Aloha Cake and the Perpetuation of a Falsehood in Mormondom

Today at church a myth was perpetuated, via an Aloha Cake (BTS Cake). It was like the one about the piece of wood and the nail? How when we sin, it's like nailing into the wood? We're the 2X4 and our sins are nails? Well, as the story goes, when we repent, it's like removing the nails/sins from the wood/us. Then the Savior's atonement is like putty, filling in the holes and making us nice an flat again. So we're an old piece of wood, covered and flat, but still old and pock marked.

Today's analogy involved a chocolate sheet cake that was stabbed with the end of a wooden spoon, to represent how our sins can tear us up. Then we try to cover things up in our own way with things like sweetened condensed milk and caramel sauce, but still you can see our sins, or something. But then the atonement comes in like light whipping cream, and covers it all up. But the cake is still beat up underneath, dadgummit!!

It's not true!!!!! When we repent, you can't see these old remnants of sin because we're made anew!! We get a totally new piece of wood, to continue the unfortunate analogy. We're not the same, stabbed cake, but a totally new one, no stabs in it, completely pure and ready to go. That's how the atonement works. When you teach the atonement as something that brings a newness of life, it's much more empowering:
"Knowing this, that our ^aold man is crucified with him, that the ^bbody of sin might be ^cdestroyed, that henceforth we should not serve ^dsin." (Romans 6:6)

Sorry if that was a soapbox moment, but I think the atonement is much more powerful and purifying than some putty or whipping cream, allowing us to walk in "newness of life" (Romans 6:4), because that's what baptism is, the renewal of our covenants at the sacrament, as well as the repentance process. We are very literally new, whole and complete.

I'm off my soapbox now.


And I'd rather have Gretchen's strawberry pie than Aloha Cake any day, anyway.