I have seen this blog written by Greg Trimble shared quite a bit amongst my LDS friends today, but it really is too good not to share. It struck a cord with me. The past few weeks in my seminary class we have talked a lot about being more Christian. I think often as Mormons we come off as too cliquish and that is not what the Gospel of Jesus Christ is about. Sometimes I sit back and think we are so much like the Pharisees and the Sadducees when it comes to our Mormon "culture".
I am reminded of an experience I had years ago while serving in the LDS branch at the Youth Corrections facility. There was a young man and he had an amazing head of hair. I mean girls would be jealous of his hair. It was long and naturally curly. One time we were talking one on one and I asked him how come he didn't go to his family ward anymore. He told me that often he would want to and occasionally he would get enough courage to go. He didn't have any "church" clothes to wear so he would wear his jeans and nice shirt, but he would always feel judged, not only by his clothes but because of his hair (and he was sporting a little bit of facial hair as well). In the course of our conversation I told him that our Savior wanted him to be there, and it didn't matter what he looked like. He needed to go to church, and go for himself. Whether he followed the counsel, I do not know, I hope he did.
I don't want people to think that I am diminishing the importance of dressing properly on the Sabbath and the respect that gives to His holy day, but I do believe for some it may take time to get there and they need to be in church to feel of His spirit and partake in the goodness of Christ. I often wonder if our sacrament talks focus too much on the details of being a Mormon (like how many more times do we need to hear about goal setting in January, and some of the other topics that is often repeated), but instead lets focus on the principles and messages of the Savior. Think about how many talks we listen to each Sunday and not once do they mention the Savior or his teachings. Sometimes the only mention of Christ is at the end when they end in his name (the talks today in my sacrament were excellent, just incase anyone was wondering.)
A few years ago, I brought a young woman from Argentina to our church service. She was staying with our family for a few days as part of vocational exchange group through Rotary International. I literally prayed that our sacrament meeting would focus on Christ and not just some of our commandments. Luckily, the good bishop must have been inspired beforehand and it was a great meeting. She came away asking good questions about our beliefs compared to her own.
I believe that as we focus our messages in church toward the teaching of our Savior as found in the scriptures, our congregations will become more Christ like.
We as Latter-day saints tend to feel embarrassed about openly expressing our devotion and love to our Savior, yet we have an amazing missionary force that goes out in their late teens and early twenties to testify of Him. For many of them, that is their first real experience telling people what they believe. They try their hardest to get those they teach to come to church and they are just praying that the membership will show them Christ like love and that hopefully somewhere that the gospel of Jesus Christ will be taught. So as I read the blog I mentioned above, my heart desires the same thing in our congregations. So often people do not ask questions in classes or give comments because what they have experienced isn't what is the "normal" in our church conversations,. Just the other day in my seminary class (I am trying hard to have the kids actually discuss things and hard topics) we got into a small discussion on Heavenly Mother and the creation of the Universe. Yep pretty deep stuff, but I was able to point to their gospel apps and have them find the essays that have been produced. We talk about how prayers take some time to be answered and how we need to have an eternal perspective on things. At the end of the day, what matters is that we truly come to know Jesus Christ (John 17:3) and not just know of him. We do that by showing the same compassion he had, we need to make sure all feel welcome at His church and the activities we have. The color of your hair, the tattoos on your body, piercings you may have or wait for it...the facial hair one might have, does not determine how much Christ loves them, so why should they determine how much we love them?
