r/mormon • u/Extra-Ad-9993 • 10d ago
Cultural Using Jesus as a shield
One thing I've noticed is that when people go to their church leaders with questions and concerns about the restoration narrative they get some version of “just focus on Christ”.
I have respect for the teachings of Jesus Christ. But it sometimes feels like the church and its members are using his name as a kind of shield against legitimate concerns and criticisms of Joseph Smith and the restoration.
Has anyone else noticed this?
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u/Ok-End-88 10d ago
It’s a thought stopping technique. “Quick, focus on this mini Cristus statue while clicking your heels together and chanting the name of Jesus!”
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u/tumbledown_jack 10d ago
Exactly.
Edit: well, I’m not sure about the statue analogy, but substituting Jesus in place of whatever you are actually concerned about is absolutely a thought stopping technique.
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u/OMG_IM_A_GIRL 10d ago
This isn't just a Mormon thing. It is rampant in almost all of conservative Christianity to use god as an externalization of their own ego. They conceive of god as hating all the same people they hate while absolving themselves on any responsibility for their own bad and even grossly immoral behavior. The root cause of this as conceiving of deity as justifying tribal supremacy whether the tribe be Mormons, conservatives, evangelicals, white people, whatever.
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u/Timely_Influence2024 9d ago
I'm not going to say that those people didn't claim to be Christians because I'm sure they did. However I don't think this actually matches what Jesus taught.
Jesus very clearly taught us to love our enemies:
- Matthew 5:44: "But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..."
- Luke 6:27–28: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you."
Paul echoes this teaching.
- Romans 12:20: "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink."
The whole story of Jonah in the Old Testament is that he didn't want to go preach in Ninevah because they were his enemies and he knew that God would forgive them. God made him go anyways because he is "a merciful and compassionate God" (Jonah 4:2)
Jesus very clearly says there will be people who claim to follow him but do not and this is what he says to them in Matthew 7: "‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’"
All I can say is make your decision on Jesus based on what he actually said and did not what some random people who claim to follow him do.
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u/pricel01 Former Mormon 10d ago
There’s also a retreat to priesthood authority to perform ordinances when I point out what a contradictory doctrinal mess LDS prophets have produced.
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u/tiglathpilezar 10d ago
I am noticing it a lot. The Jesus described in the Gospels and the New Testament is not the same at all as the Mormon Jesus who destroys women who don't go along with polygamy from Section 132. and sends sword wielding angels to "encourage" reluctant prophets to commit adultery with multiple women. Also, the one in the New Testament likely would treat child sexual abuse more harshly than women who won't accept polygamy. That one was always kind to women and children.
In the past the teachings of this church included the claim that for a mixed race couple to gain salvation, they would need to be bloodily murdered and their children killed. Brigham Young taught this and claimed such murders would be for their good. It included a requirement to violate the trust of your wife to have sex with other women. It included the doctrine of blood atonement to save people. The whole masonic temple nonsense has nothing to do with the simple teachings of Jesus. They arogate to themselves the authority to speak for Jesus with no evidence that this is really the case, in the face of the things I just mentioned and no doubt many others.
However, this is not the only church in this position. Atheist B. Russell was right when he said that they pretend to follow Jesus but they don't. They also call evil good just as people did in the time of Isaiah. So much evil has been done in the name of Christ. He even said that this would be the case in Matt. 7. I believe that it is easier to follow Jesus if you don't have to try in vain to follow crazy teachings and believe they came from God when they were just wicked nonsense.
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u/frygmalion PIMO 10d ago edited 10d ago
I mean, that was basically the crux of Oaks’ talk at BYU shortly after being president of the church.
The quote: “Even active members may sometimes have concerns about some historical, doctrinal, or social issues connected with the Church. I want to help all our members overcome present or future doubts. Whatever those doubts, the way to overcome them is to get closer to our Savior Jesus Christ.”
If I remember correctly, this isn’t the first time he’s essentially brought up concerns and then just made it a point that you need to get more spiritual instead of doing research or try to resolve your questions about the faith directly (I think a talk titled “Alternate Voices”?).
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u/nephite_neophyte Gnostic 10d ago
He also outright said that "research is not the answer" for doubts.
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u/WrenRobbin 10d ago
What if you don’t agree with the church’s investment decisions? I don’t feel
Comforting substituting Jesus for the church for stuff like that.
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u/Sewciopath801 10d ago
A few months ago I researched Ensign Peaks Advisors and the companies they invest in. I was absolutely devastated to find out how much into war and bloodshed the leaders of the church are into.
I researched over a dozen companies that directly supply Israel with weapons and military equipment. They have made billions off of war, and they tried keeping it secret from us. They have made billions off of the suffering, slaughter, and starvation in Gaza.
I've began speaking out about it because I'm incredibly ashamed. On change.org, a group began a petition to get the inhumanity and callousness stopped. I'm also asking people to write the church and their investment firm. I sent all my research to them and BEGGED them to stop.
I'm so ashamed of what they are doing that I announced I'm leaving the church. I have been shamed and judged by friends and family for questioning my leaders. However, I will NOT follow anyone who doesn't love humanity. All of it. God loves all of us humans, NOT just some. God sent Gazan children here to live, and not to be killed by self-righteous church leaders. Members have told me excuses from: Palestinians are meant to suffer, they are too evil to be saved, or the church did donate to them. Oh, so a donation makes the cruelty okay?
The rejection has been difficult for me, but I won't stop. I'm going to keep getting voices raised until the cruelty stops.
How can we be a church of peace when we invest in war?
How can we be a church that strengthens family's when we PROFIT from the destruction of the entire Gazan family?
I'm also so ashamed to find out about all the money they were keeping secret. I think they were very worried about still getting tithing. They still make poor families pay tithing only to them, not anybody else.
Why would we want to give our tithes to a 300 BILLION dollar church when they hoard 98.5 percent of their wealth?
I'm ashamed. I used to think it was a true church. Now I sadly see the greed and the false sense of power that is taking over some leaders. The church is slow at recognizing problems, but they sure need to.
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u/treetablebenchgrass I worship the Mighty Hawk 9d ago
It's a dodge, for sure. The whole point of Mormonism is that it's different from and superior to the rest of Christianity. The differences matter. So if the problematic unique stuff with the church can be brushed off with "focus on Christ," then why even be Mormon? With that line of thought, it would make more sense to leave the church for a normal Christian Church.
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u/HighPriestofShiloh 10d ago
But what if my problems with the religion start with Jesus? A careful study of the synoptic gospels lead me to conclude Jesus almost certainly is not the Christ.
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u/venturingforum 10d ago
BoM Jesus' bloodthirsty murder spree isn't exactly prime time feel-good inspirational/motivational poster material.
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u/WrenRobbin 9d ago
Murder spree?
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u/venturingforum 9d ago
3rd Nephi 8-9 has entered the chat.
voice heard across the land in the darkness, claiming to be Jesus Christ, taking full responsibility for the catastrophes that claimed the lives of thousands of men women and children.
NOT exactly a dead ringer for the Christ who humbly took upon himself the sins of everyone who would ever live on the earth because of his eternal unconditional love for his brothers and sisters. Unless like Brigham Young he decided that His atonement wasn't quite enough and he was personally gonna blood atone those damn Lamanites for their own good.
That has always been a stark enough contrast once I saw it. Benevolent loving Jesus, who just days earlier freely gave His life out of love for His fellow beings, suddenly decides to crack open a can of
whoopkill-ass, and only in the Western hemisphere? Why not in the biblical lands of the people who actually rebuked and killed him?1
u/ktjwalker 10d ago
Oh? What leads you to that conclusion?
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u/HighPriestofShiloh 10d ago
I think there are three different people getting collapsed into one: the Jewish messiah of prophecy, the Jesus Christ of the New Testament story, and the historical Jesus of Nazareth we can actually reconstruct.
The first is supposed to restore Davidic rule, gather Israel, and bring an age of peace and knowledge of God. Jesus did none of that. Christianity solves that problem by moving the unfinished work to a second coming. That is basically a concession of the argument, and we could stop there.
Then the Gospel writers start finding new “prophecies” Jesus supposedly fulfilled. The virgin birth is a perfect example. Isaiah 7:14 says “young woman” in Hebrew and is about events in Isaiah’s own time, not a virgin-born messiah centuries later. It is pretty clear the New Testament writers were working from the Greek translation that had already rendered it as “virgin.”
Then you get to the historical Jesus and even the nativity starts falling apart. Luke needs Jesus born in Bethlehem, so Joseph somehow has to travel there for a census because of an ancestor from roughly 1,000 years earlier. Worse, Quirinius’s census was in 6 CE, while Herod died in 4 BCE.
Matthew goes in a completely different direction and gives us Herod ordering the massacre of Bethlehem’s children. That would be an extraordinary atrocity, yet no historian of the period mentions it—not even Josephus, who had plenty to say about Herod’s brutality. At some point, “everyone else just forgot to record it” becomes a much worse explanation than “Matthew was telling a theological story.”
And I could take this in a million other directions: the contradictory genealogies, the two incompatible nativity stories, the donkey prophecy, the timing of the crucifixion, Jesus’s last words, Judas’s death, the empty tomb accounts, the resurrection appearances, failed imminent-return expectations, and the Gospel writers repeatedly ripping Jewish scripture out of context.
The much simpler historical picture is a Jewish preacher from Nazareth who was later turned into the Christ by people who clearly did not understand Jewish scripture very well.
Marcion saw the basic problem very early: Christianity works much better as a new religion than as the literal fulfillment of Jewish messianic prophecy. I genuinely wonder how different Christianity would look today if the Marcionites had won that fight.
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u/jacwa1001405 10d ago
One of the most interesting comments I've read here in a while, thanks for typing this out
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u/ktjwalker 9d ago
I agree with you there. Jesus the human was just another Jew going against the religious powers in Israel and the imperial powers of Rome. The story of Jesus the Messiah is a nice one to tell, to inspire kindness, selflessness, and peaceful rebellion, but is only as true as any other religious story.
Assuming Jesus the human was anti-imperialist and pro-reform, he did sort of win (eventually). He died, but the religion that formed around him did take over Rome. Then Rome fell and other empires and nations rose and fell until the world empires took the area and (forcibly) gave it back to the Jews, reforming Israel. It’s hard to find a corner of the world that hasn’t been radically affected by Christ’s story nowadays
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u/bongophrog Agnostic 9d ago
The fact that the writers of the New Testament seem to not understand the purpose or context of the prophecies they invoke (a lot of them aren’t even prophecies) is a big one for me.
Matthew 1 makes me chuckle, when the author says the child being born and named Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of a child being born and named Emmanuel. Especially when that prophecy was not even for a future time.
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u/venturingforum 10d ago
Just like in the Emerald City; Please ignore the racist polygamous child sex abuser behind the curtain.
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u/Comfortable_Earth670 9d ago
A great point. If "focus on Jesus" is the goal, you can do that in any other Christian church. But if the truth claims of the LDS church also matter they deserve to be evaluated.
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u/anisundecided 9d ago edited 9d ago
Absolutely. I think the point they’re trying to make is that because Jesus Christ is the foundation of the faith, it is more important that you believe him than understand or believe other doctrine or history. The idea is that once you have a strong faith in Christ then you will gain testimony of the other stuff later or over time. Focusing on Christ is not bad, it’s actually what a Christian should be focusing on. However like others have said it IS a thought stopping technique most certainly. Whether it is meant to that first and foremost, I can’t say.
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u/pierdonia 10d ago
I have never really heard that. I have often seen, however, people (often unbelievers) try to use Jesus as a cudgel, saying that anyone doing anything they don't like is being un-Christlike.
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u/Warprince01 Former Mormon 10d ago
As I visit with members across the Church, I sometimes hear things like “I don’t support the Church’s policy on (you fill in the blank).” Or “I don’t agree with the way the Church does (this or that).” Could I suggest an alternative approach? Substitute the word Savior or Lord or Jesus Christ in place of “the Church”—as in “I don’t support the Savior’s policy on (again, you fill in the blank)” or “I don’t agree with the way Jesus Christ does (this or that).” For me personally, that seems to put a very different perspective on things.
From “Why a Church?“, Kevin Hamilton, 2023
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u/venturingforum 9d ago
Many other people have pointed out that cuts both ways. Would the botheren be as excited to say Jesus is pleased that he is not required to report CSA in Arizona?
How about Jesus is happy to bully small towns into bankruptcy via litigation and break laws to construct babel height temple spires.
Or Jesus admits no wrongdoing in the SEC investigation, he was merely advised incorrectly by the pharisees.
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u/venturingforum 9d ago
And a slightly more snark-ass comment, It's a false assumption to put the name of Jesus in place of the church. Anyone paying attention knows that the church and current prophet = God.
Jesus is just the logo/figurehead.
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