Hating the Sin and Shunning the Sinner
Dathon posted this recently on NOM, and I just had to repost it here so that I have it for future reference. It is beautiful. I only wish more LDS leaders would speak like this.
The May/June 1979 issue of Sunstone [and reprinted in the May 2000 issue] featured a 193? General conference address given by Apostle Stephen L. Richards that had never been published because its topic angered Church President Heber J. Grant and the apostle refused to revise it. Sunstone titled it "Bringing Humanity to the Gospel":
"In application of this question, I must mention some delicate matters. I call them delicate because I run a great hazard of being misunderstood when I discuss them. Take smoking for instance. Is there more or less tolerance for the user of tobacco by the Church, as represented by its officials and the faithful membership, than there was twenty-five or fifty years ago? I cannot say. I have no way of knowing. We feel that it is wrong and we inveigh against it. Men often construe the Word of Wisdom as a commandment against it and invest the practice of it with the stigma of sin. I think my own preaching against it may be so construed. Am I right? Are all of us right? Have not some of our people failed to distinguish between the offense and the offender?
I do not mean to say that I doubt the wisdom of the Word of Wisdom. I know that it contains God's wishes and direction for the welfare of His children, and I am sure that those who fail to heed the teaching of it will lose blessings of great worth, but I am not sure that we have not estranged many from the Church or at least contributed to their estrangement by attributing to violation of our standards of health, harmful as it may be, a moral turpitude and sinful magnitude out of proportion to the real seriousness of the offense. Maybe I am wrong. I do not claim that my analysis is correct, but I think it is worthy of your attention.
I have said these things because I fear dictatorial dogmatism, rigidity of procedure and intolerance even more than I fear cigarettes, cards, and other devices the adversary may use to nullify faith and kill religion. Fanaticism and bigotry have been the deadly enemies of true religion in the long past. They have made it forbidding, shut it up in cold grey walls of monastery and nunnery, out of sunlight and fragrance of the growing world. They have garbed it in black and then in white, when in truth it is neither black nor white, any more than life is black or white, for religion is life abundant, glowing life, with all its shades, colors and hues, as the children of men reflect in the patterns of their lives the radiance of the Holy Spirit in varying degrees."
The May/June 1979 issue of Sunstone [and reprinted in the May 2000 issue] featured a 193? General conference address given by Apostle Stephen L. Richards that had never been published because its topic angered Church President Heber J. Grant and the apostle refused to revise it. Sunstone titled it "Bringing Humanity to the Gospel":
"In application of this question, I must mention some delicate matters. I call them delicate because I run a great hazard of being misunderstood when I discuss them. Take smoking for instance. Is there more or less tolerance for the user of tobacco by the Church, as represented by its officials and the faithful membership, than there was twenty-five or fifty years ago? I cannot say. I have no way of knowing. We feel that it is wrong and we inveigh against it. Men often construe the Word of Wisdom as a commandment against it and invest the practice of it with the stigma of sin. I think my own preaching against it may be so construed. Am I right? Are all of us right? Have not some of our people failed to distinguish between the offense and the offender?
I do not mean to say that I doubt the wisdom of the Word of Wisdom. I know that it contains God's wishes and direction for the welfare of His children, and I am sure that those who fail to heed the teaching of it will lose blessings of great worth, but I am not sure that we have not estranged many from the Church or at least contributed to their estrangement by attributing to violation of our standards of health, harmful as it may be, a moral turpitude and sinful magnitude out of proportion to the real seriousness of the offense. Maybe I am wrong. I do not claim that my analysis is correct, but I think it is worthy of your attention.
I have said these things because I fear dictatorial dogmatism, rigidity of procedure and intolerance even more than I fear cigarettes, cards, and other devices the adversary may use to nullify faith and kill religion. Fanaticism and bigotry have been the deadly enemies of true religion in the long past. They have made it forbidding, shut it up in cold grey walls of monastery and nunnery, out of sunlight and fragrance of the growing world. They have garbed it in black and then in white, when in truth it is neither black nor white, any more than life is black or white, for religion is life abundant, glowing life, with all its shades, colors and hues, as the children of men reflect in the patterns of their lives the radiance of the Holy Spirit in varying degrees."
Comments
I find it ironic that the kinder, gentler, more ecumenical LDS church of today has at the same time become more dogmatic and less tolerant of internal differences of opinion than former authorities like this guy, John Widtsoe, and James Talmage.