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Video transcript:
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are, statistically, the least-liked religious group in the United States. But strangely enough, Latter-day Saints feel overwhelmingly positive about all of the very groups that don’t like them back.
And for a long time now, I’ve been wondering… why?
What is it about the Latter-day Saint experience that produces this kind of fruit? And I think a huge piece of the puzzle has been sitting right under my nose for a while now. And I think it strikes right at the heart of who we fundamentally believe God is. Now, this is a hypothesis. These are my own thoughts. You’re free to disagree. But let me flesh this out a bit.
Last year I interviewed Latter-day Saint scholar, author, and theologian Terryl Givens. Givens explained that a series of cataclysmic shifts occurred in the early Christian church that changed the course of Christianity. He argues that in the New Testament, God’s most defining characteristic was his love for humanity. But as time passed, many Christians placed less emphasis on this loving father-figure role, and greater emphasis on God’s role as our sovereign and king. And if you want to dive into the nitty-gritty history of that, he and his wife write all about it in this book.
It very much-so has to do with the Hellenization of Christianity, the promulgation of some of the early Christian creeds, and the ideological victories of the early church father, Augustine. But this shift from a loving, intimate father figure to a more distant, unknowable sovereign has had massive consequences. Take a look.
So when John makes the statement in his first epistle, “God is love,” that’s not just poetry. What he’s saying is, we saw a kind of love that the world had never experienced or known. And that love was most clearly and fully revealed in that moment when Christ washed the feet of his apostles. And that, I think, is the God that is restored in what I see as the most important text revealed through Joseph Smith, and that’s Moses chapter 7, where Enoch encounters a god who does not come across as sovereign, as majestic, as overpowering, as controlling. He’s a god who weeps in solidarity with us. And we have a God the Father who is the perfect reflection of the Son that we see depicted so fully in the gospel of John….
If the paramount quality of God is love, then that’s about intimacy, connection, and interrelatedness. Sovereignty is about distance, right? The king keeps his distance from the courtiers… Now look, I believe God is sovereign of the universe, but I don’t believe he thinks that’s his most important attribute. I think he believes that his capacity to love infinitely is.
Elsewhere, the Givens wrote that “By the fourth century, God is rendered an incomprehensible entity, who created us, along with the rest of the universe, out of nothing. He is an absolute sovereign, an inaccessible father, and an enforcer of legalistic justice rather than a dispenser of boundless compassion.”
Emphasizing God’s sovereignty over his love affects some of the soul’s deepest questions. For example, What is God’s highest purpose for humanity? I Google’d that question, and these were the top 3 results:
First, “God has created us for His glory….”
Next, “the ultimate purpose of man, according to the Bible, is simply to glorify God.”
And third, “The supreme goal of God in history from beginning to end is the manifestation of his great glory.”
And to be clear, it’s not wrong to glorify God by any means. We should be worshipping and glorifying God every day. But Latter-day Saint theology does something really interesting with this in Moses chapter 1. God says,
“For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”
From a sovereignty-first perspective, it’s easier to say that God’s ultimate goal is for us to glorify Him. From a love-first perspective, God’s ultimate goal is for Him to glorify us, through the merits and mercy of Jesus Christ. God’s plan becomes less about judgment (even though he will judge us), and becomes more about healing.
Now, what does this have to do with explaining the PEW research data? I’m getting there. Stick with me. We’ve got to look at one more example before we bring this all together. When God’s relationship to humanity is viewed primarily through the lens of sovereignty and authority, it also becomes easier to justify teachings that clearly are not very loving. For example, most Christians believe that in order to be saved, you have to believe that Jesus Christ is the Savior. Fair enough. But then what happens to the vast majority of humankind who have lived and died without ever learning about Jesus? In one recent chat, I was told, “…even people who have never had an opportunity to learn about Christ are still sinners. As such, they receive condemnation.”
“…the life we deserve is Hell. God can create something He can destroy to bring Glory to himself….”
In another chat, I asked someone what percentage of the population they thought would ultimately end up in hell for eternity. Their response? 80%. He said, “…at the end of the day we were created for his glory. Why do you think you have the right to b[e] anything more th[e]n a servant.”
Now there are lots of Christians who feel and believe that there is still hope for those who never heard the gospel. You know who you are. I see you, and am grateful for you. Thank you for putting God’s love first in this scenario. But these are real conversations, and popular beliefs describing a God that I find deeply disturbing.
I recently stumbled upon a video from a former Evangelical mega-pastor who became an atheist in part because of precisely this problem. Take a look.
SOT: [Clip from @drtoddphiliips]
An archived version of this article says, “It is foolish to debate the fairness of God sending someone to hell who never had the opportunity to hear the gospel of Christ.” “If we assume that those who never hear the gospel are granted mercy from God, we lose our motivation for evangelism … The Bible is clear that those who perish without Christ will face an eternity in hell.”
This article explains that according to Romans 1, God reveals enough about himself in nature to condemn all of humanity, but not enough to save any of humanity. And it’s OK that most of humanity has absolutely no hope of salvation, because “God did not owe salvation to anyone.” To me, that does not describe a loving relationship between a father and his children. It’s closer to the relationship between a tyrant and his subjects.
But what happens when the focus is primarily on God’s love? Let’s look at another clip.
SOT: I don’t like the term “universalist” because I think it’s too easily misread as automatic, as no accountability.
Interviewer: No accountability and automatic salvation.
Terryl Givens: That’s never what universalists intended by the term. They meant just an unlimited opportunity extended to all. One of my friends calls it—a better term would be “no final buzzer-ism.”
SOT: As I’ve been reviewing the history of universalism in Christian thought, there have been—there have been two associated implications, two implications around the question of universalism.
One is a long-standing view that, look, we are such thick, recalcitrant, fallen individuals that we need to be shaken into recognition of our wickedness and our perversity, and that’s kind of the Jonathan Edwards approach, Calvin. And the other is characterized by a guy whose name was John Murray—”Salvation John Murray”—who becomes converted to universalism at the end of the 18th century, and he writes in his autobiography: “The moment I transferred my allegiance to a God who wanted to save everyone, my heart just welled with love for everybody.”
So I think that it’s conducive to a greater discipleship if we have uppermost in mind the expansiveness and the inexhaustibility of God’s love. It means you’re just as valuable as I am. I don’t have to wonder, “Are you the elect? Maybe I am.” And you know, so we lose those kinds of differentiations.
Let’s look at this table a bit more closely. It shows how different religious or non-religious groups feel towards each other. Negative numbers represent negative feelings. Positive numbers represent positive feelings. So for example, Atheists are generally not big fans of Evangelicals, and vice versa. So, every group on this list, except barely our Catholic friends, have negative feelings about Latter-day Saints. But the reverse is not true.
WHY? Well, I think it’s because we believe in a close, feeling, and physical Father in Heaven who prioritizes love over sovereignty. He genuinely loves everyone, and genuinely wants and will do everything he can to save everyone. And over time, I believe that people become more like that which they worship, for better or for worse. And because I think Latter-day Saints have transferred their allegiance to a God who wants to save everyone, their hearts well with love for everyone.
We don’t have to wonder if God gives everyone a fair shake. — it’s baked into our doctrine. Those who die with no knowledge of Christ or the gospel will have the opportunity to accept Christ after this life. We believe in a very small eternal Hell, and an expansive, multi-tiered heaven, where even those who fall short of their potential can be happy and will be ministered to by deity. We don’t lose our motivation for evangelism because our purpose for evangelism is about so much more than just keeping people out of Hell. It’s about living the gospel here and now, and enjoying the associated blessings here and now. Evangelism isn’t just about the fear of Hell, it’s about love for God.
This is still an open question in our faith, but a while back I even asked our Latter-day Saint viewers whether they believed it would be possible for people to progress between kingdoms of glory in the eternities. 58% said ‘Yes’. That’s still up for debate, but what is not is God’s ultimate goal for humanity, which Elder Kearon has so eloquently spoken of in the past:
SOT: Everything about the Father’s plan for His beloved children is designed to bring everyone home.
What do God’s messengers, His prophets, call this plan in Restoration scripture? They call it the plan of redemption, the plan of mercy, the great plan of happiness, and the plan of salvation, which is unto all, “through the blood of mine Only Begotten.”
The intent of the Father’s great plan of happiness is your happiness, right here, right now, and in the eternities. It is not to prevent your happiness and cause you instead worry and fear.
The intent of the Father’s plan of redemption is, in fact, your redemption.
SOT: In other words, the Father’s plan is not about roadblocks. It never was; it never will be. Are there things we need to do, commandments to keep, aspects of our natures to change? Yes. But with His grace, those are within our reach, not beyond our grasp.
This is the good news! … The Father’s design, His plan, His purpose, His intent, His wish, and His hope are all to heal you, all to give you peace, all to bring you, and those you love, home.I’m not saying that no other Christians prioritize God’s love or that Latter-day Saints are the only people who believe in the radical mercy of God. But I think this data reveals a significant depth to these beliefs on an institutional level that I just think is really beautiful.
And for all of our quirks and challenges, my sincere hope is that other people can see it and think, huh, maybe there’s more to this than I thought.
SOT: “…it seems to me that in a world such as ours, that is so aching and hurting and yearning for some point of orientation that is beautiful and trustworthy, that the question isn’t, “Is there a god?” At least, that doesn’t seem to me the most interesting or operative question. A better question is, “Assuming there is a God, is that God worthy of my adoration and my commitment and my devotion?”
And I think one of the things that I most love about the restoration, as I understand its purpose and intent, is that it fully restores a God who is worthy in every way of our adoration.