What Were The Lamanites Thinking?

Considering that, at first glance, the Lamanites' motivations don't seem to make any sense, I've been trying to figure out what might have been going through their heads.

In Alma 24, we're told, twice, what might have been their primary motivation for going against the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, and it wasn't because they disagreed with their new religious beliefs. The idea of hatred is brought up several times, and it's usually hard to rationalize or justify hatred, but in this case, it's not too hard to understand the actions that their supposed hatred was causing them to take.

And it came to pass that their brethren, the Lamanites, made preparations for war, and came up to the land of Nephi for the purpose of destroying the king, and to place another in his stead, and also of destroying the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi out of the land.

Alma 24:20

I think I mentioned yesterday that the violence is probably the only way to remove an unwanted monarch who doesn't voluntarily step down. If the king of the Lamanites didn't step down, he would have to be taken down, and the Lamanites expected to have to fight through his army to get to him.

It must have been very surprising and confusing to the Lamanites when the Anti-Nephi-Lehies didn't fight back. The Lamanites had gained a lot of experience with war, and the enemy usually didn't do things like this. Sure, they might surrender, but usually then they plead for their lives. The Anti-Nephi-Lehies all reacted to the approach of the Lamanite army by kneeling down and preparing to die. Odds are, that shook the Lamanites up a little bit. Some of them even began to question what they were doing and gave up the fight.

At this point, I'm not entirely sure why the Lamanites didn't push forward to accomplish their objective. Maybe, when they met with no resistance, enough of the attacking Lamanites gave up the fight that the remaining Lamanites decided that they no longer had the manpower they needed to storm the palace. Maybe they thought this was some kind of trick and they were being lured into an ambush. Leaving potentially hostile forces behind you as you march deeper into enemy territory is horrible military planning. If they had let the non-violent Anti-Nephi-Lehies live, they would have been surrounded by the people whose king they had come to kill. If the Lamanites killed the converted king, and the Anti-Nephi-Lehies decided to avenge him, the Lamanites would have had a hard time getting out of that city alive.

It was clear that the attacking Lamanites couldn't simply walk past the Anti-Nephi-Lehies on their way to kill their king, but they couldn't just kill them either. Killing the unresponsive Anti-Nephi-Lehies was having a devastating effect on the Lamanites' morale. Killing someone in a battle is one thing; killing someone who;s just kneeling there is something else entirely, and it wasn't something that many of the Lamanites seemed prepared to do. Before long, over a thousand off the Lamanites decided that they couldn't bring themselves to kill any more Anti-Nephi-Lehies, and they actually knelt down and joined them.

This was a cause of serious introspection among the Lamanites. Many of them began to question what was really going on here. A few of them may have concluded that this was exactly what the Nephites wanted. The Nephites and the Lamanites had been enemies for as long as any of them could remember. Perhaps this was some kind of Nephite trick, to get the Lamanites to give up fighting, or to fight amongst themselves. Either by getting the Lamanites to bury their weapons, or by getting themselves to kill each other off, the Nephites were seriously weakening the Lamanite armies, and that was a problem that the Lamanites needed to solve. Since the Lamanites couldn't replace their indoctrinated king without also killing off other corrupted Lamanites or allowing themselves to get surrounded, they abandoned that plan and instead went directly against the Nephites, who were the source of this confusion.

After a series of conventional battles, the Lamanites discovered that they couldn't destroy the Nephites at this time, so they returned to their own lands, which makes a lot of sense. Yes, it's usually best to solve problems at their source, but you also have to be practical about what you can accomplish. Sometimes, you can't truly solve a problem, and you just have to learn how to deal with it instead. Several people who have lived with long-term illnesses have learned that. If you can't cure the condition outright, you can at least treat the symptoms, which is exactly what the Lamanites did.

The Lamanites probably saw the Anti-Nephi-Lehies as a kind of cancer. They weren't truly Lamanites anymore; they had been corrupted by the Nephites, and it seemed that they were going to go on, converting more and more Lamanites to the Nephite religion. They had to be stopped, and fast - before the cancer spread out of control. Going to war against their former bretheren was a drastic decision, but like amputating a limb, they considered it necessary to save the rest of their kingdom, so they began again to destroy the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi.

This time, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies eventually retreated and joined the Nephites, and if I were a Lamanite, I think I would have been almost glad for that. Sure, the Nephites had managed to get a bunch of Lamanites to switch sides, increasing the strength of the Nephite forces while decreasing the strength of the Lamanites, but at least the Lamanites who had been converted were now out of Lamanite territory. The Lamanites established a new king, and could have simply secured their borders with a resolve to kill any Nephite who entered their lands, even if they supposedly came in peace.

But instead of shoring up their defences against any future invasions, the Lamanites again went to war against the Nephites. I'm not sure what the Lamanites were thinking when they did this. The Nephites had already defeated them just a few chapters ago, and now they had succeeded in getting a number of former Lamanites to join them. The Lamanites were terribly outmatched here, and they should have known that. Maybe, in this case, they really were just angry. Before this, most of their attacks made at least a little bit of sense. They found that some of their people had been corrupted by their enemies, so they tried to remove the corruption and strike back at those who had caused it. Now, with the converted portion of their forces now becoming one with the Nephites, maybe the Lamanites just wanted to get back at the Nephites for what they had done. While it may not have been the most strategically logical thing they could have done, it does make some sense, when you consider human nature. The Nephites had just pulled off a successful scheme against the Lamanites, despite everything the Lamanites had tried to do to stop it. Of course the Lamanites would feel insulted an upset. Of course they would get angry and want revenge. It may not have been very smart for the Lamanites to attack the Nephites at that time, but I can certainly see why they would want to.

So, some sense can be made out of the Lamanites' actions in Alma 24-28. This may not have been what they were actually thinking, if they were actually thinking at all, but it might explain some of the thoughts and emotions that were going through the Lamanites' heads while the Nephites were converting many Lamanites into Nephites. I'm not sure that, if I were in their shoes, I would have acted the same way they did, but I'm sure that I would have been thinking and feeling some of the same things they were. Maybe their actions don't make a whole lot of sense to us, but if we really think about it, they do seem to make some sense, and they certainly made sense to the Lamanites at the time.

I'm not sure what all we can learn from considering the Lamanite's perspective, but in real life, it's certainly a good practice to consider what other people are thinking and feeling, even if they're working against us. We're all human. We're all brothers and sisters. We all have hearts and minds, and while we don't always think and feel the same way, we all occasionally have the same kinds of thoughts and emotions. If we think about what other people think and feel, we can interact with them more wisely and compassionately than if we consider them inhuman "others." It's easy to think of the Lamanites as war-loving barbarians, but they were people, too. They had thoughts and feelings that were just as human as ours are or as the Nephites were, and if the Nephites had considered things from the Lamanites' perspective more often, they might have painted them in a better light in their records.

Solving Problems at the Source

Another problem I've been having with blogging about these first battles of the war chapters is that while the Lamanites were being fairly ridiculous, I can also see some wisdom behind their actions. Attacking the Anti-Nephi-Lehies wasn't entirely necessary, but historically, violence has been pretty much the only tool that has proven effective at removing unwanted monarchs. Basically, the only way to get a new king is to kill the old one. I'm not sure why the Lamanites didn't finish the job when they discovered that the Anti-Nephi-Lehies weren't defending themselves or their king, but that's a discussion for another time. My point is that, if they really believed that having a Christian king was bad for their country, attacking the Anti-Nephi-Lehies was probably their only logical option.

But more to the point that I wanted to make today, when a person has a problem, they would do well to go to solve the problem at its source. If a swarm of hornets was biting my arm, I wouldn't rush to get bandages right away; I would get rid of the hornets first. If the Nephites were converting the Lamanites to Christianity, and if the unconverted Lamanites felt like that was a problem, it would make sense for them to go directly to the Nephites and convince them to stop.

The war chapters teach us both good and bad examples of how to deal with Satan's influence in our lives. Here, strangely, we see both good and bad examples being demonstrated at once. While it would have made more sense to specifically target the Nephite missionaries who had done the actual converting rather than attacking the Nephites as a group, it certainly makes more sense for the Lamanites to attack the Nephites than for them to kill their fellow Lamanites, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. When they decided to go after the Nephites instead of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, it was like targeting the hornets rather than attacking their own arm. Sure, they were attacking the wrong Nephites, but they probably didn't know that. They thought they were going to the source of their problem, which is usually a good idea.

Another lesson we can learn here is that there's more than one way to look at each story. It's easy to find a lot of things wrong with what the Lamanites did over the course of their history, but we might want to bear in mind that the stories we have about them were written by their enemies, the Nephites. Perhaps we would do well to also consider the Lamanites' point of view, and to look at the things that they may have done right. We can learn more from them that way, and the more we learn, the better we can handle life's various problems. For example, it makes more sense to go to the source of our problems than it is to lash out at others, and we can learn both of those lessons from the Lamanites.

Lashing Out

I've been having a hard time blogging about the first few battles of the war chapters mostly because the motivation behind their fights were so ludicrous. After killing a thousand of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies for daring to change their beliefs, many of the remaining Lamanites, led by dissented Nephites, went on to attack a group of Nephites who had nothing to do with the Anti-Nephi-Lehies' conversion.

I'm honestly having a hard time understanding why they would do that. The Nephites had defeated the Lamanites repeatedly in battle, so much so that some Lamanites even converted to theism because they were convinced that some higher power was aiding the Nephites (and they were right). Meanwhile, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, with whom the Lamanites were actually mad, weren't even trying to defend themselves. When the Lamanites came upon them, they just knelt down and prayed, and died in the act of praying.

Now, it could be that the Lamanites were trying to address the "problem" of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies' conversion by going to the source: the Nephites. This makes a certain amount of sense, but if they really wanted to get back at the Nephites who had converted their brotheren, the should have gone after the actual Nephite missionaries, Ammon and his friends. Those missionaries were too few to defend themselves, and the only people who possibly could have protected them had buried their swords and knelt on the ground as their enemies were approaching. Not exactly the world's most effective bodyguards.

It may be that we readers know more about the situation than the Lamanites did. Maybe they didn't know that the Nephite missionaries were still hanging out with the Anti-Nephi-Lehies at that time, so they thought that attacking the Nephites was the only way to get back at the Nephite Missionaries. Or, maybe this apparently senseless act of lashing out actually had a reasonable motive behind it, and motive of which the record keeper didn't know. It's theoretically possibly that attacking the heavily armed and divinely favored Nephites was in some way preferably than continuing to slaughter the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, who were almost literally "sitting ducks."

However, from what information we have, it looks like the Lamanites were simply lashing out in their anger at people who weren't really at fault. This is a rather pointless endeavour, and we should try not to make the same mistake. When we feel upset, there's a temptation to lash out at whomever's convenient, but doing so won't get us anywhere. Lashing out in anger is never the solution to life's problems. So, even if the conversion of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies was somehow a problem for the Lamanites, their decision to attack the Nephites in vengeance for it was completely ridiculous. Though, I should probably be careful when throwing around insults like that. Lashing out in anger may be completely pointless, but I shouldn't be too hard on them for falling victim to human nature.

There are plenty of more protective ways for a person to channel or vent their negative emotions. As with most things, violence is not the answer, especially when the violence is directed at a randomly-selected target. If a group or individual does something that upsets you, attacking them isn't usually the best course of action, and attacking a different group or individual is even less likely to be a good idea. Most problems have a more logical and practical solution than that. We just need to keep calm enough to think clearly enough to find it.

How the War Began - Disagreement Means Death

As I was thinking about how the war chapters got started, it struck me how dumb the initial premise of the war was. In Alma 24, a group of Lamanites who converted to the Lord and started calling themselves Anti-Nephi-Lehies, or the people of Ammon, were attacked by many of the Lamanites who hadn't converted. This is just my opinion, but it seems to me that a difference of opinion, even one about religion, is a pretty poor reason to go to war.
People can disagree with each other without hating each other, and people can hate each other without things getting violent. If this is really how the war chapters got started, I think that the whole war could have been avoided if the Lamanites had decided to just live and let live.

On the other hand, in the aggressors' defence, they did have one good reason to be concerned. Among the converts were at least two prominent political figures, including the king over all the Lamanites. When the ruler of their country converted to the religion of their enemies, I can see why the Lamanites might have decided it was time to get a new king, especially when that king (or was it his son? I get them mixed up.) started passing laws that granted the Nephite missionaries special privileges, making it easier for them to spread their message. The unconverted Lamanites may have reacted far more violently than was entirely necessary, but I can see where they were coming from.

Still, I think that the Lamanites who had and had not converted could have learned to live with each other. They had different religious beliefs, and perhaps also different political beliefs, but those differences don't justify either of them trying to kill the other. They could have simply agreed to disagree, and so can we.

Every person is different, so we each have different opinions on subjects from religion and politics to entertainment and sports team preferences. We can disagree about anything and nearly everything without having to be enemies. We can even be friends. We might have interesting discussions sometimes, and those discussions may become spirited, but they should never come to blows. We can disagree with each other without needing to dislike each other, and if the Lamanites had believed that, that might have prevented the war. Of course, that's just my opinion. You're perfectly welcome to disagree with me.

Which Chapters Are War Chapters?

I, and the rest of Mormon culture, sometimes use the term "the war chapters" to refer to a set of chapters in the Book of Mormon that focus on a particular war. However, it's not really clear where the war chapters begin or which chapters are meant to be included.

I typically think of the war chapters as beginning with Alma 43, in which we're introduced to Captain Moroni and we see what was probably his first battle as chief captain of the army of the Nephites. However, the first few battles of this war actually happened several chapters before that.

In Alma 28, we're told that "there was a tremendous battle; yea, even such an one as never had been known among all the people in the land from the time Lehi left Jerusalem." And before that, in chapter 27, a group of Lamanites led by dissenting Nephites attacked a group of Lamanites who had converted and had practically become Nephites. That same group of attacking Lamanites had just had "many battles" with the official Nephites in chapter 25, and they had killed over a thousand of the converted Lamanites in the chapter before that.

As far as I can tell, the first battle of the war of the war chapters was in Alma 24. That's where this series of aggressions first came to bloodshed. However, not all of the chapters between Alma 24 and Alma 43 talk about or even include any mentions of  this war. Specifically, I wouldn't include Alma 26 or 29-42 in the war chapters, even though Alma 35 at least talks about the war, and I wouldn't really call Alma 45 a war chapter, either, even though it falls immediately after the war chapters had clearly begun.

I'm not sure if there's any real consensus on which of the chapters in Alma are considered war chapters and which ones aren't. Thankfully, I'm not so sure it matters. Yes, it would be nice to have a clear idea which chapters are war chapters, so when someone uses the term "war chapters," we'd all know exactly which chapters they meant, but that isn't necessary. We all know approximately which chapters are war chapters, and while a certain chapter's inclusion in or exclusion from the war chapters may be debatable, I think it's far more important to consider what those chapters can teach us than whether or not they belong within this particular set of chapters.

So, whether they can properly be called war chapters or not, I'm going to focus a bit on the chapters in the mid-to-late-twenties in the book of Alma, to see what I can learn from them. They may not officially be part of the war chapters, but they do have wars in them, and I'm sure I can learn something from those battles, just as I can learn from the battles in the official war chapters, whichever chapters those are.

God Counts Your Tears

I should have blogged about the war chapters this afternoon, but I lost track of time, and now I'm tired, so I'll share a blog post I wrote previously, and I'll write you a proper, war-related blog post tomorrow.

At least once, President Monson has quoted the old adage, "Men should take care not to make women weep, for God counts their tears." But there's something missing here that I feel is worth pointing out. I don't mean to discredit women or anything, but they're not the only people God cares about. God cares about everyone, so while this is a nice quote with good advice for men and comforting words for women, I feel that it's important to remember that God counts everyone's tears, not just women's.

It doesn't matter what gender you are or how old you are; God loves you more than you can imagine, and He rejoices when you rejoice, and He weeps when you weep. Your emotional well-being is of great importance to Him, whether you're a woman or not. No matter who you are, God loves you. He wants you to be happy, and when you're not happy, He counts your tears.

Again, I don't mean to discount women at all. God cares about women just as compassionately as He cares about everybody else. And having, as a general rule, stronger emotions than men tend to have, women probably have a higher count of tears than men, and a greater need for the comfort that God's compassion can provide. I just think that we guys shouldn't feel left out. God still cares about us just as compassionately as He cares about everyone else. We are all equally loved by God.

So, regardless of gender, we should all try to be careful about other people's feelings, and we can all take comfort from knowing that God's compassion is ever-present when we're upset. No matter what gender we are, we are all God's children, and He counts all our tears.

Back to the Battlefield

I seem to have drifted away from the original theme of my blog. I used to blog about spiritual conflict and  being a Paladin, with a side of role-playing games, but now I blog more about Magic than about any of that. I want to get back into the saddle, so to speak. I don't know whether it's the fact that I just blogged about spiritual combat strategies, or whether it's that I'm about to get into the war chapters again in my Family and Personal Scripture study, but for whatever reason, I've decided that now's a good time to refocus and to go back to blogging about thopics that are more important and more inspirational than Magic: the Gathering. No more Magic for now, or for at least a month or so. Paladins are back.

Four Satanic Tactics and How to Combat Them

One last blog post from Stake Conference before I move on to some other topics that have been building up in my "Blog About" list. This one will focus on a large portion of Elder Lawrence's talk, discussing four satanic tactics and how to combat them.

The first tactic Elder Lawrence listed was the most obvious: Direct temptation. Just as the Holy Ghost can put ideas and suggestions into our minds, the adversary has that same ability. He can put thoughts into our minds, and there isn't much we can do to prevent that. However, there is a lot we can do once the temptation enters our minds and we recognise it as such.

For starters, we could simply ignore it. The devil can give us ideas, but we don't have to act on them. Ignoring those temptations is one way to show that they have no power over us. However, merely ignoring the temptations may not be a good idea. Over time, Satan's suggestions may begin to seem reasonable, or at least annoy us to the point where we give in and try things his way.

A better way to deal with these temptations is to put our feet down. In a famous General Conference talk, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said:

Like thieves in the night, unwelcome thoughts can and do seek entrance to our minds. But we don’t have to throw open the door, serve them tea and crumpets, and then tell them where the silverware is kept! (You shouldn’t be serving tea anyway.) Throw the rascals out!

Elder Holland suggested that we could throw evil thoughts out by replacing them with thoughts of loved ones. Elder Lawrence and others suggested quoting scriptures or singing hymns. Whatever you turn to, you can force Satan's direct temptations out of your mind by thinking about other things.

The second tactic Elder Lawrence listed was deception. Satan often tries to lie to us to tell us that there's something wrong with us or that there's nothing wrong with what he's tempting us to do. He tries to trick us into giving up the fight because he knows that if we fight him, we will win.

Sometimes, we can see through his lies by using logic, but we also have the scriptures and the Holy Ghost to help us. Satan's lies can be convincing, but the Holy Ghost can help us see the truth.

The third tactic Satan uses is contention. He knows that if he can keep us busy fighting each other, we'll be too busy to fight him. He also knows that contention drives the Spirit away, and the Spirit is our most powerful weapon against him. By getting us to fight with each other, or even with ourselves, Satan tries to distance us from those who love us and would help us, and then he attacks us more directly when we're alone.

One way to counter this is to make sure we're never alone. The Holy Ghost can be our constant companion, and He, too, has the ability to influence our thoughts and feelings. When we feel contentious, we can pray for His influence to help us calm down. He can also help us to know what to say or do to help heal the rifts we may have formed between us and our loved ones. Being united through the Spirit can keep us together, even when the devil is trying to drive us apart.

Finally, Satan tries to discourage us into giving up. This seems silly after discussing the many ways we can counter Satan's strategies and the fact that he can only defeat us if we give up the fight, but the temptation to give up can be surprisingly strong. We are only human beings, and we humans have several debilitating limitations. It's easy to consider something a monumental task and give up on it. The prospect of ever becoming perfect seems impractical. The need to keep all the commandments is overwhelming. When we think of how much growth we'll have to do to even begin to approach becoming like God, it's easy to become discouraged.

As with the previous tactic, the way to overcome this tactic is to pray. The reason our eternal goals seem overwhelming is because we try to put them in a temporal context. We picture a goal that will take multiple centuries to accomplish and we think it'll never happen because we only have a little less than a hundred years to work with, but God knows we have a lot more time on our hands than that. He can give us a more eternal perspective and remind us that we actually are making progress, even if our progress is too subtle or gradual for us to see. God knows that we can succeed in this grand endeavour, no matter what the father of lies tells us, and the assurance God gives us can give us the encouragement we need to keep fighting.

These probably aren't the only ways Satan tries to work against us, and they certainly aren't the only ways we can work against him. The point of this message wasn't to give a comprehensive list of battle strategies, but rather to show that for every way Satan tries to defeat us, there's a way we can defeat him instead, and often, the answer is to turn prayerfully toward the scriptures and the Spirit. If that doesn't solve the problem outright, it can at least point us toward the true solution to the problem. For every problem Satan causes, God has an answer. Satan tries many different ways to destroy us, but no matter what he does, we will always have a way to defeat him.

Why Doesn't Everyone Know, and Why Do We?

One thought I had during this Stake Conference is a two-part question about God's plan for our happiness, the Plan of Salvation. I'm not sure if this question has a definite answer, and I'm not going to try to come up with one this afternoon, but it's an interesting question, and I thought I'd raise it here, just to give us all some food for thought.

If it's important for us to know God's plan, why did the veil of forgetfulness make us forget all about it? And if it's important for us not to know the Plan of Salvation, why would God reveal it?

There are some reasons why the veil of forgetfulness makes sense. Life is supposed to be a test. It's something like a practical personality quiz. Rather than presenting us with hypothetical scenarios and asking us what we would do, life puts us in real-world scenarios and keeps track of what we actually do. The purpose of this is not the determine what our spirit animal is, or what color our auras are, or which element we would control if we had the magical ability to control an element, but rather, the personality quiz of reality is meant to determine what kind of people we really are, specifically in terms of righteousness. Are we Celestial material, or are we more the Terrestrial or Telestial type? When it comes to difficult decisions regarding right and wrong, what decisions would we, or do we, really make?

Of course, having a prior knowledge of God's plan would influence our decisions. Even an evil-hearted person could act like a saint for a short while, if he knew he would gain eternal benefits from it. We had to not know about God's plan, and the potential punishments and rewards, or it wouldn't be a real test of character. Knowing God's plan changes the question from "Are you righteous enough to do the right thing, even though it's hard?" to "Do you want the blessings badly enough to do the right thing, even if you don't want to?" Thus, knowing the purpose and potential outcomes of God's plan kind of defeats the purpose of the plan.

Then, why would God reveal His plan to us? For starters, His plan requires some faith to accept. Knowing about the plan may make life more of a test of faith than a test of moral fiber, but we need both faith and moral fiber, so I guess it makes sense to test for both. Plus, following this plan is pretty important. Yes, God has contingencies if we go off the rails, but He'd rather that we didn't, and some of us need a little bit of extra incentive to stay on track. Knowing that there is a test gives us more incentive to try and pass it. However, since knowledge comes with accountability, knowing about God's plan also raises the stakes for us. Knowing about the plan makes it both easier and more important to follow it.

I don't really know why God would reveal His plan to some people, and invite them to share that information with others, but not outright tell everyone the plan right from the start. My only guess is that maybe some people weren't meant to know about the plan, and that there must be some benefit that ignorance gives them, though I'm not quite sure what that benefit might be. To me, it seems to be important for people to know about the plan, so we can be better-prepared to follow it. Yet, God has more wisdom than I do, so if His plan involves a veil of forgetfulness, there must be a good reason for that.

I have no idea why God would make it so some people know about His plan and others don't. Perhaps that's one of the many things I'll understand better when I pass back through the veil of forgetfulness and recall all the details He shared with us about the plan when He told us the plan in the first place. I know He told all of us His plan, and then deliberately made us forget about it, so there must have been a reason for that, and then He directly revealed information about His plan to select people afterward, so there must have been a reason for that to. I'm sure that God's plan includes a very good reason for some people to know about it and others not to, but I am truly puzzled trying to find out what that reason is. Why would God deliberately remind some of us of what He deliberately made us all forget?

Repentance Is Part of the Plan

Another thing that stood out to me may be difficult for me to describe. I tend to over-analyse things and worry too much about things. For example, I sometimes think too much about mortal life and its place in God's plan. I know that God's plan is perfect, but so much of mortality isn't. And when I think about my own life, it gets even worse. I'm sure God has a specific plan for me personally, but I have no idea what the plan is. I can't follow a plan I don't know about, unless God's plan is for me to do what I'm already doing, and I'm pretty sure it isn't. I know it's important to follow God's plan, but from what little I know about God's plan, I'm sure I've gotten off track.

With this being one of the major concerns in my life, something I heard in the Stake Conference really spoke to me. I can't remember the exact words of what I heard, but the feeling I got from it is that God's plan isn't that fragile. It isn't so rigid that it can be derailed by accident. God know that His plan involved working with humans, and He knew that humans make mistakes, so His perfect plan accounted for the mistakes He knew we were going to make. An example of this foresight and flexibility is that God knew that we were going to sin, so He made it possible for us to repent of our sins and get back on track. In fact, as long as we continually repent and try to improve, making mistakes like that doesn't derail God's plan much at all.

One of the main purposes of God's plan is for us to learn wisdom so we can make good choices. This can happen in multiple ways. Preferably, we would keep God's commandments and follow the guidance of the Spirit to learn the right things to do, and make a habit of doing them. That way, it's possible to learn the right way to act without having to learn the hard way. However, even if we make mistakes or even deliberate sins, we can learn from those experiences and hopefully gain the wisdom to avoid making those mistakes in the future. Thus, even when we make mistakes, we're still kind of on the right path, as long as we learn from those mistakes and repent of them.

Even though God's plan centers around imperfect people living in an imperfect world, His plan can still be perfect, as long as it accounts for every possibility, including the mistakes we make, and it does. In His wisdom, God made it possible for us learn from our sins and repent of them, so anything we might do to derail God's plan for us, even wilfully rebelling against it, can work toward God's plan, as long as we learn from the experience and eventually repent of our poor decisions.

I often make poor decisions. I usually try to be righteous, but I frequently find myself in need of repentance. And I worry that, since I'm not always perfect at keeping God's commandments, I'm probably also not doing very well at following God's plan. But God's plan is about us gaining wisdom from our experiences. Sure, it would be better for me to keep the commandments and learn that that's a good idea, but I can also gain wisdom when I break the commandments and find out that that's a bad idea. The goal is to gain wisdom and use it, and the interesting part is that if we don't have enough wisdom, we instead have experiences that help us learn wisdom. It's a system so foolproof that it works even when we actively work against it, and it's virtually impossible to completely derail by accident. For a long time, I've been worried that God's plan wouldn't work for me because I lack the ability to follow it, but now I understand that a perfect plan isn't one that can't go wrong, but one that has contingencies in place for everything that might go wrong, and God's plan is certainly at least as perfect as that.

Counterfeit Blessings

We just had our Stake Conference yesterday, and several blogworthy thoughts were shared. I'd like to share a few of them from my notes, starting with the distinction between opposites and counterfeits. It seems as though everything has an opposite, and for everything God wants for us, Satan wants us to have the opposite. God wants us to be happy; Satan wants us to be miserable. God wants us to be together forever; Satan wants us to be alone forever. God wants us to love everyone, including ourselves; and Satan wants us to hate everyone, including ourselves.

But even though Satan wants the opposite of what God wants, that's not what he offers us. He's too clever for that. He knows that if he blatantly offers us misery, loneliness, and loathing, we're going to turn him down. So, instead of offering us the opposites of what God wants for us, Satan offers us counterfeits. Instead of telling us "Hey, do this and you'll be miserable," he says "Hey, do this and you'll have fun." Fun is not the opposite of happiness. Rather, it's a counterfeit of happiness. It creates a similar feeling, but it's not quite the same and it's not quite as good. Having fun is a pleasant, if brief, experience, but it's nothing compared to the feeling of being truly happy.

The same is true with love and lust. Satan offers us lust as a counterfeit for love, and when we act according to our lusts, we tend to end up with hatred. I'm not sure what the counterfeit of togetherness is, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was one, and if Satan offers it to us, knowing that, if we accept his counterfeit, we're going to end up feeling alone.

We shouldn't settle for Satan's counterfeits. We're capable of obtaining so much more than that. We can have true happiness, eternal unity, and perfect love for ourselves and for our families. Satan's counterfeits can be tempting, but just like counterfeit money, it's worthless. His counterfeits can also be convincing, but once you've felt true happiness, unity, and love, there's really no substitute for that. Satan can't fabricate blessings as good as the ones God offers us, and he wouldn't offer them to us if he could. Satan doesn't want us to be blessed. He tries to trick us with counterfeit blessings to keep us away from the real blessings. I know that the blessings God wants for us are real, but I also know that we can't obtain those true blessings while we're falling for Satan's counterfeits.

Concerted Effort

About a week ago, I opened a pack of Magic: the Gathering cards which included a copy of Odric, Lunarch Marshall. Odric, Lunarch Marshall is a legendary creature (a 3/3 human soldier for 3W) with an ability much like that of Concerted Effort, which I mention only because it'd make a better title for this blog post than anything I could come up with involving Odric's name.

Both of these cards have effects that basically say "if any one of your creatures has one of a list of special abilities, all of your creatures get that special ability." For example, if I had two creatures, and the first one had First Strike and the second one didn't, the second creature would "learn" First Strike from the first creature, and they would both have First Strike. Meanwhile, if the second creature had Vigilance and the first one didn't, the first creature would "learn" Vigilance from the second, so both creatures would end up having both First Strike and Vigilance.

That's one thing I like about White cards in Magic; they work together. They learn from each other and strengthen each other. We can do the same. No matter how much we know or can do, there are always facts, ideas, and skills we can learn from others. Similarly, we each have knowledge and experience that we can share with others. We all have many things to learn, and we all have many things to teach.

As long as we are humble enough to learn from others and generous enough to share what we know, we can all learn and grow together and become far more knowledgeable and skilled than any one of us would have been on our own. And if long as we include God in our "concerted effort," there's no limit to what we can learn and share with each other.

We followed this principle in a recent Priesthood meeting. The leader of the meeting asked the group to raise questions, then invited the group to volunteer answers to those questions. Between us, we were able to come up with satisfactory answers to all the questions we raised. At the start of the meeting, I had expected the head of the meeting to dispense information to us. Instead, he showed us that we already, collectively, had the answers we were looking for.

No one of us knows everything. We all have questions that we, by ourselves, don't have the answer to. But as we listen to the Spirit and to each other, we can learn from and teach each other, until all of us know what any of us know. We won't be able to learn from each other as quickly as my Magic cards can, but sharing what we know with each other seems to me to be a good way to learn.

Mortal Measurements

I really like this quote. When we look at the weaknesses we have and the mistakes we've made, it can be easy to become discouraged and worry that we'll never measure up to our Heavenly Father's expectations of us. But God doesn't expect us to be perfect (not yet, anyway). He knows that we're human and that we're subject to the failings that make us feel insufficient, and I'm sure God takes those handicaps into account. I think that, rather than counting the mistakes we make and the imperfections we have, God measures our success by the good we manage to do despite our handicaps, which, by the way God measures goodness, may be greater than we think. I think that many of us are doing better and more good than we tend to think we are, so we shouldn't worry too much about how we measure up. God's the one doing the measuring, and as I understand it, we're probably doing a lot better than we sometimes think we are.

Forgotten Promises

As some of you may know, I go over to my dad's house once a week to help him out with shopping and some chores. This wee, my dad had a doctor's appointment, so I agreed to come early, but then life got busy and I totally forgot about both Dad's appointment and my agreement to come early. Thankfully, Dad texted me with a reminder and my sister gave me a ride, so I wasn't late, but it struck me how easily I could unintentionally break a promise, simply by forgetting that I had made it.

We make a lot of promises in this church. We call them covenants, and consider them sacred obligations. We receive blessings as we keep them and condemnation when we don't. Given how important it is for us to keep these promises, it's equally important to remember what all those promises are, yet we've made so many covenants, most of which were made several years ago for most of us, that it's easy to forget what all promises we've made.

I think that it might be a good idea to compose a list of the covenants we've made, just so we'd have a comprehensive list of the promises we told God we'd keep. Listing the baptismal and temple covenants won't be too difficult. The tricky part is that I'm not sure if I've made any eternally-binding covenants other than those ones.

Of course, as part of my baptismal covenant, I've promised to keep the commandments, or at least to be willing to and to strive to, so I should probably list the commandments as some kind of subsection under my baptismal covenants. But there are so many commandments, it would be nearly impossible to list all of them. Perhaps I could sum them up the way Christ did: Love God and love thy neighbor, but those are both so vague, it would still be very easy to forget many of the specific things we've promised to do.

I worry that I might be straying into Pharisee territory here. As I recall, they had very specific lists of commandments, especially regarding the observance of the Sabbath, and Christ scolded them for following the letter of the law, and not the spirit of the law. If I make a list of the covenants I made, I'll need to be careful to not just technically obey all the rules I promised to obey, but also to try to see the underlying reasons God asked me to keep those rules, and to stay in line with those reasons. Maybe I should add following the spirit of the law to the already-long-enough list of commandments I should try to remember and keep.

I hope that this doesn't matter as much as I worry that it might. As I understand it, God is more concerned with the spirit of the law than the letter of the law. God cares more about what kind of people we become than what we do or did. Following the letter of the law is a good idea, but only because it helps us follow the spirit of the law and to become good Christians. Then again, we've been warned to not take our covenants too lightly, and completely forgetting about something is about as lightly as you could possibly take it. Maybe I should list at least my baptismal and temple covenants, even if I don't include a comprehensive subsection of commandments. There are too many to list, and I'm sure that God, knowing how human we are, doesn't expect us to remember them all. If I'm wrong, I may be in trouble, but I think God is too forgiving to make a big deal about commandments that slipped our minds, especially if we're honestly trying to keep the commandments we remember.

Still, remembering and keeping our covenants is probably more important than trying to remember and keep all of the commandments. I should certainly make a list of the covenants I've made so I can remember them and make sure to try to keep them.

Only Two Hands

I just did some dog-sitting for my sister, who has three dogs. Three dogs can be a lot to handle at one time, and things get especially interesting when I tried to pet them. If I tried to pet two of them at once, the third dog would get jealous and insist that I pet her as well. Unfortunately, since I only have two hands, I can only pet two dogs at a time.

God doesn't have that limitation. Sure, His physical body may only have two hands, but His blessings can extend to any number of creatures simultaneously. I don't need to feel jealous if God blesses someone, because I know that God can bless me too.

God's influence and blessings can be everywhere at all times. God blessing another person doesn't mean He'll have any fewer blessings to give to another. We will all receive more blessings than we deserve, according to God's justice and grace, and His ability to bless anyone is not limited at all by how many blessings He has already given out or how many people He is currently blessing. I may only be able to pet two dogs at once, but God can bless anyone at any time, no matter how many people He's already blessing.

When Both "You're Welcome" and "No Problem" Apply - And When Neither Do

The other day, I blogged about the difference between "no problem" and "you're welcome," and how each phrase is more appropriate for different situations, but I glossed over the situations in which neither phrase applies, and I neglected to say anything about what I say when both apply. I should probably discuss that with you, lest my incomplete explanation cause confusion later down the line.

When I could honestly say either "you're welcome" or "no problem," I usually say the former, but I don't do this to exaggerate the difficulty of the task I had been asked to do. When I say "you're welcome," I don't mean to imply that the task I had just done had been difficult. Rather, I mean to say that the recipient is welcome to my service, whether that service is difficult or not.

So, if you ever thank me for something, and I say "you're welcome" rather than "no problem," please don't take that to mean that I felt that it was a problem to have to do whatever it was that was asked of me. Please don't assume that I thought a task was taxing, just because I don't say that it wasn't. Maybe it was a difficult task, maybe it wasn't. If I don't mention which it was, that's because I didn't feel that the difficulty or easiness of the task was important enough to specify, in which case, it certainly isn't important enough to worry about.

What is important is love. Just as Westley meant "I love you" when he said "As you wish," when I say "you're welcome," what I mean is that I love you enough to serve you, that I was probably glad of an opportunity to express my love for you, and that you may consider yourself welcome to future help if you need it.

In that case, maybe I should say "you're welcome" even if I don't feel that the recipient is truly "welcome" to my help. I may not feel like serving someone, but if I do so anyway, I guess I must have been willing to do so, so perhaps I did feel sufficient love for that person to serve them, and while I probably wasn't glad to have an opportunity (and obligation) to serve that person, I'd probably be willing to serve them again under similar circumstances. Maybe that person would be welcome to my help, even though I don't always feel like they are. Maybe I could still say "you're welcome" to them honestly, even if I don't mean it in every sense of the term.

I'm glad I've explored the semantics between these two phrases. This has helped me solve a puzzle that has troubled me for years, and it gave me an opportunity to tell those to whom I say "you're welcome" that I usually mean it as an expression of love. I may still say "no problem" when the phrase applies, even if I deeply love the person whom I've just served, but I think I'll say "you're welcome" more often from now on, and it'll certainly mean more when I say it.

Time is Mana

A conversation I had last night, and the thoughts and feelings I had afterward, reminded me that time is a finite resource. Fortunately, I'm rather fond of a game whose core mechanic is resource management, so I was able to come up with the following analogy pretty quickly.

In Magic: the Gathering, casting spells (which means playing any card that isn't a Land) requires Mana. Mana comes from Lands, and while Lands don't cost any Mana to play, you can only play one Land on each of your turns. Since each Land only produces one Mana, each player only has a limited amount of Mana available to them each turn.

How a player spends their turn's supply of Mana is up to them, but they should consider their Mana decisions carefully. Since a player has only a limitted amount of Mana, and each spell they could cast costs a certain amount of Mana, the player can usually cast only a few spells per turn. Sometimes, they only have enough Mana to cast one spell. So each turn, they have to choose carefully which spell(s) they want to cast.

The amount of Mana a players has each turn is similar to the number of hours a person has each day. A person only has so many hours, and they can spend each hour only once. They can spend their hours on basically whatever they want (within limits), but once their day's allotment of hours is spent, they won't get any more hours until the next day.

Since a person only has so many hours available to them each day, they have to choose carefully what they want to do with those hours. They have to decide what tasks they most want to accomplish that day, determine how many hours each task would take, and decide which tasks are most worthy of their time. If they're not careful, they could end up spending hours on tasks that aren't really all that important.

That's a mistake that I make frequently, especially during the Summer. During the school year, most of my time is spent at school or at home, doing homework, and much of the rest of my time is spent doing chores, with only a few hours each day going to recreation. Now that I don't have an obligation to go to school, managing my time has become more difficult. In Magic terms, I have more Mana in my Mana pool, and more spells in my hand, which is usually a good thing. But now that I have to make decisions regarding what to do with my Mana/time, I frequently find myself making the wrong decisions.

Today, I hope to do better. I've had a few blogworthy thoughts lately, so I'll try to type them up and hold them in reserve. I have something of a research project to do, assuming I can find any reliable information on the subject I intend to study out. I also have a small errand to run, but that won't take long. Besides that, I think the rest of my time will be taken up by chores. If not, I'll try to come up with other ways to use my time effectively. In Magic, the game can hinge on how well or poorly a player uses their Mana each turn. In life, it's even more important to make good use of our time.

Changing Situations or Hearts

When we face unfortunate circumstances, we often ask for God's help in dealing with them. Sometimes, we even ask Him to solve our problems for us because we know that we can't handle them ourselves. But having a problem-free life isn't really in our best interest. We need to experience trouble and adversity in order to learn and grow. If we always got the relief we prayed for, we wouldn't be able to achieve one of the major purposes of life. So when we pray for miracles, we should try to remember to add "If it be Thy will," because God's will for us is to achieve our full potential, and sometimes, we need some adversity to help us do that.

The Difference Between "No Problem" and "You're Welcome"

This morning, I was talking with my family about giving service and receiving thanks. Usually, when I receive thanks for some service I did for someone, I say "no problem." Sometimes, I say "you're welcome" instead. These two phrases are often used interchangeably, but I believe that there is a difference, and I usually try to say the one I really mean.

When I say "no problem," what I mean is that the service I gave was no big deal, not for me, at least. I'm an able-bodied young man, so it's usually no problem for me to help others. However, sometimes, the people I help need a lot of help. Sometimes, it is a sacrifice to help them, even for me. In those cases, I usually say "you're welcome" rather than "no problem," because even though the service requires a little bit of sacrifice on my part, the recipients of the service are welcome to my help.

There are some times when the service I give isn't exactly "no problem," and I don't feel that the recipients are freely welcome to my service, but fortunately, such instances are few. Usually, the service I'm asked to give is either relatively easy or for the benefit of someone who deserves it. I can almost always honestly say either "no problem" or "you're welcome" when I'm thanked, and I almost always try to use the phrase that's most appropriate for the service I gave.

The Second Part of the Stars

While I was thinking about choice the other day, I wondered to myself if I had truly signed up for this mortal experience in the first place, and what my other options were.

I know that everyone who came to Earth had at least one opportunity to opt out. We didn't have to come here and suffer through a mortal life. There was another plan presented, and those who elected to follow that plan went a different route, bypassing mortality altogether. Those spirits never had to experience the physical pain and suffering that we experience here, and they never will. But there's a catch: these spirits who evaded the curse of mortality did so by following Satan into Outer Darkness.

This was, of course, not a great choice. If this was the only alternative to experiencing mortality, there's no wonder we all decided to experience mortality. But this seems like a pretty serious ultimatum to me. It's hard to imagine God forcing all of His children to either got to Earth or go to hell. It seems to me that there must have been a third option, one that didn't involve either physical or eternal suffering.

In Revelations, the dragon (representing Satan) drew away "the third part of the stars of heaven" (representing pre-mortal spirits). Many people have taken this to mean that Satan convinced one-third of the host of heaven to follow him, while the remaining two-thirds followed God's plan to go to Earth. But this scripture could just as easily mean that the host of heaven was divided into three parts. The first part followed God's plan, and the third part followed Satan, but what of the second part?

Could it be that, at that pre-mortal council, we were given the option to stay where we were? I'm told that we had hit the limit of our progression as spirits, and to get any farther in our quest to become like God, we would have to experience mortality. But what if some of us, not liking the sound of the "suffering" we were told we would experience, decided that we had already come as far as we wanted to and that we would rather stay where we were than take our chances on Earth? Was that option open to us? If so, that suggests a few interesting implications.

The most important implication is that, even with the option to avoid all suffering, I chose to come here, whereas I could have stayed behind. I really did "sign up for this," and I did so when I had alternatives other than following Satan into hell. This means that, at least one point, I had the courage to say "I know this is going to be difficult, but I know that's it's going to be worth it." It means that I actually chose to come here.

That makes me feel a little bit better about being here. I don't know if it's true or not, in fact, it probably isn't, but I don't care. If it turns out that we only had two options: God's plan, or Satan's, then I would feel as though I had been somewhat forced. Sure, I still "chose" to come here, but when your only other option is to spend an eternity with Satan, that's not much of a choice. I feel much better about my decision to be born when I think that I actually had another valid option. Whether it's true or not, the thought that I could have stayed in heaven strengthens my resolve to face my challenges on Earth. I decided to come here. That was my choice. I made this decision, knowing that it would be difficult, but feeling that it would be worth it. I find it encouraging to think that I chose to rise to the challenge of mortality, whereas I might have otherwise decided to spend an eternity with the second part of the stars.

The Field of Life Is Not a Field of Lava

I want to blog more about "Commandments VS Agency" later, mostly because I don't think our situation is quite as bleak as I made it sound, but first I want to take some time to flesh out my thoughts and decide which of those thoughts I want to blog about first.

Actually, I think I've decided which of those thoughts I want to blog about first. I want to blog about how the commandments help protect our freedom and how keeping the commandments is the wisest way to use our freedom, but first, I would like to play Devil's Advocate for a few minutes and admit that breaking the commandments isn't the end of the world.

Yesterday, I compared our plight to standing on a rock in the middle of a field of lava, with a narrow bridge, representing God's plan for us, as our only way to safety. The implication was that if we don't follow God's plan perfectly, we would die. Today, I'm willing to argue that our situation isn't quite as extreme as that.

It's more like we're standing in the middle of a regular field which is overgrown with weeds. True, the path to our destination is still narrow, but there are branching paths that we can take at our own discretion and still be safe. But if we find these paths too restrictive, we always have the option of walking in whichever direction we choose, and it won't immediately kill us. Sure, the going will be rougher since we're not on a trail, and it'll probably be painful, too, when we get burs stuck in our socks, but it won't be anywhere near as difficult, painful, or deadly as trying to walk or swim through molten lava.

And when we're done trying to blaze our own trails, we can always make our way back God's trails, pick the burs out of our socks, and proceed from there. That's called repentance, and as long as we're still breathing, we will always have that option. God doesn't shut us off completely as soon as we step foot off His path. He just steps back, lets us do our own thing for as long as we want to, and welcomes us back with open arms when we realise how much better it is to follow His path than our own.

We can take any path we want through the field of life. There are multiple paths that God has laid out for each of us as valid options, and if we don't like any of those, we can make our own choices instead. Straying from God's path still isn't a good idea. It's painful, difficult, and not likely to get you much closer to where you want to go. But it's always an option, and even if we choose that option, we can always come back later. God's commandments, and the consequences for breaking them, do not limit our freedom to choose.

Later, I would like to blog about why keeping God's commandments is the best choice and why we should choose to stay on God's path, but today, my message is that we don't really have to. We have the freedom to go wherever we want. We just might get burs in our socks if we do.

The Only Valid "Choice"

I've been thinking a lot about choice lately, and it sometimes seems to me that we don't really have much of a choice at all. It's true that life gives us many choices. At any given moment, we could choose to do any number of things. Throughout the course of our lives, we make countless choices, presenting us with a nearly-infinite set of options regarding the decisions we want to make. However, it doesn't always feel like I have a great deal of freedom, and that may be mostly because of consequences for choices.

If a person is on a beach with a sign that says "Danger! Sharks! No Swimming!" they do still technically have the option to go swimming anyway, but for most sane people, a sign like that would convince them that swimming there isn't really a valid option. If a person is standing on a narrow bridge, they could, theoretically, walk in any direction, but only two of those directions would allow them to walk more than a few steps without falling to their deaths. If a person is standing on a small rock in the middle of a field of molten lava, with a narrow bridge as their only path off that rock and to safety, how many options does that person really have?

Thankfully, life isn't quite that bleak or controlling, but it sometimes seems that way, especially when we consider that God has a plan for each of us. God's plans are usually good things. He wants what's best for us, and following His plan will lead us to the greatest happiness we can have. But the flipside of that is that doing anything other than following God's plan will lead us to a lesser amount of happiness. Either we follow God's plan for us, or we don't; either we obtain the greatest amount of happiness we can have, or we don't. Those really are our only two options.

This has become a rather frustrating personal struggle for me. I feel like, if I'm prompted to do something, or if a church leader gives me an assignment, or a friend or family member asks me to do some service, I really only have two options: either I "choose" to "do the right thing," or I don't. I want to have eternal peace and happiness, so I really have no option but to "choose the right." But when I have only one valid option, I don't really feel like I have any choice at all.

Maybe I'm being too narrow in my thinking. I know that following God's plan and keeping His commandments is the only way to gain the kind of peace and happiness I'm looking for, but I'm not sure that His plan and commandments are really as restrictive as they sometimes feel. It could be that there are far more good options than there seem to be. I may have made a false assumption about how narrow the bridge out of the lava field really is. Sure, God's path is the only way to lasting happiness, but there may be some wiggle room on that path. Some choices are inconsequential, and we can make whichever choice we want without falling off the path. Maybe I do have some freedom after all.

But as long as choices have consequences, the results we want limit the choices we can make. We can't get to any place by walking away from it. We can't get to the top of a mountain by going downhill, so if we want to reach the top of that mountain, going downhill isn't really an option for us. The same is true with heaven. We can't get to heaven by sinning, so if we want to get to heaven, sinful behavior isn't a valid option. Only Celestial behavior is. If we want to enjoy the rewards of being righteous, being righteous is the only valid choice we can make.

Serve, then Teach

When Ammon went to preach to the Lamanites, he didn't start off by preaching. He started off by offering to be a servant. It was only after he had proven his great and unique skill at service that he began to preach to anyone, and even then, he let the benefactors of his service lead the conversation. As a result, Ammon had a great deal of success at converting others to the ways of the Lord.

In contrast, Aaron, who went out to preach at the same time Ammon did, started preaching right off the bat, and he wasn't very well-received. In fact, he was cast into prison without any mention of having converted anyone.

Now, the difference between the levels of success between Ammon and Aaron may have been partly because of the states of the hearts of those they were teaching, but I believe that their technique played a vital role as well. And apparently, Aaron agreed, because as soon as Ammon released him from prison, he went right back into the mission field, but this time, he offered service before he started teaching, and this time, he got much better results.

Again, this could have been due to the relative hardness or softness of the hearts of those they were teaching, but I still think it was mostly because of their approach. I've heard it said that "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." I think that that principle applies here. By serving others, or at least offering to, these two missionaries showed that they truly wanted to help those whom they were teaching, and not just by teaching them.

Service is now an integral part of missionary service. In fact, the unofficial anthem of LDS missionaries is "Called to Serve." We are to love and serve our fellow man. Sometimes, that involves doing service for them, and sometimes, that involves teaching them what we know, but if the experiences of Ammon and Aaron are any indication, it may be that others won't be interested in what we know until they know that we're interested in helping them.

Staying Clean

In life, we get dirty, and to get clean, we have to bathe. If we get dirty frequently, we have to bathe frequently. Yet, that analogy doesn't really hold up in a spiritual sense. Sin makes us spiritually unclean. To be cleansed from sin, we need to be baptised. However, baptism is an ordinance we experience only once in our lives, but we sin every day. How can we stay clean when we can only be baptised once?
The possibility or impossibility of "staying clean" depends on what we mean by that. Theoretically, we could "stay clean" by not sinning, ever. However, most human beings aren't good at that. Not all humans even try, and of the humans who have tried, I've only ever heard of One who succeeded, and there's some debate about whether or not He was really human. Humans sin, so "staying clean" by never sinning, at least not after our once-in-a-lifetime baptism, isn't really possible for most of us. If, by "staying clean," we mean "never becoming dirty again," I don't think we can do that.

However, if we loosen the definition of "staying clean" to include the option of becoming clean again and again, then staying clean becomes much more possible.  The good news is that even though we can only be baptised once, there are other ways we can become clean again after baptism. In Elder David A. Bednar's talk, Always Retain a Remission of Your Sins, Elder Bednar said that, "we are blessed both by our initial cleansing from sin associated with baptism and by the potential for an ongoing cleansing from sin made possible through the companionship and power of the Holy Ghost."

We cannot "stay clean" 100% of the time by always being completely free of sin, but through the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost, we can become clean again as often as we need to. In fact, Elder Bednar said that "receiving the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost in our lives creates the possibility of an ongoing cleansing of our soul from sin." We may only get one bath, so to speak, but if we receive the Holy Ghost and keep Him with us, it's almost like we never leave the tub. If we keep the Spirit with us and repent quickly enough, we can be cleansed from sin practically as soon as it touches us.

Of course, it's preferable to avoid sin as much as possible. It's better to stay clean than it is to have to be cleansed over and over again. But since it's practically impossible to stay clean in that sense forever, it's fortunate that we can be cleansed by the Holy Ghost, not just when we're baptised, but as often as we need to be, even continually. We can't always keep from getting our hands dirty, but if we keep the Holy Ghost with us, it's possible for us to continuously stay clean.

Post-Mortal Meetings

As I made my way to the bike shop, standing on my pedals the whole way, I wondered if I would ever have the opportunity to meet the guy who took my bicycle seat. I'm sure that, at final judgement, we'll be able, and forced, to review virtually every decision we've ever made. I wonder if we'll also see the consequences of our choices. I wonder if we'll see the people whose lives our actions affected. Just in case, I said a message to the guy who took my seat, in case he (or she) gets to see that message later.

Part of me thinks that the afterlife will be full of reunions like that. I think we will be able to meet the people whose lives we've touched or whose lives have touched ours. I currently have no idea who took my seat, and I'll probably never meet them in this life, but I hope I get to meet them in the afterlife. I'd like to give that person an opportunity to apologize to me, and I'd like to have an opportunity to forgive him or her in person. I think it'd be interesting to be able to connect over this shared experience and discuss our feelings about it. We may even become friends.

I have no idea whether any such connections will actually take place. I'm pretty sure we'll meet all our ancestors and descendants, but I haven't heard anything to indicate whether we'll meet anyone else or not. I think such meet-ups may foster spiritual growth,  but they haven't been confirmed as events that will actually take place. We may never be able to meet all the people who have touched our lives or whose lives we have touched, but it would be wise to live as if we would.

If such reunions do actually take place, I'll want them to be mostly positive experiences. I want people to be able to say that I had a positive impact on their lives. To facilitate that, I'm going to do good to the people I meet. I'll try to be kind, thoughtful, and helpful, just in case I run into those people again later down the line. We may never run into others again, at Final Judgement or anywhere else, but just in case we do, I'm going to try to make sure those end up being positive meetings. Having a positive influence on others' lives now may help prevent things from getting awkward later.

"Because God Said So"

In Sunday School this afternoon, the instructor asked the class why people need to be baptised. Someone answered, "Because God said so." The teacher wrote the word "Commandment" on the chalkboard and explained that "Because it's a commandment," means basically the same thing as "Because God said so."

God has given us many commandments, and some of them don't seem to have clear reasons for them. For example, I don't know the reason God requires His children to be baptised. I honestly don't think any mortal person does.

But the good news is that "Because God said so" isn't the only reason for any commandment. Some commandments may seem arbitrary, but that's only because we don't fully understand them. God has reasons for all of the commandments He gives us, and His reasons are a lot better than "Because I said so," even though He doesn't always reveal them.

Earlier today, I was annoyed by a rule that seemed to be completely arbitrary and stupid, but I've decided not to let it bother me any more. For now, I can accept that the rule is the rule, if for no other reason than "Because God said so," knowing that God certainly has a better reason than that. I may not know what the reason is, but knowing that God has a reason for the rule is enough to convince me to respect it.

Eventually, I will learn why God made that the rule, and it'll make perfect sense to me, but for now, I can take it on faith and respect that the rule exists even if only "Because God said so."

How I Feel About the Guy Who Took My Seat

Last night, the seat of my bicycle was stolen. I have no idea who stole it, but I have conflicting ideas of how I should feel about them.

While riding home on my bike, standing on the pedals, I was annoyed at the guy (I'm assuming it was a guy). He made my ride back home considerably more difficult and embarrassing. I will now have to buy a new bicycle seat and seat post, and I will now be a lot less trusting of my fellow man.

But maybe that's a good thing. I think that people should be able to trust each other, but if we're being realistic, people do need to watch out for thieves. I wasn't being careful, and it cost me my bicycle seat. Now, I will try to be more careful, and that may save me from a theft later on. I don't know how much bicycle seats cost, but I'm sure I own items of greater value, and considering this event, I'm going to be more vigilant to protect them. Who knows, maybe, in the long run, this thief saved me money.

Of course, this probably wasn't the thief's intention. He was probably just trying to make a quick buck, but when I think about why a person would do that, I almost feel sorry for him. He may need the money to pay for drugs, or some other addiction or debt. Debt and addiction are terrible. If this is a normally decent person who truly needs money that desperately, or at least feels like they do, then he probably feels conflicted about what he did. He may even regret it. He may feel sorry for what they did, and if he feels sincerely sorry for it, I should forgive him.

Actually, I should forgive him anyway. I guess I'm working on that.

And if the thief wasn't a decent person, then his situation is even worse. If he stole my bicycle seat just because he's greedy and thought he could get away with it, if there was no desperation, just want, then he's going to have some explaining to do before all this is over. When he stands before God on judgement day, this sin is going to testify against him, unless he repents of it first. I hope he does repent. I don't think he'd go to hell for stealing a bicycle seat, but it's not exactly Celestial behavior. He's capable of being better than that, and if this is part of a pattern of behavior, he's never going to reach his full potential this way.

I think the reason a sympathize so much with the guy who stole my bicycle seat is that I see parts of myself in him. I'm not a thief, nor am I likely to become one, but I have done things I regret, things that I fear may keep me out of the Celestial Kingdom. I'm not perfect. I often wrestle with myself over doing the right thing, and I don't always win those fights.

I'm not angry at the thief. Bicycle seats probably aren't all that expensive, and I was planning to go to the bike shop soon anyway. In the meantime, getting around without a bike seat is a bit awkward, but it's not impossible. All in all, I'm still doing okay.

Now I just hope he is.

He's obviously going through some stuff, be it addiction, debt, grappling with inner demons, or whatever else his problem may be. Whether he stole my seat just because he wanted to, or because he felt like he had to, I'm glad I'm not in his shoes. It seems that I'm in a better situation than he is, spiritually and/or financially, and that puts me in an interesting position.

I'm thankful for my blessings, both physical and spiritual, but at the same time, I know I'm not perfect. Though I don't wrestle with that sin often, there are other sins that beset me, so I shouldn't be too quick to judge. While the theft was certainly annoying, I may have learned something from it. And it's hard for me to stay angry at the guy, knowing that either his situation is painful and pitiful, or it's going to be.

I'd rather that my bike's seat hadn't been stolen, but I feel that way as much for the thief's sake as for mine. I wish he was doing well enough, both spiritually and financially, that he didn't feel compelled to take other people's things. I'm not happy with the decision he made, but I'm sure that he isn't or won't be either. This wasn't a good thing for either of us, and it's probably worse for him than it is for me. I think I do feel sorry for him, and that helps me to want to forgive him and ask God to help him with whatever his problem is. He's clearly experiencing some kind of problem, and it's probably a far more serious problem than temporarily lacking a bicycle seat.

Ask God How to Pour Cereal

Just now, I poured myself a bowl of cereal shortly before realizing that we're almost out of milk. I decided to have oatmeal instead, but first, I would have to put the cereal back in the box. After a brief, fruitless search for a suitable funnel, I tried to simply pour the cereal back into the box straight from the bowl. It didn't go well. With a few cheerios spilled on the counter and the bowl still half-full of cereal, I admitted to myself that this was a bad idea, but it was the only idea I had at the time, so I proceeded to pour the rest of the cereal back into the box, spilling another few cheerios in the process. It was only after I had emptied the bowl into the box and onto the counter that a voice inside my head told me "You could have used a piece of paper."

I had learned long ago the mystic art of holding a piece of paper so it could be used as a funnel. All I needed was a food-safe piece of paper, and I could have effectively poured all of the cheerios back into the box, not spilling any. It seems strange that the inspiration came to me only after it was too late, but it kind of serves me right. After all, I never thought to ask.

We consistently face challenges and decisions, and we often rely on our own wisdom to solve them. This is usually because we think we're wise enough to handle the situation, or we think the situation is trivial enough that God wouldn't bother weighing in. Of course, sometimes, neither is the case, but we still don't ask, because we don't expect God to answer. And to be fair, God doesn't always answer, even when we do ask for ideas or advice. Sometimes, He lets us try to figure things out on our own, so we get used to having to figure things out on our own, and we may forget that we can always ask for help if we think we could use it.

This is the situation I was in this morning. I knew I wasn't handling the situation perfectly, but I didn't think it mattered enough for God to want to give me advice. He's a busy man, and a few pieces of cereal really aren't worth the effort of saving. But honestly, it wasn't so much that I thought God wouldn't answer a request for ideas; it's that I didn't think to ask. I forgot that I had 24/7 access to an omniscient God who might have been willing to give me an idea or offer some advice. I forgot that I could have collaborated with the one being who knows everything, and we could have come up with a better plan. I forgot that I wasn't alone, that I'm never alone, and that He's always in the back of my mind, waiting for me to reach out and talk to Him, to ask Him my questions, and seek His advice.

Sure, He doesn't always answer our questions or give us advice. Sometimes, what we ask about really doesn't matter, and He let's us exercise our idea- and decision-making muscles and figure things out (or not) on our own. But it couldn't hurt to ask. And really, if we can occasionally tap into the mind of the guy who always knows exactly what to do in any given situation, why would we ever not? Why would we choose to flounder around, trying to come up with our own ideas, without even asking God if He has any input? Sure, He might not answer, but He just might. This morning, I thought my problem was too trivial for God to bother to solve it, but now I think that He was truly willing to teach me a clever way to not spill my cheerios, if only I had thought to ask.

Being Sensitive to Those with Less-Than-Ideal Families

This church has a strong focus on families. With families being such an essential part of God's eternal plan, and such a great place to learn Gospel principles at an early age, it's no wonder that we emphasize the importance and sanctity of families. But this causes complications, as not all people have families that resemble the ideal family. Some children are missing one or more parents, or have more than one of one kind of parent. Some families remain technically together, but are emotionally broken. Some parents have lost children or are unable to have children. These and other family situations can make life hard for people in the church we they hear us talking about the ideal family.

In Elder Neil L. Andersen's talk, “Whoso Receiveth Them, Receiveth Me,” he shares a few heartbreaking examples of people who struggled in the church for having less-than-ideal families. Elder Andersen then encouraged us to be sensitive to the situations of others, and to be mindful of their feelings. While there is such a thing as an ideal family, most people simply don't have one, and we should be mindful of them so we don't cause them any more emotional harm than they already feel.

The church should be a place of warmth and welcoming, so while many members of our congregation come from broken families, we shouldn't draw attention to that fact and make them feel uncomfortable. It's usually not best to dwell on a person's familial situation too much. Rather, we should be loving and kind, and we should assure every member of the congregation that they have a place in the ward  family, regardless of what their personal family situation is. So, while it's important to teach the importance of families, we should acknowledge that not all people have ideal families, and we should be especially mindful of those people's emotional needs.

Why I Can't Blog About Every Conference Talk

For a few weeks now, I've been having a hard time coming up with things to blog about. Normally, I like to blog about General Conference talks. They usually have plenty of blogworthy quotes or messages and/or analogies that I can rehash or reinterpret. However, I sometimes run into a General Conference talk that I don't know how to blog about, usually because the message didn't jump out at me as something I need to blog about. For a while, I thought that that was an indication that I wasn't studying them right. After all, these are inspired messages from God. If we seek inspiration as we study them, God should, theoretically, use them to speak to us, right?

Well, not always. One of the main reasons we have modern prophets at all is that people need different messages at different times. If one talk, or even one set of talks, was sufficient for all people for all time, then we really wouldn't need much more than what we get from the scriptures. However, times change, and people change. The challenges and opportunities we face today are nothing like what the Israelites and early Christians faced. Thus, God gives us different messages than the ones He gave them, messages better tailored to suit our current needs.

Similarly, because each person is different than each other person, it's difficult, if not impossible, for any one message to speak to every person's individual needs. Any given message in General Conference may have something for everyone, but it's just as likely to be better suited for some people than for others. A few talks with very specific messages may not be relevant to certain people at all. For example, one General Conference talk may be a strong admonition to pay tithing, but if you already have a firm testimony of the principle of tithing and you pay your tithing faithfully, you may not really need to hear that message.

General Conferences are wonderful, and there is something in each General Conference for each individual who attends it, but because General Conferences are broadcast to all the world, there are going to be a handful of messages in each Conference that were meant more for other people than for you. It is good to listen to and revisit each talk, just in case there's something in there that you need to hear, but if you don't hear anything that really stands out to you, maybe it's because that message was meant for someone else, and there's another message that would be more beneficial for you at this time.

I try to blog about each Conference talk in succession, so I can keep them in order and know which ones I've revisited and which ones I haven't, but sometimes, there are Conference talks I get stuck on because nothing in them stands out to me as being particularly blogworthy. Maybe that's because I'm not studying them right, or maybe I'm just not in the right frame of mind, but it also could be that that's not the message I need to focus on right now, and if that's the case, then I really ought to move on. I'm not sure how long I've been stuck on Elder Ronald A. Rasband's talk, Standing with the Leaders of the Church, but it's been too long. If you study it on your own and find something you think is blogworthy, please feel free to share youre insight in the Comments. But as for me, I think I need to move on to a different message.