Of Faith and Life

I hesitate to get into this discussion, because I consider it basically silly.  It is almost entirely a semantic argument, divorced from reality.  I speak of the phony and diabolical debate that poses faith in opposition to works. 

I enter into it, because this manmade doctrine too often becomes a shield against repentance and the changing of one’s life to become like Jesus Christ and receiving all that He has to offer us, which is everything.  In modern days, Jesus Christ announced that all who receive Him, “receiveth my Father; and he that receiveth my Father receiveth my Father’s kingdom; therefore all that my Father hath shall be given unto him.” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:37, 38)

That is to say, I take up the issue not to debate the doctrine, for there is no salvation in doing that.  Rather I seek to focus on how we live our lives to receive Christ, because happiness and salvation can be found there.

I know that there are some human doctrines that hold that a man or woman is “saved” only by faith, absolutely and completely unrelated to any good or evil that the person may do at any point in life.  That is the doctrine.  I do not, however, know of anyone who lives in accordance with that doctrine.  Since I do not know and could not possibly meet everyone, I do not deny that there might be someone who lives his life by that doctrine—I cannot imagine it—but I have yet to meet him, and I doubt that I ever will.

I say that because I hold that how someone lives is an exact and complete expression of his faith.  People think, however briefly, before they act, and their action is an expression of their faith in what will happen as a result of that action. 

You might ask, what about the person who acts on reflex?  I would ask, how did that person develop his reflex if not by thoughtful action, repeated over and over?  His reflex is the expression of his faith exercised in the development of the reflex. 

The same would be true for habits that have become very hard to break.  You may say that a smoker knows and has faith that smoking is bad for his health.  That may be true, but people do a lot of things that they understand to be bad for their health, but they do it anyway because it seems to them like a good idea at the time.  Often a desire for immediate gratification of a physical appetite overcomes understanding of some long off harm.  After all, all life takes place in the immediate moment, and the promise of future effects often can seem less persuasive and less real to the mind.  Faith in the present can trump faith in the future.

What does that have to do with faith and works?  Everything.  What people do are their works, and what they think before hand is where their faith resides before it manifests itself in their works, in what they do.  All we do, except perhaps when we sleepwalk, is a union of our faith and works.  Only in unreal, semantic debate is it possible to separate faith and works.  I have little time in this brief life for that debate.

The Apostles of Jesus Christ have all been, every one of them, practical men, living everyday life as we do.  The very practical James wrote in the New Testament, to those who asserted a separation between faith and works, “I will show thee my faith by my works.” (James 2:18)   So do we all.  Then in metaphor James explained, “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20).  As the body without the spirit is dead, there is no life in faith and works when separated.

I would offer another analogy, albeit one less elegant.  To say that faith and works can be separated and, moreover, that we can be saved by faith without any regard to our works makes as much sense as saying that a house can be built by plans alone, without brick and mortar.  A plan without the bricks and mortar is just so many pieces of paper, providing no shelter, warmth, or comfort for the living.  A house without plans will be nothing more than a pile of building materials awaiting application of some intelligent design.  There is no house without both design and materials organized and applied according to the design.

Sometimes at this point in the discussion an objection is made that there is no faith, no salvation, without grace, and that no amount of works no matter how good can make up for a lack of grace.  All of that is true.  And that is what I would explain next as a concluding point.

Never forget, ever, during this life of mortality that all of this existence on earth is temporary and was designed to be so.  All of mortality eventually has an end.  Men get into great difficulty when they try to make this mortality last.  Nothing of mortality lasts.  God designed and created this temporary life as a learning time and a place of testing to prepare us for worlds where endlessness is the rule, the existence where God lives and where most of life takes place, without end.

Part of that preparation in this life involves the voluntary reception by us of things from the eternal worlds that God offers to us in this world of mortality.  Anything of any real value in this life is what God has extended to us from the eternal worlds, and that is all that survives from our mortal existence.  It is all that we need and any good thing that we could want. 

All of those extensions of eternal things from eternal worlds come by grace, the free gift of God.  We can demand none of them, and there is nothing that we can do to merit them, but we do have to qualify for them.  Basically, to qualify for them we have to demonstrate to God that we will receive the things of eternity rather than despise them.  And then He gives them to us.

Let me illustrate by returning to the house analogy.  The plans for building the house are like faith.  Organizing and applying the bricks and mortar according to the plans are our works.  By grace God has inspired our plans, and by grace we receive from God the building materials.  Indeed, by grace God even works to correct the errors in our building.  Without grace there would be no plans, no materials, no house perfectly formed. 

God will not, however, build the house by grace.  He leaves that for us, in this world of action, and effort, and choice.  In what we do, by the exercise of our faith in Him through our actions, we show what we would do with what God gives us, and we qualify to receive all that the Father has.  We live our faith in this way so that the Father may say to us when we return into His presence, “thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things:  enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (Matthew 25:23)

Of Watermelons and Conservationists

Notice how the prescriptions of the radical environmentalists trend in the same direction: more government controls over private life. Certainly the global warming agenda is all about how government needs to control numerous aspects of our lives, from the way we travel (cars bad, public transportation good), what we eat (meat bad, vegetables good), the comfort in our homes (warm bad, cold good—except in the summer, when it is the other way around), to family size (three children bad, no children good).

If these people just limited themselves to preaching their ideas we could debate them and let people make a choice—which invites the risk that these proposals would be exposed as being irrelevant or even counterproductive to the achievement of the environmental purposes in which they are wrapped—but instead these environmentalists loudly call for elaborate government programs to force compliance with their schemes. It seems that it is the solution, the governmental mandates and controls, that matters far more than the real environmental issues. The enviro-advocates routinely reject better solutions that do not involve government intrusion. For good reason such state controllers in environmental clothing have earned the nickname, “Watermelons”: green on the outside, but red on the inside. These are not seedless Watermelons, as I would add that the Watermelons’ solutions rest on the seedy old notion that government knows best—the monarchist worldview that the American Revolution resisted and that the American experiment has in practice so often refuted.

I suppose that these environmentalists are eager to rely upon the force of government, because they seek to inhibit some very basic human endeavors, such as earning a living, bearing children, and breathing. The radical enviro agenda destroys jobs, sees people (and their offspring) as the source of all environmental problems, and has named the chief gas people exhale as they breathe—carbon dioxide—public pollutant number one. Only the coercive powers of government could hope to curb action that is such a natural part of life and living.

This Watermelon formula is no accident. The more common the activity that must be controlled, the more sweeping the governmental controls that are called for. And, the more undefined—or even indefinable—the problem, the easier it is to justify nearly any governmental action served up as a solution. Global warming serves the pro-government agenda of the Watermelons very well.

This is by no means an argument to ignore the environment. Care for the environment is as old as the Garden of Eden. It was one of the first commandments given to our first parents. “And I, the Lord God, took the man, and put him in the Garden of Eden, to dress it, and to keep it.” (Moses 3:15) Such counsel has been echoed through modern prophets. In 1833 the Lord revealed that the earth’s resources are “to be used with prudence and thanksgiving.” (Doctrine and Covenants 89:11)

This was not, however, man-is-the-problem environmentalism. Man is the focal point of the world, the reason for its creation. The Lord’s counsel is make the most of the earth and do not pollute your nest. This concept lies at the heart of what has been called conservation. Conservationists recognize that the world is a stewardship entrusted to man to be used for man’s best advantage. Again, as the Lord has revealed to modern prophets,

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 difference is that to the Watermelons, people are a problem, and the fewer the better. The conservationist sees the environment as a treasure house to be managed for the benefit of man, and when subjected to the creativity and wisdom of the mind of man can become an inexhaustible source of increasing wealth and benefit.

The Malthusians and their modern disciples have been predicting the environmental doom of mankind for centuries, and those unlucky enough to have followed their prescriptions have found doom and destruction. Whenever we have trusted instead to the creed of the conservationists who would manage the world’s resources in line with human incentives and martial them for human benefit, the result has been increasing wealth and welfare, just as God intended for His children.