Sheep and Goats

Division, as we learned in the previous post, is central to Mormon attitudes toward their children, their congregations, and toward the rest of the world of "non-Mormons." It's not enough, though, I think, to simply condemn the act of division itself as inconsistent with the teachings of Jesus.

This afternoon, as I was discussing with my mother a case in which a girl had "returned" to activity in the church after a period of co-habitation with her boyfriend, my mom pointed out that the Mormons who kick their children out have many examples from God of the behavior. After all, it was God who kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden for eating some fruit. God flooded the earth, drowning all but a single family and the animals they managed to bring on board with them. The Jews in their war on Canaan did not just kill all the men, women, children and animals out of bloodlust; the Lord himself had commanded it. The list goes on.

Most of those who believe in Jesus, however, place their hope and faith in his decidedly more meek, gentle, loving gospel. Mormons, in their own right, even go so far as to believe that much of the Bible is not, in fact, the word of God but is only correct insofar as it is "translated correctly."

Still, it's not like Dallin Oaks just made up that scripture in Luke about Jesus coming to divide father against son and mother against daughter. Similar quotes are scattered throughout the Gospels and, indeed, throughout the Hebrew Bible. It isn't a question of whether Jesus intends to divide, it's a question of who gets in and who gets out.


My problem with the church is that their answer, that the sexually pure and those who proclaim the Book of Mormon to be true and those who manage to remember tokens and signs and names given within the private walls of LDS temples and are "sealed" together in the bonds of holy marriage therein, are the ones, and emphatically the only ones, who get in.

Hence you have the harshest punishments meted out in the church against those who have engaged in sexual behavior before, or outside of, marriage. I mean, if you're out to save souls, and you really believe that your souls have to get married to be saved, you better provide some serious disincentives against sex before marriage. Because, obviously, if sex is the carrot to induce the kiddies to marriage, it's a damn effective, delicious carrot. Right?


I remember well serving as president of the quorum of elders in my singles branch while I attended law school, and how, at any given time, at least a third of the single men in my keep were forbidden from partaking in the body and blood of Christ, from speaking up in lessons, or assisting in the ministry in any capacity whatsoever, as a result of their sexual sins (from masturbating in private, to slipping in a little tongue with a girl, to actually doing what normal young people do with each other in the heat of passion). Earlier, when I was in college, our local "area authority seventy" (as he was called at the time) advised us that the brethren taught that "Any bishop of a singles ward who doesn't hold disciplinary councils at least once a week isn't doing his job."

The problem is that there's no rational basis in the Mormon canon for this fanatical attack on sex and for the cult of marriage that motivates it. The most frequently cited justification for the Mormon war against its members' reproductive instincts is found in The Book of Mormon:

"Know ye not, my son, that these things [LDS leaders insert here: "sexual activities"] are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost?" Alma 39:5

The lesson here: Having sex is so bad you'd have to murder someone to do worse.

Physically assaulting your wife and children isn't as bad as extra-marital sex. Brutally attacking and beating a young gay man bloody may be bad (or not), but definitely not as bad as what goes on at prom night between consenting, horny teenagers. Torture is probably top ten, but definitely not one or two or three. Turning your back on the needy and sanctioning poverty? Your guess is as good as mine, but I can promise you that not once in the history of Mormonism has a person been denied communion in the body of Jesus for failure to pay a generous fast offering.

The question here is not whether Mormons really believe this. It's repeated so often in church that there's no doubt that from top to bottom, Mormons take as an article of their faith that consensual sex between unmarried partners is next to murder in severity.

But does that passage in The Book of Mormon actually mean that? Alma, after all, does not say that "Extra-marital sex is most abominable above all things except the shedding of innocent blood." He says "these things" are.

What are "these things?"

Starting with verse two of chapter 39 of Alma:

" 2...Now this is what I have against thee; thou didst go on unto boasting in thy strength and thy wisdom.
3 And this is not all, my son. Thou didst do that which was grievous unto me; for thou didst forsake the ministry, and did go over into the land of Siron among the borders of the Lamanites, after the harlot Isabel.
4 Yea, she did steal away the hearts of many; but this was no excuse for thee, my son. Thou shouldst have tended to the ministry wherewith thou wast entrusted.
5 Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost?"

So, was Alma really saying that his son's great crime was simply having sex?

Hardly.

Alma's son apparently went around bragging about how smart and "wise" he was as a missionary, then, succumbing to his hormones, ran after a "harlot" and carried on what apparently became a well-known public affair with her. Not only that, but he did so while on a mission with his father to the "Zoramites," a group of dissenters from Alma's people, whose leaders, seeing the hypocrisy of Alma's own son, managed to use that to stir up their people to an alliance with the neighboring Lamanites, which culminated in a massive civil war that waged for decades.

Of course, blaming a horny young man's affair with a prostitute for a civil war isn't exactly fair, either, in my book (although if Alma really believed that his son had a significant role in what turned into a massive, bloody war, perhaps the harsh condemnation is understandable). But using a personal conversation the horny young man had with his father, who was also the spiritual and former military leader of his people, as justification to scare off ordinary, modern teenagers and college kids from having sex, by incorporating, as policy, large-scale, fanatical punishments, is more than a small departure from context.


Sure, you can blame the gross misreading on the Mormon practice of calling up the vast majority of their spiritual leaders from the ranks of Corporate America, where textual analysis isn't exactly in the core curriculum leading to an MBA, or in the qualifications for a plush seat in the CEO's office. Go out on a limb and blame it on the cult of marriage that has been a part of Mormon doctrine and policy since Joseph Smith's days in Nauvoo, trying, while fucking other mens' wives, to justify his behavior, ironically, by pointing to the absolute, irrefutable requirement that men and women marry in order to gain entrance to the "highest degree of glory" in the Celestial Kingdom (actually, it's not going very far out on that limb to blame it on that).

However, and on whomever and whatever, you blame it, don't blame it on Mormons' basic understanding and invocation of the words of Jesus himself. After all, Jesus, while elsewhere condemning adultery, pretty clearly and consistently provided the overall criteria by which he would divide saints from sinners, sheep from goats:

" 31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his aright hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his aright hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."
-Matthew 25: 31-46