While visiting teaching earlier this week, I was reminded of just how much my views have changed in the last six months or so. I found a story in the back of the Ensign to use as my message, about a woman who felt lonely on Easter and so decided to make and deliver meals to some homeless people that she saw every day around the subway station. It talked about one homeless man in particular who seemed in dire straits and who was very grateful for the food. It talked about the scripture “Are we not all beggars?” from King Benjamen’s address, which I’ve always liked but haven’t read for a while.
Anyway, after I gave the message, my friend who we were visiting said that she has a hard time relating to God as a loving father, since she has never had a good relationship with her own father. She pictures God as keeping a big list of everything she does wrong, and a tiny little list of the good things that she has done right. I know this woman pretty well, and she is very literal in her LDS beliefs. She is very afraid she’s not going to “make it” to the Celestial Kingdom. I think she has a lot of emotional baggage related to her childhood that contributes to her fears. It makes me sad that for some people, the gospel in some ways adds a burden to them. I don’t think anyone should have to live their life every day afraid that they are just not good enough for the God they believe in.
My companion then spoke up and said that the people she doesn’t think will make it are the LDS members who do everything they are supposed to do, but are self-righteous and prideful because they think they are better than everyone else.
I just kept thinking, is this how I used to think? I didn’t say half of what I was thinking at the moment, but I told them I thought that both my friend, and many of the now self-righteous people my companion mentioned, would be in the CK. I said that I feel that grace plays a much bigger role than we often allow it to, and that it’s more a sense of where our heart is, than a big checklist of things to do or be.
Inside I was thinking, is this really what the church is teaching us? That someone heaven is made up of only LDS people who somehow fit the magic criteria? It’s like we’re living in this little bubble and we think that the LDS world really is the entire world, or the only part of it that matters. I don’t think that way anymore. The percentage of people who will ever even hear about the church is so tiny. It just doesn’t make sense that it is God’s one and only true way to salvation.
Wow, I sound like a NOM.
