The Truth In Church

This Sunday in New Hampshire an orderly, peaceful transition of priestly powers occurred in the Concord Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

I attended, sitting next to a woman looking for a Church to join. We shared a ride in the back seat of a kind, warm, married couple who have been members for years, & entered a packed sanctuary.

The sister citizen I sat with during the proceedings had been searching & listening to "the preacher boys' raps" as she called the lessons the missionaries provide about the Church.

And she had questions. She got answers to them Sunday, which appeared to satisfy.

I want to lift up the beauty of this particular Church & the genuine love you can feel in the midst of these assemblies.

Let me share, as a friend & sister disciple of Christ what I myself, can uplift as being true about self-professed Latter Day Saints.

What draws me in to share communion, social time, & conversations with these friends?

First of all, & center stage is every testator's real & genuine faith in Christ. Listening to talks & testimonies, one's heart can not remain untouched when sensing spiritual truth & genuine love in that sanctuary.

Secondly, the devotion to family life in sobriety perhaps distinguishes them more than any other virtue. they are consistent in teaching the Word of Wisdom, a set of instructions revealed in the 1800s by the founder of this Church, Joseph Smith.

The wisdom of teaching people simple, healthy dietary habits & to abstain from strong drink (hard liquor) & smoking tobacco, standing in the 21st century is born out in an actuarial statistics: Mormons as a group live longer & healthier lives, & suffer less from cancer than other groups.

True.

It would appear also that abstaining from "hot drinks" generally meaning coffee & tea is not necessarily part of the reason they live longer. Modern nutritionists have weighed in on some of the positive qualities both coffee & tea have. Tea, well ask the British about tea. When cold & sponged on ever exposed skin to the sun will soothe a burn.

Coffee, hot coffee, when given to someone suffering an asthma attack will quickly open up breathing passages.

But in general, it is fine to live without them too. I am waiting for a new revelation to be announced this century about sodas. The caffeinated, bubbly sodas that can take the paint off your car. The saints will drink those, even if some of them have twenty times the caffeine in a cup of regular coffee.

It is simply an expansion of knowledge, time & experience.

Another strength of Latter Day Saints en masse is the diligence & organization they devote to teaching practical life skills in every season of a person's life.

I mean practical. Simple manners, dress, home-making skills, food preparation & preservation, financial planning & management, record keeping. How to navigate a life on earth.

Caring, tending, nurturing, uplifting, protecting & sheltering traditional, monogamous marriage: one man, one woman, as life partners emphasizing the importance of sociality, courtship, & selection of a life mate.

These are the beautiful & enduring & endearing qualities of the Church. If you want a truly loving, extended family with all of this kind of practical help & support, the Latter Day Saints welcome you with open arms. I encourage you to take a chance & get to know them, & the sacred scriptures they instruct from.

I only offer one caveat here. Take with a grain of salt the claim to be the one & only True Church of God. Such a claim is simply grandiose & not entirely accurate.

The truth is ultimately found in each person's heart sharing truth, being honest is certainly not the exclusive realm of Latter Day Saints.

It is a gift & ability endowed in every human body on the planet. When we speak truth, we know it. It is quite simply, innate. Part of BEING a human being.

So is the capacity to lie. Imagine the 2-3 year old, covered with cookie crumbs, when confronted by an adult authority figure. Did you take the cookies from the cookie jar? No. Vigorous head shaking, even as the jaws are moving & swallowing, a hand wiping the incriminating evidence from the lips.

In the end, whether young or old, Latter Day Saint or no, as God-created free will earth creatures, we humans can CHOOSE to walk by truth, speak truth, live the truth as far as we know it (& this is the never-ending story), or not.

In Biblically archetypal figures it is simple: two fathers in the spiritual realms; Abba, the Father of Lights, the Heavenly Father---embodying all that is divinely Paternal & infinitely, wonderfully, admirably male in creaturehood, or be enticed by satan, called the father of lies.

We all have experienced the draw & attraction of both kinds of fathers. The Father of lights encourages, uplifts, instructs, LOVES & enLIGHTens us with truth. Natural, inviolable truth found in the laws of Nature: precise, inviolable, like the law of gravity. No matter how much we may wish to, for example, human bodies are not designed to fly. In contrast to bird bodies which are. In the grand scheme of intelligent design.

Water boils at a certain temperature. And freezes at another. Steam rises. As the Father of Lights draws us to Him, we rise. We grow. We turn our faces to the sun. We become older, wiser, stronger, & this naturally & supernaturally brings us feelings of joy, of abundance, of happiness. any sort of honest gain in our progress feels pleasurable, self-actualization.

This is how we know which Father we are paying attention to. In the chatter of our minds, in the internal radio receivers of our beings, yes, it is true; following a path of virtue, helping friends out, truth-telling as an ingrained habit of choice, under all circumstances & conditions will build strong backbones, faith, & character that is loving & generous & kind & compassionate.

To BE such a human is an overflowing well of pure spring water, with more than enough to give the father of lies loves to turn these qualities upside down.

Listen to that sneaky voice; that impish, let's take a short-cut, no one is looking voice, prompting, impulse-- well this cowardly, skulking in the shadows father will only entice you into misery, prison, & death.

The eternal journey we embark on as spirits in bodies on earth involves encountering both fathers.

Pay attention. To your own feelings. Which do you prefer? Calm, peace, contentment based upon your integrity? Or fear, panicking, sweaty-palmed misery. It is, as always, up to you.

You choose today which father you want to allow to take space in your soul.

As always, lady liberty graces you with the freedom to choose. While you have breath.