This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
One obvious point of interest for Latter-day Saints is the sacred undergarment which we receive in the temple. Lots of other religions have sacred clothing, and some even have sacred undergarments–such as the Jewish Tallit Katan–but other undergarments don’t get ridiculed like Latter-day Saints do. In 2003, bigoted Antimormon protesters outside the church’s General Conference began defiling the sacred garment and waving it at members attending the worship service. Rather than arrest these bigoted Antimormons, the Salt Lake City police arrested a faithful member who tried to stop the Antimormons. The temple garment is a leading target for vitriol, but it is also an opportunity to spread the gospel to people curious about our faith. Satan screams the loudest at areas that are opportunities for the spread of righteousness. I’ve noticed a lot of admiration for Amish customs and conservative, humble clothing that promotes virtue and chastity. “Mormon underwear” gets overlooked because of the stigma the mainstream media and Antimormon propaganda attaches to it, but if we can talk about it openly and honestly, I think people will understand the benefit our sacred garments provide. It is a tremendous benefit that even few Latter-day Saints fully understand.
Temple Promises – We continue to wear garments after going through the endowment in the temple. They are worn close to the skin under clothing “according to the instructions given in the endowment” ceremony. This includes a covenant. I will not say what those instructions are or the nature of the covenant. The church website only says they are “sacred promises of fidelity to God’s commandments and the gospel of Jesus Christ,” and that the garments “represent the sacred and personal aspect of their relationship with God and their commitment to live good, honorable lives.” In general, it is something physical we take with us from the temple as a reminder of the ordinances we performed there and the promises we made. Many have noticed that the garment leads church members to dress conservatively and modestly, as garment cloth is not supposed to be exposed to view. It also leads us to dress better and to look nicer. It becomes a physical manifestation of the spiritual identity derived with help from the temple.
Clothing From Temple Appearance
We can gain a deeper understanding of what the garment represents and the function it serves by considering how clothing in general relates to the temple. In ancient Israel, clothing engaged with the function of the temple and was just as important a part of the temple experience as was the physical edifice . Moses was commanded to remove the sandals from his feet when he saw God in the burning bush, because “the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Physical clothing thus symbolized the profane physical nature of man which must be shed in order to join the presence of God, like a snake shedding its skin in a purifying repentance process. Later, a cloud concealed the presence of God from the host of Israel, like a kind of clothing, and only Moses was worthy to approach the mountain to receive the ten commandments. Priestly clothing in the ancient Hebrew temple later engaged architectural functions of the temple itself. The physical temple in Israel was constructed as a kind of device to contain holiness and make men pure enough to approach God’s presence. The temple priests had to wear special clothing “when they come near unto the altar to minister in the holy place; that they bear not iniquity, and die: it shall be a statute for ever unto him and his seed after him.” The clothing blended with the function of the temple in purifying and containing holiness. We remove our profane physical nature in a repentance and put on a new spiritual nature that reflects the image of the central temple. The appearance of the clothing even resembled the temple building. The design, arrangement, and colors as precisely outlined in scripture was the same as for the temple construction.
This kind of clothing relates our physical bodies closely to the temple architecture. This is important for internalizing the temple experience, as the primary relationship in our life experience is our relationship to our bodies. Our physical bodies were the first thing we were aware of as tiny babies and will be the last thing we are aware of when we die. I think this is why, more than just being a matter of respecting our most precious gift from God with respect, treatment of one’s body as a temple is important because it is our first and final layer of communication with our environment. If we defile our bodies with tattoos and other physically profane graffiti, this filters out holiness rather than containing holiness, and inevitably shapes our spirit and identity. Clothing is our most intimate physical material next to our body. Like clothing, architecture’s most basic function is to serve as covering and shelter for the body.
Spiritual Functions – Each of the rituals in ancient temples–including Egyptian, Middle Eastern, and Native American temples–involved the physical body. The body was washed, the body was anointed, food was consumed, clothing was put on, etc. They recognized that the body is a person’s most intimate connection to the material world, and physical rituals with the body provided the most profound influence on a person’s belief. Clothing is in its most basic form a way to alter the appearance of the body, protect the body, and provide utility for the body to perform labor. We can alter the body’s appearance to be more pure and godly. We can protect the body from spiritual dangers like protecting the body from exposure to the cold. We can also use clothing to help perform righteous actions, like the loop on a construction work’s overalls that holds his hammer. Physical clothing can symbolize a spiritual nature that we assume, and guide us in performing these functions.
The act of clothing was ritualized in a step by step process that which reflected the design of the temple structure. It was as if the temple initiate were putting the temple edifice piece by piece on his or her body. The Binding of Youth ritual of ancient Egypt illustrates a precise ritual of putting on this holy nature, in a process that reflected a person’s morning routine and thus encouraged a daily repetition of this purifying process. The youth chanted: “Praise be to God, the Mighty Creator…” The initiate was clothed in a “coat of green” and “shawl over his outer coat. He ties a knot with the ends of this girdle.” Then “a bow is tied. The young man is thus completely admitted” to the temple. (Edward William Lane, The Manners & customs of modern Egyptians)
Temple Reflects Clothing
Just as clothing reflected the architecture, the form of clothing was also reflected back to the architecture of the temple. For example, the Ionic column order of Greece explicitly took imagery from women’s clothing and proportions of a woman’s body. Ancient Greeks derived each of their classic orders from a different sex: male, female–and youth for the Corinthian order. Their physical temples thus imbued the distinct qualities of “gender,” a visual language which is unfortunately completely lost today. Our temples take on the Greek “gender” language by using these column styles–though I have noticed the Ionic “female” order is rarely used. Clothing distinct and natural for the different sexes is literally part of our temple architecture.
The reflection of clothing on the temple is therefore a reflection of characteristics which are evident by our physical image. “At the foot they substituted the base in place of a shoe; in the capital they placed the volutes, hanging down at the right and left like curly ringlets, and ornamented its front with cymatia and with festoons of fruit arranged in place of hair, while they brought the flutes down the whole shaft, falling like the folds in the robes worn by matrons. Thus in the invention of the two different kinds of columns, they borrowed manly beauty, naked and unadorned, for the one, and for the other the delicacy, adornment, and proportions characteristic of women.” (Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture Book IV, Chapter 1, v. 7)
The temple itself thus derived its form from the people inside. It is holiness to the Lord, not holiness from the Lord. That’s what it says, right? What’s the difference? Holiness is a process of changing what we are in order to come closer to the presence of God. The temple acts like a machine that starts out with what we are and refines and transforms it into what we need to be. The people thus influence what the temple is, the holiness of the place. In the Egyptian temple, the initiate became more connected to Horus, as he “wears the divine bipartite kilt of Horus, which is sometimes pleated…” The king could be seen in the temple “kneeling and wearing a long kilt,” with a “girdle fastening the kilt.” Likewise, in their ballcourt ritual games, the Aztecs took on the image of gods, “wearing an elaborate costume… kilts, yokes their arm guards, the panaches, and headbands.” The clothing of bodies becomes a kind of construction of a temple, an ornamenting of a holy place. Step by step, progression by progression, our human nature changes to become like God’s.
Deconstruction & Construction
Satan does this too. I have noticed that evil forces use a very similar method of assuming a person’s most intimate physical characteristics and then transforming it step by step, turning spiritual implications into a more degrading and evil image. I won’t call out any specific examples in America for fear that I’ll be called “judgemental,” but take a look at how people’s unique clothing reflects their identity and how the same image is also reflected in our built environment. It happens all around us. Look at how aesthetic, protection, and utility with clothing is being used to evil ends. It happens all the time.
Marxists and Antimormons have perfected a method of deconstructing things down to their essence, much like a person undressing. The most popular technique I’ve seen them use to manipulate the truth during this process is the constriction of context. They take out relevant context and isolate small snippets of quotes to make things look like something they’re not. This is the opposite of what our holy temple does. Our temple adds full context and gives a wider eternal view of our lives and the world.
Then Antimormons make the person accountable to “the people” rather than God. Our temple is a template for people to follow derived from the divine and unalterable nature of universal justice. The evil Antimormon temple is derived from the “the people,” from mob rule and whatever is popular (you might even call it “by common consent”). There is no template to follow. But rather than leading to more diversity and individualism, this ends up leading to a compulsory standard which everyone is forced to follow. You must follow this path, or you will be labeled “hateful” and socially destroyed. Rather than willingly deconstruct, a person is forced to undress by means of “agitation” and social pressure. The Antimormon deconstruction process is not repentance, but shameful nakedness. The Antimormon transformative process is one of declaring contradictions. If a reality contradicts an ideal, it must be deconstructed. If there is any association in an Antimormons life that contradicts the ideal, that association must be destroyed as well–such as cutting off relationships with “TBM parents” as so forth. What do they construct in its place? Well, we read in the Book of Mormon that the wicked Lamanites wore very little clothing, and that this made them exposed to injury in battle. With Antimormons today, you can likewise see how there is little or nothing in the place of a lost testimony. They are hollow, bare, naked. Some have a weak philosophy of Humanism or something else, and some manage to be good, healthy, strong people in spite of losing it. But the most ferocious have all become about countering the gospel. Satan’s version of putting on a sacred garment in a temple is the mindless repetition of a Marxist ideology.
I am convinced that clothing and a person’s personal appearance reflects this transformative process of apostasy. Some may try to hide it in order to blend in with faithful members, but there are always little give-aways. One of those give-aways is a disdain for the temple garment and how their bodies were involved in temple practices. They will talk about how “creepy” it is and how ugly it looks. This is because our spiritual nature reflects on our physical nature and is affected by it, and people can’t stand any kind of dissonance. It is painful to wear a holy garment but not be holy inside. More than anything this is why apostates especially hate the garment and mock it as “holy underwear.”
We must not take for granted the constant benefits of wearing this sacred clothing. It constantly connects us to the temple, as if the holiness and benefits we put on in the temple is always in our most intimate space. It is always there transforming us and bringing us closer to Him.