The Apostle Paul developed this theme, explaining the role of apostles and prophets and other workers in the Church in helping men to become perfect:
And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ . . . (Ephesians 4:11-13)
Of course, looking around us it is hard to find examples of men or women who have become perfect. That is surely why Paul pointed to Jesus Christ as our example by which to measure our progress and upon whom to model our development. Having said that, I have not found it hard to discover examples around me of men and women who are becoming more perfect.
The objection to the perfectibility of men is usually raised with little substantive argument but rather with a disdainful huff or with a gesture to the surrounding society as if to suggest that belief in perfectibility of men is naïve at best. There is some merit to this argument if you neither look closely at individuals nor at how the power of God operates upon the Father’s children. Men left to their own devices are hardly improvable let alone perfectible. And yet how do we account for those who are becoming better people, often much better people?
An ancient American prophet king, by the name of Benjamin, described the common condition of men this way:
The natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19)
We all know that untaught, unguided children tend to grow up to become barbarians. The biggest problems in public schools come from children who have either little parental guidance or bad parental guidance. On the other hand, time and again we see children who are well cared for and guided by their parents overcome enormous obstacles to become noble men and women.
King Benjamin, as a king and a prophet, was saying that we should learn from God our Father as our children learn from us. It is by allowing the power of the Holy Spirit to change our hearts and attitudes that we become better and better and more like God, more perfect all the time, as Paul also explained to the Ephesians.
Similarly in our day prophets of Jesus Christ have reemphasized the perfectibility of men under the influence of God. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught in an epistle in January 1834,
We consider that God has created man with a mind capable of instruction, and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect; and that the nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of this life and lost every desire for sin . . . (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p.51)
It is also proper and important to note that improvement and perfection is an individual accomplishment. While men certainly may help and encourage one another, each man must grow in perfection by himself, and he must do it without coercion, since perfection comes by his own free choices, building his own moral character through the decisions made throughout the course of a lifetime. Because of the individual nature of the perfecting process, efforts by governments to coerce perfection from their people are not only doomed to failure, but they will actually impede the moral growth of the people by limiting their opportunity to choose to do good.
1 comment:
There was a talk in church today on this very topic. We cannot achieve perfection on our own. The statement "nobody (excluding Christ) is perfect" is true, in that no one alone is perfect. We reach perfection only through Christ. This is even the case for good, unselfish, hardworking, upstanding citizens, who are yet unbelievers in Jesus Christ. Whether they're aware of it or not, everything good they do comes from Christ. They are acting like him when they make good choices, and are blessed by him whether they are aware of it or not. However they will not feel satisfied or look at perfection as a posiblity until they do accept and have faith in Jesus Christ. It is only through obediance that we understand and become the best people we can be, and only through the mercy of Christ that we are made to be like him.
Post a Comment