Tonight we found ourselves in a discussion with another couple and my mother about the tendency of Church meetings to lean toward abstract principles, ideas and to-do lists. These meetings helpfully review what we should be experiencing. We all longed for more discussions that can be felt, not just conceptualized—personal discussions that reflect the complexity and difficulty of our daily experience, a space for us to safely be honest about what we are actually experiencing in a group environment.
I mentioned that perhaps the reason for this is that in our attempt to be unified, it is easier for us to agree on outside abstractions of a true principle, then call that unity. It is much harder to really see, hear, understand and connect with our actual—generally messy—experiences that require Christ's grace.
It seems we often replace true unity with the illusion of sameness—we all agree on these principles and parameters, therefore we are of one mind.
Yet we are not of one heart.
Sameness is a lazy, lower unity. True unity—being of one heart as Christ has asked—requires more than nodding our heads at a set of tidy, abstract ideas and parameters. It requires connecting with each other in honest, personal ways about our own fallen experience in a fallen world that daily requires Christ's intercession. It requires that we are safe to share this reality with one another in a spirit of empathy and forgiveness, devoid of fear or judgment, because we trust in God's goodness.
As a community of Saints attempting to falteringly walk with Christ, we have the opportunity to gather together and discuss not just abstract truths, but the truth of what we are actually experiencing, thinking and feeling from day to day as we try to walk with Him—even when we stumble or walk away. When all can meet together in faith (which is trust, really), we are protected and unified in our honesty. In a community of true faith, we can all trust that God's grace is big enough for each of us, wherever we are on the path. We can be open with one another about our struggles and pain as we work out our salvation—but now no longer as isolated and alone as before.
That is the harder, higher unity—having our hearts knit together in love.
So, we settle for the easy road and we too often worship through sameness over love: we can agree that faith is the first principle, discuss the abstraction of what it means, read quotes about its importance, and list on the board handy steps for building it. That's Religious Unity 101—we are unified because we all subscribe to the same theology.
But we live far below our blessings, and in a moment we could graduate to upper division unity. And that discussion of faith can be an honest sharing of how we fallen sinners are learning to trusting Jesus Christ's promise that he can heal us—even here and now—in this moment of loss, disappointment, betrayal, trauma, abuse, loneliness, weakness, sin and despair. We can honestly share our stumbles and wonderings and wanderings. We don't need to be restrained only to affirmations and happy endings, and we never have to wear our game face to church. In safety, trusting in the reality of a real Savior, we can learn from each other in messy, real love.
As a Church, our Sunday School lessons and Sacrament talks can move past the conceptual abstractions and statements of truth to the heartfelt truth of daily experience. We all sit up and notice on the occasions where that happens—the Spirit of the meeting changes when the speaker moves from pontification to the honest, faltering struggle of an effort to connect with the Divine.
My husband said that one of his most successful Sunday School lessons came as a result of the question "Why do you go to the temple?" He did not ask "Why do we go to the temple," or "Why should we go to the temple." Instead, he dismissed in advance any easy answers. He asked his class to really think honestly about why they personally go—and the resulting answers took time. The answers were personal, honest, and surprising—and not the same. The manner in which the truth of the temple met with the truth of their daily experience varied.
The unity of sameness dissolved into the true unity of love. The Spirit not only served then to confirm truth, but to bind together the hearts of the individuals there.
My mother shared a similar experience with a recent lesson on the power of women. While the discussion tended toward extolling the virtues of beatific femininity and idyllic motherhood, one woman raised her hand and spoke honestly about how the conversation was difficult for her, because she didn't have that kind of mom—her mother was cold and uncaring both in her childhood and now toward her and her children. The abstract talk of a true principle was leaving her hungry and sorrowful because the truth she had lived and was living was not reflected in that discussion. But while the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life. She added her honest voice to the discussion so it could include not just the truth of a principle, but the truth of her experience, one that required Christ's grace. Surely there were others in the room who could relate to the reality, the pain, the guilt of our own falling short and the falling short of those we wanted to rely on.
In this moment we get to why we are really there in that meeting—to see the healing power of Christ in action in the moment of loss, pain, sin, and falling short. A discussion of perfect womanhood needs no saving, no Savior. But the truth that we all experience as flawed, mortal women—all daughters of flawed, mortal women—needs saving. Christ's grace now has room—a gap in our perfect ideals—to enter in and save.
And further, that honest expression led to a personal conversation later with my mom that served to connect and heal to them both—the honesty of the grace-starved gap that only can be filled by Christ served, and always serves, to bind hearts together.
In the end, if we narrow our focus only to the ideals, perfect principles, and tidy checklists, where really do we need a Christ? Only as exemplar perhaps. True worship includes an honest discussion not only of abstract truths, but of the flawed, daily truth we live each day—full of the gaps we need Christ to fill.
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