Neatly Folded

When Henry was four
His dad knelt in front of him
And put a twenty dollar bill in his pocket
“Keep this safe,” he said
It was for a fee at preschool
But it wasn’t needed
The fee got paid between adults
Henry’s dad was new at being a dad
And he got it wrong
But Henry kept the bill safe
He kept it safe anyway

It stayed in his pocket, neatly folded

And no one remembered it

Except maybe Henry

And it was washed and folded

Washed and folded

Once, twice, a hundred times

Until Henry was too big for the pants

And they were folded once more, and put away

Then Sam got bigger

The little brother

And the pants came to him

And he never noticed the money

Or if he did, he put it back

Put it back in that pocket

Carefully. It was neatly folded

He had not been given the trust

But he kept it anyway

And the pants were washed and folded

Washed and folded

Once, twice, a hundred times

Until one day the dad - Morgan, me

Was folding the pants

And I was looking for something

Something small that had been lost

And I checked the pocket

And there was the money

Twenty dollars, neatly folded

Twenty dollars, and it had been a hard week

Six years ago I didn't know
That I would be freshly divorced
And that I would have a hard week
Henry didn’t know that either
And neither did Sam
They didn’t know it would help
That it would keep my head above water
Because it was small, but kind
They didn’t know
But they kept it safe

I was grateful that day

For good sons.

11 years married, 1 month divorced

A few days ago marked eleven years since Sadi and I got married in the Mesa temple. It also marked exactly one month since the day we told our kids we were getting divorced. While our divorce isn’t legally finalized yet, it became emotionally real that day.

The kids were the last ones to know. We talked it over endlessly with each other, with friends, with family - I even talked it over with the internet, on this same blog. I am grateful for that. When we first decided to get divorced, I wanted to tell the kids right away because I hate keeping things secret from people I care about. But I am grateful for every minute I had to metabolize the decision before bringing it to my children. I am grateful that I was able to give them the clearest possible picture of why I would be moving out.

They knew right away that something big was coming when we invited them over to the dinner table for a serious family talk. We began to talk about our best-friend kind of love, and how important it is to be with someone who loves you in a romantic way. Kate covered the lower half of her face and said, “Don’t say it, don’t say it.”

I honestly thought the whole thing would go over Sam’s head. He’s five, and I didn’t think he had a concept of divorce. But even before we said the word he blurted out, “Are you going to leave us?” 

We told him that we weren’t. He started to cry. Sadi held him on her lap and I stroked his arm as we continued to talk. Toward the end he asked us if we could stop being divorced when the coronavirus stopped being dangerous. We said we couldn’t, but we promised to love him and keep him safe. We told the big kids that this was a big moment, and it was ok to have big feelings about it like the ones Sam was having. Kate asked us if we would be taking off our wedding rings. When we said yes, a single tear rolled down her cheek.

Henry listened closely as we talked about all the ways we would still be together, and how I would still be a frequent, regular part of their lives. About how we were still a family, and we still loved each other. He had immediately jumped to the worst-case scenario, which for him was that I would be completely gone. With each statement that made it clear that wasn’t going to be the case, he let out a deep breath and blinked back tears. “Ok,” he said over and over. “Ok.”

We hugged them, and promised them that we would take care of them. We moved to the couch for a while and talked about how I grew up with divorced parents and I was ok. We talked about how our family would look different from other families, but that what really makes a family is love.

Then we went to the beach. We wanted to show them that we were still together, even if it was in a different way.

The beach was a balm on all our hearts. It was a quiet, sweet day, and our kids played together in the sand and in the surf, and we watched them and silently loved them.

When we got in the car to go home, Kate asked us, “What’s the reason for the divorce again?”

The reason is simple, and we gave her the simple answer. “Mom and dad can’t love each other in a romantic way, and we both want to find someone who we can love in that way.”

Maybe when they’re older I’ll be able to explain some of the nuances to that answer, nuances that I’m still trying to tease out for myself. I think most people assume that Sadi is the driver of our decision to get divorced. But while we’re both at peace with it, I’m the one who asked for it.

All I can say for sure about why I asked for the divorce is that it felt right to me, and staying married felt wrong. That feeling came in November of last year, and has been constant since then. All along I’ve struggled to articulate why it does feel right. It’s hard to express. I didn’t feel trapped in my marriage with Sadi. And I could see that there was a part of her that would be fulfilled by staying with me. It was the part of her that had watched her grandparents stand by each other decade after decade until the very end. 

I wanted to honor that part of her, but I’m not as strong as she is. Sadi was ready to bear an enormous weight for the rest of her life, and I believe she had the capacity to follow through. But I didn’t have the capacity to watch. Sadi believed in marriage so strongly that she was willing to sacrifice more than I could really comprehend. And simply watching her prepare to make that sacrifice was just too much for me.

That doesn’t capture the whole story. Sadi and I both went to the temple and found peace with divorce. We both prayed. We went back and forth on being the one most ready to end it now as opposed to later. But I do think it captures some of it.

A little less than a week after telling the kids, I moved out. Chad had been my housemate in college, and he and his wife Sarah have a place up in Altadena with a couple of spare rooms. It is a quiet, peaceful place. Chad and Sarah are quiet, peaceful people, and it has been a blessing to be around them.

That first week of living somewhere apart from my children was the darkest week of my life so far. I saw them every day, but then I would drive back to Altadena and feel the loss in a way that felt like a great stone weight crushing me into the ground.  I would lay by myself in bed at the end of the night and weep and struggle to breathe.

I kept breathing. And eventually I slept. And I woke up each morning, and did my work from home, and then drove back to be with my kids, to eat dinner with them and to tuck them in and to sing them lullabies. The weekend came and I took custody of the kids. We’ve arranged it so that they always stay in the same house, so me taking custody just means I come over and sleep on the air mattress downstairs. 

That first Friday night, Sadi went out to talk with a friend. The kids and I were sitting at the dinner table and I had my hands folded in front of me while they ate pizza.

Sam said, “Dad, can I see both of your hands?”

I spread them out. 

“Are you not wearing your ring because you and mom aren’t married anymore but we’re still a family?” he asked, the words coming out in a single breath.

“Yes,” I said.

“But we’re still a family?”

“Yep.”

Things got a little better. I saw my kids every day over the next three weeks, until it was time for their annual summer trip - first to a place by the beach, and then to Arizona.

Seeing the kids every day was probably good for them, but it was lifesaving for me. 

Every time I showed up and they were still there, I felt that weight lighten a little. When we spent a weekend binge-watching Avatar together, I felt like I could breathe.

Sadi and I weren’t going to see each other on our anniversary, but she forgot a few things that she needed for the Arizona trip, so I drove down that night and met her at a Wendy’s halfway between here and the beach. We got Frostys and talked for a couple of minutes, then I hugged her and drove home.

She looked good. The hair at her temples has some early gray in it, and the silver against the brown makes her look both wise and beautiful. 

She doesn’t belong to me anymore, but she belongs to herself. She looked at home in her own skin. She looked like she could breathe.

I guess that makes two of us.

Tabernacles of Clay

I found out something about myself last week that made me feel more comfortable in my own skin.

The insight came from a book written by a friend and delivered into my life by God.

The book is called Tabernacles of Clay. It's by Dr. Taylor Petrey, who I attended church with for a few months fifteen years ago. In his book, he collects what the leaders of my church have said about gender and sexuality. Then he carefully and compassionately does his very best to figure out something. He tries to figure out what those leaders really believed about what it means to be a boy or to be a girl, and to be in love.

The part that hit home for me was that, in my church and my culture, being a boy is a task. And it’s a task at which, in many ways, I have failed.

I kind of missed this, in part because the attributes of an ideal boy are often implied instead of plainly listed. What I am surprised I missed, though, is the message that being a boy is something I can fail at.

Now that I see it, it's obvious. Time after time I have heard my leaders say that the differences between men and women are eroding, and that this is contrary to God’s plan. I have constantly been told that the world is becoming less gendered, that this is a bad thing, and that it is going to take great effort on my part to stop it from happening. But somehow it still didn't occur to me that the thing I was supposed to do was try harder to be more of a boy.

One reason it was easy for me to miss the call to be more masculine was the actual behavior of the leaders I knew and looked up to. Most of the ones I admired were sensitive, kind, emotional men. The classically masculine men - aggressive, abrasive, emotionally stunted - never seemed like role models to me. Despite the messaging, it was clear to me that masculinity did not correlate with morality. In fact, it kind of seemed like the opposite was true.

But what I realized in reading Taylor’s book is that even though I don’t think it is morally better to be more of a boy, how much of a boy I actually am is something I do have to take responsibility for and make decisions about. 

Intellectually I am aware that gender is socially constructed, and that it has to be performed. But it was hard to see that because of another idea about gender that I had internalized in its place.

The idea was that gender is fixed and binary, and it got talked about a lot at church. One oft-quoted statement was that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual … identity and purpose.” The way I naively interpreted it, being a boy was something that was assigned to me by biology, and so it wasn’t something I had to do anything about. Nothing I did could possibly make me anything other than a boy, so how “boyish” I was seemed irrelevant. If I wear pink, and I’m a boy, then by definition wearing pink is a thing that boys do. It’s just as “boyish” as fixing cars and having trouble talking about feelings. I didn’t dislike my body, so I had to find a way to be at peace with my gender.

But Taylor’s book made me realize that this isn’t really what was meant by that “gender is … essential” phrase. Now that I see it in the context of everything else church leaders say about gender, I can see that it’s not descriptive, it’s aspirational. Gender should be something that’s essential to my identity and purpose. But I have to work at it. I have to preside, protect, and provide. I have to live up to some standard of gendered behavior that the rest of the world is abandoning. I have to choose how much of a boy I’m going to be.

And when I realized that even my conservative church leaders believe that gender is something we choose to perform, or not to perform, it suddenly gave me permission to believe it too. And when I started to believe it, something shifted inside my chest. Some new space opened up in my lungs, and I took a breath that was deeper than any of the ones I’d taken before.

I like my body, and I like being attracted to women. But being a boy has often made me really uncomfortable. It made me feel trapped in a club with a lot of people that I didn’t identify with. It made me feel like all my complexity and humanity were constrained by my biology. It took away choice. It made me feel limited.

Whenever I wanted to develop one of my feminine traits, I felt like I had to petition the world to expand the definition of what makes a boy. Just like feminists called on the definition of womanhood to be expanded to include ambition, aggression, and pleasure, I wanted the definition of manhood to be expanded to include nurturing, surrender, and intuition. I thought that I was stuck being either a boy or a girl. Since I didn't want to become a girl, I had to ask for feminine traits to be made accessible to me.

I have a clear biological sex, and I feel comfortable with that biology. It feels like me. But I now realize that has only a secondary relationship to my actual gender. I don't have to ask for feminine traits to be part of boyhood. Sometimes, I can just be a girl. It's a move that takes away the need for me to fight cultural battles in order to be my authentic self.

Before, I would argue that "true" masculinity includes changing diapers. What I meant by that is that I wanted the stereotype to change, so that the masculine trait would trade places with the feminine trait, or just disappear altogether. And I still think that's a righteous cause. If people step up and change diapers, independent of their gender, someday soon that stereotype will evaporate. And that will be a cause for celebration.

But in the meantime, I can just be more of a girl when it comes to changing diapers. Being a girl is a more moral choice for me, because the way boys deal with diapers feels sub-human.

I can't change what society expects of a girl or a boy. But I can choose which gender I perform in any given part of my life. That's a human right that can't be taken away from me.

I am not constrained to be only a boy. And I am also not constrained to be only a girl. The whole array of feminine and masculine traits are laid out for me to take up. I can choose to develop feminine traits, I can choose to develop masculine traits, or I can choose to develop both. And if I develop both masculine and feminine traits, I will be less of a boy than I could be. I will fail at what my culture expects me to accomplish in terms of my gender.

And that is a wonderful thought.

Now that I acknowledge that gender is a set of choices, I reject the idea that my moral task is to push myself towards the masculine. I think my moral task is to discover the gender identities that allow me to be the most authentic version of myself. And choosing to act as a more authentic me is the way I feel touched by the divine.

So that’s what I meant when I said that this book was delivered to me by God. It came into my life with a timing that was cosmically perfect, and it tapped me on the soul and invited me to open up. It made me feel like a more complete human being at a time when I desperately needed to feel that way.

I recommend the book, and I also recommend embracing your god-given ability to perform your own gender.

Love to all.

PS: I use “Taylor” instead of “Dr. Petrey” when I talk about the author of Tabernacles of Clay. I mean no disrespect by this. In fact, my intention is quite the opposite. I admire the hard work and effort that it takes for someone to get a PhD, but I have even greater admiration for someone who used their graduate training to develop relevant skills that make them able to help out the world in a unique way. The power of Taylor’s work doesn’t come from the institution that granted him a doctorate - it comes from his brilliant mind and his generous soul. And that’s what I wanted to emphasize with the (lack of) honorifics.

Show Yourself

I had my most serious experience with (non-clinical) depression late last year. 

It lasted a couple months and I didn’t fully recognize it at the time. I kind of have the brain chemistry of a Christmas elf, so I didn’t act especially sad. But I slept about twelve hours a day and lost interest in the job that I love. Initially, I put it down to the aftermath of a really intense project sprint. But after recovering, I realized depression was a better label for what had been going on.

The cause was my inability to acknowledge an important truth. In a development that will surprise literally no one, I finally got the insight I needed while watching a Disney movie.

The movie was Frozen II, and the revelation came during the song “Show Yourself”. Idina Menzel vocals, lots of ice, a horse made out of water. And me, sitting in the audience, feeling a huge weight lifting off my shoulders.

That night Sadi and I were finally able to admit out loud to each other that she was gay. It had taken a lot of time, prayer, and therapy, but we finally understood what was going on.

Watching Sadi come out - to herself as much as to me - was a really powerful experience. She’s strong, so I had no idea how much of a burden she was carrying until she let it go (hey, look, another Frozen reference!). The change was dramatic: I swear that at times she literally glowed. It felt like watching a superhero origin story, and it became undeniably obvious to me that her identity is a gift from God.

It is kind of a complicated gift, given our situation: last year we celebrated our tenth anniversary, with the firm expectation of a lifetime to come. We have three great kids who trust us to be there for them. We have developed a good set of communication skills, and we are in close natural alignment on big questions like religion, money, and parenting. Writing down a pros and cons list for staying together is completely agonizing.

But ultimately it doesn’t come down to pros and cons. It comes down to what we can live with. Sadi is willing to face the rest of her life without the possibility of ever being with the kind of person that she finds attractive. I am not willing to accept that sacrifice from her. In my heart it doesn’t feel like the right thing to do. Sometimes I’ve wished that I felt differently. But all I can be is me.

We filed for divorce in February, so things will be finalized in August. I'm planning to move out mid-May.

We haven't told the kids yet; we are waiting until it's closer to when I move out. We want them to have some advance warning, but not to be stuck dreading the changes for too long. Being in a limbo state is hard enough to tolerate as an adult.

We are still good friends. Although the settlement gives us each designated custodial times, we expect to overlap frequently so we can both be around the kids as much as possible. They will live in our current apartment full time. I will sleep downstairs every weekend for my official custody time. 

There are no sides to this divorce, just two people trying to make the best of an unexpected plot twist. Even though neither of us have new partners yet, I remain an incurable romantic. It’s my hope that this is the prelude to something even more wonderful than what we had. But even if it isn’t, I’m at peace with doing what I believe is right.

If you want to talk more with me, send me a direct message or an email. If you want to talk more with Sadi, give her a call. If you want to say something nice, you can leave a comment. And if you can’t say anything nice - well then by all means say it, but do it in a direct message and we'll talk like adults!

Lots of love to all of you. Remember to show yourself ;)

PS: I know, I know. I’m supposed to be the gay one. I’m in touch with my feelings and I like Disney musicals. The fact that I’m straight is always a little confusing, even for me. But there it is.

Good Thoughts

I want to come out in support of sexual fantasy as a tool for promoting chastity and integrity.

If that sounds weird to you, I agree wholeheartedly. It still sounds weird to me.

When I was a kid, I definitely got the opposite message loud and clear. I got a lot of good advice from my parents, my leaders, and my church about not rushing into sexual behavior. And I also picked up a lot of anxiety about sex in general, and about sexual thoughts in particular. One pamphlet said the following: “Do not do anything … that arouses sexual feelings.”

I took that to heart. It was difficult, because I had a pretty strong natural interest in sex. But I also had one really clear goal: I wanted to get married and have a stable, happy family.

It seemed obvious that my sexual thoughts were not going to help me achieve that goal. They rarely featured a faithful, committed relationship!

I gathered that there were two ways of dealing with my sexual thoughts. Hypersexualized media told me that I should not only indulge them, but also try acting them out. The church told me that I should shut them down.

I wasn’t interested in acting them out. I believed that lasting pleasure came from doing things that made you proud of yourself, not from having a lot of orgasms. And part of me was hoping to get both! That same pamphlet also said that “physical intimacy between husband and wife is beautiful and sacred.”

So I shut things down. I learned how to block out my sexual thoughts. Do you know that trick where someone says, “Don’t think of pink elephants,” and then all you can think of is pink elephants? Someone tried it on me in high school. I was singing “I am a child of God” in my head before a single rose-colored pachyderm had time to cross from one side of my mind to the other. I had a lot of practice not thinking about things.

I was extremely anxious about anything that triggered sexual thoughts. A sex scene in a PG-13 movie could make me feel guilty for years afterwards. I told my mission president that I felt guilty reading Shakespeare because the sexual references were titillating. I doubt I said “titillating” though. That word made me uncomfortable!

There are worse ways to grow up. I didn’t get anyone pregnant, spend time or money on pornography, or even get my heart broken. And eventually I met a wonderful woman who loved me, and we got married and started a family.

I had achieved my goal, and it brought me a lot of happiness. But marriage did not cure my sexual thoughts. During the act of sex, I could relax. But that still constituted a tiny fraction of my waking time. And my sexual thoughts were always there.

At first, my wife and I earnestly tried to keep up with my constant interest in sex. It eventually became clear that no amount of sex would ever be “enough”. So we put the responsibility for initiating sex almost entirely on my wife, and things settled down. We had sex regularly, but we also spent time watching Netflix and playing board games. It was exactly what I had always hoped my home life would look like.

But, to my deep confusion and frustration, I found that I was never really at peace. I struggled with insomnia. I would lay awake, stare at the ceiling, sing “I am a child of God” in my head, and hate myself.

I started to pray for my interest in sex to just go away. Did you know that graham crackers were originally marketed as a cure for lust? The Victorians thought bland food might depress people enough to inhibit their sex drive.

I figured it was worth a shot. I spent a month eating a lot of graham crackers. It didn’t help.

I prayed more. I also looked for mormon experts on sexuality. I read books, and listened to podcasts, and did a little therapy. One message about the nature of God gave me some hope.

One of the core tenets of my faith is a belief in an embodied God. I believe that God has a physical body. I believe that God consists of both a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother, and that they are married. I further believe that our destiny is to become like them.

And it was pointed out to me that this implies that I believe that God is a sexual being, and that my sexuality is something I will carry with me into eternity. So that means it must be both an integral part of me, and a good part of me.

It was a nice sentiment. I still couldn’t square it with my sexual thoughts, though. They were just as bad as ever. And the logic seemed clear: thoughts lead to actions, actions lead to habits, and habits become character. And nothing in my sexual thoughts seemed worthy of integrating into my character.

I took it to God. “Did you give me this part of myself on purpose? If I try opening up to my sexual self, will you keep me safe? Will you stop me before I go too far?”

In response, I felt peace. I didn’t trust it completely, but it gave me a little hope. I decided to face my fears, open the door to the basement, and see what my sexual thoughts had to say.

That was about three years ago. Since then, I’ve found out some really helpful things.

First, my fantasies are not meant to be taken at face value. My fantasies have more in common with my dreams than with my other thoughts. They kind of bubble up from my subconscious, and my subconscious is a land of symbols. The situations in my fantasy are not things I actually want to do. They are symbols of who I actually am.

Second, who I actually am isn’t all that scary. As I’ve learned to decode the symbols of my fantasy, I’ve found that almost all of them are organized by one central truth: I want someone I admire, and who knows me accurately, to want me.

Last, my sexuality is not a source of darkness. My fantasies do turn dark at times, but it’s because of different truths about me, like this one: part of me believes that no one who knows me accurately could ever want me.

In other words, the problematic thing isn’t my sexuality: it’s my shame.

The most ingenious, diabolical thing my shame ever did was convince me that my sexuality was evil. Then the very fact that I wanted sex was proof that I was unworthy of it! No one who knew me well enough to see my sexuality could ever really want me.

Overturning that idea took more than just acknowledging that it was self-defeating. I had to convince myself that my sexuality really was good, and that I believed it was good. Engaging more with my sexual thoughts has helped me to do that.

I have shifted from thinking about my fantasies as a hedonistic “to-do” list and started understanding them as a window into myself, my childhood, and my internalized cultural messages. Sometimes the view disturbs me, but I don’t blame the window. Instead, I’ve learned to appreciate the insight. 

My sexuality is a messenger, and all good messengers deliver bad news sometimes. Blaming my sexuality for my immaturity would be as wrong as blaming Charles Dickens for 19th century poverty or blaming Harper Lee for racism.

For almost two decades, my sexuality troubled me almost every day. Now, my sexuality is more often a source of peace and strength. Because of it, I feel closer to God.

Arousal is ok. Sexuality is good. Sexual thoughts are symbolic messages that teach me about myself. And that gives me a chance to be a better person.

I recognize that this contradicts a lot of my culture. And it also comes into conflict with some specific advice from leaders who I think are both well-meaning and inspired. But I think it’s in good alignment with my core beliefs about the nature of God and the nature of man. 

And it also happens to be based on a true story. It’s my story. I hope it helps.

PS: Everything I’ve written here is my own, and I don’t claim to be speaking as an expert. If you are interested in experts (who may not agree with me!), then some of the ones I have found most helpful are Dr. Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, an LDS marriage and sex therapist who has a great library of podcasts on her website, and Dr. David Schnarch, whose book Passionate Marriage has had a revelatory impact on my life. 

For dealing with shame in general, I also recommend Brené Brown’s books and TED talks, especially Daring Greatly. 

For some sex- and body-positive scripture, see Genesis 1:26-28, Genesis 2:24-25, Moses 6:8-9, D&C 88:15-16, D&C 130:22, D&C 131:1-2, Joseph Smith - History 1:17, and Ether 3:6-16. 

For an uplifting essay on the miracle of the body, see the "Physical Gifts" section of this 2012 talk from President Russell M. Nelson.

Mormon Grace

I think the Mormons may have a unique solution to the millenia-old debate of faiths versus works. I just don’t think most of us know it yet ;)

Context: The Return to Grace

A few weeks ago, spiritual discussion in the mormon world was focused on one phrase in a sermon from the early part of the Book of Mormon: “for we know that it is by grace we are saved, after all we can do.” Most of the discussion centered on just five words: “after all we can do.”

It came up as part of the weekly lesson in the church-wide curriculum, and throughout mormondom I presume that the majority of Sunday School teachers and fireside podcasters tried to do something like what I observed my Sunday School teacher do: attempt to make amends for the way that this verse was misused for decades to deny the atonement of the Savior.

This phenomenon is reflective of the most dramatic convulsion in mormon theology that I’ve witnessed in my lifetime: the return to the doctrine of grace. In the middle part of the twentieth century, that verse was widely used to support the mormon church’s attempt to reject salvation by faith alone.

Growing up, I was taught to interpret it roughly as follows: God saves us, but only after we’ve saved ourselves by “keeping the commandments”. The phrase “keeping the commandments” was a little vague, but under the hood I understood it as a set of outward performances: paying tithing, attending church, not smoking or drinking, not having sex outside of marriage, not stealing, and saying yes when asked to perform an assignment. If you messed up on any of these, you went to your bishop, did penance, got the record adjusted, and then you hoped God didn’t audit it all too carefully. Yes, God saved you. But you had to be living right first. You had to do “all you can do”, and then God would come in to make up the difference.

The reason for this focus, as I absorbed it, was an underlying anxiety which can be stated fairly simply as follows: if we say people are saved by faith alone, they may stop feeling pressure to do good works. And if they stop feeling like their soul is in danger when they don’t do good works, they may stop doing those good works entirely.

I was taught that this is what separated us (in a positive way) from the Evangelicals, those shiftless bums who proclaimed their belief once on a Sunday in their youth and then wasted away the rest of their lives sinning and drinking caffeinated beverages. Tsk. 

Some of those Evangelicals, by the way, got the message loud and clear, and used it as a chance to reflect back to us our rejection of Christ’s grace. They pointed out (accurately) that we looked pretty foolish when we were trying to pretend that we were making it on our own.

Now, this doesn’t mean that the entire church had rejected grace. Derek Knox makes a good argument in this Beyond the Block podcast that the original understanding of the verse would have been a grace-centering one. And a firm grasp on the meaning of the atonement of Christ can be found throughout our history if you look for it. But based on my personal experiences, I can say that such understanding was not always readily available to the average member.

In my mid-teens, I started to encounter emissaries of the shift that was already in motion: the shift back to grace. My seminary teacher taught me that I was like a child before God, no more capable of earning my salvation than an infant is capable of feeding itself. David A. Bednar began delivering sermons on the “enabling power” of the atonement - grace that was required to give us the strength to keep the commandments, rather than the kind that was given out as a reward for compliance. Slowly, one talk at a time, one lesson at a time, one book at a time (i.e. “Believing Christ” by Stephen Robinson), I saw my church bending back towards grace. 

One dramatic example was a talk by Brad Wilcox titled “His Grace is Sufficient”, which told us what we should have known all along: our works do nothing to save us. Even more pointedly, five years ago Dieter F. Uchtdorf gave an address entitled “The Gift of Grace,” where he directly addressed the “after all we can do” phrase. In his talk, he converted it from meaning that God saves us only after our full efforts are expended to meaning that we are saved in the process of believing in Christ. No mean feat! I recommend the talk.

So all this is partly just to say: the church is coming back to grace, and thank God for it! It’s been long enough trying to save ourselves and bury the impossibility of it all in quarts of jello salad.

But although I’m grateful for the return, I think there may be some profit in trying to imagine why we turned away from grace in the first place. Beyond the simple anxiety I explained above, I think there may be a deeper truth waiting for us, and some wisdom buried in the foolishness.

A Note on Faith

Before we get into the next section, I just want to pause for a second and criticize the New Testament (lol). You see, I think Paul makes a mistake, or at least I frequently make a mistake in my reading of Paul. The mistake is to conflate faith and grace. For instance, in Romans 1:17, Paul says that “the just shall live by faith.” I think this is technically true, but I also think it’s misleading. Faith is not what gives us life: grace is. I suppose faith is a trigger for grace, in which case I agree with Paul. But faith is also a result of grace, so it seems a little silly to frame it as a fundamental source.

I also think claiming that faith saves us is just as defeatist as claiming that our works save us. Anyone who’s honest about their faith will have to admit that it waxes and wanes and that even at its best it’s rarely at mountain-moving levels. Most days my faith is well shy of being able to fit a camel through the eye of the needle, so I’m grateful that it’s not my faith that’s going to try and get my rich-straight-white-male self into heaven. That’s a job that only Christ and his grace can do.

But I digress! Let’s return to one reason that I think may have understandably led my mormon forefathers to get so wound up in works that they left both faith and grace behind them.

A Uniquely Mormon Contribution

One of my absolute favorite parts of my religion is the doctrine of the immortal body. It shows up in multiple places in our faith, but one of the ones I go back to most frequently is this radical line from Joseph Smith: “And the spirit and the body are the soul of man. And the resurrection from the dead is the redemption of the soul.”

Whoa! The body is part of the soul? The body is coming back as part of the redeemed soul? An equal partner with the spirit? It’s a bold claim. And if that’s not enough, here’s an even more insane statement: “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.”

God has a body. It’s a contradiction in terms to most of the Christian world. The philosophy of separation and antagonism between mind and body is not only baked into Christianity but also the English language: self-control, mind over matter, pleasures of the flesh, inner beauty, the real me.

What Joseph is teaching in these verses is that the attempt to split ourselves apart into a “disembodied logic center” temporarily shackled to a “meaty appetite sack” reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of our eternal nature as children of God. When God tells us he has a body, that says something even more powerful about us than it does about him. It tells us that we are not meant to escape the body: we are meant to recognize it as part of us. When we degrade and diminish the body, we are not trying to control a parasitic infection: we are trying to cut ourselves in half. When we ignore it, we ignore something with just as much divine potential and wisdom as our minds. We ignore fully half of our divine destiny.

In this context, the question of faith and works suddenly becomes almost meaningless. I may have a picture of myself as a faithful, believing person: but that picture is not me. The real me includes what I’m actually doing with my body. If the actions of my body don’t line up with my beliefs, then those beliefs aren’t really mine. I may wish I believed those things! I may be working to believe those things! I may be praying to believe those things! But if I’m not doing them, then in some very real way I don’t believe them.

In the standard view of the world that we’ve inherited, the soul is kind of like a little dude who sits in our heads and tries to steer the body around. But the body is a weird, demented, broken beast with its own agenda. The little dude yells at it, pleads with it, cajoles it, whips it, digs in the spurs: sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. As long as the little dude has the right intentions, the ultimate actions of the body aren’t so relevant.

But that’s not the way it actually is. The little dude up in our heads isn’t our soul: he’s our ego. He’s our imperfect, self-flattering view of ourselves, the one that thinks it’s already perfect. The one that blames everything else for when things don’t go well, and that isn’t afraid to throw its own body under the bus. 

The ego is the one who’s terrified of being called out. The one who trembles at the idea of not being good enough. The one that dies every time we admit to ourselves that we’ve sinned.

But, thank God, the ego is also the one that gets resurrected again, every time. When we kill our ego, God’s grace gives us back a better one. A slightly more aware one, one that acts a little bit better than the last one. One that is able to get more of its esteem from things that are actually true, that are actually lived out in the body.

So the shift to works is actually a really powerful recognition of truth: there is no fundamental difference between faith and works. The difference between them is purely illusory.

Now, here’s where I think we went wrong: I think we pulled a Paul and conflated grace with faith. We thought that faith saved us: since faith and works were basically the same, we then thought that works saved us. We should have instantly seen how ridiculous that was! We should have come to God and confided in him: 

“Lord, I know you only save us through faith, and I know my faith is manifest in my works. I’m sorry, Lord: my works are works of wickedness as much as they are works of good. I can’t do it.”

And He would have bound up our broken hearts. He would have strengthened our feeble knees. He would have lifted up our hands as they hung down. He would have said:

“Of course you can’t do it. I did it. I already did it. Show me your wicked works. Give me your false vision of yourself as God, and let me crucify it. Here, here is my grace. Take as much as you can carry. You are a little better already. Come back as soon as you can.”

But we didn’t do that. We panicked. We thought: our works save us, but my works are awful! Quick, a loophole! Find a loophole! Maybe there is a subset of works that I can do, something that I can succeed at! Maybe that subset will be enough!

So instead of acknowledging how broken our works were, and taking them to God, I think we fled for comfort to a list of works that we thought we could accomplish. 

We knew we didn’t love our neighbor, but we thought maybe we could donate ten percent of our income with perfect consistency. 

We knew we couldn’t stop ourselves from avoiding our feelings with distractions, but we thought maybe we could get it done with sugary confections instead of alcohol. 

We knew we couldn’t fully love our spouses without fear or judgement, but we thought maybe that would be excused if we managed to only have sex exclusively with them.

Faith without works isn’t dead: faith without works is a contradiction in terms. But both faith and works are dead without grace.

So as the church bends back towards grace, I hope we don’t forget works. Our works do not save us: they convict us. But if we trust in grace, we do not have to fear the conviction. We can be grateful for it. Because only when our imperfection is revealed is God’s grace made manifest. 

Only when we die can we live :)

Grace to see

I've been thinking about faith. “Faith,” Paul says, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Alma says that those who have faith “hope for things which are not seen, which are true.”

I feel like faith is another kind of sight. It’s like we have two eyes - one that sees what’s in front of us and one that sees beyond that.

Both my eyes were closed when it came to gay marriage.

I had learned at church that gay romantic relationships were not good. I have not seen any evidence for that being true. On the contrary, I have seen a lot of evidence that gay relationships are wonderful. But I kept that eye closed because it didn’t match what I was hearing at church.

My eye of faith was also shut. I never thought to ask God what he thought of gay marriage. I just assumed I knew.

One day a couple of years ago, God entered my heart and told me that I was wrong about this, and that I was wrong about him. I began to have faith that God wants his gay children to find love in this life.

Amazing grace: how sweet the sound. [I] was blind, but now I see.