Ok everyone, strap in because we're talking about social issues, this time. We think the economy is controversial but it doesn't hold a candle to these doozies. If you didn't get to read my first blog in this series, check it out. It's about economics and how God's plan would define the perfect economic system. Today I'm going to explore how God's plan relates to social issues in politics to see if I can determine where the true answers lie on the conservative-liberal spectrum. My hope is that this can help me decide which party to support in the coming election. We'll see if this works. I will be splitting this one into two sections. As I wrote it, it got pretty long.
Abortion: Let's start with my favorite topic, abortion. It's probably the most controversial of these, except maybe gay marriage but abortion is the one I'm most passionate about and this is my blog so I'm making it first. Being a strict pro-lifer, I've never given the choice issue the weight that maybe it deserves in the debate. Life and choice seem completely contradictory. But, recently I have been considering one of the most important principles of the gospel, at least from a Mormon perspective and that is free agency. We, Mormons, believe that is one of the great laws that even God will not bend. He will not disturb someone's free agency, even if someone is going to die because of someone else's choices. So, how does this play into the abortion issue? That's a tough one.
Of course we have to start with life and the great value of it in God's plan. Taking someone's life is not only breaking God's law, we consider it the most egregious sin, except for denying the Holy Ghost outright. So, if you believe that life begins somewhere in the womb, and not once the fetus emerges, and you define yourself as a Christian, I don't see how you could not believe that taking that life is a great sin, especially considering the innocence of the child. There is nowhere in the time of the pregnancy which it would be considered safe to have an abortion and still be within God's law because we have no idea at what point God sends His child's spirit into the growing body. On top of that, if you believe as we do that we come to this Earth to learn, be tested and gain experience in this life, abortion takes all those opportunities away from a brother or sister spirit. There are several scriptures against killing - I'm sure we know them well:
"Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13, and repeated in 9 different places within the Bible, Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants)
"Wo unto the murderer who deliberately killeth" (2Nephi 9:35)
"He that kills shall not have forgiveness" (D&C 42:18)
But what of choice? From the very beginning, Adam and Eve, God has emphasized choice - "Of every tree...thou mayest freely eat" (Genesis 2:16). Does this mean that we should have the freedom to choose abortion? That the law should not hinder that choice? Let's read further in that same chapter in Genesis: "But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die." (Genesis 2:17) God is clearly giving the law and the consequence of breaking that law. So, we see that clearly God believes in laws and their consequences. But, that doesn't answer the deeper question- whether a man-made government has the right to make such a law. There are actually some scriptures that address this, or at least our responsibility to keep those laws:
"Be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates" (Titus 3:1)
"And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me." (D&C 98:5)
So, it would seem that God accepts governments, and their making of laws - as long as they are constitutional and supporting freedom and rights. The question of whether a law against abortion is unconstitutional is basically one of opinion and depending on the members of the court who hear it, could be different. But, that matters less than the right that a government has to ban abortion.
So, it comes down to this, in my view: abortion is against God's law and thus, should be against human law, as well. Women have a choice, a God-given freedom of agency to break God's law, whether there is a man-made law in place or not. It does not take away a woman's choice any more than the law against murder keeps a killer from making that choice. The only difference is that there are earthly consequences as well as heavenly ones to making that choice.
There is a group that I subscribe to called Feminists for Life that advocates greater support for women who find themselves pregnant unexpectedly. They, as I, believe that if these women had greater financial, emotional and moral support, there would be no more need for abortion. These women would have a better choice to either keep the baby or put him/her up for adoption. They recognize that abortion does neither the baby or the woman any good and most of the time women greatly regret the decision. I believe this is the answer that fits in God's plan. There should be a man-made law that matches God's law to give every child a chance to live - no exceptions as in God's plan there would not be any. Along with this law, there should be immense, government supported help for any woman who is surprised by a pregnancy. Our culture and society should open their hearts and arms to these ladies to help them make the right choice and to support that choice through encouraging the father's support, encouraging colleges to provide services so women can complete their education, workplaces to provide child care and other needed services so women can keep working if they want and need to. Most of all, society needs to reject any stigma against an unwed mother that may still be lingering and especially any stigma against putting a child up for adoption so that this choice is viable and preferable.
On the spectrum of right/left, I think this answer falls to the right because of their support for a law. I have yet to see either side take up a policy for greater support for unwed mothers to prevent abortion. Tell your party to be the first!!
Gay Marriage: Maybe even more explosive than abortion, gay marriage has proven to gain support more and more every year. It is likely to be legalized everywhere one day. But, should it? As Christians, should we be considering God's plan when voting on this divisive issue? It is one that feels good to support. Everyone deserves love and to spend their lives with the one they love without fear of losing valuable privileges that are given to other couples. We are told to love one another so does opposing gay marriage mean you are a bigot? These are all questions that I think can be answered by the gospel and God's plan for us as we live on this earth.
We all know that the scriptures denounce the practice of homosexuality (Lev. 18:22, 1 Tim 1:10, 2 Ne. 13:9) But, we must balance that with the second greatest commandment "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Matt 5:43 and in ten other scriptures) and what Christ taught "A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another" (John 13:34 and in at least 4 other scriptures). So, how do we love our brothers and sisters who are homosexual without condoning their actions? And, is the issue of gays having the opportunity to marry even our business?
God's plan is clear that the nuclear man/woman based family is how it should be, based on his commandments, for multiplying and replenishing the earth (Gen. 1:28 a commandment we still believe to be in force, as stated in the Mormon document "The Family A Proclamation to the World") and for the ideal balance of gender qualities it brings to a family. This is the ideal that is expressed in the proclamation: "Marriage between a man and woman is essential to His eternal plan." Further, the Proclamation describes the sacred gender roles that a father and mother have in the family and how those are critical to the best way to rear children:
"By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners."
"Disability, death, or other circumstances may necessitate individual adaptation", it says. But, the ideal is clear and we should consistently support the ideal, even if it doesn't always happen.
Further, Mormons and Christians believe in the sacred nature of procreation. We literally work with God to create bodies for his child spirits to inhabit. Misusing that sacred power is troubling to Him, to say the least. As Christians, we must support God's plan in every way, including in the voting booth. If we don't, we will have to face Him one day and account for our own actions.
However, His law is also very clear that we should love everyone, including those with whose lifestyle we don't agree. We must also allow them the same free agency that I spoke of above. Everyone is on this Earth to deal with the physical, emotional, mental and sexual qualities that God gave them and not only are we not to judge others and their actions, we are to love and support them where we can - where we are not violating our own values. This means we should not be hindering their legal rights as a couple, in fact, compassion dictates that they should be allowed to visit one another in hospitals, should be allowed to be each other's beneficiaries in whatever benefits or legal processes they're involved in. If they want tax breaks as married couples have, fine - allow that. It doesn't hurt anyone and shows the love and compassion the Savior would have for them. Those are things of Caesar and of governments and if government makes these things legal, then I would happily support them.
I think God's plan is very clear on how we are to get along in this world with one another. Live and let live where we can but we should not promote an institutionalized practice that is counter to His plan and His will for us on this Earth. Again, my belief is His plan is for us to vote against gay marriage but accept and love all people as our brothers and sisters - as they truly are.
I don't think either party has addressed this issue appropriately. Though the right tends to believe in marriage only between a man and woman, they also tend to lack the compassion and support they should be giving to those who have same-sex relationships or the ability to compromise so they can have legal rights that married couples have. The left seems to ignore the ideal of the nuclear family in favor of allowing gay marriage. On this issue, I declare a draw. We need to go back to the drawing table and come up with a system that shows the love and compassion that gay couples need and deserve while still setting apart marriage for heterosexual couples.
Next time, I'll try to tackle the death penalty, stem cell use and euthanasia - what fun topics, huh? :\ Well, hopefully we're all getting something out of this. Feel free to argue with me and express your opinion. Who knows you might change my mind! ;-)
And, in case you missed it, here's a link to part one of my series of God's Plan in Politics - the Economy.
5 comments:
Wow, you are certainly delving deeply into these topics, Jen! I appreciate your thoughtful arguments - and I think it's cool that you're offering them to folks as conversation starters. Certainly you and I have had many lengthy debates on these issues!
While I wouldn't presume to tackle each topic you raise in this post, I would draw your attention to one thing you write: "God accepts governments, and their making of laws - as long as they are constitutional and supporting freedom and rights." I wonder if you risk advancing a circular argument with this statement ("as long as they are constitutional").
The Constitution may have been inspired by God (I don't hold to that claim, but I understand why many folks do). If this is the case, there should be no conflict between human law and God's will. But if the Constitution is strictly a legal/political document than your argument may chase its own tail.
That being said, I see that you nuance this claim by adding the clause "and supporting freedom and rights." There again, though, the argument may strain when these values are forced into competition (eg., "my freedom" vs. "your rights").
Chances are, I'm confusing the issue. If so, I can count on you to clear things up! Either way, I'm excited to see you working through these thorny issues, and I await your next post...
You make excellent points, Andy. I believe the constitution was inspired by God but not written by Him -as in the authors are not prophets but men inspired to do the best they could in writing the document. I think my point, and maybe I wasn't clear enough, was that God respects the government's authority to make its own constitution and laws and we should follow them. If those laws are wrong or against God's laws, we should work to change them but still follow them as long as they're in place.
You're right about freedom and rights, too. There is certainly a balance that needs to be struck and the overarching influence on law should be God's plan but as we are fallible humans creating these laws, we will probably never fully mesh our laws with His. We then are left to do the best we can to balance people's freedoms with others' rights, while trying to do God's will.
Part One:
I don't address the issue of abortion. If there is any issue in life about which I am decidedly and fervently agnostic, abortion is it. I'm not a woman and I will never face that choice. I can hope that each and every woman will think long and hard and eventually make the right choice, but I say that without having the remotest idea of what that right choice is. Being a man, I have the luxury of stopping there and so I'm very happy to do so.
But I do have some ideas on gay marriage. I do have an idea on how to solve it; and as with most things, in order to best understand how to solve a social problem, the first thing to do is to take a serious look at how we got here:
Men and women have always come together as couples and that has formed the primary foundation of our culture. Formalizing that 'coming together' within a religious context happened right along with the development of religion, and marriage has remained long been considered part and parcel of religion, and I can't think of a single valid argument to counter that. Marriage has always belonged to the church, and to force a church to regard marriage in a fashion against its own doctrines is an abuse of governmental power. It tramples upon religious liberty (and is thus unconstitutional), and should not be tolerated. When 5% of a population identifies with homosexuality within themselves, that segment of the population, no matter how dear and precious many of those people may be individually to those of us who are heterosexual, the fact is that they are just not driving the culture. There's no malice in that statement. It's just a fact.
But returning to one of your points Jenny, I want to point out something that you are 100% correct on, and that's the fact that it is not up to any of us to tell others that they must live their lives according to religious doctrine that they don't believe in. That is also unconstitutional. As a result, to tell people who have decided to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their love to each other, even if it's in ways that the majority of us can't understand and which might go against our personal religious beliefs, protecting their right to enjoy the same rights we do is an example of how our Constitution and the republic established by it are designed to protect minorities from the tyranny of a democratic majority.
What all of that boils down to is one seemingly-contradictory statement, and that is, when it comes to gay marriage, both sides are completely right. So, what do we do to resolve this apparent impasse?
Part Two:
Well, to answer that, let me first puck up where I left off in the history of marriage. Marriage and the church were inextricably linked and this remained true for practically all of human history. Church was also inextricably linked to the state. Thus, you had the Roman Catholic Church functioning hand-in-hand with government, with the state. The Head of State was also the Head of the Church in that country and this was particularly acute in England where the monarch was simultaneously Head of State and Head of the Church of England. This commingling of church interests and state interests within the same (or an intertwined) hierarchy caused no end of serious problems which our founding father found a brilliant solution for in the First Amendment which effectively makes a state-approved church unconstitutional, thus preventing churches from being corrupted by government influence. (Religious liberty is meant to protect the church from an overzealous government, it was not meant to protect government from the church, but I digress.) But while the founding fathers were brilliant to make this change, we forgot to tie up loose ends, as it were. Marriage is simultaneously a religious and a legal institution. As long as the church and the state were effectively one and the same, there was no conflict. But that's no longer the case, is it? The legal institution of marriage and the religious institution of marriage should be treated separately. Marriage has always been the province of the church, and I believe it should remain so. If you and your betrothed wan to be married in the sight of God, go to your church. If you can't find a church to join you in marriage in the sight of God, then tough. And that's how the religious institution of marriage should be regarded, and it will work because...
The legal institution of marriage will be separate, perhaps called something else to distinguish it from the religious sacrament. (And no, I don't particularly care what that word is.) And here's the thing. If you want to be married in a church, to be brought together in the sight of God, great. But that doesn't mean a thing to the law. If you want a marriage that is legally binding, then you must have a legal contract that stipulates the terms of your 'marriage' just like any other social or legal contract. This would have the added benefit of removing the stigma of prenuptial agreements, as everyone will have one, and it will only be the terms that will change for each couple.
And this way, homosexual couples that want the benefit of the legal protections afforded to heterosexual couples today, that should become very attainable once the church is given sole discretion over the institution of marriage and the legal institution is allowed to stand on its own under the law. And we won't have the ambiguity of 'civil unions' to deal with because EVERYONE, regardless of whether they have a church marriage or not, will still have to follow the same legal process to be covered under the law.
Tristan, your plan sounds reasonable to me. It would require a separation of the ordinances, as they are now, because the legal one requires some sort of ceremony. I would think to make it separate enough, the legal document would simply require a signature, like all legal contracts and the ceremony would be optional and separate.
I do disagree on one thing, though and that is your assumption that marriage started with religion. Couples getting together to have children and families happened long before then - it was an institution that meant the continuation of the species and strengthening of society, which is why it is part of God's plan and homosexual relationships are not. Even before they were made official with religious ceremonies, they were a part of God's plan for us.
This does not actually change your or my plan for fixing the current earthly problem, but it does clarify why we should support marriage as the foundation of our society.
Incidentally, in Mormon gospel, it is actually a disservice to homosexuals to encourage their relationships that are outside of God's plan. You see, we believe in eternal marriage- living and progressing with our spouse forever, if we are worthy. Encouraging a behavior outside of this plan, encourages them to be unworthy of the great blessing of eternal marriage. Families created in such a way will not be families in the hereafter and how sad that would be for those people.
But, we live in the world we live in and must do our best to allow free agency and fairness. But, we should also stand firm in Christian beliefs of the sanctity of marriage and it's all-important place in God's plan.
Thank you for joining the conversation!
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