A wonderful lesson in Sunday School can sometimes help draw more from the scriptures than an initial reading offers. For this reason, I'm backing up and taking things a little out of order. I was brought to notice a few more things about how the Law of Chastity was singled out among the "laws of the Church" in Section 42.
"Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else. And he that looketh upon a woman to lust after her shall deny the faith, and shall not have the Spirit"
For those who don't recall, there were four watershed commandments which could earn offenders a sentence of being "cast out" from the Church, and the new economic arrangement that combined its doctrine with the collected property of its members. Murder, of course, is the hard line: offenders don't get forgiven. But lying, stealing, and adultery can be repented of, and so the chance is offered. In listing the commandments, however, the law of chastity is the only one expressed positively--thou shalt not lie, thou shalt not steal, but thou shalt love they wife...and none else.
This command to love, to commit the heart fully, is a command usually reserved for devotion to God. And in service of helping those in attendance connect full commitment of heart to faith, the teacher, under the influence of the Spirit, asked the class to help him define "deny." Several synonyms suggested themselves quickly: refuse, reject, repudiate, dismiss, oppose. All make the point quite effectively: denying a portion of covenant love to a spouse is analogous to rejecting the love of the Lord.
One comment, however, included a vertical look at the word, rather than at the horizontal connected meanings. The term "deny" has the same etymological root as naysaying. And that's worthy of a little deeper thought.
The Lord frequently chose the metaphor of a marriage to symbolize His all-in and self-sacrificial relationship to those who believe in Him, and are organized by covenant into His Church. We, in turn, are also bound to Him by an eternal, covenantal ritual marking a change of relationship from individuals to a family, to oneness of heart, might, mind, and strength. It's this symbol which teaches us the very nature of His own oneness with His Father and with the Holy Ghost. So what is the process by which these eternal covenants begin? We know it, at least in the abstract, as the first principle of the Gospel: faith. Taking steps of trust that knit the hearts as one requires acting as if the trust hoped for is real--experimenting on the object of hope to discover whether it is true. It's the positive movement of making sacrifices of energy and emotion, of risking rejection, of making an invitation, of sharing something personal without yet knowing whether the other will appreciate the sacrifice, the movement, the invitation, or the self shared. Faith in Christ--the process of coming to learn of and love Him, of accepting His love, of receiving His forgiveness--is entirely parallel. The analogy of the marriage to the Church can now apply not only love and commitment in the family and religious domains, but to the very process of committing itself.
Withholding love, holding back to any degree are poisoning omissions to faith in Christ as to oneness with a spouse. Actively encouraging or even passively allowing an outside party to interfere with the covenantal love both literally destroys the love, and introduces psychological and symbolic negation--doubt, the opposite of faith--into the relationship. Just as naysaying interrupts the power of positive thinking--the inertia of forward obtained through work toward what we can only as yet see with eyes of faith--a wandering eye disrupts not just the marital relationship, but reverence for the deeper love for Deity as well. Being a nattering nabob of negativism prevents success in all domains, and is the inevitable result of indulgence of impure thoughts.
Think about any real or fictional account of an adulterer you have ever seen, read, or experienced. Examine their story, and tell me if the participants weren't also both liars and pessimists.
The Gospel teaches us to live as Christ lives, and His truths shone through multiple layers of analysis. Let us keep the faith in all our sacred relationships. The eternal rewards are worth it.
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