Answer

What If I Hope Future Revelation Changes a Church Teaching?

You believe in continuing revelation, and part of you is hoping it lands on the teaching you find hardest. That hope usually shows up around marriage, gender or sexuality, and it is often about a person you love rather than about an argument. It makes sense that you would want to know what is genuinely open.

Continuing revelation is real, and it is not a queue of doctrines waiting to be replaced. The Lord can give greater light, clarify how a teaching applies, and correct how His people live it. Prophets have said directly that the Proclamation’s core doctrine is not among the things expected to change.

Eternal Truths

God has more to reveal. The ninth article of faith says He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God. That is a genuinely hopeful doctrine, and it means the Church expects to learn rather than to stand still.

The Proclamation is presented as eternal truth rather than as current policy. President Dallin H. Oaks called The Family: A Proclamation to the World a statement of eternal truth in “The Plan and the Proclamation”, described its core principles as “divinely given doctrine” that “cannot be changed”, and later called it founded on irrevocable doctrine (“Divine Love in the Father’s Plan”).

Clarification is not the same as reversal. In a 2019 leadership address President Oaks said the Proclamation’s long-standing doctrinal statements will not change, though they may be clarified as directed by inspiration. Application and emphasis have shifted before and will again. That is a different category from doctrine.

What Can Make This Confusing?

When a teaching is painful, imagining that it will eventually change can be the only way it feels bearable. That is understandable. The risk is that the hope becomes the way you make peace with the doctrine, and then you never actually ask God about the teaching itself. A question held open in front of Him is a different thing from a question parked behind a hope.

What Research Shows

Research led by BYU psychologist Sam Hardy found that spiritual practices, religious relationships and supportive faith communities matter as young people work through questions of belief. It cannot tell you what is true. It does suggest that staying connected while you work is better than working it out alone.

Questions to Think About

• Am I asking Him to help me understand, or mainly hoping for a different answer?
• What has the Lord already made clear to me personally?
• What could I learn by staying close to Him while this is still difficult?

What You Can Do

Read President Oaks’s 2022 message this week, write down the single part of the teaching that is hardest for you, and take that specific sentence to Heavenly Father rather than the general grievance. The essay on questions about the Proclamation goes further.

Jesus Christ can help you live faithfully with a question that is still tender, and He gives understanding to people who stay near enough to receive it.