(Please don’t read if religious material and ideas offend you. Come back later)
As most of you know already I’m a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons). If you know anything about the LDS church you’ll know we have no paid clergy. Everything is done by members. We serve in leadership positions and we teach. I’ve taught………a lot. I’ve spent 33 years teaching every age from 18 months to 99 years old. My most challenging age has been the 14-18 year olds. Not that they were bad to teach, some were just hard to reach. One of the things I most wanted to teach them along with whatever Gospel topic assigned that week was the following:
Satan is real. He’s not a boogey man made up to get little children to obey the rules. He is a real entity, who moves through the world leaving misery and destruction in his wake. Satan’s plan is not new, nor is it sophisticated. He seeks to make all men miserable like unto himself. His plan from the beginning was to compel all mankind to return to the Father as long as he got all the glory. Nothing has changed except now he’s working for himself. He seeks to frustrate the Plan of Salvation by deceiving and coercing man to reject God, and these days he’s doing a bang up job. His minions and sycophants wander the earth sowing discord and frustration, hatred and intolerance far and wide. He has over the course of human experience tried, so far unsuccessfully, to impact on the majority of people, through war, awful leaders and Sodom and Gomorrah’s. Today his tactic is to focus on the destruction of the family.
It has been in the news lately but known by religious leaders for millenia that the family is the bed rock of society. Not perceived families but real families. Two adults of different genders, committed to raise children within the bounds of civilized behavior to create the new generation of people to then create the next generation. What do we have now? Half of the marriages today end in divorce (and yes I know sometimes that can’t be helped but living correct principles and not settling for someone who refuses to do can so go a long way to helping that not happen). This situation leaves the most vulnerable among us, children, in chaotic and precarious positions. Stress and uncertainty, unhappiness and anger are the legacy of this. These same children go on to make the same or similar decisions as their parents did, unless acted upon by a greater force.
In the last several years there have been studies reported on about the sad fate of most children raised by homosexual couples. While the parents are surely not impeding their children’s happiness on purpose the very wrongness of the situation has an impact on them and their children and their children’s children. Depression and unhappiness will not be destroyed by allow gender neutral marriage. It is not a functional situation. Children learn how to be men and women by watching their parents. They can not learn from a man no matter how “female” he feels, how to be a woman or vise versa. Each gender is given specific gifts, talents and responsibilities. Without adoption and or massive medial assistance two people of the same gender will never produce offspring. It is a fact of nature, not nurture.
Be not fooled. Satan desires to have you. He will shift you like wheat and unlike our Heavenly Father he doesn’t love you. As a matter of fact he hates you. You have a body, something his rebellion in the pre existence has denied him. Know thy enemy. He knows you so be valiant. You can overcome his machinations but only if you understand that he is real. His evil is real. There is a difference between that which is right and that which is wrong and wickedness will never be happiness. Not in this world or in the other.
These are the most important things I have ever told my students and my children. They are true whether you wish to believe them or not. They are a testimony to the grace and goodness of the God that grants me breath and to whom I owe all that I am and all that I have.
This testimony brought to you thanks in large part by facebook people who can’t seem to figure out the difference between being loved and being hated. They in their very intolerance have become puppets in a war that has been waged since BEFORE the world began. One side promised eternal life the other eternal regret. Doesn’t seem like a hard choice to me but than again I’m just a religious nut job who actually believes this stuff. What a maroon, right?