Innocence - 1 Timothy 1:12-14

1:12-14 - The "law," as Paul puts it, or the law of Moses, was made for those who aren't at the stage of their spiritual progression where they can regulate their own behaviors yet. And maybe as an example of the law as rehabilitative instead of punitive , Paul notes that he himself was "a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious," to the cause of the gospel. But Paul "obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief." I think the question here comes down to "how much does the person really know and believe?" If the gospel was laid out in front of every single person, individually and thoroughly, in a way only they completely understood while at the same time giving them full knowledge and feeling of Christ's love for them and the plan of salvation, then 99.9% of people would accept the gospel. They already did in the premortal world. But after passing through the veil into this life, the gospel isn't given to us in this way. The vast majority don't even have a chance to accept the gospel and those who do are often presented it in a way that is traumatizing and rejective and disrespectful of who they are as individuals. If we truly believe that Joseph Smith was a prophet, then we have to accept his teaching that everyone is entitled to their own personal beliefs, thus we then have to accept that this is a right granted to even those important to us, like our kids, spouses, friends, and extended family. There are three concepts that come into play when discussing people's rejection of the gospel. The first has to do with our misunderstanding of the concept that "this life if the time to prepare to meet God," which implies that the next life will be too late. This discounts the fact that most people ever to live will not have a chance to hear the gospel in this life, so what about them? This concern usually grows out of love because we don't want the people we care about to be banished to hell just because they rejected the only way out of it in this life when we didn't have complete and total information. This is why parents hound their children and it seems that church attendance is the only thing that matters to them. The irony is that when parents focus only on church participation, they lose the opportunity to love their kids. They lose out on relationships with really amazing people. I mean, Jesus didn't go around nagging people about weekly synagogue attendance, why should we? He loved people as they were, where ever they were in their spiritual journey. To overcome the debilitating anxiety over people's loss of opportunity to "repent" in the next life, we have to understand that everyone is on their own path and that that path was known to and prepared for by God himself. Someone who's left the church hasn't been "tricked by Satan," or fallen off the plan God made for them. If we consider all the horror that this life entails, I don't understand why anyone would put stipulations on how another person can protect themselves and process their trauma. We have to remember that this is the second act, the tragic part, of a three part play, and the resolution comes in the next life. If this life was meant to be the final place of repentance, then this life would be the end of creation. But it's not, so we aren't limited by the tragedies that we experience here. The second concept is the misunderstanding of "avoid the very appearance of sin." Paul talks about this in previous letters and while the idea is valid, it has been misconstrued to mean that appearance is the MOST important aspect of righteousness. Take for instance the parent who is distressed over a child leaving the church. Say that child is gay and wants to live that lifestyle, or is transgendered, or just decides that the church isn't right for them. The parent, in an attempt to avoid the appearance of evil, might disown their child because they don't want it to appear as approving of a lifestyle not in complete compliance with the gospel. The irony here is that no one lives in complete compliance with the gospel, so they themselves are sinners too. Say these parents won't let their child's same sex partner come to family dinners, or won't call their transgendered child by their requested pronouns. They don't want to appear as condoning homosexuality. But are they condemning "sinful" lifestyles or are they rejecting the teachings of the Savior? The third concept that comes into play when discussing people's leaving the church is the fact that if we love and believe the gospel so much, but someone else rejects it, especially if they are important to us, then we have to stop and evaluate our own beliefs. If someone we love rejects it, then does that mean that we made the wrong choice? Were we fooled in believing the gospel? It's basic human nature to feel reaffirmed in our own beliefs when someone else also believes the same things. But the inverse is also true, if someone disbelieves what we think is true, especially if it is a deeply held and powerful belief, then that casts doubt on our own assurance of it's validity. I just had an interesting epiphany. I have a brother who thinks that Trump is God's greatest gift to America. I vehemently disagree and one time when my brother was going on and on about how wonderful Trump is, I got so mad, I stopped him and said, "Donald Trump is a rapist and every time you say how great he is, you're telling me 'it doesn't matter if you were raped, he's a man with money.'" Every time he would bring up Trump, I would immediately feel personally attacked because suddenly the ruined lives of women he's sexually assaulted don't matter because he might make someone's 401k go up a little bit. I just realized that when someone is traumatized while in the church, which happens all the time, they feel the same way I do when someone says how great Trump is. Suddenly, they are being told "it doesn't matter if you were abused or mistreated by people representing the Church, but because it's true you have to either just get over it or be further abused." That really just clicked for me, it's incredibly representative of how we expect people to act who have had bad experiences with the Church. It's disgusting and wrong. I guess all this is to say that Paul truly believed that Christianity was wrong when he persecuted the early church as a Pharisee. That belief made him innocent of those horrible acts because they were done "ignorantly in unbelief." I contest then, that those who leave or reject the gospel for whatever reason are not the vile sinners they are portrayed as but instead are innocent because the decisions were made "ignorantly in unbelief." And like Paul, they and all of us, will have "the grace of our Lord," and obtain a fullness of knowledge in which to make our choice, free from the trauma, negativity, and pressure that comes along with that choice in this life. Unbelievers are not to be "avoided" or "converted," they are unique and special children of God with their own backgrounds, histories and traumas. They are on their own spiritual journey just like we are, we have to stick together and be kind and supportive of them in their beliefs. If we live life with the attitude of "other people have to respect and accept my beliefs," then what makes us think that we don't have to accept ad respect the beliefs of others, regardless of how we personally feel about them.