The Heart of Discipleship

                I believe we beat around the bush too much in this church. Very rarely do we really cut to the heart of the gospel. Too often we get lost in the thick of thin things while the things that are truly important escape our grasps. We spend our time trying to understand the leaves and branches before we really understand the trunk. And if we don’t understand the trunk, then our understanding of the branches and leaves will become distorted and incomplete. I don’t know where the need to do this came from or why we do it, but we should spend more time talking about the trunk of the tree; Christ and our relationship with him.

                So instead of talking about all the differing things that make up a Disciple in this church like honesty, good works and so on, I want to talk about where the path of Discipleship starts. Like a race, it doesn’t matter how good you run if you don’t start on the starting line. If you start anywhere else, you’ll be disqualified. Similarly, if you want to be a disciple you have to know where to start. Otherwise you could be busying yourself with things that are good but are of no worth because you didn’t start on the starting line. But maybe instead of starting lines, we should be talking about costs.

                In the New Testament Jesus said specifically what the cost of being a disciple was; ‘he that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple’. When we read this we want to hear that Jesus was saying to forget the things of the world because I have something of much more worth, and certainly that was a fraction of his intentions, but what those words really say is that Jesus doesn’t want our things, he wants our person. If Jesus wants things he has no problem getting them but it is people he wants. The cost of discipleship is everything the person is; their sins, their righteousness, their personality, their everything.

C.S Lewis said that when giving yourself to Christ, Christ says to us ‘Make no mistake, if you let me, I will make you perfect. The moment you put yourself in my hands, that is what you are in for. Nothing less, or other, than that. You have free will, and if you choose, you can push me away. But if you do not push me away understand that I am going to see this job through. Whatever suffering it may cost you in your earthly life, whatever inconceivable purification it may cost you after death, whatever it costs me, I will never rest, nor let you rest, until you are literally perfect….I will not do anything less.’

               

This can sound pretty intimidating. Especially when you remember that Jesus was represented by a Lion in CS Lewis’s fiction books. One of my favorite descriptions of Aslan is that He is not a tame lion, but he is good. Indicating that there is no telling what he’ll do, but you know that it’s for good. I like to think of the decision to be a disciple as the action of buckling myself into a roller coaster without knowing in advance all that it’ll be. I just know that the roller coaster will ultimately lead to everything I want and that I’ll survive. The act of buckling myself in says to Christ, ‘I trust you and will be yours no matter where this takes me’. That is the mark of a True Disciple; having fully entrusted yourself to Christ and His plans for you.

                This turns out an interesting situation; there is really no way to tell on the outside if anyone has made the decision to be a disciple. There are, for example, people who show their best faces all the time, are righteous and keep the commandments hoping to ‘distract’ God and others with their good works, but never truly fully commit themselves to Him. This type of person can never make it to the Celestial Kingdom. They are an empty shell. On the flip side, there are people who struggle through and through with the traps of mortality. From the outside, they don’t really seem to be ‘in the race’ per se, but on the inside they’ve committed themselves to Christ and are truly trying to be a good person. I believe there to be no room in heaven for empty shells. Heaven is only for people who have truly committed to Christ at heart and strive to be what He is, despite failure.

                Too often we want to believe that Jesus wants our righteousness before anything else. Now, don’t get me wrong, he does want us to be good, but it is not the most important thing to Him if He doesn’t already have us. After all, people are more important than things, and that means we are more important than our actions. This He made unbelievably clear through the Atonement which throws accountability out the window for our actions if we repent. Sitting at the heart of the Doctrine of the Atonement is the truth that God doesn’t care much about where we’ve been or what we’ve done, but that He cares about our hearts and where they’re pointing. This truth is obvious when we sin, but not so obvious when we’re righteous.

                In Mere Christianity, C.S Lewis gives the example of a fictional man and woman; Unbelieving Dick Firkin and Christian Miss Bates. Dick Firkin has a good temperament whereas Miss Bates can be mean and crotchety. If the purpose of life was to produce ‘nice people’ then God’s work would be done with Dick Firkin, He made him nice. But both are in need of just as much ‘saving’ as the other.

‘You cannot expect God to look at Dick’s placid temper and friendly disposition exactly as we do. They result from natural causes which God Himself creates. Being merely temperamental, they will all disappear if Dick’s digestion alters. The niceness, in fact, is God’s gift to Dick, not Dick’s gift to God. In the same way, God has allowed natural causes, working in a world spoiled by centuries of sin, to produce in Miss Bates the narrow mind and jangled nerves which account for most of her nastiness. He intends, in His own good time, to set that part of her right. But that is not, for God, the critical part of the business. It presents no difficulties. It is not what He is anxious about. What He is watching and waiting and working for is something that is not easy even for God, because, from the nature of the case, even he cannot produce it by a mere act of power. He is waiting and watching for it both in Miss Bates and in Dick Firkin. It is something they can freely give Him or freely refuse to Him. Will they, or will they not, turn to Him and thus fulfill the only purpose for which they were created?’

                Now, let’s suppose that we have given ourselves to Christ and are on the path of discipleship. What now? If we assume that we do all the things that one is supposed to do on the path of righteousness, not perfectly of course, but we keep our commitment; what becomes of us? Here again is another dangerous belief we can fall into; when one has given themselves to Christ, personality and all, what do we get in return? Well the Personality of Christ of course, but we have to be careful and truly understand what that means. I’ll tell you what it doesn’t mean; it doesn’t mean that we all have to orbit around some set stereotypical personality that our Mormon culture has set. The secret that we don’t see is that when we give God something in His right hand, He gives it right back to us with His left, only He has made it better. By giving ourselves to Christ we truly discover our real selves. Every individual who comes to Christ develops more and more into their real selves with infinite variety. The taste of salt is overpowering by itself but when added to food, it doesn’t (if done correctly) overtake the flavors that exist, but enhances and reveals them. God is waiting to give us our real selves if we will only give Him what we now call ourselves.

To become a True Disciple of Christ we must first choose to be that disciple and accept all that goes with it. That is the only cost God has ever set on being one of His Disciples and is the only thing He’ll accept from us.  Good works and righteousness are found further down the path of discipleship as Christ begins the perfection process on us, but we must remember that they are not the cost; we are. And if you find yourself to be more like Miss Bates, when the efforts of living a Christian life haven’t yet produced the kind of righteousness you’d hoped, to quote Lewis one last time ‘Keep on. He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive. Do what you can. One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps far sooner than that) He will fling it on the scrap-heap and give you a new one. And then you may astonish us all-not least yourself…‘ 

How Gods are Raised

Phase 2 of the Plan of Salvation, the one that we are all now in, is called mortality. This phase has been called lots of things, one of which is a Test. I’ve thought a lot about this ‘test’ as I’ve been taking it and I’ll tell you what- I don’t think it’s a test. A test implies that there is a pass/fail standard that we have to measure up to. If you’re not this tall you can’t come into the Celestial Kingdom. If that were so, I’m hell bound for sure. But the more I’ve thought about mortality, the more I see that this pass/fail mentality will doom a person for sure. C. S. Lewis said,

“I think everyone who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam. Or of a bargain in his mind. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea to bits. When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded. If fact, of course, He knows all about this. One of the very things Christianity was designed to do was to blow this idea to bits. God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam or putting Him in your debt…. When a man has made [this] discover[y] God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins.” (Mere Christianity, 143)

So to figure what mortality is then, let’s ask some questions.

What is its purpose? Why do we come here and put ourselves into the chaotic and messy dance of agency that involves billions of people? What is it supposed to do to us? What am I supposed to do with it?

When I’m trying to solve a problem I try and get outside the problem to figure it out. As the saying goes “we’re too close to the trees to see the forest”. If I try and understand these questions from the perspective of mortality alone-I might get a skewed, if not wrong, answer. So as we try and discover what the purpose of mortality is, let’s look at it from a couple different angles; the pre mortal perspective and the Celestial perspective.

First let’s see it from the perspective of the pre mortal versions of us; before we had lost the veil, while we were still in the presence of God and Jesus.

What do we know about this point in our existence?

-          It was a time of learning. What type of learning? I’m sure it ranged every subject that we have today on earth; everything from math (which might’ve been called something more like “the Quantification of Celestial Law”…I don’t know). There were surely other topics and subjects that are beyond our veiled grasp at the moment but probably made perfect sense there. Knowledge and learning were probably different. Here we have to struggle with information and repeat it and pair it in different ways and practice it for us to gain mastery. There, with the aid of revelation from the Spirit that was overly abundant I’m sure, we could learn easily and with grace. Elder Melvin J Ballard said “unto the Holy Ghost has been given the right and the privilege of manifesting the truth unto men as no other power will. So that when he makes a man see and know a thing he knows it better than he shall ever know anything else” while Joseph Fielding Smith said “The Spirit of God speaking to the spirit of man has power to impart truth with greater effect and understanding than the truth can be imparted by personal contact even with heavenly beings. Through the Holy Ghost the truth is woven into the very fibre and sinews of the body so that it cannot be forgotten.” Let’s remember that we had no bodies at this point, we were spirits. If we were learning by the spirit, which I’d say the vast majority of us were, then we were truly understanding things better than any mortal has ever understood things.

-          We had our agency. This fact is obvious because if we had no agency then Lucifer wouldn’t have had any free will to rebel and we wouldn’t have free will to choose to follow God. However again, our understanding of agency from now and then is probably a bit different. Here we struggle to make the right choices and in fact we choose wrong often. There, living in the presence of God and with our understanding of all truths as it was, using our agency to know and follow God’s will was probably a lot easier. An analogy might help; it might be like the difference between a water slide with an obvious path that’s smooth and there’s water around you to guide you in the right direction vs. white water rafting in a raging river with rocks and forks in the river. In the first it is still possible to disobey; for anyone who has been to seven peaks you know that it is fully possible to stop mid-slide. It’s also fully possible to climb over the side and jump to the ground, but why would anyone do that? Disobedience in the pre earth life was probably similar and is why it came down to a more or less black and white choice of whether or not to follow Christ or to jump off the slide.

Now if life was like that there, why even leave? The seminary answer to that is ‘well we had to get bodies’.  Granted, this is true, we were spirits and compared to God we definitely must’ve had the ‘I want to be like dad’ complex. But if the only purpose to mortality was to gain a body then I think it would’ve been done differently. Similarly; when Nephi and his family left Jerusalem the first time wouldn’t it have been nice if God said ‘oh hey you might want to grab these brass plates and your buddy Ishmael with his daughters on your way out.’ Instead, God waited till they were a couple hundred miles out of town to send them back for the plates and when they were back with those, sent them back for the Ishmael family. God’s designs here weren’t primarily to get those plates and that family-if it was he would’ve told them to do it the first time they left. His designs were to forge the character of Nephi and all those involved. So I don’t believe that our primary purpose in coming to earth is to get a body- I believe it to be a side effect. The purpose in mortality can be seen this scripture Alma 7: 11-13,

12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities. 13 Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now behold, this is the testimony which is in me.”

This scripture says that through the spirit of revelation Christ could’ve known how to succor us fully and completely. As was said above, the spirit can make a man know a thing in the fibers of his being. Christ came and suffered according to the flesh so that He might truly know and experience our pains. This speaks volumes about the majesty of His character but for my topic this illustrates the difference between knowing something in your head and knowing something in your heart. Most of us have experienced the contrast there. You can read the instructions and look at the diagram in a handbook until you’ve got it memorized, but putting together the piece of the puzzle is a whole other thing. It’s the difference between a lecture class and a lab class; between reading in a book how a broken bone heals and actually having one of your bones heal.

The major difference between us and God was that his character is 3 dimensional while ours was 2 dimensional. The simplicity of the analogy betrays the reality of God’s magnificence but you get the point. God had the bonus of experience while we simply didn’t. Now I’m sure we had experienced sadness and heartache and such while we were there, but our perspective on it was not limited by a veil and was aided by the Spirit. God, who we know, thanks to the Prophet Joseph Smith, had previously gone through a mortal life and gained this mysterious experience that had thus far eluded us.

To understand this let’s take a jump to the other side of mortality. What is the whole point of the Plan of Salvation? In the Celestial Kingdom we get to be with our families forever right? Surely that is the purpose. I don’t think so-it may simply be a benefit of the Kingdom we’ve found ourselves in. A fantastic benefit, yes, but like gaining a body, I believe it to be a side effect. The whole point of gaining Salvation in the Celestial Kingdom is to be like God. Now when I say this I don’t mean to do as He does, but to be as He is; to gain His character. Let’s look at God’s character

The Lectures on Faith has probably the best list of the perfect attributes that make up God’s character and I recommend reading through it. But for now here are the highlights:

-         - He is Omniscience and Omnipotence; knowing all things and having all power

-          -He is a God of truth and can’t lie

-         - He is no respecter of person’s; this means that he’s not a judgmental guy. It doesn’t matter who you are, what your social status is, or what you’ve done, he will not hold the gospel back from you

-          -He is unchangeable. The same yesterday, today and forever. This means that he doesn’t suffer from mood swings like the rest of us do. He doesn’t have bad days and he doesn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed. There is no need to butter him up for anything like we’ve all done with our earthly parents

-        - Here is the best part of his character; God is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, kind and is inclined to forgiveness. To quote Elder Holland- “surely the thing God enjoys most about being God is the thrill of being merciful, especially to those who don’t expect it and often feel they don’t deserve it.” Have you ever experience that? The thrill of Mercy.

The summation of God’s mighty character can really be boiled down to a single word; love. God is love. Or better yet, Charity; God is Charity. He is the man that perfectly embodies the character of Charity. That is what I want. I want Charity. The Celestial Kingdom is special because the people in it understand the way God does what Charity means. Isn’t that great?

The purpose of mortality is to learn and experience Charity. It’s often been said that we’ve come down here to prove ourselves. I don’t like that saying at all. After all God is omniscient, He knows everything which means He already knows where each of us will end up. If mortality is just a sorting ground it would’ve been much easier to use something like the sorting hat from Hogwarts. God wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of setting this world up for us if it was just some magical sorting planet. Mortality is for us, not for God.

I’ll illustrate this with an example from my life. When I was on my mission there were a lot of missionaries who had the idea in their mind that numbers and outward success accurately reflected the overall success and even the character of the missionary. Being one who never was blessed with high numbers, I frequently came under fire from my DL’s and ZL’s. I found solace in the fact that if the whole purpose of a mission was so that God could bring people into His Church, he would give each companionship a Liahona that would lead them directly to the door of the individual or family ready to hear and accept the gospel. That would be much easier and more efficient. But that’s not how it is. Ideally the heart should be like a Liahona that the Spirit can use to lead, but every missionary knows that that doesn’t happen every waking moment of every day. There is a lot of soul searching on a mission trying to figure yourself out.  I learned through this that the purpose of a mission is to forge the character of the missionary into what God wants it to be. If you’re doing what you’re supposed to and being who God intended you to be, you’ll come out on the other side something that God is pleased with and can use. Baptisms are a side effect of this process; a divine side effect, but a side effect none the less. Thus mortality is a place for God to forge us, as CS Lewis would say, into millions of tiny replicas of Himself, each individual in their own way; to teach us to love as He loves. This can be seen as Jesus gives us the two most important commandments; love God and love your neighbor. Everything is summed up with that.

Before we look at mortality from the perspective of mortality, let’s look at what mortality is. When we were sitting and listening to God tell us about mortality in our pre mortal state, it must’ve been terribly intimidating to some. Similarly to how the prospect of going on a mission feels; you have tried to prepare, you’ve heard stories about it, but nothing will prepare you for the thing itself other than the thing itself. It goes back to knowing something in your mind vs. you heart. God surely told this to us, that no matter how much we learned or how much he told us about it, we would never get the experience any other way then simply entering mortality.

The very environment of mortality is different than we were used to.  With our Faith we had while in the pre mortal phase, I’m sure miracles were not uncommon and were not referred to as miracles. They were simply what happened. Our wills could be extended beyond our bodies to manipulate a finite amount material, for this is what miracles are. But in the mortal phase, our will and agency would be wholly confined to our individual selves. Truly, our power of independent action will be the only power we are allotted. All else is God’s; our breath, our heartbeat, the very life energy that will bind us to our bodies is derived from God and is under his ultimate control. The physical material the mortal spectrum of the universe is made of is God’s and is under his control. If a miracle is to be preformed it will be by someone with His authority and will only be able to happen if it is His will, not ours. We will be vessels of choice and nothing else.

Imagining the chaotic dance of agency as choices of uncountable trillions of individuals cascade and intertwine to form the world that I live in makes my head want to burst. I’m sure we had to reassure ourselves that Omniscience meant just that. God wouldn’t send us into mortality if he didn’t think that we’d come out on the other side better for it. He would put us in life just where He wants us and in the family and environment that would ultimately lead to the greatest amount of happiness on the other side.

Perhaps the most intimidating thing about the whole idea of entering mortality was the Veil. Upon entrance into mortality a figurative veil is pulled over our memories, blocking our pre mortal experiences from us. If we are to be vessel of choice, then our choice cannot be taken from us by our memories of our lives with God. However, the veil doesn’t do anything about our individuality. It doesn’t make us a blank slate that our mortal environment can scribble all over. Our personalities and individuality would shine through in mortality, dampened yes, and also impeded by the conditions of the world, but if you would embrace God’s will, then the most fundamental things about who you are would still be there. Funny people would still be funny, musical people would still have a fascination with music. Putting a lily in another pot with new soil doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a lily. I’m sure I asked Him something along the lines of ‘when I come out the other side, I’ll still be me right?’ to which He must’ve replied ‘oh yes; only the dross will be burned away. Everything that makes up the real you will be enhanced and made purer. But, even so, you will not be the same.’

I imagine myself, with all this stuff going on inside my head, standing on the precipice of an abyss looking down into blackness with God standing next to me explaining what it’s like during the descent, what it’s like beyond the darkness. But it comes down to the fact that my eyes need to see it, my essence needs to experience it to fully comprehend it. God knows it’s no use to tell me to not worry because He’s been where I am. What scares me is not whether I will make it through alright, because I know intellectually what the Savior did for us all; I will be caught on the other side with open arms and I’ll make it through the abyss unharmed, what scares me is how I’ll be different. All He does is square me up and look me straight in the eye and say, ‘I’ll be with you every step of the way, even when you don’t see me.’ And because I know that God can’t lie I step out into nothing and begin mortality.

Now that we’re here we can finally, from the perspective of our current mortal situation, consider mortality. The first thing that is obvious to me is that it’s really hard. I’m just talking for myself here but I’m not very good at this whole Charity thing. In fact, I’m terrible at it. And I’d venture a guess to say that you think you’re not that good at it either. If we took a survey of everyone on the planet to take an honest temperature of how we all think we’re measuring up to this standard of Charity; if people were resolutely honest I think it would show that we all fail at this divine love. Failure is present in our world.

I think in the pre mortal world failure was possible but probably rare for those who were doing what they were supposed to do. Obedience to God’s will can be compared to a water slide in the pre mortal life, but now it’s like that raging white water river. To temper this love that God is forging in us, mortality introduces failure to everyone. If you come into mortality you are subject to coming up short and unless you’re Jesus, you will come up short of the standard of Charity in this life. There is no getting around it so there is no use beating ourselves up about it. We all fall short. But because this failure happens, God has a purpose and a solution for it. For if there was no purpose in failure it wouldn’t exist. If there was no purpose in us being imperfect, then God would have made it so we could be perfect on our own efforts. And if there were no solution to it, then the purpose wouldn’t matter anyways.

I’ll illustrate with a story from a book called The Continuous Atonement. In it Brad Wilcox says ‘

Working on my Ph. D. at the University of Wyoming, I was required to take an advanced statistics course. I had completed the beginning courses several years earlier, but could remember very little. I had no idea how I was going to manage the requirements of an advanced class.

Several weeks into the semester, I was floundering. I approached the chair of my committee, Louise Jackson, and said, “This is really over my head. Usually I at least know enough about a subject to follow along. This time I am totally lost.”

“Good!” she replied…  “Remember how this feels. Memorize this moment. Don’t ever forget this lesson. This is how many of your future students will feel, and you must be able to relate to them in order to understand and be effective in helping them.”

He then went on and used tutors and regular checkups with his teacher to help him eventually pass the class. Here we can see that the purpose of our failures and sins is to teach us to depend on God and to have compassion towards those in our same position of need-which everyone is. We learn to love God because we find that he is the unchanging aid that will always forgive and always help. George Q Cannon said,

No matter how serious the trial, how deep the distress, how great the affliction, [God] will never desert us. He never has, and He never will. He cannot do it. It is not His character [to do so]. He is an unchangeable being; the same yesterday, the same today, and He will be the same throughout the eternal ages to come. We have found that God. We have made Him our friend, by obeying His Gospel; and He will stand by us. We may pass through the fiery furnace; we may pass through deep waters; but we shall not be consumed nor overwhelmed. We shall emerge from all these trials and difficulties the better and purer for them, if we only trust in our God and keep His commandments. 

I love God because of this magnificent Character. I want to be just like that, I’m far from it, but I want to be it.

And we learn to love our neighbors because we’re all in the same boat and are in need of the same assistance from God. We learn that the Rock of Eternity that is Jesus Christ is broad as Eternity and can fit everyone so we don’t need to be kicking and pushing people who are trying to climb up. As we serve and lift each other we gain love and acceptance of the individual.

I believe that the sole purpose of mortality is so that God can lay the foundations in us that will one day support the Divine Character that we will build, together with God, in the Eternities. In light of this, mortality ceases to be a test and becomes a project that God and I am working on together. If I allow God to help me and ultimately guide me, I’ll come out on the other side exactly the way He intended; not perfect, but with a foundation to lay perfection on. That is why there is only one way, one baptism, and one faith; not because God is an elitist, but because mortality is the only process by which the individual can be made into the foundation to support the eternal perfect version of that self with all its glory and majesty. In short: mortality is how gods are raised.

A Great Campaign of Sabtoge

What is a Rebel? You might call into your mind has piercings, tattoos, a strange haircut and odd clothing. This would be normal. When we hear rebel we naturally think of hard rock music, drugs, alcohol, or anything that breaks the ‘social norm’ of society. That’s simply the image we have been programmed by our society to think of.

What, then, is conformism? You might think of a straight laced, white collared gentleman with parted hair and a wry smile. Never doing a thing wrong and always doing everything that’s expected of him without any verbal complaints. He should be a religious man who conforms to a set of living taught to him. One might even call him a square.

I think we all naturally have a propensity for rebellion though; a thirst for individuality that we sometimes don’t believe our culture affords us. Why is this so, if what we see as rebellion is so looked down on; especially as Mormons? When I go to church and hear about commandments, being Christlike and lots of downer things about being a rebel I can begin to think that there might be a status quo that I must up hold and that there might be something wrong with me. This is worsened by the fact that I’m not allowed into anyone else’s minds, so to me I only see people who all talk about obedience and conforming that don’t seem to visibly have a problem with it. I want to break free of that, but I’m scared to do it because I don’t want to be considered a rebel.

We also have a natural pull to conformity. This one is in odd contrast to our urge to be individuals. Despite all my wants to be myself I also want to be like someone else; someone I see on tv, someone from work or from school. I see someone and I want to absorb some of whatever they are into me; be it clothes, music, movies, personality, friends it’s all the same. I think if I can just do whatever it is they do or wear what they wear I can be just like them. This mentality can pull us into supposed ‘status quos’ or lifestyles that may not be realistic. I want to be the perfect Mormon so I have to live the perfect Mormon lifestyle. I have to do everything that I would expect a perfect Mormon to do so that I can fit in and not be gawked at like a rebel.

With these two ideas casting their lots in our brains, it can sometimes feel like we’re fighting a losing battle; “My culture wants me to be one of them, to be a good Mormon. I don’t want to stick out and be the weird one. I wish I could be the Mormon like so and so down the street.” But at the same time we have thoughts like “What can I do to be noticed? I’m tired of just being like everyone else. Those people are such squares!” What do we do with seemingly conflicting ideas? Surely we have both desires in us for a reason, right? So there must be a place for rebellion/individuality and conformity within us.

It’s my belief that the true meaning of these ideas has actually been reversed in our current world. When we see rebellion and conformity as the world wants us to see it, we’re trapped in this limbo. Let’s switch it up a bit.

In a recent worldwide seminary address Boyd K Packer told the youth of the church “You are growing up in enemy territory. When you become mature spiritually, you will understand how the adversary has infiltrated the world around you. He is in homes, entertainment, the media, language—everything around you. In most cases, his presence is undetected” (How to Survive in Enemy Territory, 2012). Frequently we’ve also heard from Pres Monson that the world’s standards have long separated from ours- “I recall a time—and some of you here tonight will also—when the standards of most people were very similar to our standards. No longer is this true… Despite what you may see or hear elsewhere, these laws are unchanging.”(Dare to Stand Alone, 2011) and that ours will not change. This can offer a shift in our perspectives. If I’m behind enemy lines, how would a blend in? By Conforming to the standards of the culture I think. If I’m behind Enemy lines and I wanted to raze some hell, how would I do it? Well I’d rebel of course and do everything I could to incite it in others.

Some of our favorite movies and books are based off of a tyrannical evil leadership with a rebel group who are the good guys-not the bad guys. Think of it: rebels as the good guys. I think more today than ever is the idea of standing for one’s good ideals to the point of rebelling against any conformers.

I do not see drugs, alcohol, tattoos, piercings, mindless partying, and unrestrained human passions as rebellion; I see it as stark Conformity. Does the parlance everyone else is doing it ring a bell? I repeat; we are in Enemy territory! The things we see on tv, listen to in our music and read about in our magazines are all just the propaganda of the ruling super power-Satan. In Enemy territory we see mindless drama, superficial materialism, body modifications and violence- all these things are part of Enemy culture and accepted as the norm.

Part of the Enemies tactics is to play into our natural tendencies for both conformism and rebellion. For those who want to fit in he says that this is what everyone is doing. To be accepted by my people you must blend into my people. And for those of us who like rebellion he spins the persuasion; ‘break free, don’t go with the flow. God won’t let you be an individual.’ We are most susceptible to these thoughts when we’re young.

Now as long as we’re in Enemy territory that means that rebellion means to be a Mormon! And to be one no matter what. C.S Lewis wrote

“We are living in a part of the Universe occupied by the [Adversary]. Enemy-Occupied territory-that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going.”

With this perspective rebellion can be seen as a form of humility; courageously doing what God commands because God commands. Pres Monson has said “when a God speaks and man obeys; that man is always right” (not sure where or when he said it, but I honestly remember reading it).  

That natural inclination we have to be an individual is godly. We were born unique and separate from every one of the trillions of people to have graced this planet over its lifetime. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally-there will never be another person like me or you. The mold was created and broken with each of us. Our individuality comes from God as an author creates a character in a book, says C.S Lewis. Any effort on our parts to further become an individual without God’s help will be futile and will only lead to us becoming more like someone else. So in the familiar paradox that is the Gospel-to become an individual I must stop trying so hard to be one.

This leads to our natural inclination for conformism. It is a desire put in us by God so that we would want to be like Him. Just as the Enemy wants us to be like him-miserable, carnal, vengeful and full of wrath; our God wants us to be like him-Merciful, patient, full of love, respectable and just. So the odd twist is that both parties ultimately want me to conform but for different reasons. In the Screwtape Letters, the tempter Screwtape reveals his motives; “We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below( Satan) has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy(God) wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.” (Screwtape Letters). Ultimately neither party cares about my actions, they simply want me as an individual.

The results are drastically different between the two. If I gave myself to the Adversary I would become a cookie cut of him with no distinctions. By coming to Christ and giving myself to Him I have the capacity to truly be myself. No one knows who you truly are better than your Creator so wouldn’t it make sense that He could make you unlike anybody else? Physically we’re already individuals. But to be a true individual on the inside we must turn to our Maker and let him do it by doing the things he asks us to do.

This is one of those things in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that doesn’t make a lot of sense on the surface. I mean, if I try to do everything God says, won’t I be just like everyone else? To make sense of this conundrum I will turn again to C.S. Lewis who simplified it for me,

“To become new men means losing what we now call ‘ourselves’. Out of our selves, into Christ, we must go. His will is to become ours and we are to think His thoughts, to ‘have the mind of Christ’ as the Bible says. And if Christ is one, and if He is thus to be ‘in’ us all, shall we not be exactly the same? It certainly sounds like it; but in fact it is not so.

…Imagine a lot of people who have always lived in the dark. You come and try to describe to them what light is like. You might tell them that if they come into the light that same light would fall on them all and they would all reflect it and thus become what we call visible. Is it not quite possible that they would imagine that, since they were all receiving the same light, and all reacting to it the same way (i.e. all reflecting it), they would all look alike? Whereas you and I know that the light will in fact bring out, or show up, how different they are. Or again, suppose a person who knew nothing about salt. You give him a pinch to taste and he experiences a particular strong, sharp taste. You then tell him that in your country people use salt in all their cookery. Might he not reply ‘In that case I suppose all your dishes taste exactly the same: because the taste of that stuff you have just given me is so strong that it will kill the taste of everything else’. But you and I know that the real effect of salt is exactly the opposite. So far from killing the taste of the egg and the tripe and the cabbage, it actually brings it out. They do not show their real taste till you have added salt.” (Mere Christianity)

Imagine being who you really are. Wouldn’t it be awesome to truly be who you were created to be? What if there was no need to pretend to be anything else other than you? A lot of stress would be lifted from all of our shoulders. There would be no need to be ‘better’ than someone else because our goal would to be our best selves and no one else. This would shake the very foundations of the Enemy’s warfare against us.

True individuality is to be found by Coming to Christ. True conformity is to be found by submitting to the Adversary. I believe Heaven to be full of splendid individuals with rich and vibrant personalities who have all found themselves by Coming to Christ.

Honesty Pt3: The Source and Our Duty

Pt3

                I believe that when we have this personal honesty we should not keep it secret. After all, we have felt the tremendous burden of perfection lifted from our shoulders so wouldn’t we try to alleviate someone else pain? If I’m not pretending to myself that I’m perfect, why pretend to others? We can all tell when some is solidly grounded and just seems to get it. We naturally gravitate to those types of people. As we’re honest about being imperfect, we liberate others to do the same. The insecure don’t need their pride inflated, they need to realize that its totally natural to be imperfect and that everyone else is to. My hope would be to put their mind at ease and let them feel better about themselves because there is no reason to cry about spilled milk in the middle of the earthquake of mortality.

                So I’ve talked about this personal honesty and all the great things about it and only alluded to the ‘how’.  As I look back I can see what the first domino was that fell to cause this paradigm shift in perspective; God pushed over the Confidence in Christ domino. Jesus came and did what he did because He and God foresaw and realized that not a single one of us would make it through the Mortal experience unscathed. We would all succumb to sin and shatter our chances to return on our own efforts. Their unfailing charity for us imperfect things is what moved them to act for us. Unlike us, Jesus could go through the Mortal experience and leave unscathed and would do this vicariously for the rest of us. He cleared the path. No matter how dirty we got in mortality, he made it so we could choose to come back.

                And that’s the heart of it-I choose to have Confidence in Christ. I choose to believe that he really can make my scarlet sins into white snow drifts. My returning back to heaven is not dependent on my abilities to run through a mud pit without getting muddy, but my willingness to choose Christ and believe that he can continually clean me up. He did what He did to allow imperfect people into Heaven to become truly perfect there.

                Perfection will come to those who want it. But does this mean that I can, as I said, roll around in the mud of my imperfection and revel in it? H no! That is not what a god would do. If we did live life like this we would be terribly uncomfortable in the presence of God. As Moroni says in Mormon 9:4, ‘Behold, I say unto you that ye would be more miserable to dwell with a holy and just God, under a consciousness of your filthiness before him, than ye would to dwell with the damned souls in hell.’

 We are to develop the attitude of a god by striving for perfection all our lives even when it’s unobtainable. However paradoxical that is doesn’t matter, it’s true. Jesus and the Atonement mean that we don’t have to be discouraged when we fail; we simply have to pick ourselves back up and try again. We have to try to keep the commandments to the best of our abilities but not for the sake of getting yourself to heaven or trying to measure up to the Celestial ‘you must be this righteous to be here’ sign. Keeping commandments is for the sake of demonstrating Confidence in the One who asks us to follow him and he’ll clean us up and get us there. So its all on his shoulders not mine. If I choose Christ and give him my good efforts at perfection, then I’m assured salvation. Sweet!

Thus we can be fully honest with ourselves and accept that we just aren’t perfect. Oh well- it’s just not in the game plan right now. I don’t even have to pretend to be perfect to have divine acceptance either. Man that feels good. I don’t have to hate others for how I perceive that they’re better than me either because we’re all in the same boat. Hot dang! I love a quote by Elder Nelson, ‘Be patient with yourself.  Perfection comes not in this life but in the next life. Don’t demand things that are unreasonable, but demand of yourself improvement. As you let the Lord help you through that, he will make the difference.’

Remember our duty to alleviate the burden on others. When Jesus said to ‘let you light shine’ he did not mean to let us shine but our Hope and Confidence in Christ shine bright. So along with being honest about our imperfections to relieve the burden on others we should be displaying our utmost Confidence in Christ to show them the way and source of our ‘at-easness’. 

Honesty Pt2: My Experience

Pt2

I find it hard to pinpoint the exact moment that my mindset changed because I don’t believe it was a moment in time, but it was a series of events and circumstances called ‘Going on a Mission’ that did it. All of a sudden I was faced with more rules and regulations than I was used to. And half of them seemed ridiculous and made because some other sucker ruined it for the rest of us. Over time I realized that perfect obedience was beyond my reach; not just perfect obedience to mission rules, but also to the standard commandments. I just couldn’t do it. There were too many things vying for my energies and efforts. What’s worse is that I looked around me and saw other missionaries who seemed to not have a problem keeping rules and appeared to keep them perfectly. As a green missionary I just assumed that all missionaries were perfect and that I was simply the only one that struggled (the same predicament that most every imperfect person is in).

I can only assume that God set all this up to teach me a lesson that would root itself in me. I can only say it was God orchestrating this and flipping the switch in my heart because I can’t recall a moment when it clicked in my mind. It was like the ‘dews from heaven’.

Here’s what happened; I gave up the illusion that I was perfect and I gave up trying to give off as though I were perfect. I just didn’t feel the need to pretend anymore. It was amazing. All the personal frustration of falling short and not being ‘perfect’ just melted away. Nowadays, those thoughts are like water on a ducks back, they just don’t stick to me. A lot of frustration and unneeded stress comes from frequently falling short of our pretended perfect personas.

If the scriptures are true then Romans 3:23 which says, ‘For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God…’ becomes a balm of Gilead instead of a sting to my pride. God put that verse in there to let us know that not a one of us is perfect; at some point sometime every single one of us has blundered and messed up. How relieving! He wants us to know that our efforts cannot get us there. No matter how good those efforts might be. It requires quite the perspective shift because that verse can certainly hurt the ego and conscious of the even the best of saints. As I accepted this there was a tremendous amount of freedom that opened up to me.  A mountain of weight was lifted off my shoulders.

Ok let’s be clear, If I can say to myself ‘I’m not perfect, so I’m not going to pretend to be’ that doesn’t mean that I’m gonna go and live a life of sin and roll around in my imperfections, it just means that I’m gonna be free from unrighteous self judgment. I no longer have to beat myself up for falling short of the Standard of Perfection because as the scripture says, we all have. I don’t have to put off to anyone for their acceptance because we’re all in the same boat anyways.

I’m also free (or at least the need to do it feels less because God knows I still do) from unrighteous judgment of others. After all; if I’m imperfect being what I am, then, darn it, everyone else is to. So of course someone else is gonna mess up, of course someone else is gonna say dumb things to me. But I don’t need to get hung up on it because we’re in the same boat. It’s easier to forgive because I’m also in desperate need of their forgiveness because I’m sure I’ve done dumb things to them.  The only way either of us is gonna make it is through Jesus so let’s just let imperfection slide off each other’s backs. God wants this desperately as D&C 64:10 implies: ‘I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.’

I’m also a lot less afraid of what people think of me. I realize that even if I was perfect, I’d be judged to be bad by some people. Jesus, who is actually perfect, was a prime example of this. So I might as well just do the best I can and try not to give people reasons to think ill of me and forget about the rest. There is freedom in personal honesty; freedom to be your best self.

Honesty Pt1: False Pretenses

As I sat down to write this, it became larger than I first thought. So it'll be broken up into 3 parts. Stay tuned for parts 2 & 3.

Personal Honesty & Confidence in Christ

Part 1

                I believe there is more to honesty than simply not saying untruthful things. If that was all it was then the vast majority of us would be upright honest people. I mean, it’s fairly logical that if I say something untrue to cover my butt, it’s gonna start a whole mess of untruthful things that will pull me into a web of anxiety. So it’s just better to not to lie to anyone. Life would be much more simple and easy on the whole if everyone followed this idea.

                I’d say honesty is divided into two parts; honesty with our fellowman and honesty with ourselves…ok-there’s probably more ways to divide honesty than two ways, but for my purpose here let’s just keep it simple. I think honesty with others is pretty straight forward and do-able if we put some effort into it. But honesty with ourselves is a much more complicated affair. Accepting who and what we are can really suck sometimes. I mean, come on-who really wants to admit, or worse yet-accept- that they’re imperfect and fall short of almost every supposed social measuring device. Despite what we see on the outside most everyone feels like they come up short of something.

                This is especially true in Mormon culture where we go to church, seminary, mutual, relief society, priesthood and all other such functions where we hear about keeping commandments. We are constantly reminded of the Standard of Perfection. As I listen to all the things I have to do and I look around at all the people who seem to be doing such a good job at keeping all the commandments I tend to feel ‘spiritually small’. This is because I know all too well that I can’t do all these things all the time, and I know God knows I don’t do all these things all the time either. However, by outward appearances it seems like everyone else is doing loads better than me and I’m being passed in the Race of Life.

                As a result of these feelings and the natural urge we all have of wanting to fit in (which is another topic in itself that I will address); my life becomes about putting on the best show so that everyone around me thinks I’m perfect.  I’m not saying this is true of everyone, but it certainly goes through everyone’s heads.

Let’s be fair though; what’s the difference between pretending to keep the commandments perfectly and actually trying to keep the commandments perfectly? Outwardly-nothing; inwardly-everything. Therein lays the difference between an imperfect person and a hypocrite. And this is why we feel the way we do because it appears as though everyone is perfect or at least really close and certainly better than ourselves. I’m not inside their heads feeling their feelings and thinking their thoughts.

As I progress along the path of Pretended Perfection, the deeper and deeper my own lies to myself get. Unlike other people, I am inside my own head; I do think my thoughts and feel my feelings. I know full well that I do not measure up to the Standard of Perfection yet I still put off as though I do. This is dishonesty at its finest. Even if I don’t actually believe that I’m perfect but just act it for the sake of approval, it’s still dishonest. 

Now, if you haven’t felt any of these feelings you are either lying or are delusional. So let’s look at the other side of the coin of dishonesty with oneself.  Instead of feeling bad we aren’t perfect and putting on a façade of perfection, there’s the group of delusional self righteous suckers that actually believe they’re pretty darn close to perfection (this state of mind can also grow from the previously described False Pretense). Regrettably, I would put a past me into this category. I think for a long time I actually did hold onto the idea that I was closer to perfection, or at least better at keeping the commandments, than a lot of my peers. It’s true that Pride is the root of all evil and it’s certainly at the heart of this issue.