The mocking is coming from underneath the tree
I’m very grateful for the good discussion on yesterday’s post about the current state of the church.
Two thoughts.
One. I was aware of the prophecies that the saints would be tempted and fall away through worldly success. I was also aware of the prophecies, such as in Lehi’s dream, that the saints would face mockery and status temptation.
I had always assumed that there would be a hard boundary between the world and the saints. On the one hand, the kingdom, mocked by the world, but standing together. On the outside riches and status, and persecution towards those who remained under the tree. The temptation would be to cross over the lines.
But that does not turn out to be the reality. The reality is that there are no hard lines. Much of the mockery and the pressure comes from within. People can succumb to the temptations of surrender to the world’s terms without ever leaving the church, continuing to occupy a visible role without any real disapprobation. In the terms of Lehi’s dream, we might say that the mocking is coming from underneath the tree.
Two, I do not think the parable of the wheat and the tares applies very well to the church right now. At least not in the way people usually apply it. In the parable you cannot tell who is wheat and who is tares yet, but you will eventually. Most importantly, the tares are tares and the wheat are wheat and nothing is going to change that. In real life, there are a number of hard lines that would reveal the wheat from the tares immediately if we desired. Most importantly, if left together over time the wheat become tares. When the trumpets of Babylon are being underlined and reinforced from within the kingdom, more and more people hearken. The church in North America is being hollowed out from the inside and the process continues.
Ben Pratt
July 22, 2022
My daughter’s friend is a fulltime missionary. Just this week a friend she was teaching was outside the church raving about church meetings after they’d finished. A sister came out of the building and started yelling at the visitor that Joseph Smith was a fraud and that the sister missionaries were manipulating her and so on. The mockery left and other members who had overheard came over. More fruit of the tree was enjoyed.
It startled me when I recently realized that not even angels nor God nor the tares themselves know what they are until it is demonstrated. As Dr. Charlton says, things have come to a point now. If wheat can be transmogrified to tares under sufficient conditions, was it ever really wheat to begin with? Can tares sing the song of redeeming love as they grow before they fully ripen and no longer feel so anymore?
Zen
July 22, 2022
I think the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares applies perfectly well.
It would just be accurate to saw that the wheat is not ripe yet.
I am reminded of the quote
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”
? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
The Church needs more ripening, meaning that, we all need to decide exactly which church we are in, The Lord’s or the Devil’s.
John Mansfield
July 22, 2022
We have lamented before the vanishing of middle grounds, circumstances and settings allowing those not altogether on-board with the church to still be connected with it, and for their children to enter and keep covenants their parents did not. Is there now a fear that luke-warm latter-day saints are too harmful to keep fellowship with? I have not experienced that feeling, but the last time I counted my ward’s members were only 1.1% of the population within the ward’s boundaries.
Bookslinger
July 22, 2022
JM: I think the OP is lamenting more the active disbelievers rather than the lukewarm believers.
I think the “not sure either way” population continues to migrate one way or the other.
I think the lukewarm (or asleep) believers who are strong enough in terms of personality and of being influencers/examples, can actually be bad examples for youth and converts by influencing them to set their sights too low.
Bookslinger
July 22, 2022
(continued.)
And therefore, it’s the lukewarm/asleep believing members who need the most outreach/ministering from the on-fire and awake members. Perhaps they are the ones offering the most potential return-on-investment.