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Rachel Allred lives in California and loves her husband, her toddler, and ice cream (not necessarily in that order). She generally tries to make the world a more empathetic place.
I literally started crying in the cab Thursday. It was a Lyft. The driver asked if I was okay; I told him I was.
I knew The Policy was wrong. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I felt like death when it was announced. My heart sank. My lungs filled with lead. My mind started screaming. My soul recoiled. I don’t know how else to say it. I was just completely numb. I walked around in a vaguely ragey, disbelieving fog for days.
That weekend in November 2015, my beloved husband and I (this was back when he went to church; I’ve wondered since if the policy was the beginning of the end) went to a thrift store to buy clothes with rainbow patterns. We specifically chose a thrift store whose proceeds are donated to LGBTQ support organizations. We wore our rainbows to church that Sunday. We went with subtle patterns. Too subtle, maybe, because we had to tell people that’s what we were doing, but I was playing the organ so at least some people noticed.
I disagreed with The Policy in November 2015, I disagreed with The Policy when I woke up Thursday morning, and I’ve disagreed with the policy every day in the middle. My conscience said it was flatly wrong.
I grew up elsewhere, but I was attending college in California during Prop 8. I stopped going to on-campus FHE (which I already didn’t like) when all we did was phone bank for Prop 8. I couldn’t do it. Eventually I regretted moving to California for college. When I voted, it was hell.
I believed that gay marriage should be legal in 2008, I believe gay marriage should be legal now, and I’ve believed it every day in between.
But I haven’t stopped feeling guilty any day for the last 11 years. Because … if I believe that the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles are prophets, seers and revelators, wasn’t it rebellion against God to disagree? Or, at least, wasn’t it rebellion to act on my disagreement? Did the difference between my opinions and my actions matter? Was God looking at my heart, or did my actions speak louder than my thoughts? On November 4, 2008, did I believe in a prophet or did I believe in my conscience? On November 5, 2015, did I believe in a prophet or did I believe in my conscience? Like so many millions of others, I couldn’t support one without torpedoing my belief in the other.
So which was it?
Was it rebellion against God if the parents of the kids that Elisha sent bears to eat believed that wasn’t a just consequence for disrespecting a prophet?
Was it rebellion against God for Sariah to believe that Lehi should take it easier on sending their sons out into the wilderness? For Aaron’s conscience to be uncomfortable with Ammon boasting? For Jesus to tell Peter “Get thee behind me, Satan” when Peter’s at-all-costs zeal carried him away?
Thursday morning, when The Policy Change was announced, I felt alive. All little children can be blessed and baptized. Same-sex marriage is no longer considered apostate. The church genuinely seems to be making an effort to ameliorate divisive rhetoric around these issues. My heart rose. My lungs filled with air I almost didn’t recognize. My mind started rejoicing. My soul soared. I don’t know how else to say it.
I also felt the still, small voice of the Spirit whisper with an abundance of love in my heart, “you were right.”
I had thought I had to choose between church leader statements and my own conscience. Either I destroyed myself to agree with them, or their opinion needed to be right consistently, no disagreement or patience or grace allowed.
Reflecting on the past 11 years, I’ve learned to own the times I know I’m right. When I own that, I’ve found I can give others the grace and patience to receive their own revelation, at their own time. To learn to make the right choice through making the wrong choice (like Peter). To make the wrong choice for the right reason (like Ammon). To repent (like Elisha, presumably). To grow and change (like between November 2015 and Thursday). And to know that sometimes we’re just going to believe differently (like Sariah and Lehi), and that’s okay.
Extending grace and patience comes at a cost. That’s important. To all the individuals whose families and lives and faith have been torn apart, the children who have already been forced out of the faith their parents hoped to raise them in, the teens and adults who have been bludgeoned by diminishing, belittling rhetoric for 11 years, Thursday’s reconciliation effort doesn’t heal that hurt, doesn’t right that wrong.
That’s the tricky thing about grace: I think Elisha had to answer for those children’s lives. I think Lehi was accountable for the toll his decisions took on Sariah. I think Peter was responsible for misrepresenting Jesus in saying he could never be killed (the thing that prompted “get thee behind me, Satan”). And so on.
Owning that my conscience can be right, and my leaders can be wrong (and sustaining them through that) means giving them the grace to be accountable for their wrongs and still be prophets, seers and revelators. It means widening my belief in the Atonement of Jesus Christ to account for not only the sins, misdeeds, mistakes and hurts of every individual human soul, but also for the institutional mistakes the church makes when invoking His authority — along with all their snowballing effects and intersecting consequences.
This, I think, is my access point to the grace and patience required to sustain prophets, seers and leaders through their humanity. After suffering the hurts of those wronged by leaders’ choices, after paying for the choices which were made in His name by His authority, Jesus Christ lays the burden at His own feet, and carries it in the scars on his hands. Christ embraces the suffering in this divine/mortal church called in his name: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
And I think I believe that, as God, His empathy is so deep, His healing is so pervasive, His reconciliation so complete that even the sometimes-wrongly-wielded power invested in the prophethood, seership and revelation of the Elishas, Ammons, Lehis, Peters, and First Presidencies and Quorums of the Twelve Apostles of this world can be included alongside the sins, mistakes, misdeeds and hurts of the rest of us on an eternal timescale. Prophets are humans, and they along with their institutional leadership, and along with the rest of us, can become whole through faith, repentance, and the covenants that enable all of us to access God’s grace.
In retrospect, I haven’t actually sustained my leaders in good conscience for 11 years, but that is because I have been suspending the use of my conscience. I think I sustain them now, because I won’t suspend my conscience anymore.
I literally started crying in the cab Thursday morning. I cried because prophets can change their leadership. I cried because The Policy doesn’t have to hurt anyone new.
Photo by Riley Briggs on Unsplash