This isn't in final form quite yet, but it's readable, so I'm posting it. The citations are DEFINITELY not in final form, so you can ignore those.
It will take you a bit of time to read this, just as it took a bit of time to write it. I do hope you do read it all the way through, so if you can, set aside an hour or so to give it a full reading. I would love any constructive comments you may have to offer. Thanks!
-Neal
A Mirror of God, Or: Our Relationship with Our Heavenly Father
by NEAL SILVESTER
I. Initial problem –
Plato’s allegory of the cave has been a fundamental part of philosophy for literally thousands of years. Today I’d like to make it a fundamental part of our own theology.
It goes as follows:
“Imagine human beings living in an underground, cave-like dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is both open to the light and as wide as the cave itself. They’ve been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them, because their bonds prevent them from turning their heads around. Light is also provided by a fire burning far above and behind them. Also behind them, but on higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above which they show their puppets. … Then also imagine that there are people along the wall, carrying all kinds of artifacts that project above it—statues of people and other animals, made out of stone, wood, and every material. And, as you’d expect, some of the carriers are talking, and some are silent.” He goes on to explain that the prisoners in the cave see nothing but the shadows on the wall cast by the fire; they have no knowledge of each other, nor of themselves. The prisoners, then, “would in every way believe that the truth is nothing other than the shadows” that they see. The character of Socrates goes on to explain that a prisoner freed from such bonds would “stand up, turn his head, walk, and look up toward the light,” and would “be pained and dazzled.” This freed prisoner, once in the light, would see the world anew, see the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens, make fantastic discoveries and understand the world as it really was. Socrates then asks rhetorically, “What about when he reminds himself of his first dwelling place, his fellow prisoners, and what passed for wisdom there? Don’t you think that he’d count himself happy for the change and pity the others?” And, “If this man went down into the cave again and sat down in his same seat…while his vision was still dim, if he had to compete again with the perpetual prisoners in recognizing the shadows, wouldn’t he invite ridicule? Wouldn’t it be said of him that he’d returned from his upward journey with his eyesight ruined and it isn’t worthwhile even to try to free them and lead upward?”
Brothers and sisters, does this sound familiar? It should. All of us should feel like the man that was freed, that was shown the true matter of things. Brothers and sisters, as Latter-day Saints, we have made that journey upward, and we are surrounded by these “perpetual prisoners.” We know the truth concerning the purpose of this life and we try to share it with those still unaware, and for our beliefs and for our efforts, we are mocked, we are scorned.
Plato’s allegory of the cave encapsulates the entire existential situation of this mortal, temporary world. A world filled with shadows and distractions that confuse and distort, mortal things that lead us away from immortal things, the truths of eternal life. Elder Neal A. Maxwell warns us aptly, “To mistake mortal props for the real drama that is underway is a grave error to be avoided.” What, then, is the real drama?
English religious thinker Malcolm Muggeridge offers his thoughts on the matter: “When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all its various guises; being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down it like Satan, exploring and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer.
“In retrospect all these experiences in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called ‘licking the earth.’ They are diversions designed to distract our attention from the true purpose of our existence in this world” (A Twentieth Century Testimony).
The world doesn’t realize what the “true purpose” of this world is, and so they also fail to know what the “real drama” is. Imagine: You tell someone, a good friend maybe, that Jesus will save you. In return, they stare at you blankly. It doesn’t mean anything to them. Save you from what? they might ask. They don’t see a hero and they don’t see a villain because they don’t see a conflict. In trying to inform the world of the truth we seek to free them, but the world thinks that in doing so, we wish to enslave them. They don’t know the full story behind our presence on this planet and as a result they don’t know the full story of their own life, this one and beyond. It reminds me of a line from a Billy Joel song: “We never knew we could want more than that out of life.”
The world’s perspective on this situation can be illuminated in a short parable from Elder James E. Talmage. He once found a bee in his office, and, knowing it would die if he did nothing, opened up his window so the bee could escape. After it clearly couldn’t get out on its own, he tried to guide it to freedom from its office prison with his hand. The bee, however, did not take the guidance and instead stung Elder Talmage’s hand and consequently perished.
This is what Christ called “kicking against the pricks” (Acts 9:5). Brothers and sisters, we won’t fight against God if we know what He’s doing, if we understand His ways, how He guides us to true freedom. Sadly, we see most of the world reacting to truth the same way the bee reacted to Elder Talmage, with pride and short-sightedness.
In the Book of Mormon the prophet Jacob declares, “Wherefore, do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy” (2 Nephi 9:51). It is easy to be distracted by our day to day worries, parts of our lives that do not truly satisfy, that leave you wanting in the end. Then there are things like video games, television, film, and other immersing activities that occupy our mind but instill spiritual stagnancy if not kept in check. Even supposedly big-picture issues like the economy and global warming can turn our minds and spirits away from the true battle being waged. Elder Maxwell observes, “One might learn a great deal about the physical characteristics of this planet earth but yet be ignorant of why it was created in the first place.” (p.215, 217) In the end, these are not things Heavenly Father will care much about, except for the negative and wasteful effect they can potentially have on the growth of our souls. Remember that spiritual stagnancy is not just going nowhere; it’s an active downward plunge, and this is one of Satan’s goals: to waste our time in mortality, to halt our progress and keep us from achieving growth. We are ALWAYS becoming something; it is our choice if we are becoming something less or something more. It all depends on what our priorities are, and whether or not those priorities are lined up with God’s. The better we understand God and His plan for us, the more we realize that our life is not about fulfilling selfish temporal desires or “expressing our individuality” or living however we want to because it’s “our life.” In the end, such lives are ultimately, tragically wasted --- a key goal of Satan.
The wicked in the Book of Mormon were wicked because “they understood not the dealings of the Lord” (Mosiah 10:14). Thus, to best use the precious time we have on this earth we must understand God’s priorities, God’s goals. And communicating these truths to the world is paramount. My good friend Travis Kupp wrote to me once while he was on his mission, saying: “I know plenty of people that genuinely seek to go about doing good but who affiliate themselves with no denomination, no system of belief, and often are not sure of the existence of God. Why? I believe because no one has ever given them a satisfactory description of who He is, what He does, and what our relationship is with Him.”
Understanding the character of God is KEY — it is the reason why Laman and Lemuel failed where Nephi succeeded. “And they” --- Laman and Lemuel ---- “did murmur because they knew not the dealings of that God who had created them” (1 Nephi 2:12). The process of attaining divine attributes is not just to be able to emulate Christ, but to understand the various situations and problems we are given in this life, to understand why we are given such trials, and what we can do to overcome them and use them to our eternal advantage. Therefore, the world must be told who God really is, what His purposes really are, and what methods He uses to attain them. In essence, we must all seek to know the mind of God.
To some it might be overly bold to even think we can know the mind of God. But Joseph Smith taught, “If men do not comprehend the character of God, they do not comprehend themselves.” This is also exactly what Satan wants, to destroy our potential and who we actually are --- children of a god, heirs to eternity — by telling us we are someone, something else. This is why it is so important to understand God: so we understand ourselves and our own reason for existence. The prophet Joseph’s words hint at who God really is: He can be found in our own world, in some of our own traits and attributes and proclivities, those that spring forth the greatest happiness and progress of soul.
Elder Quentin L. Cook in the February 2012 Ensign teaches that “family relationships help us know, love, and understand the Father….we can learn many things simply by observing the pattern for righteous families…Carefully observing and conscientiously living in accordance with righteous family patterns on earth is at the core of our quest to know the Father.”
And so, in this talk we will first go over the character of God. To understand His ways we must first understand who He is, and what our relationship is with Him. We will then discuss His purposes and goals, for when we understand God’s purpose, we will understand our purpose. We will then consider the various ways He brings those purposes to pass, His direct dealings with His children. This is what Laman and Lemuel did not understand, and what led to their apostasy. Such ignorance and apathy as they had have similarly led many in this dispensation down the same dark paths. When we understand all of these things --- God’s characteristics, purposes, and methods --- we may more easily come to understand ourselves, our purposes and potential, and thus not kick against the pricks, or murmur our way to hell, and instead more successfully discover the path to eternal life, both the universal journey we all must take and our own personal pathway that Has been set for us individually as unique sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father.
(On a stylistic note, when I say “God” I will mean both our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, unless I am explicitly distinguishing between the two.)
II. God’s characteristics
“Among the first principles lost in the Apostasy was an understanding of God the Father. It is not surprising, then, that among the first principles revealed in the Restoration was an understanding of God the Father” (“The Doctrine of the Father,” Elder Quentin L. Cook).
Christ tells us in the Doctrine and Covenants, “This is eternal lives—to know the only wise and true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent” (D&C 132:24). Thus it is imperative that we know and understand who and what God is. I will state this answer plainly:
God is our Father, the begetter of our spirits, and we are His children. We know from latter-day revelation that He has a body of flesh and bones, a body very similar to ours, the difference being that His body is exalted, immortalized, glorified. Our bodies fade, crumble, pass away over time; His does not. His defining characteristic is that of our most common reference to Him: Father.
Elder J. Devn Cornish of the Seventy has said, “God our Father is not a feeling or an idea or a force. He is a holy person who, as the scriptures teach, has a face and hands and a glorious immortal body. He is real, He knows each of us individually, and He loves us, every one.”
Knowing this is the foundation of the Gospel. Note that the first topic in the missionary handbook Preach My Gospel is “God is our Loving Heavenly Father.”
In applying the principle that we can learn about God by looking at ourselves, the fathers and mothers receiving this message better understand what drives our Father in Heaven than anyone else: it is love for His children. Christ demonstrates this allegorical connection between earthly and heavenly parents towards the end of the Sermon on the Mount when He asks, “What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” (Matthew 7:9-11).
God, then, being the quintessential Father, is, first and foremost, a god of love.
This is among the least understood trait of our God in the world today. A missionary friend once wrote to me regarding his experiences dealing with investigators: “I was never aware of how many people believe in a God that does not love us.”
The reason they do not understand this is because God shows love in ways the world does not comprehend. The world sees pain and tragedy as a symbol that God is not there, or that He does not care. My friend, who served in France, told me about one specific man he had spoken to, who said that “we only believe in God because we come from a country without war. He felt that sufferings he and his country have felt in war have proven there isn’t a God.”
We as Latter-day Saints, meanwhile, know of the necessity to reconcile “God loves us” with “I’m in pain right now,” and we know that it is very possible to do so, though it can be difficult at times. Being able to do this can help us realize that whatever corridor of hell we are called to pass through in this life can actually be a staircase leading up to heaven. Like Nephi, we must understand that though we do not know the meaning of all things, we know that God “loveth his children” (1 Nephi 11:17); “We cannot always fully or glibly explain everything that is happening to us or around us,” Elder Maxwell says, “but knowing that God loves us is absolutely crucial” (P. 274-275). It is the knowledge that He will never retreat fully from us; though there are dark and stormy days, the sun is still there. Elder Maxwell further points out that, “We—not he—let something come between [us], but no lasting eclipse need ensue” (P. 65 of Inexhaustible Gospel). This knowledge of the eternal mercy and love of God is the foundation of all our faith; the knowledge that, as our God so beautifully told Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail, whatever happens, it shall be, in the end, for our good (D&C 122:7).
God, in turn, feels our love for Him through our expressions of gratitude for all that He’s done, shown in our devotion to consistent prayer and an attitude of thankfulness, as well as in our obedience to the commandments He has given us. He asks nothing more of us than to simply remember Him, and show that remembrance in our day-to-day actions and behavior.
Love, however, does not necessarily equate to happiness. Is God always happy? I don’t think that He is. In fact it is because He loves us so much, and wants the best for us, that it is undoubtedly a tearful occasion when we as His children turn away from Him, and make choices that drive us in separate, diverging ways, and down “forbidden paths.” The prophet Enoch witnessed God weeping as He looked over His unrighteous children. And Elder Jeffrey R. Holland has said that God and the angels of heaven weep with us when we are going through painful, trying, horrible times. In having perfect love, God most certainly has perfect empathy as well. This implies that God mourns on a regular basis. So, in turn, why should we demand constant comfort, unhindered happiness? Are we greater than He?
God is all-wise. He knows all, is aware of all. He has the divine ability to process an infinite amount of thoughts at once, whereas we often struggle with just one.
God is a man of patience; He takes time to work and we should learn from it, and learn to be patient with ourselves, with others, and even with God Himself.
God has no fear. If we wish to become like Him, we must extinguish all of our fears, whether they be temporal or spiritual. We should not seek after fear.
He is also a God of miracles (Mormon 9:19), one who rewards faith and answers sincere prayers (Mormon 9:21).
God is a covenant maker; if we do our part, He will ALWAYS do His. He extends His arm of mercy “towards them that put their trust in Him” (Mosiah 29:20).
Our Heavenly Father is a god of justice. He sets forth laws and in turn acts within the boundaries of Law. It is a common misconception that certain behaviors and actions in this world are moral because God says they are, or that God’s ways are moral just because they are God’s. This is absolutely false. There are certain principles that are eternal and independent of even our Heavenly Father. He is God because He obeys them; that which He commands us to do, He himself does, perfectly.
In the words of Alma, “Now the work of justice could not be destroyed; if so, God would cease to be God” (Alma 42:13). God works within all law, and expects us to as well, if we desire to join Him in the next life: in the Doctrine and Covenants, Christ explains, “Except ye abide my law ye cannot attain to this glory” (D&C 132:21), meaning celestial glory. “Receive ye, therefore, my law” (D&C 132:24).
In addition to spiritual law, God’s law stretches beyond moral boundaries to the physical laws that define and give shape to this mortal world. Law is the basis for all existence. This is evidenced in nature. Without allowances, without mercy, nature is a very capitalistic world, built on physical, temporal cause and effect, choice and accountability. We are at liberty to act according to our will in this world; we have freedom, we have agency, yes, but as the scriptures tell and show us, there will always be consequences to our actions, and these we cannot choose. We believe, in more than one sense, the law of the harvest, found many places in scripture: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7). Our choices produce natural consequences, and according to the law of justice, outcomes cannot be artificially equalized in God’s kingdom... EXCEPT by the process of the Atonement. Only through Christ’s sacrifice can the law of justice be sated and the effect of our wrong choices be neutralized. Thus it is only after law (and hence justice) is implemented that God provides ways around it.
Elder Cook has said, “One of the great distortions of the Apostasy was that it cast God the Father’s plan of salvation as overwhelmingly harsh. Frederic Farrar, the Anglican church leader, classical scholar, believer, and highly regarded author of Life of Christ, lamented that most Christian churches view hell and damnation incorrectly as a result of translation errors from Hebrew and Greek to English in the King James Version of the Bible.”
Our view of Heavenly Father and His glorious Plan is, of course, entirely different. We understand that God’s love and mercy have given us everything we have, and everything they have too, should we successfully keep His commandments and endure to the end. “Where would we be,” Elder Maxwell asks, “without God’s long-suffering? Given the divine sorrow each of us here has caused our God and our Savior, what a divine comfort to know that when we “get it all together,” it will be mercifully said, “Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (D&C 58:42). No more reassuring and important words could be said to any of us than these.” (P. 247)
Elder Maxwell has said concerning the character of Jesus Christ, “Ironically, when Jesus’ enemies came for him, the Light of the World, they came with lanterns and torches (John 18:3). Jesus, who by then might have understandably been so swollen with sorrow and self-concern that there was no time to think of others, nevertheless restored the severed ear of a hostile guard.” (p 224). What a beautiful characterization! We understand that first and foremost, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are Beings of love, and that everything They do --- the plan, the application, the glorious ends they have in mind --- is driven by that love. That love for us.
We know from scripture that Christ Himself employeth no other servant at the gate; it is He, personally, who receives us as we enter into His kingdom (2 Nephi 9:41). He truly is a profoundly personal God. As the apostle Paul has said, we love Them because They loved us first.
God is also a teacher, an essential aspect to his role as Father. His methods of teaching will be discussed later on in detail, for they are truly how we come to know Him, by His interactions with us. One method that can be discussed here is that God teaches by example: Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ embody the essential traits of faith, hope, patience, long-suffering, meekness, mercy, virtuous, soberness, charity, diligence. We learn by doing what we see Them do. Such are the words of Christ when He tells us to see what He has done, and to go and do likewise. As God has treated us with so much tenderness, love, and mercy, so should we treat our fellow man.
Another integral part of God’s character is the first role that He took on as He became what He is now: the role of Creator. The desire to create is our deepest spiritual instinct, and we inherited it directly from our Father in Heaven. It is the ultimate divine attribute, to be a creator and to take care of one’s creations. And among all His infinite creations, among all the worlds and marvels given form by His hand, none is as important to Him as His family, His children. We are His children, His sacred stewardship, and so His first, and truly only priority, is us.
III. God’s purposes
So what is it about us that concerns God so? What are His goals for us, His creations, His children? Essentially, why are we here? What is the purpose of life, of existence?
These are broad questions, but they does have answers. Specific answers. And they can’t be found in the philosophies of men. As Elder Maxwell teaches, “Secular education wisely does not pretend to give us answers to the great “why” questions —any more than you and I, brothers and sisters, would read a telephone directory in search of a plot!”
Instead of looking to a telephone directory, then, we can turn back to the principle Joseph Smith taught, by asking another question, one we can understand and answer as human beings. The question is this:
What do you think is the deepest desire a loving father and mother have for their children? We might know this because of our experiences with our own parents, with our own children, or just by way of common knowledge of parents in general. The answer is this: a loving parent’s deepest desire for his or her children is to make sure their offspring have everything they themselves had and have, and, if possible, more.
With this social truth in mind, let us again take into account that God is our Father, the prototype of parenthood. With this comparison, we can see exactly what God’s goal for us is: to give us everything He has. And it is confirmed in the scriptures. D&C 84:38 says “All that [the] Father hath shall be given unto him” who comes unto Christ.
When we are little, we wanted to be a “big boy” or “big girl.” We wanted to be like our parents or our older siblings (admittedly with some exceptions). As we come to know our Father in Heaven and our elder brother Jesus Christ, don’t we develop a desire to be like Them? I would say, though, that it is not a desire developed out of nothing. This desire is in our spiritual DNA, implicit in every single human being who has ever lived on this earth, or on any of the planets on which God has placed His children. At the very core of our being is a copy of God in embryo form. It is up to us to foster that embryo, that spark of eternal life, and develop it in righteous ways; we must walk down correct paths, and make choices that bring us closer to God, closer in both spiritual proximity and metaphysical likeness.
This is God’s purpose: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man (Moses 1:39), to make His children like Himself. Elder Cook put it this way: “The purpose of all that the Father has revealed, commanded and initiated for the inhabitants of earth is to help us come to know Him, emulate Him, and become like Him so we can return to His holy presence.”
The task of our religion isn’t merely to make people “nice” — one does not need religion for this; it’s a mere pittance compared to what our ultimate destination is (although being “nice” is certainly a step towards this goal). No, the task of our religion is to turn men into gods.
This world, this tiny slice of time, is the most immensely important. Before we came to earth we were spirits who chose wisely in the war of heaven and kept our first estate. This gave us license to come to earth to receive a body, the first of many steps in our quest to be like our Heavenly Parents. Here we learn “hands-on” lessons impossible to learn as mere spirits; we grow and show our faith, we partake of the Atonement of Christ, and prove all we’ve learned by enduring to the end. Success in this our second estate combined with the sacrifice of our Savior allows us to become like God physically, and then we continue to develop our minds souls as we started to do in mortality, and grow and grow until perfection is reached and God gives us everything that He hath, and we continue the generations of gods as Creators of our own worlds and eternal families. This is the plan of salvation; this is eternal lives.
President Boyd K. Packer of the Twelve has compared our existence to a three-act play. Currently we are in the middle of the second act, and to truly understand what’s going on, we must know what happened in the first act, and have an awareness of what awaits us in the third act.
Unfortunately the world is stuck in the second act, “locked in the dimension of time” and “contained within the tight perspectives of this second estate” as Elder Maxwell puts it. Some feel an awareness of the other two acts; they have a sense that there is more to life than what we see before us now. Others, however, because they have seen no evidence of the first or the third, refuse to accept that they exist, and so they attempt to find purpose and meaning in the second act alone. Their search for meaning may be sincere, but the conclusions they come to can often twist or distort the truth of “things as they really are” (Jacob 4:13), and simply be a part of the distractions and dead-ends of this world.
Because the world’s perspective on life is severely limited, because they see this life only through the “lens of mortality,” their purpose is to do what you like, do what you love, do what you want to do. In D&C 1:16, the Lord says, “Every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world.” The world believes what the world wants to believe, things that may not be true but give rationale for the behaviors they already live and the passions they already pursue. Sadly, so many of those things turn out to be distractions from our true purposes, masks over our true identities. The world claims that the natural man is our core self, that we are, essentially, animals built to fulfill appetites given by nature. The world would have us believe that we are simply “born this way,” and thus conclude that we should embrace this aspect of our lives. This attitude is a destroying lie, sinister as a poisoned apple given us by the Deceiver,and it leads to naught but wasted lives and empty eternities.
Throughout the struggles of the second estate, we first seek to become like Christ, taking upon ourselves various moral attributes like patience, faith, diligence, humility, and love. And in our responsibilities, our stewardships given us by the Lord, in particular those of family duties as fathers and mothers, we practice, essentially, being like Heavenly Father, for keep in mind that salvation is not an individual attainment; it is a family dynamic. “And when he shall prove himself faithful in all things that shall be entrusted unto his care,” reads Doctrine and Covenants section 124 verse 113, “yea, even a few things, he shall be made ruler over many.”
In a few words, God’s purpose is to give us everything that He hath: the role as Creator and Law-giver of an eternal family that begets infinite generations of godhood, or what is known in the scriptures as eternal lives. Brothers and sisters, hearken to the words of Elder Maxwell: “The Lord loves each of us too much to merely let us go on being what we now are, for he knows what we have the possibility to become!” (p. 201)
IV. God’s methods, values, priorities, and perspective
In setting about to accomplish these eternal goals, God has certain priorities that frame His perspective. What I submit to be God’s highest priority is not, as one may think, our eternal salvation, but rather our agency, the freedom we have to choose between good and evil.
My missionary friend in France observed in another letter that agency was important enough to Heavenly Father that He lost an entire third of His children to it. D&C 29:36 points out the same: “also a third part of the hosts of heaven turned...away from me because of their agency.”
To Heavenly Father, their agency, their freedom to choose, was more important than their eternal salvation. Heavenly Father’s perspective seems to be that if we are not our own agents, if we cannot choose between good and evil, then there is no accountability, and there is no growth, and without growth, without accountability, there is no godhood, no true salvation. Where agency and free will cease, morality ceases also. This is why God does not just take our tithing away from us; if He just took it then the tithing process would be an amoral act, neither good nor evil, and it would not matter whatsoever. Heavenly Father wants our will far more than He wants our money. It is Albus Dumbledore who said, “It is our choices, far more than our abilities, that show us who we truly are.” Choices without consequences are no choices at all, which is why sometimes horrible things have to happen, so that villains’ choices have significance --- think of the women and children Alma and Amulek had to watch be thrown into the fire because of their beliefs. God has given us agency “that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment” (D&C 101:78). There is no joy without choice; a free agent is a god in embryo.
Regarding prayer, Elder Cornish of the Seventy has said, “Little children, young people, and adults alike, please believe how very much your loving Heavenly Father wants to bless you. But because He will not infringe upon our agency, we must ask for His help.” Likewise, we cannot receive the greatest of all the gifts of God if we do not employ our freedom to choose; if we do not ask for the blessing of repentance and ultimately salvation, we will not be given it. God will do anything, everything, to help us come back to Him---EXCEPT infringe on our agency.
Regarding other worldly priorities, Elder Maxwell observes, God’s “chief concerns are not real estate and political dominion, but the growth of souls, the celestializing of the souls with whom he works” (16). Politics and other contentious worldviews can be prime distractors if they lead to conflict and negative feelings for other children of God. The state of the economy is not God’s chief concern; it is the state of our souls that God cares most about.
Neither is God concerned with making sure we’re perfectly happy all the time. My wife and I heard on the television show Nanny 911 the truth that “Good parenting doesn’t mean your kids are never upset.” What is best for us in the short term is usually not what is best for us in the long term. And make no mistake, brothers and sisters, we are in this for the long term. We are in this for eternity.
Seen from eternity, the two greatest sins we can commit are those that change other lives most drastically from what they otherwise should or could be: the sins of murder and fornication. These two sins are directly connected to the destruction and creation of life, respectively, and put limits on eternal life in ways other sins cannot.
However, it is clear that from God’s perspective, and when God is in control, death is easily not the worst thing that can happen. Here, though, seen through the lens of mortality, we see it as the worst possible consequence, and in some cases that may be right. But seen with the lens of eternity, death is as necessary and liberating as any other element of the plan of salvation. Seen with the lens of eternity, spiritual death far outweighs physical death, and the state of the soul at the time of death is far more important than the fact of the death itself. We see this very prominently in the heartbreaking but beautiful story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, who willfully suffered death instead of returning to their old violent ways, a decision that ultimately led to the salvation of even more Lamanites than the number of Anti-Nephi-Lehies who died.
However, this does not mean that it would be better for us to die than to sin. This life is about so much more than simply “not sinning.” Through error and mistake, we learn valuable life lessons that cannot be taught any other way than by personal experience. Seeking death rather than sin would nullify the work we are meant to accomplish for the sake of others’ salvation. God knew we would sin before putting us on this earth and obviously felt that the experience we gain and the joy we can spread to others is worth the imperfect behavior we would display now and again. That’s why Christ performed the Atonement: so the sins we make would not damn us forever, and so we can, in the meantime, accomplish much righteousness.
In terms of who, we are God’s number one priority. We are His family, His children, for whom He does everything, for whom He exists. We are expected to learn from this relationship and make our own families our highest priority. The family is the social unit of eternal life, and we must prepare ourselves for such responsibilities in the coming world. And not only that, but in our current world, the family situation is the best opportunity to raise a soul in righteousness, to put him or her on the track to eternal life.
In flipping through an illustrated book recently, I found a picture of two glowing parents being presented with an A paper from their young son. The caption was, “These are Jack’s parents. Who could be happier?” Now, WHY are they happy? The answer to that question may seem obvious, and it is, but in fact it is greatly significant, and points to the pattern of God’s happiness with His own children. The answer is, of course, that they see that their young son Jack is learning, and learning well. Note that he’s still far, far behind them in intellectual capacity, but that’s not the point: the point is that he’s progressing. He’s learning. And that makes his parents happy because they love him, and want everything for him, everything they have and more.
It is not an immediate process. It takes time, and God understands that. Please remember in your prayers to thank our Heavenly Father for His patience towards us. He understands that it takes time to grow, and we need to understand that about ourselves as well. Elder Maxwell offers the following insight:
“The whole process of subtle inspiration and revelation is like this metaphor: an inspired painter working on a large canvas does not report to or ask patrons or friends to react to each brushstroke. Nor does he exclaim after each stroke of his paintbrush well before the canvas reflects any emerging pattern. Yet each stroke the painter registers on the canvas is a part of an inspired whole. Without those cumulative, individual strokes, there would be no painting. But each stroke, if examined by itself, is not likely to be appreciated by itself, least of all those who stand outside the process, outside of the contextuality.” (P. 252)
Though we should not procrastinate the day of our repentance, we should not run faster than we have strength, either. We must have discipline and be patient with God’s ways and methods.
Those ways and methods can seem very strange to us sometimes. In the First Presidency Message of March 2012, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said about God’s words to us, “The teachings of our Heavenly Father are not the ordinary, predictable, run-of-the-mill kind you can pick up in paperback at the local bookstore. They are the wisdom of an all-powerful, all-knowing celestial Being who loves His children.” Such is the same with His methods of helping us return to Him, and of showing us His love. They are so different that most people do not understand them and so rebel against them. In the words of Elder Maxwell, “If people misread life, this leads to murmuring, rebellion, and irreligion” (P. 283).
After the story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, who chose to suffer death instead of take up arms against their brethren, the prophet Mormon comments, saying, “Thus we see that the Lord worketh in many ways to the salvation of His people” (Alma 24:27). To understand God’s many and varied ways we must take into account all that He has given us --- our placement in a family, in a society; our blessings, our trials, our any given trying moment --- and sincerely ask “Why?”, and then attempt to answer that question through searching our minds and studying our scriptures, through prayer to God and revelation through His Spirit. If we do not ask, brothers and sisters, we will never learn. And if, as the case may be, no answer is received, then we can know that this is a trial of our faith, and we need to hold out in patience, trusting our God.
But it is in fact possible to analyze and understand many of God’s dealings with us on this earth. It is more than possible, it is essential. And so we’ll go over some of these methods.
The philosophical problem of suffering has possibly done more to crack the faith of believers worldwide than any other philosophical issue. I have seen the damage this question can do with my own eyes. Suffering exists in the world, including the suffering of innocents, and why would that happen if there were a just and all-benevolent God at the helm of it all?
Allow me to relate a story you may have heard. Though this parable has little historical evidence for it being fact, it still represents a truth, one of the ways God works with us as His children. It comes from a sermon given by Christian minister William Marrion Branham several decades ago. He said in the sermon,
“I guess you’ve heard the story of the shepherd that broke his sheep’s leg one time. Many little stories has been told about it. And was asked this shepherd, “Did the sheep fall off of a mountain and do this?”
He said, “No.”
Said, “What happened?”
He said, “I broke its leg.”
Said, “Why did you break its leg? Are you a cruel shepherd?”
He said, “No, I love the sheep. But the sheep got to running away from me. And he kept straying out to itself. And I know the nature of sheep. And I know if they stray too far away, the wolf will get them. So I had to break the sheep’s leg to keep it with me, to draw it to my bosom, to give it a little special food. And I’ll be so kind to it, that when its leg gets well, it’ll never leave me any more.”
Brothers and sisters, the Lord gives us weaknesses, as we know from the Book of Ether, so that we might have reason to return to Him for help. All of us are lambs that are “dear to the heart of the Shepherd” (hymn no. 221). Sometimes we will have to go through pain, suffering, the sorrows of the damned. But if it compels us to return, if from that suffering we deepen our relationship with our Father in Heaven, then it is completely, utterly worth it. Just as the physical creation of a human being is worth the pain of childbirth and travail (John 16:21), so is the spiritual rebirth of a human life worth the pains it took to be brought about. Pain will always pass away, but our relationship with Heavenly Father does not need to. It is an eternal relationship that will outlive, outlast any suffering we are called to bear in this life, and virtually anything that brings us closer to Him is worth it in the long run. Remember the pure sentiment of the words of the sacred hymn, “Nearer my God, to thee, nearer to thee. E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me” (hymn no. 100). God, in essence, breaks our legs that we may remain close to Him and come to know Him. But if we do not know why He does so, we are all the more inclined to hate Him for giving us such pain, to murmur and rebel. This crucial difference in reaction shows just how essential it is that we understand what God is doing with us at any given time.
“Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you” (D&C 88:63), He tells us; “seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”
Such is another reason we are commanded to pray: so that we acknowledge Him, seek Him out and find Him, and develop that relationship with Him through conversation in prayer. Brothers and sisters, true prayer is not monologue, but dialogue.
One way God teaches us is through repetition. This is essentially prevalent at General Conference. Our Priesthood leaders, our prophets and apostles, often go over doctrine that we may have heard many times before. But one reason we hear so much about the basics because they are our basic arsenal — things such as prayer, the truth that God does listen to us and He does answer us (if we’re listening carefully). In grumbling and complaining and “murmuring” about the repetitive nature of sermons we forget how easy it is to forget! As “Come Thou Fount” suggests, we are prone to wander and leave the God we love! Heavenly Father, aware of this potential problem, solves it via reminders. Ironically, the practice of daily prayer and scripture study is also meant to be a reminder. We may not learn something new every time we pray or read the scriptures, but it gives us at the very least the opportunity to feel the Spirit every day, reminding us of our duty to God and of the real purposes of this life, which, as has been made quite evident in this talk, we can so easily be distracted from in the rigors of everyday life. Everything that we are commanded to do on a regular basis — read our scriptures, say our prayers, do work in the temple, attend church weekly — are all specifically designed so that we may remain close to the Lord, so that we may feel His presence and love through the Holy Ghost.
As previously established, God is a god of justice — we see this in the way the physical world works; everything is governed by law, and most of the time He lets it play out according to that law. But occasionally God does intervene. These moments are called miracles, effects of the Almighty on our earthly lives. Miracles can only be performed where there is faith present. Christ performed miracles during his mortal ministry to show love to those people He came to save. These miracles, in which Christ cured leprosy, gave sight to the blind, helped the lame walk, and raised the dead back to life, also served as a type or shadow of His true mission on this earth, the most prominent of all these divine interventions, the miracle of the Atonement. In his ministry He healed those with physical injuries, weaknesses and pains, a perfect precursor to the Atonement, through which He heals our spiritual wounds and brings the spiritual dead back to life, the fallen soul back into the presence of the Risen Lord. The Atonement is the perfect emblem of divine intervention, of mercy overcoming justice, of the saving influence miracles can have on the children of God.
Not only were Christ’s miracles a shadow or type of the Atonement, they served another function as well: miracles can help galvanize faith, by giving us the initial footing we need to climb up to heaven. This is part of the reason Christ did so many miracles when He was on the earth. However, as has been shown so many times in church history, both ancient and latter-day, miracles cannot be relied upon in place of a personal testimony of the truth, given by the Holy Ghost. In our climb we must rely on those surer footholds that will not crumble after too much pressure is put on them.
Sometimes God acts and intervenes in our behalf in answer to prayer… and sometimes, He does not. It is our responsibility to determine Why that is, based on each of our own individual, unique situations. Sometimes that takes thinking, pondering, searching the scriptures, and praying; and sometimes, it just takes patience and faith.
We pray for help in difficult situations. If we don’t get it, it means either we didn’t need the help, and we’re strong enough to do it on our own and we are all the stronger for it; or it is God’s will that we do not succeed in that endeavor at this time. This opens up a variety of pathways much wider than the proverbial shut door would have led us to.
One miracle we see often in the scriptures is God softening the heart of the wicked. For a while I wondered what exactly that meant, and whether or not that constituted an override of an individual’s free agency. After all, it seems God is directly interfering by changing something about a person, no? But I came to realize that the softening of the heart doesn’t change the will of the individual, and it doesn’t directly affect the person’s choice. It is merely giving the individual an added measure of the Spirit, allowing them to see more clearly than they did before, with wider vision. It still doesn’t change their wills; it simply is giving the individual greater amounts of knowledge or information, and allowing for an increase of spiritual sensitivity. It is like turning on another light in dim room lit only by a single lamp: it just adds light.
This subject makes one wonder about a certain truth we often hear: that God is in control. The question is raised: how is God in control? Don’t we control our own destinies, make our own choices? Isn’t it all up to us?
It is, and it all depends on our own free will. God knows our wills perfectly, and acts through the Spirit, softening hearts and inspiring the minds of His children, and with His more faithful children giving direct revelation. God does not control us; He works with us, and never constrains us to do something that we would not be willing to do otherwise. It has been said that one plus God is a majority. By knowledge of our wills, our desires, and our abilities, He can use each of us for the maximum possible good without forcing us into anything. Thus, through the influence of His Spirit, and while we retain our agency, God can put our wills into a greater work. Elder Maxwell has said, “only by aligning our wills with God’s is full happiness to be found. Anything less results in a lesser portion” (“Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father, Nov. 1995). God’s will, what God wants, the plan God has in mind, is best, overall. If we do something contrary to God’s will, that plan changes, and it becomes a less effective plan, with lesser happiness as the end result. This is why it is important for us to keep our own will in line with His, and why we need to understand His ways: so that we may bring to pass as much righteousness and and as much joy to as many of God’s children as possible.
Brothers and sisters, personal revelation is one of the key methods God uses to bring about His will, and it is just as pertinent to our salvation today as it was two thousand years ago. If someone tries to tell you otherwise, ask them whether or not Adam was told how to build an ark. There is no true end to God’s word being given to us in the timeline of this mortal world. Just as surely as we can communicate with God through prayer, God can communicate to us through the Spirit.
As a teacher of mine at the Utah Valley University Institute of Religion would say, sometimes what He has to say is soft and soothing and comforting, like a feather; and sometimes it’s more like a spur, something sharp to rouse us out of our stupor and get to work. Sometimes we’re chastened, and properly so. As the Lord in Doctrine and Covenants section 101 points out, this just shows that God loves us, because He’s vitally interested in our salvation, and is especially invested in the one He’s chastening. It is important to be humble and submissive in such circumstances. Christian author and apologist C.S. Lewis said, “We are bidden to ‘put on Christ,’ to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we think we want.” (CS Lewis) And sometimes, that’s a spur in our flesh to get us moving.
Heavenly Father is a God of truth and light — but though He does not actively deceive, He sometimes lets us think or believe in untrue things, such as a possible future we might desire and think we are going to have. He allows us to misunderstand things. It is part of our agency, and may be part of His plan for us as individuals. We may think one thing, and then act according to that one thing, and ultimately find out that’s not what it was about at all, but God used that lack of knowledge to bring good things to pass. So though He does not lie to us, He does not tell us everything; this is the point of faith.
Elder Maxwell said regarding faith, “The Lord gives more instructions than he gives explanations.” (p. 251) Faith is the first principle and ordinance of the Gospel for a reason. God does not take that first step for us. We have to be willing to put our foot into the darkness ahead of us, and only then will the light turn on. God wants us to trust Him, and giving us situations where we don’t know what’s going to happen gives us a chance to increase that faith, for even if we slip in that first step and fall, He will catch us. Through this cyclical process we come to trust Him because of He has caught and saved us in the past. This is important to know, because if we’re living according to the will of God, we’re going to be stepping into the darkness quite a bit.
Sometimes God tests our faith with doctrines we don’t fully understand. For instance, the practice of polygamy, and black male members not being able to hold the Priesthood until just a few decades ago. As Elder Maxwell has said, “Of course, there are going to be puzzling moments” (p. 274) and points out that even the prophet Nephi did “not know the meaning of all things” (1 Ne. 11:17). In another talk, Elder Maxwell says: “Hence it is so vital for us to be submissive because we’ll be puzzled when He gives us what we need in order to become more like Him and the Son, unless we are submissive in mind” (296).
The following is from Hugh Nibley in his book Temple and Cosmos: “As C. S. Lewis used to point out, the test of the Christian is not to conform with the commandments and accept teachings which are perfectly right and sensible to any normal way of thinking; if the gospel consisted only of such convenient and unobjectionable things, we could be quite sure that we were making it up ourselves. It is the very contrariness and even absurdity of the Christian teachings that provide, for him, the highest proof of their divinity—this is not man's doing. In the efforts of every president of the Church to explain our position to the world... we see the admission that this thing is not the invention of those men—they are embarrassed by it, and they all pass the acid test for honesty when they refuse to put their own opinions forth as revelation—which in their case would have been an easy thing to do. They are all sure that the policy is right, but none claims to give definitive rational or scriptural justification for it, though they are not backward in putting forth suggestions and speculations. This put the Mormons in an embarrassing position, and why not? The Lord has often pushed the Saints into the water to make them swim....”
God wants us to pursue him, to seek him out, and that’s why we aren’t given everything we need all of a sudden. But sometimes it’s about more than that. Faith does require that we live in the darkness for a season. So after prayer, after fasting, after the temple, after we search and study and pray and attempt to reconcile — if we still fail to understand, if something still doesn’t fit quite right, the answer is that this is, at least in part, a test of faith — so throw up that shield of faith, and put on that armor of righteousness, and you will be prepared against the frequent fiery darts of the adversary. If we are prepared, we will not fear (D&C 38:30).
In fact, we are commanded to neither fear nor doubt. He does not fear, He does not doubt, and He commands us to trust Him and do the same. “Fear not; doubt not” (D&C 6:36). But, I would add, ask MUCH. We need to ask questions if we are to learn and grow, and that is the primary purpose of this world. To learn and grow under God’s hand, to become as He is.
One way we can pursue God and understand His ways is through a very different medium — that of “secular” education. Science is, after all, really all about discovering God’s ways and means of Creation, of organization, of the physical laws put into place in the beginning. D&C 29:24 reads, “For all old things shall pass away, and all things shall become new, even the heaven and the earth, and all the fulness thereof, both men and beasts, the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea.” What this means to me is something that is confirmed by the science of astronomy: God is constantly creating new worlds and destroying old ones. Why? For one thing, His creative work never ceases; it is an eternal work. But in a way more pertinent to us as individuals, I believe God shows us stars and planets in all their various phases of development so that we can further understand His methods of creation! I don’t think I’m being controversial when I submit that God LIKES science! That He WANTS us to be curious about his ways, especially because we will need to understand them if we are to become like Him someday!
Another of God’s methods is illustrated in Nephi’s vision of the Tree of Life, and the chapters surrounding it. In this marvelous vision that spans chapters 11 through 14 of First Nephi, the angel of the Lord tells Nephi at least thirteen times, “Look!” When reading this, note that the angel does not turn Nephi’s head for him. The angel sees something Nephi does not and points it out to him, but it is ultimately Nephi’s decision to actually look in that direction.
Likewise, God will, through His prophets, show us things, or have us undergo experiences, or give us a message, but it is our responsibility to listen to it, to seek to understand it, and to act accordingly in response. More often than not, we have to be the ones to seek after the interpretation thereof. And ofttimes it is as simple as just plain asking. But we have to choose to. God wants us to grow individuals who make right choices without compulsion. He will show us the path, but we have to walk down it.
An example of this truth is surprisingly found in the film Evan Almighty. The character of God, played by Morgan Freeman, gives the doubting and discouraged Steve Carell some words of wisdom:
“Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?”
Again, here we see agency as highest priority: God will neither turn our heads to look in the right direction, nor will he simply turn us into a better person: we must choose to do it ourselves; he simply gives us the opportunity to choose correctly, and in so doing, enlarge our souls.
“The divine attributes of love, mercy, patience, submissiveness, meekness, purity,” Elder Maxwell teaches, “…cannot be developed in the abstract” (275).
A good teacher won’t simply pronounce truth or fact—he or she will help the student discover it for him/herself; offer encouragement or show context; help them FIND the answer, but does not always directly give it outright, at least not without work on the student’s part.
For a prime example of this we can look at the translation of the Book of Mormon. God didn’t force the revelation on Joseph Smith; even though God needed it to bring to pass the marvelous work of the Restoration, He made Joseph work for it, and work for it in the right way. God was not simply using Joseph as a tool or instrument; the whole process led to growth that Brother Joseph may not have gotten otherwise. God was as interested in cultivating Joseph Smith’s character as He was in bringing forth the Book of Mormon.
We also see it in the same example though with Oliver Cowdery. An interesting, yet telling fact is that in the translation, he made multiple punctuation and spelling errors! One might think that God would be guiding the translation process more heavily, but He really lets the mortals work at it. This fact displays the personal nature of our relationship with God, that He is also a real person, that we are not as far from Him as we might think. He is not an abstraction. He works with us personally, and works in our world. As in Jacob’s allegory of the olive tree when “the Lord of the vineyard labored with them,” our Lord today labors with us — but He does not do it for us, except in special situations.
Elder Maxwell further drives this point home: “Heavenly Father doesn’t want us, as His spirit sons and daughters, to be mere automatons, dutifully jumping over what seem to be arbitrary hurdles. Instead, He wants us, His children, being empowered to choose for ourselves, to choose joy instead of misery.” (P. 268)
I had a meaningful experience at a store meeting I attended for my old job at a hardware store. Normally experiences at that job were very far from being meaningful, but this one stood out to me as a kind of parable. One of the workers at the paint desk was showing us the process of how to paint a wall, so that if we, all those who had little to no experience with paint, were asked a question by a customer, we’d know what to answer. For a good fifteen or twenty minutes he demonstrated the process of painting a typical wall in a typical home, and I don’t remember a thing he said or did to this day, and probably forgot everything he said and did within minutes of the workshop ending. I find this very significant, for it demonstrated to me not how to paint, but how not to teach. After all, it’s quite hard to learn without any hands on experience, isn’t it? If you learn something intellectually but never put it into practice, you’re going to forget the technique very soon. (Or at least, I am.)
Likewise, God as the master teacher does not merely give us theoretical knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong; He puts us out into the world. As children grow, they learn that every action has a consequence (despite them wanting otherwise). Some of these are natural (when they are learning the laws of physics in all of nature’s particulars) and some of these are artificial (punishments, or lack thereof, from parents).
This kind of experience is the foundation of our knowledge, and the foundation of God’s ways. God lets us experience things for ourselves; we NEED that experience; there is no other way to properly learn. As the Lord told Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail, and consequently the rest of us, everything we go through will ultimately be for our good, for our growth and learning. This kind of growth and learning cannot occur in either the first act of life nor the third. It must happen here, in mortality.
The prophet Brigham Young taught: “There is not a single condition of life that is entirely unnecessary; there is not one hour’s experience but what is beneficial to all those who make it their study, and aim to improve upon the experience they gain.” (Maxwell book p. 253)
Unfortunately, this experience doesn’t always lead to growth. If taken the wrong way, it can actually lead to a kind of devolution of the soul, making one more bitter, more prideful, more likely to hate. As Elder Maxwell laments: “I wish I could say to you that suffering teaches automatically, but it doesn’t. To paraphrase Anne Morrow Lindbergh: If suffering inevitably taught us, the human family would be a very wise family indeed.” (P. 299)
THIS is why it’s so important to know the mind of God, and what He is trying to do with each and every one of us. It is so we don’t waste time, we don’t waste this life, and we don’t waste the suffering each of us will inevitably go through.
Elder Maxwell, speaking for me in conclusion, related his thoughts on the matter: “Some here know that for 25 years I have felt one of the precious verses in all scripture about discipleship was the one given to the Prophet Joseph in Liberty Jail: “All these things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good” (D&C 122:7). That premise is that experience is valuable, and the only way to have it is to have it. And whether it involves adversity or whatever, then we are blessed. Notice these lines from Paul: ‘Knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope’ (Romans 5:3-4).
“You may ask, ‘There is no other way?’
“And I answer, ‘No, there is not. There is no other way.’”
(It should be noted that we’ve been talking about God’s dealings with us as individual souls, and have purposefully left temple ordinances, family history, and missionary work off the list. Though of course these are ways of saving souls, I do wish to keep the discussion limited to how God works with His children in bringing them up to be like He is, in a more intimate sense. It is, as Elder Maxwell called this world, “this constant shaping of souls…this strategic swirl of people and principles and tactical situations” that I am referring to. The question I seek to answer is not having to do with converting and baptizing, but in God’s methods of building and refining the individual soul.)
V. Satan’s methods
It will be worthwhile to briefly go over the methods Satan uses to counter the work of our Father in Heaven so that we might be ready for his attacks. He seeks to reverse the process of growth towards godhood, and distort those truths that govern eternity. Satan wants us to see this world and this life as having little meaning or purpose other than living for one’s self. Above all Satan seeks to deprive us of our agency. To do this he has convinced the world that we are animals, who have no agency, who are slaves to passion and impulse, living by instincts alone. If we see ourselves as animals, we take from ourselves our own agency, claiming we are simply “born this way,” as certain people in popular culture believe. This method of thinking burns the bridge between us and God, leaving us seemingly willingly stranded on the island of a lower kingdom.
In his plan, Satan would have taken consequences away, hence destroying the foundation of the world: law, cause and effect, choice and consequence. He also tries to erase guilt and shame from our culture, which are ways God has given us so that we might know when we’ve done something wrong.
Satan preaches that God is a spirit, without a body, to make God more like himself, and to persuade us to hate our bodies as something evil and sinful. He also has denigrated the holy act of having children, and turned our society away from the sacred duty to raise them and see them as parents’ most precious assets. Instead of heeding this most important of callings, Satan has convinced people that careers are more fulfilling enterprises than raising children.
This paradigm instills in me considerable outrage: Why is the desire to create life and foster its development — the very measure of our creation — so looked down upon by the world? Why is it considered a lesser calling? Satan is quashing that divinely-inherited instinct to create; he is crushing it in the eyes of the world, destroying, in people’s minds, God’s own work and glory. The institutions of marriage and family are falling away, dissolving into an undefined state in which they can mean anything a person wants them to mean.
Elder Cook taught the following: “Efforts to distort and destroy the family are designed to keep the Father’s children from feeling His love drawing them back home to Him. Abusive male authority figures, out-of-wedlock births, unwanted children, and other social challenges of our day make it harder for those who suffer them to comprehend, hope for, and have faith in a righteous, loving, and caring Father. Just as the Father seeks to help us know Him, the adversary uses every means possible to come between the Father and us. Fortunately, there is no power, sin, or condition that can keep us from the love of the Father. Because God loved us first, we can come to know Him and love Him.”
VI. What we learn – an eternal perspective and the purpose of our own lives
In this life there is a constant search for self, for identity. Animals do not share this pursuit. We struggle, we search, to find meaning, belonging. This quest to find us parallels our quest to find God, and where we find one, we find the other. To understand God is to understand ourselves, and our own eternal destinies. Elder Maxwell asks, “Will we, for instance, remember our true identity as we move through daily life? How much sin occurs because people momentarily forget who they really are?” (p. 278)
Our temporal destinies matter as well. Our own individual purpose in life, the reasons we are precisely where we are in time, in place, at whatever point in our spiritual development we are at. We find meaning as we observe the patterns that define our life, as we speak to God through prayer and as we consequently receive personal revelation, whether it be through the scriptures, a Priesthood blessing, or just a quiet whisper during the sacrament.
The sooner we determine why we’re here, the sooner we can accomplish our mission to bring souls to Christ. The more we understand, the more powerful our faith and strength to do good will be.
Quoting Elder Maxwell again, “When striving disciples reflect deeply upon this mortal experience, certain realities become even more clear. This includes a clarifying and particular reality…: We are immortal individuals whose constant challenge is to apply immortal principles to life’s constantly changing situations. Seen in this way, life’s varied situations are more sharply defined. With this perspective, we can improve our daily performances because we have fixed our gaze on eternity and its great realities.” (P. 272)
We live in a world of limitations. Only in this world are there endings. And those endings do not apply to the next, eternal world. And so, in this world we must focus on those things that do apply, as conveyed in the “two great commandments”: love God and love our neighbor. In other words, who we are to God and to others. Our two most sacred relationships are first, as children of our Heavenly Father, and second, as fathers and mothers to our children and eternal companion to our spouse.
Always remember that to God, and at this crucial juncture in the eternal scheme of things, WE are CHILDREN. God is our Father. Our children in this life are a practice and preparation for when we become like God. And so we can see in this a very pertinent parable. Like with God, over time we, as children, develop the ability to communicate with our Parents--- but in the beginning, we just don’t understand. Communicating with the Lord takes effort and time to master, as well with observations of patterns and promptings — I’m sure the Lord gets frustrated with us just as much as we get frustrated with our children — BUT, his great love quells that frustration, and He will never stop trying to guide us and teach us. Above all, we must cultivate that relationship! For when we do, He will “encircle [us] in the arms of [His] love” (D&C 6:20). Elder Quentin L. Cook has said, “Personally feeling the reality, love, and power of that relationship is the source of the deepest and sweetest emotions and desires that can come to a man or woman in mortality.”
And how do we develop that all-important relationship with our Heavenly Father? By praying regularly and paying attention to whatever comes next. It’s as simple as that.
In “paying attention” we must be aware of who God is, what his goals for us are, and how He brings them about, so that we do not fight back against the hand that is trying to save us and ultimately perish because of our pride and willful ignorance.
As to the second of the great commandments, we have been told to “stand in the place of our stewardship” (D&C 42:53). One must understand which particular stewardships God is concerned most about. President Uchtdorf, clarifying this duty, said, “Brethren, when we stand before the Lord to be judged, will He look upon the positions we have held in the world or even in the Church? Do you suppose that titles we have had other than “husband,” “father,” or “priesthood holder” will mean much to Him? Do you think He will care how packed our schedule was or how many important meetings we attended? Do you suppose that our success in filling our days with appointments will serve as an excuse for failure to spend time with our wife and family?”
The brilliant mastermind behind Apple Inc., Steve Jobs, has shared his regrets about his failures as a parent, and said of the times when he was able to embrace that role of father, “It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.” And in the world’s eyes, brothers and sisters, he did quite a lot.
In a 1982 address to religious educators in the church, Elder Maxwell taught, “Those callings we have, as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers, will outlast any other calling we have, and when the time comes in the next world when stakes and wards fall away like so much scaffolding, there will be the eternal family! And there we shall be, installed as officers in those branches of the Kingdom. This is the calling, of course, that matters most and at which we most need to succeed.”
In seeing all of this, we put on what Elder Maxwell calls “the lens of the Gospel” (p. 275) and we see things as they really are, and what truly matters in life---not according to the world, but to God. In his April 2000 general conference address, President Boyd K. Packer related the following poem by Edwin Markham:
We are all blind, until we see
That in the [universal] plan
Nothing is worth the making if
It does not make the man.
Why build these [buildings] glorious,
If man unbuilded goes?
In vain we build the [world], unless
The builder also grows.
I leave you with one further parable. It is the parable of moonlight. When the earth has turned, and the sun is no longer visible, rays from the sun, so blinding when seen in the day, hit the moon and the light reflects off its surface. This light then travels right to us, showing us that though we cannot see the sun directly, we can know that it is still there.
Likewise, in this life, we can really only see a shade of God, a mere reflection of His true glory. But in that reflection we see a being not unlike our own self. We can see us, and know that, in the same way we are like God, God is also like us, and we can come to understand Him, His ways, His perspective. In so doing, we can progress in such a way that we become like Him, and help others to do the same.
Elder Cook brings all this to a head: “It is precisely because social ills are so prevalent today that we must teach the doctrine of the Father and family to help us heal, correct, and overcome the false ideas and practices pervasive in the world.”
Brothers and sisters, we are to take this message to the world. It is our sacred duty. To understand our Father and our Savior, and bring souls to Them, so that they may know Them as we do.
Christ told the Nephites, “Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up—that which ye have seen me do” (3 Nephi 18:24). And in the next chapter, Mormon tells us that “the light of his countenance did shine upon them” (3 Nephi 19:25).
Brothers and sisters, let us be mirrors of God. Let us reflect the light of His countenance back upon the world. Light reveals all things; let our souls and persons reveal the nature, the character, and the love of God to all.
I offer you this in the name of my Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.
