A talk I gave today in the Golden Gate Ward:
Today I want to talk about something that I’ve thought about over the last couple of years serving in the bishopric. And that is the question, "what is the difference between being a good member of the church and being a good follower of Jesus?" Your first reaction may be “well shouldn’t those be the same thing,” and they should, but I think there are some differences and noticing them in myself has helped me personally feel closer to Jesus and my hope is that something I say today can help someone else feel the same.
So what is the difference? I just want to focus on two of Jesus' teachings today that I feel like I’m lacking to bridge this gap and give some examples to help frame my thoughts on this. These are:
1) Give to the poor
2) Love God and love your neighbor – the two great commandments
Give to the poor
One of Jesus' core themes that he repeated over and over and over throughout his life was to take care of the poor. It’s mentioned 26 times in the New Testament and 23 times in the Book of Mormon and more than being mentioned a lot it was a core theme that he hit in other sermons and teachings, focusing on those most in need, the least of these, etc. Here are just a few examples:
Alma 5:53-56
55 Yea, and will you persist in turning your backs upon the apoor, and the needy, and in withholding your substance from them?
56 And finally, all ye that will persist in your wickedness, I say unto you that these are they who shall be hewn down and cast into the fire except they speedily repent.
Mosiah 4 – King Benjamin’s address
26 …for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may awalk guiltless before God—I would that ye should bimpart of your substance to the cpoor, every man according to that which he hath, such as dfeeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants.
Matthew 19: Jesus teaches the rich young man about how to obtain eternal life
21 …If thou wilt be aperfect, go and sell that thou hast, and bgive to the cpoor, and thou shalt have dtreasure in heaven: and come and efollow me.
Luke 6
21 Blessed are ye that ahunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall blaugh.
Then he really brings the heat, pretty uncomfortably:
25 Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.
Remember this is Jesus, from the New Testament and Book of Mormon. This isn’t AOC’s twitter account. He doesn’t hold back any punches. And yes we can contextualize or discount it and say that we need to compare it to the practical fact that we should save and work hard and be frugal so we can be comfortable and self-reliant, and yes, that’s fine and great. But he is both very clear and repeats it over and over and over. So we can’t completely discount the duty that we have as disciples of Jesus to care for the poor, and not just the poor that we know will become self reliant or those that we think will come to church because of it. Just help the poor. Period.
The big problem for me personally has been that I’ve spent most of my life thinking that my tithing and fast offerings were sufficiently fulfilling this duty, so I basically outsourced that responsibility to the church and I don’t think that’s a very uncommon sentiment. The problem with that of course is that tithing doesn’t go toward helping the poor. It goes toward operating the church, specifically “to build and maintain temples and meetinghouses, to sustain missionary work, to educate Church members, and to carry on the work of the Lord throughout the world.” I’m not being critical, that’s just not what it’s for. Fast offerings do go to those in need, but are relatively small and only used for members of the church in the ward. Then there’s welfare and humanitarian aid which from separate funds raised for those specific purposes, and the church spends about $40 million per year there, which is a lot of money, but still a tiny fraction relative to tithing, less than 1%.
And I want to be clear, the fast offering program is amazing and a huge blessing that I’ve seen first hand in our ward and it has sustained and changed lives. Humanitarian aid and the church welfare program is amazing and saves and changes lives. What I’m not saying is that people should feel guilty and start giving more money to charitable organizations that help the poor necessarily. We all help the way that we think is best and that’s great. What I am saying is that for me personally I think that when I compare the amount of emphasis that Jesus placed on helping the poor with the emphasis I place on it in my life with my resources, financial or otherwise, I think that on this particular topic I’ve been a great member of the church and I don’t think that I have been a very good follower of Jesus and I’d like to change that.
Love God. Love your neighbor
Matthew 22: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. “This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”4
He also said that “if ye love me, keep my commandments,” so there’s a good reason why we have such a focus on obedience to the commandments, to fulfill that first great commandment to love God. And what I want to talk about isn’t our striving to keep the commandments, that’s an objectively good thing. But perhaps while trying to do that we lose sight of the love part. Said differently, we focus too much on the act of obedience for obedience’s sake and forget why we’re actually doing it. Said even differently, we can easily resemble much more the Pharisees than love-filled followers of Jesus. I’ll give some examples:
Something we reference a lot in the church are what we call the primary answers, the common answers to almost every question, which are to pray, read your scriptures, and go to church. Do these things and all will be well is the general sentiment. So my question is, “why aren’t the primary answers love God, and love your neighbor? Or perhaps love everyone, forgive everyone, and don’t judge anyone?” At least for me I’ve always thought, well yeah of course we need to do those things, that’s a given. But I don’t think that it is a given. We don’t hit those topics over and over again explicitly and, importantly, there is no formal process that we follow to make sure that we’re living those Christ-like principles when there are for most other things.
If you listen to the topics of the For the Strength of Youth, you see more of a focus on compliance to church standards and practices and less on actual Christ-like principles:
Agency & accountability
Dating
Dress and Appearance
Education
Entertainment and Media
Family
Friends
Gratitude
Honesty and Integrity
Language
Music and Dancing
Physical and Emotional Health
Repentance
Sabbath Day Observance
Service
Sexual Purity
Tithes and Offerings
Work and Self-reliance
This is a great manual and a lot of great and helpful topics, and I also understand that this isn’t the only thing being taught to the youth. But just to illustrate my point, wouldn’t it be great to have categories like:
“Loving your enemies” for teens
How to forgive, then forgive again, then forgive again
Humility – you’re not better than anyone, and no one is better than you
Judging others – a surefire way to be unhappy
Some practical application of core Jesus messages and how to live more like Jesus as a teenager. And I think we’re going in this direction generally. Then if we look at adults it’s the same...
We have a specific set of commandments, standards, and guidelines that we follow, which are all good things that are designed to help us live more righteously. Some examples would be:
Keeps the Ten Commandments
Keep other commandments like the Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, etc.
Pray daily
Study the scriptures daily
Fast on fast Sunday at least
Observe the sabbath day
Pay tithing and a generous fast offering
Attend the temple regularly
Be honest in your dealings
Don’t watch inappropriate media
Be modest
Magnify your calling
Share the gospel
Serve others
Attend meetings
And on and on
This is a fairly common and heavily shortened list of everything we try to do as members of the church. We talk about them constantly and try every day to do them. And that’s great. It keeps us focused on trying to be good people and progressing. But if along the way we lose the love for God and love for our neighbor as the core focus, that’s a much more Pharisaical approach, and I think there are at least two common consequences that can happen that separates a good member of the church from a good follower of Jesus: judgement and shame/guilt.
Judgement
There is a popular scripture in Matthew 7, part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
Many items on this list that we do help us feel “worthy” or a generally good member of the church. Importantly, many of these things are also publicly demonstrated. Which means that we often see what one another are watching, wearing, drinking, doing, and saying. We can tell if someone is “active” or “semi-active” or “less active” or “inactive.” We hear how people talk and can tell where they stand on certain topics and can easily judge their devotion or level of obedience and compare it with ours. Sometimes you may even know or can probably guess whether someone has an active temple recommend, which is a very personal thing.
We have a judgement problem as humans generally (a lot of it is just human nature) but also as members of the church. Judgement is naturally present in a world where we believe that everything is being recorded and a score is being kept, and often our perception of that score is fairly visible to others.
One obvious problem when judgement is pervasive is that when people do admit their problems or seek help in an honest search for healing and support, they risk being judged as less than, weak, or looked down on for doing something non-compliant or non-traditional. Even if it’s not explicit, judgement can be subtle. A thought of superiority or condescension, of ridicule, or even just gossip or entertainment. So it’s often easier to just try to appear like things are better than they are, which is incidentally the definition of social media (I had to mention it). And I don’t think it’s a surprise that we can get lost in this sometimes and lose sight of the basics. Love each other, no matter what. Don’t judge each other, which causes a vicious cycle of comparison, jealousy, and even hate, but instead love and listen and care, regardless of how difficult that is sometimes. I actually think our ward is pretty good at this. But it’s something that I think is rooted in this concept of Pharisaical obedience. The second consequence of this kind of obedience without love and meaning is…
Shame and guilt
There’s a great couples counseling book that I love called Hold Me Tight by Dr. Sue Johnson. One of the quotes is that “even though we are programmed by millions of years of evolution to relentlessly seek out belonging and intimate connection, we persist in defining healthy people as those who do not need others.” If I were to change the example a bit to apply to our spiritual selves, I would say that “even though we’ve been taught for 2,000 years that Jesus Christ suffered for our sins so that we could repent, learn from our mistakes, and be clean again, we persist in defining righteous people as those who do not need the atonement.”
I think that we understand academically that we can’t be perfect in this life but often people feel that the expectation is to get as close as we possibly can. This can of course be really positive if you’re very honest and comfortable with yourself. But I think that it can be incredibly unhealthy as well.
Ignoring your mistakes and pretending that everything is fine in an attempt to appear perfect means that your goal is actually to not use the atonement and ignore His mission altogether. This would actually be Satan’s plan. In fact we are supposed to make mistakes and learn from them. We don’t have to celebrate them or anything, but once we have made them we should be honest with ourselves, try to improve, and look to Jesus for help when we fall short. Pretending that we don’t have problems is actually anti-atonement and I’m a pro-atonement kind of guy. And if you’re thinking right now about a list of things that you do or don’t do, I think that’s my point.
I also think it is fairly common for members of the church to use the temple recommend questions as a proxy for generally being “worthy” or even a great member of the church. Being able to enter the temple does not necessarily mean that they are a better person or even a better follower of Jesus than someone without. It can still be our goal, but we need to be careful to not judge. Because to go to the temple, you don’t have to answer the questions, “is there anyone that you haven’t forgiven in your life? Do you care for the poor and needy? Do you strive as best as you can to not judge others both in person and online? Do you demonstrate love for those around you? Is there anyone that you hate?”
Those are hard because they’re not as easy to define, they’re not binary, but that’s why they’re the things that actually matter and that by the way actually make us happier.
I don’t have hard evidence, but I would propose that this cultural phenomenon of obedience for obedience’s sake often leads to us being dishonest with ourselves of who we are and what makes us individually happy. It leads to comparison to others on our constant quest for perfection. And I think that plays at least a small part in the reason why Utah has the highest adult depression rate of all 50 U.S. states. Now I’m not from Utah, so I tread lightly, but I think it’s fair to say that Utah is the best proxy for a group of people whose primary focus in life is to follow Jesus and His plan of happiness. And if you use depression as a proxy for being unhappy, as a state it’s not above average in happiness or even average, but dead last. And I’m open to other explanations and would love to hear them, and correlation does not equal causation, so I get it. One actual reason is turns out is that people are less likely to seek mental health treatment, which is actually a related issue, basically denial of one’s problems. Inversion and altitude also play a role actually, so that’s something.
My point is that I think there’s some room in our lives to love more and judge less. To feel hopeful more and ashamed and guilty less. And in my opinion, I think this is an example where trying our best to be great members of the church is different than trying to be good followers of Jesus. Getting back to the basics and putting all of the technicalities, standards, and expectations secondary to our real goal, to love God and to love one another.
And as I wrap this up I think it’s actually important for me to say and make very clear to my ward family whom I love and whoever needs to hear this that wherever you are in your life, and however you view your standing with your Heavenly Father, and regardless of what others think about you or what you think they think about you, that you are worthy of God’s love. You are worthy of having Jesus in your life. To bless yourself and your family. He knows who you are and that you are fantastically flawed, and that’s just a fact, and that’s great. He loves you exactly how you are right now. He loves you at your very worst. He loves you when you’re being a terrible person. He loves you even if others don’t. He loves you even if you don’t love yourself. And you are enough (cue Robin Williams “it’s not your fault”). He also loves criminals, and addicts, and those with mental illnesses on the streets of San Francisco. And he doesn’t love me or you any more than them. And we have no idea how judgement works exactly or if we’ll fare any better than them in the eternal ranking system. We don’t know what other people have been through or how they’ll be judged. We are simply enough and He loves us and that’s it.
Is there more that we can do? Of course, there always is. Can we be better, love more, be less angry, judge less, of course we can and we try every day. But in our constant quest for perfection, let’s not lose sight of the fact that Jesus is the example, and love is his message, so let’s figure out how to do that part better. And really internalize the fact that perfection is impossible, so all we can do is try and He will make up for our shortcomings. That is literally the purpose of the Atonement.
I’m sad to eventually be leaving this ward. It’s been my home and my community for almost 10 years. For those just moving in, you have a special opportunity to be part of an organization that I can truly say does so much good and you should be proud to be a part of it. This is an exemplary ward in striving to live like Jesus, focusing on what matter, and helping others live happier lives.
Jesus taught us how to be happy. Then He suffered for our sins so that we could make mistakes, learn, iterate, and improve, and become better and happier people. That is the whole point after all, to have joy. And not just after we die. We should be happy now. That’s what it’s all about. And by getting back to the basics, following the two great commandments of loving God and loving our neighbors, I know that we can improve the way that we live our lives for the better and become not just better members of the church, but also better true followers of Jesus, and I say this is his name, Amen.
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