A free ride to heaven?

In a facebook exchange related to my last post,  I stated that, in “The Gift of Grace” President Uchtdorf “teaches explicitly that we get a free ride to heaven.”

One LDS disagreed and responded:

“If by “free ride” you mean free of repentance, obedience, good works, or somehow contradictory to what other prophets and apostles have taught, you’ve clearly completely misunderstood his point.”

Another LDS agreed and stated:

That “free” gift of sanctification, however, is itself conditioned upon repentance, personal righteousness, and “enduring to the end.” Grace assists us in these tasks as well, but DOES NOT override our agency, free will, or the power of Satan to tempt and deceive.

It is after “all we can do” moment by moment, that we are purged and made “new creatures in Christ.”

I totally disagree with these very common mis-interpretations of Mormonism. When I was a Mormon I might have been an outlier in that I based my faith on what it said in the scriptures over any other teachings.  Based on the Doctrine and Covenants section 76, Joseph Smith’s revelation concerning the afterlife, these commentators have Mormonism fully bass-ackwards.

In their vision of heaven Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon affirm that Christ himself appeared to them defined the Gospel:

 40 And this is the gospel, the glad tidings, which the voice out of the heavens bore record unto us—

 41 That he came into the world, even Jesus, to be crucifiedfor the world, and to bear the sins of the world, and tosanctify the world, and to cleanse it from all unrighteousness;

 42 That through him all might be saved whom the Father had put into his power and made by him;

 43 Who glorifies the Father, and saves all the works of his hands, except those sons of perdition who deny the Son after the Father has revealed him.”

It sticks in my craw that Mormons continue to deny even their own scriptural account of the Gospel, to hold onto the dream that eternal joy is not the fate of all who accept the power of God in their lives.

I have always understood that authentic scripture-based Mormonism teaches that all are guaranteed eternal joy in Christ.  What the Church has been missing are witnesses to this reality.  Without the witnesses, and without the evidence in the countenances of the saved, Mormon children simply won’t get what Jesus — or Joseph Smith — was talking about.

Joseph Smith clearly believed he, and every man, woman and child that was created, was saved from hell and his life was an attempt to glorify God.  Only those who rejected God’s grace would not wind up in heaven.  What Latter-Day Saints should be teaching is that the ONLY free ride in this world is the ride to Heaven. Instead, they often teach that everything in this world is guaranteed if we obey, EXCEPT our place in heaven.

“Grace” and Politics: searching for new terminology to explain salvation

This post is a bit incomplete, and un-proof read, but I thought I would throw out these thoughts in response to SlowCowboy’s comments.

I am still coming to grips with the conversion experience that I had a few weeks ago, and still very tentative about committing to any particular way of explaining it, even though I recognize that it is unmistakably similar to Protestant Christianity. The new way of feeling joy has made me realize that I probably didn’t know much of anything before, and things that were confusing to me before seem much clearer. I don’t think I have things figured out. Part of my confusion was thinking that I did. I also recognize that I have a lot to learn about the experience of grace, I am a new convert. Pascal’s thought means a lot more to me now: “Men often take their imagination for their heart; and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted.”

The difference between the Light of Christ and the Gift of the Holy Ghost

I have probably been thinking about this way too much lately, but it seems to be an occupational hazard when what I do otherwise is make hopeless arguments for the hopeless people that are my clients.

I wanted to share a common LDS example of the difference between what the LDS call “the light of Christ” and what they call “the Gift of the Holy Ghost.” In LDS teaching, the Gift of the Holy Ghost was not on the earth at the time Jesus was on the earth. The Holy Ghost was around, but this particular state of having its “constant companionship” was not. This is the explanation of why Jesus’ disciples seemed so clueless about who He was. They were simply operating on what Jesus taught and the light of Christ. This is why Thomas doubted, this is why Peter denied Christ three times – they didn’t have the power of the Gift of the Holy Ghost to make them strong and unshakable in their testimonies.  After Pentecost, when they received the “baptism of fire,” the book of Acts shows that the apostles did not falter.

This story is used in LDS teaching to show that the surest way to know that Jesus, a man, was actually God (in the LDS sense or any other sense) was by accepting the testimony of the Holy Ghost, not by seeing visions and miracles. Why? Because, as shown by Peter’s humiliating denials, and Thomas’s obstinate doubt, even the Gospels report that intimately knowing the man Jesus, watching him be crucified for his teaching (not to mention watching him raise the dead) did not fully convince them that his cause was worth being crucified for. But after Pentecost, it is pretty clear that the Apostles were all willing to “take up the cross” in the most brutally literal way. This unbelievable commitment to sacrifice for the truth – like what Stephen showed – was probably what shocked Paul out of his complacency and prompted him to see the “light of Christ” on the road to Damascus.

The flip-side of the story is also fascinating. What in the world convinced the disciples in the first place, if not the Holy Ghost? Jesus must have been essentially a social outcast, a bastard step-son of a typical family, probably treated precisely like a step-child, he clearly took comfort in the scriptures and spent plenty of time thinking about their meaning, even when he was a pre-teen. When started his ministry it probably seemed to His community that he completely lost his marbles, they were ready to stone him for his blasphemies. He was a dangerous man to be associated with from the beginning. He openly blasphemed, ate and drank with traitors, outcasts, and sinners, did not share the revolutionary politics of the day, caused public disturbances in holy places, and preached the moral bankruptcy of all of the powers that be of the day.

What was it that these early disciples saw in Jesus words that made them break away from their culture, even if they were yet unwilling to give up their lives?  To the LDS it was not the Gift of the Holy Ghost, it was the words of Jesus and the light of Christ that shone in his words.  The LDS believe it is these words and the light of Christ that kept the church alive, in spite of the apostasy of the clergy, and laid the groundwork for the Restoration.