Church for post-Mormons?

Looking for a place where you can explore a new and rational faith after leaving the LDS church?   Live in the Boise, Idaho area?  Be sure to check out a new non-denominational church plant at…

http://www.BoiseChristianFellowship.org

Is Faith in Jesus Essential or Sufficient?

Every once in awhile I check out lds.org just to see what the LDS church is up to. It’s usually pretty telling to see where the focus is at a given time. It is currently running a lot of promotion for a new website they’ve developed dedicated to Jesus. I won’t venture to speak on why they waited until now to launch such a site, but will let that fact speak for itself. What I do want to comment on is one of the featured articles on the site talking about faith in Jesus Christ being essential to our salvation. To the untrained ear, this likely sounds very mainstream Christian. And Latter-day Saints certainly do believe that faith in Jesus Christ is essential to salvation, as do mainstream Christians. But that’s only half the story.

After all you can do…

2 Nephi 25:23 …for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.

This may be one of the most well-known passages of LDS scripture, and one that speaks volumes about LDS doctrine and the LDS plan of salvation.  Unfortunately, it is also one of the doctrines that serves to bring overwhelming feelings of condemnation upon Mormons.

Consider this.  When have you ever felt like you have done all that you can do?  As I look at every aspect of my life, I realize that I never reach that place of feeling like I’ve done all that I can do.

What Is It About The Bible?

Imagine if you will that you are in a bookstore. All around you are shelf upon shelf of books… the vast majority of which you have never heard of, let alone actually read. There are also people all around you, milling around in this same bookstore, pulling random books of the shelves and thumbing through them.You decide to take a poll. And it goes something like this…

My Story

I realized today that, following the new web design, I didn’t get my story of leaving Mormonism back up on the site. Here it is in a nutshell… (as opposed to the really, really long version available in the Books section of this site).

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To understand my life now, you would have to get a glimpse of what my life was like not so very long ago. You see, I was raised a Mormon. I come from a very active Mormon family and, with a few temporary exceptions, I lived it quite consistently throughout my life. In mid-2006, my life would have looked something like this:

A Very Different Christmas

Despite what my wife and kids might think, I really do love Christmas. It’s because of my love for Christmas that I’m always a little leery of starting to play Christmas music and put up decorations too early. Somehow it seems to take away some of the feeling of that special time of year when it lasts too long. I don’t like being sick of Christmas music and all the trappings by the time the occasion actually rolls around. But I’m very appreciative of a wife who loves the holidays so much that she keeps our home filled with Christmas spirit, too. I guess it’s just a balance thing for me.

Anyway, the point to that introduction was that I love Christmas. And this year it all feels very different. And it’s not because I didn’t believe in Jesus all those other Christmas’, because I did. But it has everything to do with how differently I understand Him and feel about Him this Christmas.

It’s so much more to me than the birth of the Son of God in a manger several thousand years ago. Sure, that’s all part of it. But it seems so much more profound to me now.

What began as the beautiful and humble entry of our Lord into the flesh was really just the putting in motion of all the events that would lead to the cross. The real gift of Christmas wasn’t actually the Christ child being born. The real gift of Christmas is the gift that He offers to all the world to come unto Him, recieve salvation, and live in His peace. The offering of that gift to the world began under that bright shining star in Bethlehem.

I have this image in my head of countless families gathered around a Christmas tree, excitedly opening gift after gift. As the gifts begin to disappear, the kids start searching around among the wrapping paper and under the tree, hoping that just maybe there are one or two smaller ones that they overlooked. And yet there is one present that is just waiting right there… the biggest one of all with the most beautiful paper… that they never see. In fact, they get up and walk away to play with their toys without ever seeing it. Christmas passes, the tree gets taken down, the stockings go away, and life returns to normal… yet that huge beautiful present still sits there in the corner unnoticed. It is the only gift that really matters at Christmas time or any other time of the year, for that matter. But it just sits there unopened. I imagine the giver of this great gift just eagerly hoping that someday they’ll notice this incredible gift and finally get around to opening it up. It is a very real and literal gift from the Savior. All it requires is that we notice that He’s given it, and accept it from Him. I hope I never let the most profound gift ever given be overshadowed by iPods, video games, and DVD’s. That gift is what Christmas is all about to me this year.

Everything about Christmas looks different to me this year.

The giving of gifts seems much less about ribbons and bows and more about the symbolism of offering free gifts to others. It reminds me how human and lowly I am. It takes all I have to scrape together a decent Christmas for my kids by buying them stuff at the local mall that will be forgotten in a few years, if not a few months. And yet it is in memory of the One who gave us the ultimate gift that we could not have possibly provided for ourselves. I can offer CD’s or Gameboys at Christmas… He offers eternal life and salvation. It all makes me feel pretty darn worthless in a very uplifting and inspiring way, if that makes any sense at all.

"Peace on Earth." That used to sound like such a hollow sentiment to me. Sure, ‘peace on earth’ would be great… but Christmas was hardly going to bring together all the warring factions of the earth and destroy hostilities. But this year that means something very different. To me, it speaks of the peace of Jesus. I have been so profoundly blessed with His peace that I can begin to imagine a world full of that kind of peace. The sentiment no longer means the absence of war, but the existence of Jesus in more and more people’s lives. That’s true Peace on earth. He is peace. The phrase may as well be "Jesus on Earth".

Having a better understanding of the nature of God has given me more of an appreciation for His sacrifice for me… and not even His sacrifice on the cross, necessarily. It amazes me that the God of the Universe and the Creator of All was willing to take on a human form and enter this world in the most humble way I can imagine. Both His birth and His death show me that He was willing to descend lower than all of us in order to lift us up.

Christmas is definitely about celebrating the birth of Jesus. But for me, it will also be about everything that this new baby was destined to accomplish for us.

Turns out maybe I’m perfect!

I’ve really been bothered in the last few months about the times in the Bible when the Lord says things like, "Be ye therefore perfect." I couldn’t figure out how this couldn’t be talking about works. The Lord wouldn’t tell us to accomplish anything that we couldn’t accomplish. I was having a hard time rectifying this with salvation through grace by faith.

But it finally clicked for me in the last few days… or at least I think it has. This might be one of those posts I read back in a few months and think, "boy was I dumb back then… I had no idea what I was talking about…"

Anyway, with that risk in mind, here goes…

The moment I was saved, I allowed Jesus to take upon Him all my sins… past, present, and future. He has very literally paid the price for them already, and I accepted that free gift He offered me. When I sin again (which will probably be within the next five minutes, knowing me) He will immediately take that sin upon Him, or to be more correct, He has already taken it upon Him before I ever committed it. In that sense, although I am nowhere near a perfect person, accepting Christ’s sacrifice for me has made me perfect in His eyes, meaning He holds no judgement of sin against me.

When Christ says, "Be ye therefore perfect," He may be simply telling us to make ourselves perfect in His eyes by accepting His salvation.

Of course this doesn’t mean I should go and sin all I want now. I have come to love God and His involvement in my life so much that it is my desire to get sin out of my life as much as possible so that my relationship with Him can be as close as possible.

My Supports

Had another great Wednesday night service last night. Among the things talked about was how, so often after being saved, the Lord will permit some or all of a person’s pre-existing supports to fall away from them. This to see if a person has truly come to rely on the Lord. While I agree, and am definitely feeling some of those supports being kicked out from under me, I think there’s a little more to it. I think that, when He removes a support, He stands ready with a new one to insert in it’s place. Now, that doesn’t mean He’ll automatically do it… just that He’s got one ready.

For example, my family was a huge support to me in my life. Obviously, they aren’t supportive at all anymore in my religious life, and I honestly think they kind of hope for some tragedy or hard times in my life to "bring me back to the faith" or whatever. This support has truly been kicked out from under me… although maybe I’ve kicked it out myself… the end result is the same. But He was ready with a new support in the form of a new church family. Just as I was falling to the ground, without the support I was used to, He propped in a new support and caught me. I literally spend four days a week now with my church family… in church, in bible study, in a home bible study group, in a men’s discipleship group, and the occasional event. I have some inkling of how Paul must have felt as he wrote to the Philippians… his very first thought being of thanks for brothers and sisters in Christ.

I feel like I’m also having the financial support kicked out from under me… at least partially. A major portion of my business came from contact and friends within the LDS church. I find that those are disappearing very quickly. I wonder what form of support the Lord has in store for me in that area of my life. I’m trying to be as open as I can to recognizing it when I see it.
Maybe it’s the same support (or same career) but just at a very different financial level than I’m used to. Maybe it’s a entirely new direction. Maybe it’s a combination.

I picture myself like some old three-legged stool that someone made in shop class. Nothing looks really good, or fits together very well, but it at least stands up. The Lord doesn’t want me to be that clunky old stool. He’ll remove one leg at a time, replacing it with a better grade of wood, and sculpted with a master’s hand. It seems scary for the stool at first to have a leg removed. And even scary when the master begins to attach a new leg that doesn’t look anything like the rest of the stool… doesn’t really even fit very well. But, if the stool would just trust the master and not fight him, eventually He will have replaced every part until that ugly old stool reflects his glory as a fine and useful piece of furniture.

I feel I’m at the very beginning of that process. I’m an ugly old stool who’s freaking out because the master is removing the legs I’ve known and relied on all my life. I have no idea what the new legs will look like, how they’ll fit, what others will think of them, or how the finished project will look. But I have to have faith in the Master that He knows my potential.

Wednesday Night Refuge

I didn’t want to go tonight. I even asked the kids if they wanted to go, hoping they’d say "no". But they said "Yes", so off to Wednesday Night church we went. I’ve had a terrible, terrible week. No wife at home, no money in the bank, no deals on the horizon, no self-confidence to speak of. I wanted to hide in my little hole and whimper tonight.

Thank God for Wednesday night church… literally. We have the most amazing Pastor at our church. He is quite simply the best teacher of The Word I’ve experienced… in or out of the LDS church. He exudes a passion and a love for it… and it’s contagious.

As my previous posts have mentioned, things have been rough lately. I’ve been questioning my faith, and God’s willingness to truly step into my life and take over. Tonight my Pastor taught from 2nd Kings. I get all the different kings mixed up in there, but I’m pretty sure it was King Joash… the seven year old King, that we were reading about tonight. The first thing the people did after his coronation was to commit to God and then go and violently destroy the temple of Baal. And they didn’t stop there. They burned everything related to it, and then killed the Priest of Baal. It was a real lesson to me on what needs to happen to accept God into your life. It’s not enough to just say, "Yeah… cool." There has to be a violent and abrupt change of your life to match His. I have to burn my own personal idols and kill my own personal pagan priests. Now, it’s not like that. I’m not a devil worshipper. But, in a way, maybe I am. If I am hung up on sins that are keeping me from a more personal relationship with Jesus, is that not putting Satan first in my life in those areas?

I need to get violent. I need to find those parts of my life that aren’t in keeping with Him and destroy them… burn them to the ground… and kill them. I know that God is standing ready to help me in all that I do… and that it is me, not Him, that is the stumbling block for that to happen. And yet I know also that he doesn’t require perfection before He steps in. Maybe my feeble efforts at coming closer to Him will be just enough to allow Him into my life a little more all the time.