"Rules for Thee but not for Me" - A Reflection on Power, Hypocrisy, and Latter-day Warnings

 Rules for Thee, But Not for Me  

A Reflection on Power, Hypocrisy, and Latter-day Warnings

The phrase “rules for thee but not for me” captures a timeless human failing: the comfortable belief that moral standards, warnings, and restraints are meant for everyone else—never quite for us. It thrives wherever power gathers. Politicians exempt themselves from the laws they impose on citizens. Corporate leaders preach austerity while securing golden parachutes. Cultural elites lecture about sacrifice from their yachts and positions of comfort and privilege. In every case, the reasoning is the same: "I am different. I am necessary. The rules are for the lesser ones."

Religious institutions are not magically immune. They are made of people—flawed, status-seeking, image-conscious people—who can slowly adopt the same attitude. When a church accumulates wealth, influence, fine buildings, or a sense of being the sole exception to widespread apostasy, the temptation grows: the prophetic warnings must apply to "them"—the other churches, the fallen world, the Gentiles who never received the restoration. Surely not to "us". We are the faithful remnant. We are on the right side of history with God.

The Book of Mormon refuses to let us off that easily. Written specifically for the people who would receive it in the latter days, its final pages are a sobering vision from Moroni, who says he has seen our time. He does not speak in polite generalities. He declares:

“I know you live pridefully; there are none, except for a few, who aren't lifted up in pride to their very center... and "your churches and congregations -- every single one of them -- have become polluted because of the pride of your hearts.” (Mormon 4:5 MC - Modern Covenants)

He goes further, rebuking those who love money, fine apparel, and the adorning of churches more than the poor and needy, calling out hypocrites and teachers who “sell themselves for that which will canker” and pollute “the holy church of God” (Mormon 4:5 MC).

Nephi, centuries earlier, described the same latter-day scene: churches corrupted by pride and false doctrine, lifted up and puffed up, each claiming “I, I am the Lord’s” while contending with one another (2 Nephi 12:1-2 MC).

These are not ancient warnings aimed at long-dead Catholics or Protestants alone. Moroni addresses the future readers of the record directly—“you” and “your churches.” The book was preserved and brought forth for "this" day. Yet it is remarkably common, even within the restored Church, to read these chapters as a comfortable diagnosis of everyone else’s apostasy. The Great Apostasy happened long ago to others. We restored the truth. Therefore, the pollutions, the pride, the hypocrisy—they must belong to the outsiders. We point the scriptures outward like a spotlight on the world, while assuming our own immunity.

That is “rules for thee but not for me” dressed in Sunday best.

So what's in the mirror? The powerful—whether in government, business, or religion—often convince themselves they stand above the fray. Churches can do the same when institutional success, cultural respectability, or a narrative of being “the one true church” creates a quiet exemption clause. The very prophecies meant to humble us become tools for self-assurance: "Those" churches are corrupt. "Those" people have slipped. We, however, are good with God.

But if the Book of Mormon is true, it was written "to" us and "about" us. Its authors saw our day and chose these words because they knew human nature would not change—even inside a restored covenant people. Pride, love of wealth and appearance, and the slow pollution of what should be holy do not magically skip one organization. The only safe posture is to drop the exemption and ask whether the warnings describe "us", right now, in subtle ways we’d rather not admit.

True discipleship begins not with outward pointing, but with inward honesty. It asks whether we have begun to believe the rules (and the rebukes) apply to everyone except the group we belong to.

In the end, the most searching question each of us must face is the one the scriptures quietly invite:  

"Is it I?  

Am I the one walking in the pride these prophets foresaw? Am I stuck in the comfortable loop of applying the warnings to others while assuming my own house is in order? Or can I look unflinchingly into the mirror, examine my heart and my community with real humility, and course-correct—believing that these words were spoken precisely to people like me, in a day exactly like this one?

That single honest question may be the beginning of real faithfulness.

So I have a thoughtful friend who "sees" and has the honest tensions of many thoughtful Latter-day Saints.  He sees the pride, the wealth, the image-management, the quiet exemptions—the very pollutions Moroni described—and yet he clings to the idea that the restoration and the hierarchical authority somehow make the Church immune or at least the only possible path: he's not blind to the flaws. Most people who stay in any institution long enough either stop looking or start making excuses. He does neither, and that’s rare. He sees the corruption the Book of Mormon warned would come in ‘our day,’ yet you still believes this is the ‘one true church’ because the restoration happened and the keys of authority sit with the hierarchy. I get the logic. It feels safe. It feels like a divine insurance policy: "Even if we mess up, the priesthood power guarantees we’re still the right ship."

But here’s the uncomfortable question the scriptures themselves force us to ask: Does the Book of Mormon actually teach that?

Moroni didn’t write to some future generic Christians. He wrote to the people who would receive the record he was finishing—the very people living in the day of restoration. And what did he say about "their" churches?

‘Your churches, yea, even every one, have become polluted because of the pride of your hearts.’ (Mormon 8:36 LDS)

He didn’t carve out an exception for the restored one. He didn’t say, ‘All churches except the one that publishes this book.’ He said "every one". The same prophets who restored the authority also preserved a warning that the institution carrying that authority would still be vulnerable to the very pollutions they described.

Think about it: the Nephites had the ‘true church’—they had prophets, priesthood, temples, covenants, even visits from the resurrected Christ. Yet within a few generations they were lifted up in pride, building up churches to get gain, and sliding into the exact corruption Moroni later condemned. The authority didn’t save them from the slide. Righteousness did. When pride entered, the power of godliness departed, even while the outward offices remained.

The restoration restored "keys", not perfection. Joseph Smith himself warned that the Church would have to be ‘chastened and tried, even as Abraham’ and that many would fall away because they trusted in the arm of flesh instead of the Holy Ghost. The Book of Mormon’s entire latter-day message is that the restored people would be tempted to do exactly as described: point the prophecies at everyone else while quietly assuming "we" are the exception because we have the authority.

Authority without humility is just power. And power, as we both know, has a way of convincing itself the rules no longer apply quite so strictly.

So the real question isn’t whether the Church has the restored priesthood -- they no longer do. The question is whether we are living individually in a way that "honors" that priesthood. Moroni’s warning wasn’t written to destroy faith—it was written to refine it. It asks every one of us: Are you the exception, or are you part of the ‘every one’ he saw?

That’s not a question the hierarchy can answer for you. It’s not a question I can answer for you. It’s the mirror question: "Is it I?"

If the answer is ‘maybe,’ then perhaps the most faithful thing you can do is stay "in" the Church "while" refusing the exemption. Stay and call it to higher ground. Stay and demand that it live the warnings instead of explaining them away. That might be the hardest, most honest kind of belief there is—believing in the restoration enough to hold it accountable to the very book that made the restoration possible.”

Otherwise, I have an invitation. 

The Book of Mormon doesn’t ask us to choose between the Church and the truth. It asks us to love the truth enough to apply it first and foremost to ourselves.

Signed

John  (The-Not-So-Beloved)