Every Good Thing

Image:  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

 

As the celebration of Easter nears, it is appropriate to remember that Jesus Christ has taught us how to “lay hold upon every good thing” (Moroni 7:20).  After all, He is the Founder of every good thing.

Fifty-five years ago, in Palmyra, New York, esteeming His example, I was baptized in the same way and by the same authority as Jesus Christ was baptized, nearly two thousand years before in the Holy Land.  My baptism was followed by the same divine blessing, the gift and companionship of the Holy Spirit.

Since then, giving heed to the inspiration of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit has allowed me, in every momentous decision of significant and lasting consequence, to recognize and make the right choice.  I have been enabled to perceive what was wise, what was right, what the Lord would advise me to do.  The vision and inspiration are from the Savior, who leaves each to choose.  The consequence of the right decision has been joyful.  As Christ’s prophets have taught, those anciently, and those in our time in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we exist that we might have joy, and Jesus Christ helps us find it.

For example, one category among many has been my career.  I can say that I am grateful for the jobs that I wanted and did not get.  Instead, in each case, I was blessed with a better one, on a career path fairer than what I had envisioned.  The Savior has been my best career counselor.  It has been, knowing my thoughts, as if Jesus Christ were to say, that is fine, but I have something more for you.  And so it has been and continues.  

Now in what is called retirement, I labor for joy above any salary, with my eternal companion as my colleague.  Together we are privileged to prepare for the ways of heaven, serving in one of Jesus Christ’s holy Temples.  To get there, the first big step I took fifty-five years ago, in Palmyra, New York.

Thinking on such things is appropriate as Easter nears, to celebrate with deep gratitude that Jesus Christ, through His sacrifice and resurrection, made all good possible and placed it within our reach.

Of a Christmas Tree and Everything Good

 

We are now into the third week of our Christmas tree, braving the low humidity of indoors in the wintry season.  It is still drinking, though about half as much as in the first days, when a gallon or so of water had to be added between morning and late evening. 

We could celebrate Christmas without a tree, but our tree is a focus of Christmas and its meaning.  Our evergreen has ever been a symbol of Jesus Christ.  The tree itself, with its conical greenery pointing upward, emphasizes life when most of the trees around are leafless. 

Those other trees are not dead, but rather filled with life.  Scripture speaks of life in deciduous trees metaphorically.  Loved ones and friends who have passed on from this life may appear to be gone.  A tree may be bare for the season.  Yet, it springs to life at a time whose chief holiday is Easter, the reminder of the resurrection of Christ, extending resurrection and newness of life to each of us when our own season of spring comes.

Upon our Christmas tree we place ornaments of many kinds.  While in great variety, the ornaments to us are all unified.  They display the reality taught in scripture:

. . . in Christ there should come every good thing . . . and all things which are good cometh of Christ” (Moroni 10:22, 24).

If you have a Christmas tree, perhaps upon yours as upon ours there will be found memories of family.  Families are divine gifts, and Christ gave us the way that our families may be united forever.

We have ornaments of fruit, whose beauty, goodness, and plethora are gifts from the Creator.  That is also true of ornaments reminiscent of wondrous places that we have been and seen.

There are charming images in other ornaments retelling stories and tales from inspired authors, among recreations in beauty of form and color.  Mixed in are images of snowflakes, of stars, of beaches, of flowers.  Jumbled about the tree are decorations testifying of birds and animals and other displays of nature well beyond human design.

Were you to gaze upon our tree, and perhaps on yours as well, you might ask, “Then what is the purpose of the ornaments of the Congress and the Senate and the White House?”  Based upon some personal experience, I would reply, they remind us of the Constitution that God inspired the Founders to give us.  From that gift we have enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a nation under God for many generations, with hopes for more generations to come.

Looking to the top of the tree, as with nearly all Christmas trees, there is a special ornament given prime position.  I helped make ours from things that someone else made, depicting an angel flying above the world with a book of scripture on one arm and with the other holding a trumpet to his lips.  It is an effort to resound Christ’s prophecy through the Apostle John to us in these latter days:

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.

(Revelation 14:6,7)

With that glory represented on our Christmas tree, it is easy to look about us and see uncountable examples of good things that Jesus Christ, the Creator, has given and still gives to us.  It is His wish that we “may lay hold upon every good thing” (Moroni 7:25), and that forever.

Of Christmas and Easter

 

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Christmas, in all its depth, is marvelous.  It gathers together a world, nay, a universe of goodness.  It also attracts that which may not be so good, but in this world that can be said of nearly all good things.  Love, which is the greatest virtue of all, attracts a plethora of counterfeits, some of which are cheapened varieties of love, too many of which undermine love.  Many broken marriages so teach us.

I love Christmas, because I love Easter.  It is from Easter that Christmas derives its profound meaning and joy.  The depth of meaning and joy involved in Easter is unfathomable, yet there is joy in seeking to fathom it.

All goodness and happiness in life and this world are founded upon what Jesus Christ suffered and accomplished in those last few days of His mortal life, His brief experience in the world of the dead, and His resurrecting entrance into eternal life.  The ancient prophet Lehi taught that everything has its opposite.  To his son, Jacob, he said, “there is an opposition in all things,” nothing excepted, “neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.” (2 Nephi 2:11)  Christ plumbed the absolute depths of evil, suffering all of the pain, sorrow, and the effects of evil for all, and then overcame it all.

Consider what it means when Jesus Christ’s perfect love for all the Father’s children meets with His omniscience, His knowledge of everything, before, then, and since.  Consider all your sorrows, and comprehensively combine them with the sorrows of all who ever lived and all who will ever live.  To Christ that whole weight was fully and completely revealed.  Christ considered and knew and experienced.  In so doing, He earned in the balance of justice an infinite supply of mercy that he offers to you  and me.

Thereby consider the opposite to the sorrow, a fullness of joy that overwhelms that weight.  No wonder when, shortly after His resurrection that guaranteed the resurrection of all, Christ met with a multitude of disciples who loved Him as much as those who wanted Him crucified hated Him.  Beholding these disciples, Jesus blessed their sick, one by one.  Surround by their children, He said, “And now behold, my joy is full.”  How much would it mean for the Creator of the world, to experience fullness of joy? 

Filled with that joy, Christ “wept, and the multitude bare record of it”.  Then Jesus “took their little children, one by one, and blessed them . . . And when he had done this he wept again . . . and said unto them:  Behold your little ones.” (3 Nephi 17)

Christmas is a delight, because Easter is a joy, and Christmas points us to it.

I have heard that before the days of Lenin, it was customary for Russians to greet each other on Easter with the words, “Khristos voskres!” To which the reply would be “Voistinu voskres!”  Christ is risen!  Indeed, He is risen!  I understand that many in Russia have resumed that Easter greeting.  There is rejoicing that can lead to a fullness of joy for each of us, everywhere.

Of Material and Spiritual

Photo by Angus Gray at Unsplash

Selfishness or selflessness?  Hard to find many defending selfishness or saying a word against selflessness.  Yet these two concepts are intertwined in thousands of years of philosophical debate over materialism and immaterialism. While these two philosophical ideal appear as opposites, they each are, at most, half of reality.  Indulged in, each can lean toward a self-centered view of the world, the materialist surrounding himself with all that he can grasp, the immaterialist indulging in a cocoon of isolation from which he never emerges.

As most of us go about our daily lives, it may seem hard to conceive of the libraries of books filled with one side arguing that all that our senses constantly perceive is all that there is, while another school of thought just as vehemently asserts that it is all illusion, that the material is a false cloak covering spiritual reality.  Which is right, and which is wrong, and does it matter?  Can we bring the ideas together?

To shorten a very lengthy debate, materialists contend that the history of the progress of mankind is the story of overcoming physical obstacles and learning how to make the elements yield to our control, resulting in longer, healthier, more productive lives.  In similarly abbreviated fashion, the contention of immaterialists—sometimes referred to as spiritualists—is that at the end of the day all that physical “progress” means nothing, that its focus makes no one happy, that it chains people to an aggressive pursuit and struggle against one another that fails to bring lasting joy, instead feeding greed, covetousness, and hostility.  There is much more to the arguments, but that is their flavor.

To engage the debate on more practical terms, the materialist might argue that the spiritualist, by rejecting a very material world, is starving while living in a garden, dwelling in poverty amidst plenty.  The spiritualist might reply that the materialist may satisfy his appetites by feasting, but in the end he will still die, and by failing to transcend his surroundings he will die unhappy, having accomplished nothing lasting.

You may consider yourself partial to neither approach.  That would be understandable and proper, for man is by nature physical and spiritual.  The scholarly division is contrived, unnatural, isolating indivisible halves of existence.  The gospel of Jesus Christ, however, embraces the complete man.  When Jesus, as Creator, “saw every thing that he had made” of a very physical earth that included man and woman, He pronounced it all “very good” (Genesis 1:31).  Later, in our times, Jesus declared, “And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; for unto this end were they made to be used . . .” (Doctrine and Covenants 59:20)  Furthermore, the scriptures teach, “there is a spirit in man” (Job 32:8).

The material is real; we are immersed in it.  As spirit children of a Heavenly Father, our challenge is to put our spirits in charge of the physical things, to control our environment as the Father does.  The physical is not here to slow us down or to bind our spirits.  Neither is it an instrument of penance for us to overcome and then be done with.  The material exists to facilitate our development and enhance our being.  We became more when our spirits united with our bodies.  The material is here to be used, first for learning and then for doing.  Joy comes in discovering how to use the physical well.  We are to subdue the earth, to become masters over the physical, not masters from the physical or to escape from the material.

The evil is when we shorten our vision, no longer employing the material for our growth and progression but becoming slaves to wanton appetites, food and drink devolving into our gods of gluttony and drunkenness, material things becoming objects of avarice instead of instruments of service.  We come to worship our tools, betraying our divine heritage as makers and wielders of tools.

The truth of the whole matter is found in the union of the spiritual with the material.  As children of God, it is our heritage to become like our Father.  Growing in the love of God, we govern our appetites and enlist our tools in the cause of ennobling one another.

The Master, Jesus Christ, explained it this way:

For man is spirit.  The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected receive a fulness of joy.  And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy.  (Doctrine and Covenants 93:33, 34)

God created this very material world out of available elements, placed our spirits into physical bodies to learn how to control material things.  Christ was Himself born into a physical body that He also might enjoy the union of spirit and element.  Then He  willingly surrendered that union in death so that He might be resurrected from the dead, inseparably united as spirit and body, ensuring that for all of us the separation of spirit from body would be merely temporary while the unity of spirit with body, and the joy of that union, could last forever.

In so doing, Christ, and each of us, may receive the fulness of eternal joy that only our combined nature can achieve.

Of Fasting and Relief

Photo by Bruno van der Kraan on Unsplash

To a physically empty room, but to a crowd of millions gathered electronically around the world, a prophet of God spoke reassuringly about times of turmoil.  Russell M. Nelson, Prophet and President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was conducting a worldwide conference with the more than 16 million members of the Church.  Fewer than 10 people, presumably including the cameraman, were in the room, and all were practicing social distancing as urged by government officials. 

President Nelson has refused, however, to engage in spiritual distancing.  Quite the contrary, his work is aimed at bringing the hearts of people together.  In keeping with the great commandments to love God and love our neighbor, President Nelson called for a worldwide fast this coming Friday, Good Friday.  “Good Friday would be the perfect day to have our Heavenly Father and His Son hear us!”  As part of the fast, he counseled that we pray “that the present pandemic may be controlled, caregivers protected, the economy strengthened, and life normalized.”

This call was extended not just to members of the Church.  President Nelson invited all to join in.  Who would not be in accord with the focus of these petitions? 

This fast is well timed and well targeted.  Well timed, because during the Easter season, Christians from around the world are focused on the most important miracles that Jesus Christ performed on our behalf, His suffering and atonement for our sins—which no one else could do—and His resurrection from the grave, which no one had done before and because of which all of us will experience.  A worldwide devotional petition to the God of miracles for His help will at this Easter time give many, shut out from their houses of worship, a way to focus their faith on a very traditional Christian act, temporary self-denial of physical nourishment to emphasize spiritual nourishment and commitment to God and His work.  People may wish to do as latter-day saints normally do when fasting, take the money that would have been spent on the skipped meals and donate it to those in need, of which there are a lot more than there were a few weeks ago.

The fast is well targeted, because the call highlights the four most urgent areas in which we need divine help:  controlling the virus, blessing the caregivers, strengthening the economy, and returning life to normal.  I know of no one not acutely in need of one or more of these petitions.

The New Testament tells of when Jesus Christ was asked by a lawyer which commandment was greatest.  The ancient lawyer was hoping for an argument.  Instead, he received inspired teaching.  The Savior replied, love of God and love of our neighbors, explaining that from these two commandments come all of the others (Matthew 22:35-39).  In essence, all of the rest are commentary on these two.  This fast is all about those two commandments.

Consider joining us in this fast this Good Friday, to the extent that you can.  Let God our Father, who reminded us that He acts in accordance with the faith of His children, hear our prayers and witness our devotion.  He will surely welcome such a global expression on behalf of His children and their welfare. 

Of Jesus Christ and Life

Life.  Jesus said, “I am the life” (Doctrine & Covenants 11:28).

Jesus said, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” (Matthew 22:32)

Jesus said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God:  and they that hear shall live.  For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:25, 26).

I will tell you the story of a German woman, whom for this relation I will name Hertha Lux Bullerman.  Hertha was the mother of 5 children, three boys and two girls.  She lived in far eastern Germany.

Her first child was a daughter, Ursula.  Her second was her first son.  He was named Fritz.  Ursula and Fritz were close, as first and second born children can be.

 

Next was born another son, named Hubertus.  Hubertus died a day short of four weeks after he was born.  Hertha’s next child was a third son, to whom was given a name similar to his brother’s, perhaps in memory of his brother who lived such a short time.  This third son was named Hubert.  Hubert died from typhus, a few days short of his third birthday.  Last born of the children was Hertha’s second daughter, named Christa.

Hertha Lux Bullerman outlived all of her children except her oldest, Ursula.  She also outlived her husband, Alfred, who died in 1938 of an incurable disease, just a few short years before that disease, tuberculosis, became very curable.

The family was religious.  Alfred was a Lutheran minister, and they all lived in the parsonage, along with Hertha’s father for a time, who was an organist for the church.  It was Ursula’s job to work the pump that gave the air that gave the sound to the pipes of the organ.  For Ursula, as a child, that was hard work.  You could get tired long before the music was through.

 

Ursula’s grandfather, Theodor Bruno Waldemar, was proud of her.  They would often walk in the town, old grandfather and young granddaughter.  When other children saw them walking together, they would sometimes call out, “There comes the old musician, with his daughter, the clarinet.”  Grandfather would beam with pride, while Ursula thought altogether differently about the peer recognition.

I speak of these things and these people, because this is life, and they lived it.  And they are all children of God, the God of the living.

Yet so much of it happened before my mortal life, before I arrived on earth and my mortal reality began.  Did it really happen?  How could it be real?  Are the people of the past, of long ago and not so long ago, real?  I am quite sure that it was and that they are.

One year and a month after the death of Hertha’s husband, Alfred, Germany was at war with nearly all of its neighbors.

Hertha’s remaining son, Fritz, was 16 when the war began.  Before the war was over he would serve in a tank on the Russian front.  Fritz never returned home.  He died, in late autumn of 1943, in Ukraine, not far from where there is war again today.

A year later, in November 1944, the old musician, Hertha’s father, died.  Of Hertha’s family, she and her two daughters remained.  In not many weeks all three would flee for their lives from the Red Army.

The three women, barely fitting on the overcrowded refugee train, could take very little with them.  Why did Hertha bring with her the folder containing her family history?  With her world crashing down around her, with so many of her family and friends gone, with her homeland behind her and a merciless enemy at her back, why would those records of the dead have any value?  Were these people who had gone, children, husband, father, family, real anymore?

Jesus said, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

Jesus said, “I am the life”.

Hertha and her daughters, Ursula and Christa, found refuge in southern Germany.  Though her new home would soon be occupied by another enemy, it was a more merciful one than the communists.

Hertha and both daughters survived the war.  The younger one, Christa, married and had children of her own, though she died from an illness in the mid-1960s.  The older sister, Ursula, married an American soldier and came to the United States.  She brought with her that treasured folder of family history, preserved by Hertha through fire and flame, through tragedy and chaos.

Ursula herself died just 10 years ago, from Alzheimer’s disease.  She had forgotten much of what I have remembered for you today.  While my mother’s memory of these people faded away the people did not.  She regained them and her memory of them all just as she joined them in the world of spirits.

We all have such stories.  I am glad for those that I have saved.  I wish that I had saved more.  That folder of family history mattered very much.  Why did my grandmother entrust that folder to my mother?  My grandmother rescued more than her daughters in the cold winter of 1945.

Because the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ extend life to all, I have confidence in the day when we shall be united.  

Of Love and Superheroes

Some years ago, one of my children gave me a very lovely replica.  It is a ring.  The ring is modeled from the description J.R.R. Tolkien gives of Sauron’s one ring, central to Tolkien’s epic, The Lord of the Rings.  The power of the legendary ring was awesome.  Unfortunately, it was also altogether evil, so evil that no mortal could wield it without eventually becoming overpowered by the ring itself. 

Just hefting the replica, holding it in my hand, and being fully acquainted with the story (the only books besides the scriptures that I have read more than three times), I have to confess that I would be sorely tempted to put on such a ring of power, conceited that I could hold and turn its powers to good—good as I saw fit.  In the story, several mighty yet foolish ones were corrupted by the very thought of wielding the ring of power, while the wise were wise enough to recoil from the attempt.   Tolkien had a keen insight into the varieties of human nature.

Similarly, perhaps you have at a dinner party or other casual conversation with friends discussed what kind of “super power” you would wish to have, were you given such a choice.  Some say great strength, others the ability to fly, or the ability to see in the dark or through opaque objects, or the power to be invisible, among others.  Immortality is a favorite.

These fanciful musings and entertaining discussions may not be as fanciful as we might think.  Certainly modern technology is constantly making commonplace what would have been marvels in centuries past.  Consider trying to explain to a George Washington of the 1780s a jet aircraft, or a phonograph (let alone today’s latest sound reproduction devices), or a personal computer and the Internet.  He would have as much trouble believing as we would have explaining.  Can we in turn conceive of the instruments and tools our grandchildren will someday have as everyday conveniences? 

Yet the greatest miracles of man’s invention are trifles compared with the power of God:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. (John 1:1-3)

This was the same who, during His mortal ministry, calmed the storm at His will, brought sight to the blind with the touch of His hand, healed the sick with the word of His mouth, and restored the dead to life and vigor at His command.  This was the same who perceived men’s thoughts, saw men’s hidden acts, predicted the future, and personally triumphed from death to immortality, the first of all who would be resurrected by His power.

This omnipotent God wants to give us of His power, far beyond that of the supermen of mortal imagination:

If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. (Matthew 17:20)

Paul explained that this was promised us as heirs of the Father, “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18) 

The Book of Mormon tells of one Nephi, who had a mustard seed or more of faith and to whom God extended heavenly power.  Because of Nephi’s faithful dedication and spiritual strength, the Lord had been able through Nephi’s ministry to bring tens of thousands of people to repent of their sins and follow Christ.  A few years before the Savior’s birth the Lord declared to Nephi,

And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless thee forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yea, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word . . .

The Lord then explained to Nephi that “all things” meant anything, from moving mountains to national calamities.  All this the Lord would entrust, He said, “for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will.” (Helaman 10:5-10)   God could trust Nephi with His awesome and infinite power, because Nephi would use it only for God’s purposes.

Can the Lord trust us with His power, or, like Tolkien’s mighty ring, would too much power turn us to evil and self-destructive employment of the power in devastation and sorrow?  A hypothetical question?  Look at what man has done with God’s great power of procreation.  Designed to unify man and woman and raise children within the love, happiness, and security of families, the misuse of God’s power of life has led to hate, misery, broken families, degradation, despair, abused children, abortion, and many other terrors.  The evils of the abuse of the powers of procreation are second only to murder in their consequences.

The example of family life is instructive.  Families are intended as environments where wise parents prepare children for society, plying greater responsibility as children demonstrate—under parental guidance and correction—their ability to make good use of their opportunities.  In this way, when children reach adulthood they are ready to take on adult responsibilities and bless their own spouses and children rather than abuse and lead them to grief.

God’s commandments are designed for the same purpose.  As we obey them, not only are we blessed because the commandments highlight the paths of happiness, but through obedience to God’s commandments we obtain experience and gain God’s confidence that He can entrust us with His heavenly gifts.

The greatest of all the gifts of God, and His most heavenly, is charity, the pure love of Christ, the essence of eternal life.  As we grow in the use and possession of this love, we become Christ-like.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure.  (Moroni 7:48)

That is how we can each and all become real superheroes.  As we want what God wants, because we love as He loves, we become ones on whom He can bestow His power to bless His children in miraculous and powerful ways, now and in the eternities—without the personality flaws and self preoccupation of the comic book superheroes that provide interesting plots as they inflict sorrow on those around them.  We become fit for all that God wants to give us.  Imagine all you can, your thoughts cannot reach it.

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 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 Mountains and Forever

They say that the mountains of the East are far older than the mountains of the West and at one time were just as lofty.  Over ages and ages the Appalachian Mountains have been worn down by wind and rain and the other engines of change, their substance contributing to much of the land on which many of the people of the southeastern United States today live and where generations before them cleared the land, built their homes, and at length departed. 

The sugary white beach sands of Florida’s Emerald Coast are said to be uncountable grains of quartz eroded from the mountains far to the north.  The cities of Wilmington, Delaware; Baltimore, Maryland; Washington, D.C.; Richmond, Virginia; Raleigh, North Carolina; Columbia, South Carolina; Macon, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; and numerous others are outposts along the “Fall Line” of the eastern seaboard, marking where the ocean once met the land and where eons later waterfalls and rapids set the limit that colonial ships could travel up the rivers.  All of the land between these cities and today’s coast was created from the rocks of the timelessly ancient Appalachians.

And yet these mountains are still majestic for all of that wear and tear.  The clouds ever cling to the Smoky Mountains, while in Virginia, as the Blue Ridge, the mountains rise as the rocky fence that for the early colonists divided the new land between what they called east and west. 

I recently spent a week in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, on the western side of the Smokies.  In the morning the view of Mt. LeConte and other towering peaks greeted me, and at night they fed evening reverie. 

Each evening of the week the family gathered for a devotional on a wide porch with that marvelous view as our backdrop.  Each adult family member, often helped by a younger participant, took a turn leading us in song, prayer, scripture study, and a spiritual message.  Spiritual thoughts came easy in that setting.  On one evening in full twilight I called upon the setting for my visual aid.

The mountains of the East are distinguished by being blanketed in forest framing the occasional meadow, with very infrequent exposed rock.  I drew attention to the forest covering, noting that among the woodland growth there were a fair number of trees shorn of every leaf—long dead.  I remarked that all of the living trees that we saw would die in turn, and that the mountains themselves were steadily disappearing, imperceptibly wearing away.  We live in a world that of itself is a world of steady decay, with no earthly exceptions.

And then the point of the message (with little ones in attendance you have to reach the point soon enough):  each one of us is older than the mountains before us.  Our Heavenly Father told us long before time all about this world and His plan for us here while we lived in His presence in His eternal home that preexisted the earth.  From that eternal world we were sent to a world where all was change and where decay prevailed.  This temporary world is our learning, growing, and testing ground, where we have full freedom to choose who and what we want to become.      

Into this world of death and decay Jesus Christ was sent by His Father and our Father to redeem every good thing, including (most of all) those who would choose to rely upon His power and grace to become good and be brought back into the eternal worlds of the Father’s presence.  All good, all beauty, all loveliness of this world would be saved by Christ and amplified where moth and rust do not corrupt.  That was the power that Christ the Redeemer won by His atoning sacrifice.  As beautiful and great as the view before us, Christ came that we might rise above and lay claim forever to it all, losing nothing worth keeping.  Most of all, that included especially all of us gathered on that porch and our eternal relationship as family.

And that was the lesson of the mountains and the forests before us, presented in fewer words.  But the truth of the message lingers and will not wear away.

Of Farewells and Forever

My son considers the final chapters of The Lord of the Rings evidence that Tolkien did not know when and how to end a book.  On the other hand, I have always loved those chapters.  I find the passages deeply moving each time I read them.  In a book rich in art and story they speak to my heart while tying important threads of the work together, completing the grand pattern woven of many tales, valuable to the telling of the greater story.

Part of the attraction for me, as with other great books with which I have enjoyed many a memorable experience, is that I am reluctant to close the cover and say goodbye.  These final chapters of The Lord of the Rings are a prolonged goodbye in a trilogy that is at its core a farewell to a whole world that Tolkien spent his life elaborating and never finished.

Like other great books of art, the work brings into bold relief important themes of reality.  In this life we experience a continuing series of goodbyes.  They fill our hearts with a tenderness, with a longing for lingering. 

For those who consider this life all that there is, goodbyes have a dreadful finality without remedy.  The dear one is gone, the experience has ended, something cherished is lost.  These are finalities that are hard to face.  People avoid them or refuse to recognize them when they cannot be avoided. 

Notice even in our language of parting that our words have a lingering quality about them, as if there were no break, as if there were an enduring connection, another day. We do not seem to have a parting phrase that means, “so it ends,” or, “it is over, done.”  Instead, we use words like, “goodbye,” a contraction of “God be with ye,” as if to connect us by our wishes and thoughts to the one leaving.  Similarly, “farewell” carries with it our interest in the future success of our family member or friend.  And, “until we meet again,” expresses the expectation, however forlorn, of another day in each other’s presence.  Those words, however, cannot mend the finality of it all if there is nothing beyond this life. 

If this life is all that there is, there comes a time when there will be no other day of meeting.  This life is then full of endings that are absolute and unalterable, the greatest of which is our own ending, when with our departure all existence ceases for all that it concerns us.  The awesomeness of that leaves a longing for something more, something to convey meaning that otherwise would not exist.  If when we die all is done, if there is no more, then how does anything matter?  We intuit, “there must be something more.”

Indeed there is.  Rather than finality governing mortality, the defining characteristic of this life is that so much around us is so very temporary.  As it should be.  This life was designed as a temporary existence, a brief exception to the order of the universe, ever changing with the movement of time.  Mortality was not designed to be the end of anything, the only finality being when mortality itself comes to its conclusion and this world is brought back into the realm of the eternities, where real, unending life prevails.

Jesus Christ descended from the eternal worlds into the world of mortality in order to preserve all good things forever.  An angel, a messenger from the eternal worlds, explained it to the ancient prophet Nephi as “the condescension of God,” whereby Jesus, the Savior, experienced all things mortal, and suffered for all things mortal, including death itself, gaining power to preserve all of this world worth preserving and worthy of being brought into the eternities (see 1 Nephi 11:26-33).  With His resurrection, Christ left mortality, creating the avenue for all of us to leave it as well and bring with us all that we had gained from our mortal experience.

Most important of these gains are our relationships with each other.  Most important among these relationships are those of the family, of parent and child and, highest of all, of husband and wife.  All that matters, and these relationships matter most, is preserved through Christ.

Without Christ, as everything perished it would be lost.  People would die and would be eventually forgotten, their works decayed and vanished.  Memories would fade.  Relationships would end.  All would end, constantly, until the end of the earth itself, a pointless and meaningless existence.  Without Christ and His atonement, there would be a dreadful finality to every parting, every last touch, every last glance, every last memory clothed with a hopeless END that nothing could cure.  With Christ, every good thing is saved.

By receiving Christ, since entering into His eternal order through the ordinances that He prescribed and authorized, I have the promise that the farewells have become temporary.  The goodbyes and the partings have an end.  Even death itself is swallowed up as a transient phase of life.  I have no fears of losing any good thing but rather peaceful confidence of inheriting all good things forever.

Of Physical Temptation and Exaltation

Many passages of scripture make plain that through the appetites of the flesh, especially when turned to lusts, Satan finds his readiest avenue for temptation. Here are just a few examples:

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.  For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. . . . So then they that are after the flesh cannot please God. . . . For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die:  but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.  (Romans 8:5, 6, 8, 13, JST)

Besides writing that to the Romans, Paul similarly warned the saints at Galatia:

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh:  and these are contrary the one to the other . . . Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. . . (Galatians 5:17, 19-21)

John, the Apostle, made a similar point:

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. (1 John 2:16)

One more out of many, from the Epistle of James:

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.  Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin:  and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.  (James 1:13, 14)

Such passages have led unenlightened readers to embrace ancient Greek and Indian philosophies that consider all things material to be evil, seeing life as a continuing process to overcome the physical and leave the material world behind.  The philosophies that envision the struggle between good and evil to be the struggle between spirit and matter are at odds with other central principles of Christianity, particularly the Creation and the Resurrection.

If matter is evil, then why would God create a very material world in a vast, material universe, and call it “good”?

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.  (Genesis 1:31; see also verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, and 25, in which the various phases of the creation are described as “good”).

In modern revelation, Jesus Christ explained further how God delights in providing the blessings of a very physical world to His children:

Yea, all things which come of the earth, in the season thereof, are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; yea for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul.  And it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man; for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion.  (Doctrine and Covenants 59:18-20)

The beauties of the earth are not accidental.  Neither is it a sin to recognize and appreciate their goodness.  Man was not born into a body into a material world as a punishment, as if placed in a straightjacket in a prison, both to be escaped.  Possession of a physical body was the next major step in a process of progression that embraces all good things, among them the very elements of the universe.

Again in modern revelation Jesus Christ explained,

The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; and when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy.  (Doctrine and Covenants 93:33, 34)

The power of physical bodies and the control of the physical world are so great that God provided a time of learning and testing through which man could learn to control the elements before receiving full, immortal control of them.  Mortality is designed as a brief time for each of God’s children to learn and understand the challenges and joys of a material world, eternal spirits clothed in temporary, physical bodies. 

The metaphor God uses to remind His children how important bodies are is the Temple (see, for example, 1 Corinthians 3:16, 17; Doctrine and Covenants 93:35).  God refers to bodies as Temples, sacred, to be used and cherished for eternal purposes as houses for the immortal spirits of men.  Since the beginning, God has given men laws and commandments as guides to use their bodies safely.  Just like all great instruments of power, physical bodies can enliven or enslave.  God’s commandments unfailingly show man the path to empowerment and away from captivity.  Sin is not in the use and enjoyment of the physical but rather in the misuse and abuse of the physical, whereby the spirit, rather than controlling matter, is overcome by it.  Nearly all sin can be traced to allowing appetites to govern action rather than letting the spirit in man—guided by the Spirit of God—rule.

As in all things, Jesus Christ is the great example.  Already as God in the spirit before His birth, He entered into mortality to take upon Himself all of the challenges and opportunities of physical existence.  The Savior’s miraculous control of the elements is well known and recorded by legions of witnesses.  He also experienced the full depths of the challenges and pains of mortal, physical existence.

An ancient American prophet-king, named Benjamin, foresaw Christ’s mortal experience, and witnessed that He would not spare Himself from its full trials:

And lo, he shall suffer temptations, and pain of body, hunger, thirst, and fatigue, even more than man can suffer, except it be unto death; for behold, blood cometh from every pore, so great shall be his anguish for the wickedness and abominations of his people.  (Mosiah 3:7)

To a modern American prophet, Joseph Smith, who was undergoing great physical trial and anguish, Jesus related how deep His own experience had been, and summed it all up with the declaration, “The Son of Man hath descended below them all” (Doctrine and Covenants 122:8).

What did Jesus mean?  He meant that after experiencing the full breadth and depth of what the physical world could do and offer, He let the will of the flesh be swallowed up in the will of the Spirit.  Doing the Father’s will, Jesus Christ physically and mentally suffered for the physical sins of all mankind of all time, meriting no portion at all of the suffering.  The Spirit of Christ conquered, in spite of all that the physical appetites or wants of the flesh in a physical world could demand, and He controlled His physical body to submit to what the physical would refuse if it could.  Remember, there was no point, in Gethsemane, in the kangaroo court of the Sanhedrin, under the lash of the Roman tormenters, or on the cross itself, where Jesus could not have said, “enough,” and stopped the suffering.  Surely His body called out for it, but His Spirit always remained in control of the flesh as he drank the dregs of the atoning cup of suffering to the very last.

Having conquered all of the demands of a physical world, Christ gained it all. On the third day, He did not pass into a nirvana of spiritual nothingness, but rather He took up again a very physical body, a permanent and immortal body, forever gaining all power and all joy that only comes from spirit and element, inseparably connected, with the will of the spirit always in command.  Christ gave up the physical body in death on the cross, subjecting the demands of the flesh to the demands of the spirit.  With His Spirit fully and forever in control, Jesus Christ took up His body again in perfection on resurrection Sunday.

In so doing, Christ made available to all of us every good thing, including all of the good things of God’s glorious—and very material—creation.

Of Dead Family Members and Getting to Know Them

Some years ago a radio commentator expressed revulsion toward the popular fascination with genealogy.  To make his argument short, he did not see the point.  In his view all of those people are dead and gone. What do they matter?

Inasmuch as the comment was made before recent notable advances in research on gene-based hereditary diseases, we can excuse the radioman’s ignorance of how important genealogy can be to tracing the roots of many things that make us ill.  At the time, however, I would have liked to relieve his ignorance of other points perhaps even more relevant and important.

In all fairness, I agree with a narrow part of his argument, his objection to the democratization of the old aristocratic practice of using genealogy to prove yourself better than someone else.  Such a pitiful exercise in arrogance and pride is pointless.  Given how family trees intertwine in just a few generations, there is probably nary a person of western European background who is not a descendent of Charlemagne.  The story is similar for people from other parts of the world.  And we are all descendants of Noah and Adam, so where are the bragging rights? 

It is on his central point where the radioman’s rejection of genealogy falls to the ground.  What a woeful and lonely view of man’s condition is embodied in the view that once someone dies he is forever gone!  Genealogy, or more broadly speaking, family history, is founded on the belief that the dead in profound respects live on, that they do matter to us.  Let me suggest three ways among many, ranked in a generally progressing order of importance.

·         The members of our family who have passed on are in many aspects part of us, beyond the shared DNA.  Much in our habits, practices, language, beliefs, and our culture in general has deep roots in those who raised and taught those who raised and taught us.  Most of that is probably worth retaining and cherishing, some of it in need of overcoming, but there is a rich heritage there to be discovered.  Significant personal meaning can be found in the recognition that the current generation is only the leading edge of something very big that has been going on a long time.

·         As I mentioned, you do not have to do much family history research to discover that we are linked together, more connected than separate.  Few genealogists can avoid the powerful realization of being part of the family of man.  Our respect for humanity and for each other deepens.

·         Most important, the dead are not gone.  They have merely passed from this brief state of mortality, brief for all of us, to the next state on the journey that makes up eternity.  Each of us will soon be joining those who once walked where we walk.  Family history is the effort to get to know them now, whom we have the privilege of knowing better for a much longer time than mortality has to offer.

Explaining the resurrection to the Sadducees, Jesus Christ reminded them that our Father is God of the living, not of the dead (Mark 12:26, 27).  The mission of Jesus Christ is to provide life to all, to carry out the “work and the glory” of God, “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39)

Jesus Christ speaks more than symbolically and beyond His own relationship when He refers to God the Father.  The family relationships and ties, so precious to us now, are eternal.  That means that they not only are intended to last forever, but they reach across the generations, beyond death—to generations past and future.  They can be among those few precious things we take with us to the grave and beyond.  That is not a vain wish of every loving husband and wife and father and mother.  It is an inheritance from our Divine Father. 

We can begin to build and extend and preserve those relationships here and now.  Why wait?

Of Freedom and Despair

Every man and woman who walks the earth is a union of three natures:  intelligence, spirit, and physical body.  The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that only in this union can there be found a fullness of joy.  Our intelligence is eternal; our spirit an inheritance from God, the Father of spirits; our bodies, mortal vehicles of trial and testing to be placed in the grave and then raised in the resurrection to immortality through the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.

Before we were born and earth’s history began we all lived as spirits in the presence of God, where the whole plan for this earth and its purpose were presented to us.  In a great act of courage, greater than I believe that we can imagine, we each agreed with that plan and volunteered to be born into this world of trial and sorrow, but also of potential achievement and triumph.  The exercise of our free will centered on voluntary obedience to Jesus Christ would make all of the ultimate difference.  As the scriptures  relate, many there were who shied away from the risk and in rebellion sought another way where freedom would be denied us while all of our needs and comforts would be provided for without any exercise of our will or moral effort.

Those who rejected the plan of the Father and rebelled against Him before His face were cast from His presence directly to earth, without birth, without any future or hope.  The plan of moral trial in physical bodies being rejected by them, they could not participate in it.  For those there would be no bodies, no progression, no returning to the presence of God.  Having lost all hope, damned, or stopped in their eternal progression these became devils seeking forever the sorrow of those who chose a better way.  As if to reach for a blistering balm in other’s suffering, they tempt us to rebel against God here on earth and misuse all that a loving Father has provided to His children.

One day near Hallowe’en, more than thirty years ago, I thought to capture in verse something of the attitude of these unembodied spirits towards us, who chose before our birth to follow the plan of the Father as fulfilled by Jesus Christ, His Son.  These devils wish us no good thing, but evil and destruction continually, envying every good thing with which God has blessed us, not the least of which are all of the sensations and experiences that a physical existence in a physical world can provide.  They can see, but they cannot touch.  But they can speak to our spirits, and they each day encourage us to follow them, which is what sin is.

Dance of the Damned

’Round and ’round and sing around,

Swirl the spinning sky with sound.

Twirling, grinning, spinning down

Franticly upon them.

Fill the earth and spread around,

Make the awful beauty frown,

Rip it down, infest the ground,

Though you cannot touch it.

Curse the bodies never known

’Till they’re thrown into a mound.

Bring them blind and blinder still,

Swing the chain ’til you fill

All the world with sorrow;

For if we end tomorrow

They must die tonight.

Twist their sweet virginity.

Drain their new infinity.

Waste their pure divinity.

’Round and ’round, let song abound,

Swirl the human soup around.

Stir them floating, bloating, drowned,

Crowned with our iniquity.

Of Coming to Heaven and the Lord’s Supper

The lyrics to a Spanish song that I enjoy listening to include this line:

Para entrar en el cielo, no es preciso morir.

That translates into, “In order to enter heaven it is not necessary to die.”  Of course, that is true.  I have often said and know from some experience that eternal life can begin even in mortality, since the core element of eternal life is to possess the spiritual gift of charity, meaning the pure love of Christ (see Moroni 7:47), the one spiritual gift that never ends.

While it is not necessary to die to receive eternal life, we do need to come unto Christ.  Eternal life means living with God the Father, in His presence, and inheriting all that He has.  To qualify for that existence where perfect love and goodness prevail from this world of imperfection, corruption, and sin, it is necessary to come unto Christ, who has overcome all and who offers to help us to overcome all.

We come unto Christ only on His terms.  We cannot command that He come to us on our terms.  He is the perfect being, and we are very much short of that.  We are the ones with distance to cover.  Christ condescended to come as mortal man into our presence and our world of evil, but He did not condescend to partake of the evil.  We have.  He left our world through death, as we all will, but then was resurrected, which none were before Him, but because of whose resurrection all will follow.

Following resurrection, we will all be judged by the Father to determine whether we may remain in the Father’s presence and continue to grow and develop under His care.  At that judgment, Christ will identify for the Father those who have come to the Son and thereby qualified to remain in heaven.

How do we come unto Christ?  What are His terms?  Just these, that we solemnly promise by covenant with Him and the Father that we will accept Him and keep His commandments.  That is, we promise that we will follow Christ and stay with Him.  How can coming unto the Savior mean anything less?  Either we come unto Him or we do not.

The Savior has declared that this solemn promise and covenant is to be made in such a way as to be unmistakably imprinted on our minds, rich with the symbolism of washing away sin, burying the unrighteous way of life, and then rising to newness of life in accordance with the laws and ways of heaven.  This covenant and symbolism are present in the ordinance of baptism.  We place ourselves in the Savior’s hands via those whom He has personally chosen to represent Him.  We are buried in water, washed and cleansed from sin, and arise out of the water in the image of the resurrection into a Christian life.

The person who approaches baptism truly repentant of all of his sins, genuinely committed to a complete turning away from all evil, will feel the powers and joys of heaven filling his heart.  He will enter into the presence of God through the power of the Holy Ghost.  In fact, shortly after baptism, the next step in coming unto Christ is to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands of Christ’s representatives, just as the Samaritans anciently, who were baptized by Philip and soon thereafter were given the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands of the Apostles Peter and John (see Acts 8:12-17).

I have experienced those steps personally and testify that it works just that way.   Through faith, repentance, and baptism, sins are washed away, and through the gift of the Holy Ghost the heart is changed and filled with the gift of charity, the pure love of Christ.

Sad to say, and I would not excuse myself by noting that it happens to us all, not long after the covenant is made the covenant is broken, and it is not broken by God.  He perfectly fulfills His part.  On our part, sins are once again indulged in, old or new ones, or both.  The Spirit is grieved and withdraws, the gift of charity is also withdrawn, the man is left back on his own.  With the covenant broken what are we to do?

With a graciousness that far surpasses the patience of any mortal man, God allows us to remake the covenant and come unto Christ again.  We need not be rebaptized.  God has provided another ordinance that allows us to reaffirm the baptismal covenant and reclaim its powers and blessings.  As with baptism, it is a physical action that embodies a spiritual commitment.  Also, like baptism, it is designed and prescribed by God in a symbolic form that reminds us of Jesus Christ through whom our redemption is possible.

I refer to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  As with baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper comes in two parts.  In the first, we partake of broken bread, reminding us of the Savior’s body broken for us and soon after resurrected.  In the second we partake of water or wine to remind us of the blood shed by Christ in Gethsemane and on the cross.

As we partake of the sacrament with the same intent and spirit with which we were baptized, the whole baptismal covenant is reaffirmed and renewed, and we resume our Christian life.  We return to Christ.  We need this sacrament or our baptism would be nullified by our later sins.  We need it to retain the effects of our baptism.

It is astonishing, really.  It is a marvelous manifestation of the grace of God that He offers us this opportunity, weekly, to renew our solemn baptismal promises that we not so solemnly break.  While we renege, the Lord does not.  In fact, He offers us the second, third, and hundredth chance, which by all rights and justice He need not do.  Which of us would have such patience with those who broke their promises to us?

Because of the Lord’s patience, to enter into heaven, the presence of God, again and again, it is not necessary to die.  It is necessary to live, and to do that we must come unto Christ, and He beckons to us, all the time.  Why wait to answer His call?