fair, many Christians are greatly ignorant of the Hebrew scriptures and some suffer confusion about the very nature of the “old testament God” – but those are personal limitations and not reflected by normative Christian theology) and then add the new testament, the gospels and epistles. Likewise the Mormons embrace the Christian bible (old and new testament) and add another gospel and additional books that form specific Mormon theology. I am told by Mormon friends that they are discouraged from reading the Bible, that it is considered inferior to the LDS scriptures. Joseph Smith was told by his angelic source that none of the churches were rightly following Jesus and he needed to form a new one. So he did.

I think the LDS and Mitt Romney in particular would be better served to acknowledge that they are Mormon and, while the religion has similarities with normative Christianity, it is significantly different. In my opinion Christians shouldn’t try to pass themselves off as Jews and Mormons shouldn’t try to pass themselves off as Christians, at least not as unqualified Christians – it looks deceptive to people who know something about the two theologies.

It’s a truth-in-advertising, accuracy-in-labeling question. And inadvertent misrepresentation could explode the candidacy of a Mormon.

Now, does any of this theology have any bearing on the suitability of Mitt Romney to be President? No, of course not. We're not voting for "Theologian in Chief," we're voting for "Commander in Chief." Would Romney's LDS beliefs have any bearing on his ability to do a good job as President? No (and, arguably, they could have a positive bearing: Mormon males are under a lot of pressure to live excellent and exemplary lives; there is no "cheap grace" in LDS theology). Would religious holidays in the White House take on a different flavor? Sure.

So what? This is the United States of America and we very purposefully chose not to establish a state religion. One of the consequences of that (wise) decision is that we've had Presidents from a variety of Christian traditions. And, in the larger sense, being Mormon certainly grows up out of the Christian tradition even while it is not traditional Christianity.

Are there religions which would prevent me from voting for a candidate? Yes, if the religion embraced a different set of values. I don't know that I could vote for a Muslim because the religion is inherently political; Islam doesn't see a separation between mosque and state. I wouldn't vote for a satanist. Would I vote for an atheist? If their values were solid and I believed they were the best person for the job, yes. If Mitt Romney is the conservative nominee most likely to win the general election, he should be the candidate.