Political Ramblings

On the subject of religion and politics, and particularly on the church's stance on politics, there's a really good video on Youtube, posted by LDSPublicAffairs, that helps to clear things up.





As the video explains, the church does not participate in party politics. It does not support or oppose any specific candidates, and church buildings and property are not to be used for political events or messages. However, the church maintains the right to speak out on moral issues that could affect society.

I personally think that those who have extra knowledge of what's right and wrong should try to help others to make good decisions. Now, I don't think we should force people not to sin (that was someone else's plan), but I do think that it's a Christian attribute to want to help people avoid the suffering that would be caused by the consequences of making bad choices. So, here's my question: Does making something illegal force people not to do it?

At first glance, that seems like a stupid question, and maybe it is. It's illegal to kill people, but (surprise, surprise), people still kill each other. It's also illegal to steal, kidnap, abuse certain substances, and do all kinds of wicked things, but people still do them. The law does not force them not to break God's laws.

But what about marriage? To get married, you need a marriage license, right? In order to be legally married, you need the government's help. If two people want to get married, but it's illegal for them to do so, they're not going to get the government's help in getting married, so they literally can't do it.

Then again, marriage as recognized by the country and marriage as recognized by God are two separate things. God may recognize a marriage that the government may not, and the government may recognize a marriage that God does not. The government can say that two people are married, but as far as God's concerned, they may not be.

So part of me is thinking, what's the big deal? So those two guys have a piece of paper that say they're married, and the government recognizes that piece of paper and treats those two as if they were married, but what does it really matter? Their marriage was probably "until death do you part" anyway, so they know it's going to be dissolved as soon as one of them passes on, and if their marriage was never valid in God's eyes in the first place, you can bet it won't be valid on the other side, where God has full jurisdiction. So why should we get all worked up if some people say that certain types of marriage are valid on Earth?

My answer to that question, along with so many others, is that I don't know, but thankfully, God does. Only God knows what kind of affect same-sex marriages will have on society. Some say the affect will be positive - that no one will judge other people for being different - and others say that the affect will be negative - that children will grow up learning that something that's morally wrong is socially acceptable, encouraging them to abandon the moral principles that hold society together. I certainly don't know enough about society or psychology to know what people are going to think or do if certain laws are or are not passed. All I know is that God knows what's going on a lot better than we do.

God wants us to make our on decisions, but He also want us to make the right decisions. He tells us what the right decisions are, and He encourages us to choose them by telling us about the rewards for righteousness and the consequences of sin.

You know, maybe that's what law is trying to do. It creates consequences for doing things that aren't acceptable, to try to dissuade people from doing such things. Does that force people not to do those things? I don't know. But what I do know is that I've allowed my political ramblings to get me WAY off-topic. I do want to get back to the basics - to things that even I can understand. Maybe I'll talk about the Holy Ghost next, or maybe some more about Faith. We'll see. Until then, I'm going to try not to try to figure out anything as complicated as politics. Religion is tricky enough.