Answer

Is It Okay to Have Questions About Parts of the Proclamation?

Something in the Proclamation does not sit right with you, and you are not sure whether that is a problem. Maybe it is the part about gender, or about marriage, or about roles in a family. Maybe it is hard because of someone you love. Wondering whether you are allowed to ask is its own kind of weight.

Yes, it is okay, and asking is how nearly every revelation in this dispensation started. The more useful question is not whether you may ask but which direction your question is pointing. Some questions move toward God. Some move away while sounding identical.

Eternal Truths

God invites questions and answers them. James told the Saints that anyone lacking wisdom should ask of God, who gives liberally and does not upbraid (James 1:5-6). Joseph Smith read that verse and went to a grove with a question. The Restoration began with a fourteen-year-old asking something he could not resolve on his own.

A question can also be a device. The adversary opened in Eden with one: hath God said? (Moses 4:6-7). It was not a request for information. It was a way of introducing a frame. Same grammar as an honest question, opposite trajectory, and you can usually tell which you are holding by whether you would be glad to find the answer.

The Proclamation is presented as doctrine, not as a position paper. President Dallin H. Oaks, who was present while it was prepared, called it a statement of eternal truth and the will of the Lord for His children (“The Plan and the Proclamation”). That is worth knowing before you decide what a hard question about it means.

What Can Make This Confusing?

The internet applies real pressure to make one unresolved difficulty load-bearing for a whole faith. It is not how anyone reasons about anything else. Nobody abandons medicine over one thing their doctor cannot explain. And if a teaching is hard because of a person you love, that is not a doubt to be argued down. It is a real cost, honestly felt.

Questions to Think About

• Would I be glad to find the answer to this, or am I hoping there isn’t one?
• Am I starting from the strongest thing I know, or from the difficulty?
• What have I already received that I would have to explain away?

What You Can Do

Write the question down in one sentence, as precisely as you can, and put a date beside it. Then take it to the Lord and to someone who will not flinch, and leave it open long enough to be answered. A question dropped early because it was uncomfortable teaches nothing. There is a fuller essay on holding questions faithfully if you want it.

Jesus Christ is not threatened by your question, and He has a long record of giving more to the people who kept asking Him than to the people who stopped.