Tithing the Widow’s Mites

It may be because tithing settlement is upcoming in my local ward, but I recently had my attention drawn to a particular story in the scriptures.  To be frank, I know that my position with how I relate to the church is idiosyncratic.  My opinion about the present order of things is far too critical for most of my mainstream peers [I admit they’re problems with how Mormonism is governed by the men in Salt Lake and I admit there are alternate ways for people to legitimately be “LDS”] — but I’m far too generous for any among the critical crowd [I believe that the LDS church is literally the true church of Jesus Christ and don’t support an “All is lost, corrupt-apostasy, JUMP ship” view of things].

In any event, this last week I was reminded of the story of the widow and her two pennies.  At a point when Jesus had already condemned the religious establishment of his day as corrupt,

woe unto you
scribes and
pharisees
hypocrites!

and when he had already tossed his hands up in derision at the apostasy he saw present in the management of God’s temple,

behold
your house is left unto you desolate
and truly I say unto you
you shall not see me
until the time come when you shall say

blessed is he
that comes in the name of YHVH

the scriptures say that:

he looked up
and saw rich men casting their gifts into the treasury
and he saw also a certain poor widow
casting in two pennies
and he said

truly I say unto you
that this poor widow has cast in more than they all
for all these have given
of their abundance unto the offerings of God
but she
out of her poverty
has cast in all of the living that she had

Here we see Jesus referring to what was obviously an abused receptacle of money as “the offerings of God”.  Here we see Jesus approving of an impoverished widow submitting what little money she had into the coffers of a corrupt and wealthy religious establishment.

To me, the same applies to the criticisms that people make about things like the encouraging of leader-worship, relying on the corrupt works of our own efforts, the lack prophecy and revelation coming from the men sustained as prophets and revelators, using the tithing funds to have sufficient for our needs and then investing the difference for usury, etc., etc.

Do I think such concerns are valid?  Absolutely.  But it is my belief that it is still the church of God that is doing those things.  We have not ceased to be the Lord’s people because of these condemnable works.  The church of Christ can remain “true” while being “dead” and “damned” [see D&C 84:54-57].

For the last couple years, there’s been a lot of attention on blogs about the “corporate Church”, [the “Church™” as opposed to “the church”, etc.] — and more especially since the whole City Creek Center things was announced, built, and opened.  Although it is true that none of us [except Thomas Monson] is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints™ corporation — it is my understanding that every latter-day saint was confirmed a member of “the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints.”

While we know how to spell the name of the corporate Church, including where the capitalization and the dash goes [it’s a trademarked letterhead and defined in the corporate charter] — on the other, the name of the Lord’s true church is never spelled, it is only spoken as hands are laid on a person’s head and they are confirmed a member of it and commanded to receive the Holy Ghost.  This latter church may, or may not, contain a dash and capitalization — we don’t know.

When the Lord refers to his “church”, it is always in reference to a living body of people — not to some non-existent, non-living, non-corporeal, legal corporate entity.  That’s why you see Jesus not giving a hoot whether the temple treasury where the widow was submitting her pennies was “corrupt” or not.

Of real concern to me, is not the corruption and break-up of the corporate LDS Church — but the corruption and break-up of the latter day church [meaning seeing the members dividing into a plurality of separate, wicked churches].  That is where my focus is, on the LDS church — on the people.  We cannot call the LDS church [people] out of the LDS Church [the corporation], because they were never a part of it to begin with [the Church President is always ever the only member].

We, like the widow that Jesus observed, must assert our rights as confirmed members of “the church of Jesus Christ of latter day saints” and turn the tide in the Lord’s favor — allowing for the wicked and corrupt influences to be exposed in the open light, right smack in the middle of the church, where observant people can be influenced, so that they can make an informed decision as to who they will follow [whether that be Jesus Christ or other men].

Next Article by Justin:  Master, Master, We Perish

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CHI #3 Whose marriage is this anyway?

Since the CHI deals with LDS church doctrine and in places draws from the scriptures there are many good things said in this handbook. The problem is that the way it is treated is as though it is the gospel. We are expected and many members and leaders do take it to be 100% authoritative as if it is the voice of the Lord to us.

So as I discuss these points if they run counter to the truth we know then they are wrong regardless of who signed the book.

3.5.1 under the subheading of special meeting for guests who do not have temple recommends the CHI explains a couple arrange with their bishop to have a special meeting for relatives and friends who do no have temple recommends. It can have a prayer and special music followed by a talk by a priesthood leader.
It says no ceremony is performed, and no vows are exchanged.

Then a short paragraph saying:

No other marriage ceremony should be performed following a temple marriage.

Well why does the CHI say that? In fact I think I violated this one without knowing it. You know your government sanctioned marriage may not be recognized in another country. What then? Since the church says you need a government issued license to be married then obviously if you don’t have one for the country you are living in you are not married there. You might think twice before having sex with who you think is your spouse while visiting a foreign country. I mean maybe you committed adultery without knowing it.  But on the other hand if you get a new marriage in the new country you are violating the church rules here stated.

How now brown cow? Please Mr. Church what do I do? How can I be subject to kings and rulers etc and still follow you? What do I do?

Hey stop whining the answer to that was given long ago and is right in the Doctrine and Covenants. Well at least part of it, the OF1. Don’t look at the rest of the Lord’s words as found in say section 98 or 101 or 42 where He says you should obey Him and His law above the laws of man. Just follow Wilford Woodruff’s example and his strong prophetic “advice” and put the law of God subservient to the law of the government.

Sure do it. It works every time. The church won’t bug you and this will muffle your conscience. Of course it may decrease your portion of the Holy Ghost but hey you will still have temple recommend which we all know is required to return to the presence of God. By this rational the soldiers who fought for Germany in world war 2 were all blessed even if they were working at a concentration camp turning on the gas, they were just obeying the law. Same as any God given right violating members serving in the military, FBI, CIA, IRS, or TSA. They are all following the law and just doing their jobs.

Now please as you read this don’t take an excerpt from the above two paragraphs and explain that it is wrong. Of course it is wrong. It is all sarcasm.

You may think this is all foolishness. I could not agree with you more. To think that a man and woman need to have permission from other people (with the exception of their spouse) to be married is total foolishness. Governments and churches are people. They both administer their ordinances. And when a church which has authority from Gd to perform ordinances which will be recognized by Him they had better be damn careful to not run afoul of His laws of agency in doing so.

The whole mess comes about when we start putting any law of man, governmental body or church body above the law of God. Only we ourselves personally can insure that we are not guilty of this. It should be obvious by the posts on the CHI that the present LDS church is not going to be of any help in this regard. The doctrine of the marriage covenant stated on this blog is correct. Marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman. Why is that correct? Because it is what God said it.

So what pray tell does the CHI think it is doing in forbidding people to have other marriage ceremonies?

Maybe someone is afraid that members might awake to the realization that they never needed government approval or church approval to have a God recognized marriage in the first place.

I don’t really care what they think. I can see what it does. It places the corporate church as the dispenser and controller of God’s blessings to its members. It inserts said church between God and His children thereby depriving them of rights and freedoms which God has given them.

Seeing Apostasy from Within

“…we know that the people who were in the land of Jerusalem were a righteous people; for they kept the statutes and judgments of the Lord, and all his commandments, according to the law of Moses; wherefore, we know that they are a righteous people…” 1 Nephi 17:22

After nearly a decade of wandering in the desert, Lehi and his family arrived on the seashore and pitched their tents in the land they called Bountiful. Nephi, according to the word of the Lord, began to fashion tools for the construction of a ship. Laman and Lemuel began, once again, to complain citing the above reference regarding the people of Jerusalem. From their view, their friends back home were on the right path. They bemoaned the fact that they could not enjoy their possessions and be happy.

As we stand here centuries later, we can see the big picture. The house of Israel has fallen into disrepair. The people of God had replaced their love and service of God with the pomp and circumstance derived from wealth and pleasure. Apostasy had set in. But to Laman and Lemuel, their easy lifestyle enjoyed in Jerusalem was the standard by which they measured the ‘rightness’ of their living. No admonition from either Lehi or Nephi could sway their sons and brothers from this viewpoint.

Given the difficulty that Laman had in seeing the real picture, how hard would it be for us in this day to see the threads of apostasy in our normal lives? Have we supplanted what the Lord defined for righteousness with our own comfortable standard?

I believe that this movement away from the truth is apostasy and can occur at two levels, organization and personal. The former dealing with the migration of the goals and objectives  promoted by the leadership and the latter expressed in our individual thoughts and actions. Let’s take a look at these two themes.

Corporate Apostasy

Today, we can easily see that the church established by the apostles in the meridian of time moved away from the true principles established by Christ. Let’s look a little more closely at what outward characteristics emerged from this change.

As we look at the Holy Roman Church, we find an entity that expressed itself in the form of magnificent edifices. St. Peter’s Basilica, first commissioned by Constantine, was rebuilt in the 15^th century with no equal. While churches dominated the landscape of most cities of the time, none compared to the structure finally completed in the early 1600’s. A considerable amount of wealth was spent in the construction of beautiful buildings, meant to send a message of the power and prestige of the Catholic church.

The need of the church to express itself in terms of its physical environment extended to the surrounding areas of its headquarters in Vatican City. Speaking of the popes of the 14^th and 15^th century, here is a quote from The Restoration by Wil Durant (page 14):

“They labored to redeem Rome from the ugliness and squalor into which it had fallen while the popes were in Avignon. They drained marshes (by comfortable proxy), paved streets, restored bridges and roads, improved the water supply, established the Vatican Library and the Capitoline Museum, enlarged the hospitals, distributed charity, built or repaired churches, embellished the city with palaces and gardens, reorganized the University of Rome, supported the humanists in resurrecting pagan literature, philosophy, and art, and gave employment to painters, sculptors, and architects whose works are now a treasured heritage of all mankind…perhaps they thought of it as transforming scattered crumbs of evanescent wealth into a lasting splendor for the people and their God.”

The true reverence of God is not expressed in magnificent buildings, gardens, and lavish art. Could this extravagant effort to honor God with the works of man be an outward sign to the apostasy within?

At its height, the Holy Roman Church exerted political influence well beyond the confines of the Vatican. Princes and kings sought out the elite of the church hierarchy to solidify alliances and to position themselves. Leaders of the church traveled not only to Germany and France but to China and India to gain favor with the rulers of these foreign lands. At home and abroad, politics played an integral role in the lives of the popes. Does the ability to influence politics domestically and worldwide serve as a marker of the wayward path?

The practice of indulgences, the idea of reducing the time of a loved one in Purgatory through the purchase of the excess grace of the saints, represented one of the primary methods for creating ongoing cash flow. The donations to the church, then as now, were viewed as ‘fire insurance.’ To spin off an old refrain, money corrupts, and a lot of money corrupts greatly. Such was the Catholic Church in the middle ages. Property bequeathed to the church held the giver higher in the eyes of God, or does it generate a false hope?

Four years before Martin Luther tacked his 95 Theses on the door of the church at Wittenberg, Machiavelli penned the following in his Discourses, iii:

“ Had the religion of Christianity been preserved according to the ordinances of the Founder, the state and the commonwealth of Christendom would have been far more united and happy than they are. … And whoever examines the principles which that religion is founded, and sees how widely different from those principles its present practice and application are, will judge that her ruin or chastisement is near at hand.”

This statement foreshadowed the reformation; an effort to return to the basic principles that were contained in the founding words of apostles. Have we of the LDS church diverged from the original principles upon which the religion was founded? Has the money and power afforded the LDS church over these last decades succeeded in moving us away from the principles contained in the fulness of the gospel? I have found nothing in the scriptures that suggests this generation is immune from apostasy. Are we so blind, as Laman and Lemuel were, to not see what is happening to the corporate church?

In Third Nephi, chapter 27, Christ outlines the criteria for the church to be His. In addition to being called by His Name and tuned to His gospel, He requires that the church ‘show forth the works of the Father’.’ He also warns us that ( verse 11):

If the church “is built upon the works of men, or upon the works of the devil, verily I say unto you they have joy in their works for a season, and by and by the end cometh, and they are hewn down and cast into the fire, from whence there is no return.”

Assuming what I described above, are we taking joy in the works of men? Is the season coming to a close?

Individual Apostasy

Just as there could be markers of apostasy for the corporate entity, there are also similar markers for us as individuals. Apostasy comes from the Greek meaning ‘to stand away,’ and means today that one departs from one’s religion or principles. Subtle apostasy would have us focus our time, talents, and energy on items at ‘appear’ to be important but are really only invalid substitutes for the real thing.

In Matthew 23, we read:

“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Is it possible that we, today, can do many wonderful works, yet be rejected by Christ? I submit that this substitution of works instead of seeking to be known by Christ represents the type of apostasy that threatens us today. Can we assume that attending the temple, doing our home teaching,  fulfilling our callings and all the other various and sundry activities we are called upon to do in the church today can substitute for having a relationship with Christ sufficient to be ‘known’ by Him?

In the times of the Middle Ages, the tradition of visiting relics and defined sacred sites became very important. Martin Luther, himself, tells of his effort to climb the 200+ steps of a holy site on his knees, reciting a prayer on each step in hopes of currying favor with God. Do we exert such an outward effort in hopes that God will recognize our sacrifice? At the same time, do we ignore the fundamental gospel steps of repentance, faith, baptism by water followed by baptism by fire and the Holy Ghost?

As I sat in fast and testimony meeting last week, I was struck by the ‘testimony’ of an older gentleman who talked of his challenges in keeping his business solvent. He described a discussion with his brother where he was told: “I pay my tithing; I have no reason to worry.” Has tithing become simply a modern day equivalent of the Holy Roman Church’s indulgences? Is there an implied promise that if we pay our money to the church we will receive some level of protection? I am not proposing that anyone who pays tithing is in apostasy. My intent is to raise the concern that substituting tithing for the true meaning of the gospel, to bring us to Christ, will not bring us to our intended goal – His kingdom.

Can the LDS Church fail? Yes, if it allows money, politics and power to supplant the ministry of the gospel. Can we as individuals fail? Yes, if we allow the works of men to replace a relationship with Christ.

These are the questions we must answer for ourselves:

Have I received a remission of my sins? See 2 Nephi 31:17-18,

Have I been sanctified? See 3 Nephi 27:20-21

Have I been cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost that I may be numbered among the people of the Church of Christ? See Moroni 6:1-4

Once we have prepared our hearts then we turn our effort toward our neighbors. Have we accomplished our personal preparation such that we can assist our brothers and sisters with a pure heart? See Mosiah 4:11-30

Are we, as Laman, defining our own criteria for righteousness?

What think ye?