Church is For Sinners and All Should Be Welcome

On Saturday morning we received a call on a road rage incident.  A couple of us responded and found some people yelling and shouting at each other.  We separated them and I tried talking to a woman and she started screaming at me.  I told her she had about 1 second to change her tone of voice with me or thing were going to go badly for her.

She calmed down and started telling her side of the story.  As it turned out, she was the aggressor and had started the whole thing.  She obviously had a very bad temper and had an excellent vocabulary of profanity.  We got everyone calmed down and sent them on their separate ways.

The next day, being Sunday, my family and I were attending a different ward* (I can't remember why).  We went into the chapel and sat down.  I felt someone looking at me and at the opposite end of the row we were sitting on was the lady I had dealt with in the street.  She whispered something to her friend and then both of them looked at me and giggled.

My first thought was, "I can't believe she comes to church and then acts that way.  She should know better."  And in that moment, the Lord taught me a lesson that has changed my life and how I look at people... and myself as well.

Church is for sinners.  If we were perfect, we wouldn't need a church.  The best place for sinners is in church.  Where else are they going to learn to act better?  Where's the best place for someone with a bad temper to learn to control it... in church.  And guess what.... we're all sinners.  I think we often think of other people as being worse sinners than we are.  We judge the 'publicans and sinners' and don't count ourselves along with them.  Sin is sin.

In the Doctrine and Covenants 1:31, the Lord says, "For I the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance;"  The Book of Mormon, in Alma 45:16 records, "And he said: Thus saith the Lord God—Cursed shall be the land, yea, this land, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, unto destruction, which do wickedly, when they are fully ripe; and as I have said so shall it be; for this is the cursing and the blessing of God upon the land, for the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance."

Just because someone goes to church, they are not perfect.  And we should welcome all into our churches, because we no better than anyone.  It's time to put down our rocks and remember that Christ said, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

So there we sat in church that Sunday, a sinner with a bad temper and a sinner that had thought himself a little better than some people.  After that day, I decided I'd put down my rocks and leave judgement up to Christ.  I have more faults than I can count so who am I to think anything bad about anybody?