Flower Children? Or Followers of Christ?
We have among us some outspoken members of The Church of Jesus Christ who have donned their Sunday clothes, taken up banners, and marched in Salt Lake City’s lewd Gay Pride Parade today, yes, in the name of Jesus. May we suggest that if people invoke the name of Christ they had better know what he is really about?
This group is saying that Jesus is all about love (they are handing out lollipops with stickers that read “love one another”) and that we should follow his example by reaching out to the gay community, “building bridges.” Is this accurate or appropriate in any way? What is Jesus’s love, also called the pure love of Christ, really about?
There may be many ways to hate people, but there is only one way
to truly Love people, and that is through the kind of Love, with a capital L, Jesus alone exemplified. Jesus said to love one another as he loves, not the way we love, the way he loves. (Alas, we humans are not naturally very good at it.) It’s perfectly unselfish and righteous, that is, based in rightness and wishing the very best for the person in the moral, spiritual, and eternal sense. That’s a tall order. Jesus’ love for the Father in doing His will, and his love for us, God’s undeserving fallen children, in accomplishing the Atonement, are quintessential illustrations of this true, pure love we’re supposed to be striving to develop.
Another word for the pure love of Christ is charity. Bruce R. McConkie said, “Charity . . . is the pure love of Christ, a love so centered in righteousness that the possessor has no aim or desire except for the eternal welfare of his own soul and for the souls of those around him.” Key words: eternal welfare, souls. That is God’s business, the business Jesus was about.
The kind of Love Jesus wants us to learn does not begin and end with how nicely we treat others. Religion is not to be mistaken for mere neighborliness or social work. The devil himself has been known to treat others quite generously – he even offered to give Jesus everything: stuff, appetites, power. No, Real Love must begin in our heart of hearts as we seek the Spirit of the Lord to guide and correct. We are called upon to put off the natural man inside us so prone to wander. Christ invites each of us to become a new, selfless person – like him – intent on doing God's will, which will often mean putting aside one’s own will. This may cause friction in our human relationships, especially in today’s one-way, politically correct culture. So be it. Jesus himself said his coming would divide not just peoples, cities, and countries, but families (Matthew 10:34-37). Of course it’s entirely up to each of us whether we will choose God as our master or something or someone else instead.
This real Love has been called tough love, and rightly so. It’s difficult. It’s painful. And it can work to help people change for the better like nothing else if so desired. When Jesus said to love one another, even to love our enemies and do good to those who curse us, he didn’t mean for us to march in step with the decadent worldly parade; he meant for us to offer the Truth that can save souls.
People who don’t realize this, who think they can meet gays halfway with a see-no-evil, lollipop-love reminiscent of the anything-goes 1960s are very naive indeed and are part of the further vaporization of morality and religion in our society. Any of us who have any loyalty whatsoever to decency and propriety, to biological facts that defy the normalization of homosexuality, to God and His laws about chastity and sin, to the reality of male and female and motherhood and fatherhood, to mating and marriage, to keeping our passions and desires within His boundaries, to the priesthood, even to upholding mental and physical health, will find zero tolerance from the powerful gay community and its endorsers.
C. S. Lewis, talking about Love with a capital L, put it so well: "Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them; but Love cannot cease to will their removal . . . Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness."
The Love of Jesus? It isn’t comfort for its own sake, like a skin-deep massage, that makes us feel better about ourselves and each other here and now. It’s the sword of Truth, the real deal, elective heart surgery, or more accurately, a total, divine, voluntary heart transplant, that fits us for Everlasting Life.
–Stephen & Janice Graham
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