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 Claiming Good and Doing Bad

A very good book was published this month.  Ostensibly, it is about our economy and the recession.  It is actually about much more.  It is the first book about the current American economy written by a philosopher, and it is perhaps the best book I have read yet about all the recent unpleasantness.  Some might say that the economic trouble still continues, more like a long, slow convalescence from a serious illness than a healthy recovery.  For many whose financial condition stagnates, for those who have replaced a full-time job with one or two part-time jobs, for graduates who have a degree in hand but no work in the field for which they have trained, and especially for the millions who remain out of work, talk of an economic turnaround can seem like a mockery.

For those and others, Infiltrated, by Jay W. Richards, can help make some sense of what hit us.  The book does not suggest that there was a massive conspiracy to drive our nation into economic turmoil.  It explains how turmoil came nevertheless as national policymakers followed the prescriptions of people who claimed to be doing good but tried to cheat the laws of economics and markets to impose what they might call “benevolence” on the rest of us. 

It was their idea that in order to help more people own homes lenders should ignore such things as ability to repay a mortgage, strong history of employment and steady income, and having some equity in the value of the house so there would not be an incentive to walk away if prices dropped.  They also agitated for the government to expand its guaranties for mortgages to people with poor credit histories and loans where lenders cut corners.  And they badgered builders to keep building more houses. 

Their plans horribly miscarried, and yet those people have even more control over us and our economy today and are more able and determined to try again.  The recession, rather than educating and deterring them, has made them bolder.

I am reminded of what the late Louis Rukeyser, the very popular host of the PBS program Wall Street Week, wrote in the 1990s:

            Washington has been taken over by an impregnable mob of short-sighted, power-hungry megaclowns.

They try their worst to micromanage every detail of the economy, but succeed only in whipping the markets back and forth, up and down in spastic patterns.  They despise the gentler forces of a free market, which would moderate swings far more predictably.

(Louis Rukeyser, 1993 advertisement for his financial newsletter)

The people to whom I refer and whom Richards exposes in his book do not like the markets.  They trust themselves more and think that you should trust them, too.  They seriously do believe themselves smarter than the markets, and that is the problem.  No one, other than God, is smarter than the markets.  A large part of economic history, the tragic part, is a chronicle of the disasters caused when a small coterie of people are able to enforce their wishes and preferences on the rest of us in contravention of economic reality.  It never works. 

That was the story of the Great Depression, and it was entirely the story of communism, where whole societies were based upon the now well-proven fallacy that any group of people, no matter how smart or well intentioned, can gather sufficient data and know and understand enough to run a national economy.  It is just far too complicated, with billions of economic decisions being made by millions of people all day and all night long.  The markets make it all work, because the markets are the sum combined total of all of those economic actions and decisions interacting with each other.  No human five-year plan for economic control has escaped failure.

What is worse, as well intentioned as such people may start out, all too often, as Richards’ book exposes, their efforts not only fail to do what they set out to do, they fail to stay virtuous and instead  become enlisted in the service of private gain at the expense of the rest of us.  The Soviet system might have worked pretty well for the party owners of the dachas along the Black Sea but only by impoverishing the workers their leaders claimed to be serving.

Do not let yourself be put off that Richards is a philosopher.  His book is remarkably readable, one that you can take with you to the beach and actually enjoy, and feel that you have learned something—a lot—in the reading.  Richards mixes real life narrative with hard facts and good research, unified by sound reasoning to expose a nasty and growing problem in American government today.  The problem is a big part of why government is expanding and becoming more intrusive in all aspects of our lives, including our financial affairs, education, healthcare, energy use, the products we buy, the food we eat, and the entertainment we enjoy, and even the breath we exhale. 

That is to say that the story told by Jay Richards, in Infiltrated, is actually a longer story, a story that began long before the recession, and continues afterward, a story that is bigger than his book.  The recent economic events and their painful aftermath illuminate Richards’ core message, the human wreckage caused when some people are able to harness the coercive force of government to impose their personal notions of “benevolence” on the rest of us. 

Roger Kimball, writing in 2011 in The New Criterion, warned that such efforts are “intoxicating, addictive, expensive, and ultimately ruinous.” (Roger Kimball, “Liberty versus benevolence,” The New Criterion, February 2011, p.6)  Richards offers several well-described examples, well illustrating the truth of Kimball’s observations. 

A valuable lesson for policymakers and for the people they would govern:  the more discretion you give to government, the more you create the opportunity for abuse of that discretion for private gain.  Europe in the 18th century was lousy with the practice.  Our forebears sought to escape it and fought a revolution to get out of its grip.  The men who threw the tea into Boston Harbor were acting in protest of the partnership between the British Crown and the British East India Company. 

Beware the public-private partnerships.  Jay Richards explains how some public-private mortgage partnerships went bad, very bad, for the partners and for all of us caught in the dust and debris of their collapse.  I am reminded of the warning by former Congressman Dick Armey, that when you enter into a partnership with the devil, you are always the junior partner.

I conclude with the words of New York City Democrat Congressman Bourke Cockran, delivered 110 years ago:

That Government only is good, that Government only is great, that Government only is just, which has neither favorites nor victims.

(W. Bourke Cockran, speech given before the National Liberal Club of England, London, July 15, 1903, in W. Bourke Cockran, In the Name of Liberty, p.190)

Our government should be that government.

Of Liberty and Breaking the Rules

Sometime in the 1990s, before the days of YouTube, I received a homemade video from a man who owned and operated a small business near Dallas, Texas.  He ran a landscaping company, had a handful of employees, and, according to the video, was in violation of some rule or regulation of the federal government every day.  He did not intend to be in violation.  He did not want to be in violation.  As he explained, it was just impossible to comply with all of the requirements. 

The video began with the owner sitting behind his desk, explaining the problem.  He stood up and took the camera with him as he walked through different parts of his operations, pointing out what was required of him, his business, and his colleagues. 

In the main office he described the employment rules, the tax laws, the related mandates and regulations that applied because he had hired other people.  He walked over to the equipment and described the numberless “safety hazard” regulations, from warning notices that had to be glued beneath the seats of garden tractors, to how he and his workers used, carried, and stored their tools, gear, and machines, and what they were supposed to wear while using them.  He discussed the multitude of formal requirements for managing and applying the fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals that are commonly used in his business, including their handling, storage, clean up, and their transportation.  Speaking of transportation, because his company used trucks and other vehicles, there was another long list of rules and regulations that applied to that part of the firm.

Added to all of this, there were numerous reports, applications, notices, and other papers to be filed with a variety of agencies on a regular basis.  When he was through, he sat down again behind his desk and said, “I break the law every day.  I don’t intend to, but I cannot avoid it.  I can’t keep up with it all as long as I stay in business.”

How did we get here?  Is this America?  Is this the land of the free and the home of the brave?  Is this a land of freedom sustained by law?  It is an unknown America, too unknown to most but too familiar to people who run a business, especially the people who own a small company.  The rest of us see little of it, though perhaps we suspect it is there.  Some of us catch glimpses. 

In a large business it takes longer for the regulatory burden to become overwhelming.  For a while the boss can hire more people to help carry the load.  In the large firms of America there is a host of employees who produce no goods or offer any services to any customers.  They spend their careers complying with their slices of these federal rules, laws, and mandates so that some of the other employees can be involved in what the business is all about, providing something to a customer for which the customer is willing to pay. 

The customer may not realize that a large share of what he pays for he never receives; it goes to pay those people who work to keep the business in compliance with the government rules.  More than businessmen would be wealthier without this heavy, dead hand clamped on firms, factories, and farms.  The necessities and luxuries of life would all be a lot cheaper.  Or, another way to say it, we would get more of the goods and services we pay for, less of our money sunk into these hidden costs for unproductive activity. 

America’s Founders sought to create a land of freedom, not dominated by government and the officiousness of government functionaries.  To them “unregulated” was a goal, not a criticism.  They also knew the danger of what could happen, even in America.  James Madison wrote, “It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. . .”  (James Madison, Federalist no. 62)

And yet here we are.  What the Texas businessman faced in the 1990s has not become any lighter since.  When was the last time that you read the full text of a law?  Who has read the Obamacare statute, the Dodd-Frank Act, or any of the other voluminous, incoherent laws recently enacted, each written on more than a thousand pages?  For each page of law enacted by Congress today government bureaucrats write ten pages of rules and regulations, all of which are enforced as law though never voted on by anyone who himself has been voted into office by the people.

In the land of the free, whose founding document begins with “We the People”, why do we tolerate it?  One of the complaints against the king of England in the Declaration of Independence reads, “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”  And yet we have done the same to ourselves.  The Dodd-Frank Act alone created several New Offices and has already stimulated the hiring of more than a thousand new officers.

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost.  “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.  Is its pattern strange to you?”

Scrooge trembled more and more.

“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?  It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago.  You have laboured on it, since.  It is a ponderous chain!”

(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

There was a time when the chains had to be broken to restore the rule of law.

Of Hope and Just Getting By

Working in Washington, D.C., and living in the D.C. suburbs as I do, I am fond of saying that I eagerly accept opportunities to get away from the Capital region and spend time in real America.  That has always been a bit of an overgeneralization, expressing a usually correct but not unerring description.  Washington is not real America, but there are parts of this nation that have already gotten ahead of where the smart people of Washington have been able to take the nation.  Those places are not what I mean when I refer to real America. 

Our large, industrial states are examples of misrule by those who assume that their ability and right to rule, and the inexhaustibility of the wealth of their cities and states, are given and immutable.  Wrong on all assumptions.  These states, once beacons of progress, growth, and development, are wastelands of decline:  economic, social, moral, and even demographic.  Millions of people—those who could—have been leaving these states for decades. 

The recent bankruptcy of Detroit is a prominent symbol of where this misrule leads.  At its prime a bustling metropolitan center approaching two million in population, Detroit has been steadily falling from its prime to a dilapidated city of barely 700,000 who remain to wonder where have the productive people gone, and what is to be the future?

I recently returned from spending several days in such a place, mixing with, talking with, associating in the daily lives of the ordinary people living there, people with whom I had lived as a wide-eyed teenager a generation before.  I am not referring to the urban center of the state.  The region I visited has been for 150 years a mixture of industrial and rural economies, and as I recalled, a happy mix.  Now the villages and towns are actually smaller than in my youth and shrinking.  The number of productive enterprises is fewer and those that remain, smaller.  The schools have remarkably fewer students and struggle with how to keep their programs going with declining enrollments.  The largest employers are the instruments of government welfare services—as well as a couple of new state prisons—and the local hospital network. 

The people were friendly and pleasant, yet something did not feel right.  I understand the wisdom that “you can never go home” if you expect to find all the same.  I expected change.  New technologies were present, hand-held electronic devices ubiquitous, a fair number of new cars, if not the foreign luxury models so common in Washington.  It was not, though, a happy place of happy people.  Why? 

It was only near the end of my stay that I recognized the ailment.  The region has become a land of small hope, particularly small hope of progress.  People there were not living their lives to get ahead, to advance, to build a better future (I cannot recall seeing a single new house in the several days of my visit, though the dump north of town is working on its third mound).  Most of the people in these formerly vibrant communities, with what I remember as bright expectations for the future, were now living their lives to get by, just to get by, to get on from day to day, holding on to what they have. 

Taxes are high, so it is not easy to keep what you earn.  Regulation makes it hard to do anything new.  For those reasons, businesses have been leaving, and so have the talented youth.  Talk with the people about their daily lives, and not long into the conversation the problems of wrestling with this or that regulation or working with some officious government apparatchik will come up.  And yet so many of the people expect the solution to their problems to come from some new government program or service rather than from their own effort.

I say “most” of the people are so ailing.  There are a few exceptions, and interesting ones.  Two religious groups seem to be growing—and not the establishment churches, whose places of worship, grand and beautiful buildings, eloquently testify to bygone days of prosperity but now show signs of neglect.  The two groups are the Latter-day Saints, whose Church was founded in the area nearly two hundred years ago and whose membership is growing steadily, and the Amish/Mennonites, who in recent years have moved in strong numbers to take advantage of neglected farm land.  There are also some very prosperous farm businessmen, also gathering up land and putting it into obvious productivity.  Finally, I would mention the growth of mini-wineries, although this latter movement seems after about 25 years to be approaching maturity.

Hope is an essential ingredient in happiness.  Hope comes from the belief that a desirable future is attainable, so much so that it draws out extra effort to realize its promise.  Genuine hope in your own effort can be contagious, and those who have it can help revive communities.  You cannot do much to give hope without that personal effort, but hope comes naturally with that effort and the opportunity to keep the fruits of one’s efforts.  Our nation’s founders were filled with hope and with it created the greatest nation on earth.

There is no hope, though, in just getting by.  In the end, you cannot get by if getting by is all there is to your hope.  No future there, only decline.  For hundreds of years people have been leaving their lands where they struggled to get by and have been coming to America, to them a land of hope and the freedom that feeds hope.  When I leave Washington to look for America, that is what I am looking for.  I hope to find it ever.

Of War and Freedom

Independence Day 2013 had perhaps a more than usual significance for our national holiday.  On that day, 150 years before, the Army of the Potomac waited on the hills and ridges south of Gettysburg for a rebel assault that did not come.  Though General Meade and his officers and soldiers were unaware of it that morning, the rebel army was beaten, after three fruitless days of attacking the soldiers of the United States to clear a path to Philadelphia, Baltimore, or even Washington itself.  Instead, Robert E. Lee was engaged on July 4, 1863, in plans to extricate what was left of his army from Pennsylvania and get it across the Potomac and into Virginia before it could be destroyed.

On that same day a thousand miles to the southeast, the rebel army in Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrendered to the U.S. Army and General U.S. Grant.  It was strategically an even more important victory.  The fall of that rebel stronghold would lead to the free navigation of the entire Mississippi River, from its source to the Gulf of Mexico, for all shipping loyal to the United States, and it divided the rebel Confederacy in two.

As Grant reflected later in his Memoirs,

The fate of the Confederacy was sealed when Vicksburg fell.  Much hard fighting was to be done afterwards and many precious lives were to be sacrificed; but the morale was with the supporters of the Union ever after.  (Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, p.297)

Some who are not friends of the United States Constitution make the false claim that the War of the Rebellion was clear evidence that the Constitution was hopelessly flawed, that the war revealed the weakness of the American government rather than its strength.  Such critics little understand history or what a rare thing it is for nations—or rather the people of nations—to learn to be willing to settle issues of life, death, and livelihood by the casting of ballots.  It is an acquired discipline. 

Consider how very few democracies or republics have been established and accepted by the populace without the people being convinced by bloody war and rebellion that deciding issues by votes and law is superior to trying them by force.  England had many civil wars and rebellions on its way to rule by parliaments instead of kings.  France, too, went through several revolutions before its current Fifth Republic achieved political stability.  The Weimar Republic of Germany teetered for some fifteen years until it descended into the Third Reich, and only upon ruins was a stable federal republic built.  Japan at last settled for meaningful republican government after its military dictatorship completely prostrated the nation in World War II.  Republican government was only months old when the Bolsheviks replaced it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the verdict is not yet in as to whether the Russian nation has embraced free republican government even now.  Similar stories can be told all across the globe, about China, Korea, Turkey, Mexico, and many other lands that through trauma and struggle came today to be governed by leaders chosen by the people limited in their authority by viable constitutions.

But if the American War of the Rebellion demonstrated the challenges to constitutional government in the first one hundred years of the Republic, it also showed its strength.  That can be illustrated by what its critics consider its most damning flaw, for they denounce the document for enshrining human chattel slavery instead of abolishing it.  In this they are entirely wrong.  The Constitution took the thirteen new American states as they were in the late eighteenth century and brought them into a society of constitutional freedom incompatible with slavery, where the operations of that Constitution would sooner or later bring slavery to an end.

It is true that there are provisions in the Constitution as adopted in 1787 that recognized slavery.  That was the price for bringing the slave-holding states into the Union within the structure of the Constitution.  That very Constitution, however, made it impossible for slavery in the United States to endure.  Four score and seven years after the Declaration of Independence, war waged by the people under that very Constitution was abolishing legal slavery in America.  Perhaps there was a time when it might have ended peacefully, but peacefully or not, slavery in the United States had to end.

As Abraham Lincoln predicted at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention, “I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing, or all the other.”  I believe that Lincoln knew which would triumph, but I do not know that he suspected that he would be the constitutional officer that would see that the Union was not dissolved and that all of the United States would become free.

By  the end of 1860, slaveholders knew that they could not retain slavery if they stayed under the Constitution.  Sooner or later, the votes would be cast to end the practice.  The slaveholders chose to rebel and get out from under the Constitution before its principles of human freedom inexorably overcame them.  But once under the Constitution, it was too late to leave.  Under the organization of the Constitution, the armies of the Republic were organized and put down the rebellion and slavery, holding congresses and conducting elections along the way.

The War of the Rebellion did not free the land from enemies of freedom and constitutional law. Those who would impose their will on their neighbors remain with us today.  Their freedom is protected by the Constitution.  But the Constitution has ever stood in the way of their plans to subjugate their fellows, and it will continue to do so as long as it is upheld.  Hence the relentless efforts to undermine it, to claim it a flawed document, or pronounce it a “living document,” changeable at the whim of politicians and judges who are allowed to raise their own will above its meaning.  Our devotion to that Constitution, if we are to remain free, cannot be any less than that of those who fought at Gettysburg and other battles of freedom.  As we remember them, it is our turn to show “increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion”.

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 Marriage and Happiness

Last week I completed teaching another “Strengthening Marriages” course at church.  The principles I taught were my own.  By that I do not mean that I thought them up.  They are mine because I embrace them.  The course was designed under the direction of living Apostles and prophets.  The concepts are divinely inspired. Their purpose is not to “fix” troubled marriages but rather to help husband and wife in any marriage increase the joy of this most important of all human relationships.

Here is a summary of some of the key principles taught.

The first and foundational principle is that the family is not only the most important institution in the Church but is in fact the most important institution in all time and all eternity.  The marriage relationship is our most important relationship and can be the source of our greatest joy, beginning now and lasting forever.  The key to that joy is building our marriages and our homes on the rock of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.  So built, we can withstand all that this life of trial throws at us, allowing us to begin living in heaven already while here in mortality.

Another central principle of happiness is unity in marriage.  Husband and wife are intended to be one.  Man and woman were created to be united and become a greater one.  No man or woman is complete or whole without wife or husband.  To enjoy the most of that unity husband and wife should allow their differences in gifts to complement one another.  God intended man and woman to be much alike but also significantly different in physical, mental, and even spiritual gifts.  Embrace that, do not fight it.  Unity in marriage also requires complete loyalty to each other, placing commitment to each other above any relationship with anyone else on earth.  This unlocks an unending wealth of happiness in marriage.

Important in the day-to-day life of marriage is nurturing love and friendship with each other.  Frequent expressions of love and kindness—in ways large and small— play no small part in that nurturing.  The proper expression of intimacy in marriage is a gift that God has extended to His children that, kept in proper channels, unlocks enormous eternal power.  Complete faithfulness to each other strengthens that intimacy and enfolds it in an ever increasing love.

Both husband and wife should expect and acknowledge that there will be challenges.  The purpose of mortal life is to be immersed in a world of challenges and grow from those challenges, our reactions to them shaping us into who we choose to be for the eternities.  In marriage we find help to face those challenges, a help meet that we can find in no other way or relationship.  Husbands and wives, with the aid and inspiration of the Lord, can work through any challenge.  This is part of the marriage covenant.  Marriage, to be what the Lord intended, to manifest all of its power for joy, must be a covenant, not a contract, a covenant through which we give all to each other without consideration of an “exchange.”  The concept of “prenuptial” agreements, of counting the contributions of each in marriage, are foreign to the eternal union of souls that marriage can be as intended by God.

An important principle of happiness that needs to be applied whenever a challenge arises within the marriage itself, be the challenge large or small, is that we can choose to react in patience and love rather than in frustration and anger.  That may take practice, but it is a rewarding practice.  As children of God, we can increase our power and freedom to make that choice each time that we choose well.  Strong lines of communication between spouses will enable us to respond to challenges most effectively.  When looking at each other, seeing the admirable qualities rather than the temporary weaknesses facilitates that communication and builds the confidence that underlies it.

A successful eternal marriage involves the Lord as a constant Partner, Help, and Guarantor of the covenant.  He wants us to succeed.  We draw upon His help and strength through faith and prayer.  Modern prophets for a hundred years or more have counseled that great power comes to husband and wife and then to their family from such inspired practices as regular, daily family prayer and scripture study and weekly family home evening.  From long experience I can tell you that this is true.

We know that we each will come up short from time to time.  The atonement of Christ gives us the best tool for dealing with our shortcomings and not letting them harm our marriage:  forgiveness.  We discussed how we need to seek forgiveness from each other and be ever ready to extend forgiveness.  The result is peace, trust, and security.

Do not neglect to follow, jointly, principles of sound family finances.  Managing family finances together can be a powerful way of uniting marriage in real life.  As we manage the material elements of our life we build eternal spiritual ties with each other.  In a material way we see our complete union growing closer.  A few of the key principles of successful financial management include paying an honest tithe (as a constant reminder of the spiritual nature of all things material), spending less than we earn, and the freedom that comes from living within a budget.

These are just highlights of the marvelous truths that God has revealed to us through His prophets to make our marriages what He intends them to be, the greatest source of happiness and joy in this life and happiness and fulfillment beyond anything that we can imagine in the eternal worlds.

As you consider them, think on the words of the modern prophet Brigham Young about the marriage relationship:

But the whole subject of the marriage relation is not in my reach, nor in any other man’s reach on this earth.  It is without beginning of days or end of years; it is a hard matter to reach.  We can tell some things with regard to it; it lays the foundation for worlds, for angels, and for the Gods; for intelligent beings to be crowned with glory, immortality, and eternal lives. In fact, it is the thread which runs from the beginning to the end of the holy Gospel of salvation—of the Gospel of the Son of God; it is from eternity to eternity.  (Brigham Young, October 6, 1854, Journal of Discourses, 2:90)