The Bride: an analogy for the Church of Jesus Christ
Many of you may be familiar with Matthew 25 where Jesus tells the story of the 10 virgins.
The Bridegroom represents Jesus in this parable. The Bride represents the Church and the 10 virgins represent those of us who would like to be present at the wedding-- church members so to speak. In the parable, 5 virgins were wise and 5 virgins were foolish. The foolish ones had no oil in their lamps and the wise had oil.
Drawing on some aspects of this parable, I would like to talk about The Church of Jesus Christ for a moment in another analogy.
A young man meets a young woman. She is intelligent, kind, beautiful and virtually perfect in every way. He is so happy with her. He learns so many things about her that he thinks he knows everything. They are married and he couldn't possibly be any happier. He finds out that there are some people that hate his beautiful bride, but he tells everyone about how perfect she is. As time passes, the honeymoon period ends. They stop spending as much time together as they used too and he spends more time at work than before. Being married becomes somewhat of an unwanted distraction or duty at times, it also is expensive and sometimes it is not easy. Then one day, he meets his wife's ex-boyfriend while he is at work. The ex-boyfriend tells him things that he had never heard before. He hears some things that make him wonder if he had ever even known the bride at all. The ex-boyfriend says a lot of stuff, some of it is too unbelievable to be true, but the ex-boyfriend provides reasonable proof for some of it. The husband stops the ex-boyfriend from talking and walks away because he doesn't want to hear it anymore. The husband feels sick inside. He is shaking and his stomach is in knots. He feels like running away and hiding. He wishes he never heard any of that stuff. He wishes that he could make it all go away so he could enjoy a wonderful marriage like he used to.
He gets home and greets his bride. He notices some blemishes and defects in her face that he never saw before. She isn't as beautiful and smart and perfect as she used to be. He can see all of that now so clearly. He pretends to be happy to see her. She nags at him for cleaning up his shoes he left in the middle of the room and then presents him with a meal that is slightly under-cooked. He takes a few bites and puts his spoon down without any appetite. He starts to wonder why he married this nagging woman in the first place-- so that she could nag at him for all of his faults? He keeps his thoughts to himself and withdraws to to his room pretending that nothing is wrong and tries to distract himself with other things.
Years pass in mediocrity. He tries to push it all out of his head and just deal with it later. Sometimes, he is successful and he enjoys some great moments with his wife, but there is always the words of that ex-friend telling him of her flaws and bad-history nagging him in the back of his head. He tries to convince himself that everything he learned is a lie, but some of the proofs her ex-boyfriend provided are unavoidable. One day it is just too much. He wants to know more about who this woman is. He goes to her ex-boyfriend and hears everything he has to say. He doesn't know what part of it is true and what part is a lie, but he writes it all down. He had enough stuff here to give him reason to leave. Look at this huge list of past misdeeds, character flaws, and lies.
"She LIED to me!" He shouts in his head. "She told me she was perfect!-- I believed her!" She has done terrible things and is anything but perfect! He starts daydreaming about getting a divorce so he could be free of this witch with of a woman with her lies, problems, and dirty past.
He doesn't even tell anyone what he is going to do, but he leaves work early to go to the storage unit so he can start getting all of his stuff separated before the he feeds her divorce papers. He tells his wife that he has to go on a business trip. When he gets to the storage unit, he pulls down some old boxes and a box slips off the top of the stack. It comes crashing to the ground with a loud noise. The box rips open and out pours a stack of journals... they are hers and there are a lot of them. His first reaction is to want to stomp on them. But when he picks one up, a picture falls out between the pages. It is a picture of when they first started dating. He looks at his face in the picture... he is so happy; she is so happy. He remembers the way he felt. The love that filled him. He looks up at the old vanity sitting in the storage unit. The mirror is staring back at him. His face is older and bitter and full of sadness and anger.
"What has happened to me?" He asks out loud. He sits down on the vanity bench and opens up one of his wife's journals and starts to read. At first reading about his wife makes him angry, but then his anger slowly melts away. He sits there reading and reading. When he finishes this journal, he picks up another one and reads it. It gets dark and he turns on the storage unit light and keeps reading. He reads all through the night. He reads all about her old relationships. Her childhood. Her teenage years. He reads about her old mistakes-- the things she tried never told anyone about He finds pictures of her when she was a baby. As he reads, he starts to feel love in heart heart for this woman. Not for the perfect woman he thought that he married, but love for the imperfect woman he is married too. The love in his heart slowly begins to grow as he reads. It increases page after page. He finds out that the ex-boyfriends reports only shared half of the story and was taken out of context for her life. He begins to admire her for her complexity and for all that she has overcome to be who she is today.
That night he realizes that he would rather be with her than anyone else in the world, but if he is going to do that, then he needs to fall in love with her for who she is and not for who he thought she was when they were engaged. After reading all night in the storage unit, he comes home the next morning. His wife is waiting for him at the front door. She is smiling but looks worried. He runs to the door and takes her in his arms and looks into her eyes with a knowledge of her past-- all of it in context. A tear runs down his cheek. He feels more love for his wife than he has ever felt before because now he truly knows who she is. He wishes that his wife would have told him everything about herself long ago. He wishes that he would have read the journals before he talked to her ex-boyfriend. It would have saved him from so much needless suffering. He would have been able to love his wife exactly for who she is.
In case you haven't made the parallel. The wife is The Church of Jesus Christ. The husband is many members of the church. The ex-boyfriend represents a source of information about that church that is mostly un-pleasant (sometimes called "anti-mormon").
In this story, the husband happened to come across his wife's old journals and chose to read them all and then decided that he wanted to stay with his wife. That doesn't happen for everyone. Sometimes people find the journals, or don't read them, or do read them and still decide to get a divorce anyways.
The point of this parable is for you to realize that the church history is more complex than what the husband thought it was when he was first married. It is also more complex than what the ex-boyfriend shared. Isolated information taken out of context can paint a picture of someone that is incomplete. The version of the husbands wife that he thought he knew when he was engaged was perhaps as incomplete as the version of his wife that the ex-boyfriend shared. The reality lay somewhere in the middle.
Listening to the ex-boyfriend, you would reasonably conclude that she is a totally evil person-- and if you asked the man when he was first engaged, he would tell you she was a totally perfect person.
The truth is that no perfect people exist. It is as simple as this. So if you are looking for perfection, then expect to spend the rest of your life single (without a church).
Rather than looking for a perfect church, here is another approach you might try:
1). Is it more beneficial in your life for you to go to a church or not go to any church?
2). If you answered that it is more beneficial for you in your life to go to a church, then the question is WHICH church is the most beneficial church for you to attend.
3). If you can name another church that would be better for you to attend, then maybe you ought to join yourself with it. --Have you even looked?
4). If you have looked and can't find a better church, then it is reasonable to attend the BEST church available to you. If you take the time to truly study its history, you might find out that you can be very happy and very in love with someone (a church) that isn't perfect.
Lastly, I strongly encourage you to read "her journals". If you have already read the first three, maybe its time to read the 4th, 5th, and 6th to get some context for after the honeymoon phase wears off and you run into her ex-boyfriend.
1). The Bible
2). The Book of Mormon
3). The Doctrine and Covenants
4). Saints
5). The History of Joseph Smith by his Mother
6). Rough Stone Rolling
The Bridegroom represents Jesus in this parable. The Bride represents the Church and the 10 virgins represent those of us who would like to be present at the wedding-- church members so to speak. In the parable, 5 virgins were wise and 5 virgins were foolish. The foolish ones had no oil in their lamps and the wise had oil.
Drawing on some aspects of this parable, I would like to talk about The Church of Jesus Christ for a moment in another analogy.
A young man meets a young woman. She is intelligent, kind, beautiful and virtually perfect in every way. He is so happy with her. He learns so many things about her that he thinks he knows everything. They are married and he couldn't possibly be any happier. He finds out that there are some people that hate his beautiful bride, but he tells everyone about how perfect she is. As time passes, the honeymoon period ends. They stop spending as much time together as they used too and he spends more time at work than before. Being married becomes somewhat of an unwanted distraction or duty at times, it also is expensive and sometimes it is not easy. Then one day, he meets his wife's ex-boyfriend while he is at work. The ex-boyfriend tells him things that he had never heard before. He hears some things that make him wonder if he had ever even known the bride at all. The ex-boyfriend says a lot of stuff, some of it is too unbelievable to be true, but the ex-boyfriend provides reasonable proof for some of it. The husband stops the ex-boyfriend from talking and walks away because he doesn't want to hear it anymore. The husband feels sick inside. He is shaking and his stomach is in knots. He feels like running away and hiding. He wishes he never heard any of that stuff. He wishes that he could make it all go away so he could enjoy a wonderful marriage like he used to.
He gets home and greets his bride. He notices some blemishes and defects in her face that he never saw before. She isn't as beautiful and smart and perfect as she used to be. He can see all of that now so clearly. He pretends to be happy to see her. She nags at him for cleaning up his shoes he left in the middle of the room and then presents him with a meal that is slightly under-cooked. He takes a few bites and puts his spoon down without any appetite. He starts to wonder why he married this nagging woman in the first place-- so that she could nag at him for all of his faults? He keeps his thoughts to himself and withdraws to to his room pretending that nothing is wrong and tries to distract himself with other things.
Years pass in mediocrity. He tries to push it all out of his head and just deal with it later. Sometimes, he is successful and he enjoys some great moments with his wife, but there is always the words of that ex-friend telling him of her flaws and bad-history nagging him in the back of his head. He tries to convince himself that everything he learned is a lie, but some of the proofs her ex-boyfriend provided are unavoidable. One day it is just too much. He wants to know more about who this woman is. He goes to her ex-boyfriend and hears everything he has to say. He doesn't know what part of it is true and what part is a lie, but he writes it all down. He had enough stuff here to give him reason to leave. Look at this huge list of past misdeeds, character flaws, and lies.
"She LIED to me!" He shouts in his head. "She told me she was perfect!-- I believed her!" She has done terrible things and is anything but perfect! He starts daydreaming about getting a divorce so he could be free of this witch with of a woman with her lies, problems, and dirty past.
He doesn't even tell anyone what he is going to do, but he leaves work early to go to the storage unit so he can start getting all of his stuff separated before the he feeds her divorce papers. He tells his wife that he has to go on a business trip. When he gets to the storage unit, he pulls down some old boxes and a box slips off the top of the stack. It comes crashing to the ground with a loud noise. The box rips open and out pours a stack of journals... they are hers and there are a lot of them. His first reaction is to want to stomp on them. But when he picks one up, a picture falls out between the pages. It is a picture of when they first started dating. He looks at his face in the picture... he is so happy; she is so happy. He remembers the way he felt. The love that filled him. He looks up at the old vanity sitting in the storage unit. The mirror is staring back at him. His face is older and bitter and full of sadness and anger.
"What has happened to me?" He asks out loud. He sits down on the vanity bench and opens up one of his wife's journals and starts to read. At first reading about his wife makes him angry, but then his anger slowly melts away. He sits there reading and reading. When he finishes this journal, he picks up another one and reads it. It gets dark and he turns on the storage unit light and keeps reading. He reads all through the night. He reads all about her old relationships. Her childhood. Her teenage years. He reads about her old mistakes-- the things she tried never told anyone about He finds pictures of her when she was a baby. As he reads, he starts to feel love in heart heart for this woman. Not for the perfect woman he thought that he married, but love for the imperfect woman he is married too. The love in his heart slowly begins to grow as he reads. It increases page after page. He finds out that the ex-boyfriends reports only shared half of the story and was taken out of context for her life. He begins to admire her for her complexity and for all that she has overcome to be who she is today.
That night he realizes that he would rather be with her than anyone else in the world, but if he is going to do that, then he needs to fall in love with her for who she is and not for who he thought she was when they were engaged. After reading all night in the storage unit, he comes home the next morning. His wife is waiting for him at the front door. She is smiling but looks worried. He runs to the door and takes her in his arms and looks into her eyes with a knowledge of her past-- all of it in context. A tear runs down his cheek. He feels more love for his wife than he has ever felt before because now he truly knows who she is. He wishes that his wife would have told him everything about herself long ago. He wishes that he would have read the journals before he talked to her ex-boyfriend. It would have saved him from so much needless suffering. He would have been able to love his wife exactly for who she is.
In case you haven't made the parallel. The wife is The Church of Jesus Christ. The husband is many members of the church. The ex-boyfriend represents a source of information about that church that is mostly un-pleasant (sometimes called "anti-mormon").
In this story, the husband happened to come across his wife's old journals and chose to read them all and then decided that he wanted to stay with his wife. That doesn't happen for everyone. Sometimes people find the journals, or don't read them, or do read them and still decide to get a divorce anyways.
The point of this parable is for you to realize that the church history is more complex than what the husband thought it was when he was first married. It is also more complex than what the ex-boyfriend shared. Isolated information taken out of context can paint a picture of someone that is incomplete. The version of the husbands wife that he thought he knew when he was engaged was perhaps as incomplete as the version of his wife that the ex-boyfriend shared. The reality lay somewhere in the middle.
Listening to the ex-boyfriend, you would reasonably conclude that she is a totally evil person-- and if you asked the man when he was first engaged, he would tell you she was a totally perfect person.
The truth is that no perfect people exist. It is as simple as this. So if you are looking for perfection, then expect to spend the rest of your life single (without a church).
Rather than looking for a perfect church, here is another approach you might try:
1). Is it more beneficial in your life for you to go to a church or not go to any church?
2). If you answered that it is more beneficial for you in your life to go to a church, then the question is WHICH church is the most beneficial church for you to attend.
3). If you can name another church that would be better for you to attend, then maybe you ought to join yourself with it. --Have you even looked?
4). If you have looked and can't find a better church, then it is reasonable to attend the BEST church available to you. If you take the time to truly study its history, you might find out that you can be very happy and very in love with someone (a church) that isn't perfect.
Lastly, I strongly encourage you to read "her journals". If you have already read the first three, maybe its time to read the 4th, 5th, and 6th to get some context for after the honeymoon phase wears off and you run into her ex-boyfriend.
1). The Bible
2). The Book of Mormon
3). The Doctrine and Covenants
4). Saints
5). The History of Joseph Smith by his Mother
6). Rough Stone Rolling
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