17 February 2022

A Decision to Deviate from the "Agenda of God"

In the beginning, Adam and Eve were given a commandment to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28). This is a key part of the "Agenda of God", where men and women couple through marriage and seal themselves together through covenant with God to bring children into mortality and raise them up to follow Christ toward the life that God leads, or exaltation. We may use different words to describe it these days, but this is the same plan that God introduced to our first parents many millennia ago.

There are some married couples of men and women that, despite their best efforts, cannot have children. As this is through no fault of their own, God doesn't hold them culpable for that part of his first commandment to Adam and Eve - they still came together as instructed and sealed themselves together through covenant. There are also people who cannot find a righteous opposite-sexed mate, but keep God's commandments in every other way.  Exaltation can still be theirs through aligning themselves with Christ and certainly by encouraging those around them to marry through temple covenants and to have their own families centered on exaltation.

Beyond these, a growing number of people eschew God's purposes for them and follow other paths. A common way to do this is to attach oneself to a sexual or gender deviancy through LGBT+ lifestyles. These paths propagate behavior and thought which are thoroughly incompatible with the "Agenda of God" - no marriages through covenant, children not taught to authentically follow Christ, no interest in exaltation. Yet such deviants insist that their practices and pseudo-doctrines should be given the same respect and honor as those who work to align with Christ, his commandments, and purposes, even within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

So, how do those who espouse lifestyles that deviate from the "Agenda of God" fit in the Church? Honestly, there isn't a "fit" in an organization devoted to eventual exaltation. If a person chooses not to align themselves to Christ by encouraging all to be sealed through covenant, man with woman, there isn't anything the Church of Jesus Christ can do to support or be encouraging of such deviance from Christ beyond inviting that person to keep attending and encouraging changes through repentance to make exaltation their goal. The Church cannot provide a soapbox from which gospel deviants preach something counter to the will of God for his children.

Reality dictates that deviation from the Agenda of God cannot bring joy. No matter the shrill demands of deviants to change institutions into comfortable spaces and capricious conformity to such demands in public spaces, the joy will not come. Joy is tied to obedience to divine laws and cannot be had by any other means, chemical, psychological, or ideological. No amount of sophistry can generate joy - "Wickedness never was happiness." (Alma 41:10)

Leadership in the Church of Jesus Christ made the "Agenda of God" clear in their 1995 proclamation to the world entitled "The Family". Those opposed to these tenets and who choose to defy the path commanded by Christ should find their visits to Church meetings to be somewhat uncomfortable, but always with an invitation to align themselves better with the path toward God and exaltation through repentance and baptism.  A person who deviates can choose the higher way!