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Bumping up this topic again, like I promised in another thread – with my totally heterodox take on “true and living”. First, just to provide the link again to what I wrote on Mormon Matters: “Common Scriptures in Review: The Only True and Living Church” (
http://mormonmatters.org/2008/08/12/common-scriptures-in-review-the-weapons-of-their-rebellion/ The following is not explicit in the thread I just linked, but it is implied if one understands it when beginning to read:
1) These words (this particular phrase) are attributed to God, but the common interpretations of them come from those who recorded and read them. Iow, if we start with the possibility that God chose the words (a stretch for many, I know, but humor me, as the resident parser), then ANY reasonable definitions might be the intended meaning.
2) One of the definitions of “true” is “
pointing toward the proper destination, like ‘true north‘”. (mentioned in the linked post) One of the definitions of “living” is “ subject to both growth and decay, with the ability to heal imperfections and regenerate“. (not mentioned in the linked post) 3) Therefore, a reasonable interpretation of the phrase “true and living” actually might be a paradox – NOT two “complementary” descriptions. Let me re-write it given these possible definitions:
Quote:the only church that is BOTH pointed toward the proper ultimate destination (oneness with God in character and glory) AND empowering of ultimate growth but also self-correction / self-healing / regeneration as it inevitably decays
That’s a radically different definition than we normally hear, but I believe it is totally consistent with what is presented in our scriptures and our history – and what I see at both the local and global level. It’s a paradox I can embrace and from which I gain great comfort.
Ray – I think you are onto something. I suspect God may be a bit of a parser. Plus, your interpretation is so much better than the one that results in people musing over non-LDS friends’ faiths: “How’s that false & dead church workin’ out for ya?” I really like it Ray! Thanks for this. It’s the paradoxical views like this that REALLY help me and speak to my soul these days! I have had an interesting experience recently with my father who serves in a branch presidency at the MTC. He was discussing things with my brother-in law over the holidays and I heard him make the statement, “The gospel is true, the church is not.” As I perked up my ears and eaves dropped on the conversation, I learned the context. He is frustrated with the way “the brethren” are handling missionaries as they are preparing to go out. It is very much a machine. And it seems that every Bishop and Stake President is still living by the Every Young Man Should Serve a Mission policy. I guess they didn’t get the recent updates on worthiness, testimony, psychological and physical ability, and the latest in raising the bar. It will take a while for them to figure it out. I took way too long to get to my point here. My point is that while other churches have truth and may be better suited to bring a person to Christ, ultimately if these ordinances and the power of the priesthood are required in order to qualify a person for entry into the Celestial Kingdom, then no other church has these things. God can guide his children however He will, as I know he’s been guiding me. But most importantly, those ordinances alone are not enough to save a soul. We can’t be saved in ignorance, so we must seek that personal relationship and do much more than just attending church once a week and staring at the scriptures once a day and home teaching once a month. I don’t believe any of those things are required for exaltation. But I do believe that knowledge is. I’m impressed with the people in this forum for that reason. None of you are sitting around any longer, just trusting that you are right. You all seem to be seeking to really know. I commend all of you on your own quests to seek God as Paul describes in Acts 17:21-30.
I recently had another very good friend who is a hard-core believing member (and quite conservative in her lifestyle) mention to me how much she HATES how “the one true church” phrase is used by some members. She doesn’t hate the phrase, necessarily – just the common usage and meaning others attach to it. I think that happens with FAR more people than most realize.
I realize this sounds nutty, and for all I know I’m probably up in the night, but I was thinking about this awhile ago in terms of the analogy of Christ being the bridegroom and the church being the bride. What if Christ is a polygamist? Could he have several brides, each different from the other that serve different groups of people? Of course there are two problems with this line of thinking. Are all Christian (and even Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, New Age, etc) churches brides of the bridegroom or only some of them? I tend to think not all of them are. When I was on my mission in the midwest, I met a lot of pastors who were not christian at all. They were careerists who were exploiting the poorest of people to get gain, buy mansions and fancy cars, and ignore their flock unless they found out they were meeting with the missionaries. Then there are all of the prosperity gospel televangelists, James Dobsons, Pat Robertsons, and Jim Bakkers of the world, that I wouldn’t include in the body of Christ. But there are many others who do a lot of good for a lot of people. I have a very difficult time picturing the Savior cutting all of these off because they weren’t members of “the true church”.
Then there’s the whole authority question. I realize these other ministers and pastors probably don’t have pieces of paper tracing their line of authority back to Jesus Christ, so they can’t administer Priesthood ordinances or officiate in the temple. But I have a hard time believing they’re not authorized to do what they actually do: preach the gospel and encourage others to become better. As a missionary, my companions and I used to frequently use the ice cream truck driver analogy to explain authority to others. The gist of it was: imagine you’re out speeding one night and a guy driving an ice cream truck follows you, and hands you a speeding ticket. Would you recognize that speeding ticket as valid? Same thing goes for baptism and other ordinances. I now realize how offensive that must’ve been to investigators and others who we were trying to convince had been deceived.
So yes, I believe many (but not all) churches out there are “true”. And as far as not being able to perform ordinances, we’ll take care of that for them in the temple and during the millenium, so it doesn’t matter if they don’t have the authority to perform them.
ADMIN NOTE:This question was asked by one of our new members, so I am bumping up this thread rather than starting all over again. Maybe I’m over simplifying here, but to me I’d say the LDS Church ‘big picture’ is what makes the most sense. It makes sense to me that there is more than one God but the God we know is our God ie. Our Heavenly Father. The teaching that we are here to learn to become a God eventually and life being the first step makes sense to me just on the basis that nature itself moves in circles of death and rebirth. Almost every religious tradition teaches that life is but a test or trial. The question is for what? That is were Mormonism made total sense to me after years of study and mental exercise, questioning, study, etc. The ‘Most True’ statement is simply the more digestable simple food for thought. I hate this statement on many levels but I must say that it’s true, ‘milk before meat’. It’s very true. However I think that we must all experience the cold hard dogmas of life and religion before we can be enlightened. To me dogma is God’s version of training wheels. We need them, initially anyway. When we find the contradiction of scripture, teachings, and dogma we then become forced to judge and decide without the crutch of someone telling us what to do. We have to ask ourselves as well as the creator how to proceed. Sometimes we get answers sometimes we don’t but I think eventually we come to a point where that light comes on…and eureka! We are able to see through much of the fog and mysteries of God and the universe. Many times it leads us to more questions and mysteries which in turn makes us progress further.
When we get to the real meat of Mormonism I think it is more appropriate to say that it is the best guess or theory. It may be arrogant to say but in many cases the general membership of any faith just can’t handle much of what is presented to them without some serious study and many are happy to have the answers they want to hear given.
The freedom of thought and conscience is a heavy responisbility. It is a heavier burden to carry and harder road to travel. I think many who have crisis’ of faith are simply on the next step of progression, ready for the meat of spirituality. It means accepting the fact that those in leadership and those we work with are not ready to give yopu the answers and frequently do not have them. That is when we must turn to the Creator and the spirit within all of us where in a small way we put our feet in the proverbial shoes of God. We are given a taste of what it is like.
Think of the scritpures and teachings as an instruction manual, just one, for every make, model, and year of every car on earth. It may give you the general description of an engine and the general theory of the combustion engine. but it would be almost impossible to give direct instruction for every single problem you may experience with any given vehicle. Following this analogy we would need a mechanic to guide us along some are better than others some know more than others. Some are better at working on some cars or better at certain parts. So puttting that into perspective no one has all of what we need to know so we therefore must seek guidance and pursue answers.
My conclusion is we will never know everything nor will anyone else. We must take charge of our own salvation with a few guides and hints along the way. There are few absolutes and when discover that we know we are progressing, When we realize there are few absolutes we can deal and judge with the contradictions of life and faith better. We are able to absorb more knowledge. If God is intellegence and intellegence is knowlege and God is eternal then so is knowledge and intellegence. So if the big picture is to become like God and we are to be like God and he was once as we were then it makes sense that we must learn like God.
The other day in the car I asked my 11-year-old son out of the blue, “I can’t understand this. Why would Joseph Smith have said that his church was ‘the only true and living church on the face of the earth’?” He answered, “Maybe he wanted to get more people in the church.”
😮 Sounds good to me.Tom Haws wrote:The other day in the car I asked my 11-year-old son out of the blue, “I can’t understand this. Why would Joseph Smith have said that his church was ‘the only true and living church on the face of the earth’?”
He answered, “Maybe he wanted to get more people in the church.”
😮 Sounds good to me.
LOL I think the problem here is that the statement is loaded as heavy as a dumptruck. JS was charismatic as were his statements. The problem is he is also the founder of Mormonism. I think the big problem is that JS and BY made many statements in the vane of Obi Wan and Yoda, They were ‘from a certain point of view’ style statements. Unfortunately we also have alot of Luke Skywalkers who train Jedi when they don’t have all the training themselves. They/we have to get thier hand chopped off by Darth Vader to learn what Yoda and Obi Wan really meant. Then we get mad when we find out that we made out with our sister on Hoth and we’re grossed out. Then the guy that chopped off our hand we end up redeeming after he almost kills us. The moral being that if you can get through all of this alive, you get to have an awesome party with Ewoks in a pretty cool tree house.😈 FD, I love your awesome post! It makes me smile. You really gave an important insight about Joseph Smith. The real Joseph Smith does use a lot of bluster and hyperbole. My favorite example is the “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts than any other book.” I can imagine vividly the lively discussion leading up to that declaration!
FenixDown wrote:I think the problem here is that the statement is loaded as heavy as a dumptruck. JS was charismatic as were his statements. The problem is he is also the founder of Mormonism. I think the big problem is that JS and BY made many statements in the vane of Obi Wan and Yoda, They were ‘from a certain point of view’ style statements. Unfortunately we also have alot of Luke Skywalkers who train Jedi when they don’t have all the training themselves. They/we have to get thier hand chopped off by Darth Vader to learn what Yoda and Obi Wan really meant. Then we get mad when we find out that we made out with our sister on Hoth and we’re grossed out. Then the guy that chopped off our hand we end up redeeming after he almost kills us. The moral being that if you can get through all of this alive, you get to have an awesome party with Ewoks in a pretty cool tree house.
😈
Nice!I liked your recent comments FenixDown. They are some good observations. Just wanted to say that. Actually there was a lovely speech by a couple who were going back to America, the other day. The woman’s sermon was very much by numbers, whereas the guy said that many people feel the spirit who were not in the COJCLDS. I certainly agree with this, but I think some of my friends with other churches have trouble with the idea that Mormons feel the spirit!!!
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