A Grammar Note About Objectification

In most languages, a sentence may include a subject, a verb, and two different kinds of objects. The distinction between the direct and indirect objects turns out to be very important. It's the difference between rolling a ball to the baby and rolling the baby to the ball. A direct object is what the verb is acting upon; the indirect object explains to or for whom the action is done. The subject puts everything in motion.

This is important to all of us because, grammatically speaking, the Lord has put us all on the earth to be the subjects of the sentences in which we live. The prophet Lehi taught his sons that God, 'hath created all things, both the heavens and the earth, and all things that in them are, both things to act and things to be acted upon... Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself' (2 Nephi 2:14, 16).

One way the devil seeks "to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will" (Moses 4:3-4) is to convince them to treat themselves or others as direct objects to be acted upon rather than subjects that act for themselves (or indirect objects that interact with the subject are subjects themselves from a different point of view). Perceiving or treating someone like an object without a mind and will of their own, known as objectification, leads to grievous sins of all types.

Slavery is an obvious, horrific and continuing example of objectification. So is pornography, controlling and abusive relationships, provocative media and advertising, feuds and warfare, victim mentality, violent crime and even sports fanaticism. Each of these depend to a large extent on one or more people viewing another person or people as an object to be acted upon.

Objectification includes any time someone perceives or treats another person like a tool that can be owned, is good only to meet the objectifier's purposes, and is interchangable with other objects. It includes the denial of autonomy and treating a person as though they are lacking in agency or the capacity to speak. It often involves mentally reducing someone to 'just' a body or body parts and treating them primarily in terms of how they look or appeal to the senses. Objectification also often includes perceiving someone as lacking in boundary-integrity or unable to prevent intrusions into personal space (Nussbaum, Martha, 1995, "Objectification", Philosophy and Public Affairs, 24(4): 249-291 and Langton, Rae, 1995, "Sexual Solipsism", Philosophical Topics, 23(2): 181-219).

When we turn back to the rules of grammar, we may notice that many of the commandments can only be broken when we objectify others. We cannot covet or lust anything other than a direct object. Nor can we hate, fear or kill the subject of a sentence; that comes only after we have turned them into an object in our perception.

Conversely, there are verbs that can only take an indirect object. Grammatically speaking, we can only answer, thank, follow, forgive, help, believe, miss or serve someone we respect as a person with divine agency. We can only be healed as indirect objects interacting with the subject who heals us; or, from another perspective, as subjects taking action to receive that healing.

Elder Bednar has taught, "If the adversary cannot entice us to misuse our physical bodies, then one of his most potent tactics is to beguile you and me as embodied spirits to disconnect gradually and physically from things as they really are" (Things As They Really Are, Ensign, June 2010). This includes perceiving or treating ourselves or others as if we did not have the agency the Lord has given us, through our faithfulness, from the beginning.

Moroni spoke with us in mind when he admonished, "Be wise in the days of your probation; strip yourselves of all uncleanness; ask not, that ye may consume it on your lusts, but ask with a firmness unshaken, that ye will yield to no temptation, but that ye will serve the true and living God" (Mormon 9:28). Objectification is part of the world in which we live, but we don't have to adopt a mindset disconnected from the reality and truths of God if we will follow the counsel of Moroni.

God Has a Body

In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. This sentence that begins the Old Testament summarizes five majestic creative periods in which God created light, earth, clouds, oceans, mountain ranges, waterfalls, forests, flower-covered fields, flocks of gulls, parades of elephants and billions of other formations, plants, ponds, animals and insects. The magnificence and wonder of God's creations has stirred your soul and mine as we've looked out over an endless ocean horizon, sat peacefully beside a quiet mountain lake or tried to count the stars in the midnight sky.

As a capstone to His creations God created the first people, Adam and Eve:

And I, God, said unto mine Only Begotten, which was with me from the beginning: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and it was so... And I, God, created man in mine own image, in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them (Moses 2:26-27).

Like our first parents, you and I have been born in the image of God. We look like Him because He is the father of our spirits. He created physical bodies for us that house our spirits and provide opportunities for us that could not be gained outside of mortality.

The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that our bodies are sacred. Christ referred to his body as a temple when he prophesied of his death and resurrection to the Jews (John 2:21). Paul made the same reference in a letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 6:19) and goes on to explain that, though our spirits are separated from our imperfect mortal bodies at death, both spirit and body will be reunited in perfect form when we are resurrected so we may dwell in our bodies throughout eternity (see 1 Corinthians 15, Alma 41:2-4).

Old Testament Job understood this truth perhaps thousands of years earlier as he exclaimed: I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God (Job 19:25).

We have been created in the image of God. The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's (D&C 13:22), only His body is perfect, immortal, glorified and celestial in nature. He is a personage with definite and unalterable form who, albeit perfectly, shares a common physical structure and  looks and talks and walks like us. He is our father, after all.

Though most of God's communication with mortal man is done through the Holy Ghost, our Heavenly Father has appeared to men from time to time. He appeared in the Garden of Eden to give Adam and Eve instructions and perform ordinances such as marriage where there were no others to do so (Genesis 2-3). The New Testament apostle Stephen saw God on his throne with Christ at his right hand (Acts 7).

The grandest of these appearances came in a quiet grove of trees in upstate New York in 1820. There a young boy named Joseph Smith prayed with sincerity of heart to know God's will for him. After he began to pray he records this experience:

I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me... When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other-- 'This is my Beloved Son. Hear Him!'

Joseph Smith saw God, our Heavenly Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ. In addition to learning the answer to his prayer and being called to restore the pure gospel of Jesus Christ after hundreds of years of apostasy, Joseph learned the eternal truth that God does have a body.

Through the witness of Joseph Smith and the witness we can receive through the Holy Ghost as we approach the Lord in sincere prayer, we may know the truth about the nature of God for ourselves. We may know that He is the literal father of our spirits; that He has a glorious, perfected, immortal body; and that we have been born in the image of our heavenly parents as well as our earthly parents. You can know, as I know, that God knows and loves you and I individually, completely and unconditionally; He wants nothing more than to bless our lives and help us grow to meet our potential.

I feel much like President Gordon B. Hinckley when he said:

I do not equate my body with His in its refinement, in its capacity, in its beauty and radiance. His is eternal. Mine is mortal. But that only increases my reverence for Him. I worship Him 'in spirit and in truth'. I look to Him as my strength. I pray to Him for wisdom beyond my own. I seek to love Him with all my heart, might, mind and strength. His wisdom is greater than the wisdom of all men. His power is greater than the power of nature, for He is the Creator Omnipotent. His love is greater than the lover of any other, for His love encompasses all of His children, and it is His work and His glory to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of His sons and daughters of all generations (see Moses 1:39).

He 'so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life' (John 3:16).

This is the Almighty of whom I stand in awe and reverence. It is He to whom I look in fear and trembling. It is He whom I worship and unto whom I give honor and praise and glory. He is my Heavenly Father, who has invited me to come unto Him in prayer, to speak with Him, with the promised assurance that He will hear and respond (Ensign, March 1998).