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Had this dawn on me as I was driving today, and reflecting on how little I’ve prayed since my trial of faith a while ago. Had brief periods, but feel at loggerheads with the Church at times over the incident that triggered my trial of faith. So, I feel discouraged or unwilling to pray at times because I feel disappointed in the Church, feel estranged from God, etcetera. Then I realized in the car that I’ve let my experiences with the Church interefere with my relationship with God. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, the Church is not the gospel. Nor is the Church God. We have personal relationships with God, and even though we feel disaffected from the Church at times, we can still have a good relationship with God through prayer, right thinking, etcetera.
Have you been able to separate your relationship with God from your relationship with the Church? If so, how have you acheived this?
Definitely. If God was around before I was in the church, I suspect God will be there when I’m not in the church, and outside it, and in spite of its mistakes. I think that the church in its normalization campaign has played down personal spiritual experiences and denies that ordinary members can have revelations about each other.
Great insight, SD. There’s really only so far the Church can take us as far as our personal relationship with God. To put it a different way, the Church can teach ABOUT how to love God, but it can’t do it for us. We have to do it ourselves. Also, that is what the Church actually teaches. The leadership even goes as far as to say that the Church is secondary to the family. Individual leaders often say things that seem to be at odds with those two things, but the core message ever since the beginning has been that we are responsible personally for what we ultimately become – and that is one of the core principles that is different than many Protestant theologies. It’s one of my favorites – and I will add it to the “pure Mormonism” thread.
I look at the primacy of relationship importance as an ever-expanding group of circles. I, as an individual, am at the center; my wife and I, as two-made-one, are next; my immediate family is next; my extended family is next; my universal extended family is next. “The Church” is a subset of my extended family and provides the organization within which I can learn to be united with contemporary others when I “naturally” wouldn’t become united with them and the theology by which I can show my commitment to be united with past others. It’s the structure within which I can show symbolically that I recognize I am no better than anyone else who ever has lived – that I want to be united with all God’s creations.
Since “perfect” is defined as “complete, whole, dully developed”, I can’t be “made perfect without them” – but the beginning of that eternal unity is my own relationship with and to God. Take me out of that series of circles, and the rest shatters.
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