Eternal Progression - Starting Today

Note to Self: The next time I agree to give a lesson in church, I'm going to try to find out the subject of the lesson I am to give BEFORE the day on which the lesson is to be given. In fact, I STILL don't know what I'm supposed to talk about, even though I'm giving the lesson in about 4 hours. In my defense, I've had a crazy, busy week, but I should have obtained my topic about a week in advance, so the business of said week should not have been an influence on whether I know my topic or not.

But since I don't know my topic, but I know that this is the week in which the instructor teaches from a recent General Conference talk, I'm free to pick one. And the talk I chose to begin studying this morning is What Manner of Men? by Elder (or President?) Donald L. Halstrom of the Presidency of the Seventy.

The reason I chose this talk is that it seemed like a good, basic, Christian message, and because I like that it addresses both the need to change and the reason we can have hope in our ability to change.

Jesus Christ has commanded us to become as He is, to become perfect. This seems like such an impossible task, especially considering all our human habits and weaknesses, that some people are tempted to give up the quest of perfection and basically say, "I'm flawed, I have bad habits, I'm nothing like the Savior, but that's just the way I am. I can't change that."

And it is tempting. I've occasionally thought, "Wouldn't it be easier to quit Mormonism and find a church that accepts people the way they are without expecting them to change?" The trouble with that idea is that I know this church is true. When asked whether they would leave the Savior's company and effectively leave the church, Jesus' disciples answered, "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life." John 6:68 We hear those words at least twice a year, in General Conference, and we share those words with each other at least once a month, in lessons like the one that I'm giving today. And it's those same words that are saying that we need to become perfect, and that we can.

My favorite thing about the concept of eternal progression is the duality of its meaning. Firstly, it's progression to become like God, because God is Eternal, and secondly, it's eternal because we have an eternity to work on it. Becoming perfect isn't really realistic, or even possible - not in one lifetime, anyway. But since we can continue progressing throughout the eternities, we can have hope that we can eventually reach any goal we commit ourselves to pursuing, even perfection.

Fortunately and unfortunately, we're not just talking about the eternities. Elder or President Halstrom also teaches us that we can, and must, make some changes during our mortal life. God doesn't expect us to become perfect right now, but He does expect us to start working on it as soon as possible, and He makes such change possible not by giving us an infinite amount of time to work on it but by giving us His Son to be our Example and our Savior. It's through the power of Jesus' Atonement that we gain the power to change our behavior, and even our very natures, even while we're still human.

Through the power of the Atonement, we can change. Any sins, bad habits, or addictions can be put behind us, making us free to become better, or in other words, more perfect, people. None of us are perfect yet. Many of us may have imperfections that we're not even trying to change right now. But God expects each of us to become perfect eventually, and He wants each of us to start working on that today.

I suppose it was such an imperfection that caused me to procrastinate and forget to ask for the topic of my lesson until it was too late, and I probably ought to begin working against that bad habit of procrastination, starting today. Or perhaps I'll procrastinate kicking the bad habit of procrastination until long after I'm dead, and I'll spend all of eternity saying to myself, "Yeah, I should work on that, but I can do that later." There's a reason God wants us to start working toward perfection now - because if we don't start now, maybe we never will.

This is shaping up to be a pretty good lesson, but perhaps it was meant to be a lesson just for me, because I just got a text from my Elder's Quorum President letting me know what the actual topic of my lesson is. I'd better go start studying it now.