Dear Gramps,

When I was a teenage girl, I had an abortion. I am investigating the Mormon church and am thinking about being baptized. I understand this is a question that will be asked of me. I know it was wrong and probably knew at the time it was wrong but did not see any other option. If I were in that position today, I would not have an abortion but then again I wouldn’t be having premarital sex. I often can’t believe that person was actually me. I am haunted by the memory and the thought that I will face a child that I chose to not have - though at the time you could not have convinced me it was killing one of Heavenly Father’s children. Please help me to understand what is in store for me or should I tell the missionaries to move along to someone else?

Simpson, from Lawrenceville, Georgia

Dear Simpson,

How wonderful that your Heavenly Father has led you to the one place where you can solve all your problems and concerns about your past life, and feel like a whole and worthy person again. If they have not done so already, the missionaries will explain to you how the Savior took upon himself all of our sins–every one, committed by every person, over all the ages of time. He paid the required price of suffering to satisfy the demands of justice for all of those sins, so that our Heavenly Father can extend his mercy in forgiveness to the repentant without violating the law of justice. If we accept the Lord as our Savior, really repent of all the bad things that we have done, and make a commitment of obedience to the Lord by being baptized for the remission of those sins, we are cleansed wholly and completely and are as much without sin as a new-born babe. Then we will be harrowed up no more by what we have done, knowing that our loving Savior has paid the price and has accepted us into his kingdom–which is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

One of the scriptures that bears on this subject that was given to the prophet Joseph Smith, goes as follows—

Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more. By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins–behold, he will confess them and forsake them. (D&C 58:42-43)

There are two or three things to note about this scripture. Please note that it does not say of the repentant that they will be forgiven, it says that they are already forgiven! Then it tells us how we may know if a person has really repented. Those sins will be confessed– you have already done that, and you will mention it again to the missionaries, who are the Lord’s representatives to you.

Next, the sins are to be forsaken. By what you have written above you have surely forsaken the sin that concerns you. To forsake a sin is not just to say you’re sorry, nor is it just to feel sorry for what you have done. It’s to experience a change of character such that such a thing would be really repugnant to you. When you say that you can’t believe that the person who did that was actually you, you give ample evidence of the fact that you have really repented from what you have done.

Now, let me suggest one more thing to you. You have overcome the temptations of the adversary. He cannot entice you to do such a thing again. But what he can try to do is to make you continually feel badly for what you have done and to not forgive yourself. If he can to this, in a sense he wins. He will have robbed you of a full appreciation of the full effect of the Savior’s great sacrifice in your behalf, which represents a lack of faith in the Savior’s great atoning sacrifice. Let me tell you a little story that I believe would help if that sort of a feeling were ever the case—

There was a young lad who had just received a brand new pair of shiny black shoes. So he put them on and went for a walk. During the walk he stepped in a mud puddle. So he came back home to clean his new shoes. By that time the mud had dried, so he spread a newspaper out on the kitchen table, and with a kitchen knife carefully scraped all the dried mud that he could get off his shoes onto the newspaper. He then went to the kitchen sink and with some soap and water cleaned all the remaining mud off the shoes. Then he got out the shoe polish and shined and polished the shoes. Now it was impossible for anyone to tell that the shoes had ever been in the mud. Next he went back to the kitchen table, tore off a square of newspaper and carefully collected all the dirt that had been scraped off the shoes into the square of newpaper, carefully folded it up and put it in his pocket. From then on, from time to time, he would take the paper from his pocket, unfold it and look at the dirt and say to himself, “What a terrible thing to do. Why in the world did I walk through all that mud?”

Now the question is, what should that lad have done with all that useless dirt? Exactly the same thing that we should with all the useless sins from which we have repented! Throw them away! They are of no worth!

Gramps