My wife is gone and I have access to the blog, so I will add a thought to this line of discussion as an aside:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a role in the Gospel, but not the central role which some have tried to make it assume.  It prints copies of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants and Pearl of Great Price.  It conducts Sacrament Meetings at which an essential ordinance is performed.  It provides missionaries an opportunity to teach, and then gives the ordinances of baptism and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.  These are important and I do not think there will be any freelance practice of these rites so long as the Church exists.  All of these things take place at the lowest level, where the hand of the Lord is still apparent.  Elder Oaks’ examples of the Holy Ghost come from that lowest level of the Church.  It was at this level I first received companionship of the Holy Ghost as a gift, and not merely a visit to bear testimony of the truth.


The Church above this local level, however, has become somewhat of a deterrent to the Saints’ progress and happiness.  Mandates and control from an increasingly distant hierarchy more often than not detract from what could be enjoyed.  The Church has first sought to obtain the ability to micro-manage every member’s lives through the correlation process, then upon securing that ability has felt duty-bound to exercise that control.  Now it is a matter of whether you are a “good member” if you conform to the central authority’s direction on everything from opening your scriptures in Sacrament meeetings, to engaging in an order of prayer in the privacy of your home, to your lesson’s content when permitted to teach in a class of the Church.  The color of the priests’ shirts, the length of their hair, their dietary habits and dating restrictions are all weighed against programs like “Duty to God” and conformity to “Church Standards.”


The standards and conditions ALWAYS have as their goal the betterment of those involved.  But the results are to mislead those who conform into thinking they’ve become better as a result.  The practice of universal conformity becomes a distraction in which the distracted believe their strict Church regimen pleases Christ; when it was the heart He was always after.  It was the religiously scrupulous who persecuted and killed Him.  His persecutors were careful about their diet, dress, language, behavior and conformity.  We may be reminding Him of His mortal opposition when we engage in this conformist behavior.  He captured the hearts of fishermen, outcasts, prostitutes, tax collectors, the heretical and rebellious.  Their outward behavior may not have conformed, but their hearts were in the right place.


The Church has something to add, to be sure.  But what it adds comes to an end, so far as I can tell, once you move above the ward level.  As LeGrand Richards quipped: “Everything above the Stake is just talk.”  He’s right, but I would have said the Ward instead of the Stake.  And some of that “just talk” actually interferes with the development of the Saints’ hearts.  It would be better to remain silent than to speak up and justify interference by a flawed program between a man and his God, or a woman and her Lord.


I am active, but not merely in my weekly Church attendance.  I am active also in my daily obligations to the Lord.  It is my daily service which I consider the more important of the two.