He That Worketh Righteousness is Accepted With Him

I serve in my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) in their women's organization. Every five months I'm in charge of writing a message to the women in my neighborhood. These are my February thoughts.

I’ve recently been pondering the fear that if we emphasize tolerance and inclusion in our sisterhood, we water down the standards of the church—the fear that if we say that we must let go of a specific image of what a Relief Society sister looks like, we lose the standard that created that image.

Modern revelation says, “Be one, and if ye are not one, ye are not mine.” I think the heart of the commandment requires us to ask what we are united to. Do we need to be united in hairstyles? Do we need to be united in dress? Do we need to be united in life experience? What is it that unites us? 

President Hinckley once taught the brethren, “I remember when President J. Reuben Clark, Jr. […] would stand at this pulpit and plead for unity among the priesthood. I think he was not asking that we give up our individual personalities and become as robots cast from a single mold. I am confident he was not asking that we cease to think, to meditate, to ponder as individuals. I think he was telling us that if we are to assist in moving forward the work of God, we must carry in our hearts a united conviction concerning the great basic foundation stones of our faith.”

But are there not standards? Does the “For the Strength of Youth” pamphlet not teach us to be well-groomed and modestly dressed? Does it not teach us to “choose friends who use good language,” and “to obey the Word of Wisdom” and to “not intentionally harm your body?” Yes. Standards and commandments are given by a prophet of God and we’re each individually striving to live them. However, we can strive without passing judgement on others or even without passing judgement on those whose charge it is to enforce those standards.

President Oaks taught how to seek unity. He said, “[M]embers of majority groupings (whatever their nature) are responsible to accept Church members of other groupings, providing full fellowship and full opportunities in Church participation. We seek to establish a community of Saints—“one body” the Apostle Paul called it—where everyone feels needed and wanted and where all can pursue the eternal goals we share.” That defines my role. In this bigger plan, my only job is to provide full fellowship to anyone who walks into the church or into my life. I’m striving to follow the standards, as God commanded. Who’s to say someone who might not look like me isn’t striving, too? My job, as a run-of-the-mill member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to simply love and try to see everyone as God sees them. Joseph Smith taught, “While one portion of the human race is judging and condemning the other without mercy, the Great Parent of the universe looks upon the whole of the human family with a fatherly care and paternal regard.”

Jesus, when presented with a woman committing adultery, saw in her a daughter of God and said, “Neither do I condemn thee.”

Jesus sat down with Matthew, a hated tax collector, and saw in him an apostle.

Jesus looked at Saul, “breathing out threatenings and slaughter” against Jesus’ followers, and saw in him the great missionary of the Old World.

Jesus looked at Alma the Younger, going about to destroy the Church of God, and saw in him the great missionary of the New World.

I imagine it was hard for the Israelite saints, after Jesus had spent his entire ministry focused on them, that Peter would then organize a mission to the Gentiles. But the message hadn’t changed then, and it hasn’t changed now. Peter said, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him. The word which God sent […] preaching peace by Jesus Christ [is] that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.”