Sanctity and Sadness

Last night, I came across some news that saddened, sickened and totally deflated me.  There are visceral types of anger and sadness that animate us--strong, superficial reactions that make us want to scream or hurl things against a wall.  Then there are reactions deep in your heart--feeling as though your heart has sunk into your stomach, where your outward action is minimal or nonexistent because the body simply has no way to express what the spirit feels.

There is a show on HBO called Big Love, about a polygamous family in Utah.  The existence of the show itself I find to be a minor annoyance that really does not affect me or my life.  However, this week, the episode will, it is widely rumored, contain portions of the LDS temple ceremony and this week's TV Guide features a photo of one of the cast members in full temple robes.  I felt a bit angry, but mostly sick and sad, when I read this.

Right off the bat, let me make one thing absolutely, unequivocally clear: I am ashamed of absolutely nothing that goes on in the temple; I am not in any way embarrassed by any of the covenants I have made.  I believe that in the temple, and the work done therein, there is to be found a peace, a love, a knowledge that can be found nowhere else on earth.  I stand fast by the promises that I have made, and no amount of mockery or persecution or judgement from the world will ever make me turn away from those things.  I believe that the is temple quite literally the house of the Lord on the earth--the only place, besides perhaps a truly righteous home, where His spirit can dwell fully.  I am always happy to tell people that I am one of those Mormons who goes to one of those "mysterious" temples and to bear my testimony of the beautiful, eternal truths tied to these marvelous buildings.  These things being blasted before the world doesn't make me sick because I'm embarrassed by them.  It makes me sick because I hold them sacred.

How do you explain that to a society that not only holds little to nothing sacred, but has largely abandoned the idea of sanctity altogether?  My surety in the truthfulness of the Gospel has at times been mistaken once or twice for arrogance by those who know no such confidence--those who know only the haughty, self-indulgence of worldly confidence.  Its not about me, its not that I'm right--its that I was fortunate enough to be raised with the truth and have received multiple witnesses from the Spirit.  I realize that to many this relegates me to "religious nut" status, or a well meaning individual who is simply confusing strong emotions with something else.  I accepted that long ago, because there is no way to adequately describe the workings of the Spirit to someone who has never felt them.  Yes, it employs my emotional faculties and my intellectual ones, but it is unique and distinct from either.  I once heard a General Authority use the analogy of trying to tell someone what the Spirit feels like as trying to describe the taste of salt without using the word "salty".  Unless you have tasted it, there's no adequate description.

I know these things are true.  I know the temple is a place of sacred instruction and great love.  That is a testimony from which I cannot be shaken.  The evidences in my life have been too great to deny.  Will I tell you what they are?  Not here.  But not because I am ashamed--if you come to me in sincerity, willing to listen with a heart that appreciates their deeply personal and profoundly spiritual nature, I'd be happy to.  But if you simply want to mock or demean my intelligence, rationality, or truths that I hold sacred, I'm not interested.  Nothing you can ever say or do will cause me to change my mind.  Not because I've been indoctrinated to fear the wrath of an angry God, but because I know all too well the power, peace and beauty of His eternal love.

"For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. . . ."