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.

Of Self Determination and Carving Up the World

Woodrow Wilson unleashed some nasty asps of public policy on the world, the venom of which continues to work its misery on mankind.  Professor Wilson as President pushed into practice the idea that American governance should be shifted from the people who elect Senators and representatives and entrusted instead to a cadre of wise men in the executive branch.  Experts like himself, elite college professors and their best students, would know better how to manage the affairs of others than would the teaming masses of the nation left to make their own decisions. 

Today, thousands of regulations, uncounted yards of red tape, and millions of bureaucrats later, we all live within a shrinking sphere of personal liberty, with diminishing control of our lives, permitted to make few decisions without someone we do not know having a major say in so much of what we have and do.  Increasing numbers of our neighbors have effectively been rendered wards of the state, unable to manage their own lives without dependence upon a myriad of government programs that punish individual initiative and grind up families.  Today, the most reliable predictor of poverty in America is being a single mother.  Lured into the web of sweet-sounding sticky federal, state, and even local programs that promise help, these government victims are rarely delivered from poverty, and neither are their children or their grandchildren.  This is surely not what Woodrow Wilson intended, but it is surely what his model of governance by experts has delivered.  Obamacare is one of the most recent and obvious examples of this machinery of misery.

Yet it can be argued that nothing that Woodrow Wilson bequeathed has worked more harm than the destructive principle of “self determination,” imposed by Wilson and his international experimenters at the negotiations to rearrange the world after World War I.  Of course, he did not act alone, but Wilson did much to make the world safe for World War II.  Self determination worked its evil by institutionalizing perpetual turmoil in eastern Europe and the Balkans, as bickering and unstable micro-states created a power vacuum tempting for fuehrers and commissars to fill.

The concept of self determination can seem appealing as long as you do not pause long enough to consider how it might actually play out in practice and over time.  The basic idea—and it does not go very far past this basic idea—is that every group of people has the right to find its own place in the sun, either with its own government or subject to another, whichever the group might wish. 

It was this idea that Russian boss Vladimir Putin invoked to cloak his grab of Crimea.  The people of Crimea had a vote (carefully monitored by Russian troops) in which over 95% said that they wanted to break away from Ukraine.  And then they decided, almost the next day, that they wanted to become a part of Russia.  According to the Russian Government, this was all very legal and in keeping with international law.  It was self determination.  Who could object?  It was more than faintly reminiscent of the nearly unanimous votes in the nations of eastern Europe a generation ago—when occupied by the Red Army—in favor of communist regimes closely allied with the old Soviet Union.  More self determination.

I wonder whether Professor/President Woodrow Wilson thought of how his principle of self determination would have worked in American history?  What if Wilson instead of Lincoln had been President in 1861?  Did self determination apply to the people of the southern states who wished to leave the Union?

I also wonder how dedicated Vladimir Putin really is to the principle of self determination?  If it applies to Crimea, does it also apply to the people of Chechnya, who seem to be eager to be out of Russia?  Are there other minority populations in Russia yearning to breathe free? 

How about elsewhere in the world?  Is self determination a universal principle worthy of universal application?  Are Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran ready to let the Kurdish minorities carve up their countries and realize their dream of a new Kurdistan?  How about Muslim minorities in southern islands of the Philippines?  The Tamil populated northern Sri Lanka?  The Sunni-majority communities in Shiite majority Iraq?  The multitude of tribal groupings in virtually every country of sub-Saharan Africa?  Are all of the many minorities of China content with being governed by Beijing?

When would the bloodletting of self determination ever end?  It has not ended yet, whether used as a justification for aggression or as a means of sustaining discontent.  It is a ponderous legacy.

Of Free Agency and the Game of Life

This past week my wife and I were drawn to an interesting and insightful headline from the Sports section of the newspaper:  “Free agency can be useful tool if used correctly”.  Very true.  This may be true in the games of sports.  It certainly is true in life.

In professional sports, free agency means having some choice as to which team a player may join and on what terms, depending on talent and performance, interest, and the advocacy skill of his representative, among other factors.  Used well, the player may go on to a successful and happy career, profitable for him and for his team, opening up even greater opportunities, including perhaps championship achievements and continuing successes beyond.  Used unwisely, free agency can lead to a career that is a frustrating struggle inhibiting growth, achievement, and limiting follow on opportunities.

In life, free agency means that you and I can choose our manner of living in mortality and, in the process, the terms of living and opportunities available in the immortal worlds, depending again on talent (as expressed in performance), interest (again demonstrated by performance), and the effectiveness of our representative.  If you will agree to His terms, you can have the very best Advocate as your representative, who only emphasizes your triumphs and takes upon Himself the blame for all of your failures.

A popular board game I knew as a child was “The Game of LIFE.”  In this game several players compete by moving along the board on a marked path, buffeted by the vicissitudes and aggrandized by the rewards of life as determined by the cast of the die.  Its virtue is that it presents to children how life is a steadily moving journey filled with a variety of experiences building to some degree on the ones before.  The game was not a favorite of mine, because it asks for little skill from the players, the events of the game subject almost entirely to chance.  In that sense, it teaches the false lesson that how you fare in life has almost nothing to do with your skill and the exercise of your free agency and everything to do with fate, beyond your control. Success or failure happens.  Perhaps the game does little harm as a diversion, but I have not played it in a long while.

Life is not a game of chance.  Neither, is it a sport, least of all a spectator sport.  Each of us is the key and central player involved in making and applying decisions.  The period of life called mortality is a testing ground, where decisions are free only because results are meaningful.  The results derive their meaning from their reach into the worlds of immortality, following our death and resurrection.  Because life has meaning then, it has meaning now. 

That meaning is a gift from Jesus Christ, purchased by His free gift of voluntarily suffering for our sins, including surrendering His life in an unjust execution, one that He could have prevented should He have exercised His free agency not to bear our burdens.  Because of the injustice of that suffering, He came back from the dead and conquered death, to die no more.  Death was thus converted into a temporary interlude for all of us, allowing the choices of this life to extend beyond the grave.

If, on the contrary, each one of us were to end in death, if our being were then to cease to exist, then nothing we did would really matter in that end.  Whatever we did, whatever we achieved, whatever we learned, so what?  It would all be gone, never to be reclaimed. 

Nothing we do makes any difference in the end, if in the end we are nothing, literally nothing.  As far as we are concerned, it all vanishes with us, and any memory of us ends with the end of any who remembered.  With nothing now mattering later, then all loses any present meaning.  Any meaning we attach to anything now is a mirage, or even a charade.  Like a child’s game, things seem to matter until the game is over, when nothing matters.

If nothing that we do matters, then the choices and decisions that we make do not matter, they have no lasting result, they make no real difference in the end.  Whether we put too much salt or pepper in the soup, it makes no difference if no one eats it.  With death as the end of it all, of all existence of any kind for each of us, then we really have no freedom, because we cannot and do not change anything for ourselves or for others.  In any and all cases, whatever choices we make, it all ends the same way, in complete nothingness, annihilation of being.  Choice itself becomes meaningless, a mirage, a charade.

But it is not like that in reality.  It does not feel like that, and very few of us, even the atheists among us, believe or act like nothingness is our destiny, as if what we do is lost in the void, as if our choices do not matter.  Christ’s redemption of us and of the world has changed everything for everyone.  It gives lasting value to our choices, our actions, our decisions, making them all very real, preserving their consequences, their reach into the continuing life beyond our very temporary death.  Our decisions can and do affect ourselves and others, in lingering ways.  Christ’s redemption from death makes our freedom possible, then and now, because what we do matters, and how it matters is preserved.

With that freedom, Christ has given us a tool, which certainly can be useful, if used correctly.  Fortunately, He also has given us guidance and still gives us guidance so that we may get and save the best results from the use of our free agency.  And that is a big part of why we celebrate Easter, why Christ's atonement and resurrection are the central event in Earth's history.

Of Hard Things and the Holy Spirit

Life is rife with hard things.  They are what make life worth living.  The easier matters are intended for rest and relief and perhaps enjoyment, but they offer little growth.  The hard things do, and life is all about growth.  When living things stop growing they decay.

God understood from the beginning the hard things that we would face.  Many of them He put here for us, “for our sake” (though we arrange plenty of hardships for ourselves).  When man and woman were expelled from the Garden of Eden God explained to them, “cursed is the ground for thy sake. . . Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. . . In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. . .” (Genesis 3:17-19, emphasis added)

Our Heavenly Father knew that by facing and overcoming the hard things of life we would advance and progress and become worthy to be called His children, His heirs.  As a loving Father He has also promised that we need not face the hardships of life alone, that His help would be ready at hand to take our best efforts and amplify them to be equal to the challenges, by which we are “glorified”.

. . . we are the children of God:  And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.  For I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.  (Romans 8:16-18)

It is common to believe that some people, such as the wealthy, have it easier, that perhaps they face fewer of the hard things of life.  The Savior took on this assumption directly.   He taught His disciples that such views have it backwards:

. . . It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.  When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?  But Jesus beheld their thoughts, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but . . . with God whatsoever things I speak are possible.  (Matthew 19:24-26, JST)

No one escapes hard things.  Like opportunities for growth, they are for everyone, including the rich.  We can, however, overcome life’s troubles, God working with us, making all good things possible.

How is it done?  Sometimes, surely more often than we know, God intervenes directly and removes obstacles, provides tools, brings friends and allies, and otherwise lowers barriers or lifts us over them.  Perhaps even more frequently He increases our power and ability.

The Holy Spirit in particular can give us the power to do hard things as we qualify for that help.  Consider some of the gifts of the Spirit.  The ancient American prophet, Moroni, reminded us that these spiritual powers “are many”, given “unto men, to profit them.”  As examples he cited wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophecy, interpretation of languages, and others, explaining that these gifts of the Spirit are available to “every man” (see Moroni 10:8-17).  The Apostle Paul provided a similar list in his letter to the saints at Corinth (see 1 Corinthians 12:8-11).  A modern Apostle, Parley P. Pratt, offered us this description of the power and influence of the Holy Spirit, speaking as the others did from personal experience, not theory or hypothesis:

It quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands and purifies all the natural passions and affections. . . It inspires, develops, cultivates and matures all the fine-toned sympathies, joys, tastes, kindred feelings and affections of our nature.  It inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness and charity. . . . It invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man. . . . In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being.  (Parley P. Pratt, Key to the Science of Theology, p.101) 

With such godly influence we can surmount every challenge that we need to rise above and withstand the sorrows of life we are called upon to endure.  That is the secret, at least in part, to the counsel and promise from God,

Therefore, let your hearts be comforted; for all things shall work together for good to them that walk uprightly. . . (Doctrine and Covenants 100:15)

Of War and Virtue

One hundred fifty years ago the United States remained divided in a brutal war of rebellion.  Rather than unusual, such convulsions are typical in the establishment of representative republics.  It does not come easy for a population new to a republic to embrace in practice the idea that matters of life and wealth should be resolved by votes.  It seems that the age old recourse to arms and blood has to be tried again a time or two before people, who have only experienced more abusive government, come to accept that ballots and representation, enshrined in the rule of law, are a better way of deciding a society’s important issues.

One hundred fifty years ago, in 1864, the people of the young United States were still learning that painful lesson.  But the instruction was nearing its end.  Back in July of 1863, at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the outcome of the war became inevitable.  The rebels of the southern states were going to lose, constitutional government of the United States was going to succeed.  The only chance for the rebels would be if the loyal people of the nation lost their determination to persevere to reunite the nation and reaffirm the constitutional republic.  Often that seemed in the press to be an iffy question, but in reality the republican will remained strong.  The hundreds of thousands who sacrificed life and limb in the field of war, in an overwhelmingly volunteer army (the number of drafted soldiers remained relatively minor), testified to that determination.

In the winter of 1863-64 U.S. soldiers in the field reenlisted in large numbers.  Throughout 1864, and into the Spring of 1865, many thousands more would die, but the battles were becoming increasingly futile for the rebel cause, little more than adding to the destruction and suffering that rebel commanders were pulling down upon themselves and their fellows and families in this national lesson in self-government.

For the rebel soldier, experiencing defeat after defeat to his regiment, his corps, or his tattered army—with only occasional respites and temporary successes—it all may have felt pointless.  The high and growing rate of desertion from rebel armies in those days suggests so.  The historian comes to this point in the conflict and is tempted to describe the remaining rebel heroics and gallant but failing defenses as futile, the casualty lists a bloody tally of worthless and wasted sacrifice—particularly for so ignoble a cause as breaking up the best form of government on the earth at the time.

From the perspective of the rebel “cause” it was pointless, the continued bloodshed and destruction a burden for which the rebel leaders—in the rebel government and at the head of the rebel armies—will surely have to give an accounting before the Judge who weighs the doings of nations and those who lead them.  Does that mean, therefore, that the daily struggle of the individual rebel soldier was meaningless?  His effort could not change the outcome, only affect in some small way its overall cost.

And yet, throughout 1864 and to the end of the war, there were meaningful and often pitched battles fought on every field of action.  The battles to which I refer echo a passage from The Book of Mormon written almost two thousand years before, describing an ancient American people after a very long war:

But behold, because of the exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites many had become hardened, because of the exceedingly great length of the war; and many were softened because of their afflictions, insomuch that they did humble themselves before God, even in the depth of humility.  (Alma 62:41)

War, on a very personal level, appears to accelerate moral development.  Individuals become more virtuous or more evil more quickly than they might under more peaceful conditions.

I believe that for the individual rebel soldier, as for perhaps every soldier, the real battle was his own, and in the end it was the most important battle with the most long-lasting consequences.  Abraham Lincoln understated that the world would “little note, nor long remember” his speech at the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, though he perhaps correctly predicted that the world would never forget the great battle fought there. 

In the full scheme of things, in terms of what really matters in the eternal worlds after this temporary one is rolled up and its purposes completed, the individual battles fought by each soldier on each side will be recognized as far more important than the whole Battle of Gettysburg.  The battle of armies is a temporary one.  The battle fought by each soldier, whether he exercises virtues or chooses vices, is the more permanent, the one that has never ending consequences.  The battles of freedom were fought in recognition and preservation of these more important personal struggles we all have.

In the battles of 1864 and 1865 of the American War of the Rebellion the rebel soldier could not change the outcome of the war.  But in each case his own personal triumph or defeat was there to be etched into his character more permanently than the scars of bullet and saber in his flesh.

As my son has often reminded me, everyone who fought in the Civil War died.  And all of them lived.  So must we all die, and yet we will all live again where there is no more death.  By the time each of us leaves mortality, each must face and fight his battles, the ones that really matter far above those recorded in the history books of the world.

Of Belief and Choice

Belief in God is a choice, and with all choices worthy of the name, there are results directly related to that choice.  If you choose to believe, you receive the fruits of belief, and with belief strong enough to result in action you receive the fruits of faith.  If you choose not to believe in God, you receive the results and consequences of that choice, also.

It is important to understand that belief or disbelief in God does not change the reality of God’s existence or change Him in any way.  All it does is change your relationship to God.  A major purpose of this life, for each person who lives it, is to develop and test faith in God, so your choice of belief matters a lot to you and how you live and succeed in this very brief and temporary existence we call mortality.

The principles of belief and faith in general are recognized for being so closely tied to action that the maxim is oft repeated that whether you believe that you will fail or that you will succeed in something you are likely to be right, since your belief will govern your effort.  There is a similarity—but only a similarity—with regard to belief in God.  Whether you believe in God or not in this life, the events of life are likely to seem to confirm you in your belief.  Those who believe in God will, if they choose to persist in their belief, increasingly see His hand in everything.  Those who choose not to believe in God will find many ways to convince themselves of their choice.

Those with faith in God see evidence of Him in all things and are increasingly able to draw upon the powers of heaven.  The ancient American prophet Alma declared, “I have all things as a testimony” of God (Alma 30:41).  Jesus Christ, after His resurrection, declared to His disciples that “signs shall follow them that believe” (Mark 16:17).  In modern times the Savior declared again that “signs follow those that believe”, but He warned and added that signs come “not by the will of men, nor as they please, but by the will of God.” (Doctrine and Covenants 63:9, 10)  God is not a machine, responding to direction and command, but rather a loving parent who bestows His blessings on His children for our benefit as plentifully as we will receive.  Our belief enhances our ability to receive.

On the other hand, those who choose not to believe in God in this life can usually conjure up reasons not to believe and even to explain away what believers would consider strong evidences of the reality of God.  These words spoken nearly a hundred years before the birth of Christ, by one who chose not to believe, sound very fresh in the twenty-first century:

Behold, these things which ye call prophecies, which ye say are handed down by holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers.

How do ye know of their surety?  Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ.

Ye look forward and say that ye see a remission of your sins.  But behold, it is the effect of a frenzied mind; and this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so.  (Alma 30:14-16)

It has been my observation that God usually leaves for those who choose not to believe plenty of room to apply their choice, to find an explanation that excludes God and His power.  He rarely provides knowledge founded on hard, convincing evidence until after a person has made his choice to believe and exercised faith.  Then the evidences come and with increasing clarity. 

The Lord wants the virtues that are associated with belief—humility, patience, perseverance, trust, courage, obedience, and many others including broadness of mind and soul—to be developed in us, which would be scarcely possible if He provided the evidence of conviction before the development and trial of our faith in Him.  As we grow in our faith, we grow in these other virtues.

Not only does the person who chooses not to believe fail to recognize the evidences of God before Him, but God intentionally withholds from him the greater evidences.  In effect, the Lord rewards believer and unbeliever with what they choose, confirmation of belief or the withholding of what the unbeliever would consider verification.  The unbeliever, as with the believer, has to come to the knowledge of God through faith. 

Part of the grace of God, available in this life, is that the choice of unbelief is not final while mortality lasts, and those who believe are commanded by God to employ their faith to help stir belief and faith in others.  “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17)  Believers are commanded to tell, to share their belief.  God is ready to begin to lead to faith and from faith to knowledge those who will begin to hear.  “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” (Matthew 11:15)