An abiding temptation for me is to covet the intellectual rights of others. I have a dream, too, but Martin Luther King, Jr. beat me to making his public. So, too, has Philip Yancey described The Jesus I Never Knew in his book of the same name. Although our interpretations of Jesus differ greatly, I am envious of his title that I would have liked to use to encompass these daily snippets of my regard for—and understanding of—the Nazarene. Now that I have at least given credit where it is due, I can go ahead and surmise that the Jesus of whom I try to be a disciple may be quite different than the one you learned about in Sunday school.
This brings me to my ultimate heresy. Although I have done my best to stir the waters with my reasoning that Bush et al are the current manifestation of the antichrist, there is a much older, pervasive presence of the antichrist which appeared almost simultaneously with the historical Jesus: the Church! I’m not sure that I would have ever been able to see this had I not dissociated myself from the church some five years ago. While it was the painful end to what I perceived as the fulfillment of my calling to surrender my credentials, the separation has enabled me to look much more objectively at the dogma and doctrine of Christianity. As I proceed to expose what I have learned from my studies of Jesus, I invite my readers to examine what they know of him and where their ideas came from. We may discover together that we have been deceived and misled from the get go!
August 22, 2007
ReplyDeleteLast weekend was memorable, and I wish that you could have been there. It would have been interesting to get your perspective on the events that I will attempt to describe. Friday evening Tamara and I flew to Salt Lake City to meet Samantha’s new husband and spend some time getting to know him, then Saturday attended their wedding reception. Samantha had been TJ’s fiancée and true to her promise to him, she had found someone to love, marry and together raise a family. You can imagine the emotions of the event, particularly for those who knew the history of Samantha and TJ. Samantha sang a beautiful song. The last time I heard her sing was at TJ’s funeral. Now, seeing here beautiful smile and the gleam in her eyes confirmed that she had found the happiness that she had promised to seek. It was also interesting to observe the blending of two families, joined by a common love of their children.
Sunday morning, we took the opportunity to attend a live broadcast of “Music and the Spoken Word” with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Because of the summer crowds, the event is held in the conference center instead of the usual Tabernacle venue. You would think that a building that holds 22,000 plus people would swallow up even this size choir but it is just the opposite. The power and strength of their voices filled the hall with their unique sound. The closing number was a hymn unique to our faith, “High on a mountain top”. It tells a story of the sacrifice and purpose in coming to the mountain tops. It gave me pause to reflect on my ancestors who had sacrificed all that they had to leave England and travel across the plains in covered wagons for the opportunity to worship their God, in their manner, without fear of persecution or repression.
We then went to the refurbished Hotel Utah, which is now named the Joseph Smith Building and is used for meetings, restaurants, and a theatre for showing church related movies. There is a local congregation that meets there as their place of worship. As the member of the Bishopric made the opening announcements prior the start of the service he acknowledged the presence of Gordon B. Hinckley in attendance. Here was the President of our Church, 98 years young, attending sacrament meeting in his home ward as any other ember of the church (our congregations are set by geography and limited in size between 400 to 700 members per ward). I can only imagine the nerves of the two people that had been asked to speak and the young lady that played a flute solo. It was a marvelous experience.
Later, we stopped by the home of the Tamara’s friend Paula Bowen. At the time Tamara had just joined the church, Paula had been asked to fellowship her. They were both single college graduates living in Los Angeles, and became roommates and friends. Then they both met fine men, married and went their separate ways, communicating from time to time through letters. We spent the afternoon there, in a humble home with a beautiful family of six girls aged 10 to 23. There was a simple meal with good conversation, no bickering nor sibling rivalry, but mutual respect, as we were treated as if we were family, (which in a sense we all are family).
I mention this because that thing that we had most in common, that had not changed in all these years was our membership in the Church and our mutual understanding of our relationship to our Heavenly Father, and His son Jesus Christ.
As I reflect on my life, the greatest happiness came when I followed the precepts of the Gospel, and the greatest sadness in my life has been when I made wrong choices and suffered the consequences of those choices. The teachings, the faith, the discipleship are all products of this Church. The same principles that drew my ancestors to make their sacrifices in leaving comfort and stability for a life of uncertainty in a strange land are the same that are taught today.
When I was a young boy my father taught me principles of building. He said that you could not build something that would last without two important tools. One was a square and the other a level. With the square, I would know that the angle was exactly 90 degrees, and the level would tell me if a wall was upright or “true”. Often when I am doing a building project and measuring and designing I will look at a wall or corner and I will seem right, but upon applying my tools to the surface I find that I am deceived and it is almost, but not perfectly true. I know in little things, a degree off one way or the other may not make much of a difference, but on a long journey, being a degree off will mean the difference in reaching the intended destination or not.
Likewise, since the Church is just a means to an end, i.e. to bring us closer to God and emulate His Son, it would be necessary for the tools or teachings to be “true” to bring us to that destination or understanding. And if, by that affiliation, we do in fact become more like Him, then is it not a good thing? There is an interesting phenonomen in a forest of redwoods. These towering majestic trees have no tap root to keep them erect. Instead the roots intertwine, and the grove receives its strength from the collective group. I think of our Church in the same manner - supporting each other against the winds and storms, which always occur in this life.
Sometimes when I get frustrated by world or political events, I have to remember the things that matter most, family, friends, and faith. And although I cannot change the world, I can change myself and how I relate to and help others, which, is the beginning of changing the world.
This was a good weekend; I wish you could have been there.
Steve's Dad
I'm rather late in expressing my thanks for sharing your thoughts, but I wanted to have the time to read them in their entirety. There seem to be exceptions to every rule, and so it is remarkable to discover the timelessness of genuine truth. Thank you, again, for sharing.
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