Isaiah 29:13
The Lord says:
"
These people come near to me with their mouth
and honor me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
is made up only of rules taught by men.
2Tim. 3:1-5
1But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— **5having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them. **
Its interesting how scripture resurfaces in the BOM.
Those two verses have been on my mind for a long time. I didn’t know that they were also present in the BOM. I grew up in a denomination that believes God is waiting for the right time and then He will strike, when we least expect it (but they don’t think much about it). They believe they have found the right denomination and as a result, they are safely among those who will go to heaven. For them that’s all that matters - they follow the rules and put their time in and its ‘all good’… They “have a form of godliness, but deny its power.”
It seems that there are verses that stand out to people as they read scripture. There would be varying explanations as to why these verses are present in the BOM.
A LDS might say that it is because God knows which verses we will remember most and wants us to see His presence in both texts.
A while ago, on the topic of various world religions, I heard someone say, "No one will believe a pure lie. They will see it for what it is. A believable lie is one that starts with some truth. The hearer accepts the truth that is offered first and accepts the information (which is false) that the speaker associates with it. Each world religion is not all bad, otherwise people would see through them. On top of the lie rests some goodness, some truth - that’s why people believe in lies.
This makes me think of that CS Lewis quote we’ve been shooting back and forth about how Satan mostly wants to fatten us up so he can devour us in Hell. Satan just wants to keep us out of God’s hands, so he can have us for eternity.
I’m not saying that I know how God will respond to people who believe the things taught by Joseph Smith. God is just and merciful in a way that none of us can fully comprehend. In Lewis’ last portion of the Narnia Chronicles the story comes to a close as Narnians enter into Heaven. There is a man who was not a believer in Aslan through the course of his life, but worshipped another god. Aslan talks with the man and makes it plain to him. Aslan says that this man was sincere in his devotion and was not polluted by the religion he was raised in and so the whole time, the man was actually worshipping the one true God, even though he had no way of knowing Him. He may have been the one exception. Similarly, in ‘The Great Divorce,’ the narrator only witnesses one person make the decision to leave damnation behind - everyone else, when faced with the reality of Heaven, refuses it. Lewis is careful that we don’t begin to imagine that his ideas are fact - He presents them as maybes. He clearly believes that God is merciful, but doesn’t offer us any definite statements on how far that mercy will extend beyond the invitation of Christ, or if it will at all. In both of Lewis’ texts I’ve listed here, he makes a clear point that God won’t force us to see things as they really are.
The primary disconnect from the Way of Christ for me when looking at LDS theology is in the answer Joseph gets from his prayer. He hears from God that all churches are an abomination to Him and that Joseph should not join any.
One thing that is crystal clear to me is that no one denomination is the right one. I believe that true believers/followers are present in all denominations. I believe that the true church is not defined by the sign on the lawn of the church people attend, but by the way individuals live out the calling they receive. I believe that we should not be seeking the perfect church, but the one and only perfect and holy God. I believe we will always be disappointed if we seek pure divinity among people, but never with God.
Lets imagine that the Lutheran church is the one true church and instead of following the teachings of that denomination, I tell everyone that I am, but my lifestyle is not reflective of the teachings of the church - am I really a follower of that denomination? There will be some sincere followers and some who are insincere.
“They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
“They have a form of godliness, but deny its power.”
Its likely that there are people among the denomination that I grew up in who are sincere, I just don’t know of any - I suppose its not my job to judge that. The verses above are probably there mostly to remind us not to be those kind of people, to examine ourselves.
(I’m sick and I imagine I have ranted quite a bit - thanks for your patience
)
Peace,
SW
