Saturday I came home to find the ward newsletter in our mailbox. Like most ward newsletters, there were missionary letters, announcements, trivia, birthdays and a bishopric message. Our message was written by one of the counselors, reminding us of the youth theme "Stand in Holy Places." It talked about how the Savior is a firm foundation you can stand on to weather the storms of life, which is a nice Christian thought. However, the one page article went on to talk about the Savior and the Church interchangeably - like you'd use the terms Jesus, Savior, Son of God to describe the same entity.

This inability of members to distinguish between the church and Jesus gives the church incredible power to do whatever it wants and adopt the roll of an actual God in peoples' lives. How often have we all heard people say "I don't know where I'd be without the church?" Not, "I don't know where I'd be without Jesus" like in other Christian religions. They put pictures of religious buildings on their walls with the same frequency as you see pictures of the Son of God, they claim to worship, honor and serve. The songs they teach their kids are mixed between songs of God and the teachings of Jesus and things like "I Love to See the Temple" and "I Belong to the Church of Jesus Christ."

It's also why they are so irritated by us. We haven't just changed religions, like people do when they become Mormon. Since the church and Jesus are interchangeable in their minds, we apostates have actually turned against Jesus. It's inconceivable to them that people may leave because they want to follow Jesus or that someone's spiritual path would lead them in a different direction. They can't give respect to those who don't accept the Mormon church because it's also the Mormon God. To them, you have literally abandoned God himself.

And what's really weird is they can't even see it. They can't see how they worship their church, their temples and their membership/status in the religion. If you called them on it, they'd deny it. Yet if you listen to them, it's obvious they can't or don't differentiate between the church and their God. It's literally the same to them. That's why they can so confidently claim the church is perfect but the members aren't. Because it's like saying "God is perfect but people aren't."

All the super TBM's I ever knew [including my husband] thought the "church" and God were one and the same. You so what it tells you OR ELSE.

I don't see much difference.

Jesus Christ is a human construction or invention and
the "Church" or what the bible calls the "body of Christ"
is equally an invention.

Jesus Christ, standing in the Temple grounds at Bountiful,
proclaiming commandments to the Nephites seems (to me) to
be practically the same thing as Brigham Young standing
in the Salt Lake Bowery at General Conference, proclaiming
commandments, in some preserved Journal of Discourses talk.

That is not to disparage the man Jesus and his teachings,
if they can ever be extracted from the New Testament matrix
and considered on their own merit, of course.

UD

I agree 100%

The following blog link discusses this in detail. I particularly like the analogy of how members love the UPS guy (the delivery vehicle / or church) more than the actual gift itself (Christ / gospel).

http://puremormonism.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/best-conference-talk-you-never-read_13.html?m=1

When I hit my thumb with a hammer I don't yell out: "THE CHURCH!!!!"

I don't either but I'm going to start. On the other hand, I do say "son of a b&*tch" which could refer to any of the church leaders so yelling "The Church" wouldn't be that big of a jump.

Good one! I mean, we SHOULD yell it out when we're really pissed. And just like some people will do the whole, "Augh! God. Bless. AMERICA!!" thing when they bang their thumb, one could do a graduated approach to the CoJCoLDS when we bang our thumbs or heads, depending on severity of the pain. An insignificant but annoying accident could get you, "The Church!" But if you tear open your scalp like I did recently, and it's very painful and bleeding badly, you could really let it rip with, "The.CHURCH. of. JEEEEsus Ch-RIST! of. Latter-day. SAINTS!"

Call it the Quebecois version of Mormon swearing. For thos familiar with it, Canadian French swearing is all about the Roman Cathlic church. Yelling, "Tabernak!!" ("Tabernacle!") is close to as bad as you can get. You really want to send it home, yell out, "Saint Ciboir de Tabernacle!!!" ("Holy ciborium of the tabernacle!!").

Going further with this thought, if you read Mark Twain's article, "110 Tin Whistles" (from Roughing IT) about Brigham Young, Twain had a lot of faux Mormon swearing in there, like, "By the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assail!)..."

link: http://www.online-literature.com/twain/roughing-it/16/

As if Mormonism isn't muddled enough, like the doctrine, for instance. But The Church really does equal Jesus Christ, according to Mormon-thought. Abandon the church, abandon Jeebus.

This reminded of the South Park atheism episode. Science Dammit!

I agree with you completely. You're right, they don't get it at all. It's one of the things that separate Mormons from all other mainstream protestant Christian denominations. Christians do bear their testimony, but it's never of a church organization or a human, like Joseph Smith. Rather, it's based on Christ. And this way of thinking is also the root of why so many former Mormons become atheists without considering another form of Christianity.

Christian: "God is real, therefore the church exists"
Mormon: "The church is true, therefore God exists"

If God only exists BECAUSE the church does, then when the church winds up not being true, then ...

Very succinct!

Great point CA girl. The other day, I told a missionary the reason I hated being a Mormon was that there was no peace in Jesus Christ. There was always some tedious thing we were supposed to be doing, and after a while it makes you feel exhausted. The crucifixion means absolutely nothing to them, because we still have to climb the ladder to heaven by 'good works.'

When I told him that, I saw a light bulb go on. He actually agreed with me. Being a Mormon is not only to worship the church entity, it is also an exhausting expectation that we must perform our own 'exaltation.' It's so offensive on so many levels to people who actually accept salvation. Mormons believe Jesus just isn't enough to get the job done.

There's the old "endure to the end" phrase.

And there's the mormon-made-up Jesus quote, "I never said it would be easy; I only said it would be worth it."

That "yoke is easy and my burden is light" doesn't work when the church wants to consume you.

Additionally, they can't separate "the church" from "members of the church" - as long as the members are doing good things. If a member does something wrong, then it's "the church is perfect, the people aren't." But if a member does something good, the church is given credit. "This guy was able to save a woman from getting mugged with a samurai sword because he's a bishop!"

Combined with the inability to separate the church from God, this accounts for a lot of mormon arrogance, methinks. It feeds their power delusion. "The mormon church is god. I am the mormon church. Therefore, I am god!"

judyblue, this is one thing that bugged me about the Young Women's Standard's night. My daughter plays an instrument in band and plays it well. She chose it because her brother played a similar instrument and she looks up to her big brother. She has band at school and extra lessons and practices faithfully. None of this had the slightest thing to do with Mormonism. When Standard's night came around, the church leaders wanted to include her, even though she only occasionally went to church and didn't fulfill any of the goals she was supposed to be setting in her Personal Progress book. So her Beehive leader came up with the idea she could get up, play her instrument and talk about how setting a goal in the "developing talents" area helped her become a good musician.

Now granted, they were trying to find something for her since she didn't set or achieve goals in their dumb book but to give the church's program credit for my daughter's idea, hard work and talent when the church had nothing to do with it really rubbed me the wrong way. The church will take credit for your good works while blaming your bad choices on you. You just can't win. Thankfully, DD said the whole program for the evening was just about showing off and no way was she going to attend.

As usual CA Girl, your analysis is spot on. My mormon relatives are always talking about how their church does this or does that. It helps me to understand, and I now see, they they DO equate "The Church" and Jesus as being two different words for the same thing.