Election aftermath

The results of the presidential election leave me with a profound feeling of relief, which I translate into an idiom of gratitude: Thank God. Thank God. I pray that the new administration will be blessed with a spirit of wisdom and discernment as they seek approaches to the disasters our government has created in the Middle East, and to the economic crisis, as well as to other pressing issues like health care, and energy, and climate change. It's depressing to think about the magnitude of the problems facing us.

The passing of Proposition 8 in California left me feeling unexpectedly angry. I've stayed relatively impassive about that particular political battle. I didn't follow the campaign closely; I didn't let myself get worked up into an outrage about the various forms of LDS involvement. But I now find myself getting very angry at the thought of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve gathering tomorrow for their weekly meeting in the Salt Lake Temple—perhaps in their temple robes, using the ceremonial trappings of the True Order of Prayer—to express their gratitude to God for blessing their efforts in support of Proposition 8. That image makes me want to explode into a blistering jeremiad about false priests who oppress; or idolatrers who defile the temple by offering prayers and sacrifices to a false God of their own vain imaginings; or apostate clerics, convinced they preach the orthodox religion, who reject the further light and knowledge God is sending into the world...

I hear the Spirit telling me that kind of radical rhetoric doesn't do any good. I should view the situation more charitably. They're afraid of what they don't understand. They're honorable men blinded by the false traditions of their fathers. They're zealously devoted to the strictures of what they understand to be God's law, and that misguided zeal prevents them from recognizing the coming of a kingdom that breaks down their conceptions of clean and unclean, sinner and righteous, in the name of charity and compassion and an expanded vision of God's love and salvation. They're in bondage, chained down by their own prejudice. And if I go on in this vein, I'm going to sound even more blatantly pompous and self-righteous than I already do, so let's stop now.

I will add this: My anger humbles me because it makes me realize that I can relate, after all, to the hostility toward religious Others that you encounter so often in the scriptures, i.e., the expressions of condemnation toward what the scriptural authors understand to be false religion. Normally I look down my enlightened nose at those sentiments: "Here you see the serious limitations of the scriptural authors, their inability to grasp a more pluralistic vision," etc. But I can be just as hostile, and I experience those feelings more often than is healthy for me. I pray that my anger can be transfigured into a truly fruitful zeal for justice wedded to charity.