Any Latter-day Saint or non-Latter-day Saint who feels tension or angst or negativity of any kind coming from anyone or anywhere over dating someone outside your faith or inside that particular faith for fear you might fall in love with that suitor or suitress and — heaven forbid — marry that person needs to hear my story.
Actually, it’s not my story, it’s just a story that’s made all the difference in my life. So, yeah, please forgive me, we’re going to get personal here.
Let’s not dilly-dally around, and just start right from jump with strong encouragement from this corner to go ahead and say — fall as hard as love could or would push or pull you.
Nobody here is claiming to be the doctor of love or the Ph.D of romance, but in this crazy world, regardless of religious affiliation, that kind of heart, mind and soul connection is tough to come by. And if you feel it and you know you feel it, act on it.
God is love, the Good Book proclaims, and it seems fair to believe that if the Almighty is granting you a portion of that rare, deep, tender devotion, then denying it, casting it aside, on account of what is preached at church or what prejudice might be presumed from the other direction, is like throwing away a blessed gift.
That’s not to say — with divorce rates being what they are — that emotion should be shifted into gear carelessly or without regard to proper attention. It is to say that Mormon-on-Mormon dating and marriage is not the only route to bliss and happiness in this life.
As for the life after this life, there is the doctrine that proclaims that only those “sealed” in a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will have eternal marriages.
(The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) A sealing room in the Manti Temple.
OK, now, that’s heavy and remarkably exclusionary. Who’s to say what’s possible through the eternities under God’s purview if love is present — especially since faithful Latter-day Saints already perform proxy sealings for deceased married couples in their temples?
All of this brings to mind my Latter-day Saint mission, when I taught a couple in Germany nearly five decades ago about the prospect of having an eternal family. It was a new concept to them. I asked the wife, “How would you feel if you knew you could live with your husband forever and ever?” The 60-year-old Frau looked like I’d hit her in the forehead with a socket wrench. She glanced over at Herr Braun, a scruffy man who was scarfing a bratwurst with extra-hot mustard dripping down the front of his shirt as he sat in his lounge chair, and laughed. No lie, she LOL’ed. So, there’s that.
Yes, there is a divide
Whatever the doctrine is, however understood or misunderstood, I figure if it causes young people and/or their parents or other family members to stress or freak out over those young people dating good, honorable young humans of other faiths or of little or no faith, then something is messed up.
Yeah, I know it’s a thing. As reported in Part 2 of The Salt Lake Tribune’s look at Utah’s religious divide, there are real tensions, real zeal, that can rupture relationships among younger — and older — singles. Some Latter-day Saints desire only to seek temple marriages inside the faith. And some non-Latter-day Saints avoid dating and courting members of the state’s predominant faith for a multitude of reasons. That’s OK. That’s their choice.
The way I figure it, folks should date and marry whomever they’re attracted to, whomever expands their mind and makes their heart jump, whomever possesses the qualities and characteristics they seek in a companion, whomever can make them smile, whomever they feel they can’t live without.
But I will say, alongside that, there’s an abundance of anxiety caused by the notion that Latter-day Saints should date and marry only Latter-day Saints, and that non-Latter-day Saints should stay away from Latter-day Saints in the pursuit of partnership and love.
When I was once asked by my lay leaders — given, in churchspeak, a calling — to work with young single adults (individuals between ages 18 and 35) in their faith journeys, I noticed in the wards (congregations) I was assigned to visit that there were approximately two female worshippers in attendance for every male. Sometimes, that ratio was 3-to-1. With the emphasis inside the faith on marriage, I talked with enough of those women to hear and realize their concerns. Many of them were worried, vexed even, about finding a suitable faithful companion.
That’s when I thought the church was doing its young members an unhappy disservice, not just by blanketing the point about marriage being the sole way to find authentic meaning in life, but by hammering that whole temple marriage dictum as the only way to reel in celestial satisfaction.
Many of the women — and men — were lonely and truly burdened by these directives. The absolute — you must do this particular thing to find and inherit joy and fulfillment in this life and in the next — was beyond troubling to them. All they wanted, at least in some cases, was to garner what a lot of people yearn for — a shot at happiness, to not go through life alone, to find meaningful relationships and, with any luck, a partner who would treat them with kindness and goodness and respect and love.
Who thinks it’s wise to tell these members only to date those of their own faith, to avoid all the other wonderful people on the planet who might love them in the best ways possible, and if they don’t do that, their eternal progression could be in peril? The same question, or one with the same at least temporal vibe, exists for those outside the faith who refuse to connect with Latter-day Saints, even ones with whom they might be completely compatible and find lasting love.
Closer to home
(Illustration by Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
As the father of five beautiful adult daughters — some who have married inside the temple and stayed in the faith; some who have married outside the temple and left the faith; and some who have married inside the temple and now are outside the faith — I can say I’m proud of and happy for all of them.
And, I believe, God is, too.
As a Latter-day Saint, I believe a loving God, who loves them more than I do, extends that love equally and blesses them, regardless of where they worship, or if they worship, or whom they worship with, or whom their friends and spouses are. They’re all good, selfless and charitable. The last thing I’ve done after so many years as a dad is fret or freak out over whom they date or whom they marry as it pertains to religious preference.
Those who think I don’t understand or adhere to my own church and its teachings, well, I’ll leave that up to God. I believe the Almighty will work it out, one way or the other. In the meantime, I will, in my own imperfect way, try to follow and live basic Christian principles.
One last thing, and, again, please forgive the personal nature of all this: The most valued part of my life, now and a thousand years from now, is my wife, Lisa. She is everything, the love of my life for 42 years and counting. Everyone who knows her likes her better than they like me, has a higher opinion of her than they have of me. I’m good with that. I also like her better. She’s a better person than I am. I married her and she married me in a Latter-day Saint temple, and that’s been good for us.
She wouldn’t exist as the person she is, however, if her late mother, Leora, a Latter-day Saint girl from Cache Valley, hadn’t been open to dating and eventually marrying Hank, a Catholic boy from Chicago.
Nobody can convince me that union wasn’t favored by God in the highest, holiest, most sacred imaginable way. I thank the heavens for it every day for what it did for them and for the amazing person it brought into the world.
Go ahead, then, and look for love — wherever you can find it, wherever you can feel it, wherever you can embrace it. And God, if you believe that way — somehow, sometime, some way — will embrace and love it, too.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tribune columnist Gordon Monson.
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