Sacrament
Fact 1: LDS Church doctrine states that all people will sin:
Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God"
1 John 1:8 "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
LDS Topical Dictionary, "Sin,": "Other than Jesus Christ, each person who has ever lived on earth has broken commandments or failed to act according to knowledge of the truth."
Fact 2: Every week as LDS people take the sacrament, they covenant to not sin:
Prayer on the bread: by taking the sacrament members "witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given them"
Problem:
We covenant weekly to not sin (ie. to always remember Christ and keep his commandments), knowing full well that our own doctrine states that this is impossible.
I can't really think of another similar situation where people are expected to make and renew covenants that they know that they cannot keep. The secular parallel might be something like having a month-to-month rent contract that has to be renewed monthly. That contract requires you to promise to pay $500/month in rent, but you've never paid $500 before and you know at the time of signing (or you should know) that you will not be able to pay $500 moving forward. It seems like a set up for failure, guilt, disappointment, and minimizing the value of promises. I wonder if the sacrament prayer itself sets up mormons for impossible expectations that they either go crazy trying to keep or simply abandon out of exhaustion.
So why are we asked to do it? Why doesn't the sacrament prayer say something more like, "we witness that we are willing to try to keep the commandments, even though we know we will come up short and that's why there's an Atonement"? Perhaps it is just trying to help us reach for lofty, if unattainable goals? Perhaps it is designed to set us up for weekly failure so that we will continue to repent for failure to keep our covenants? Perhaps there is some deeper lesson here that we are all missing?
Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God"
1 John 1:8 "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."
LDS Topical Dictionary, "Sin,": "Other than Jesus Christ, each person who has ever lived on earth has broken commandments or failed to act according to knowledge of the truth."
Fact 2: Every week as LDS people take the sacrament, they covenant to not sin:
Prayer on the bread: by taking the sacrament members "witness unto thee, O God, the Eternal Father, that they are willing to take upon them the name of thy Son, and always remember him and keep his commandments which he has given them"
Problem:
We covenant weekly to not sin (ie. to always remember Christ and keep his commandments), knowing full well that our own doctrine states that this is impossible.
I can't really think of another similar situation where people are expected to make and renew covenants that they know that they cannot keep. The secular parallel might be something like having a month-to-month rent contract that has to be renewed monthly. That contract requires you to promise to pay $500/month in rent, but you've never paid $500 before and you know at the time of signing (or you should know) that you will not be able to pay $500 moving forward. It seems like a set up for failure, guilt, disappointment, and minimizing the value of promises. I wonder if the sacrament prayer itself sets up mormons for impossible expectations that they either go crazy trying to keep or simply abandon out of exhaustion.
So why are we asked to do it? Why doesn't the sacrament prayer say something more like, "we witness that we are willing to try to keep the commandments, even though we know we will come up short and that's why there's an Atonement"? Perhaps it is just trying to help us reach for lofty, if unattainable goals? Perhaps it is designed to set us up for weekly failure so that we will continue to repent for failure to keep our covenants? Perhaps there is some deeper lesson here that we are all missing?