Episode #259 - LGBTQ+ Issues & Covenant Desire

LGBTQ+ Issues & Covenant Desire

Transcript

Welcome to episode #259 – LGBTQ+ and Covenant Desire.  I am your host Damon Socha.  Today I am going to talk about a subject that tends to divide people.  And yet that is not my purpose.  My purpose today is to heal wounds and to understand mental health issues surrounding church members who have and work with same sex attraction.  The media has done a marvelous job of highlighting the mental health issues surrounding members of the church and LBTQ+ community.  Unfortunately, the press does not have any desire to discuss the entire issue, only the divisive part of that issue.  I think that the divisive path has been well worn.  Today, if you are going to listen, I want you to listen all the way through the episode, no matter your inclination towards the subject.  I want you to also remain open minded until it is finished and then form your opinions.

I have a deep love for individuals who work through desires that coincide with LBTQ+ issues.  They are near to my heart as they often deal with the ramifications of living the gospel with desires outside of the covenant and must battle the internal emotions that rarely help the problem.  Living with desires outside of my covenants is something I can certainly understand.

It is no secret that some of the highest levels of depression, anxiety, and mental health issues arise among Latter-day Saint youth and young adults who work with desires of same sex attraction.  It is also no secret that suicide is significantly higher compared to other youth groups.  What we find is that the turmoil surrounding the covenant breaking desires causes deep-seated trauma and pain.  The individual cannot change the desires that rise from their motivational centers anymore than one can just quit being depressed.  These emotions are more than the topical daily feelings that run our lives.  These emotions run to the core of who we are. 

Today, I am not going to take up any argument that deals with this issue of how emotions are formed in the body and how much those emotions are a make-up of culture and tradition and how much they are woven into our DNA.  For our purposes today it doesn’t matter.  Individuals who feel same sex attraction and the other emotions that coincide with LBTQ+ have real emotions.  These emotions are as driving as any emotion any human being feels.  They are as real as any emotion.  And they are deeply embedded in our bodies and difficult to remove or alter.  How do I know this?  Mental illness isn’t much different.  We feel emotions that we may not want.  Those emotions come from deep within us and really cannot be altered.  Now I am not attempting to say mental illness and LBGTQ+ issues and emotions are the same thing.  I am just comparing their strength and staying power.  One can no more change the emotions of the LBGTQ person than change the outcomes of mental illness.  What I am saying is that we should have deep compassion and understanding for those who feel these emotions and face the difficulties of living church doctrine and their covenants.

We have long-standing traditions in the church that we govern our emotions, not the other way around.  The truth of the matter is that we do in some senses control our emotions but more in the sense that we do not act upon the emotion but suppress it. Rather than fully controlling what we feel at any given time.  What we feel is a complex process of, spiritual nature, emotional history, driving core emotions, external stimulus and perhaps even some DNA influence.  Each of those factors plays a role in what we feel.  However, we tend to focus as a church on the external stimuli and spiritual nature of our emotions, discounting the role that core driving emotions and even structural elements in the brain play.  We want to say that our spiritual natures are pure coming to earth, and we can control our external circumstances.  Both of which are not likely true at least in a unique sense.

D&C tells us that we were born innocent into this world.  Meaning we would bring no sin with us as we came to earth.  Anything we did outside of our covenants was erased as we entered mortal life.  This is important as it explains a few important things about our previous life.  There would be no need to state that we are innocent when born into mortality unless we had opportunity to sin in the pre-mortal world.  And we did have the opportunity to sin and to develop spiritually to good or to evil.  That is obvious through Lucifer’s punishment.  You can’t punish someone without evil action or inaction as the case may be.  Lucifer broke covenants and commandments and was punished along with all those who were evil to a particular line of offense.  We tend to see the premortal world as good and evil but the reality is that it was much like we are now from one end of the spiritual spectrum to the other.  The spirit children of god had spiritual natures spread from Christ to Lucifer in differing shades of light.  We do come to earth innocent and pure as to our actions and absolution from previous sin in the premortal world.  But we also come with the same nature that we had previous to this life.  The significant variation in this mortal world as to spirituality attests to the fact that many differing spirits entered this earth.

Now am I saying that all LBGTQ+ issues stem from the premortal world.  No I am not.  What I am saying is that we were all very different spiritually and learned differently.  Could they have come across?  I believe so but anything we brought with us was not given to us by our Father in the sense of embedded core emotions and beliefs.  We developed those through our own actions in the premortal life.  The first and foremost problem that exists within church tradition is to state that our spirits are entirely celestial when they came here and did not come with problems that needed to be solved here.  To state that our spirits are purely celestial relegates any problem with sexuality and chastity to our mortal bodies.  It leaves no room for the idea that we might have brought something with us.  And we did bring our personalities and everything we learned with us as core emotions.  We rely upon these core emotions to tell us who we are, what we should be doing based on who we are, and how we should act in any given circumstance.  Most of all these core emotions represent our individual nature and our identity and cannot be separated from them.  This means that any emotion rising from our core nature is us.  It is who we are not just what we believe.  We feel it deeply and that is the most difficult part.  These core feelings and emotions simply do not change easily and in fact most individuals cannot change them without the power, influence and spirit that comes with covenants of the Lord.

To say that someone can just stop feeling gay or trans or lesbian or queer is not accurate.  I don’t believe that without the Lord it would be possible.  My experiences with individuals tell me that, for the most part, emotions surrounding LBGTQ+ issues run far deeper than simple mortal emotions that can be trained.  So when these emotions run to the core, we feel any attack upon those emotions with far greater intensity.  We are app to defend those core emotions to the bitter end.  Subconsciously and consciously we know when our core emotions are speaking to us.  We know the difference between a passing feeling and a deeply held emotion that continues to rise no matter how we approach it or what we do.

I think that the problem we deal with most often in the church comes about with these deeply held emotional beliefs.  What we might term our nature.  When we speak of controlling our emotions in the church most often it is in the sense of repression, the taking up of one’s cross.  And this is important to the training of our mortal body and our habits.  If we let our bodies have what it wants, we will shorten our lives dramatically.  Our mortal emotions need tempering and training to keep us balanced and this includes our sexual drive.  Too often we take our sexual drive and place it only in the sense of the mortal body.  If you keep the external stimuli away from the brain and you control your thoughts your emotions will follow.  This is the tradition of the church doctrine.  I don’t believe this to be doctrine itself but a tradition that has come of the doctrine.  While it is true that keeping stimuli away from the brain and controlling thoughts does control our actions.  Not all emotions are controlled in this manner.  A deep set of emotions exist that are far more embedded into the core of our nature.  We tend to call this our heart in the church. We know that our hearts are not entirely celestial in nature, otherwise they wouldn’t need to be turned to god, changed at the core level, or even replaced.  What we find in the church tradition is that individuals tend to focus on outward behaviors and changing behavior rather than changing nature and so it is easy to say things like just get over it.  Just stop thinking about it and it will go away.  The problem this represents is that it is damaging to those who must overcome deeper concerns in their lives.  

So often we see repentance as one and done.  And when you are working with behavior, this can often be accomplished.  We repent and don’t repeat the action.  We tend to focus on this one and done type of behavioral repentance and then extend it to everyone and everything.  However, there exist core emotions that take significant time and effort to resolve.  And some may not even get resolved in this life.  Paul was told that the Lord was not going to remove his weakness that Paul himself could not overcome.  Paul was going to need to live with it and learn from it and eventually the Lord would provide the blessing.  While repentance should be behavioral at times, any behavioral repentance should always lead to core repentance or change of nature.  If we do not change our nature, then behavioral repentance has done us no good.

So we will have in this life core emotional natures that may cause us issues throughout our lives.  The Lord may intervene and change those natures or he may allow us to learn from them.  The key to understand about this type of repentance is that it takes many years and may even take a lifetime.  Can the Lord change us in an instant?  Yes he can and perhaps some of that will occur at judgment day but he generally does not and repentance should be a much longer term process where we are examining our core emotions and beliefs and working with the Savior to make necessary changes.

What I have come to understand and what I want those who work with same sex attraction to understand is that the Lord understands the process.  He knows how to work with these difficult core emotions and how best to work with us.  We all work with different core emotional difficulties we brought with us and those we have obtained on earth.  Repentance in those cases needs a great deal of mercy and love because it is going to take time and as the Lord would likely say, it is going to take the time it needs to take.

These are individuals working through long-term concerns with motivational issues.  This type of problem just doesn’t go away.  Just like mental illness, core emotional difficulties are likely to last a life-time.  What they need is support and love.  To discard someone over one motivational emotion that they have no ability to really control does not provide any Christ-like concern.  You are casting away so much good when you do this.  It is like throwing away an entire Thanksgiving dinner because the butter doesn’t taste right.  What everyone needs who struggles with emotional motivation is someone at their side no matter the decisions they make based on those emotions. What does this mean?  For some families it may mean that they don’t discuss this issue.  I knew a family who had a child who was and still struggles with same sex attraction.  This child was not living the gospel in the sense of this law of chastity but in almost every other sense except attending church she was.  The mother and father knew that they couldn’t talk about the gospel at least in a direct sense in the home or she would not attend.  They had a family dinner every week and she was invited and made to feel welcome.  They didn’t talk about the issues from a gospel sense but they did talk about her partner and what was going on in her life.  As we discussed what was happening, I asked them.  Does your daughter know how you feel?  They answered that she did.  As their leader stated then there is not need to discuss the subject.  Think about your home and what you are inviting them into.  This is a temple where they can attend and feel the spirit.  We should consistently open our homes to our family, friends and anyone who we feel needs the spirit in their life.  Many of them will not be able to hold a recommend but they can attend your home and feel something very similar.  Those who experience same sex attraction need support not judgment and isolation.  Judgement and isolation only teach two things.  Your love and concern are conditional.  And when the individual doesn’t meet those conditions, they will be isolated.  Our Father in heaven never isolates us.  We should be far more kind to anyone who struggles with deep seated emotional concerns.  We really know so little about how the body really works from the brain’s perspective and we know even less about how our spirit interacts in that same brain.  We should be far more empathetic, loving and kind to those around us.  I do not believe we every fully know what is going on inside another person’s head but I do know one thing.  Love, compassion, concern, understanding, forgiveness and patience go along way to healing wounds and creating lasting and loving relationships.  We should allow individuals space and time to work through their concerns.  Space does not mean isolation.  Isolation indicates punishment, giving space means allowing for an individual to work through difficulties on their own without someone giving advice every 30 seconds.  Space allows the individual to work through emotional concerns with the Lord and provide a pathway for change.

I hope that my ramblings today were helpful.  I love the gospel and I love those who struggle with it even more.  LGBTQ+ issues are difficult.  I hope that you feel enough love and concern from those around you that you feel comfortable in your own skin.  I hope that you feel safe and loved.  If not and you are contemplating harm in any way, talk to someone.  I am even open if needed.  The Lord loves you and is concerned for you as he is for the prophet.  Talk to him and find someone who can support you on your path.  May the Lord bless you with peace.  Until next week.  Do your part so that the Lord can do his.