Flimsy Philosophies
We have observed a new religion seeping into the membership of the Church over the past decade. This religion is a deconstructed imitation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It copies the culture, vocabulary, and standard works of the Gospel, but waters down (and sometimes rejects outright) the foundational truths of the Gospel. If the Gospel is the healthy cows of Pharaoh's dream, then this alternate religion is the sickly cows– hollowed-out shells of the real deal. And like the emaciated kine of Pharaoh's dream, this skeleton gospel devours and destroys healthy testimonies of the true Gospel it imitates. In my experience, this counterfeit gospel has already infiltrated the testimonies of a significant percentage of western Church members.
In September, a few of my socially progressive friends asked for my thoughts on a recently published article that was making the rounds. The article made an audacious claim: that there is space within the Gospel for the Church to permit same-sex relationships– even same-sex sealings in the Temple– with only a few minor tweaks to our theology. While I've heard many advocate for a reversal of the Church's teachings on that subject, I had yet to hear a theological case for it.
I read through the article several times. It impressed me because of how clearly the author articulated the tenets of this counterfeit gospel. No personal attacks, no emotional games, no appeals to "fairness" or personal intuition, just the theology itself. If there was ever an opportunity to engage and lay out the distinctions between the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ and this rapidly growing alternate gospel, this article was it. So I expanded my original response to friends into an article I could share publicly.
The original article was a scholarly and sourced paper; it deserved a scholarly and sourced paper response. I like my blog, but it ain't exactly that kind of place 😜. So I submitted my response to the the Interpreter Journal. My article was published on Friday in Volume 54. You can read it here:
"We Don't Know, So We Might as Well": A Flimsy Philosophy for Same-Sex Sealings
I'll be posting more about this subject in the near future, stay tuned.
