A Faith Beyond: Understanding the Gospel's Least-Understood Principle (Part 8)

Anchors Away

I am a firm believer in the proposition that "truth is manifest in the proving of contraries."  There's usually a bit of truth on both sides of an issue.

So while I take the Lord at His word ("Ye are the salt of the earth") I also wonder, "If we're salt, then why did Lot's wife need to watch her sodium intake?"

What I'm trying to say is the world needs paradoxes and contradictions and even (especially) mists of darkness because they create an ideal environment for us to walk by faith in.  As opposed to 'by sight.'

Navigating the mists of darkness allows us to exercise faith more fully.  So I am thankful for the mists.  I am also not afraid of "strange roads" therein (1 Nephi 8:32) or those who explore them.  Who knows, they may return with quite a tale to tell!  Remember, what one man calls 'strange', another calls 'faith.'  For even God is going to do a "strange work" (Isaiah 28:21).

I share this to point out, a boat that doesn't rock doesn't interest me, for it must needs be anchored in port, going nowhere.

But a boat that is whipped by winds and waves upon the ocean?  There's a boat worth standing in!  I want to have an adventure of a lifetime ― and what greater adventure is there than sailing the uncharted seas of faith and discovering what Christ has hidden in the far reaches of His heart?

Will you set your sextant to the stars with me, looking upwards to the Bright and Morning Star (Rev. 22:16) of what may yet be, leaving the safety of the shore behind?

Or shall we go on, dogmatically viewing the world in black-and-white boxes, blind to God's technicolor Truth?  Everyone these days seems to be drawing lines in the sand, worried about separating the sheep from the goats ― am I the only one over here with the llamas, watching Christ minister to the alpacas?

Let us not allow our faith to become either/or.  Faith will always be found enlarging the pie, not dividing it.

   I am the Lord God Almighty,
   and Endless is my name;
   for I am without beginning
   of days or end of years;
   and is not this endless?

(Moses 1:3)

I like to imagine the Lord's gospel as 'grace unending'; it is a many-sided, splendored thing that defies our desire to stick it in a thimble.

The scary part about being in open waters?  Once we leave the security of solid ground, we find Faith shattering our old beliefs into potshards, weaving new cloth from her sails with which to stretch God's garment across all of creation, covering all people.

   No man also seweth
   a piece of new cloth
   on an old garment.

(Mark 2:21)

So I am going to rock the boat a little today.

Faith Crisis: Code Blue!

It is clear to me that the Church is having a full-blown faith crisis.

Now, I don't mean the members are in crisis; I am talking about the Church itself.

This may not be breaking news to you.  But it is alarming to those of us who wish to pretend "all is well" in Zion.

Speaking from my own experience (living in Utah), I can report the members are starving.  Spiritually speaking, we're skin-and-bones.

Each Sunday we dress and go to Church, craving Christ's meat, and instead are fed a nursery snack of pretzels and fish crackers.

The situation is worsening.  Many of my friends are leaving the Church like orphans, malnourished.

I think, honestly, that we are reaping the spiritual whirlwind of what was sown in past generations (Hosea 8:7).  The Law of the Harvest has not spared us.

I suspect the cause of this faith crisis is the doctrinal "leaven" (Matt. 16:6) we are weaned upon.  The Church's milk simply lacks the sustenance we require to exercise exceedingly great faith in Christ.  It's like trying to sail a ship in the doldrums, where it is windless (Acts 2:2).

I love the Church and am grateful for all the good in it; and I am not saying the Church's curriculum is determinative of our faith outcomes (Moses was able to spend 40 years in idolatrous Egypt and he still managed to become the Lord's servant).

What I am trying to say is, I believe the membership truly desires to feast on Christ's word (the seed of faith planted in our hearts), and yet our meetings are routinely occupied with what Elder Holland called the "empty calories" of spiritual fast food and Twinkies, filled with artificial preservatives ("A Teacher Come From God", April 1998 General Conference).

Hugh Nibley said it much better than I ever could in Zeal Without Knowledge:

"[Members have] zeal without knowledge for sitting in endless meetings, for dedicated conformity, and unlimited capacity for suffering boredom.... Pure zeal tends to breed a race of insufferable, self-righteous prigs and barren minds."

(See?  And you thought I was outspoken; I can't come close to Nibley's natural eloquence.) 

Now, how did this happen?  Why are we spiritually starving in a First World Church?

Let's find the answer ― and more importantly, let's find the solution.

Faith Crisis: Exhibit 1

I recently read online a story by a member from their mission:

"One day we invited an investigator to come to church.  He was very religious and sat quietly throughout the meetings and at the end I asked him what he thought.  His response still resonates: 'Well, I have been sitting here for 3 hours and have not heard a single word about Jesus Christ!'"

Here are some of the comments that followed:

Comment 1:  "I have said this before but I think one of the signs of someone being on their 'way out' [of the Church] is when they start to talk about Jesus more."

Comment 2:  "Mormonism is more in line with the gospel of the Pharisees or Islam than it is the teachings of Jesus."

Comment 3:  "When I see a member saying, ‘Our doctrine and teachings focus on Jesus Christ', yeah right.  Is that why I know more about Joseph Smith and Nephi than I do about Jesus?"

Comment 4:  "I was in a stake presidency.  I noticed the same thing.  When I suggested to the stake president that every sacrament talk should tie back in some way to faith in Jesus, he said he’d have to ask the Area Authority 70.  I was completely flummoxed."

*****

These comments are interesting.  They each hint at a larger problem plaguing the body of Christ.

While their experiences may not match your own, I think their comments are sobering.

"Out of the mouths of two or three witnesses."

"I Object!"

As I said at the beginning, there are many sides to every issue.  The leaders of the Church are (so far as I am aware) sincere and devout men.

One of the things I love about the Church is our expanding canon of scripture.  In it we find:

​​   We talk of Christ,
   we rejoice in Christ,
   we preach of Christ,
   we prophesy of Christ.

(2 Nephi 25:26)

That sounds good, doesn't it?  In a way, I see Christ everywhere in our meetings ― everywhere from our artwork to our hymns to our scriptures to our temples (of course, the same could be said of the Catholic Church and its Christian artwork and hymns and scriptures and cathedrals).

Why, then, do many members feel Jesus is missing from our midst?  What makes Christ the Cornerstone of a church as opposed to just an ornament?

In 1820 the Lord told Joseph Smith:

   The Personage
   who addressed me
   said that all their creeds
   were an abomination
   in his sight;
   that those professors
   were all corrupt; that:
   "they draw near to me
   with their lips, but their hearts
   are far from me,
   they teach for doctrines
   the commandments of men,
   having a form of godliness,
   but they deny the power
   thereof."

(Joseph Smith History 1:19)

Does this apply to us?  Does it make you question the health-and-safety of the foodstuffs we are fed at Church?  All the testimonies of Girls Camp and Pioneer Trek and Tithing and living prophets and temples and family history work.  (Yikes: maybe we have joined creedal Christianity.)

An observation:  If the words of Christ are absent from our lips, we may safely assume He is absent from our hearts.

Exhibit 2: My Experience Last Sunday

Last Sunday I attended Ward Conference in Lehi, Utah (pictured above) with my friends and neighbors.

All the adults gathered into the Relief Society Room for 2nd Hour.  The Stake representatives presented our Stake goals for 2024:

   1.  Read the entire Book of Mormon this year.  (Okay, good start.  Christ's words can be found in the Book of Mormon.)

   2.  Study the words of President Russell M. Nelson weekly.  (Okay, President Nelson talks about Christ sometimes, so as long as we're discerning . . . .)

   3.  Attend 2nd Hour prepared to discuss what we've learned.  (Okay, it's good to gather and fellowship.)

During the hour-long lesson, we read quotes by President Nelson and watched a video of Elder Bednar and discussed ways to turn our homes into temples.

(To be clear, I have no problem at all quoting the Brethren, the Prophet, C.S. Lewis, the Dalai Lama, Hugh Nibley, Clark Burt ― or Beyoncé for that matter ― if they're speaking light and truth.  I'll take truth from whatever source I find it.  The problem arises when we quote platitudes, truisms, and falsehoods.)

But sitting on the soft-padded Relief Society chairs, I itched to raise my hand because no one was actually talking about, or rejoicing in, or preaching, Christ Jesus.  I had a whole soliloquy going through my mind.

But I constrained myself and bit my tongue, because last time I "spoke up" I received a home-visit from the Elders Quorum Presidency who reprimanded me (I am currently on their naughty list).

Well, the meeting ended and there I was, feeling hungry.  We hadn't "worshipped" God (not by any definition of the word I am familiar with).  No one had mentioned Christ, not directly (although I think someone mentioned the iron rod, so).

I bet if you asked the other members who attended class, they would have thought nothing was amiss.  After all, wasn't Christ implied in all that?

This is it, then: the milk; the way the Church worships God indirectly as the Implied Lord; a deity found in the background, behind our temple worship; standing beside our covenant-keeping; lying among the sundry quotes of the Brethren.  He's there, to be sure, just not prominently or centrally ― unless we're using the full name of the Church (every rule has its exception).

Sort of like He's the "reason for the season" behind our Christmas shopping at the mall.

As I left the 2nd hour to gather my children from their classes (the situation is even worse for our youth, with all their "standards"), I took a photograph of the Relief Society bulletin board that I had been staring at for the entire meeting.

I think it illustrates beautifully the god-we-worship: the Implied Lord & His Prophet.

The Faith of the Judaizers

This is not new.  Two thousand years ago, the early Church grappled with the same issue, to wit: What does faith in Christ look like?

In the second half of the New Testament we encounter the Judaizers.  They were Jews who believed in Christ but who (like us) believed they had to keep the Law in order to be saved.

Paul disagreed.  He argued that Christ was all.  He taught that salvation was found through faith in Jesus.

I sympathize with the Judaizers because they remind me of the old me.  Like Judaizers, many of us today believe in Jesus but also (and here's the catch) in strict obedience to the Law (what we now call 'staying on the Covenant Path').

But imagine what this is doing to our faith!  Ask yourself, how is faith warped by the belief that Christ is only able to save us if we stay on target, minding our P's & Q's?

In other words, can we really say we have faith in Christ when our confidence arises from our obedience to the Law of Works?  No wonder our faith is limping along.

You see, aren't we trying to serve two masters?

Just like the Judaizers, who were committed to Christ AND to Leviticus AND to circumcision AND to following Moses AND . . . you get the idea.

The danger is, at what point does Christ become buried beneath all the extras?

And doesn't this sort of "faith" smell suspiciously of self-righteousness?

Exhibit 3: The Plan of Salvation

The picture, above, is one I see all the time on Facebook.  Someone depicted the Plan of Salvation.  

Look at the image carefully.  There it is, tithing, our old friend.  And the Word of Wisdom.  Nice to see the whoremongers getting their comeuppance.  And see the large temple perched atop heaven? 

But wait: notice Christ anywhere?  Look again.  Surely the Savior must have a prominent place in the Plan of Salvation, no?

"Well Tim, calm down," someone says.  "It mentions faith and baptism, right there.  So obviously that implies Christ." 

Gotcha.

   *****

A Conversation With An Investigator

Missionary:  "Christ is great, but He's not enough, because in addition to having faith in Him, you must also pay your tithing and avoid cigarettes and never touch meat sacrificed to idols.  Okay?"

Investigator:  "Idols bad, got it."

Missionary:  "Are you willing to live the Word of Wisdom in order to be saved, and to never swear (unless it is to swear-off coffee)?"

Investigator:  "Hold on.  This is getting complicated.  Are you telling me that Christianity means keeping the commandments, or else Christ will be powerless to save me?  Why, then, do I need Christ?"

Missionary:  "You misunderstand.  We need Christ to be saved.  He's our Savior, silly!  It's just that He can't save you unless you follow the rules, too."

Investigator:  "I am confused.  Do you have a list of all the rules I need to obey to be saved?  That seems important."

Missionary:  "Not exactly.  It's in the fine print somewhere.  Honestly, we update our Terms and Conditions from time-to-time, so you've got to stay current.  But you can only go to the highest heaven if you're sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise into a celestial (but not necessarily monogamous) marriage by someone on earth who holds keys.  It all boils down the sealing authority, really."

Investigator:  "What?"

Missionary:  "Never mind.  Just know that Christ is right up there, near the top of the list.  It's His Church, after all!  Along with the prophet's.  Joint custody, basically.  And families: you want to be with them forever, right?"

Investigator:  "Yes."

Missionary:  "Excellent!  Well, you show your faith in Christ by following His Prophet.  Do whatever the prophet says and you're assured to go to heaven to be with your loved ones.  That's what we teach in primary."

Investigator:  "So do I follow Christ into heaven or do I follow the Prophet into heaven?  Which is my Lord and Master?"

Missionary:  "What's the difference?!  Anyway, just remember that Christ loves you so He gave us prophets and apostles to tell us how to live the gospel.  Surely everything the Lord does is through His prophet and proper priesthood channels.  Otherwise you get Protestantism!"

   *****

As I said, the Church is experiencing a faith crisis.