HAND ME THAT HANDBOOK

I want to burn the church handbook.

Hear me out.

I'm in several LDS moms groups on social media. The topics that come up vary from simple things like baby name ideas all the way up to the real traumatizing stuff that most women post anonymously. Almost daily though, I read posts about women asking questions similar to "what does the church think about this...?"

First...can we focus on the fact that "the church" is an organization, and not a living, breathing person?  And...I don't know...maybe for the sake of just being argumentative, can we also focus on the fact that "the church" is also not God? 

The handbook changes constantly, based on opinions of (mostly rich white) men who run an organization that includes people from all over the world. People who believe in different things. People who follow different customs and cultures. People "the church" doesn't know from Adam. 

The men who write the handbook don't have a clear understanding of each of the people within the organization of the church. Even if they did, it would be impossible to create one handbook that could clearly define the guidelines for our personal paths to God.  We may be part of the same church family, but that does not mean we believe the same things. It does not mean what works for me will work for you, or that God expects the same things from us.

In the handbook, there are often instructions on how to do things, followed up with a sort of disclaimer that basically says, "it's between you and God." But how much more clear could the instruction be, and how much less likely would it be for someone to feel like they just couldn't measure up...if we just scrapped the opinion of "the church" in the first place and just focused on how "it's between you and God?" What if "the church" didn't have an opinion at all on things that are between us and God? What if we allowed our people to think and pray for themselves, rather than "discouraging" the choices that have no bearing on their status in the church anyway?

Let me be clear (because my husband told me I'm not yet) that I don't believe the church handbook is negative overall. There are important sections of the handbook that protect people and those parts are absolutely necessary. What I'm focusing on here are the parts in which opinions of "the church" are placed before the instruction to rely upon God to plan our own paths. 

It's not up to "the church" to decide what you should wear. Or whether or not you have your tubes tied when you don't want to have any more children.  It's not "the church's" business what clothing you're buried in, whether you're an organ donor, vaccinated, or have an autopsy performed on your deceased loved one. 

As a people, I think we have become too reliant on "the church" and not enough on ourselves and personal revelation. If the church truly wants to promote self-reliance, perhaps they should stop having so many opinions on things we shouldn't be relying on them for to begin with...