Reaching for Heaven

Hi godlives, I can really identify with your struggle on the celestial kingdom. I think it is perhaps the single doctrine that the Evangelicals find the most offensive since they are so focused on grace and the idea that a person can do absolutely nothing that will make any difference it is all up to God. We need to come down somewhere in the middle but focusing on “getting to the celestial kingdom” it seems to me is one of the better ways to not get there. What we have to focus on is being as honest and loving with everyone around us and be thankful for the grace that Christ brought into the world which makes all of heaven possible.

This lead me to the question, why do we excommunicate? How is it possible for the church to take away Christ’s ability go give us salvation? If the church isn’t 100% true doesn’t that question keys to the priesthood?

I thought I would at least try to handle these two issues at least a bit.

1. Excommunication: ideally the Church uses excommunication as a last resort and in a loving way. I guess there are a few members who are inherently evil and that we simply have to get out of the community in order to have a good safe place to live the gospel. However in most cases the idea is that excommunication is an act of love (most cases or at least in the ideal case) a way of saying, “the way you are going is wrong, seriously wrong and it has consequences, now recognize the sin and work your way back to fellowship”. I have seen this work out several times in my own ward where after an initial period of anger the person returns to meetings and over the next few years slowly develops a new faith and is finally baptized again. However I don’t think that anyone involved ever thought that the excommunication ever “took away ” their possibility of Christ’s salvation, it was just a reminder that their current behavior/position was too extreme for the community.

Not a completly satisfying answer I know. For what it is worth in our area there was a time when we would have automatically excommunicated a member who was part of a “common law” marriage. Now we keep them active and supported and encourage them to get married and most do but then we are out in the “mission field” (central BC in this case) and this most often happens in a conversion situation where someone has just joined the church on their own without the rest of their family and clearly then excommunicating them because they were living common law simply wouldn’t make sense.

2. Priesthood and 100%.

The reason that we do have the priesthood and ongoing revelation is that ANY human insititution, any human being is going to make mistakes and is not going to be 100% perfect, it just can’t be done, so we need to have a contact with Heavenly Father that gives us the ability to connect with him and get active direction from Him. Joseph Smith certainly never said he was perfect and in fact the D&C records several quite severe scoldings that he got, our problem as a Church is that we too often want to make him more perfect than he was.

The Church doesn’t need to be 100% right to be on the right track, but it is always important to distinguish between the gospel as Christ intends it and the messages that a “culture” sends out and it would seem that the overall culture of Utah Mormonism is still just a bit to “self satisfied” and in danger of leading itself “carefully down to Hell”.

Enough of this , keep up the struggle, thanks for bringing this up.

The truth is, I don’t want to go to the highest kingdom, nor do I want to be a God. I don’t think that motivates me any more at all. I do however want to be honest, fair, understanding, and just a little bit better everyday. I want to help those that hurt. I want to feed the poor and aid the sick.

Some of the best leaders in the world, the ones that made positive impacts on humanity, are often the ones that didn’t really want the job. Sometimes the people that lust for the leadership positions, and want them the most, are often the worst at them. They want them for the wrong reasons.

Maybe the best “gods” are made like that too. Maybe the celestial kingdom is full of people that focused on being happy and making the world a better place, and not so much full of people who focused their whole life on getting the biggest “mansion” in the best kingdom.

Wherever the compassionate and enlightened people go in the afterlife, can I have a small little shack there? That would be heaven. Like attracts like, or so I hope and pray.

This lead me to the question, why do we excommunicate? How is it possible for the church to take away Christ’s ability go give us salvation?

The Church excommunicates people to distance themselves and separate out people who are (perceived) threats. Trust me. I don’t think a Bishop or Stake President overrides Jesus Christ. When I get to the off-track betting window, my money is going on JC in that race.

[img]http://ddq5.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/dennis1.jpg[/img]

Besides. The excommunication decisions of the temporary executive officers in the Church must be approved in a bi-weekly meeting during the millennium, in the case of purely internal affairs, and by a two-thirds majority in the case of unorthodoxy or lack of faith, but an otherwise good life lived. The whole thing can be overridden by JC, who is our King, who wields Excaliber (a flaming sword), signifying his authority … and his ability to lay down THE LAW … and cut down stupid annoying people … in his mercy.