No, not "Paradox", our young and brilliant contributor, but actual paradoxes—where two contradictory ideas are entwined together within LDS policy and culture.

It’s okay to be single, except it’s better to be married.

At least once a year the Ensign publishes an article about how being single still means you are a quality person and a loved child of God.  That’s all true, of course, but why would there be a need for such articles in the first place? 

Well, duh—church teachings are based on and aimed toward married families.  The doctrine about the destiny of eternal families is fairly clear and specific, and singles aren’t included (not without the hope of being part of a married family in the future).  Being single in this context means you’re incomplete within the Church, and it’s not a surprise that being single leads many members to feelings of isolation, depression and low self-esteem.   The focus of Church doctrine, policy, and teachings has been and always will be based on the married with children ideal, because that’s the foundation of the plan of salvation.

So, how do you emphasize the importance of families without alienating those without families?  Well…you can’t.  That’s the paradox.

It’s a no win situation—you can't maintain being married is "better" without simultaneously saying that being single is therefore "worse".    You can’t abandon single Saints who have great worth and value in the Church, and have a lot to offer.  But you can’t pretend that being single is ‘just as good’ as being married when everyone can see in doctrine and practice that it’s not true.  You can’t say that being married is an important step in spiritual progression in God’s plan and then hope that singles don’t notice that you just said that they’re…lacking in important spiritual progression.

Balancing the need to be inclusive when there are fundamental differences between being single and married is one of the difficult paradoxes to navigate in the Church.

Sins can be forgiven, but don’t commit them anyway.

Another classic paradox, and another no-win situation.  Do you try to keep people away from sin using harsh rhetoric such as “an abomination in God’s sight”, or “becoming a captive of the devil”?   For some, that will encourage (read: scare) people into staying on the true and narrow…but at the same time, those who have sinned will feel unworthy of God’s love and be discouraged from the saving doctrines of repentance and the atonement.

But…if you emphasize mercy, forgiveness, repentance and the cleansing power of the Atonement, those ‘prodigal sons’ will be encouraged to return, but at the same time for others it will create a casual, shrug-your-shoulders, ‘eh, I can just repent later’ attitude about sinning in the first place.

How do you balance the seriousness of sin with the availability of repentance and forgiveness?  Emphasizing one seems to diminish the other—each way pushes a certain class of people in the church towards an undesirable extreme.

We should not be judgmental, while still keeping firm standards and encouraging personal responsibility. 

As Kent has recently noted, there is a trend in the Church about charity implying that:

“the target of compassion must deserve the compassion somehow. We see floods of compassion for the victims of natural disasters, for those who become ill with diseases that strike at random, and we willingly dig into our pockets to help, believing that they deserve help.

But in cases where the person suffering brought the problem on themselves, or shares some responsibility for what happened to them, too often the response is far from compassionate, and many people even launch vicious criticisms because of the perceived sins of those that suffer.

But, of course, on the other hand…

It is also true that we need to promote personal responsibility, even if the only wrong is what was done to the person who committed the wrong. Justice demands that everyone suffer the consequences of their actions. And there are consequences, even for sins in which “no one is hurt.”

So…since many circumstances that require compassion and service involve some extent of personal culpability with the person requiring the service, how do you withhold judgment and show compassion without encouraging like behavior and discouraging personal responsibility at the same time?

Good question!  These are another pair of ideas that push in completely opposite directions. 

Compassion and service can provide a reverse-incentive to change.  But the responsibility for compassion and service in the first place is not predicated on change.  But…without change, there’s likely just going to be the need for *more* compassion and service in the future as the problems continue, leading to a never-ending cycle.  So what do you do?

Virtually all faithful Latter-Day Saints will encounter this problem some time in their personal dealings—how do you love the sinner without at the same time excusing the sin even in small ways?  How do you find the balance between justice and mercy—compassion and accountability?

Husbands and wives are equal partners in their marriage…but men still “preside”.

So...both halves of a married couple are equal, but one half is more equal than the other?

While the other paradoxes involve finding the tricky middle ground between two extremes that pull in opposite directions, this one may just be a straight-forward contradiction. 

At a recent stake conference, a member of our stake presidency raised this exact question, and then attempted to explain this paradox by showing from the scriptures how man is divinely determined to “rule” (in a benevolent, righteous fashion, of course) over his family.  If that lesson sounds like it didn’t exactly answer the question of how wives are equal partners in their marriage despite the husband being the ‘ruler’…you’re right.

If men are called to “lead”, “rule” and/or “preside” over the family, then by definition the relationship is not equal.  And if they truly are not equal, then why not just say so, without trying to cloud the issue through grafted-on, nice-sounding rhetoric about equal partners.

Or, on the other hand, if husbands and wives really are equal partners, then why introduce the abstract concept of "presiding" in the first place?

Actually, maybe we’d better stick with the other three paradoxes, because this one may be the most unsolvable of them all…