Yesterday, I bore my testimony at Church about Geoff, of all people. (The worst is, I couldn’t even keep the facts straight…) Anyway, I was also thinking of a question Geoff asked. This is my attempt to answer.

I love to go to church. I mean I really enjoy it. Yesterday, for example, I got to substitute teach CTR-5, and I enjoyed church so much I was horse from screaming in the classroom and every member of the bishopric, several concerned parents, and the 2nd Councilor of the Primary presidency all peeked in to make sure no one was seriously injured. (You’d think no one else ever let five age five boys reenact Helamen’s stripling warriors vs. The chairs in the room. What can I say? Lessons were learned, chairs were slain, children screamed.) But I digress.

The Point is, I love going to church, and I want everyone else to love going to church too. I am all about getting the rears in the pews, as it were. But why? Why should we all go to church?

Some common reasons I hear are to take the Sacrament, to hear the words of the prophets, and to commune with Christ. I think these are incomplete. First, I have the priesthood, I can take the sacrament in my own home. Second, It is currently 2007. The book has been in existence for millennia now, and add to that television, radio, mp3, the internet, etc, and I have plenty of means of hearing the words of the prophets. Finally, the words of the prophets have taught me to create a sacred space in my own home, to pray in my closet, as it were, and that I can commune with the Almighty anywhere and at anytime. So these reasons, while all good, I think are insufficient.

I think the purpose of Church is to create the proper order so that we can establish and practice the correct type of interdependent society to come unto exaltation. Call it “building up Zion” if you like. I believe the Gospel teaches that we are all in this together, and that we are all weak alone, and much stronger together. It is only when we come together that Christ is with us. Finally, I believe that it is through the order and organization of the church and our communing with one another that we will “all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.

-2 Nephi 2:11

When I was young, there was this comic book “What If?” which answered all sorts of brilliant questions, such as “What if Mary Jane were Spider-man and not Peter Parker?” Or “What if Captain America were the Incredible Hulk?” In order to get at and understand the question of LFW versus CFW. I would like to ask a “What if” question myself.
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