Temple Changes: Of Course, God Is No Respecter of Persons
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It took me too long to attend the temple after the changes to the endowment ceremony, but I finally was able to attend in Indianapolis last weekend.
I admit that I didn’t have an earth-shattering experience, primarily because I have long believed that God loves His daughters as much as His sons, and that God is fair and just. It’s humans who insert inequalities based on gender—as well as inequalities based on race, ethnicity, wealth, education, physical ability, and a myriad of other categories for division.
The Book of Mormon shows people again and again being filled with pride and looking for ways to divide themselves from one another based on various human-imposed categories.
People can be so tribal: DC vs Marvel, east side of town vs west side of town, foreign cars vs domestic cars, left vs right politics, Nike vs Adidas, men vs women, Coke vs Pepsi, U of U football vs BYU football, etc. In the Doctrine & Covenants, the voice of God instructs us to erase divisions:
“I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine” (D&C 38:27).
We aren’t the first to be blinded by our cultural biases. In the Book of Acts, we see Peter, the head of the Church during the meridian of times, come to the realization that the God speaks to all of His children, and not just to the children of Israel.
Cornelius, a centurion who was not from the House of Israel, was directed by the Holy Ghost to find Peter and hear the gospel. When Peter sees that a non-Jew received divine guidance, he responded this way:
“Then Peter opened his mouth, and 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.” (Acts 10:34-35).
A similar realization occurs for the leaders later in Acts when they discuss in a council the policy of circumcision before someone is baptized. Does someone have to adhere to the Mosaic law as a gateway to conversion to the gospel of Jesus Christ? (See Acts 15.) It takes a while to sort through that question of what is an unchanging principle and what was a temporary one for a specific time, place, and culture.
Paul in writing to the Galatians asserts a similar understanding about how all are equal before God:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).
I have attended the temple regularly since the mid-1980s, so I quickly noticed the changes. And I felt a warm confirmation of what I have known all along: God knows me, acknowledges me, and loves me unconditionally. I kept silently saying to myself, “Of course. Of course. Of course.”
The half dozen or so changes to the endowment ceremony reminded me of the time in the 1970s when I watched a woman way the opening prayer in Sacrament meeting for the first time. (It was Sis. Gates in the Cypress 1st ward in Orange County, CA.) At that time, I also thought “Of course.” And when the priesthood was expanded to all worthy male members of the church: “Of course.”
We mortals gain instruction in the temple in how to move from the temporal to the eternal. A celestial view differs dramatically from the terrestrial view. Ultimately, we want to become a Zion people, but we have to stop creating and maintaining divisions:
“…they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness…” (Moses 7:18).
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