The Not Even Once Club is a new children’s book by Wendy Nelson (who is married to Russell M. Nelson) about a group of kids who form a club where they pledge to never break the commandments, Not Even Once.
I think a book like that might be okay (if a little didactic) if it was a heartwarming story about kids with good intentions to do the right thing all the time but who inevitably fall short, because we all do, and learn a little something along the way about forgiveness, grace and the power of the cross.
But nope, it’s apparently just a story about choosing to never break the commandments and only hanging out with other kids who do, and it even comes with a certificate your kids can sign to join the club by pledging to never break the word of wisdom, lie, cheat, steal, do drugs, bully, dress immodestly, break the law of chastity or look at pornography. NOT EVEN ONCE.
There was a recent post about it over at Wheat and Tares but that post deals more with the psychological and sociological problems with making commitments like that, rather than the basic incompatibility of The Not Even Once Club with the gospel. (EDIT: there’s now a follow-up, cross-posted at Wheat and Tares and Rational Faiths that does address gospel issues more directly.)
The Bible is incredibly clear that we all sin, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Because we are fallen people in a fallen world and heirs to a sinful nature, a promise to never break God’s commandments is a promise that we will invariably break. We are hard-coded to break God’s commandments, and we absolutely lack the power on our own to do anything about it. Personal perfection projects like the Not Even Once Club, whether we attempt them as little kids or as adults, get us off on the wrong foot from the very start. Are the kids in the Not Even Once Club really going to never break the “law of chastity,” not even once? What about when they hit puberty and their brains are flushed with hormones? They’re going to be able to never entertain lustful thoughts? Really?
How is the Not Even Once Club good news? “Good news, if you manage to never sin, you can be part of the club!” “Good news, if you manage to never sin, you can go to heaven!” That’s not good news for sinners like you and me. That’s really bad news. I’ll admit that I haven’t read The Not Even Once Club, and I’d love to be wrong about it (by all means, tell me if I am!), but everything I have read about it and everything I know about Mormonism leads me to believe that the book is nothing less than a false gospel aimed at children. I am confident that Wendy Nelson has good intentions, but they’re not enough.
The Good News is that we don’t have to join the Not Even Once Club, because we get to join a far better club. Despite our corrupted natures and our inborn tendency to sin, we are declared to be in the right with God, right now, by virtue of Jesus Christ. Not because we managed to never sin (no matter who we are, that ship has always already sailed–we literally can’t help it), but because he did. Through God’s grace we are given the ability to respond to God’s grace and submit to the reign of Jesus. He makes us good. We don’t.
We don’t have to worry about qualifying for the Not Even Once Club because we get to be a part of the Kingdom of Heaven. I promise you it is way better.
Sailing to Byzantium 
Lest you think that this is just some kind of a knee-jerk, anti-Mormon screed, check out what the faithful folks over at By Common Consent are saying.
Hey, thanks for leaving a comment on my blog post. I think you touched on a great point. But I still really liked the book. My kids received it so well. God’s Laws are just that…LAWS. The book introduces commandments and keeping them in a fun way. It is encouraging. It set’s a Standard for our children. It gives them a vision. And you know the scripture, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Why not set the bar high. I also teach my children about repentance and doing better. My kids were out of the club the first day that they made the club promise. They aren’t perfect. They know they don’t have to be. They know that their covenants make up the difference. I think that this book is a great kids book and it opens up dialogue about really important issues.
I really wish I would have talked about the atonement in my blog post though. Thank you very much for pointing that out to me.
Have a great day!
Erin
This is a tough call for me. It makes me think of the man who wanted to hire a truck driver; his single interview question was “How close to the edge of a cliff can you drive without going over the edge”. Most applicants gave varying estimates of alarming proximity but the man who got the job was the man that answered ” I don’t go anywhere near the edge. I stay away as far as I can”. With that in mind I agree with staying as far away from sin as you can and eliminating any basis for rationalization.
On the other hand I’ve personally seen the effect of taking rigid “observation” to the extreme. As much as we talk about forgiveness there is a judgmental river out there that can emotionally drown people. I’ve been asked what I learned on my mission and I tell people “How to lie”; from my trainer on I was around missionaries who – being human – would transgress mission rules but rather than go through the repentance process would lie. They’d lie because they couldn’t cope with the icy reception they’d receive were they to openly admit to their mistakes.
It’s not just a mission thing either. Go to any of the church schools and you’ll find that any mental hygiene facility close by will have a ward dedicated to treating students who couldn’t cope with a transgression they’d made so rather than (again) facing the ‘icy reception” they check out mentally and emotionally.
On the surface though I would say the book is a success because it has people talking, and when you get people talking you get progress.
Erin: There’s nothing wrong with setting or having high standards. It’s establishing a false dilemma to suggest that criticizing the absence of the Atonement in this book is being against high standards.
It just seems to me that having a “club” where the only people around are those who have never fallen short is making a mockery of the infinite Atonement, which promises that those who have fallen short and learned from doing so are every it are every bit as worthy as those who have never fallen short, and that’s true even if they make the same mistake again. In fact, our making mistakes is part of the plan of salvation! It was the Adversary who wanted a system where we couldn’t make mistakes.
I realize that the nuances of grace and consequences can be difficult for a young child to grasp, and I don’t see anything wrong with telling youngsters before they can understand more that there are some things we just don’t do. But in this book I see an overemphasis on some things that don’t matter all that much in the target age group (is it even possible for a 6-year-old to dress immodestly?) and no explicit mention of what Jesus called the two most important commandments (correct me if I’m wrong on this).
I’m not saying there’s nothing good in this book, and I agree with Kullervo that the author was well-intentioned, but the author’s approach misses the main point of the Gospel. Jesus died to save sinners, not people belonging to the club of perfection.
Eric, You are right that the book does focus on “NOT EVEN ONCE”, but the savior himself said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” I’m am a parent that talks with my kids everyday about making right choices, repenting for wrong choices and trusting the Savior to do the rest. While the book does not focus on the Atonement directly and makes keeping the commandments seem fun and rewarding for kids, it does have a section in the back of the book with talks about obedience and repentance. I think that a lot of people don’t even have the book to look at and read. It is actually set up really well with guides for parents and children to use as they read the book. It opens up dialogue about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and encourages parents to pray and seek guidance for continued discussion about the infinite atonement of Jesus Christ and seeking forgiveness when we have made mistakes. I think it is pretty great. I understand that some might disagree, but my kids loved it and understood the deeper concept through our discussion.
That’s a fairly short list of sins. How about judging unrighteously? How about being lazy, or not attending the temple enough, or not cleaning the church with a grateful heart?
You can tell that someone has created God in her image when they hate all the same sins that God does. 🙂
David and Erin, the problem is that both of you (and apparently Wendy Nelson) are imagining that God’s expectation is for us to be perfect and that the atonement is a back-up plan to make up the difference when we fall short. To be perfectly frank, that’s a damned heresy.
Of couse God’s law demands perfection. No argument. But we have already broken God’s law, not because we made a couple of mistakes, but because we are fallen and sinful by nature. We are not good people who mess up and sin sometimes; we are sinners. We come into this world completely and utterly in the clutches of the satan.
Joining the “Not Even Once Club” is not even theoretically possible, because we are incapable of choosing God on our own. It is impossible to live a sinless life without Grace. God gives, as a gift, the ability to do what he commands. But your salvation, your redemption from the grasp of the satan, is not dependent on your ability to live sinlessly. Your salvation is not by virtue of your righteousness; it is by virtue of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That is the basic principle that you are missing, and it changes the entire perspective: you are not saved by your works; you are saved by becoming subject to the Messiah and allowing his works to save you.
I’ll say it again: the Not Even Once Club is the wrong club, because it’s a lie. The club we should be teaching our kids to join is the Kingdom of Heaven. The choice you need to be the most worried about your kids making is the choice to follow Jesus.
I agree completely, the “Not Even Once” club is based on a severely distorted view of the Spirit. Its a very scary view of God and Christ. Teaching kids this way is sowing seeds of real problems down the road.
I am not sure what it has to do with the Spirit. Care to elaborate?
I am speaking of the Spirit in the Mormon sense, i.e. as Mormons normally talk about it.
The distorted view is that some Mormons believe that we are entitled to the Spirit if (and only if) we keep the commandments. This leads to a drastic correlation between feeling the Spirit, the love of God, etc. and where the person sits in their compliance with certain commandments. And this ultimately leads to lack of faith and/or self loathing.
So you are putting the focus on “what must be done to have the Spirit” as opposed to “what must be done to be saved.”
For Mormons, that is the focus.
It’s certainly a focus. Dunno about the focus. I don’t know if Mormon theology is sufficiently well-developed in that regard.
I think its a practical reality. The Spirit, and worthiness to be its companion, seemed to be a constant focus to me.
I mean, I think you are right about it as the de facto focus. I just wonder what that means in the bigger picture of Mormon theology and the Plan of Salvation.
If worthiness to have the Spirit is the most important thing, well, why? And what does that mean for the rest of the Plan of Salvation (Pre-Existence, Mortal Life, Spirit World, Final Judgment, Degree of Glory) and the Mormon Gospel (Faith in Jesus Christ, Repentance, Baptism, Gift of the Holy Ghost and Endure to the End)?
I think that I am describing the standard understanding of the Gift of the Holy Ghost and its importance in the Gospel. Remission of sins comes by baptism by the Holy Ghost, the gift of the Holy Ghost guides the believer in daily life and the promise is that they will always have the Spirit with them if they keep the commandments.
Dalin Oaks, quotes Joseph Smith to propose that the Gift of the Holy Ghost is the most important difference between other Christian churches.
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/1996/10/always-have-his-spirit?lang=eng
This teaching doesn’t have a lot of consequences for any of the doctrines of the church regarding salvation, because the common Mormon soteriology makes theological accuracy relatively unimportant. In theory, everybody is given a chance to make saving covenants, after being given a fair explanation of the gospel and what is at stake. The remission of sins comes by receiving the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost is the basis of faith and enlightenment. Living by the Spirit is what makes a believer qualified for the Second Endowment.
Also, in theory, the Spirit trumps any theology and Joseph Smith left the theological door wide-open for the Spirit to keep trumping established doctrines. There really can be no solid theology when the basis of the theology is conceptually in flux. Mormons also acknowledged that their theology is incomplete, and wait for all of the sealed and secret teachings to come out to explain all the theological questions left open. Ultimately, in this situation, traditional-Christian-style theology is impossible.
I think you misunderstand what I meant by asking about its relevance to Mormon theology, and I think you are severely mis-using the term “theology.”
Which is unfortunate, because I think there is a hypothetical good conversation to be had here, but not if you don’t check some of your baggage from Tim’s blog at the door.
hmm, well, I guess I am not sure where the ball is, nor where the goal is, but I am interested in a good conversation. What do you mean by theology?
I am also interested to know the baggage I should drop, sincerely.