I went to bed an hour ago with the New York Times article about tattling and spying among our people weighing heavily on my mind and heart.

Normally I fall asleep quickly, and when I do, I sleep soundly. But for the past hour, I’ve been tossing and turning.

I wish I could say that it’s just been the past hour. But really, it’s been the past week. If I’m being totally honest, it’s been the last six months. A feeling has been growing in me, one of unrest, one of ill ease.

Brothers and sisters, we are better than this. We. Are. Better. Than. This.

This infighting. This outgrouping. These sharp words. These factions. This desire to paint each other in the least charitable light, to win points, to squash each others’ perspectives, to limit each others’ heartfelt expressions of faith.

It’s driving a knife right into the heart of the Body of Christ. It’s destroying the promise of Zion.

In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord gave these words to Joseph Smith: “Be one. And if ye are not one, ye are not mine.”

Right now, we are not His.

Not even close.

In a recent interview with church PR spokeswoman, Ally Isom, Isom declared that Kate Kelly’s separation from the Body of Christ was “her choice.” No, it isn’t. Being told that you have the choice between being silent in matters of conscience and belonging to the community of faith isn’t a choice. It’s a violent ultimatum. It’s a false dichotomy. The promise and the challenge of the gospel is that we can have both—that we must have both! Kate Kelly can have her perspectives on the ordination of women and she can say them out loud and other people can have their, completely different, perspectives on the ordination of women and they can say them out loud…AND WE CAN STILL BE ONE BODY.

One of the most beautiful tenets of Mormonism is agency. The idea that we are self-existent free agents responding to the call of God, not just in this life, but in an eternity previous, and in an eternity to come.

No manner of coercion is justified as an attempt to control free agents. It is a deep violation of Mormon teachings. In some of the most sublime passages of scripture penned by the Prophet Joseph, we learn: “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, by love unfeigned; by kindness, by pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile.”

In matters of conscience and doctrinal disagreement, we must seek to persuade, to listen, to be gentle and kind—this is the way of the Master, and it is the only way we can interact to be One as we are commanded. We cannot hold people’s temple recommends or their eternal ordinances over their heads as a way to coerce compliance. The very idea makes me tremble with fear and unease. It is a gross distortion of the gospel of Christ.

Again, to quote the Prophet, “When we undertake…to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves.”

That is what is happening now. The heavens are withdrawing. You can feel it in the fear and anger bursting out on every side. And yes, I mean every side. I confess with tears that I feel it in myself most of all.

But there is a path to peace and wholeness.

It is the gospel of reconciliation.

Paul says that as Christians, we are called to a ministry of reconciliation. So I say in the strongest terms possible, let’s embrace this ministry! It begins when we sit down together and talk through our differences, as Jesus commands us in the Sermon on the Mount and again in Matthew 18. We can’t convene long-distance courts in abstentia. We can’t talk past each other in back-to-back media interviews. We have to come together, and sit down together, and seek to understand before we seek to be understood. We have to give each other the grace and space to express the most deeply held convictions of our own conscience without fear of retribution or rejection.

We have to claim each other despite our differences in an act of radical, life-changing, soul-stretching, world-shattering love.

The kind of love Jesus taught over and over and over and over again.

Jesus told us that in the last days the very elect would be deceived. Maybe it’s time to stop pointing fingers and instead ask the uncomfortable, piercing question of every disciple, “Lord, is it I?”

The only thing I can think of tonight, the thought that pulled me from my restless sleep, is that maybe the deception to which Christ referred doesn’t have to do with whether or not we support women’s ordination or gay marriage or whatever the issues are that divide us…and instead has to do with the fact that we allow them to divide us.

And perhaps insofar as we let these issues drive a wedge between us, we are deceived. Let me be the first to confess: I have done this! I am deceived!

However inconveniently, Jesus never breathed a word about the hot-button topics du jour; but He certainly had a lot to say about love and Oneness, the charge to establish His Peacable Kingdom, and the call to build Zion.

Let’s de-escalate. Let’s come together and talk, without coercion, without ultimatums, and just listen to each other and seek to understand, so that in the process we can find healing.

This is my heartfelt prayer.

God, please forgive us; we are better than this.