Going to Church every week can give believers a false sense of security that they are correctly following God. This is especially true for believers who take on difficult assignments from their church that require sacrifice. Surely, they rationalize, God appreciates their effort in their roles and is pleased with them.
A Personal Relationship with God over Church Participation
However, (in my view) what they are actually doing is participating in a bureaucracy. God wants us to do more than that – he wants us to have a personal relationship with him. To have such a relationship we need to spend time with him every day reading his word in the scriptures and praying. When we do this, it gives God the opportunity to change our hearts to align with his will. Essentially, we are born with impure hearts, and we need to cut out the bad parts of our hearts in order to fulfill the directive to be circumcised of heart and become an overcomer. However, due to our fallen nature, we cannot do this by ourselves – we need divine intervention to accomplish this task. Hence, the importance of spending time with God so that he can begin working his great change to our souls. This is not to say that church assignments are bad – Organized religion is indeed very necessary – especially for the task of organizing scripture and missionary work. However, having a relationship with God is vastly more important than participating in the Church bureaucracy. This can be seen in the story of Jesus’s visit to the home of Mary and Martha – it was more important for Martha to talk to Jesus and have a relationship with him than for her to be distracted with work and preparations. The real life application of course is that there should be less of a focus on artificially creating enough callings to keep everyone busy and then holding each other accountable, and a greater focus on ensuring everyone has a personal relationship with Christ through prayer and scripture study. One way to do this could be to encourage families to do a daily scripture study, and another way could be to organize intercessory prayer groups.
Knowledge vs Heart Posture
Just as the Church institution is inclined to accidentally focus more on participation rather than devotion, it also tends to avoid difficult conversations about what God expects from us. This is natural – it is uncomfortable for Church leaders to teach things that imply less than 100% of the congregation shall reach heaven. As a result, in church we often find a lot of patting each other on the back for successfully arriving at Church, a conviction that merely holding the correct views on God with faith leads to salvation, and an overabundance of knowledge dissemination for trivial topics, while missing the vital messages some may need to here in order to cross the threshold into being saved. One of the most harsh scriptures on this topic can be found in Matthew 7, which reads:
21 ¶ Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
The apostles arrived at similar conclusions. James wrote (in James 1):
22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
I believe this scripture is explaining how unfortunately some people believe they are in Jesus’s camp because they believe in his name and associate with the Church. However, they have failed to develop a personal relationship with Christ, so when they die, Jesus will tell them (correctly) that he never knew them.
James likewise cautioned that it is not enough to just listen to others discuss the Gospel in James 1:
22 But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:
24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
Finally, while concerned that people merely sought religion to gain knowledge, rather than to actually align themselves with God, Paul wrote in 2 Timothy 3:
2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
…
7 Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
When people only seek esoteric knowledge from religion and don’t allow religion to realign their hearts, they become somewhat like a person who regularly watches videos explaining how to exercise, but never actually exercises themselves.
Condemnation due to lack of knowledge
The darker side of this topic ends up being the belief that others are condemned because their knowledge of the gospel is slightly off. An example that comes to mind is the obsession with the Trinity I find in other Christians. I personally have read all the scriptures that are used by proponents of the Trinity, as well as the whole new testament, and I doubt Trinitarians have the scriptures on their side or even really understand what the other side believes.
However, IT DOESN’T MATTER.
The main commandments we have are to love God and love our neighbor. Beyond that, we are told hundreds of times to pray, fast, repent, and follow the commandments. Nowhere are we told that having a slightly incorrect view of God’s nature will lead us to damnation. Indeed, seeing the great quantity of scriptures in which Jesus describes himself as the intercessor between man and God, rather than himself being directly God (1 Timothy 2:5, John 14:6, Romans 8:34, Hebrews 7:25, 1 John 2:1) as well as scriptures in which Jesus addresses God as if God is a separate person (John 3:16, John 3:35, John 5:22-23, John 8:17-18, John 14:28, Mark 13:32, Matthew 26:39, 1 John 4:9-10 ), it would seem cruel for Jesus to then send to hell people who actually took these scriptures seriously and believed Christ to be somewhat separate from God. Moreover, we actually get the impression that God is deliberately withholding knowledge about himself and keeping his true nature aloof and mysterious. Just to name a few:
· We don’t truly know the name of God.
· We don’t know (exactly) what his face looks like.
· If the Trinity is true, we still don’t grasp how it actually works (seeing there are no scriptures on the topic).
· If the Trinity is false (meaning Jesus actually is the only begotten son of God rather than the physical body representation of God), then other questions arise, such as the existence of heavenly mother.
· What we will do in heaven.
· We don’t entirely understand God’s relationship with Satan or how the war in heaven started.
· We don’t understand how the Atonement works.
Most of these questions could be answered very easily. However, we don’t have the answers because, as said, IT DOESN’T MATTER.
The root cause (in my view) of the Trinity obsession lies in how people are taught in Church. Church leaders in all Churches are afraid of insulting members by calling them to repentance. So instead, they focus on ensuring their members all have the right knowledge and basically tell their members that their salvation is assured because their knowledge is exactly right. Therefore, the members end up all patting each other on the back for having the correct beliefs, and then absolutely condemn people of different orthodoxies because they think that holding slightly incorrect opinions on religion leads to hell. This is all of course incorrect. It is our heart posture that saves us, not our esoteric knowledge.
Because of the obsession with knowledge, we also end up getting a different problem: leaders are afraid to admit that they could be wrong about doctrines and rarely show scriptures used by the other side. Again, the trinity comes to mind: in many of the scriptures discussing how Jesus is one with the Father, the subsequent verses then tell us how Jesus’s disciples can become one with Jesus if they follow his commandments (John 17:20-26, John 14:20). This of course greatly weakens any argument in favor of the trinity (I shouldn’t have to explain why). But most Christians aren’t even aware of these verses because they have only been carefully spoon-fed scriptures that support their Church’s doctrine, and don’t read the Bible because they believe it is not necessary since they already believe in Jesus and go to Church.
* Lest you think I am a trinity hater, my personal view is actually extremely apathetic. I don’t care about the Trinity. I think it is possible that the Trinitarians are actually right in the end. However, I am certain that our exact views on the Trinity will have NO IMPACT WHATSOEVER on our eternal salvation.
Desert vs Vegetables
The problem with modern day religions is that they have been feeding their members only spiritual desert and neglecting the vegetables. The spiritual vegetables are the basic steps required to change our heart posture to align with God. These include (but not are limited to):
– Spending time with God through prayer and scripture study.
– Strictly obeying all of the commandments, including keeping the sabbath day holy and not having premarital sex.
– Relinquishing all addictions and getting into a place where your Spirit completely subdues the Flesh (fasting helps with this).
– Letting go of pride.
– Letting go of all spite – humans have a tendency to want to embarrass others when others are perceived negatively. Most people are in denial about this and rather tell themselves they are teaching important lessons when they defile themselves with their lips through angry exchanges. However, as we learn in 1 Corinthians 13:1, words delivered without love will not ever work changes on other people’s hearts. The persistent denialist, who inwardly wants to punish others for annoying him but doesn’t intellectually recognize his own instincts, will likely respond that his actions are motivated by love. But, of course, this scripture is referring to whether the person who received the message felt your love. If you spend most of your time being cruel, but then occasionally mutter euphemisms about how you actually do love those around you, this will only come across as self-righteous or passive aggressive.
– Letting go of all condemnation. We need to stop caring about showing others that we were right all along or punishing others for behaving inappropriately. Rather, we need to completely trust that God’s judgements will make all wrongs right. A balancing act is required here though. We also can’t be in the least bit tolerant towards wickedness, and if we fail to warn others about their transgressions, we learn in the scripture that their transgressions may be answered on our own heads. Thus, we do need to boldly stand up for what is right and against what is wrong, but we also need to make sure we don’t let such matters become personal.
– Loving and Serving others
– Letting go of fear and replacing it with faith and hope. As we are taught in the scriptures, God will take care of us.
– Learning to withstand temptation to become an overcomer
– Faith
These are the “vegetables” because they are vital to the alignment of our heart with Christ. Now what is the “Desert” of religion.
– Patting each other on the back for being good Christians who will go to heaven.
– Deep Doctrines / Controversial Ideas / Lore / Eschatology
– Learning the history of the Church
– How the Gospel can help our Career
– Church social events
– Advice on how to be happy
– Relationship advice
These are all “deserts” because they still can be part of our religion, however they are not necessary. They (unfortunately) can even become distractions to the “vegetables” of religion, and any individual who neglects the vegetables will likely make no progress if he jumps straight to the religious desert.
There also is a third category – the false vegetables. The false vegetables are things that people believe are going to save them but actually will not. To put it simply, the false vegetables are our works. Works cannot save us, only Christ can (Isaiah 64:6, Ephesians 2:8-9, Titus 3:5). False vegetables include spending excessive time magnifying your calling, making great sacrifices for the Church monetarily and time wise, never missing Church even on vacations, ministering to others, always obeying Church leaders (even when their council seems wrong), defending Church leaders from criticisms, and in general good works.
Note: all of these things are usually good to do.
However, they are not the thing that will save you. As stated before, our primary goal should be to align our hearts with God. Once we have done this, our good works will follow.
Why do I note the False Vegetables? Unfortunately, occasionally I run into members who believe they will be saved because they are perfectly executing all of the items in the false vegetables list. However, these people (sometimes), have very deep heart problems often stemming from Pride, Spitefulness, and Condemnation of others. The presence of false vegetables in these people’s lives gives them a false sense of security, and their Church activities may even have a negative impact on their soul because it distracts them from truly searching their hearts to remove all impurities.
Spirit of Legalism
A final way Church can distract us is by subtly replacing the authority of God in our minds with the authority of religious leaders. In running a large organized religion, an extensive chain of command becomes unavoidable, and in order to standardize Church services, most nonstandard Church actions require permission from higher ups. After living decades spent in the Church, people eventually take to heart the Church hierarchy and lose sight of the big picture. It is vastly more important for us to seek for permission to do actions from God over acquiring man’s permission (even if these men are part of your religion). As the spirit of bureaucracy begins to creep into people’s hearts, sadly in occasional circumstances we find that this legalistic spirit starts to supersede even basic commandments such as serving others. Two examples from my mission come to mind.
While I was still in the MTC, one time my companion and I were 10 minutes late for a meeting because we helped a new missionary who was lost find the right building. We then found ourselves publicly reprimanded in front of the entire zone for not properly acquiring permission to help this new missionary. This (to me) is obviously a sign of the legalistic spirit because, even if our leaders had told us to not help the new missionary, the right thing would have been to disobey the leaders and continue to help the lost missionary. (And no, this man was not just overly concerned about our welfare, he genuinely was cruel to everyone around him including most importantly his wife. Likely he wasn’t even aware that his heart posture was totally wrong because he thought he was saved due to his good works in the church.)
The second example came later in my mission. A person we were teaching offered to bring us to the rest of their family to teach them in an area just outside the mission boundaries. We asked for permission to exit the mission boundaries to teach the family and were denied. I then went on to write a longer letter explaining the circumstances and again asked for permission. In response, the mission president invited me to his office and scolded me so harshly for not initially accepting his denial of permission that I basically had to beg to not be sent home early. It was only later that I found the true reason for the mission president’s wrath – after the first request, the mission president had told me that he would need permission from higher up church officials to allow us to leave (which now I highly doubt), so in my second request I offered to draft a request to such higher ups. My mission president had viewed this as a threat – if you don’t allow me to leave the boundaries, I will complain about it to your higher ups – which was definitely not my intent. In the end we sadly were never able to teach the person’s family, and thus we see the spirit of legalism strike again: An overly complicated bureaucracy and obsession with obtaining permission prevented us from going about spreading the gospel. And no, missionaries outside the mission boundaries were not able to help. It would have been better if we had just snuck out of the mission boundaries to teach the family.
I don’t dredge up these experiences as evidence that the Church bureaucracy is a force for bad. Overall it is a huge force for good, and while it might have made my mission annoying occasionally, my mission wouldn’t even be possible at all without the Church bureaucracy. But if you still don’t believe it is possible for Church leaders to act contrary to God’s will, I recommend reading Doctrine and Covenants 121:34-41.
Rather, I bring up old events to help realign our priorities. Though the bureaucracy is a necessary evil, our hearts shouldn’t be aligned with the bureaucracy, but with Jesus himself. When we go about our Church obligations, we should always make sure that we are doing our obligations not because we were told to by someone else, but because we believe God wants us to do them.
This holds true for our entire religious lives. Whenever we have a question, we should first ask God before asking our religious leaders. Whenever we have an idea, we should first ask God about the idea before we ask our Church leaders for permission. The list goes on. A parable that comes to mind is the parable of the 10 virgins. The foolish virgins didn’t go directly to God (represented by the sellers of the oil) to attain oil. Rather they went to man – their fellow virgins – to attain oil. Likewise, we must remember that it should always be God who we go to first and not our fellow man when making decisions and going about our lives. Ultimately, we must never “outsource” our spiritual learning to church leaders and teachers, but instead make personal time spent reading the word and praying become the bedrock of our testimony.
Salvation due to Heart Posture, not Works or Knowledge
Ultimately, there is a very large temptation to believe on one side that we are saved by believing the correct knowledge, and on the other side that we are saved by our works. Unfortunately, the natural workings of the Church can encourage these attitudes. Neither side is true, we are saved by aligning our hearts with God through spending time with God and allowing our spirit to overcome the natural man.
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