Each week, Google Alerts brings me articles, videos, and blogs with the keywords “Mormon” and “Latter-day Saint.” It is interesting to read the various news articles from around the world that mention the Church. Perhaps it is the “ghost in the machine” or perhaps it is the same bias that Google programs into its search algorithms that always put anti-Trump articles at the top of the list, but the Church is always framed in a negative light by Google.
Opposition from outside the Church doesn’t alarm me in the least. Psalms 2:1 says, “Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?” Non-Mormons don’t get it. They are spiritual “normies” who haven’t awakened to the truth that is right under their nose. Mormons have become “awakened” to truths that are visible, once you see them. Like Q followers see the world differently, Mormons also see the world through a different lens.
What does concern me is the presence of spiritual termites in the Church. One of the items Google Alerts brings to my mailbox every week are articles from Mormon “intellectuals” like Jana Riess and others. These people are focused on weakening the Church, while feigning loyalty to it. They question the authority and calling of prophets whom God has called. They praise the compassion of gays, lesbians, and their fellow heretics while calling those who stand firm in protecting the faith intolerant and bigoted. They are social Mormons who seek social justice, not the Lord and his righteousness. They forget that Satan always sets his side up on a pretended moral high ground.
In the Book of Mormon, there are numerous instances where we see offended elites leave the Church because they couldn’t rearrange the metaphorical furniture of God’s house to their own liking. Not content to just leave the Church when they could no longer bear it, they eventually went over to the Lamanites—the sworn enemies of God’s people—and incite them against their former brothers and sisters. With their imagined or pretended wounds, they focus their resentment on destroying the Church. Satan convinces them that their sophistication exceeds that of their Church-mates and that their cosmopolitan views are more than the rest of us can handle. They defend apostates who defy and “speak evil of dignities” and celebrate those who “walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness.”
Meanwhile, there are many, many saints who struggle through life’s storms, trying their best to cling to the “good ship Zion.” Sometimes they get washed overboard in their struggles. Because they desire to be faithful, they strain to hold on to the battered, barnacle-encrusted hull with all of their might. Their shipmates brave the squalls of life to try to help them get back on board and rescue those who were washed overboard. Jana Riess and her lot are like spiritual termites who gnaw quietly at the timbers and weaken the ship—the sole source of refuge in an ocean of storms.
Defending those who undermine the Church is not honorable. Nothing these people do saves souls. They work against God and those who gather God’s elect. We should not mourn their excommunication even though it is sad. For the sake of those drowning, the safety of the ship is paramount.
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