The church and the "gospel it contains"

[Anonymous]

I’ve heard this expression before, but not in a while. (That may be because I haven’t been to church in a while.) Yesterday the youth speaker (older youth, preparing for mission right after high school) said words to the effect of “I know this church and the gospel it contains are true” as part of the closing testimony in the talk.

I don’t disagree at all that the church teaches the gospel, but the sticky word for me is contains. I have said on these forums before that I believe the gospel is bigger and simpler than the church. Love your neighbor is a universal truth as far as I can tell – it is taught by all major religions, belief systems, and moral philosophies. That Jesus is the Christ is taught and believed by all Christian churches, not just Mormons, and it’s just as true to Catholics, Methodists, and Baptists as it is to us. I don’t think the church contains the gospel at all and in fact in some respects it may be quite the other way around. And I get the restored aspect, but that was not the context here and I don’t have as much of a problem with talking about the church in terms of the restored gospel. The whole gospel is another story.

I’m guessing in this case the youngster was just parroting something previously said, nevertheless, am I being too sensitive? Is this something we should be saying?

[Anonymous]

I agree completely with this OP.

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[Anonymous]

Thanks cwald. I was asked to bear testimony in the stake PEC meeting tonight. Understandably I stumbled through it, but I did manage to say the above – that the gospel is both bigger and simpler than the church.

[Anonymous]

DarkJedi wrote:

I don’t think the church contains the gospel at all and in fact in some respects it may be quite the other way around.

That’s essentially what Pres. Uchtdorf teaches, unless I’m misunderstanding him. But I think I know what this kid means when he says it. I might take it a little differently if someone “higher up” was using the same language and pressing the point.

[Anonymous]

Agreed. :thumbup:

[Anonymous]

I’ve been considering an analogy of glass. We have the fullness of the gospel because our Mormon glass is full to capacity. That doesn’t mean all of the gospel is in the glass, just that the glass contains the absolute maximum to overflowing.

There’s much more gospel and the church certainly doesn’t have all of it.

I’m not sure what the young man meant, but you’re probably right about the parroting.

[Anonymous]

That’s a really interesting statement. If you look at it on its own, without any preconceptions, you can read it different ways. First, and this is really interesting, it makes a pretty clear distinction between the church and the gospel. The church is a vessel or framework that contains the gospel—it isn’t equivalent to the gospel. Second, it can very easily be read as “the church and the gospel THAT it contains.” In other words there’s the gospel, and the church contains an unspecified amount of the gospel, just like Mackay was saying. Whether you read it as the church containing the whole gospel or part of the gospel is actually ambiguous. But more realistically, I see it as a kid just saying “I believe the church teaches the gospel, and I believe it’s true.”

[Anonymous]

Agreed, Daeruin. It’s important to realize that lots of things can be interpreted differently – that just because we don’t define or interpret something in a particular way doesn’t mean, necessarily, that it isn’t right or true based on a different definition or interpretation.

If that simple concept alone was understood by everyone, I think at least half of the arguments and contention that happen would disappear completely.

[Author]

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