Why The Church Is AsTrue As The GospelGrappling Constructively With the Oppositions of Existence

By Eugene England

~was convinced when I was a boy that themost boring meeting in the Church, perhapsin the world, was a quarterly stake confer-ence. In those days they were indeed heldevery three months and included at least two

two-hour sessions on Sunday. The most inter-esting highlights to us children were the quaverysongs literally "rendered" by the "Singing Moth-ers" and the sober sustaining of the stake NoLiquor-Tobacco Committee.

But one conference was particularly memora-ble. I was twelve and sitting near the frontbecause my father was being sustained as a highcouncilor in a newly formed stake. I had justturned around in my seat to tease my sister whowas sitting behind me, when I felt something, vaguelyfamiliar, burning at the center of my heart andbones and then almost physically turning mearound to look at the transfigured face of ElderHarold B. Lee, the "visiting authority." He hadsuddenly interrupted his prepared sermon andwas giving the new stake an apostolic blessing.And I became aware, for a second and confirmingtime in my life, of the presence of the Holy Ghostand the special witness of Jesus Christ. Howmany boring stake conferences would I attend tobe even once in the presence of such grace?Thousands--all there are. That pearl is withoutprice. And because I have since learned betterwhat to look for and find there--not doctrinalrevelation so much as understanding of andexperience with the members of the Church--the conferences are no longer boring. Thus, oneof the earliest and most important pillars of myfaith came not through some great insight intothe gospel but through an experience I could onlyhave had because I was doing my duty in theChurch, however immaturely.

Yet one cliche Mormons often repeat is thatthe gospel is true, even perfect, but the Church is,after all, a human instrument, historybound, andtherefore understandably imperfectmsomething

to be endured for the sake of the gospel. Never-theless, I am persuaded by experiences like thatone at a stake conference and by my best think-ing that, in fact, the Church is as "true," as effec-tive, as sure an instrument of salvation as thesystem of doctrines we call the gospel--and thatthat is so in good part because of the very flaws,human exasperations, and historical problemsthat occasionally give us all some anguish.

I know that those who use the cliche about thegospel being more "true" than the Church wantthe term gospel to mean a perfect system ofrevealed commandments based in principleswhich infallibly express the natural laws of theuniverse. But even revelation is, in fact, merelythe best understanding the Lord can give us ofthose things. And, as God himself has clearlyinsisted, that understanding is far from perfect.He reminds us in the first section of the Doctrine

30 SUNSTONE

and Covenants, "Behold, I am God and havespoken it; these commandments are of me, andwere given unto my sevants in their weakness,after the manner of their language, that theymight come to understanding. And inasmuch asthey erred it might be made known."(D&C 1:24-25.) This is a remarkably completeand sobering inventory of the problems involvedin putting God’s knowledge of the universe intohuman language and then having it understood.It should make us careful about claiming toomuch for "the gospel," which is not the perfectprinciples or natural laws themselves--or God’sperfect knowledge of those things--but is merelythe closest approximation that inspired butlimited mortals can receive.

Even after a revelation is received and expressedby a prophet, it has to be understood, taught,translated into other languages, expressed inprograms and manuals, sermons and essays--ina word, interpreted. And that means that at leastone more set of limitations of language andworld-view enters in. I always find it perplexingwhen someone asks a teacher or speaker if whathe is saying is the pure gospel or merely his owninterpretation. Everything anyone says is essen-tially an interpretation. Even simply reading thescriptures to others involves interpretation, inchoosing both what to read in a particular cir-cumstance and how to read it (tone and empha-sis). Beyond that point, anything we do becomesless and less "authoritative" as we move intoexplication and application of the scriptures--that is, as we teach "the gospel."

Yes, I know that the Holy Ghost can givestrokes of pure intelligence to the speaker andbear witness of truth to the hearer. I have expe-rienced both of these lovely, reassuring gifts. Butthose gifts, which guarantee the overall guidanceof the Church in the way the Lord intends andprovide occasional remarkably clear guidance toindividuals, still do not override individuality andagency. They are not exempt from those limita-tions of human language and moral perceptionwhich the Lord describes in the passage quotedabove, and thus they cannot impose universalacceptance and understanding.

This problem is compounded by the funda-mentally paradoxical nature of the universe itselfand thus of the true laws and principles that thegospel uses to describe the universe. Lehi’s law,"It must needs be, that there is an opposition inall things" (1 Ne. 2:11), is perhaps the most pro-vocative and profound statement of abstracttheology in the scriptures, because it presumesto describe what is most ultimate in the uni-verse-even beyond God. In context it clearlysuggests that not only is contradiction and oppo-sition a natural part of human experience, some-thing God uses for his redemptive purposes, butthat opposition is at the very heart of things; it isintrinsic to the two most fundamental realities--intelligence and matter, what Lehi calls "things

to act and things to be acted upon." According toLehi, opposition provides the universe withenergy and meaning, even makes possible theexistence of God and everything else: Without it"all things must have vanished away" (2:13).

We all know from experience the consequen-ces for mortal life of this fundamental, eternaltruth about reality. Throughout history themost important and productive ideas have beenparadoxical; the energizing force in all art hasbeen conflict and opposition; the basis for successin all economic, political, and other social devel-opment has been competition and dialogue. Thinkof our federal system of checks and balances andour two-party political system (which togethermake pluralistic democracy possible), Romanti-cism and Classicism, reason and emotion, free-dom and order, individual and community, menand women (whose differences make eternalincrease possible), justice and mercy (whoseopposition makes our redemption through the"At Onement" possible). Life in this universe isfull of polarities and is made full by them; westruggle with them, complain about them, eventry sometimes to destroy them with dogmatismor self-righteousness or retreat into the inno-cence that is only ignorance, a return to theGarden of Eden where there is deceptive easeand clarity but no salvation. William Blake, theprophetic poet, taught that "without contrariesis no existence" and warned that "whoever triesto reconcile [the contraries] seeks to destroyexistence." Whatever it means that we will even-tually see "face to face," now we can see only"through a glass, darkly" (1 Cor. 13:12), and wehad better make the best of it. So, as we know itin human terms, the "gospel" is not--and per-haps, given the paradoxical nature of the uni-verse itself, cannot ever be--a simple and clearset of unequivocal propositions.

And that is where the Church comes in. Ibelieve it is the best medium, apart from mar-riage (which it much resembles in this respect),for grappling constructively with the oppositionsof existence. I believe that the better any churchor organization is at such grappling, the "truer" itis. And I believe we can accurately call theMormon church "the true Church" only if wemean it is the best organized method for doingthat and is made and kept so by revelations thathave come and continue to come from God, how-ever "darkly" they of necessity emerge.

Martin Luther, with prophetic perception,wrote, "Marriage is the school of love’--that is,marriage is not the home or the result of love somuch as the school. I believe that any good churchis a school of love and that the Mormon church,for most people, perhaps all, is the best one, the"only true and living Church" (D&C 1:30)--notjust because its doctrines teach and embody someof the great and central paradoxes but, moreimportantly, because the Church provides thebest context for struggling with, working

ChurchInvolvementteaches uscompassion andpatience as wellas disciplineand courage.

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Thosewho resist,desert, and

attack theChurch failto see their

own bestInterest.

through, enduring, and being redeemed by thoseparadoxes and oppositions that give energy andmeaning to the universe. Just before his deathJoseph Smith, also with prophetic perception,wrote, "By proving contraries, truth is mademanifest" (History of the Church, 6:428). By "prove"he meant not only to demonstrate logically but totest, to struggle with, and to work out in practicalexperience. The Church is as truemas effec-tivemas the gospel because it involves us directlyin proving contraries, working constructivelywith the oppositions within ourselves and espe-cially between people, struggling with paradoxesand polarities at an experiential level that canredeem us. The Church is true because it is con-crete, not theoretical; in all its contradictions andproblems, it is at least as productive of good as isthe gospel.

Let us consider why this is so. In the life of thetrue Church, as in a good marriage, there areconstant opportunities for all to serve, especiallyto learn to serve people we would not normallychoose to servemor posssibly even associatewith~and thus opportunities to learn to loveunconditionally. There is constant encourage-ment, even pressure, to be "active": to have a"calling" and thus to have to grapple with rela-tionships and management, with other people’sideas and wishes, their feelings and failures; toattend classes and meetings and to have to ligtenother people’s sometimes misinformed or preju-diced notions and to have to make some con-structive response; to have leaders and occasion-ally to be hurt by their weakness and blindness,even unrighteous dominion; and then to be madea leader and find that you, too, with all the bestintentions, can be weak and blind and unrighte-ous. Church involvement teaches us compassionand patience as well as courage and discipline. Itmakes us responsible for the personal and mari-tal, physical and spiritual welfare of people wemay not already love (or may even heartily dis-like), and thus we learn to love them. It stretchesand challenges us, though disappointed and exas-erated, in ways we would not otherwise choose

to be~and thus gives us a chance to be madebetter than we might choose to be, but ultimatelyneed and want to be.

Michael Novak, the lay Catholic theologian,has made this same point concerning marriage.In a remarkable essay published in the April 1976Harper’s, he reviewed the increasing inclination ofmodern intellectuals to resist, desert, and even toattack marriage and argued that the main reasonthe family, which has traditionally been the mainbulwark of economic and emotional security, iscurrently "out of favor" is that many modernopinion-makers are unwilling to take the risksand subject themselves to the disciplines that theschool of marriage requires. But he then pointedout how such fears, though justified, keep themfrom meeting their own greatest needs. Similarly,I believe that those who resist, desert, and attackthe Church fail, from a simple lack of perspec-tive, to see their own best interest. As you readthis passage from Novak, mentally substitute theChurch for marriage:

Marriage [the Church] is an assault upon the lonely,atomic ego. Marriage is a threat to the solitary individual.Marraige does impose grueling, humbling, baffling, andfrustrating responsibilities. Yet if one supposes that pre-cisely such things are the preconditions for all true libera-tion, marriage is not the enemy of moral development inadults. Quite the opposite.

Being married and having children [being active in theChurch] has impressed on my mind certain lessons, forwhose learning I cannot help being grateful. Most arelessons of difficulty and duress. Most of what I’ am forced tolearn about myself is not pleasant .... My dignity as ahuman’ being depends perhaps more on what sort of husbandand parent [Church member] I am, than on any professionalwork I am called on to do. My bonds to my family [mychurch] hold me back { and my wife even more) from manysorts of opportunities. And yet these do not feel likebonds. They are, I know, my liberation. They force me tobe a different sort of human being, in a way in which Iwant and need to be forced.

I bear witness that the Church can do those samefrustrating, humbling, but ultimately liberating

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and redeeming things for usBif we can learn tosee it as Novak does marriage, if we can see thatits assaults on our lonely egos, its bonds andrespnsibilities which we willingly accept, canpush us toward new kinds of being in a way wemost deeply want and need to be pushed.

Two keys to this paradoxical power in theMormon church are first that it is, by revelation,a lay church and radically so--more than anyother--and second that it organizes its congrega-tions geographically, rather than by choice. Iknow that there are exceptions, but the basicChurch experience of almost all Mormons bringsthem directly and constantly into powerful rela-tionships with a range of people and problems intheir assigned congregation that are not primar-ily of their own choosing but are profoundlyredemptive in potential, in part because they arenot consciously chosen. Yes, the ordinances per-formed through the Church are important, asare its scriptural texts and moral exhortationsand spiritual conduits. But even these, in myexperience, are powerful and redemptive becausethey embody profound, life-giving oppositionsand work harmoniously with those opposition, sthrough the Church structure to give truth andmeaning to the religious life of Mormons.

Let me illustrate: In one of his very last mes-sages, during the Saturday evening priesthoodsession, October 5, 1968, President David O.McKay gave a kind of final testament that was abit shocking to many of us who are conditionedto expect that prophets have no trouble gettingdivine manifestations. He told how he struggledin vain all through his teen-age years to get God"to declare to me the truth of his revelation toJoseph Smith." He prayed "fervently and sin-cerely," in the hills and at home, but had to admitto himself constantly, "No spiritual manifesta-tion has come to me." But he continued to seektruth and to serve others in the context ofMormonism, including going on a mission to Bri-tain, mainly because of trust in his parents andthe goodness of his own experience. Finally, asPresident McKay put it,the spiritual manifestation for which I had prayed as a bayin in my teens came as a natural sequence to the performanceof duty. For, as the apostle John declared, "If any man willdo his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be ofGod, or whether I speak of myself" {John 7:17}.

Following a series of meetings at the conference held inGlasgow, Scotland, was a most remarkable priesthood meet-ing. I remember, as if it were yesterday, the intensity of theinspiration of that occasion. Everybody felt the rich outpour-ing of the Spirit of the Lord. All present were truly of oneheart and one mind. Never before had I e~cperienced such anemotion. It was a manifestation for which as a doubtingyouth I had secretly prayed most earnestly on hillside and inmeadow ....

During the progess of the meeting, an elder on his owninitiative arose and said, "Brethren, there are angels in thisroom." Strange as it may seem, the announcement was not

startling; indeed, it semed wholly proper, though it had notoccurred to me that there were divine beings present. I onlyknew that I was overflowing with gratitude for the presenceof the Holy Spirit.

I have had many confirmations of PresidentMcKay’s prophetic witness in that sermon. Mostof my profound spiritual manifestations, thosethat have provided the rock-bottom convictions Ihave about the reality of God and Christ andtheir divine work, as well as my most troubling,soul-searching moral struggles with the greathuman issues of personal integrity versus publicresponsibility, loyalty to self versus loyalty tocommunity, redemptive freedom versus redemp-tive structure--all these have come, as PresidentMcKay affirms, "as a natural sequence to theperformance of duty" in the Church.

I know God has been found by unusual peoplein unusual places--in a sudden vision in a groveor orchard or grotto, or on a mountain or in acloset, or through saintly service to African lep-ers or to Calcutta untouchables. But for most ofus, most of the time, I am convinced he can befound most surely in "the natural sequence tothe performance" of the duties he has given usthat all of us (not just the unusual) can perform inour own homes and neighborhoods and that theChurch, in its unique community, imposed aswell as chosen, can best teach and empower us toperform.

I have come to an overwhelming witness of thedivinity of the Book of Mormon, such that theSpirit moves me, even to tears, whenever I readany part of it, and I came there by teaching it atchurch. I am convinced that book provides themost comprehensive "Christology"--or doctrineof how Christ saves us from sinmavailable to uson earth and that the internal evidences for thedivinity of the book entirely overwhelm the evi-dences and arguments against it, however trou-bling. One Sunday last summer, as I tried to helpa young woman who had attempted suicide anumber of times, once just recently, and wasfeeling the deepest worthlessness and self-rejection, I was moved to read to her some pas-sages from the Book of Mormon about Christ’sAt Onement. As I read those passages to thatdesperate young woman and bore witness oftheir truth and power in my own times of despairand sin, her lips began to tremble with new feel-ings and tears of hope formed in place of those ofanguish.

In moments such as these, I was able, throughmy calling as a bishop, to apply the atoning bloodof Christ, not in theory but in the truth of expe-rience. In addition, I have come to know the minis-tering of angels because I have done my duty intemple attendance and have gone whenever pos-sible to temple dedications. And I have found thatwe mortals do indeed have the power to bless ouroxen and cars as well as people because I was abranch president and was pushed to the limits of

The dif-ficulties ofInvolvement ina lay churchare also power-ful lessons inloving oneanother.

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Beingcalled as

branch presi-dent taught

me muchabout what"religion"

really is.

my faith by my sense of responsiblity to mybranch.

Before I was a branch president, I served in thebishopric of the Stanford ward in the mid sixtiesand taught religion at the Institute to brightyoung students. At the same time, I was doinggraduate work in English literature and trying tocome to terms intellectually with modern skepti-cism and relativism and the moral dilemmas ofthe civil rights and anti-war movements and theeductional revolutions of the time. I tended to seereligion very much in terms of large moral andphilosophical issues that the gospel did or did notspeak to. In 1970, I accepted a position as dean ofacademic affairs at St. Olaf, a Lutheran liberalarts college in the small town of Northfield,Minnesota, and within a week of arriving wascalled as president of the little Mormon branch inthat area. I suddenly entered an entirely differ-ent world, one that tested me severely andtaught me much about what "religion" is. AtStanford much of my religious life had beeninvolved with understanding and defending thegospel--and had been idealistic, abstract, andcritical. In Northfield, as branch president fortwenty families scattered over seventy-five miles,ranging from Utah-born, hard-core inactiveswith devastating marital problems to bright-eyed converts with no jobs or with drunkenfathers who beat them, I soon became involved ina religious life that was practical, specific, sacrifi-cial, exasperating--and more satisfying. And Isaw, more clearly than before, how true theChurch is as an instrument for confronting allkinds of people with the processes of salvation,despite--even because ofmits management byimperfect instruments like myself.

I think of a young man in that branch who hadbeen made a social cripple by some combinationof mental and family problems: He was unable tospeak a word in a group or to organize his life

productively. As we gave him increasing respon-sibilities in our branch, supported him with muchlove and patience while he struggled to workwith others and express himself, I was able to seehim grow into a fine leader and confident hus-band and father. I think of a woman whose hus-band made her life a hell of drunken abuse butwho patiently took care of him, worked all weekto support her family, and came to Church eachSunday in drab but jaunty finery and withuncomplaining determination. She found there,with our help, a little hope, some beauty andidealism, and strength not only to endure but togo on loving what was unlovable. The Churchblesses us all by bringing us together.

During the five years I served them, therewere, among those seventy to one hundredmembers, perhaps two or three whom I wouldnormally have chosen for friendsmand withwhom I could have easily shared my most impas-sioned and "important" political and religiousconcerns and views, the ones that had so exer-cised me at Stanford. With inspiration far beyondmy usual less-than-good sense, I did not beginmy tenure as branch president by preachingabout my ideas or promoting my crusades. I triedvery hard to see what the immediate problemsand concerns of my flock were and to be a goodpastor, one who fed and protected them. And aremarkable thing happened. I traveled hundredsof miles and spent many hours~helping a couplewho had hurt each other into absolute silencelearn to talk to each other again; guiding a stu-dent through drug withdrawal; teaching an auto-cratic military man to work cooperatively withhis counselors in the elders quorum presidency;blessing a terribly sick baby, aided by its father,who was weak in faith and frightened; comfort-ing, at a hospital at four in the morning, parentswhose son had just been killed by his brotherdriving drunk--and then helping the brotherforgive himself. And after six months I foundthat my branch members, initially properly sus-picious of an intellectual from California, hadcome to feel in their bones, from their directexperience, that indeed my faith and devotion tothem was "stronger than the cords of death."And the result promised in the Doctrine andCovenants 121:44-46 followed: There flowed tome "without compulsory means" the power totalk about any of my concerns and passions and tobe understood and trusted, even if not agreedwith.

Now that may all sound a bit selfish, evenobsessive about the Church’s contribution to myown spiritual maturity. But what was happeningto me was happening to others. A young couplecame to the branch who had lived in Spain for ayear right after the wife had joined the Church.Their Church experience, especially hers, hadbeen essentially gospel-oriented, deeply felt andidealistic but abstract, involving very little ser-vice to others. She was a dignified and emotion-

34 SUNSTONE

ally reserved woman, bright, creative, andjudgmental--and thus afraid of uncontrolledsituations or emotional exposure. The husbandwas meticulous, intimidating, somewhat aloof. Icalled them--despite their resistance--into posi-tions of increasing responsibility and direct in-volvement with people in the branch and sawthem, with some pain and tears, develop intopowerfully open, empathetic, vulnerable people,able to understand, serve, learn from, and betrusted by people very different from them-selves. And I saw them learn that the very expo-sures, exasperations, troubles, sacrifices, anddisappointments that characterize involvementin a lay church like Mormonism--and that areespecially difficult for idealistic liberals to endure--are a main source of the Church’s power to teachus to love. They are now teaching others whatthey have learned.

This lesson--that the Church~s characteristic"problems" are among its strengths--has beencontinually confirmed as I have served as bishopof a ward of young married students at BYU. Thetwo most direct, miraculous, and ultimatelyredemptive blessings the Lord gave us when theward was organized three years ago were a spas-tic quadriplegic child in one family and seriouslyhandicapped parents in another. I had known thecrippled child’s mother for nearly a year: After Ihad spoken on the Atonement at her sacramentmeeting, she had come to me for counsel and helpwith her anger and guilt and loss of faith as shetried to understand this failure of hospital carethat had made one of her twins into a desperatephysical, emotional, and financial burden, onewhich had ended her husband’s education andintended profession, severely tested their mar-

riage and their faith as priesthood blessing seemedto fail, and left her close to breakdown and apos-tasy. Now, as I prayed for guidance in organizinga new ward, I felt as clearly as ever I have feltthose "strokes of intelligence" Joseph Smith de-scribed telling me that I should, against all com-mon sense, call her as my Relief Society president.I did, and despite being on the verge of movingaway, she accepted. She became the main sourceof the unique spirit of honest communicationand sense of genuine community our ward devel-oped. She visited all the families and sharedwithout reserve her feelings, struggles, successesand needs. Together with her husband she spokeopenly in our meetings about her son, his prob-lems, and hers, asked for help and accepted it, andall the while did her duty and endured. We haveall learned from them how to be more open,vulnerable, gracious, persistent, to turn to eachother for all kinds of help and not to judge.

I first met the handicapped couple wanderingthrough the halls of our ward house on our firstSunday. They were not looking for our ward; infact, they lived just outside our boundaries, but Iam certain the Lord sent them. They haverequired a major expenditure of our wardresources--time, welfare aid, patience, tolerance--as we worked to get them employed, into decenthousing, out of debt, capable of caring for theirbright, energetic child, and tried to help thembecome less obtrusive in meetings and less offen-sive socially. And I have learned two lessons:First, the Church structure and resources (whichare designed for voluntary, cooperative but dis-ciplined effort with long-range, essentially spiri-tual goals) have been ideally suited to buildingthe necessary support system for them, onewhich may yet succeed in keeping the familytogether and may even bless them with moreprogress. Second, the blessings have come to theward as much as to them as we have learned toexpand greatly our ideas about "acceptable" be-havior and especially our own capacities to loveand serve and learn from people we would other-wise never know. One woman called me to re-port on her efforts to teach the woman somehousekeeping and mothering skills, confessedher earlier resentments and exasperations, andtold me in tears how much her heart had soft-ened and her proud neck bent as she had learnedhow to learn from this sister so different fromherself.

These are examples, I believe of what Paul wastalking about in 1 Corinthians 12, the great chap-ter on gifts, where he teaches that all the parts ofthe body of Christ--the Churchmare needed fortheir separate gifts, in fact, that those with "lesshonorable" and "uncomely" gifts are more neededand more in need of attention and honor becausethe world will automatically honor and use theothers. It is in the Church especially that thosewith the gifts of vulnerability, pain, handicap,need, ignorance, intellectual arrogance, social pride,

TheChurchbrings thedivine and thehuman togeth-er throughconcreteactivity.

SUNSTONE 35

If weevade the

challengesof Church ac-

tivity, we willnever know the

redeemingtruth of

the Gospel.

even prejudice and sin--those Paul calls themembers which "seem to be more feeble"--canbe accepted, learned from, helped, and made partof the body so that together we can all be blessed.It is there that those of us with the more comelyand world-honored gifts of riches and intelli-gence can learn what we most need--to serveand love and patiently learn from those withother gifts.

But that is very hard for the "rich" and "wise"to do. And that is why those who have one ofthose dangerous gifts tend to misunderstand andsometimes disparage the Church--which, afterall, is made up of the common and unclean, themiddle-class, middle-brow, politically unsophis-ticated, even prejudiced, average members. Andwe all know how exasperating they can be! I amconvinced that in the exasperation lies our salva-tion, if we can let the context which most bringsit out--the Church--also be our school for un-conditional love. But that requires a change ofperspective, one I will now summarize.

The Church is as true as--perhaps truer than--the gospel because it is where all can find fruitfulopposition, where its revealed nature and inspireddirection maintains an opposition between lib-eral and conservative values, between faith anddoubt, secure authority and frightening free-dom, individual integrity and public responsibility--and thus where there will be misery as well asholiness, bad as well as good. And if we cannotstand the misery and the struggle, if we wouldprefer that the Church be smooth and perfectand unchallenging rather than as it is, full ofnagging human diversity and constant insistencethat we perform ordinances and obey instruc-tions and take seriously teachings that embodylogically irresolvable paradoxes, if we refuse tolose ourselves whole-heartedly in such a school,then we will never know the redeeming truth ofthe Church. It is precisely in the struggle to beobedient while maintaining integrity, to havefaith while being true to reason and evidence, toserve and love in the face of imperfections andeven offenses, that we can gain the humility weneed to allow divine power to enter our lives intransforming ways. Perhaps the most amazingparadox about the Church is that it literallybrings together the divine and the human--through priesthood service, the ordinances, thegifts of the spirit--in concrete ways that noabstract systems of ideas ever could.

My purpose here has not been to ignore thevery real problems of the Church or the power ofthe gospel truths. As I have tried to indicate allalong, the Church’s paradoxical strength derivesfrom the truthful paradoxes of the gospel itembodies, contraries we need to struggle withmore profoundly in the Church. And we mustnot merely accept the struggles and exaspera-tions of the Church as redemptive but genuinelytry to reach solutions where possible and reduceunnecessary exasperations. (Indeed, it is only

when we grapple with the problems, not merelyas intellectual exercises but as problems in needof solution, that they prove redemptive.)

But along with our sensitivity to problems, wemust also, I believe, have more respect for thetruth of action, of experience, that the Churchuniquely exposes us to and respond with courageand creativity--be active, critical, faithful, believ-ing, doubting, struggling, unified members ofthe body of Christ. To do so we must accept theChurch as true in two very important senses:First, it is a repository of redemptive truths andof the authority to perform saving ordinances.Though those truths are difficult to pin down tosimple propositions, taken together they moti-vate the willingness to serve that makes possiblethe redemptive schooling I have described. TheMormon concept of a nonabsolute, progressingGod, for instance, though not reducible to acreed or even to systematic theology, is the mostreasonable, emotionally challenging but satisfy-ing ever revealed or devised. And even thoughthat concept is not universally understood in thesame way, it remains true, as a thoughtful friendonce remarked to me, that "the idea of eternalprogression is so engrained in our Church expe-rience that no statement or even series of state-ments can root it out," which of course supportsmy main point about the primary truth of theChurch. In addition, the power of ordinances,however true in form and divinely authorized, islimited by the quality of our preparation andparticipation. Like baptism of infants, beingordained, partaking the sacrament, and receivingour endowments can be merely what Moronicalled "dead works," an offense to God and value-less unless they are genuine expressions of oursolidarity with others living and dead and sincereresponses to the communion of the Saints that isthe Church.

But one essay cannot cover everything, and Ihave been emphasizing how the Church is truein a second way that is too much neglected:Besides being the repository of true principlesand authority, it is the instrument provided by aloving God to help us become like him. It gives usschooling and experiences with each other thatcan bind us together in an honest but lovingcommunity, which is the essential nurturingplace for salvation. If we cannot accept theChurch and the challenges it offers with theopenness and courage and humility they require,then I believe our historical studies and our theo-logical enterprises are mainly a waste of time--and possibly destructive. We cannot understandthe meaning of the history of Mormonism orjudge the truth of Christ’s restored gospel unlesswe appreciate--and act on--the truth of theChurch.

EUGENE ENGLAND is an associate professor of English atBrigham Young University and author of the book, Dialogueswith Myself.

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