The following is taken from an audio book called 'Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of Doubt.' It is my transcription, and my punctuation and paragraph breaks, as well as some emphasis added. It is from the end of chapter 8. I thought it was really practical and profound, and I never wanted to forget it. So, it's here, because there are a plethora of fb articles about why people have left the church and why they don't need organized religion to be good or have a relationship with the Savior. They also lay out why they are a better person, happier, etc, etc, etc. I can't speak to those articles, and everyone is entitled to their own truth. This however is mine (via this author- who is quoting often a professor). I just add my Amen and admonition to read/listen (although I didn't really enjoy. no, it's awful. I'm sorry. the voice or speaking pattern of the audio version, but I made it through) to the entire book. Nothing below this paragraph are my words.
The church is true because it is concrete, not theoretical. It’s the place we not only talk about Christian discipleship, we exercise it. However awkwardly at times.
In the life of the true church [Eugene] England [professor at BYU] writes there are constant opportunities for all to serve, not just an elite few especially to learn to serve people we would not normally chose to serve, or possibly even associate with, and thus opportunities to learn to love unconditionally. The organization of the church into strictly geographic areas compels us to love our neighbors wherever we find them, not just to chose the congregation that we feel best fits our personal tastes. The church thus caters to our needs far more than our wants. We are subjected to other people who don’t always think like we do, and who sometimes publicly offer misinformed and prejudicial notions as authoritative fact. We are asked to follow leaders who are untrained amateurs who occasionally make bad decisions and say or do things that are hurtful and possibly even constitute unrighteous dominion. Of course our own statements and decisions are always entirely reasonable and justified, and any offense taken is the result of other people failing to recognize our good intentions and wisdom.
We’re asked to visit people who’s opinions, grooming habits, child rearing techniques, or wall decor are odious to our tastes. In turn, we are visited by other people. Often at inopportune times. Who endlessly recount their latest string of unpleasant medical melodies, or their judgment about the state of our souls, or in a really efficient visit, both. All of this unpleasantness is precisely the stuff of discipleship. As England observes, church involvement teaches us compassion and patience, as well as courage and discipline. It makes us responsible for the personal and marital, both physical and spiritual welfare of people we may not already love, or may even heartily dislike, and thus we learn to love them. It stretches and challenges us, though disappointed and exasperated, in ways we would not otherwise chose to be, and thus gives us a chance to be made better than we might chose to be, but ultimately need and want to be…
England further writes that [church] further assaults our lonely egos and imposes upon us bonds and responsibilities. Through it’s buffet of un-chosen associations, the church pushes us toward new kinds of being, in a way we most deeply want and need to be pushed. The church is a classroom where we do not necessarily chose either the content of our lessons or how or when they will be presented to us. Sighting a statement by president David O McKay, England observes that the learning we need and the grace we receive comes as a natural sequence to the performance of duty within the church, the home, and in the faithful pursuance of our other daily obligations, and as Jesus taught, we find ourselves only through the loss of self importance, self centeredness, and self satisfaction. We must constantly remember in England’s wise words, that the church is not a place to go for comfort to get our own prejudices validated, but a place to comfort others. Even to be afflicted by them.
The path of ease, recognition, and casual sameness is not the way of the cross Christ calls us to bear…
The church is the instrument provided by a loving God to help us become like Him. It gives us schooling and experiences with each other that can bind us in an honest, but loving community...which is the essential nurturing place for salvation. We cannot engage in and live independently of the the Body of Christ….If we cannot accept the church and the challenges it offers with the openness and courage and humility They require, then I believe our historical studies and our theological enterprises are mainly a waste of time, and possibly destructive.
The standard of the church’s divinity, is not it’s perfection, but it’s ability to serve as a school master for gods in embryo.
The things that may be most frustrating and perplexing, may be the very means by which God is teaching us what it’s like to be him.
The church is not merely something we tolerate while striving to live the true gospel or anticipating the coming kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is among us…Religion is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable… I know that I am a better person and disciple of Christ by being a Mormon…
The church is not only a repository of true doctrine and ordinances, but it also a laboratory of love, where we discover and encounter Christ through fellowship with and service to our fellow sisters and brothers. In this lab God gives us really dangerous chemicals to work with and clear instructions on how to handle them, but ultimately we have almost complete freedom to do with them what we will. Like any other laboratory, on occasion we blow things up. The explosions are real, and they hurt people, sometime badly, and we wonder why God gave such powerful chemicals to students like us, who obviously have so little clue what we’re actually doing. His chosen teaching assistants seem to have a better handle on things, and following their lead generally keeps us safe, but upon closer inspection, it’s clear their lab coats aren’t spotless either. They are, after all, still in graduate school themselves. Some of the students have gotten so disillusioned or hurt that they’ve left the lab altogether, but God’s answer is to stay in the lab. To clean up the mess whether it was made by us or by others, to keep experimenting and gain experience until we get it right and do something really amazing with the tools he gave us.
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