Strong in Faith

Last night, for our family scripture study, we read Romans chapter 4. Some of it went over our heads, but some of it made a bit more sense and conveyed an aspect of faith and hope that I'd like to share this morning. In verses 18-21, as well as through most of the chapter, Paul wrote about Abraham:

18 Who against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. 

19 And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, neither yet the deadness of Sara’s womb: 

20 He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; 

21 And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. 

Romans 4: 18-21

At the risk of brutally butchering this passage, I'll try to explain what it says in plain English.

Even though it seemed hopeless, Abraham had hope that he would be the father of many nations, because God had promised that he would be. And because of his strong faith, he didn't worry about the fact that both he and his wife were too old to have kids. So, even though the blessing God had promised Abraham was staggering and difficult to believe, Abraham believed that it would happen, and he glorified God, knowing that what God had promised, He was able to make true.

I butchered it, didn't I? Oh, well. At least now I'm pretty sure you understand those verses as well as I do, though I had to read them a couple of times for it to make any sense to me.

This passage of scripture reminds us of a moment in time when God promised Abraham that He would do a thing that seemed impossible. But, of course, God kept His promise, lending even more evidence to the claim that nothing is impossible for God. That's great, but what most interests me about this passage is the parallel from which we may learn if we link this passage to ourselves.

God has made us a few tremendous promises as well, ones involving salvation, exaltation, and a mighty change of heart. When we get stuck in a rut or suffer a setback in our spiritual progression, we may wonder sometimes if even God is able to save us, to change us, to help us eventually become like He is. We have such a long way to go, and we're making so little progress, if any at all, it seems impossible that we'll ever reach such lofty goals. Yet, with God, all things are possible (Matt. 19: 26).

God is able to save us. He is able to change us. He is even able to exalt us until we become even as He is. But in order for that to happen (assuming I'm not mistaken), He needs us to trust Him and follow Him in faith, or at least to try to trust Him and try to follow Him. His incredible blessings rest on the prerequisite of faith, and faith is a principle of action.

There's another concept I'd like to tie into this; a concept relating to time, and a strong faith in the certainty of future events. When God says He's going to do something, it is going to happen, so sometimes, when there are prophesies of things that are going to happen, they're written in the scriptures as if they already did, because they might as well have. The truth of the matter is just as certain either way. So, if God has promised that He will work a mighty change in our hearts, perhaps it'd make sense to start acting as though He already has.

Faith being a principle of action, we should act on our belief that God is helping us to be worthy and welcome to dwell in the Celestial Kingdom with Him. We have been promised that, if we are faithful, we will be saved, so let us be faithful to that promise, and glorify God in faith that we will be saved. We don't have to wait for blessings to be realized in order to thank God for them, especially when these are blessings that God has promised will come. Let us be strong in faith, like Abraham, and strive to live worthy of the blessings God has promised us, trusting whole-heartedly that God will fulfill His promise.

Immediate Blessings

Yesterday, in Sacrament Meeting, one of the sisters in our ward, whose name I forgot to write down, quoted a scripture that I immediately wanted to share this morning.

And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him. 

And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast? 

Mosiah 2: 23-24

When I heard that scripture yesterday, I thought of the word immediately, meaning without delay, instantly, very closely following whatever happened before it, and I knew there were a few places in which the word "Immediately" was used in the scriptures. I was wrong. There are several places where "Immediately" is used in the scriptures, mostly in the New Testament, and as far as I could tell, most of those referred to people being healed immediately. I wanted to share the "Immediately" scriptures, but there proved to be too many, so I thought it'd suffice to share the one I posted above, and one more, but I'll get to that one later.

The scripture above is mostly talking about the debt we owe to God for creating us and for the many blessings He gives us, but I want to highlight the part of the verse where it says that some blessings come immediately. We normally don't think of it happening that way. Or at least, I don't. I feel that it sometimes takes a while for the blessings of commandment-keeping to come. Delay gratification is a good thing, right? It teaches us patience, and it teaches us not to keep the commandments just for the sake of receiving blessings. If we keep commandments just for the sake of receiving the blessings that will immediately come, then the purpose of hose commandments (making us better, more Christ-like people) would be ruined.

Or would it? Even if we keep the commandments selfishly, if we keep them consistently, the habit will still form, and we'll become better people for it. I'm starting to get off-topic, aren't I?

My current thinking is that God does bless us immediately when we keep commandments, but that the blessings that come immediately after a specific act of commandment-keeping are often very subtle. To be specific (though I may be wrong here, so don't quote me on this), I think that the immediate blessing of keeping commandments is that we'll have the Holy Spirit with us more abundantly, that it'll touch our hearts and give us the "warm fuzzies" that we usually associate with the act of doing good. Other blessings, such as miracles on our behalf, may come later, precisely in the moment they're needed, perhaps after we've shown that we're willing to keep God's commandments with some consistency. The less-obvious blessing of the presence of the Holy Spirit may also help people to keep the commandments for the right reasons. It's subtle enough that many people could miss it, and it's not usually enough incentive for people to keep the commandments just so they could feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.

The other scripture I wanted to share the features the word "immediately" is Alma 34: 31:

Yea, I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer; for behold, now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.

This verse talks about the keeping of a specific commandment, repentance, for which one may immediately receive a specific blessing, that "the great plan of redemption [will] be brought about unto you." I think that means forgiveness, but again, don't quote me because I'm not completely sure.

If I'm right, this is another blessing that can be rather subtle and not always felt, so there's little chance of people repenting just for the instant gratification of the feeling of being forgiven (besides, such people probably aren't genuinely repenting anyway), but for those with sincerity and enough spiritual sensitivity, the feeling of being forgiven may be felt and appreciated.

Honestly, I think that God likes to bless us, that He's eager to bless us, but that there are usually a few things holding Him back. His Spirit can't be with us if we're not keeping the commandments because He "dwelleth not in unholy temples." He could grant us miracles on our behalf, but actually, that might do more harm than good. If we sin, but get blessed anyway, we may never learn our lesson and repent, so, for our own sakes, God can't bless us unless we obey His counsel and commandments.

But as soon as we do, He blesses us. I believe that God is eager and anxious to bless us, and as soon as we give Him an opportunity, by keeping a commandment or repenting of a sin, He welcomes us with open arms and makes sure that we feel welcome by blessing us with His Spirit. I think that God really, really loves us, so He wants to bless us, and He does so immediately when we give Him a good reason to. But even more than He wants to bless us, He wants what's best for us. He wants us to learn and grow to be good people. He wants us to repent of our sins and keep His commandments. So, as much as He wants to bless us, He often holds some blessings back until we show that we're willing to follow Him.

But here's the kicker: If we do follow Him, no good thing will be withheld from us. Even all the He has will be given to us if we follow Him. A blessing that big may not come to us immediately, but it's certainly worth keeping the commandments for, and we have a scriptural assurance that there will be many immediate blessings along the way.

Let's Agree to Disagree

While I was looking on Facebook for something uplifting and sharable, I stumbled upon a Facebook page that posted, or at least shared, the following photo:

This photo is particularly relevant because of how I found the page. One of my friends shared a photo that this group had posted, depicting a comic that I find myself surprised that I agree with. The comic showed a man having a conversation with God:

Man: Lord, why do you pile all these troubles upon us? It's because of the gays, isn't it?
God: Yes, it is.
Man: I knew it. You're punishing us for their abominations.
God: Oh, no no no. Not at all. I'm punishing you for the [poor] way you treat them.

The general feeling I get from the Facebook page I stumbled upon is that those who claim to be Christian should try to act more like Christians. We should be loving, and even tolerant, even with those with which we disagree. I agree with that much. But then there comes up the question of gay marriage, and suddenly I no longer know where I stand. By opposing gay marriage, am I being intolerant?

Hold on. I blogged about this once. I know I did. Let me go back and remember what I said then.

Okay, I blogged about it in two places: In Faith and Following on June 28, and Political Ramblings on June 30. In my opinion, they're better read in reverse order.

Reviewing my opinion in Faith and Following, I remember that while I have no personal convictions against gay marriage, I believe that God is against it, so I cast my vote against it as well, not because I oppose gay marriage or gay people, but because I trust God. I have nothing against gay people and I don't think I'm being intolerant of them. As I said before:

If it were up to me, I'd let people - no, I'd want people to follow their hearts courageously, and not have the government or the general public trying to tear them down for acting according to their beliefs.

I want them to act according to their convictions, but I also want them to understand that I have to follow mine. It's nothing personal. We're both just tying to do what we think is right, and I hope we can just agree to disagree. There is a disagreement, but I'm not trying to change anybody's minds and I hope they don't try to change mine. I don't want to start any arguments. I'm just trying to follow God.

I hope that we can all be kind to one another, even though we disagree on this point. Rick Warren once said:

Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense. You don’t have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

I hope that I can be compassionate with those I disagree with without compromising my conviction to follow God. We made be opponents, politically, but we don't have to be enemies, personally. At least, that's how I feel about it.

Upkeep

I was looking through my older blog posts, re-reading "Four Titles," and others. As I did, I saw the post on Prerequisites and was reminded that I had revised that role-playing system since then, by adding the principle of Upkeep.

In the standard role-playing system, once you've earned a Benefit, you usually get to keep it. Say a character was a fighter in his twenties and thirties, but he retired from that and now he's in his sixties, not having swung a sword in thirty years. But a horde of goblins raids his village, so he pulls his old sword off the mantle and starts slaying goblins just as easily as he did when he was thirty. The problem with this is that he should be horribly out of practice. He should have forgotten a lot of what he used to know about fighting, and lost almost all of his strength (depending on what he has been doing these thirty years, if not sword-fighting). There's a sort of use-it-or-lose-it principle to most skills in real life, and I'd like that to carry over to gaming.

A problem I saw with my Prerequisites idea is that it seemed too easy for a character to become extremely powerful, just by virtue of growing up. Say a boy of fifteen sets out to become a warrior, and spends five years learning how to fight. Along his adventures, he meets a wizard, and spends five years learning how to do magic, while keeping up his sword-fighting skill in his free time. By now, he's a well-known and very competent adventurer. He goes on an epic quest in which he saves the life of the High Priestess of the Holy Light. In return, she offers to teach him the way of light, which he accepts, spending five years learning the art of holy magic, while simultaneously maintaining his wizardry and swordsmanship. At this point, the man is thirty-ish years old and has spent half his life sword-fighting, has a decade of experience with arcane magic (or wizardry), and has spent the last five years learning divine magic from the High Priestess herself. He would be an incredibly powerful character. But there's just one problem: It would be impossible to keep all those skills in top shape. The more time he spends studying magic, the less time his spends practicing sword-fighting. The more time he spends with divine magic, the less time he spends with arcane magic.

In my Prerequisites system, I want there to be a system of Upkeep, where you need to spend a portion of your time practicing a skill you learned previously in order not to lose it. The fighter in the first example should be fairly useless at sword-fighting after thirty years of no practice, and the adventurer in the second example shouldn't be a great sword-fighter either, having spent so much of his time studying magic instead. There needs to be a way to keep tract of how much time each character spends on each skill, and at what level each of those skills should be as a result of the amount of time spent on them. This is starting to get complicated.

Thankfully, in real life, this system is much more intuitive. We all know that the more time we spend, say, practicing on the piano or learning to cook, the better we get at those things, and the longer it's been since we've done those things, the more those skills will start to slip away from us. The same applies with spiritual matters. The more time we spend reading the scriptures and trying to follow the spirit, the more spiritual we become, and there's a certain amount of effort required just to maintain the level of spirituality we've already achieved. The longer we go without saying our prayers and reading the scriptures, the more our spirituality starts to dwindle. We may lose it entirely, if we're not careful.

So, I'm going to try to spend more time, especially in the evenings, when I'm supposed to read the Book of Mormon, write in my journal, and say my evening prayers, trying to keep my spirituality up. I've felt it slipping the last few days, and forgetting my scripture study may be a large part of that. I need to get back into the habit of meeting the Prerequisites for Divine Favor, or I may lose that benefit entirely, and I seriously cannot afford that.

A Picture Book Parody

I just finished reading (if you can call a comic-book style picture book "reading") a version of the Bible that I'm not sure how to describe. I don't want to insult the book or its creators, but I don't have many good things to say about it, and I don't want to describe it enough that anyone would recognize it on a book store shelf and feel any prejudice against it because of what I write in this blog post.

I have two main problems with the Bible I just read (if it can still be called a Bible): Mistranslations and Omissions. Omissions first. I'm not going to fault them for only having so many pages to fit picture onto. If you turned the entire Bible into a picture book, with each scene getting its own picture, it'd end up being one huge book. Naturally, they had to cut things out and simplify what they kept, but the omissions they made seemed selective, and in my opinion, they kept the worse parts. Just for one example, they showed Peter cutting off a soldier's ear when Jesus was arrested, but they didn't show Jesus healing said ear afterward. And on the cross, they showed Jesus dying right after He said "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" not mentioning the phrases "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit," "It is finished," or even "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." If I could only pick one phrase that came out of Jesus' mouth when He was crucified, "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" would not have been it.

Then there were the mistranslations. I don't know if they were simply using another common version of the Bible, other than the King James Version I'm used to, or whether they put the words into (mostly) plain English for storytelling purposes, or some combination of both, but whatever they did to the text of the story, they made it way more confusing. Of course, it could be just that they don't have the footnotes that LDS Bibles do. There are plenty of places when the Bible uses a word or phase that doesn't translate quite right, and the footnotes help clear up that confusion. And they certainly didn't have access to the Joseph Smith Translations for the verses that were recorded or translated wrong.

I'm aware that the Bible is usually confusing. There are plenty of parts that are unclear to those of us that aren't very well familiar with the language and culture of the time. To make matters worse, there's also lots of symbolism that's lost on most of us. So when they made the picture book, saying "here's (part) what I think it said or meant, or might have looked like," I think they got a lot of it wrong, and I came away from that book thinking that it was the craziest book I had read in living memory, and I sure hoped that most of it wasn't true. At least, not literally. It scares me to think that that book might become someone's only, or even just first, exposure to the Bible. Those of us who have read the Bible and are familiar with it will recognize many of the places where the picture book got it wrong, and we won't be thrown off by it. But someone who has never read the Bible, but only knows that it's supposed to be the Word of God; if they read that book, I bet they'll come away from it with even more questions and confusion, and even less faith that the Bible might hold the answers to their questions.

All in all, I think that silly picture book is doing more harm than good. On the other hand, if someone sees the book, gets confused, and starts asking questions of their local clergymen, they might actually be led to some constructive, helpful answers. So, really, who am I to judge?

It was a rhetorical question, but I'll answer it anyway. I'm someone who has read the Bible, the King James Version with LDS footnotes, to be specific, and found that it held a good deal of sound doctrine as well as the spirit of truth. The book I just read had neither and is a mere parody of the Bible. You might get a good chuckle out of the silly imagery, and it certainly took a lot of creativity to put it together; I'll give them that much. But it's worth no more than that, and it's certainly not worth anywhere near as much as the true Holy Bible.

Bonus Post: I Blog For Myself

It occurs to me that most of my blog posts end up talking about things we should be doing, or at least should be doing better. That's because those are the messages that I need most frequently, so those are the messages I usually find when I look for things to share on my blog. I have frequently said, and I'll say it now just in case anyone's wondering, that I blog for my own benefit rather than other people's. If my readers find something inspiring in what I write, that's wonderful. But if my blog posts consist mostly of calls to repentance, that's because I need to repent, not because I think any of you do. Well, actually, we all do, but blessing the masses with my goodness and wisdom, if I have any of either, is not why I blog.

Sometimes I have an insight that I share for others' benefit, but mostly, this blog is for me. I write here the things that I want to remember. So please don't take it personally if I blog about things we should be doing more or better. I'm just talking to myself, trying to talk myself into being a better person than I am.

Things I Should Remember

About half a year ago, on May 17th, I said that I got to my blog each morning by making a web search for it. I still do. But now, instead of searching for "Andrew Robarts Armor of God," which gets many more results than just the place I'm trying to get to, I now search for the words "Madman," "Blogspot," and "Armor," in any order, and my blog is the top hit every time. There are usually two particular blog posts that come up when I do those web searches: Helmet of Salvation (May 17th), and Sword of the Spirit (May 23rd). I usually click on the Helmet of Salvation, but it really doesn't matter because I get to my blog either way.

Occasionally, I do more than just pass through those posts to get to my blog. Sometimes I read them on my way. Sword of the Spirit isn't much worth re-reading frequently, but the other blog post is something I should re-read regularly. "Keep the goal of salvation on your mind [and] remember that serving God faithfully is your goal." I sometimes find it hard to keep the goal of salvation on my mind, just as many people struggle to always remember Christ. That's why we need frequent reminders, like the Sacrament and Christmas.

Focusing on the Lord and everlasting life can help us not only at Christmas, but through all the challenges of mortality.
- Russell M. Nelson, "Jesus the Christ--Our Prince of Peace"

We all face many challenges in mortality. When we do, it's good to remember why those challenges are there and who we can turn to to help us get through them. One of my challenges is with my feelings of self-worth. I often have a hard time seeing myself as a child of God, with a spark of divinity inside me. It's hard to imagine me, as I am, ever having the potential to grow to become like Him. That would take an AWFUL LOT of growing, and sometimes progress seems very slow, or non-existent. In those times, I need to remember that I am a child of God, but that I am much, much younger than He is. The strength of an acorn, whose existence consists of only a few weeks, pales in comparison with that of an oak that has stood and grown for centuries. I have many centuries of growth and experience ahead of me before I could even dream that the goal to become like my Heavenly Father might be realistic, but even now, the potential is there. And I need to remember that.

He That is Without Sin Among You

Merry Christmas!

I don't want to spend a ton of time Blogging this morning because there's lots of Christmas to enjoy, but since the other members of the household are still in bed, I figure I probably shouldn't start the party without them, and blogging is an excellent alternative. Besides, I have to. I haven't missed a day yet, and I'm sure not going to start now!

Last night, we did something that I probably shouldn't talk about too much because I think it might be a surprise for someone. But without giving away many details, it led to a discussion of the scene described in John chapter 8. While Jesus was teaching in the temple, the Pharisees brought in a woman that had been taken in adultery, and they asked him what they should do with her, reminding Him that the Law of Moses says that a person like her should be stoned. But Jesus said, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

Here, I believe, Jesus was basically saying that unless we're perfect, we have no right to judge others of their imperfections. The Pharisees seemed to get the message, because after hearing what Jesus said, they all left.

But here's the interesting part that I didn't notice until last night. Jesus basically just said, "Unless you're perfect, you have no right to judge her," then He, the only perfect person to ever set foot on this planet, was left alone with the woman. He, the only being with the right to judge the woman was immediately handed the perfect opportunity to judge her. In fact, by the way He phrased His answer to the Pharisees, He might have been saying "Yeah, sure, let's stone her, but I get to throw the first rock." But, of course, He didn't. As soon as He was alone with her, He said, "Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? ... Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."

I love that just after saying that He was the only one with the right to judge her, He didn't. He basically forgave her of her sin, though He did instruct her to "Sin no more." It's pretty comforting to know that the only being who has the right to judge us is more forgiving than judgmental. Still, the charge to "Go and sin no more," is undeniable. I think that though Jesus is very forgiving of weakness and imperfection, He feels more strongly about willfully sinful behavior. I think that if we're trying to repent, He'll forgive us and help us repent, but if we're not really trying... then we've made our decision.

The moral of this story, besides the "sin no more" part, is the same as in most New Testament stories: Don't be like the Pharisees. The Pharisees thought they were extra-righteous (which they weren't), which meant that they were in a position where they could judge the woman (which, again, they weren't). And neither are we. None of us are perfect. When we see imperfection in others, we should try to be understanding and cut them a little slack. At the same time, we should all be trying to overcome our imperfections and to help each other do the same. We should be building each other up, rather than beating each other down. We're all human. Perhaps we should show a little more human kindness rather than judging each other for being human.

The (Cheesy) Reason Behind Christmas

Because I have nothing else to blog about and I need to get this blog post done quickly so I can wrap up a couple of Christmas projects (pun intended), I will now share a video that was posted on LDS.org a long time ago, but I chose not to share then because it was too cheesy.





What I like most about this video is the feat of impressive shadow-puppetry. What I dislike about it is that it seems to imply that as long as we're nice, we don't need to give each other gifts. That's not really true. In our society, we've sort of dug ourselves into a pit of obligation, where we now need to give gifts to each other.

Rather than telling us to cast aside those traditions and not give gifts to others, I prefer to believe that this video is trying to tell us that, while we may get busy with buying gifts for everyone on our lists, there's one person who should be on our lists that doesn't want a store-bought gift, but rather a gift from the heart.

Heavenly Father gave us the gift of His Son. Jesus Christ gave us the gift of the Atonement. And having the Holy Spirit with us is, itself, a gift. To repay Them, They ask that we try to be a little nicer, to keep the commandments better, to do some act of kindness for someone else. The children in this video give terrific examples of gifts we can give to the Savior. For this Christmas and afterward, I'm going to try to find ways to do good things as a gift to the Savior, just to thank Him for all that He has given me.

But that, unfortunately, will have to come later. I have a little bit of last-minute, Christmas business to take care of, and I'm on a pretty tight deadline. I need to get back to work.

Leaving a Legacy

Yesterday, we watched a program on TV about State and National Parks. They talked about the legacy of those who fought to make Yosemite the first National Park. From there, the movement spread to the rest of the country, protecting dozens of sites, and from there (the program implied), to the rest of the world, protecting hundreds. The work those valiant men did has blessed lives all over the country, and perhaps all over the world, for many generations. Millions, perhaps billions, of lives have been blessed by what they did.

Today is Joseph Smith Jr's birthday. The work he did nearly two hundred years ago spread from New York to Utah, and even a little farther, and from our country to the rest of the world. Today, millions of people have received the blessings of the gospel, and have access to revelation through the spirit and through modern-day prophets. Temple work has been done for countless ancestors and friends who have passed on. It's no exaggeration to say that millions, perhaps billions, of lives have been blessed by what he did.

Those men left a powerful legacy. There aren't many people who have done more good for the world than they did. Their examples of hard work and dedication to a righteous cause are inspiring. I almost wish I could do something great, like they did. But, theoretically, I can.

It is rumored that someone use said "everything that can be invented has been invented," in 1899. That was over one hundred years ago, and there have been many life-altering inventions since then, including whatever you're using to read this blog. This morning, I'm tempted to say that there are no great works left, that every great thing that can be done has already been done, or is currently being done. I could become part of any of those movements, but it's too late to spearhead any. Even if I had the inspiration to choose some great task, and even if I had the diligence and will-power to actually accomplish it, I don't think I'd have enough time to really affect anyone. We're in the "last days," as I'm sure you've heard. Those who have started great works did so at least one or two hundred years ago. I don't know if the earth has one or two hundred years left.

As excuses go, however, that one is pretty pathetic. We've been in the "last days" since Joseph Smith restored the church. That was almost two hundred years ago, and I have no reason to believe that the earth won't keep spinning for at least one hundred more. And who says it takes one hundred years to do something great? I don't need to change the world in order to have a positive impact on people. This blog may have already have had a positive influence on a handful of you, and I've only been blogging for a year. If I keep this up for another decade or so, who knows how many people may be affected; how much of an impact I may have. Maybe this is my "great work." Maybe this blog is how I'll leave my mark on the world. Still, I can't shake the feeling that I should be doing something more, something greater. Maybe that's just the pride in me, wanting to do something for which I'll be remembered. Or maybe God is trying to inspire me to start the work I was created to do. I wish I knew for sure.

Paladins Pray

You know the difference between paladins and regular warriors? Paladins make and keep oaths to live worthily of divine favor, then they pray for it, and frequently get it. Without the oaths, the righteous living, the prayers, and the blessings, paladins would be no different that regular warriors. Each of those elements are essential, but today I want to focus on one in particular: prayer.

When the day begins, a paladin doesn't just check his equipment and don his armor, as a warrior does. He also prays. When the day ends, a paladin doesn't just check his equipment and make sure his sword is sharp. He also prays. When danger appears, a paladin doesn't just unsheathe his sword and jump into the fray. He also prays. When a battle ends, a paladin doesn't just clean his sword and re-sheathe it. He also prays.

Sometimes, it's just a quick, mental prayer for help, or giving thanks for help received. Other times, it's a longer, more meditative prayer, often accompanied by scripture study. Whatever the situation is, whether things are going well or poorly, whether the paladin has all the time in the world or no time at all, a paladin is almost always praying. And so should we be.

The phrase, "pray always," appears dozens of times in the scriptures. In the Book of Mormon specifically, Alma 33 talks about how we should pray in all places, and Alma 34 speaks on how we should pray for a variety of reasons. In addition, there are many General Conference talks that remind us to pray frequently.

One of the reasons we're asked to pray frequently is found in the Bible Dictionary; "The object of prayer is... to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them." I believe that there are many of those, blessings that we qualify for and that God knows could help us, but that He's waiting for us to request before granting them. I may not fully understand all the reasons God asks us to pray for blessings (besides as a way to remind us where our blessings are coming from), but I know it's a good idea to do it. Sometimes God gives us challenges that we can't overcome without His help, and we get His help by asking for it through prayer. Paladins know this, which is why they pray for heaven's help as often as they need it.

I'm often faced with challenges that I could use God's help overcoming, yet so frequently, I forget to pray for help. It's not a pride issue most of the time. It's not that I don't want His help (though I would like to be strong enough not to need it). Mostly, it's just that I forget. I'm going to try to change that. Maybe if I make a conscious effort to pray very frequently, whenever I have anything I'd like to say to God, I'll say a quick, silent prayer. Perhaps if I teach myself to "pray always," I'll remember to pray for God's help when I need it, just as a paladin would.

If We Struggle With the Trials of Life

I found this photo on Facebook the other day, and thought I'd hold onto it in case I wanted to blog about the quote later. Later is now.

Remember when I blogged about training and healing? I think life is kind of like training in an adventure game in that we need to face tough challenges in order to become stronger. God often hand-picks our challenges, but the trouble is that the challenges He picks for us are often really tough. Sometimes, our challenges are tough enough that they occasionally defeat us. When that happens, we may wonder why God gave us a challenge that hard and why He didn't help us overcome it. There may be a number of reasons, but the one I want to focus on right now is this: If a challenge isn't tough enough to possibly defeat us, it probably isn't tough enough that defeating it will make us stronger. If it's not actually a challenge, it's not actually going to help us grow.

God knows that life is hard. He made it that way (plus, sometimes we make it harder for ourselves and each other). He knows that we're going to struggle and fail from time to time, and maybe failing occasionally is part of the growth we're meant to experience. If we never fall, we can never pick ourselves back up. God doesn't think any less of us for failing to overcome our challenges. I believe that He only becomes disappointed with us if we stop trying. If we face our challenges and fail to them, at least we faced them, and there's definitely something to be said for that, and maybe even just the display and exercise of courage can strengthen us, whether the valiant effort is met with success or not. As long as we're trying to do God's will, I believe that God has reason to be proud of us, whether we actually accomplish His will or not.

Maybe the test of life isn't of whether we will succeed or fail, but whether we'll continue to try, even when we fail. This is a hard test. But then again, if it wasn't hard, it wouldn't really be a test, would it?

As Yet Unaffected

I've been spending my last few mornings volunteering at the Bishop's Storehouse, which conveniently isn't far at all from where I live. It's kind of fun. The physical work has been good for me, and it really makes me feel good inside to help out. A lot of people do volunteer work around Thanksgiving and Christmastime, and I hope I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon, though having my mornings free thanks to Winter Break has certainly helped, and when Christmastime is over, school will start up again, and I may not be able to volunteer as often as I have this week. Maybe this is just a seasonal phase, though the season has in no way affected my desire to help.

I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Theoretically, it's good because it means that I always have some desire to serve, which, at times,  I've thought to have been one of my defining attributes, as well as one of my more admirable attributes. I like helping people, and I like that I like helping people. That's a good thing.

Still, I feel no extra desire to serve others in the spirit of Christmas. I don't know if it's that we haven't gotten around to putting up many Christmas decorations yet, or maybe I just haven't been listening to the radio enough, but I haven't been feeling extra Christmassy this year. Not that I'm complaining. If I don't feel a certain way, I know it's mostly on me, and I could change it by opening Pandora in another tab, shoving some clutter around, and making room for a tree somewhere. But what does a plastic evergreen coated in lights or a few merry tunes about silver bells and snowmen have to do with wanting to help other people?

I think it mostly reminds us that it's Christmas, and Christmas reminds us to think about, and act like, Jesus Christ.

But do we really need reminders? Well, actually, yeah. We do. Jesus gave us the Sacrament to remind us of the Atonement. It was probably the greatest of all acts in the history of mankind, and one that has a central role in each of our lives, but most of us need weekly reminders to help us let it affect us. Could Christmas be the same way? We know we're supposed to be Christians and act like Christians all the time, but we only get excited about it once or twice a year (possibly counting Easter).

At Christmastime, we serve others and give gifts and generally be better people in some ways than we usually are, and as a result, we feel a lot better around Christmastime than we usually do. The strange thing is that we tend to chalk that good feeling up to the "Christmas Spirit," and shortly after December 25th, everything goes back to normal. I know this is going to sound really cheesy, but shouldn't we act like it's Christmas all the time? And I'm not talking about gifts or decorations anymore. I'm talking about service and kindness and acting like Jesus would want us to act. Shouldn't we live our religion not just in the winter?

Well, yeah, we should. But we struggle with that sometimes. Life gets busy and the world gets us off-track. We eventually forget how good it feels to act like a Christian. But then Christmastime rolls around again and reminds us. We need Christmas. We shouldn't, but we do. We need to have a time of year that inspires us to break out of our normal routines, do nice things for other people, and rejoice in the spirit that comes into our hearts when we do. Christmas does that to people. And it's well-passed time that I let it do that to me.

"Thy Father... Seeth in Secret"

In this room, where I sit every morning to blog or use the computer in any way, there is a poster with Jesus' face on it, and the caption, "You Are Never Alone." The poster is meant to be comforting, and comforting it sometimes is, with a smaller caption, "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you (John 14:18)." But it can also be a warning. Nothing you do is ever done in secret. Eyes from above are always watching. You are never alone. Of course, that's nothing to be afraid of, as long as we don't do anything we'd rather keep secret from Heaven. It can even be a positive thing. Jesus taught:

Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: 

That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
Matthew 6: 2-4

I think "Secret-Santa"-style generosity fits under the same category.

The truth is that all things, good and bad, are witnessed by Heaven, and for every action, both of virtue and of vice, there will come a just reward. Justice can seem cold and hard at times, but it is always fair, and sometimes acts in our favor, especially when we act in the favor of others. Whether we do good things or bad things, whether other people know what we do or not, God knows. His angels are always watching us, making record of every action. Let's try and make sure we have positive marks on our Eternal records, whether anyone else is watching or not.

Procrastination and the Second Coming

There is, officially, just a week to go until Christmas and I am, like many other people, not ready.

During the discussion in the lesson I gave last Sunday, we talked about one possible reason why God isn't telling us exactly when the Second Coming will be: Procrastination. Some people have a tendency to put things off until the last minute. For example, if a person knows that Christmas isn't until December 25, they might figure that they have a few months or weeks or several days to get completely ready for it... and they don't. I suspect that, just shy of Black Friday, December 24th is one of the busiest days for retail stores. But usually, by the time people realize that they can't put things off any longer, it's too late to get the job done properly.

Can you imagine what would happen if everyone knew what day the second coming would be? There would probably be a lot of people that put off repenting until just before then, only to realize that repentance is a process that takes longer than most people think. In order to repent properly, a person needs to invest some time into it. The sooner they start, the better. But if a person checks their calendar and sees that the second coming isn't going to happen for a while, they might figure that they can start the repentance process later.

But by not telling us when the second coming will be, God has made procrastination seem like a far less viable option. We can't say that we have at least a few months or weeks until the big day, because nobody knows when the big day is going to be. It might be a long time away, but it also might be tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe the time for last-minute repentance is now. It's certainly time to begin our "last minute" Christmas preparations. Speaking of which, I have some shopping to do and some projects to work on, not to mention a few other tasks I need to attend to today. I'd better get to work.

Different Lessons for Different Listeners

Two days ago, I tried to give a lesson on the Second Coming, but even with days of forethought on the topic and studying from the manual, I felt that I did a fairly poor job of actually teaching the lesson. I, personally, got a lot out of studying the lesson, and I got a few good blog posts out of it, but when it was time to teach it in person, I found that I was unable to communicate what I had learned. At this point, I wonder if I'm better at writing than at speaking, but that's not the real reason I had trouble teaching the lesson. Shortly after the lesson was over, I got the impression that I had received through study, and then attempted to share, the message that God had meant for me to learn from that chapter, without pausing to consider that that message might be different from the message that He intended for them.

One thing I love about parables is that they can mean different things to different people at different times. I understand that there often isn't only one correct interpretation to a certain parable, but rather, God uses that parable to teach the hearer whatever lesson they need to learn.

For example, the parable of the sower is largely understood to be related to people's reception of the gospel, but I could see how a person who could use a lesson on tithing could benefit from this parable. The sower needed to do his part and cast the seeds before God was able to grow it into a harvest. But when we think about it, if we are the sowers and the seed is money, we're all casting our seeds out on a regular basis. We buy food, we buy shelter, we buy clothes. The rich may buy large houses or fancy cars. In the end, it doesn't seem to amount to much. The food gets used up and we get hungry again, our clothes and shelter wear out and we need to pay to repair or replace it, and even if we buy something that will last forever, we can't take it with us. So what's the value of money? Money is as temporary and trivial as the things we spend it on. Since most of the sower's seeds are going to get choked, scorched, or trampled anyway, we might as well cast our seeds wherever we want. But there was a small percentage of seeds that landed somewhere special - somewhere where it would really do some good. It went to pay for the printing of the copy of The Book of Mormon that changed someone's life forever. It paid for the church building where a family gathered and grew closer together. It helped pay for the construction of a temple, where the blessings of heaven were poured out on millions. So, the seed fell among good soil and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold (Matthew 13:8).

How about another, less long-winded example? Say a person needs to hear a lesson on the Word of Wisdom, and they hear the parable of the sower. One part in particular catches their attention - the part where some seeds fell among thorns, and they thought about how the ground was good, and good seed fell into it, but because of the thorns, the good seed was unable to grow. Many weeds, like many addictions, are difficult and painful to remove, especially those with thorns, but the result of removing the weeds is that you then have good, clear soil with good seed planted in it, and then, instead of growing weeds and thorns, the ground produces good fruit. It can be an inspiring message on why a person should change their life and what might happen if they do.

As I studied the Second Coming, there were parts that caught my attention, and I learned from those, but if a person teaches a parable or a lesson from the perspective of they learned when they studied it, their students might not pick up on the parts of the lesson that they need to learn. When studying a lesson, a person should listen for the Spirit's influence giving guidance specifically for them, but when preparing to teach a lesson, they should listen for guidance of what they should share with others. That's what I didn't do this time, and that I hope I'll remember to do next time I'm asked to teach a lesson.

The Unique Skill Set of One of Helaman's Servants

Reminded by a talk in church yesterday, I read from the Book of Mormon last night. In Helaman chapter 2, there's an account of an assassination attempt that went South because one of the target's servants was in the right place at the right time.

And it came to pass as he [Kishkumen, the would-be assassin] went forth towards the judgment-seat to destroy Helaman, behold one of the servants of Helaman, having been out by night, and having obtained, through disguise, a knowledge of those plans which had been laid by this band to destroy Helaman— 

And it came to pass that he met Kishkumen, and he gave unto him a sign; therefore Kishkumen made known unto him the object of his desire, desiring that he would conduct him to the judgment-seat that he might murder Helaman. 

And when the servant of Helaman had known all the heart of Kishkumen, and how that it was his object to murder, and also that it was the object of all those who belonged to his band to murder, and to rob, and to gain power, (and this was their secret plan, and their combination) the servant of Helaman said unto Kishkumen: Let us go forth unto the judgment-seat. 

Now this did please Kishkumen exceedingly, for he did suppose that he should accomplish his design; but behold, the servant of Helaman, as they were going forth unto the judgment-seat, did stab Kishkumen even to the heart, that he fell dead without a groan. And he ran and told Helaman all the things which he had seen, and heard, and done.
Helaman 2: 6-9

I have a whole lot of questions about this servant guy. Why was he out by night, especially in disguise? How did he know about Kishkumen's band's secret plans and signs? Why was he carrying a knife? Well, okay, that part is fairly understandable, but the rest of it is highly suspect. If I didn't know any better, I might think that this nameless servant was some kind of shady character. Yet, he saved Helaman's life, and he was probably the only person on the continent that had the knowledge, skill, and right heart to do it.

It could simply be that he was the right person at the right place at the right time. It could have been just a coincidence, but as a "coincidence," it seems pretty far-fetched. I'm reasonably certain that people don't just happen to know the secret signs of secret organizations, and people don't normally end up wearing disguises by accident. It's possible that this servant's job was to, in disguises, infiltrate such "secret" organizations to find out what they're up to and stop them, which he did. Perhaps it wasn't a coincidence that the servant had these skills and knowledge of those secrets. Perhaps it was all part of some plan.

In life, I sometimes think that God's very good at making something good out of what we give Him to work with. We are all imperfect, but we occasionally find that we're perfect for the jobs God calls us to do. Sometimes I think that's because God finds the perfect jobs for us. But sometimes, and especially in the case of Helaman's servant who thwarted Kishkumen, I think God shapes His servants for the jobs that He needs them to do. I believe that God had a hand in how the servant's life turned out, and the skills he ended up possessing. It's possible that we give God lemons and He makes lemonade, but it's also possible that God planted those lemons because He wanted to make lemonade. Whichever is the case for Helaman's servant, and for each of us, we know that God's plan is perfect and it takes all our strengths, weaknesses, and unique attributes into account.

God knows each of us perfectly. He knows what we can do, and sometimes He gives us assignments that no one can fulfill but us. Whether He fit the job to match the servant or fit the servant to match the job doesn't matter as long as we put our faith in our Heavenly Father and get the job done. Either way, His plan has an important place for all of us, whatever our skill set may be.

Trying to Organize my Thoughts

So, I don't really have a topic for this blog post, but I've got to blog about something, so I'll just start typing and see what comes up.

I'm teaching a lesson on the Second Coming today, but the basic lesson plan is the stuff I've been covering over the last week. I might start with "Looking Forward to the Second Coming," or I might finish with it, or I might not cover it at all. It was kind of personal, after all. But I'm definitely covering what Jesus will do when He comes again, possibly bringing up the question of chronology, and most likely mentioning the timeline of resurrection. I think some people will be interested in that.

I don't want to cover the Millennium too much because there will be a whole class on it next week, and there's also a section in this chapter about "How Will We Know When the Savior's Second Coming is Near?" But we had a lesson on the signs of the second coming last week. I might throw in some review, especially pointing out that only God know exactly when the second coming will happen, so we need to be prepared for it to happen any time.

Speaking of being prepared, I want to spend maybe about half of the lesson time talking about HOW to prepare for the second coming, repeating those four "Quick Tips" from yesterday. I think they'll like that.

Also, I'll want to mention the connection between celebrating the Savior's birth, or "First Coming," and anticipating His second coming. I've seen it in a New Era magazine, at the Elk Grove Nativities Festival, and this morning on Facebook. If that's not a nudge and a hint, it, at the very least, is still a good idea. Maybe I'll open with that, linking the birth of Christ to another exciting and well-prophesied event that we, like the shepherds, may be lucky enough to witness, assuming that we, like the wise men, are wise enough to prepare for it.

I might even throw in the contrast that the manual makes obvious: that though Jesus came quietly and humbly the first time, and not many people took notice, everyone will notice the second coming, as it will be (I'm estimating) the biggest event in the history of the earth. But if that distracts from the Christmas theme, I might have to leave it out. I don't want to try and upstage Christmas ten days prior.

This'll be a good lesson for this time of year. Refreshingly different, but with enough similarities to fit. Many of us have spent months preparing for Christmas and the application point of my message is to prepare for the second coming. I think it fits. I'll need to polish it a little more, I think, and maybe draw up a list of symbols and similarities, before I'm ready to present the concept to the class, but I'll have to wait to do that after I've gotten ready for church. I'm running out of time.

Four Quick Tips to Prepare for the Second Coming

The last section of the manual is only one paragraph long, but it talks about how we can prepare for the second coming. Since I'm short on time this morning, I'll share the paragraph itself, and maybe a comment or two, and call that my blog post for today.

The best way we can prepare for the Savior’s coming is to accept the teachings of the gospel and make them part of our lives. We should live each day the best we can, just as Jesus taught when He was on the earth. We can look to the prophet for guidance and follow his counsel. We can live worthy to have the Holy Ghost guide us. Then we will look forward to the Savior’s coming with happiness and not with fear. The Lord said: “Fear not, little flock, the kingdom is yours until I come. Behold, I come quickly. Even so. Amen” (D&C 35:27).

Loads of good advice in there!

- Accept the Teachings of the Gospel and Make Them Part of Your Life
- Live Each Day the Best You Can (That'll be a tough one. =/ )
- Look to the Prophet for Guidance and Follow His Counsel.
- Live Worthy to Have the Holy Ghost Guide You (Another toughy, especially as it implies that we should learn to recognize and follow His promptings as well as living worthily enough to receive them.)

Then the Promise:

"Then we will look forward to the Savior’s coming with happiness and not with fear." (Emphasis Added)

This is basically saying that the best way to prepare for the second coming is to be the best people we know how to be, and follow the guidance of those who know how we can be better. Part of the purpose of earth life is personal improvement. I think that as long as we're trying to improve ourselves, we're on the right track.

An Interesting Question About the King of Kings

In steps 3 and 5, the manual explains, Jesus Christ will usher in the Millennium and rule over the earth for 1000 years. Now, I don't want to talk too much about the Millennium because it gets its own chapter in the Gospel Principles manual, and that's not the chapter I'm supposed to cover. But there is one question that I have about those thousand years.

The scriptures say that Christ will reign as "King of kings and Lord of lords." I wonder if those phrases were meant to be taken literally. There are currently many nations on the earth, each ruled by a king or a lord, or some other kind of ruler. When Christ reigns over the earth, will we be one nation, ruled by Jesus, or will we still be many nations, each with their own national ruler, but all subject to Christ's authority?

That may be what one may call an "interesting" question. On my mission, there was a General Authority who would visit every so often and would sometimes open up to a Q&A session, but I'm told that before he would do so, he would tell those in attendance that there was a difference between "good" questions and "interesting" questions, and he would only answer the good ones.

Now, I'm only mildly curious what the structure of the government will be like during the Millennium. I'm not sure it really matters, and it certainly doesn't matter yet. When the Millennium begins (once we got over the shock), we might ask how the government will be rearranged, if at all. But until then, it's not important. Whether Christ will rule the whole earth, including the church, directly or through delegation is a question for the curious, but not one that really needs to be addressed.

In fact, part of me wonders why we need to learn about the Millennium at all. Yeah, it's interesting, but what are the odds that we'll actually have a chance to benefit from that information in our lifetime? In the months and years preceding the Second Coming, wars and natural disasters will increase in frequency and intensity, ergo, the body count will rise. Of the survivors, only the righteous will survive the purge that will occur when Jesus comes. And nobody but God Himself knows exactly when that moment will be. Even if we're lucky enough to escape multiple wars and disasters and righteous enough to withstand the purge, those events might not occur until after our lifetimes anyway. On the other hand, it doesn't have to.

If we're righteous enough to live on the earth during the Millennium, we're going to be resurrected during that time, if not sooner. We'll have bodies and will be totally capable of literally living on the earth during the Millennium. While it might be too crowded for all of God's righteous children to live on the earth at once (or am I being overly optimistic?), I'm pretty confident that we'll all some at least Some time on earth then. And if you're going to visit a place, let alone live there, you'll probably want to learn about the local conditions so you can plan accordingly.

And that leads me to the real reason why this is all being taught in the first place; so we can prepare for it. Whether the Second Coming happens during our mortal lifetimes or our extended lifetimes, it's going to happen soon enough that we should start preparing for it now. And if part of the conditions during the Millennium is that Jesus Christ will rule the earth, whether directly or indirectly, I'd say that we had better get used to listening to Him.

Bonus Post: The When of Resurrection

Step 4, which I'm guessing happens just before, or at the same time as Step 3, is the completion of the First Resurrection. Fortunately, the manual spells it out very clearly who will be resurrected when, so I don't mind throwing in an extra blog post to relay that information, especially since I still have some time before I leave to go to institute.

Those who have obtained the privilege of coming forth in the resurrection of the just will rise from their graves. They will be caught up to meet the Savior as He comes down from heaven.

Two phrases stood out to me in that little paragraph. First, "the resurrection of the just" and second, "as He comes down from heaven." The "when" here is very clearly explained. The "who" is explained a little later:

Those who already have been resurrected and those who will be resurrected at the time of His coming will all inherit the glory of the celestial kingdom.

So, the "resurrection of the just" is when those who will "inherit the glory of the celestial kingdom" are resurrected "as [Jesus] comes down from heaven" at the second coming.

Naturally, some of the people who will inherit the celestial kingdom will still be alive at the time of the second coming. They won't need to be resurrected then because they'll still be alive. When it comes time for them to die, they'll go from a mortal state to an immortal state without actually dying and being brought back to life through resurrection. That change is called "translation" and it has happened to a few of the ancient prophets, including Moses and maybe Abraham, if I'm not mistaken.

However, the "first resurrection" includes more than just the "resurrection of the just." It also includes the resurrection of those who will inherit the terrestrial kingdom.

After the resurrection of those who will inherit celestial glory, another group will be resurrected: those who will receive a terrestrial glory. When all these people have been resurrected, the First Resurrection will be completed.

But since everyone will be resurrected (or translated), there's a time for those who will receive the telestial kingdom, or worse, to be resurrected as well, but they'll have to wait a while. To find out how long they'll have to wait, we need to read from Revelations.

In Revelations 20, John records a vision he saw of the Second Coming and the millennium, which I'll get to later. In this vision, he saw that "the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God," and they rest of the righteous, I would assume, "lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years" ... "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished" (Revelations 20: 4-5).

So the last resurrection, or the resurrection of the unjust (so to speak), will not happen until after the millennium. A thousand years is a long time to wait, but as promised, everyone who has ever been born will be resurrected eventually.

When it comes to resurrection, it's not a question of "if," but rather "when," and once again, we make that decision ourselves by choosing between righteousness and wickedness. It's all up to us to say which we will choose and when we will be resurrected.

The Fates of the Wicked at the Second Coming

The next section of the chapter on the second coming of Jesus Christ lists five things that He will do when He comes again, in numeric order. I say "numeric order" because it seems not to be a chronological order. Let me briefly show you the first few points, in numeric order, to illustrate why I think the order is not chronological.

"1. He will cleanse the earth. ... At that time the wicked will be destroyed."

"2. He will judge His people. ... and will divide the righteous from the wicked."

If these are chronological events, by the time we got to step 2, there would be no wicked people to divide the righteous people from because of what happened during step 1. Or perhaps we're talking about three groups of people here, and the most-wicked are destroyed during step 1, and the semi-wicked are divided from the righteous at step 2. But that implies that there will be wicked, or at least semi-wicked people living on the earth at the time of the Millennium. I don't think that's the case.

On the other hand, these are human beings we're talking about. We all sin occasionally, it's just that some of us sin less frequently and less drastically than others. But we all sin, therefore, it may be that it could be said that we're all wicked, and in order to cleanse the world of all the wicked, Jesus would have to cleanse the world of everyone. Yet, there's another way to purge wickedness from the earth, and that is to purge the wickedness from our hearts. Could it be that the "wicked" that are spared through step 1 and are divided from the righteous at step 2 are those who will repent and be cleansed and become righteous by the end of the Millennium?

If that's the case, some wicked will be driven from the earth, and some will drive the wickedness from their hearts, and I think I know which wicked are which. Those who are trying to drive the wickedness from their hearts already, those who are trying to repent and choose the right, maybe those are the ones that will be divided, but not destroyed and Jesus' coming. Whereas those who choose wickedness and are not trying to repent will be removed from the earth at step 1.

But this is all only relevant if the two "first" steps are, in fact, in chronological order. If they are, there are at least three groups, if not, there could be as few as two. The real question is which group we're each going to end up in, and we make that choice ourselves every time we make a decision. Are we trying to choose righteousness, or are we falling into wickedness? It may or may not be that black and white, but however you look at it, the choice is ours, and the time to decide is now.

"Looking Forward" to the Second Coming

I've been asked to give a lesson on the second coming of Jesus Christ, as taught in the Gospel Principles manual. As I started looking over the manual to see what I should teach, I couldn't help noticing that the first section of the chapter is "Looking Forward to the Savior's Second Coming." The phrase "Looking Forward" can have at least two meanings. The first is that there's some future event and we're waiting for it to happen. The second is that there's a future even and we're anxiously, and/or perhaps excitedly waiting for it to happen. We can "look forward" to the second coming in either or both senses of the phrase, but since the phase they used may imply, but not necessarily implies, that we might be excited about the second coming, it made me wonder. Are we? Should we be? Why, or why not?

Last Sunday, we had a class on the Signs of the Second Coming, where we mentioned that there would be wars, natural disasters, and other causes of distress, which would intensify until the Savior's return, at which point, I believe they would stop. We may want the second coming to be delayed, so the wars and other disasters won't get any more frequent or terrible than they already are, or we may wish that the Savior would come quickly, to get all the turmoil over with and usher in the Millennium of peace.

When the Savior comes, He will cleanse the Earth from wickedness, mostly by cleansing the Earth from the wicked. We may wish for that to happen sooner rather than later, so there would be fewer (or no) wicked people in the world, but some of us may feel less ready for such harsh judgement to occur. Those of us who aren't completely sure we'll be counted as righteous enough to live on the Earth during the Millennium amy want more time for repentance and self-improvement.

But really, those are the only two reasons I can think of for not being excited about the second coming: worsening disasters and not feeling ready for the purge. I wrote up a short paragraph about the fact that Jesus will rule the world during the Millennium, and I called into question what His laws might be and how strictly He might enforce them, but I realize that I'm grasping at straws with that one, so I decided to delete it.

On the other hand, even though I can only think of two reasons not to be excited about the second coming, for me, those two reasons are enough. My hometown hasn't been hit by any natural disasters yet, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time. I'm not looking forward to that. Also, I have my struggles, spiritually. I'm sure that, if we're honest, we all do. I'm sure I'm not worthy to live in Christ's presence. Am I even worthy to live on the same planet as Him? I don't know. And if I'm not worthy, I'd rather keep on not knowing than have it made (literally) painfully obvious by a scorching blast of holy fire. That would probably be the most painful moment of my life, in more ways than one.

So, no, I'm not "looking forward" to the second coming. I know I should be, because the Millennium will be pretty wonderful, for those who live long enough to see it. I'd guess that the best way to get excited about the second coming is to prepare for it. Natural disasters can be prepared for. There are plenty of resources for those who seek advice on how to be prepared for an emergency. And I suppose the only way to prepare, spiritually, for the second coming is to keep trying to repent and improve, and to increase my faith in the power of the Atonement. I don't think it has been said anywhere that only perfect people will be allowed to live on the Earth during the Millennium, so there's still hope for us all.

We need to prepare for the second coming. Sooner or later, it's going to happen. And if we're prepared for it, and especially if we feel prepared for it, we might even be excited about it, and then it may be said that we are indeed "looking forward" to the second coming.

Concerning the Multiple Meanings of Symbols

This morning, I'm going to a special Christmas devotional thing put on by one of the students at institute. They'll be talking about the symbols of Christmas (trees, wreaths, candy canes, etc.) and their symbolic meaning. Having taken a Mythologies of the World class at SCC, it's my understanding that pagan traditions and holidays (and their symbols) pre-date and, in some cases, were adopted by Christian traditions and holidays (which, if I'm not mistaken, is why Seventh-Day Adventists have a problem with most holidays - they were originally pagan). But that doesn't bother me. I don't care what pagans celebrate[d], how, or why. I don't care if Christians got symbols like Christmas trees and candles from them. Personally, I think there's some good in just about everything, and if we let ourselves see the good, we'll be much happier than if we focus on the parts that we see as bad.

Another thing is that symbols (and parables, if I'm allowed to rant a little here) can and do have multiple meanings. Like Jacob's ladder, does it represent life and death, spiritual advancement and decline, the formation and restoration of the church? I'd say it mostly depends on what message the person thinking about the vision needs to receive at that moment. Jesus only gave the interpretations of a few of His parables (maybe only one, I'm not sure), and I think that was on purpose. I think He wanted us to see each parable however we need to see them. A candle may be an emblem of fire, of rampant destruction and unbridled passion, barely restrained by a small piece of wax, symbolizing the body; or it could be an emblem of light, sharing a small amount of brightness from one's heart to bring joy to anyone who sees it. It's all in how you look at it.

There's lots of good symbolism in many of the symbols of Christmas. Some of them may have different meanings to different people, and I'm okay with that. I don't think anyone's interpretation of a symbol's meaning is wrong, because their interpretation of a symbol is what the think of when they see it. If I see a candle and think "mortality" because the candle, while vibrant and full of life, has a limited amount of wick and will eventually die, that doesn't mean my thinking is flawed. It means "that's what a candle means to me." So, I'm not going to get hung up if what the student at institute sees in the symbols of Christmas is different than what I see. I say "to each, their own." Let them learn whatever lesson they want to learn from the symbols of Christmas. If it helps them be a better person, that's good enough for me.

Happiness Through Service to God and Others

A mini-theme from church yesterday, or at least a concept that I heard at least twice, was that we increase in happiness as we try to make other people happy. I even found some quotes on LDS.org to support and strengthen that concept. As the second counsellor of the first presidency under President Benson, Thomas S. Monson said, "happiness comes through serving our Heavenly Father and serving our fellowmen." A quote from President Joseph F. Smith is even more bold: "There is no happiness without service." It would seem that a good way, perhaps the only way, to find happiness is through service to God and others.

This is in harmony with many of the messages we hear at Christmastime, that it is better to give than to receive, and that random acts of kindness, including "Secret Santa" moments, can create warm and lasting memories.

Everyone desires happiness, but ironically, much of the misery in the world comes from seeking happiness in ways that are "contrary to the nature of God; [and] therefore... contrary to the nature of happiness." (Alma 41:11) In the April 1986 General Conference, Jack H. Goaslind said:

Our happiness is diminished by at least two things: sin and adversity. Of the two, sin is the most tragic. ...The suffering that results from sin is most tragic because through our own choices we can choose to avoid it.

We can avoid a good deal of unhappiness by choosing to serve God and keep His commandments rather than "serving ourselves" and rebelling against God's commandments. (Brother? Elder?) Goaslind said, "the commandments are guides to happiness," and I strongly agree. God gave us commandments to guide us along the path of happiness and help us avoid the suffering of sin. Returning to Brother Goaslind's talk, he told us:

The other thing that may diminish our happiness is adversity. ... While we can choose to avoid sin, we usually cannot choose whether we experience adversity. I am convinced if we are to have happiness in our hearts, we must learn how to preserve it, in our hearts, in the midst of trouble and trial.

He then told us a story of a pioneer couple that faced extreme hardship, including the loss of their son.

Now, both the mother and the father experienced the same trials, but the father became withdrawn, cantankerous, and bitter. He stopped going to church, found fault with Church leaders. He became caught up in his own miseries, and the light of Christ grew dimmer and dimmer in his life. 

On the other hand, the mother’s faith increased. Each new problem seemed to make her stronger. She became an angel of mercy—filled with empathy, compassion, and charity. She was a light to those around her. Her family gravitated toward her and looked to her as their leader. She was happy; he was miserable.

I want to highlight the attributes the mother was said to have been filled with, "empathy, compassion, and charity." These are divine attributes that often inspire giving Christlike service to others. I may be going out on a limb here, but I'd guess that the mother experienced happiness despite her trials partly because she gave service to others.

Service to God and service to others seem to be the recommended method of gaining genuine, lasting happiness. This holiday season, I'm going to look for opportunities to serve others, and I'm going to try to serve God by keeping His other commandments as well. I expect that that will increase the happiness of others, and that will, in turn, increase my happiness as well.

Training and Healing

Life is an adventure. In adventures, you explore the world and face challenges, you gain experience and grow stronger and more capable, and you occasionally face challenges that defeat you. So, you go and recover from your wounds, then you do some training to make yourself stronger, so the next time you face the same challenge or a similar one, you'll be better prepared for it.

I've spoken before about how we gain experience in life. Today, I want to talk about training and healing in adventure games, and relate that to real life. In many games, characters gain experience (or XP), by fighting monsters and wild animals. The stronger the monster, the more XP it yields, but it also brings a greater chance of more serious injuries, or even death. Death is a major setback in most games, and sometimes it's even a game-ender. You don't want to die. But the stronger a character is, the more XP they need in order to grow stronger, so, as they grow stronger, they need to face stronger monsters in order to keep growing. As they face stronger monsters, it's inevitable that they'll sometimes get injured, and perhaps even killed. It's a dangerous balance between facing challenges that are strong enough to help you grow, but not so strong that they defeat you. Fortunately, in real life, we don't have to worry about that part.

In real life, God often chooses our challenges for us. He gives us trials and temptations that He knows we can defeat (though sometimes, we need His help to defeat them), but that are tough enough to make a good challenge for us. As we successfully face our challenges, we become stronger, and God trusts us with tougher challenges to face. But sometimes we fall short. Maybe we were caught off guard. Maybe we forgot to get help from God, or weren't maintaining the prerequisites to receive His help. Maybe we weren't bold enough or brave enough, and ran from the fight because it looked too strong for us to face. Or perhaps we foolishly took on a challenge that we shouldn't have tried, and God let's us lose just to teach us a lesson.

Whatever the cause, as we face our various challenges, we occasionally take damage and need healing. Normally, we think of that as a bad thing. We don't like losing "hit points" in "monster encounters" any more than we like getting aching, burning muscles when we exercise. Some people would take that as an excuse to not face such challenges, but there's a saying that I don't always agree with, but that I feel applies here: "No pain, no gain."

In order to gain experience and grow stronger, we need to face our challenges boldly, and that will, occasionally, result in some minor to major injuries. Those injuries will require healing if they are to not become fatal, and almost all adventure games make a way for healing to occur. So it is with real life. God has made both spiritual healing and spiritual growth possible, and if we follow His plan for us, we will frequently achieve both. We will constantly grow stronger and stronger as we face tougher and tougher challenges, receiving frequent healing along the way.

The path God has planned for us is both difficult and painful, but it's the only way to achieve the desired results. Though it may seem hard at times, we need to remind ourselves that God knows what He's doing. If He brings us to a challenge, He knows we can overcome it. And as we overcome each challenge that He sends our way, we gain the strength we need to face our next challenges. Life is hard, but I'm grateful that I know there's a reason that it's hard, and, in the context of adventure games, the frequent, difficult challenges of life start to make a lot more sense.

Christmas is What You Make of It

On Facebook, my Mom liked and shared this photo. I thought I'd "share" it, too.

Those words look pretty small. I'd better type them up.

Christmas is what we make of it. Despite all the distractions, we can see to it that Christ is at the center of our celebration. If we have not already done so, we can establish Christmas traditions for ourselves and our families which will help us capture and keep the spirit of Christmas.
- President Thomas S. Monson

My family has a handful of Christmas traditions of the kind of which President Monson spoke. We write on red, white, and green strips of paper things that we're thankful for, then link the strips together to form a "Thankful Chain" that fits for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But the best Christmas tradition we have id the Christmas Eve dinner, where we light the room with candles, sit on the floor around a short, wooden table, and eat simple foods, like bread, fruit, and cheese, the kinds of foods Mary and Joseph might have eaten on their journey to Bethlehem. Then we share our testimonies and watch a short nativity video. It's a very nice, quiet, spiritual moment.

I think it's important to make moments like those occasionally. There's a good deal of distractions in people's celebrations of Christmas. There tends to be a good deal of stress and trouble with buying gifts, planning and working on gifts and events, and attending numerous events and gatherings. It's a fairly busy time for a lot of people. Sometimes it can be easy to get caught up in the stress and to observe Christmas without really celebrating the birth of Christ.

But as President Monson said, Christmas is what we make of it. We can make it busy and stressful. We can make it light-hearted and fun. We can make it deep and spiritual. And Christmas can be different things at different times. Even if it's busy and stressful sometimes, we can make it deep and spiritual at other times. And though Christmas should be deep and spiritual at some times, we can still have it be light-hearted and fun at other times. Christmas can be a great time of year in make ways. What will you make of this Christmas?

Teach the World to Love

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
―Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013

Nelson Mandela died recently. Yesterday, in fact, if I have my facts straight. I don't know much about the man - I don't know anything about him, really - But I like this quote of his, especially the last part. "Love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite." But if this is true, and I believe that it is, why is hatred so widespread? Why is racism, religious intolerance, and violence such world-wide problems? If "People must learn to hate," where is everybody learning it?

Many people learn hatred from other people and pass it on like a disease. A person could learn it from their parents or their peers, and they might have learned it from their parents and their peers. But if we trace that line back as far as it will go, we all have the same two parents, and I highly doubt that they taught their children to hate each other. And yet, one of them did.

Cain was taught to hate and kill his brother Abel, and his teacher was the evil one. Perhaps all of the world's hatred started there, but I doubt it. Satan is still roaming abroad in all the earth, teaching anyone who'll listen to him how to hate their fellow man and themselves, and how to do all manner of sin and iniquity. The devil has, apparently, had many pupils, as we have all become sinners at some point or another, and though I say this with less certainty, I can guess that we have all hated someone (ourselves or others) at some point in our lives. Either by our peers or by our enemy, we have been taught how to hate.

But as Nelson Mandela said, if we can be taught how to hate, we can be taught how to love. But who will do, or has done, the teaching? It almost seems silly to ask, even rhetorically.

Jesus Christ was our perfect example in all things, but especially in love. Everything He has ever done, He has done out of love. Everything He has ever taught, He taught because of His love for those who were being taught. And Jesus taught us that we should love one another as He has loved us.

If hatred can be spread like a disease, I'd say that love can be spread too. We can spread it to our children, to our peers, to our friends and neighbors and everyone else we come across. We can teach it by expressing it, and especially by acting on it, as the Savior did. We can teach each other and the whole world to love one another. I won't lie - It's an uphill battle. Satan has taught so many people hatred that some people have come to accept it as a fact of life, and some of those people don't believe the world can change.

But it can change, and it will. We know through revelation that this world will become the Celestial Kingdom, perhaps in part, by destroying the wicked, but perhaps also, in part, by destroying the wickedness out of the hearts of the children of men. If we can teach ourselves and each other to love ourselves, themselves, and each other, then this world will become much more like the world it was meant to be - the world it will be, and we will be part of the change.

Forgiveness in the Moment

Last night, Joe and I read Acts chapter 7, in which Stephen gives a long, but still greatly condensed, history of the Jewish nation, then is martyred. What stood out to me in this chapter, besides its length and a few other things, was something Stephen said at the very end. As Stephen was being stoned:

...he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
Acts 7: 60

I must have been tired last night when we read this, because I remember that the euphemism  at the end confused me for a moment. I also mistakenly thought that it was Saul, the "young man" to whom the martyrers had given their coats to hold, who had knelt down, said that prayer, then literally fell asleep (perhaps a supernatural sleep, like King Lamoni in the Book of Mormon experienced). But no, it was definitely Stephen, and in this case, "falling asleep" is a term they used in faith of the resurrection, in which Stephen would or will "wake up."

But falling asleep isn't the interesting part. What really stood out to me was that Stephen said "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge," as he was being stoned.

There are lots of bad was to die. Being burned or eaten alive are among my least favorites as they are both long and extremely painful. Being stoned seems like it would take a bit longer, but would be equally painful. But the part that really gets me about stoning is that it's always personal. Being burned to death or eaten alive might not be anybody's fault, but stoning doesn't happen by accident unless there's an avalanche, and that's definitely not the case here. Here, Stephen knew that there were people who were killing him that wanted him to die slowly and painfully, and they wanted it badly enough that they were willing to get their hands dirty and do the killing themselves.

I can imagine being mad at someone enough to wish they were dead. I can even imagine being so angry at someone that I though the deserved to die slowly and painfully, though that is a dangerously evil level of hatred. However, I can hardly imagine ever becoming so angry at someone that I lose my humanity entirely and decide to kill them myself. That level of evil is almost unthinkable. Yet, that's what happened to Stephen. And, even more remarkably, he forgave them.

As he was in terrible pain, suffering from serious bruises and possibly broken bones, and knowing that every single one of those wounds were inflicted willfully and intentionally by people whom he knew would not stop pelting him with rocks until he died, he got down on his knees and asked God to forgive the people who were in the act of murdering him.

I can imagine forgiving someone for killing me. I can even imagine forgiving someone who willfully killed me, but it'd take me longer to get to that point, especially if I knew that they willfully decided not only to kill me, but that I should die in a very slow and painful way. I might be able to forgive them for that eventually, but it'd be one of the hardest things I've ever done. In Acts chapter 7, Stephen demonstrates a level of Christianity that I think is virtually impossible to achieve - A level of Christianity that I've only seen (so far) in Stephen and in Jesus Himself. Stephen was able to forgive his murderers for killing him in a terribly evil and horrifically brutal way, even while they were in the act of killing him. It's no wonder that Stephen saw a vision of Jesus Christ in that moment. It's hard to be more Christ-like than that. What better way to enter heaven than by following Christ's example so perfectly?

Sometimes, people wrong us, and we're supposed to forgive them. Sometimes they wrong us by accident, sometimes they wrong us on purpose; it doesn't matter. We're supposed to forgive them. Usually, forgiving others is a hard thing to do, and it usually takes time for the wounds to heal before we're ready to forgive those who wronged us, but sometimes, certain individuals exercise a great deal of long-suffering and love by forgiving those who had wronged them recently. Jesus and Stephen each suffered terrible wrongs at the hands of their murderers, but even so, they were strong enough and good enough to forgive them.

I hope that we can follow their example by forgiving others a little bit more readily than we currently do, and that by doing so, we can find ourselves drawing spiritually, but hopefully not yet literally, closer to Christ.

Leave the Party

I found this video on LDS.org. It's about the exercise of righteous courage in the face of temptation and especially peer pressure, and the effect that courage can have on your future. The title of the video is Leave the Party, and the text was taken from Bishop Gary E. Stevenson's October 2012 talk, Be Valiant in Courage, Strength, and Activity.





My first thought of this story, partly inspired by its title, is that, yes, you should leave such parties when you find yourself at them, but it takes less moral courage to simply not go in the first place. Of course, to successfully avoid such parties, one needs to either avoid all parties or have the ability to discern what kind of party each party will be before they happen. Sometimes, we find ourselves unwittingly attending a "party" like that one through no real fault of our own. At the point, the only good advice we can follow is to Leave.

I've heard it said that it's easier (and better) to avoid temptation than to resist it. It's easier to not go anywhere near temptation than to get away from temptation when it's close. But we don't always have a choice in the matter. Yes, a fair bit of wisdom can help you avoid some temptations, but it's virtually impossible to avoid them all. Some don't give you any warning, and some are camouflaged to seem benign until you get too close. Every once in a while, we might make a bad judgement call or simply get duped, and we find ourselves at one of Brandon's "parties." It is for that reason that we need to develop within ourselves what Bishop Stevenson called "righteous courage," to help us resist the temptations that we weren't able to avoid.

Sometimes we don't have a choice whether we face temptation or not. Like Joseph who was sold into Egypt was a slave and literally couldn't leave Potifar's house and his lusting wife, we sometimes need to face temptation and overcome it the hard way. It takes strength and courage to do that, and like all things that require strength, it rewards you with more strength for doing it. God wants us to be strong - strong enough to resist every temptation He allows to come at us. In order to follow God's chosen path, we need to develop that strength by resisting every temptation we're unable to avoid, even the small ones. That way, our moral courage can grow full and strong, and we can become unbreakable by Satan's temptations. At least, that's my theory, and I hope it's true. I hope that it's possible to become strong enough to be undefeatable. But until we achieve that, if it's even possible, we just need to fight temptation as hard as we can and, win or lose, keep fighting until the battle is over. We will be faced with temptations as long as we live. We can avoid many of them, but some of them, we'll have to resist, and for that, we will need to be strong.

Thankful for Adversity

I kind of don't want to blog about this because I don't feel like I fully agree with it. Sure, I know that our trials make us stronger, and becoming stronger is good, so, theoretically, trials are good things, but even though it seems that the logic is sound, I still don't like it. I'd rather not have to suffer through trials and adversity (wouldn't we all?) but I also want to get stronger, and if facing adversity is the only way...

Well, okay. If facing adversity is the only way to get stronger, then I can kind of see how adversity is a blessing. It's like exercise. It's hard work and sometimes painful, but there's a purpose to it, and there can be positive results. And, unfortunately, the positive results of exercising can't come any other way.

But still, are we really supposed to be thankful for our trials? If so, then I'm going to cheat a little and do it indirectly. Instead of saying "Thank you, God, for putting this problem in my life," I'm going to say "Thank you for giving me this opportunity to grow." It amounts to the same thing in the end, but one of them is a lot easier to say than the other one.

I guess it all has to do with attitude and perspective. Instead of focussing on our present struggle against our adversities and afflictions and how hard and painful they are, we can try to think about the future results, the strength we're developing, and how amazing it will feel when we prove that we're strong enough to overcome our challenges (or at least brave enough to face them head-on). And, if we fail the test sometimes, we can made lemonade out of the situation by turning it into a learning experience. I guess, in that sense, failure is just another form of adversity, intended for a different form of personal growth.

So maybe we can be thankful for adversity, or at least thankful for the blessings that adversity can hold for us. We can be thankful for God's help in facing our adversities, and thankful for our adversities in the sense that they bring us closer to God. We can be grateful for the challenges we face and the strength that we gain by facing them. We can be grateful for the things that we learn, and perhaps even for the trials and struggles by which we learned them. Adversity and yield a number of terrific blessings, and I suppose our prayers of thanks should reflect a knowledge of that. I'm still not really thankful for my trials, but I'm thankful for the blessings that come through them.