Why is the church so bad?

[Anonymous]

I finally took a minute to write out a list of what’s good about the church vs. what’s bad. Nearly everything I thought was bad about the church had to do with it’s central power structure. Ie self preservation vs. investment in the community, lack of transparency, outdated discrimination of gays and women etc. But everything good had to do with local structure such as community, opportunities to serve/teach/lead, and spiritual renewal. I realize that with a decentralized power structure we would be at risk for really conservative and really liberal congregations, but even then they would require local support for their congregations and would only be successful if they were supporting the needs of local members. So, just curious if anyone can name things that are good about the heavy influence of Salt Lake on our wards.

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[Anonymous]

I certainly am still struggling with the centralized, authoritarian, infallible leaders, never question the brethren, obeying a leader even when he is wrong is the best, …

After coming to terms with the Blacks and the Priesthood, I feel that it is my moral duty to find out if what I hear from church leaders is correct. Not doing so is abdicating my moral responsibility. Now if it is something simple like GBH’s 6 “B’s”, that one wasn’t hard to swallow. “You shouldn’t have 2 piercings”, well I don’t feel is much more than his opinion. In fact I just have to say, in “Meet the Mormon’s” I think I saw a close up shot of the Costa Rican kick boxer and she had 1 earing in and one other piercing hole with no earing in it. I assume they told her, “You have to take that out for filming or some Mormon’s will think you a sinner.” When I saw it I chuckled and my wife looked at me to because there was nothing funny in the story at that time.

I know if I bear my testimony tomorrow in church, I will talk about believing in the gospel. I do think that I will never say the words, “I know the church is true.” I have come to the conclusion that the church is supposed to help me find my relationship to God. I don’t feel my “relationship” with the church directly has anything as much to do with my salvation as my relationship with my God. They usually will line up, but they are not one in the same.

[Anonymous]

The best thing about centralization, imo, is that poor congregations can do things they wouldn’t be able to do otherwise – including meeting in the exact same type of buildings as rich congregations.

Centralization also keeps the crazies from setting local curriculum, even though correlated curriculum isn’t wonderful.

[Author]

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