YM lesson on "purposes of life"

[MikeWaters]

I found it interesting that in the lesson, many things were said by the teacher. Faith was about the seventh thing mentioned. Other things were "being tested", "covenants", and others.

THen he talked about how we can get to the celestial kingdom. His answer was "by keeping our covenants."

I raised my hand and said "but none of us will keep our covenants. We will all break them. We will all fall short."

This lesson reminded me of how far typical Mormon belief is from typical Christian belief.

Nowhere in the lesson was it said that the purpose of life is to accept and take advantage of Christ's atonement. Former member of stake presidency, the bishop, and bishop's counselor were all listening.

The typical Mormon belief is that if you work really hard at keeping your covenants, and live as sin-free a life as possible, you will go to the Celestial kingdom. The problem with this system is that it doesn't give Christ any credit. We theoretically believe in Christ's atonement carrying us through I suppose, but it seems like it is a footnote or something so assumed that it isn't mentioned.

We don't talk enough of being born again of the spirit (the verbage probably offends us because it is too similar to evangelicals). We don't talk enough about being "in the Spirit" about YM and YW having a born-again-type spiritual experience, etc.

Sometimes it feels like we are a Christ-focused church, but not really a Christ-centered church.