When I was a Latter-day Saint I was very proud to carry my temple recommend with me at all times. My recommend signaled that I had been interviewed by a priesthood holders and been found worthy to enter the house of the Lord. It therefore signaled assurance that my course of life was pleasing to God and that I was accepted in his sight based on my obedience and diligence. I believe as Elder Rasband taught that ““Your temple recommend opens the gates of heaven for you and others with rites and ordinances of eternal significance, including baptisms, endowments, marriages, and sealings.”
As an Evangelical Christian, I have several concerns with the concept of temple worthiness and temple recommends.
- The practice of deeming certain members as “worthy” of access to “the gates of heaven” based on their own righteousness and obedience is deeply problematic. Ultimately, our standing before God is not based on the imputed righteousness of Christ and NOT our own personal worthiness. As Paul explained in Romans 3:22, “[t]he righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” The temple recommend reinforces what is taught in the temple that we will be admitted into God’s presence on account of our “having been true and faithful” to all of our covenants rather than based on the meritorious blood of Jesus Christ alone.
- The standards of a temple recommend can be soul crushing for those who are aware of and truthful about their sins and imperfections This issue is made worse in the endowment ceremony itself. There we make promises of obedience and consecration that we all fall far short of. And yet we are told, by no less than Satan himself, that if we fail to live up to any of these impossibly high covenants that we will be in Satan’s power.
- The temple recommend questions focus on easily measurable attributes of LDS Church faith and membership rather than the more subtle or difficult to detect inward condition of our hearts. For instance they measure whether we are keeping the word of wisdom, but not on whether we are truly showing love to those around us. They ask about whether we “sustain” prophets, but not about whether we have a loving relationship with God. By focusing on these things, people can be “worthy” without actually putting in the more difficult work of critical self-evaluation and transformation.
- Being deemed “worthy” can lead to a sense of pride or overconfidence. People who are “temple worthy” will judge less active members or non-members and feel puffed up in their own obedience and worthiness. But in reality people that are not temple “worthy” may be far more christlike, submissive, humble, charitable, and kind than those who are deemed “worthy.” And because they are “worthy” members focus on the mote in their neighbors eye rather than the beam in their own eye.
- I worry that there will be faithful LDS temple who have been assured that they are “worthy” of God and therefore do not fully account for their true standing before God. They see themselves as righteous and do not recognize the wide gap that exists between their “obedience” and the holy and perfect righteousness of God. Temple recommends can allow some members to not come face to face with the darkness and sin in their hearts and therefore not realize how fully they are in need of salvation in Christ.
Being able to relinquish the need to prove myself temple “worthy” and trust instead fully on the merits and worthiness of Christ has been freeing. I am freed from both self-righteousness and self-centered despair at my failings. I truly have nothing to boast about, because my salvation is a gift of God and not based on my own worthiness. This has been a life changing truth in so many ways and I am so grateful to God for his deliverance and his grace