Proving Trustworthy

There's a thought from a recently-blogged-about General Conference talk that was also brought up in a conversation I had recently. That thought was about earning the trust of the Lord.

In his talk, Earning the Trust of the Lord and Your Family, Elder Richard J. Maynes said:

One thing is for certain: earning the Lord’s trust is a blessing that comes through great effort on our part. Trust is a blessing based on obedience to God’s laws. Earning the Lord’s trust comes as a result of being true to the covenants we have made in the waters of baptism and in the holy temple. When we keep our promises to the Lord, His trust in us grows.

Gaining the Lord's trust is one of the purposes of mortality. God wants to give us great blessings, including great power, but it would be irresponsible to give that power to someone who couldn't be trusted to use it properly. That's part of the reason God gave us lesser powers and abilities, to let us prove whether we would use them responsibly. If we do, God gradually trusts us with more blessings.

Unfortunately, the inverse is also true. If we prove untrustworthy by breaking covenants and promises or by misusing or abusing our power, God is not going to trust us with any more power, and He's not going to reward us with any more blessings.

If we want the blessings God has promised to the faithful, then we must be faithful. We need to prove that we can be trusted with great power by proving that we can be trusted with the power we already have. As Elder Maynes suggested, this takes great effort on our part. That is because the temptation to abuse power is far too prevalent among humans. We must learn how to fight this temptation and use our power responsibly if we ever want to be trusted to handle more.

The gift of Godhood carries a tremendous amount of power. If we want to receive it, we need to prove that we can be trusted with it. If we prove that we can be trusted by making and keeping promises and by using our power wisely, God will eventually  come to trust us with every blessing He can give us, including the kind of power He Himself has. It would be amazing to hold that much power, and it would be even more amazing to know that God knows that we can be trusted with it.

Imperfect Leaders

The final talk of the Priesthood Session of the October 2017 General Conference was given by President Henry B. Eyring and was titled The Lord Leads His Church. In this talk, President Eyring spoke of Priesthood leadership, a topic that would become timely a few months later. He taught that the Lord uses imperfect people (which, as Elder Holland famously remarked, is all He has to work with) to do great things despite their weaknesses. President Eyring said that it takes faith to believe that, and I mostly agree.

It does take faith to accept that God calls imperfect people to serve as leaders in His church, but as Elder Holland reminded us, He could hardly have called anyone else. No one is perfect. All human beings have their flaws, and our leaders are no exception. But rather than criticize their failings, we should strive to work on our own.

Of course, our leaders aren't perfect, but the Lord calls them anyway, and He has His reasons for doing so. Perhaps they have a set of tangentially-related talents that will be of use in their task. Perhaps He put them in those positions to help the develop leadership skills. Or perhaps they truly are perfect for the job, and our imperfect judgement sometimes fails to see that.

One does not need to be perfect in order to be perfectly suited to a task, and one does not need to be perfectly suited to a task in order to be useful to God. I'm confident that God could turn a worthless rock into a priceless sculpture, even if He could only use imperfect chisels to do the sculpting. We are all imperfect. All people have flaws that, in some people's opinions would make them unsuited for the work of the Lord, but the Lord is better at using chisels than people are at evaluating them. If God has called someone to a specific task, we can be confident that He knows how to help them accomplish that task, no matter how inadequate they seem or are. As long as those whom He calls to lead are humble enough to accept His guidance, they can hardly go wrong.

It's easy to criticize, but it's important to have faith, especially as it relates to the Lord's choices. No, the leaders He chooses are not perfect, but His reasons for choosing them are.

Living in the Light

In President Uchtdorf's most recent Priesthood Session General Conference talk, Bearers of Heavenly Light, he managed to slip in yet another lesson learned from aviation. Travelling high above the Earth, he saw how the Earth turned and rotated around the sun, creating day and night. He remarked that night is nothing more than a temporary shadow that always gives way to light again.

Even in the darkest of nights, the sun does not cease to radiate its light. It continues to shine as bright as ever. . . .

When the darkness of night falls, we do not despair and worry that the sun is extinguished. We do not postulate that the sun is not there or is dead. We understand that we are in a shadow, that the earth will continue to rotate, and that eventually the rays of the sun will reach us once again.

Darkness is not an indication that there is no light. Most often, it simply means we’re not in the right place to receive the light.

 There is a lot of darkness in the world these days, and we've been warned that it will probably get darker before it gets brighter. But that doesn't mean that the light is fading. God, our source of spiritual light, still shines as brightly as ever. The trouble is that much of the world is not in the right place, spiritually, to receive His light. Yet, that, too, is temporary. Each individual can repent and come back into the light. But regardless of whether we repent or not, we will all be brought into God's light to be judged for whether we accepted it, and eventually, the whole world will be purified and made into a world of light.

If we want to live on the Earth after that, we need to prepare ourselves now by living in the light. Much of the world is, arguably, bathed in shadow, but we can all bear heavenly light wherever we go, and, when appropriate, we can share it with others. We can all do our part to make the world a little bit less dark. More importantly, we can make our homes places of light and frequently visit places where spiritual light shines the brightest, like Sacrament Meetings and Temples. By doing so, we can ensure that we always have light to guide ourselves and others through the otherwise troubling darkness of life.

It's nice to put the darkness of the world into perspective sometimes, and it's even nicer to know that, even with the prevalent darkness around us, we can hold the darkness at bay and perpetually live in the light.

Integrity

Elder Richard J. Maynes' talk, Earning the Trust of the Lord and Your Family, focussed largely on trust, but for this blog post, I'd like to focus on another important trait: Integrity. Elder Maynes said that "trust is built on integrity," and that "Being a man of integrity simply means your intentions, as well as your actions, are pure and righteous in all aspects of your life, both in public and in private."

That's a pretty good definition. When I looked Integrity up on Google, the first definition for it is "the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness." It comes from the Latin word Integer, meaning Intact or Whole.

Looking at other definitions of Integrity and of a related word, Integral, I found some interesting connections. Integrity can also be defined as "the state of being whole and undivided" and/or "the condition of being unified, unimpaired, or sound in construction." Similarly, one definition of Integral is "having or containing all parts that are necessary to be complete."

So, Integrity suggests a good moral character with an underlying idea of being whole, intact, unified, and complete.

These definitions point us toward the perfection we hope to eventually attain.

Of course, having a good moral character is an essential part of perfection, but so is having a body, as we've explored earlier with our (mostly one-sided) discussion about Jesus' commands to be perfect.

Our perfection also depends on our spirits and bodies being unified, not just in being inseparably attached to each other, but also in purpose. To be perfect, we must make our natural appetites subject to our spirits.

We also must be undivided ourselves, having firmly decided which of our two most influence spiritual brothers we are going to follow. And we must be intact, unblemished by sin.

Thus, in many more ways than one, Integrity helps to define Perfection. To have a full measure of integrity is to be perfect. And, until we attain that perfection, integrity can serve as an understandable and largely achievable goal to strive for. We can hardly wrap our heads around how to be perfect, but we can easily understand how to have integrity, especially with the definitions above. It's still a lofty goal to strive for, but at least we can understand it. And once we achieve integrity in almost every sense of the word, we will effectively have become perfect. Perfection is the term the Lord has chosen to describe our ultimate goal, but to help myself understand what He meant by that, I might mentally substitute the term Integrity.

Mixed Alignments

Normally, when a person plays D&D, they play the role of a hero. These characters typically slay monsters, defeat villains, and save the day. But life's not that simple. There aren't just good guys and bad guys in the world. We all have some good and some bad. Sure, most people have more of one than the other, but in real life (and in most good stories) every "bad" person has redeeming qualities and every good person has flaws. People are complex. They can't be summed up with labels like Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil. And that's why it's important not to judge people too soon or too absolutely. You may think you've got a pretty good idea what kind of person a particular person is, but that person can still surprise you, for good or for bad. When applied to people, "Good" and "Bad" are generalizations that are far too broad to be useful. We're all both good and bad sometimes. That's what makes us such great characters.

The Perfection of Imperfection

In my Philosophy class's reading of Descartes, we just got to the part were he wonders why a perfect God would create beings who are so imperfect as the likes of us. Descartes came up with several possible answers, as have I, and since I can't now remember which ideas he wrote about, I'll just throw them all together and explore the question freely without worrying about citing my sources.

Firstly, how do we know we're not perfect? Sure, we make plenty of mistakes, but we learn from those mistakes, as God intended. We're not great at everything, but maybe we don't need to be. We know that God has plans for us, but we don't know what all those plans entail. Maybe He has planned for, and is planning on, our occasional missteps. Perhaps our "imperfections" are features that help make God's plan a perfect one.

Or maybe they're just cosmetic. In my Art History class, I learned that when artists got bored of hyper-realism, they invented whole new art styles built on deliberate imperfections. Impressionists, Surrealists, and Abstract artists painted images that didn't reflect how the world really looked but that carried deeper meanings to them. Many of them could have made perfectly realistic-looking paintings, had they wanted to, but they didn't. As Descartes said (and I'm paraphrasing), even a perfect craftsman doesn't have to make all of his creations perfect. Sometimes, "good enough" is good enough.

Plus, we have to take ourselves into account. A lot of the mistakes we (or at least I) make on a regular basis are our (on at least my) own fault. God gave us the freedom to choose, and He's not going to force us to make perfect choices all the time. That was another guy's plan. God is willing to let us make our own choices and learn from the consequences. That may be the best if not only way for us to learn and grow. And our growth is the goal here, not immediate perfection. He wants us to become perfect eventually, but in order to become perfect, we first have to not be perfect. And we're following that part of the plan perfectly so far.

There is a lot we can gain from our imperfection, like wisdom, humility, and the quirks that help make us unique. Rather than hating our imperfections and wondering why God allows us to be so flawed, maybe we should look for the silver linings and learn what good can come from our being currently imperfect.

A Simple Answer to Complex Moral Questions

Life is full of difficult moral questions, and I almost relish that. I enjoy pondering complex moral issues in a purely academic sense. When the questions are less theoretical and more immediate, I enjoy the questions less. I frequently have a hard time determining what the right answers are, leaving me paralysed when making decisions and second-guessing the decisions I ultimately make. The questions "What Would Jesus Do?" and "What Would Jesus Have Me Do?" are sometimes very difficult to answer. But in his recent Conference talk, The Truth of All Things, Elder David F. Evans shared some counsel his mother had given him in response to other questions he had raised.

"While you are searching and reading and praying for the answer, why don’t you do the things you know you should and not do the things you know you should not?"

We don't have to know the best way to act in any given situation, even our own. God knows that there are going to be situations we misjudge, signals we misinterpret, principles we're going to misapply, and so forth. That may be partly why He gives us so much credit for just trying to do what we think is right. That's all we really need. God gives us basic guidelines, and it can be difficult to apply them to the complexities of real life, but as long as we are trying to follow at least one or two of those principles, we can simplify (perhaps oversimplify) the complex moral problems we occasionally face.

We won't always know what we should do in each situation, but as long as we're doing at least one of the things we know God wants us to do, that's a step in the right direction, and it can help attract the Spirit, who can walk us through the rest. So, if you find yourself facing a tough moral question, try to think of one thing, maybe an unrelated thing, that you know you're supposed to do, and do that. It might not make your question any easier, or if you apply the principle to the problem, it might not be the best possible solution, but it'll show God that you're at least trying to do good things, and that may compel Him to give you a hand with that.

Life's moral problems are complicated, but the first steps of our approach to them don't have to be. We can start with basic principles, and hopefully build up to more complex issues from there.

How Do I Know That God Exists?

In one of my Philosophy classes, we're reading Rene Descartes' meditations on philosophy. Right now, we're on meditation #3, in which Descartes attempts to prove through sheer logic that God exists. In my opinion, he failed. I don't doubt his conclusion; I fully believe that God exists. I just think that the logic Descartes uses to come to that conclusion doesn't make any sense. But could I do any better? What sort of logic would I use to prove the existence of God? Or, in other words, how do I know that God is real?

Of course, there's faith. We could simply believe that He exists, but that's not proof, or even strong evidence. We can put forth a better argument than "You've just got to believe it."

The existence of the earth could be strong evidence. It's so well balanced, it hardly seems like it could be random. However, if there were an infinite number of planets with randomly generated traits, there would have to be some life-sustaining planets among them. And besides, as Descartes might argue, this whole world could be an elaborate illusion. Even so, someone would have had to create this illusion.

I think that the strongest reason I have to believe in God (beside the Utterly Ridiculous and Admittedly Untrue Theory I hatched over five years ago) is the feelings I get in my heart. In the Gospel, we know that as the witness of the Spirit, but in a philosophical sense, it's empirical evidence; it just uses a sense that's not one of the traditional five senses. It's an inner sense, like introspection. I feel in my heart that God is real, and while I won't win any arguments citing that as evidence, I'm the only person that I really need to convince.

Maybe I can't argue for God's existence much better than Descartes did, but I know He is real, and I thankfully don't have to rely on Descartes' convoluted logic to come to that conclusion.

The Rocket and the Payload

Elder Dale G. Renlund's talk, The Priesthood and the Savior’s Atoning Power, compared the power of the Priesthood to a rocket. He said that a rocket needs to be well maintained to avoid material fatigue, and that a rocket's only real function was to deliver a payload, which Elder Renlund compares to the opportunity to benefit from the power of the Atonement. Thus, the purpose of Priesthood is to make the blessings of the Atonement available to all. This is accomplished through baptism and other essential and saving ordinances, which are performed by those who bear the Priesthood. Without the Atonement, the Priesthood would be pretty much meaningless, basically just a big firecracker. It is only through the power of the Atonement that the Priesthood actually manages to get anything down. We need the Atonement, and He often sends Priesthood holders to make sure other people have access to it.

But just as rockets can fail if they have damaged parts, we, too, can fail to deliver the Savior's atoning power if we have sins that make us unworthy to bear the Priesthood. Thankfully, repentance is available to everyone, even those without access to Priesthood power, allowing both Priesthood holders and other members of the church to repent of their sins and tap into a portion of the Savior's atoning power, paving the way for even greater Priesthood blessings, like Temple ordinances.

I am astonished by the amount of trust God puts in His followers, and I'm awed by the responsibility to live up to that trust. God has given us great power and, with it, the responsibility to remain worthy to exercise it. We all rely on the Atonement, and to gain some of the greatest blessings of the atonement, we need the Priesthood. I'm thankful for the Atonement, and I'm thankful that God has given us the Priesthood as a means by which to access the Atonement.

What Lies Inside You

Today, I spent about half an hour of work time reading inspirational quotes on the internet. Please don't tell my supervisor. It'd be redundant. She already knows.

We had some downtime at work today (the start of the semester is usually pretty slow for us tutors), so we spent part of our time selecting inspirational quotes we could print up and put on our tables for our students to see. I thought I'd share one of those quotes here.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't know a whole lot about Emerson. Specifically, I don't know if he was religious. I don't know if he knew we have spirits or if he knew how great our spirits are.

This earth life is daunting, and it can certainly be a force to be reckoned with, but our spirits are as strong as anything we face here and will last much longer. In that sense, what lies behind us and what lies (immediately) ahead of us truly do pale in comparison to what lies within us.

However, it could be argued that Eternal Life and the power of deity are even greater, and those things truly do lie ahead of us, as long as we keep following the path that leads to them.

It's difficult to compare the greatness of the soul against that of the world and of God's promised blessings. A few of those things are literally immeasurable. But still, I believe I agree with Emerson's sentiment. Even now, in our mortal state, we hold a power that is greater than any challenge we have ever faced or will ever face in our mortal lives, and that great power lies within.

Real Enough

For my Philosophy 481 class, we're reading Rene Descartes, who famously decided to begin his quest for certainty by discarding any notion for which there was any doubt. In doing so, he found himself in a position where he (at least initially) wasn't sure whether anything really existed, even himself. He soon concluded that at least he himself existed, even if his body didn't, and at our current place in the readings, he acknowledges that his senses are feeding him information about the world, but I'm not sure whether he is sure if that world he "sees" is real or not. And throughout all of this, I've been wondering, what does it matter?

It's possible that this world is a real planet somewhere in a real space, but it's also possible that this is all a dream or simulation. Either way, it's performing one of its main purposes: to  test us. God wanted to give us an opportunity to prove what sort of people we are, and He wanted to give us experiences that can help us grow into the people we can become, but those tests and experiences can have their desired effects, even if they're all in our heads. And there is actually at least one practical reason why God would want this to all be some kind of simulation. God doesn't want His children to get hurt, yet we frequently hurt each other, whether we intend to or not. God could prevent that sort of pain by putting each of us into isolated simulations, each designed to test only the individual who experiences it. If that's true, and this is your simulation, then every other person you meet is just part of the simulation. It's possible that you're the only person in the entire world who is "real."

But even so, the world and the other people in it are real enough. They seem real enough to convince us that they could be real, and our interactions with them really will effect our standing with God. Destroying robotic, holographic, or illusory people might not bear any moral consequence inherently, but if this is a simulation meant to test our behavior, it's likely in our best interest to treat every (fake) person we see as if they were real people with real emotions.

Personally, I don't think this world is an illusion. One of the reasons God created the Earth, we're told, is to give His spirit children a place to gain physical bodies, so, in theory, this is a physical place and we are all physically on it. But even if it's not, and this is all a simulation, I think that this simulation is real enough that we ought to treat it as though it's real, even if we can't logically prove its reality. Plus, there's Pascal's Wager to consider. If this world is real, and we treat it like it isn't, I imagine that there'll be worse consequences than if it actually isn't real, but we treat it like it is. We may not know for sure, logically, whether this world is real or not, and I'm okay with eventually learning that this was all a simulation, if it is. But for now, as far as I and this moral test are concerned, this world and everything in it are real enough for me.

The Plan and the Story

This lesson has been giving me a bit more trouble than previous lessons have. One of the reasons I had an easier time preparing previous lessons was because there was already a framework to each of those lessons. I was teaching church history as well as some doctrine, so there was almost always a story to tell, and then I could transition to teaching a few of the lessons we can learn from those stories. To me, this lesson seemed to be more doctrine than story, so I was having a hard time organizing the lesson.

That was until this morning, I was talking to my brother about it, and I realised that there was a story I could build my lesson around. The Council in Heaven and the subsequent war in heaven, expulsion of the adversary, and our current need to stay on guard against his influence can all be strung together into a fairly exciting story.

I'll begin with a reminder of what our previous lesson was: Our Heavenly Father's Plan. Then I'll tell the children that God asked for a volunteer to help Him accomplish the plan, and I'll ask them who volunteered. There are two correct answers to this question. Once both correct answers are revealed, I'll explain that Jesus volunteered first, and that Lucifer (or Satan or whatever we decide to call him during this lesson) also volunteered to take part in this plan, except that he had wanted to make some changes to it.

To explain those changes, I'll have one of the children read Moses 4: 1 & 3

And I, the Lord God, spake unto Moses, saying: That Satan, whom thou hast commanded in the name of mine Only Begotten, is the same which was from the beginning, and he came before me, saying—Behold, here am I, send me, I will be thy son, and I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor.

Wherefore, because that Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down.

 I'll have to do some set up first though. Moses commanding Satan in the name of Jesus will take a little bit of explanation. So as the children are looking for Moses 4, I'll tell them that that Moses had just seen a vision, and then Satan came to tempt him, but Moses, in the name of Jesus Christ, commanded Satan to depart. Then God appeared to Moses again and told him some more things, including those passages above.

Once that scripture has been read, I'll explain the importance of agency in our Heavenly Father's plan, and I'll tell the children that God respected our agency so much that He let us choose whether we wanted to follow Him or Satan. That's when we'll get into the War part and read Revelations 12: 7 & 9.

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,

And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

I'll explain that Michael is another name for Adam, if anybody wonders who this Michael guy is, and then I'll emphasize that Satan and his followers were "cast out into the earth," and ended up here, where they remain, attempting to tempt us and lead us away from God. That's when I'll bring in 2 Nephi 2:27 and talk about the importance of using our agency to choose good.

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

I'll conclude with my testimony of the importance of agency and of using it wisely, of staying vigilant in this ongoing war for souls, and of choosing the right. I might not spend much time on the Armor of God, but I might mention that CTR is often placed inside a shield, which reminds us of "the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked," teaching us that our best defence against Satan's influence is to have faith and choose the right.

Framing the discussion of agency around this story allows me opportunities to illustrate agency in action, like when Jesus and Satan chose to volunteer, when we chose whom to follow, and when Moses resisted Satan's temptations. I like having stories like these that I can use as examples and from which I can draw doctrinal lessons. I suppose I could teach the doctrine on its own without a story to serve as a framework, but it's nice to have a story, especially when it's as grand and epic as this one.

A Time and a Season

Paul's epistle to the Ecclesiastes tells us that "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Ecc. 3:1). For me, today was a time to do laundry and homework, and tomorrow will be a time to finalize my lesson plans, do some chores, and possibly run a few errands. Now that school has started up again and I have more time-based obligations, like getting to school and work on time and getting my homework done by a certain date, I find myself scheduling out my obligations and planning when I'm going to fulfil them.

Thankfully, I've got the time to meet my obligations. I know people who have a much tighter schedule than I do and who have a much harder time finding the time to do everything they need to do. Those people tend to rely on schedules to make sure they use their time as optimally as possible. I do not have a tendency to use my time optimally. That's why I think that having a weekly schedule is good for me. By requiring myself (or, more accurately, by being required) to get certain things done by certain times, I find that I have more periods of planned, focussed productivity, and I get more done that way.

Now, I didn't spend any time today preparing for my lesson on Sunday. I didn't plan to. I've been building up to it over the last few days, and I'm going to make it my primary focus tomorrow (no pun intended). Today was laundry and homework day, as Fridays will be for me for the next several weeks, and that structure is something that I think will really help me keep myself organized and get my assignments done on time. It's something I've been missing for the past few weeks of my life, and something that I am grateful to get back, even if it means I spent much of the day doing laundry and homework.

Agency vs Authority

Whenever I have any trouble with a Primary lesson, particularly when I feel like I'm, losing focus, I scroll back up to the beginning of the lesson and reread the lesson's purpose, which, in this lesson's case, is "To help the children understand the importance of using their agency to choose and act for themselves."

This is an important principle, one that even many adults still need to learn. So often, we let people other than ourselves make our decisions for us. Sometimes, we think it's necessary. After all, if your boss or your parents or your government or your spiritual leaders tell you to do something, then you have to, don't you? For some people, the response is almost automatic. We consider it so important to respect the authority of others that we sometimes don't even consider our own authority over ourselves. Satan is not the only being to whom we must not surrender our agency.

Now, I'm not saying that, to exercise our agency, we need to be rebellious. I'm saying that we need to be conscious. We need to take others' counsel, commandments, and orders into consideration and then decide for ourselves what we will do. If we decide to trust and obey others, that's fine. Sometimes, that can be very wise. However, it should be a conscious and deliberate decision, not an automatic one. We shouldn't just do whatever a person tells us to do, just because they told us to do it, even if that person is God. He respects our agency more than that, and so should we.

We are all free to choose and act for ourselves. That freedom is possibly the greatest gift that God has ever given us. We shouldn't let it go to waste or give it away to anyone else. We should reserve the right to make decisions  for ourselves, no matter who tells us what we should or must or ought to do. God will give us commandments, the government will give us laws, our bosses will give us orders, and our parents will give us rules, but we are the ones who have the ultimate authority over ourselves. We decide what we do. And that is a decision that we should never let anyone make for us.

Famine, Affluence, and Fast Offerings

This evening, I read an article by Peter Singer titled Famine, Affluence, and Morality. In essence, his argument seemed to be that people in affluent countries should donate considerable sums of money to countries that are not affluent, for the purpose of alleviating famine and other suffering. As I've thought about the article, I've decided that I could stand to donate more money to charity, but I was grateful to know that I already was donating some money via Fast offerings. I am grateful for the church and the work it does to alleviate suffering throughout the world, and, especially as I think about my moral obligation to help others, I am grateful that I can contribute, in some small way, to the good the church does in the world.

The War and The Armor

This Sunday, I will teach a lesson about how Jesus Christ Was Chosen To Be Our Savior. My first thought is that there's not a lot to tell. We'll talk about the counsel in heaven, about the two volunteers and what they wanted, and about the importance of agency. I think it'll be helpful to share Revelations 12: 7-9, because it a) talks about a war with a dragon, which sounds pretty awesome and b) reminds us that Satan and his followers didn't just go away or get cast out to outer darkness or some other far away place. They were "cast out into the earth." They're here. And the war isn't over.

I titled my blog The Armor of God based largely on that truth. We are still at war with the forces of evil. Battles and skirmishes with demonic forces occur on a daily basis, and if we are to win this war, we need to know that it is happening, and we need to be well-equipped. That's where the Armor of God comes in. We need to be armed with virtue, righteousness, the Spirit, and all the rest if we're going to successfully stand against the forces of evil.

I wonder to what extent I should incorporate the Armor of God into my lesson. It certainly bears mentioning. We might turn to Ephesians and read about it, after mentioning the war in heaven and how it continues on earth. I have some props I could bring, but I don't have a complete set, and I think that cardboard armor and a plastic sword would probably be more of a distraction than a teaching aid. Maybe I'll look for some paper cutouts the children could glue together, if I think it's worth spending that much time on it. Perhaps I should focus more on Agency, as the lesson manual does. Still, the Armor of God is pretty interesting. If I need a post-lesson activity, cladding paper knights in the Armor of God isn't the worst way we could kill the last few minutes of class time.

I'll think about what the focus of this lesson should be, and I'll pray about it as well. As I ask for the Lord's help in directing the lesson, I am confident that the Lord will help me make the lesson run smoothly, and I trust that He'll help me teach and the children hear something that they'll remember and that will be of benefit to them in their lives. Naturally, I don't want the whole hour to amount to nothing more than just killing time. I hope that this lesson will sink in a little bit, especially since the subject matter is so immediately and eternally important.

Murkier Morality - Quasimodo's Cries

Part of the reason I blogged about Captain Pheobus's lie last night was because I couldn't think of the right words to use to blog about a far trickier moral issue that appears much earlier in the film.

Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame begins with Clopin telling a group of children the beginning of Quasimodo's story. When he was a baby, a group of gypsies, which may have included either or both of his parents plus at least one gypsy who wasn't one of his parents (if I recall correctly), carried him though Paris, trying to sneak past Judge Frollo and the city guards. At one point, Quasimodo cried, putting the gypsies at risk of detection. Fortunately, the female gypsy in the group, who is assumed to be his mother, managed to hush the baby Quasimodo, but this situation reminded me of an episode of M*A*S*H in which a baby had to be smothered to prevent its cries from putting the lives of others in jeopardy, which prompts a very serious moral question: Is it morally acceptable to kill a child when doing so is necessary to save the lives of others?

In essence, this question is a variant of the Trolley Problem. In the Trolley Problem, the situation is that a speeding trolley with malfunctioning brakes is racing down a track toward a junction. If the trolley keeps going down its current track, it will hit and kill one person or group of people, but if someone throws a switch and sends it down a different track, it will hit and kill another person or group of people. In this situation, you are the one standing by that switch, and you must decide whether or not to sacrifice one person or group in order to spare another person or group.

Naturally, this decision can be very difficult to make, especially as the situations become more complex. If two identical people are standing, one on each track, and there is no discernible difference between them, it pretty clearly makes little to no sense to sacrifice one of them to spare the other. They're identical, so there's no reason to value either of their lives over the other's. But the situation the gypsies found themselves in was much more complex and tricky.

In the situation in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a woman who may have been Quasimodo's mother had to decide how she was going to try to silence the child in order to reduce the chances of their capture. If they were captured, they would be arrested and probably either killed or tortured, and the baby would almost certainly die.

Looking at the situation simplistically and pragmatically, it might make sense to sacrifice one person, whose life was almost certainly forfeit anyway, in order to spare the others from death or a fate worse than death. But this situation is not so simple. It involves unknown odds of unpredictable outcomes. Maybe they could spare the child and still not be detected, or they might kill the child and still get caught. It's impossible to know what any of their odds of survival were based on which course of action they took.

It's also irrational to expect the woman who may have been Quasimodo's mother to think about this situation from a purely logical and pragmatic perspective. It's one thing to say that it makes sense to sacrifice one for the good of the many, but it's much more difficult to put that belief into action when you're the one who has to smother your own baby.

I'm not sure what I would have done in such a situation, and I deeply hope that I never have to find out. This is an exceptionally challenging predicament for anyone to be in, and I can't judge anyone who has ever been in such a situation for whatever decision they made. It's an impossible decision for anyone to have to make, and I have sympathy and pity for anyone who has ever had to make it.

Murky Morality - Pheobus's Lie

At one point in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Esmeralda slips into a cathedral to avoid being arrested by Frollo. Captain Pheobus followed her inside and started to talk with her, but their conversation was interrupted by Frollo, who had followed Pheobus. Pheobus advised Esmeralda to invoke the right of sanctuary, trying to help her, but she suspected a trap and refused. Regardless, Pheobus lied and told Frollo that Esmeralda had invoked sanctuary, whereupon the Archdeacon had both Frollo and Captain Pheobus escorted out.

I respect Captain Pheobus, and I believed that what he did here was right, but what he said was clearly wasn't. He lied. He broke one of the Ten Commandments by bearing false witness, yet I believe that it was the right thing to do.

Morality is tricky. There are times when one law outweighs another, and doing the right thing in one circumstance might involve doing something that would be wrong in another. Lying is usually wrong, as is killing, stealing, and breaking any number of other commandments, but there may be circumstances under which it is morally right. I think it was good that Pheobus lied to Frollo just then, even though it is normally immoral to lie.

Reducing Costs

My brother and I spent most of the day playing Magic: the Gathering. In Magic, just about every card you could play has a mana cost relative to the power of its effect. For example, if you want to summon a large, powerful dinosaur, you will have to pay a lot of mana.

Usually.

There are some cards that reduce the mana costs of others, such as Knight of the Stampede's effect "Dinosaur spells you cast cost (2) less to cast", and some cards have effects that reduce their own cost, such as the effect of Ghalta, Primal Hunger: "Ghalta, Primal Hunter costs (X) less to cast, where X is the total power of creatures you control." Normally, Ghalta would cost twelve mana to cast, but with the help of Knight of the Stampede and a few other creatures, he could cost as little as two, giving you a very powerful dinosaur at an unbelievably low cost.

I don't think God would let us get away with anything like that in real life.

In the Gospel, each blessing has a commandment associated with it. The greater the blessing, the more we have to do to earn it. If we want the benefit of the blessing, we have to pay the cost associated with it, and there aren't any tricks that will let us get great blessings at lower costs. Each blessing we get from God has to be earned in full.

Thankfully, some blessings come cheap, and we earn them by doing things that we were just going to do anyway, like being nice to other people and praying occasionally. Other blessings, like those we learn about in the Temple, are much greater and carry greater costs. There are no tricks or loopholes that will make earning those blessings any easier. We can't reduce the costs of those blessings. We have to actually earn them.

In a way, I'm thankful for this. Yes, it can be difficult to qualify for certain blessings, and it can be frustrating that God can't/doesn't cut us a little slack from time to time, but I'm thankful that God is just and that His requirements aren't arbitrarily tougher or easier based on His mood. God is fair. His requirements are fair. And the requirements He has set for His blessings will remain fair, no matter how badly we would like to reduce them.

Prophetic Promises about the Book of Mormon

Given that President Nelson was already a prophet when he gave his most recent General Conference talk, that means that his counsel was already prophetic counsel, and his promises were already prophetic promises. As such, I would like to share some of the counsel and promises he made in that talk, focusing particularly on one paragraph from his talk:

My dear brothers and sisters, I promise that as you prayerfully study the Book of Mormon every day, you will make better decisions—every day. I promise that as you ponder what you study, the windows of heaven will open, and you will receive answers to your own questions and direction for your own life. I promise that as you daily immerse yourself in the Book of Mormon, you can be immunized against the evils of the day, even the gripping plague of pornography and other mind-numbing addictions.

I am not the wisest person in the world. I could stand to make better decisions more frequently. I wouldn't mind getting some answers and directions, and I certainly wouldn't mind being "immunized against the evils of the day," especially if those evils include giving and taking offence. These promises are ones that I would like to see realized in my life. And I know that if I'd like to receive the blessings of prophetic promises, I had better follow the wisdom of prophetic counsel.

I read the Book of Mormon daily with my family, but I haven't been as faithful with my personal scripture study, and I certainly haven't spent much time studying and pondering the scriptures. I have a long way to go before I can say that I "daily immerse [my]self in the Book of Mormon," but if I want those blessings, that's what I've got to do.

I am thankful when God is clear on what He wants us to do and what blessings we can expect to get from doing it. Through one of His chosen spokesmen, He has very clearly spelled out how we ought to use the Book of Mormon and what blessings we can gain from it. Now, my job is to actually follow President Nelson's counsel and prayerfully study the Book of Mormon daily and immersively, especially since I would like to receive the blessings we've been promised for doing so.

Already a Prophet

With the death of President Thomas S. Monson and the (what would you call it? The promotion?) of President Russell M. Nelson to the position of "Acting President" of the church, I imagine that some people will give more weight to his words, past and present, now that he is probably soon to be the next prophet.

But the thing is, he was already a prophet. All members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles are "prophets, seers, and revelators," from the President of the Quorum to its newest members. His counsel was already prophetic counsel, as is the counsel of any General Authority.

Of course, there is something special about the mantle that is probably about to fall on President Nelson's shoulders, and I'm probably going to pay more attention to his next Conference talk than I paid to his last one, but we really should pay attention to the talks of all General Authorities, because they are all already prophets, even if only one of them is considered the prophet.

The Faith and Sacrifice of the Widow

Elder O. Vincent Haleck's General Conference talk, The Heart of the Widow, focussed on the story of the widow's mites. He said that, just as the widow "cast in all that she had" (Mark 12:44), many saints faithfully do the same. Many Latter-Day Saints, especially first generation converts, make great sacrifices as members of the church. Many have lost friendships over joining the church. All have sacrificed time to be faithful members of it. God and His church ask a lot of people, sometimes even asking people to give their whole lives for the church. It takes a great deal of faith to believe that these sacrifices will be worthwhile.

When the widow cast in her two mites, she "cast in all that she had, even all her living." That is an enormous and faith-testing sacrifice. People need money to buy food and pay rent. It is very, very difficult to survive without money. So when the widow cast in "all that she had," she was basically betting her life that the blessings she hoped to receive from her sacrifice would be worth potentially paying the ultimate price. She put "all her living" into that offering, trusting that the blessings she'd receive for doing so would either keep her alive or be worth dying for.

That must have taken a tremendous amount of faith. That's an amount of faith I'm not sure I would have in her situation. I have some faith, and I trust the Lord, but I'm not sure I trust Him that much.

Well, maybe I do. I at least trust that heaven is better than Earth and that giving one's life to the Lord is practically a sure-fire way to get to heaven, so giving one's life to the Lord is almost certainly a step up for the person who does it, but that doesn't make taking that step much easier. It's hard to make that kind of sacrifice. It's tough to sacrifice that much. Many people can't bring themselves to do it. I'm reminded of the rich young ruler who was told by Jesus to sell all that he had and give it to the poor. The scriptures don't tell us whether the rich young man did that, but I'm not sure I would. I want to follow the Lord, but to give up everything for Him, or at least every thing for Him, is a lot to ask. I'm not certain that I'd be willing to make the same kind of sacrifice that widow and many other saints have made.

I applaud the saints that have made such sacrifices, and I admire the faith with which they did so, but I don't think I have the same kind of faith that they do, and I'm not sure if I'm willing to follow their example.

He Plays Chess

While it may be true that, as Einstein put it, "God does not play dice with the universe," there is another game that God analogously plays, according to Elder Rasband: Chess.

Elder Rasband said, "Our lives are like a chessboard, and the Lord moves us from one place to another—if we are responsive to spiritual promptings." In God's grand design, we are all pieces that, if willing, are moved around by the hand of God.

Personally, I'm very thankful for the inclusion of those "if"s. It may be some rebellious part of my nature, but I don't want to be a pawn in anyone's schemes, even God's. While there have been times when I thought that life (specifically, living a righteous life) would be easier if I let God make all my decisions for me, I don't actually want God to take that level of control over my life. I don't want anyone to have that level of control over me.

Thankfully, God respects our agency, so even while He has a perfect plan for our ultimate happiness, He lets us decide if we're going to follow that plan, and how closely. So, while He might issue a command like "Pawn to A5," that "pawn" can still decide whether to make that move or not.

Of course, not everyone respects our agency as much as God does. Satan, and even other people, can and do try to control us without any regard for what we want. That is why it's so ironically important to follow God's directions. He wants to protect our agency, so many of His directions lead us away from situations that might compromise it, such as drunkenness, addiction, and temptation. God can't force us to avoid traps and pitfalls -- we can go where we want -- but He frequently warns us of those traps and urges us to avoid them.

So if we follow God's commands, we will avoid situations that would rob us of our agency. Ironically, the best way to preserve our right to choose what to do is by choosing to do whatever God tells us to do. If we let God direct our actions, all the pieces in His plan for us will fall into place, and we will make it through life with our agency intact.

I'm glad God has a plan for me, and I'm glad that His plan involves me retaining my freedom. Now, I just hope I can gain enough wisdom to use my freedom to choose to follow God's plan.

God Doesn't Roll Dice

One of the highlights of my weeks recently has been looking forward to playing D&D, a game in which players declare what their characters attempt to do, and then roll dice to determine if (or how well) their characters manage to do it. There's a lot of die-rolling in this game, and many of the events and outcomes of the game are determined by random chance.

God doesn't do that. He doesn't leave things to chance or determine things at random. In Elder Ronald A. Rasband's recent General Conference talk, By Divine Design, he teaches us that many events, in the world, in the church, and in our personal lives, happen "not by accident but by God’s plan." God plans many of the events that unfold, rather than letting fate or a roll of the dice decide.

However, I won't commit to saying that everything that happens happens according to God's plans. There are more than a few "wild card" factors that can interfere with God's plans. In fact, by some estimates, there are approximately 7.6 Billion of them. Of course, God has accounted for human agency and has correctly predicted what each of us will do, and He can even have worked our decisions into His grand designs long before we ourselves knew which choices we would make. God can predict our choice as well as He can predict the movements of the planets, and He has made His plans accordingly, so even when we consider the factors that we would like to think are the least predictable, we know that God can have predicted them and built His plans around them.

God has a perfect and detailed plan for this planet and everyone on it, and I am convinced that none of it is left up to chance.

Pride and Humility

In The Eternal Everyday, Elder Quentin L. Cook said some bold things that many people in the modern world need to hear. Notably, he focussed his message on the need for humility, speaking out against boastful social media posts and almost every other claim to superiority. He counselled us to exercise humility and Christlike love for others rather than trying to belittle them or elevate ourselves.

I have previously thought that if Pride is "the universal sin, the great vice" as President Benson described it, then humility must be a great virtue, and the world needs it now more than ever. There are many social trends that feed on and exacerbate people's sense of pride, encouraging them to take pride in aspects of themselves over which they have no control, like their nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or skin color. In my opinion, being proud of any of those things makes very little sense. Of course, in my opinion, it makes little sense to take pride in anything at all. It makes some sense to be proud of our accomplishments, and I think that a certain amount of that kind of pride may even be healthy, but when we compare that which we have done and can do against that which God has done and can do, we see that we really don't have a whole lot of room to boast.

Pride is a terrible problem that I see too much in today's world, including in myself. I sometimes suffer from an inflated sense of my own importance. I think that almost everyone has at least some amount of trouble with pride, in one form or another. And in today's world, the pride seems shockingly overt and straightforward. Some openly and unapologetically acknowledge their pride. I wouldn't be surprised if some have even bragged about it. This world has a serious pride issue, and the only way I can think of fighting this issue is to take a personal commitment to try to be humble. If pride is the problem, surely humility is the solution.

The First Lesson Plan of the New Year

I have recently been assigned a new Primary manual and new teaching partners. As a team, we're going to have to establish who is teaching when. For now, all we've decided is that I'm going first.

This year, our Primary class is learning from the Old Testament, starting with a lesson on what happened before the beginning. Seriously, the creation is literally the first thing that happens in the Old Testament, but we're not going to cover that until two weeks from now. Until then, we're going to focus on the premortal existence, and I plan to teach it a little bit differently than I had taught my previous lessons.

When teaching about the Doctrine and Covenants and early church history, there was a continuing story linking almost every week's lesson with the lessons that go before and after it. As such, it was important to cover each section of the story and how they relate to each other, even if those connections aren't clearly spelled out in the scriptures. Since my class loved to read, and the manual explained the stories fairly clearly, I usually asked my students to take turns reading selected paragraphs from the manual, which we would then discuss as a class. This was a great way to encourage participation, both in reading and in discussion, and get the story across to the class.

However, for this lesson at least, there isn't much of a story that needs to be continued from one lesson to another. Next week's lesson will add more detail to the situation we'll learn about in this week's lesson, but the story doesn't really get started until the week after that. This lesson is more like a preface, and it focusses more on the doctrine than on the story. That's good news for me, in a way, because it means that it makes more sense to use scriptures than the manual.

So, here's my plan: After getting all the introductions out of the way, I will ask questions listed in or inspired by the manual, and I'll give the kids a chance to answer them. After the kids have given an answer or two (or none, if they can't guess), we'll turn to the scriptures, and I'll ask one of the kids to read a few verses that tell us the answer to the question. Then we'll discuss the question and answer for a bit and move on to the next question.

One potential downside to using this method is the time it takes to look up scriptures. When I was having the children read out of the manual, I could simply hand the manual to them and let them read the paragraph I pointed to. But I don't want to just hand the kids scriptures with verses highlighted and ready to read. I want them to learn how to search the scriptures and find verses themselves. That skill is less important now that we have digital scriptures that are easy to navigate and search through, but I don't want my Primary kids to be completely hopeless with a physical set of scriptures. We'll at least try using physical scriptures to find the relevant verses. If searching the scriptures ends up taking too much class time, either I'll reduce the number of questions I'm asking or I'll switch back to digital scriptures. That's something I'll have to figure out in the classroom.

Before that, I'll need to decide what questions I'll want to ask and which scriptures I'll use to answer them. Thankfully, the lesson manual already provides a fair number of questions, with scripture references related to them. We'll definitely want to use Abraham 3, since it covers many of the key points of the lesson. Alma 34 and Alma 40 might be useful for covering the middle parts of the plan. And there are several verses in D&C 76 that we could use to discuss the three degrees of glory.

I've made a list of some scriptures we'll want to use, and I made it on paper so I can bring it into the classroom with me. I hope it doesn't take too terribly long to look the verses up in physical scriptures. If it does, I might have to cut some scriptures out and explain those points of doctrine by paraphrasing.

I feel fairly well-prepared. Essentially, this is a basic Plan of Salvation lesson, with emphasis on the Premortal Spirit World and on how we were taught this plan before we were born. With my current plans, plus some time to introduce ourselves and the Old Testament, I should be able to fill all the time I'll have and get this new year off to a good start.

Violence in Scripture

Yet, I don't think we should altogether cut violence out of the media we consume (assuming that the media we consume includes the books we read). The scriptures include countless stories where the heroes use violence. Nephi kills Laban. David kills Goliath. Ammon killed at least a few Lamanites. And who knows how many people Captain Moroni killed, yet we're told that "if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever" (Alma 48:17). He sounds like someone we should be like, and he was the leader of an army.

I don't think that violence is always bad. If it was, it would have been bad for Nephi and Ammon and Captain Moroni to be violent, meaning that they were all setting bad examples. I am convinced that there are some circumstances under which violence is acceptable, and sometimes maybe even good.

Maybe violence is only good when God commands it. Nephi was commanded to kill Laban, Ammon supposed that he had been commanded to use violence as well, and Moroni also was following God's commandments by going to war. Maybe the use of violence was okay at those times because God said it was okay.

But that reminds me of the Euthyphro Problem, which asks if things are good because God commands them or if God commands them because they're good. Previously, I said that I think that God's laws aren't actually God's laws. I don't think He made them up. I think that He learned them, and now He's teaching us. I think that there are underlying reasons for all of God's commandments, and that those reasons go deeper than "because God said so."

So, what does that mean for violence? Would that mean that Nephi killing Laban, David killing Goliath, and Captain Moroni killing an untold number of Lamanites would all have been the right thing to do, even if God hadn't expressly commanded them? I think so, but then the question is "Why?" Why would violence be acceptable and even commendable then, when it normally isn't?

It may be that God subscribes to the Greater Good philosophy (actually, I think that philosophers call it Utilitarianism, but I may be remembering that wrong). Maybe, violence is normally wrong, but it becomes right when it accomplishes a greater amount of good. The death of Laban was justified by the good it brought about, the killing of Goliath spared countless lives, and the Captain Moroni was waging his war in defence of the Nephites. In each case, more harm was prevented by the violence than was caused by it.

I have to guess that that's the key. Violence is the right answer when it is the best way to bring about the greatest good. Still, there are some problems with this philosophy, and I wouldn't mind going into them later. For now, I feel fairly certain that there are times when violence is bad and there are times when violence is good. Most media still uses violence too often, but that's not to say that violence is never acceptable at all.

Violence in Media

Many of the Youtube videos I watched today shared the opinion that there's too much violence in media, and I think that I'm starting to agree. I had always believed that there were specific pieces of media that had too much violence in them, like entire genres of films and video games, but it has only today occurred to me that there are also too many pieces of media that have an "acceptable" amount of violence in them. One example that is frequently used is Star Wars: A New Hope. It's a classic Action/Adventure Scifi film that isn't too heavy on the "Action" and that teaches some good, valuable, important life lessons. Yet, if Luke Skywalker is set up as a role model, people might get the idea that it's okay to shoot one's way out of problems and that one's greatest achievement might be making some big thing (with lots of people in it) blow up.

One of the keywords to all good stories is "conflict." Conflict drives the action of most, if not all good stories. However, many writers for books, films, video games, and all other forms of media have taken the idea of "conflict" too literally, building stories around physical conflict when they could have used personal or internal conflict instead. I'm reminded of a scene in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in which Hermione confronts Draco Malfoy, who is gloating the upcoming execution of Buckbeak. In the book, Hermione slaps Malfoy, and in the movie she punches him, and, in my opinion, she shouldn't have done either. I'm not saying that Malfoy didn't deserve what he got. In both versions, he clearly did. But too many stories glorify moments when the hero uses violence against someone when a better response would have been to walk away.

I understand that there aren't always peaceful solutions to some problems, and I even accept that there are some times when violence is appropriate, even in some cases when it's avoidable. But there are an alarming number of stories in our media that focus on and normalize violence. Thankfully, there are also many that don't. But now I find myself wondering how much violence truly is acceptable.

Repenting Toward Perfection

The next Conference Talk to blog about Repentance is Always Positive by President Stephen W. Owen. That's an important reminder because repentance doesn't always feel positive. It often feels sort of like a punishment: "I did something bad, and now I need to repent." But repentance isn't a punishment, and it isn't even an apology. It's change. Specifically, it's changing one's behavior for the better, and that always means a positive change. It means moving forward and becoming a better person. It means taking another step toward our ultimate goal of perfection. I suppose it could all be just a matter of perspective, but the way I see it, repentance doesn't mean that we're imperfect; it means that we don't have to stay imperfect forever.

Proximity and Perspective

In Elder Gary E. Stevenson's General Conference talk Spiritual Eclipse, he spoke of the solar eclipse we experienced in August 2017, when the moon passed in front of and almost completely blocked out the sun. He noted that "Although the sun is 400 times larger than the moon, it is also 400 times farther away from the earth. From earth’s perspective, this geometry makes the sun and moon appear to be the same size."

The concept of perspective played a key role in Elder Stevenson's talk:

In the same manner that the very small moon can block the magnificent sun, extinguishing its light and warmth, a spiritual eclipse can occur when we allow minor and troublesome obstructions—those we face in our daily lives—to get so close that they block out the magnitude, brightness, and warmth of the light of Jesus Christ and His gospel.

It's difficult to imagine how big the sun is because it's so far away. With the moon being so much closer, it looks to be about the same size as the sun. Similarly, it's hard to imagine how great God's plan is since many of its implications are practically an eternity away. Our everyday concerns, being much closer at hand, seem just as great causes of consideration as our eternal concerns, when the truth is that our eternal concerns are actually far more important.

We should be careful to not let the proximity of earthly matters overshadow the magnitude of eternal matters. It's true that we have to live in the now and deal with the present, but we should try not to forget that eternity is greater than it sometimes seems and that it won't always be so far away. One day, eternity will be our present, and then our mortality will be in the distant past. One day, our earthly concerns will seem as small and insignificant as they really are. In the meantime, we should try to put things into an eternal perspective so our tiny, earthly issues don't eclipse matters of great, eternal significance.

What We Can Achieve

It is now January, and I haven't finished blogging about November's General Conference talks yet. Thankfully, the last of November's Conference talks is Be Ye Therefore Perfect—Eventually by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. In this talk, Elder Holland noted how discouraging such a commandment as "be perfect" can be, but he said that he didn't think that discouraging us was Jesus' intention:

I believe that Jesus did not intend His sermon on this subject to be a verbal hammer for battering us about our shortcomings. No, I believe He intended it to be a tribute to who and what God the Eternal Father is and what we can achieve with Him in eternity.

And, apparently, "what we can achieve with Him in eternity" is perfection.

I find that amazing. When I think about about how flawed we are, and especially about how flawed I am, I am awed by the prospect that any human being, even me, could eventually become perfect. Granted, it's going to take a lot of work, and Elder Holland even said that "Our only hope for true perfection is in receiving it as a gift from heaven—we can’t 'earn' it," but still, the idea that we can become perfect is mind-boggling, even considering God's help.

Yet, that's the plan. It's been the plan since the very beginning. I'd even go so far as to say that the very reason God created us was so we could eventually accomplish the goal of becoming perfect. He wants to watch us grow and reach the same heights He has reached.

And the fact that we can reach those heights amazes me.