Scripture references are from the NRSV.
I have been deconstructing for a few years now. As I have deconstructed, I have come to be a bit of a "cafeteria Mormon" or "decluttering Christian" in that I now hold onto the beliefs that feel like love and let go of the ones that don't. This practice, to me, is living the Law of Love.
Jesus makes it clear in the New Testament that love is the measuring stick of any and all laws AND prophets. In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind," and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Jesus cannot be more direct in his message. Love is the command. If a law, command, instruction, counsel, or words of prophets, apostles, leaders, or family result in acting in any way other than showing love, it doesn't measure up. It breaks the Law of Love.
In John 13:34 & 35, Jesus says, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another," and "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples..."Here, he says not only that love is a commandment, but that whether or not we show love to others is THE thing that will identify those who are his followers from those who are not.
In 1 John 3:14&15, it is taught that "Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them." Here in 1 John, it's said that people who do not love are living in death. Not only that but lacking love for others is akin to murder and disqualifies someone from eternal life. We really get a sense here of the enormity of the importance of love to Jesus and early Christians.
In 1 John 3:18, we're admonished to "love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." Here, love is defined as not just talking the talk but walking the walk. Love requires action. 1 John 4 goes even further, saying that "God IS love" (emphasis added) and that "if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us," and "God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them." Clearly, love is incredibly important. Where earlier, we learned that the absence of love is death; here, we learn that God is love, and thus, when love lives in us, God lives in us. The author then goes on to further define love, stating, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment..." How do we know love when we see it? Love casts out fear. Love, definitionally, cannot instill fear or threaten punishment. And why are we to love? "We love because he first loved us."
So this is it. This is the Law of Love. Love is the most important commandment. Love is the measuring stick of all other commands. Love is God. Where love is, there God is. If something instills fear or threatens punishment, it breaks the Law of Love. Only those who love will see eternal life. We love because God and Christ loved us first.
This Law of Love has led me to the following incomplete list of things I believe and things I no longer believe.
I believe that all of humanity will make it to heaven/eternal life/celestial kingdom in the end. I do not believe that there will ever come a point where we are locked in place or state forever and cannot progress.
Heavenly Parents who are loving (and remember, God is Love, so if They stopped loving, they would stop being God) could not possibly see their children at one level of understanding and progression who want to grow and progress and say, "No, you're too late, you're stuck where you are." A loving God could only meet a child wanting to grow and learn with excitement and opportunities for further understanding and progression. Thus, all humanity will have the chance in the next life, if they desire, to move from hell to the greatest degree of heaven. And I think given an infinite amount of time, most, if not all, will.
I believe that ALL families who want to live together in the eternities will live together in the eternities.
I don't proclaim to know what ritual, covenant, or ordinance may or may not be required in the eternities to be tied to our loved ones, but I'm confident that Loving Heavenly Parents could not see people who love each other and want to be together and not provide a way for them to be together. It would be hell, torture, and prison to be forever barred from seeing and living with one's loved ones. It would be hell not only for those actually in hell but also for those in heaven. Heaven isn't heaven without your loved ones.
Further, it would be cruel to deny relationships of love that don't fit the "right" mold. Think of the love of a child and their foster parent or step-parent, or a child and their aunt, uncle, or grandparent who raised them or acted as a loving parent figure. Think of a man and his non-member wife who lovingly and devotedly raised children together and created a life together. Think of a woman who married and had kids with a husband who passed and then remarried and had kids with another man. It cannot be love to keep the first kids from their dad or the second kids from their dad. It cannot be love to make the woman choose who gets eternal relationships and who will be left alone forever. It cannot be love to force polygamous wives to live with sister wives and their families if they don't want to. It cannot be love to force a woman or children who were abused by husband and father to be tied to that man forever. It cannot be love to keep gay or trans people from their loving life partners or husband/wife/spouse for eternity because their love doesn't "look" right despite the love they experienced being the same love that other couples experienced. It cannot be love to keep gay or trans people from the children they nurtured, loved, and raised forever. Families are love. God is love. God cannot be God if They deny those who love each other from being together both physically and relationally.
I believe that any consenting, loving adults who want to be married in the temple and sealed should be allowed to do so. I do not believe that hetero-love is the only love or a superior love such that it should be acknowledged and honored by God and no others.
Love is love. Love is God. Where there is love, there is God. Thus, God exists and is the very thread that ties two loving partners together whether husband and wife, wife and wife, husband and husband, spouse and wife, spouse and husband, spouse and spouse. Where there is love, there is God also.
I believe that our commitment must be to protect the victims of abuse through mandatory reporting to law enforcement or appropriate government agencies in cases of abuse. I do not believe that shielding abusers from consequences is a morally acceptable thing to do, and it has to stop.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an abuse problem. So much so that it regularly makes headlines. The church has spent a not insignificant amount of money and time dealing with lawsuits, making settlements, and generally avoiding blame for the abuse that happens in its church buildings and congregations. Now, the church itself cannot be wholly to blame for the individual abuses carried out by its members. People who want to be abusive will be abusive regardless of their status in a church or other organization.
That being said, the church is not innocent in the systemic problem of abuse. The church was the biggest donor and supporter of the Boy Scouts of America, which incurred heavy penalty fines for numerous cases of boys being abused by their scout leaders, many of whom were placed and sustained in those positions by their congregations. The church withdrew its support of BSA shortly before a huge wave of abuse cases hit. The church maintains its support for clergy-penitent privilege and defends it despite the fact that clergy-penitent privilege laws protect rapists, sexual abusers, and those who beat, hit, and assault children, spouses, and neighbors. Protecting the abusers from consequences is unacceptable. Doing so perpetuates harm to those who have already been victimized by abusers, as the abusers remain free to continue harming their victims. We make our congregations, our primaries, our ward campouts, our temple recommend and other worthiness interviews more dangerous places to be.
Some defend clergy-penitent privilege, saying, "What about the abuser's right to repent and change with the help of their clergy and religion?" To this, I say that the infinite grace of Jesus Christ extends to all human beings and can be accessed in all places, including from jail, prison, or any other place that the law and due process decide to place abusers in order to keep victims, children, spouses, congregations, and communities safe from them until they have served their sentence and are safe to re-enter society.
I'm not saying that clergy-penitent privilege should be done away with entirely, but it should be unequivocally mandatory for our clergy to report abuse to the law in order to protect abusers. This should be required, if not by the law, then by our church, with the standard being ex-communication or being barred entirely from holding any future callings if found to have not reported abuse when there was clear evidence while they were a leader that abuse was happening. Abuse should be clearly unacceptable in our church by not just words of admonition about abuse but in the mandatory actions taken to protect victims. Protecting victims from further abuse rather than shielding abusers from the consequences of their actions is the only loving response to victims.
I believe "taking the Lord's name in vain" has much, much more to do with being hateful, judgmental, abusive, and exclusionary in God's name than it does with saying "Oh my ...". I don't believe swearing is disrespectful so much as degrading speech.
I used to not swear at all. I used to say that God had chosen Americans, spoken to Mormons, honored man and wife marriages, etc., and thus would not choose, speak to, or honor other nationalities, religions, or relationships as much as those. I learned this through "America is the best country in the world. It's chosen by God to be the literal gathering place of Israel, while other places are not," and "All churches other than God's chosen church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) are the great and abominable church, that abominable whore directed by Satan who drags people down to hell (see 1 Nephi chapters 13, 14, 22)," and the Family Proclamation and seemingly every other talk from Oaks in the last 10 years. While I wouldn't swear, I did believe hateful things in the name of God. This was using the Lord's name in vain.
Now I do swear (though I still don't say "Oh my..."), but I no longer say or believe that God holds one people over another. I now really believe that "God is no respecter of persons," or that God loves, honors, and values ALL people. While I will say sh*t, d@mn, h*ll, f***, and @ss (I tried to keep it clean for readers who are less comfortable with swears), I feel like God is probably happier that I've stopped believing and saying disrespectful and unloving ideas are God's ideas.
On the topic of swears though, I do try not to swear at people, swear with words that demean or degrade people because of gender, sex, anatomy, disability, orientation, race, nationality, or culture, or swear in a way that is disrespectful to people's religions. If I saw something unbelievable, I'd be much more likely to say, "Oh my f***ing h*ll" than "holy cow" or "oh my g**" because the first isn't directly degrading to anyone in particular. The second two might be disrespectful to religions that see cows as sacred, or religious people who believe in God.
This is mostly just my ramblings, but I'll probably come back on a regular basis to add to this list as I think of more "I believe" and "I don't believe" statements.