I was watching the weather report on a local TV station last night... it was so odd for me, because the weather guy was standing in front of his green screen, showing the satellite image of an approaching storm. From his mouth was emanating dire predictions of 2 feet of snow in the mountains, 1.5 inches of rain in the valley areas, and a horrid commute for this morning. However, on the pictures, I could literally see that the storm was breaking up and was just a fragmented mess, with no hope of large-scale precipitation. He placed so much trust in what his charts and computers were telling him that he could not just open his eyes and see what was right in front of him. Of course, this morning we woke to partly cloudy skies and wind. Blinded by the computers, he couldn't just look at the big picture... and thus his conclusions were utterly wrong.
[i]24 Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.[/i]
Over the weekend, I was reading one of the "free-range Mormon" books and had a bit of an epiphany. Faith. What is faith?
[i]And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.[/i]
If something is not a correct principle, [b]it is not possible to have faith in that principle[/b]. Faith is belief in things which are true. Thus, when we see that things that Joseph Smith restored to the earth, like the endowment, the garment, the Word of Wisdom... and then we see the way the church has changed and distorted those things, they are no longer true and correct principles, and it is no longer possible to have faith in those particular principles... This discovery rocked me pretty hard. All those years of telling myself I had faith in "the church" and "the brethren" and "the blessings of the temple, tithing and word of wisdom" were, essentially, meaningless. I did not, in fact could not, have faith in them as I understood them, because they were distortions and incorrect. Pretty shocking.
I was looking at Rock Waterman's blog this weekend as well. He has a big list of other blogs that he recommends for reading. The bulk of those involve pointing out where the church is off track, what's gone wrong, what is just plain false... I get that. I, too, am going through, or have gone through, the phase of trying to knock the scales of unbelief from my eyes. We all have it. We are all viewing this new thing from the eyes of long-time church membership, and we are trying to justify or explain or rationalize to ourselves that it's OK to actually doubt the church... you know, to look at the satellite photo and judge for ourselves, rather than trust in what the charts and computers are telling us. There is, in fact, a tremendous difference between "the church" and the gospel of the restoration and the gospel of Christ.
I think it's time that I (we) stop looking at reasons the church is messed up. It behooves us nothing. It does not build faith. We are unable to have faith in a mistaken church. False traditions cannot save us. False principles do not lead to the strait and narrow gate. Belief in and practice of false principles will damn us.
I am going to work more on learning the gospel of the restoration, which is a true and correct principle, and the gospel of Christ, which is THE true and correct principle upon which everything else hangs. It's time for a clean break, isn't it? Time to quit futzing around with "the church did this" and "Elder XXXXX said that..." There is no time. Denver Snuffer himself recently said he has little hope for Zion. I believe that is because we are all messing around trying to figure out what's wrong with the church and, sometimes, with each other.
Far better to focus on the simple plain and precious truths, to learn the gospel that Joseph Smith sought to restore, and to understand true faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Otherwise, I'm just like that weather guy, aren't I?
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