One of Satan’s most effective strategies against the followers of Christ in the last days is redefining words to change their meanings, and all too often we let him do that. There is no more prime example than gay marriage. In the summer of 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States legalized gay marriage, the news media celebrated the decision declaring “Love has won!” or “LOVE IS LOVE!”
Now, I am not even going to go into the fact that they redefined marriage against 6,000+ years of human history. Despite historical precedent, despite that God had defined marriage as a heterosexual union, or that even Hillary Clinton had gone on the floor of the senate to speak in defense of marriage just a mere 10 years earlier saying traditional marriage is the bedrock of human civilization. (You won’t believe her speech unless you hear it).
Instead of focusing on marriage, as so many do, I want to focus on the other issues, namely redefining love. Those forcing the redefinition of marriage used the guise of “Love is Love.” And the hashtag #LoveWon went viral. The Sunday after the ruling by the Supreme Court, I was sitting in Elders Quorum when our teacher, who was so excited about the ruling, related a conversation he had with his father, he told us, “I talked with my dad about the SCOTUS and the ruling on marriage this weekend.” and he said, “my dad is kinda ‘right-wing’ and thinks this will destroy the morals of the USA… But I told him how this ruling proves that hate has lost, and this is about equality and love.” He then triumphantly declared, “Love has won!”
I could not sit quietly any longer and I replied that I disagreed, I said, “This has nothing to do with love! God is love, love is of God, love will never and can never lead you to sin, because it can only lead you to God! Therefore, gay marriage is not and can not be love! It is a sin, it is lust. No one here hates gays, yet almost no one here supports gay marriage. There is no hate. They not only want to sin, but when they feel GUILTY they want us to tell them it is not a sin.” Everyone went quiet and I continued. “And love did not win Friday, love won in a garden 2,000 years ago, love won on the cross, and love in the empty tomb!”
God Is Love.
There are many attributes of Deity, knowledge, power, patience, wisdom, diligence, mercy, humility, but the crowning attribute of Deity is Love. In 1 John 4:8 John the beloved declares, “God is love.” not “God is power” or “God is knowledge” but that “God is love.” Mormon declared in Moroni 7:46-7, “Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail. But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.”
Charity is not just a human attribute, it is the defining attribute of God. It is the essence of Godhood. God is love. His Plan of Salvation is a Plan of Love. His Only Begotten Son, in the ultimate act of love, performed the atonement to enable us to return home to heaven. All love emanates from God! God’s love permeates all around us and beckons us to come unto Christ. This is why Christ said that the gospel could be condensed down into two great commandments:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Matthew 22:37-40
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Lust Is A Counterfeit of Love.
Satan is the father of deception, and one of his greatest deceptions is redefining lust and physical attraction as the apex of love. Whereas physical attraction can be an expression of love, it is not love itself. (I actually have written an article comparing Telesital Love, Terrestrial love, and Celestial Love that I highly recommend, as it breaks down the different reasons and types of love, click here for it).
The notion that love justifies lustful actions was flatly rejected by President Spencer W. Kimball. The best way to convey his rejection is to directly quote from his teachings:
In counseling Church members about dating, courtship, and marriage, President Spencer W. Kimball emphasized the importance of living by the Lord’s law of chastity and fidelity. He also warned against Satan’s attempts to make the violation of this law seem justified or harmless. He told of a young couple who had fallen prey to this deception of the adversary:
“The boy said, ‘Yes, we yielded to each other, but we do not think it wrong because we love one another.’ I thought I had misunderstood him. Since the world began, there have been countless immoralities, but to hear them justified by Latter-day Saint youth shocked me. He repeated, ‘No, it is not wrong, because we love one another.’
“They had repeated this abominable heresy so often that they had convinced themselves, and a wall of resistance had been built, and behind this wall they stubbornly, almost defiantly, stood.”
To their rationalization, President Kimball responded, “No, my beloved young people, you did not love one another. Rather, you lusted for one another. … If one really loves another, one would rather die for that person than injure him. At the hour of indulgence, pure love is pushed out one door while lust sneaks in the other.”
Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball Chapter 17 The Law of Chastity
Spencer W. Kimball outlined that real love would never hurt another person and that breaking the law of chastity is hurting them, therefore it is lust, not love, that inspires one to break the law of chastity.
Sin is an action.
Just as dangerous as the redefinition of love and lust has been Satan’s attempt to rebrand sin. Most of us know that Satan is seeking to normalize sin. Often under the guise of ‘agency’ or the fact that ‘God loves us’ as the reason we don’t need to keep the commandments. The Book of Mormon warns us about these tactics in the famous, “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry” verses from 2 Nephi 28:7-9:
7 Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us.
8 And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God.
9 Yea, and there shall be many which shall teach after this manner, false and vain and foolish doctrines, and shall be puffed up in their hearts, and shall seek deep to hide their counsels from the Lord; and their works shall be in the dark.
But there is another redefinition of sin going on, one that I would argue is much more dangerous and nefarious than telling people their sin is ok, it is telling people that they have sinned when they have not. The best example of this is those who struggle with same-gender attraction or pornography. Satan tells them that their attraction itself is a sin. That even having those feelings makes them unworthy and sinful. THIS IS NOT TRUE. It is NOT sinful to be tempted. Christ was tempted. Sin comes only by action. If you have the desire to break the law of chastity and you choose to resist that temptation, then just like Christ, you have NOT SINNED you resisted Satan’s temptations. But, when you choose to not resist Satan’s temptations, or you choose to indulge in your lusts that is when you have committed sin. President Oaks taught, “we commit sin only if, knowing the law, we disobey it.” (This quote comes from an amazing Ensign article entitled Sin and Mistakes, it is worth the read).
Redefining our identity
Above and beyond redefining words, Satan’s most successful assaults in these last days has actually been redefining our identity. When tempting Moses the following is related in Moses 1:12-13: “Behold, Satan came tempting him, saying: Moses, son of man, worship me. And it came to pass that Moses looked upon Satan and said: Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten; and where is thy glory, that I should worship thee?” Satan seeks to have us identify as ANYTHING other than as a child of God. It is not a new trick, he has used this for all of recorded history. He even tried it on Jesus when tempting Him he started with, “If thou be the Son of God…” (Matthew 4:6).
Satan wants us to identify ourselves by the condition of the fall, aka things that won’t matter in the next life; “Billy is bald, Jeremy is fat, Jenny is short, Donna is white, Jerry is Japanese, Roger is a republican, Aaron is gay, and Beth has bad teeth.” by getting us to identify as something other than the divinity of our creation Satan causes us to lose focus from our Heavenly Father and His Plan of Salvation. One of the prime examples of this comes in the focused attack by Satan against those who identify as LGBTQ and their families. Satan tells these people that their attractions, feelings, and desires are who they are, no longer do they identify primarily as a child of God, they identify as their sexual orientation, “I am Gay” or “I am Bi” and if you love me, you will support me.
This deception is VITAL for Satan’s plan to work. Because as soon as we shift a person’s identity to a sinful behavior, then they become that behavior, and any criticism of that behavior are taken personally. When the Prophet or the Apostles repeat the law of chastity it is no longer decrying an action, but it is decrying them as a person. This is why Elder Bednar said, “There are no homosexual members of the Church. We are not defined by sexual attraction. We are not defined by sexual behavior.” For Satan to move is plan forward we must identify ourselves and others by anything other than our status as a child of God.
“Most important, each of us is a child of God with a potential destiny of eternal life. Every other label, even including occupation, race, physical characteristics, or honors, is temporary or trivial in eternal terms. Don’t choose to label yourselves or think of yourselves in terms that put a limit on a goal for which you might strive.”
Dallin H. Oaks, “Where Will This Lead?” April 2019.
Our Real Identity: A Child of God.
To God, your identity is defined by your relation with Him. Not by temporal characteristics, or actions. When Joseph Smith knelt in the Liberty Jail pleading with God to deliver him, did Heavenly Father say, “My White, American, working-class, six foot two, blonde hair, heterosexual, married, worshiper.” No! He said, “My son, peace be unto thy soul” The same with Hyrum in D&C 11:23, “thou art Hyrum, my son” The Lord did the same with Abraham, Enoch, Moses, Orson Pratt, Thomas B. Marsh!
When Heavenly Father addresses us, He addresses us by our name, to show He knows us, and by our relationship as His son or His daughter. He does not label us, but rather He seeks to enable us to become like Him. And if our focus is on our divine birthright inherent as His children, then we will not fall prey to Satan’s traps. We can choose NOT to focus on temporal things like political ideology, race, sexual orientation, or nationality, which Satan uses to define, divide, and conquer us. Instead, we can follow the example of the Lord and focus on what really matters with those around us, namely that no matter what someone looks like, smells like, talks like, who or how they worship, or how they act, that they are a child of God worthy of loving, serving, and saving. That is the essence of the gospel, after all, to love God and to love ALL our brothers and sisters that we are sojourning with.
Thomas S. Monson