2016-11-06: All is Well

Thinking back on the many times I rode my bike to Top of the World (see 2016-11-03: High Mountain) and looked out over the ocean fills me with longing. In this, I feel some kind of paradise that I wish I could hold onto forever. Perhaps this is a taste of what God offers if we will commit ourselves into his hands and do all things according to His will. The promise of the Gospel is to have peace in this world and in the world to come (D&C 59:23). I’ve had similar feelings scattered throughout my experiences in the LDS church. I described this in a previous post (2016-10-29: New Light):

[From a journal entry on 2012 September 3 (Mon)] Today we took the kids to the temple. It was so peaceful. I had such a good feeling while I was there. I had a personal witness that this is a true & living church. The feeling of peace I had there was not a unique feeling, but an altogether familiar feeling that has attended me at many other periods of my life when I felt close to the Lord, one of those being my mission. In different locations & at different moments or periods of my life, I’ve felt this same familiar feeling & this feeling connects them all together in one continuous thread. I feel the Lord in all of this & this is a witness to me that the Lord lives, that he’s present in our lives & that this Gospel & the church are true & living. There is life in this Gospel & the church….

We have laid out for us in the LDS church a program for salvation. To know what this program is, all you have to do is sit through a general conference. You can get a pretty good overall idea of the different parts, because they are the focus (either directly or indirectly) of all the talks. In two recent conference talks, Elder Ballard referred to the church as Old Ship Zion (see “Stay in the Boat and Hold On!” and “God Is at the Helm“). The expression was borrowed from Brigham Young who said on one occasion:

We are in the midst of the ocean. A storm comes on, and, as sailors say, she labors very hard. ‘I am not going to stay here,’ says one; ‘I don’t believe this is the “Ship Zion.”‘ ‘But we are in the midst of the ocean.’ ‘I don’t care, I am not going to stay here.’ Off goes the coat, and he jumps overboard. Will he not be drowned? Yes. So with those who leave this Church. It is the ‘Old Ship Zion,’ let us stay in it.

On another occasion Brigham Young said (as quoted by Elder Ballard in his October 2014 general conference talk):

We are on the old ship Zion. …[God] is at the helm and will stay there. …All is right, sing Hallelujah, for the Lord is here. He dictates, guides and directs. If the people will have implicit confidence in their God, never forsake their covenants nor their God, He will guide us right.

In these two talks, I like what Elder Ballard says about how “we need to experience a continuing conversion by increasing our faith in Jesus Christ and our faithfulness to His gospel…“. He says that “the words of the Lord are found in the scriptures...” and that “we need to be like the sons of Mosiah and give ourselves ‘to much prayer and fasting’“. He counsels us to “keep our focus on the Lord” and (quoting 2 Nephi 31:20) “press forward with a steadfastness in Christ.” But the overriding theme that comes across more loudly than anything else is how essential it is to heed the words of the current leaders of the church and place our trust and confidence in them.

In his talk from October 2014, Elder Ballard said: “Recently, I spoke at the new mission presidents’ seminar and counseled these leaders: ‘Keep the eyes of the mission on the leaders of the Church. …We will not and … cannot lead [you] astray.’” In the same talk, he presents a defense against those who “think the Church leaders live in a ‘bubble’.” He goes on to explain: “What they forget is that we are men and women of experience, and we have lived our lives in so many places and worked with many people from different backgrounds….” In his talk a year later, reiterating and elaborating on the same themes as the previous year, he says: “Focusing on how the Lord inspires His chosen leaders and how He moves the Saints to do remarkable and extraordinary things despite their humanity is one way that we hold on to the gospel of Jesus Christ and stay safely aboard the Old Ship Zion.”

The program of the LDS church has as a central tenet the crucial role of modern day prophets, seers and revelators. And every general conference has these leaders reiterating the importance of paying tithing, attending church each week and partaking of the sacrament, doing our home and visiting teaching, magnifying our callings, regularly attending the temple, and so forth. There’s much good that can come from these things, but it is regimented and regulated and monitored so much that I often find it awkward rather than edifying. But, because this is the way it has been for generations and because we are led by men who we consider to be God’s representatives on earth, we see this program as God’s program and his plan for the salvation of his children.

The general conference talks in which these men urge us to follow this program are scattered with scriptural verses. This reinforces in our minds that this program is indeed God’s revealed plan. If we face hardship and experience depression or feelings of aimlessness, the answer in our mind is always that we need to renew our efforts to follow this program. Apostasy or faithfulness, falling away or staying the course, inactivity or activity are defined in terms of our attendance at church, how willingly we accept and “magnify” callings, the extent to which we study and agree with the teachings and policies of the sustained leadership of the church.

In many ways, it feels as though what we have in the church is a highly centralized, efficiently managed spiritual welfare state. Tithing donations are not locally collected and used solely for local needs, but are sent to Salt Lake City to be centrally managed and redistributed. Church buildings and temples spring up throughout the world, the locations of which are determined by membership activity statistics and demographics carefully collected by local congregations and sent into Salt Lake. Sunday school, youth, relief society and priesthood curricula are created by the central leadership and rolled out to all of the wards and branches throughout the world. New policies and programs are likewise discussed, outlined, finalized and rolled out from Salt Lake. With the priesthood authority and keys necessary, the central leadership call and set apart local area authorities who, in turn, call and set apart stake leadership who, finally, call and set apart bishoprics and priesthood quorum leaders. It’s that local priesthood leadership that regulates affairs in the ward. They extend callings, decide who can administer sacrament outside of the regular, weekly sacrament meeting, who can baptize and be baptized and so forth.

The benefit for us is that we don’t need to worry about doing many things of our own free will, but we can safely and securely be commanded in all things (see D&C 58-26-29) by men in whom (as Elder Ballard has taught) we can place our complete trust. In an increasingly wicked society with unprecedentedly complex issues, we can thank God for a prophet to guide us in these latter days. And with a church program that provides for us the bare essentials for spiritual survival, we know the necessary and sufficient requirements to gain entry into God’s kingdom. It doesn’t matter so much what poverty, injustice, suffering exist outside of the church and the bounds of our stewardships (in our church callings). As long as we are paying our 10% tithing and our fast offerings, as long as we’re serving faithfully in our church callings, we don’t need to worry about those things.

As long as we attend to the things specifically required by the church program, we can spend the balance of our time pursuing material comforts, luxuries and conveniences. And the reverent hymns and musical numbers we hear each week at church, the peaceful quiet we experience in the temple and the quiet hymns we listen to while waiting to go into an endowment session, the soothing sounds and reassuring voices and words we listen to each General Conference while dozing off on the couch, all of these things reassure us that the Gospel is true, the church is true and that we are led by men who cannot lead us astray.

Traditionally, we (members of the LDS church) think of 2 Nephi 28 as referring to the churches of Joseph Smith’s time or the non-LDS Christian denominations of our day or the medieval Catholic church that was responsible for the crusades and inquisitions. But Nephi seems to have seen the broad expanse of history in which the churches of men, from Constantine to the present, with all their follies and abominations, were laid before his eyes. And right now, I don’t know of another church (besides the LDS church) that speaks so frequently of being Zion and the Lord’s one true church on the earth. To these people, whoever they are, this is what Nephi wrote (2 Nephi 28:5-6,21,24-26,31):

…they deny the power of God, the Holy One of Israel; and they say unto the people: Hearken unto us, and hear ye our precept; for behold there is no God today, for the Lord and the Redeemer hath done his work, and he hath given his power unto men; Behold, hearken ye unto my precept…

…others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls…

Therefore, wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion! Wo be unto him that crieth: All is well! Yea, wo be unto him that hearkeneth unto the precepts of men, and denieth the power of God, and the gift of the Holy Ghost!

…Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost.