The Church Isn'T Perfect But The People Are?

[thesometimesaint]

My good pogi, if only I had your eyes, all would be well. But I must work through hard things before I can see clearly. Who knows what the view will be?

We all see through that glass darkly. But we can rest assured that God is there to encourage us to keep looking.

[CV75]

This would seem to assume that the imperfections are separate from the truthfulness of the Church.

This is a view that many would disagree with, I suspect.

I agree, hence the problems. Imperfection is not the same as falsity. It is just a lack of completion, and we all know that all Lord's work isn't done yet. But we do have to take a stand on what His revealed work is, and how He is accomplishing it, before allowing imperfection to stand in our way (or allowing imperfection to stand in our way of finding that out).

[CV75]

Even as Prophet, there are some things about the Church that President Hinckley doesn't get to define.

Of course, but what he is saying in the quote I provided is true, since the Church cannot be both the kingdom of God (which would include being a fraud of God, or a kingdom where He permits fraud) and a flat-out fraud. Are you saying God cannot allow any fraud to occur in His imperfect kingdom on earth? He might tolerate some of it to exist just like any other imperfection. The kingdom is still ultimately God's, so it is true in that regard. And there is no fraud in His estalishing the keys of the kingdom upon the earth.

It makes no sense for people to throw the baby out with the bathwater, or spurn the baby because he's soaking in used bathwater.

[Walden]

I guess it depends on how you look at it, whether through physical eyes or spiritual eyes. I view my very breath as a supernatural gift. What you call natural, I call divine. It's all perspective. Christ pleaded for us to let ourselves see, and to allow our hearts to be touched. To discover what we already know. Letting ourselves see means to allow hope into our lives. Doubt is nothing more than closing our spiritual eyes. Once closed, you can no longer perceive breath and other "natural" phenomenon as divinely given. God becomes indiscernible and all things can only be perceived as "natural." No wonder they doubt their previous experiences.

Yes, I am in full agreement that "it depends on how you look at it" and that "it's all perspective"; thus, truth is relative. Personally, I don't need a divine or supernatural explanation to explain the very natural occurrence of breathing, which a believer such as yourself sees as a "supernatural gift." I generally lean towards those explanations which require the least amount of speculation, conjecture or assumptions, essentially an "Occam's Razor" approach, one congruent with Issac Newton's statement that "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." Thus, "breath" has no need to be "divinely given," it is a natural occurrence required to maintain life, it's functionality easily explained through the processes of natural selection and evolutionary biology.

Regarding the "spiritual eyes" versus "physical eyes" argument, I often think of a similar example when watching a show such as "Ghost Hunters" or similar shows. On these shows, "paranormal investigators," who at least portray the ideal that they fully believe in ghosts and the supernatural, hunker down in a "haunted" venue and perform an investigation. They are looking for ghosts, and fully believe that they will find ghosts. When they hear a knock or a sound or feel a cold breeze, their first assumption is that it is the result of the presence of a ghost. They sometimes investigate for an alternate source of the sound, but often, that investigation is cursory and half-hearted. Most often, because they are fully invested in the "ghost" myth, they immediately jump to the conclusion that a ghost must be present, as it confirms their belief. It doesn't matter if the ghost is present or not, nor does it matter that there has never been verifiable evidence that ghosts even exist, these people are under the full assumption that these ghosts are real. By seeing the world through their "ghosts eyes", they see evidence of ghosts all around them, even though there are very real, natural explanations for the occurrences (noises, cold drafts, etc.) that they interpret as the presence of ghosts (I mean, really, how many old buildings make "spooky" noises, not as a result of ghosts, but rather, as a result of their age and the very natural phenomena of expanding/contracting wood and other building materials, etc). Thus, like believers, these investigators correlate natural phenomena to supernatural causation, and thus add extraneous amounts of assumption, conjecture, etc. to provide a supernatural explanation to a very natural phenomena that does not require a supernatural explanation.

[thesometimesaint]

Believe me breathing is a gift.

There is only one ghost with which we have anything to do with, and that one is Holy.

[cinepro]

Of course, but what he is saying in the quote I provided is true, since the Church cannot be both the kingdom of God (which would include being a fraud of God, or a kingdom where He permits fraud) and a flat-out fraud. Are you saying God cannot allow any fraud to occur in His imperfect kingdom on earth? He might tolerate some of it to exist just like any other imperfection. The kingdom is still ultimately God's, so it is true in that regard. And there is no fraud in His estalishing the keys of the kingdom upon the earth.

It makes no sense for people to throw the baby out with the bathwater, or spurn the baby because he's soaking in used bathwater.

My point is that depending on how you define "fraud", it would be possible for the Church not to be exactly what it says it is, while not actually being a "fraud".

Certainly it could be the "Kingdom of God", or a "fraud", but perhaps there are other things it could be.

For example, there are other churches that aren't the "Kingdom of God", but unless we're going to call them all "frauds", that must mean they are something else. What are they?

[juliann]

I continue to think the battle is not over theology at all, it is over access and control of the community.

Lightning Out of Heaven”

Joseph Smith and the Forging of Community

Terryl Givens, "Lightning Out Of Heaven, BYU Studies (45:1) byustudies.byu.edu

I am, perhaps belatedly, coming to the recognition that the sustained growth of the Church, while impressive, is not itself the greatest legacy of Joseph—or the most significant issue we can investigate. Amway had a phenomenal growth rate. There is something else Joseph accomplished—something that is obliquely suggested by the very difficulty of knowing whether to define the people who now revere him as a church, a religion, a culture, an ethnicity, a global tribe, or something else. Joseph succeeded in creating a community with no real parallel—and few precedents—in the history of the world.

[bu11fr0g]

My current thoughts are that the notion that the church is true, perfect, good while the people are not is flawed. Perhaps the ideals of the church are, but the church is the actions of the people. Even more, members are frequently better than the institution of the church: more tolerant of gays, more acknowledging of flaws in church leaders and previois church practices, more generous towards helping others in need....

Is my thinking right or wrong?