A Faith Beyond: The Gospel's Least Understood Principle (Part 4)

Part 1:  A Faith Beyond
Part 2: A Faith Beyond
Part 3: A Faith Beyond

"Ello Gov'nor, Can I 'Ave Some Mo'?"

Faith has gone missing; will you help me search for her?

The authorities will want a recent photograph.  What does Faith look like in 2024?  How would you describe her to a police sketch artist?

Is it just me, or does Faith seem to get lost a lot?  She is always going where we least expect ― "boldly going" where no man or woman has gone before:

   Having boldness
   [why boldness?]
   to enter in . . .
   [why was she not welcome?]
   by a new
   [what made it "new"?]
   and living
   [what makes Faith "living"?]
   way.

(Hebrews 10:19-20)

So where has Faith gone now?

An Objectionable Faith?
​
The principle of Faith is a childlike, wild thing.

She runs around with bramble bushes in her hair; she's the kind of girl that hides from the schoolmistress.  She looks nothing like the respectable mannequin we hear about on Sundays, sitting primly in the pews, stationary and static and (most importantly) submissive to authority.

For Faith is a remarkable, revolutionary thing: an agitant who regularly threatens our traditions and firmly-held beliefs.

So let me begin with the main point of this post, which is to suggest the possibility that (more often than not) enmity exists between Faith and organized religions.

That sounds backwards, right?  The idea may sound odd because we've been taught our whole lives that faith is the heritage of religious peoples (and atheists are the faithless ones).

We point to our temples, synagogues, mosques, and chapels as signs of our faith!  So how could they be opposed?

Well, how much faith did Jesus find among the Pharisees?  They attended church every week.  They fasted and paid tithes.  And yet they did NOT have faith?

Is it possible religion and Faith are NOT the bosom bedfellows we've been told they are?

Ask yourself:  Why did Jesus find fault with the Pharisees (see Matthew 23)?

And if we look at it in the reverse, why did the Pharisees resent the Faith that Christ espoused?

Ah, we've stumbled upon something interesting.  Was it because Jesus's living Faith exposed their religious hypocrisy and dead works?  Was it because Jesus's faith could not be controlled, neither quelled, by their religious authority?

It's makes me wonder why ― what with Christ refusing to kow-tow to the Sanhedrin's authority ― why Christendom prefers the sort of faith that bows to creeds and clings to the priests' cloth?

After all, we saw how Jesus wouldn't sit still long enough for the authorities to ensnare and trap Him (until His hour was come, and He voluntarily gave Himself into their hands).

Prior to that, Jesus had an uncanny ability to slip past and evade their councils.  He wasn't about to let the leaders clip His wings (as they famously tried to do with the blind man Jesus healed on the Sabbath, whom they "cast out" in John 9).

   Then they took up stones
   to cast at Him:
   but Jesus hid himself,
   and went out of the temple,
   going through the midst
   of them, and so passed by.

(John 8:59) 

How frustrated the priests were with Him!  For Jesus's faith was something they could not own; His faith they could not dissect and disassemble and sell off in parts as a catechism to the masses, for personal gain or glory.

Jesus's faith utterly destroyed their priestcraft.

Forest

A forest is a beautiful place.
 
     Aspiring pines
      arrowheads spun
       toward evergreen skies
        colors vibrantly true―
         sturdy sequoias
          wrapped in rabbit-scent.
            Stillness felt through skin
             was how God meant
              the sunrise.  
                          It cannot stay.  
                        
               Ecosystems decay.
 
              Snakeskin resin
             weeping white
            powderpost beetle
           spending its larvae
          in decomposing furred host―
         detritus eaters clusters
        of clotted shadow.
       Hunger a carpeted ghost.
                      This I know:
 
 A forest is a beautiful, deceiving place.

Most Wanted: Dead (Not Alive)

The point I am trying to make is simple: Faith is bad for business; she cannot be used to make money.  Mammon is flummoxed!

How will we pay the bills to heat our chapels?  What coin will we have for our clergy, or to build temples?  How will we bankroll the missionary department?

You see, the irony is that Faith risks bankrupting our churches ― and the one thing Mammon must avoid at all costs is financial insolvency (even if it means our moral bankruptcy).

Babylon long ago solved this conundrum by charging a fee to  "lease" religious rites and privileges to its members who (here's the catch) must pay their dues in order to have full access to salvation.

The Covenant Path, we find, is leased to the faithful; it does not belong to them.

The secret all along, as Master Mahan learned, was to find a way to make faith transactional.  This explains, I think, Nephi's conniption at the way churches operate today:

   (1) The Gentiles "have built up many churches" (2 Nephi 26:20).
  
   (2)  These modern churches "preach up unto themselves" (well that's certainly an interesting way of putting it) (2 Nephi 26:20).
 
   (3)  Churches offer certain services to their members in order "that they may get gain" (2 Nephi 26:20).  Well, that explains a lot!

   (4)  Whereas, true disciples of Christ will be pounding the pavement sharing the good news: "Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey WITHOUT MONEY and WITHOUT PRICE" (2 Nephi 26:25).

   (5)  Saying so (#4) makes churches very uncomfortable.  In fact, the churches have developed elaborate justifications for their priestcraft, calling evil good and good evil.  They tell those who don't pay tithing to "depart . . . out of the houses of worship" (i.e. temple) (2 Nephi 26:26), declaring them unworthy.

   (6)  By contrast, true disciples of Christ boldly declare, "Nay; but the Lord hath given it FREE for all men" (2 Nephi 26:27). 

   (7)  Free?  No, no; the churches will claim, "I am the Lord's" (2 Nephi 28:3), and thereby exact tithing from the poor in exchange for blessings only they (the churches) can bestow; thus "they rob the poor" (2 Nephi 28:13).

   (8) The way the churches will ensure their coffers are fed is through doctrinal pay-to-play (payola), saying: "Come unto me, and for your money you shall be forgiven of your sins" (Mormon 8:32).

Unto all these churches the Lord says:

   (9)  "Wo, wo, wo be unto them, saith the Lord God Almighty" (2 Nephi 28:15).

So what would happen to Nehor's bottom-line if we exercised genuine Faith?  Would it destroy our churches?

Is Faith powerful enough to shake the foundations of the earth?  Is she mighty enough to topple the pillars of priestcraft to dust?

How can Faith ever be wrestled into submission when she fears not what man can do, having authority that comes directly from God (Moroni 8:16)?

Plan B

Our churches will not give up without a fight.  What cannot be claimed or tamed must be quenched and conquered. 

Because Faith, left unharnessed by the religious elite, is simply too dangerous to the creeds of Christendom.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has an uncommon creed, but a creed nonetheless.  We call it the Church Handbook.

When I read the Handbook, I am struck by how we've turned the gospel into something resembling a British Royal Dinner with an elaborately set table governed by strict etiquette, attended by the sort of folks who speak with a cultured accent and quote from the Bible Dictionary smartly between dainty sips of soup (using a dedicated spoon for the task, nary an elbow in sight), "Faith comes by righteousness."  (Yes, our own, to be sure.)

Reading the Handbook allows us to navigate the swishing gowns and cummerbunds of those in authority, telling us how to mind our P's and Q's.  It transforms Church into a sort of reenactment ball from a Jane Austen novel.

("Which hand must I take the sacrament with?  Who is the presiding authority that receives the emblems first of all?")

No wonder we are loathe to get our spiritual clothes dirty on Sunday by slurping hungrily straight from the bowl of God's grace.  Why, we'd be deemed uncouth and out-of-order, no better than the scullery staff.

"Cheerio!" we say, smiling, with our manicured nails beneath white gloves holding our dance cards, nodding to the chamber music.

The Point:  The Handbook is not written so we may exercise faith to move mountains, but operates quite to the contrary, to ensure the mountains remain just-where-they-are, thank you very much.