Of Jesus Christ and Revolutionary Doctrines

There are several key doctrines of the gospel of Christ revolutionary to the general world.  I do not include the existence of God, since belief in God is as old as human thought.  The first man and woman believed in God, and that belief has continued—with much variation—among their children to our present day.  Belief in God is not exceptional.  It comes easily to the human mind.  Disbelief seems to be more artificial.

Without an attempt to list the revolutionary doctrines of Christ by order of importance, I nevertheless will begin with the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and in His divinity He walked among mankind for some 34 years.  Through word and deed Jesus proclaimed His relationship to the Father.  That being true, and it is, all non-Christian religions are human inventions, however well-meaning they might be.  Christ being a God, what He said was true, what He taught was true, what He did had divine approval and purpose.  There is peril of the highest order in disregarding any of that.

Next I would turn to the revolutionary import of the resurrection, beginning with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The Savior’s resurrection was as sure as His death.  Jesus made significant effort to demonstrate the physical nature of the resurrection.  When He appeared to His disciples in their shut up room on the evening of that first new day He had them touch the wounds in His hands and feet and the wound in His side inflicted by the executioners to make certain of His death, assuring the disciples that, “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” (Luke 24:39)  When the disciples for joy yet doubted their own senses, Jesus emphasized the reality by eating some broiled fish and honeycomb to demonstrate the tangible nature of it all (Luke 24:41-43).  The disciples even felt His breath on them (see John 20:22).  In the Americas, shortly afterwards, thousands more beheld the resurrected Christ and personally felt the wounds of His execution (see 3 Nephi 11). 

In this mortal world, death is as common as birth.  The resurrection, already begun, will become as common as death, and will overcome death, making death as temporary as mortal life.  Hence the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians that, because of the resurrection, “Death is swallowed up in victory.”  (1 Corinthians 15:54)  That very physical resurrection rescues from oblivion all done in this very physical world, endowing it all with lasting meaning, nothing of value lost.

The fact that we each and all existed before we were born, in another sphere and in the presence of God, our Father, is another revolutionary doctrine of Christ.  Jesus taught that His Father was also our Father, the literal Father of our spirits.  On the morning of His resurrection, Jesus commanded Mary Magdalene to tell His disciples, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father” (John 20:17).  The Apostle Paul, who taught that we should obey “the Father of spirits, and live” (Hebrews 12:9), wrote to the Romans, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:  and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16, 17). 

As His spirit children, we lived in the presence of our Eternal Father before this creation.  The earth was purposely made for us, designed for our growth and development in our brief mortality.  Not only did Christ’s resurrection preserve meaning and purpose for this mortal existence, but that purpose preceded the beginning of mortality.  Among the many consequences of that revolutionary truth is the reality that all members of the human race are more than figuratively brothers and sisters.  The children born to mortal parents existed before their birth, and they come from the same eternal home as did their parents.  There is a deep-rooted respect that is due in both directions between parent and child.

In that context it is appropriate to recognize the revolutionary import of the Christian doctrine of the eternal nature of the marriage relationship.  If we come from an eternal family that was formed before the earth was, then it becomes natural to recognize that life’s closest relationship, between husband and wife, is not a temporary arrangement.  Love is the highest virtue of the highest heaven.  Love finds its deepest manifestation in the marriage union.  God, who preserves all good things, could not mean for that relationship to end with death.  As Christ paved the way for us to live on through the eternities, so He prepared the way for a loving marriage to last forever for those who desire it enough.

Perhaps on another day I will more than touch upon other Christian doctrines that revolutionize the world and human relations.  Among these would be the opportunity to talk with God and receive direct, personal revelation; the ability to change human nature, for better or for worse; the reality of individual freedom, such that God is not responsible for our personal decisions, we own them; and the continuing, unfinished canon of divine scripture, from ancient time into the modern era (scriptures were always revealed in a modern era to those who first received them).

These revolutionary doctrines of Christ are eternal, connecting us to an eternal universe, which makes them revolutionary to a mortal world where endings seem to prevail.  They are rejuvenating to mind and spirit.  When Christ taught them to the people of the ancient Americas, He declared that “all things have become new.” (3 Nephi 12:47)  They make things new today.

Of the Soviet Union and the European Union

Do you remember when the Soviet Union disappeared?  Do you recall how and why?  I hope that Vladimir Putin does.  An accompanying question that needs to be considered is, why is Ukraine so attracted to the European Union?

To answer the first question briefly, we have to turn our attention to the final days of the old USSR, then led by Michael Gorbachev.  Russia, the largest member of the 15 “Republics,” was led by Boris Yeltsin.  Under Yeltsin’s leadership, Russia chose to withdraw from the Soviet Union.  He said that Russia was weary of carrying the burden—economic, military, and otherwise—for the others.  Russia just left, and after a brief try there was nothing that Gorbachev could do to make Russia stay.  Without Russia, there was not much left to the Soviet Union, and the other members said “enough,” too.  The Soviet Union was gone with hardly a whimper and little lamented except by the class of privileged communist leaders.

The word is that current Russian President, Vladimir Putin, wants to put the band back together, that he wants to reassemble the old Soviet Union, with the coercive influence of the Russian military as his chief tool.  Not that he wishes to recreate the communist paradise of Lenin and Stalin.  His vision reportedly reaches back to the great days of the czars—though presumably without the trappings of monarchy and royalty.  Putin is through and through a Russian, so he wants to recreate a Russian Empire.  Continuing along the path that he has set out, the path of creating an empire of the czars after the mode of the Caesars, he is unlikely to succeed.  Been there.  Tried that.  Did not work.

It is hard to understand why Putin would choose that model.  Why would he want to deal himself and the Russian people a losing hand?  The Russian-dominated Soviet Union, assembled by the Red Army, failed.  It did not fail because the Soviet leadership did not try hard enough, or was stingy in expending resources, or showed too little military muscle, to hold it together.  It failed because—as Yeltsin recognized—it was costing too much to hold it together, draining too much life from Russia.  The USSR was a bankrupt model (morally and financially) for building an empire, especially for keeping an empire.  There were not enough hands to hold on tight to everything and everyone.

Perhaps Putin figures that without the burden of communism a strong Russian government could hold and control successfully where the commissars could not.  In other words, he would reject the model of Soviet communism and embrace the model of a modern non-communist authoritarian regime, like the Third Reich.  That one did not work so well, either.

There is a model available, tried and tested, that would work.  It would unleash the power and greatness of the Russian people and at last make the most of the amazing resources of the Russian land.  The results would exceed by far even the exaggerated dreams of czars and commissars.  Does Putin have the vision?

I refer to the model of freedom, only briefly known to the Russian people, only occasionally offered in limited experiments, experiments that were always wildly successful, surprising only to the governmental leaders who tried them and then abandoned them, frightened by the successes.  Applied boldly, we would see a Russian miracle that would change not only Russia but the world—all for the better.  Free men and women, operating in free markets, protected by the rule of law enshrining individual rights, erected on the foundation of a constitutionally limited government, would be a model offering limitless growth and prosperity.  Moreover, the variety of peoples and cultures in a land as vast as Russia could be recognized and accommodated, attracted and joined together, within a strong but genuine federation, united by the ties of thriving national markets, reassured by the rule of law supported by a just and independent judicial system to safeguard fundamental rights.

A dream?  Perhaps it is, but a realistic one.  This offers the answer to the second question.  Why is Ukraine attracted to the European Union?  Does not the European Union offer just such an option?  Is not the economic prosperity and individual freedom—and room for national expression—found in the European Union obviously different from the offering of today’s Russia and the memory of the old empire?  Is it not fear of the specter of the czars and commissars that haunts Ukrainians? 

Was not the creation of the European Union once just such an impossible dream as a truly free and just Russian federation?  For hundreds of years the fathers and mothers of the peoples of the European Union made war, large and small, upon each other, French against Germans, Germans against Austrians, Austrians against Poles, Poles against Germans, and round and round again.  Today such wars among these same people are unthinkable.

Assembling such a federation takes time, patience, and skill.  It may be too tempting for an impatient Putin to rely on his military muscle to make an empire.  Perhaps for a brief time he could succeed by force to reassemble much of the old Soviet Union as a greater Russia.  The greater challenge, the one that has proven impossible, is to hold such an empire together by force. 

Such empire of force would very soon prove ungovernable, with rebellions large and small flaring up constantly.  The brutality exerted to try to hold it all together would make the task of unity even harder and progress nigh impossible.  It would drain away, once again, Russia’s strength in an unending effort, just as it eroded the strength of the USSR.  Maintaining greater Russia by force has always proven a burden far greater than its worth, in the long run a losing effort that has collapsed in a weaker and vulnerable Russia.  World War I was one example, the end of the Cold War yet another.

The people of Russia—along with its neighbors—can have a better and brighter future.  A Russia built on individual freedom, free markets, free peoples, would unleash a new era of prosperity.  Russia would become a beacon of wealth and success, with all Russians participating.  Instead of Russians leaving to find their future, they would return to their homeland.  If Japan can prosper on islands scarce in natural resources, imagine what free Russia could do, rich in resources, harnessed efficiently by the discipline of the markets.

Instead of an empire of force, a free and flourishing Russia would draw its neighbors to it as the European Union beckons to them today.  No longer facing Russian fists, neighboring nations will come knocking at the door, eager to associate with Russia voluntarily, attracted by opportunities for betterment.

Of course, that is the theory.  In practice, the more that Russia seeks the path of freedom and abandons the chimerical lure of military conquest, it will succeed.  Russia would then achieve its real greatness in the world, the only way that it ever really could.