"Only in the Service of Your God"

Tonight, my mom and I read Mosiah 2:17 "And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom, that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God."

I hope that's right. I tried to memorize it, and I typed that by memory. I'm really iffy about the punctuation, though. I didn't bother to try to memorize the punctuation.

Anyhow, I thought about that "only" part. Because, as I understand it, it's not possible to only serve God. When we serve our fellow beings, yes, we are serving God, but we are also serving our fellow beings. Service is being done for them, as well as for God. However, if we didn't serve our fellow beings and tried to only serve God, we couldn't do it. We cannot serve God without serving others because we can only serve God by serving others. I don't think God accepts any service to Him that does not also bless others.

Now, I did think of one way one could, theoretically, serve one's fellow beings and still only be in the service of one's god. However, that way required one to serve a different god. That god could take many forms, such as self-righteousness or the praise of the world. We might serve others only because we have to, or to pay off a favor, or to be owed one. We might have any number of reasons to do "service," including several reasons that have nothing to do with serving God or others and everything to do with serving ourselves. But that's why this theoretical possibility fails. If we do service for others, not for their sake, but for our own, we're not really serving them; we're serving ourselves.

I don't think it's possible to truly serve others without also serving God, and I don't think it's possible to truly serve God without also serving others. To serve God is to serve our fellow beings, and vice versa. So, no, I don't think it's possible to serve your fellow beings and still "only" serve God.

(Not) Prepared to Help

A few days ago, I had an opportunity to lend a hand, but not much else. A door's handle had come loose, and it would have been simple enough to fix; I just needed a screwdriver. However, on this particular day, I wasn't carrying my multi-tool. I tried to tighten the screw with a key, but it wasn't working. Fortunately, someone else had their multi-tool on them, so they were able to fix the door, but God allowed me to struggle long enough to learn that it's important to always be prepared to help. After all, it's what I'm here for. It would be wise for me to carry the tools I need to help others. Going forward, I'm going to try to carry my multi-tool more often, even to places where I doubt I'll need it, like church. After all, one never knows when they'll be called upon to help, so it pays to always be prepared.

Eternal Treasures

Jesus said

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Matthew 6:19-21

All this time, I thought He was talking about material treasures, and that made sense. This Earth won't last long. Worldly goods don't stick around forever. Materialism isn't a good long-term investment.

But the more I thought about it, the more "investments" I thought of that are also not good long-term investments. For instance, I don't know if we'll have writing or story-telling in heaven. We certainly won't have Magic cards or D&D. We may not even have pianos in heaven, though I'm pretty sure we'll still have music of some kind. I feel certain that we'll have some good, wholesome things, like forests and flower gardens, but I'm not actually sure. It may just be wishful thinking.

However, I know of at least one thing that is guaranteed to exist in heaven: Family. Family is one of the few things we can gain in this life and keep in the next. Our family relationships are among the few treasures that it's actually wise to cultivate. Almost everything else will eventually fade out of existence. But families can be eternal, and when they are, they become among the most valuable and enduring treasures of all.

Certainty Sans Proof

In my Logic and Critical Reasoning class this morning, we discussed proof, knowledge, and certainty, and we established that, as far-fetched as it sounds, it is possible to attain certainty (or at least a strong enough certainty that it might as well be completely certain), even without actual proof. One example of this certainty is our knowledge that the sun will come up in the East tomorrow. Of course, we can't prove that any more than we can prove anything else about the future, but we're pretty darn sure. We've seen enough evidence to make a strong prediction, even without indisputable proof.

Similarly, we can be fairly certain of our religious beliefs, even in the absence of undeniable proof. We have seen evidence of God's hand in our lives. We have felt His touch and His love. We have had enough experience with God to know that He exists and to have a pretty good idea about His nature and His character. We may not have perfect proof of God's existence, but we can have perfect faith in Him regardless. I am certain that God exists and that He cares about us, just as I am certain that the sun will rise tomorrow, even though I technically can't prove it.

Excuses to Bless Us

Elder Holland spoke in Stake Conference in my stake today, and while he said many blogworthy things, what I most want to blog about right now is something he said, almost in passing, toward the end of his talk. Unfortunately, I didn't copy what he said accurately enough to claim to know his exact words, but the basic idea of the message, as I heard it, was that God doesn't look for excuses to punish us; He looks for excuses to bless us.

That's what the commandments are, in my opinion: Means by which God hopes to bless us. Sometimes, those blessings come as a natural result of keeping the commandments. For example, those who obey the Word of Wisdom are often generally healthier than those who don't, all other things being equal. This isn't because God is blessing the obedient with health and cursing the disobedient with unhealthiness. It's just how the world works. There are natural laws, and things tend to work better when we work within those laws than when we try to work against them. And, because God loves us, He sometimes tells us what those natural laws are long before we could have figured them out on our own. God doesn't want to curse us for defying the natural laws of health; He wants to help us reap the natural benefits of keeping it.

But even then, those are just natural consequences of our actions, coupled with a warning, in the form of a commandment, telling us what consequences our actions might have. I think God goes further than that. I think that He sometimes gives us commandments so He can justify giving us rewards for keeping them. God loves us. He wants us to be blessed and happy. However, He is also a God of justice, so He often gives us opportunities to "earn" the blessings He wants to give us. Those opportunities are usually service opportunities, though that service can take myriad forms. Essentially, if we at least try to do any good for anyone, that gives God an opening to justifiably give us as many blessings as we can handle.

Some people seem to assume the opposite. Some think that the reason God gives us so many commandments is so He can punish us for breaking them. Others think that God isn't quite as vengeful but is still incredibly just. There are countless rules. When we break any of them, justice demands punishment. However, God sacrificed His Only Begotten Son to satisfy the demands of justice. I don't think He's going to be too hard on us after putting His Son through hell to let us off the hook. Of course, we have to abide by God's conditions in order to escape justice in that way, but that's really just another way that God blesses us for obeying Him.

God is not a vengeful person. He strict and tough when He has to be, but I think He would rather be kind and generous. He would love to give us loads of blessings, but He must be wise and just, which means that we need to do a few things to "earn" our blessings. That is, I think, one of the reasons God give us so many commandments: to give Himself excuses to bless us when we keep them.

The Blessing of Promised Blessings

Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount with a set of sayings now known as the Beatitudes, most of which follow the same basic pattern: "Blessed are the [certain kind of people (eg. meek, peacemakers, poor in heart, etc.)], for they shall [receive a particular blessing]." What strikes me as being interesting here is the verb tenses. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth." Are and Shall. Present Tense and Future Tense. The meek are blessed because they will be blessed.

Perhaps the promise of a future blessing can, itself, be a blessing. Maybe it's like a check. A check that's made out to you isn't exactly money, but it is a promise of money, and that promise is sure enough that you can take it to the bank (pun intended). Being given a check is almost the same as being given money, even though what you're actually being given is the promise that you will given money. Being given the promise of a future blessing is almost like being given a blessing; you just have to wait for it.

In the meantime, the holder of such a celestial promissory note can enjoy a certain amount of peace and anticipation. When you know a blessing is coming, you can look forward to it, and it can give you the encouragement you need to hold out faithful and ultimately secure it. Temporal blessings are good, but eternal blessings are even better, partly because eternal blessings come with some temporal blessings as well.

I am grateful that I have been blessed, and I look forward to the blessings that are coming. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the blessing that is the promise of future blessings.

A Willing Sacrifice

For a Bible Study class I'm taking for college (the same one whose Discussion Board posts I have blatantly plagiarized in a few of my blog posts), I'm writing a paper about Rembrandt's painting of the Sacrifice of Isaac. One of the more interesting and note-worthy details of this painting is that Rembrandt had Abraham cover Isaac's face. There are several possible reasons for this artistic choice, but one that I think is likely is that Rembrandt probably didn't want to have to paint Isaac's face.

It's hard to know exactly how Isaac felt about his impending sacrifice. Some amount of common sense tells us that he must have been at least somewhat complicit in the act. After all, as Genesis 21:5 tells us, "Abraham was an hundred years old, when his son Isaac was born unto him." It wouldn't have been hard for a young man, or even a young boy, to get away from a murderous man about a hundred years older than him. Then again, it's hard to imagine anyone being willing to let themselves get killed. The Biblical record isn't clear on whether Isaac was or would have been okay with going through with the sacrifice, so it's possible that Rembrandt had Isaac's face covered so he wouldn't have to paint it, so he wouldn't have to decide whether Isaac looked composed or alarmed.

Personally, I think that Isaac knew what was happening and willingly consented to be sacrificed, though I'll admit to basing that assumption solely on the similarities between Isaac and Jesus Christ. Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac was symbolic of God's sacrifice of Jesus Christ, so, because Christ willingly submitted Himself to the will of His Father, I imagine that it's at least fairly likely that Isaac willing submitted to the will of his father, too.

Still, that's pretty incredible to think about. Pain is painful, and death is scary for most people. Willingly facing both demonstrates a good deal of fortitude. It's incredible to think that Isaac was willing to let Abraham kill him like that, but it's just as incredible that Jesus willingly let the Jews torture and kill Him as well. Yet, we know that Jesus bore the weight of our sins willingly. He allowed Himself to be killed for us. He suffered unimaginable pain for us, not because the Jews physically forced Him to, but because he loves us.

That's why I think Abraham didn't physically force Isaac to participate in the sacrifice. Jesus was a willing sacrifice, which is why I think that Isaac was a willing sacrifice, too.

Equal Treatment

Krusk and I are currently experiencing a slight shift in mindset, a shift which is not necessarily for the worse. We have come to the realization that giving women special treatment is inconsistent with treating people equally. It is, frankly, sexist. People should treat men and women the same. However, Krusk and I interpret this maxim in different ways. Krusk has decided to treat women the same as men, and I have decided to try to treat men the same as women. There is a difference. Under my interpretation, everyone gets special treatment; under Krusk's interpretation, no one does.
Krusk is not a kind person. He doesn't treat people very well, generally. He steals from people. He fights people. He kidnaps people and holds them for ransom. However, until recently, he didn't consciously include women in that definition of "people." Case in point: He had an opportunity to hold a woman for ransom, and he turned it down partly because she was a woman. As he has learned, that's ridiculous. The victim's gender has nothing to do with whether or not it's wrong to kidnap someone, and he shouldn't let it influence his decision of whether or not to do so. So, from now on, he won't. From now on, he's going to try to overcome his gender biases and treat women just as poorly as he treats men.

I, on the other hand, will try to treat men just as well as I treat women. I grew up with the concept of Chivalry, which includes being especially nice to women. This means holding doors open for them, offering them assistance, and generally being very respectful and kind. However, I realize now that that kindness and respect shoe extend to men, too. Men also deserve kindness and respect, just as women do. The recipient's gender has nothing to do with whether or not it's good to do small acts of kindness for someone, so I shouldn't let the recipient's gender influence my decision. I should be kind to everyone, not just women. So I will, or at least I'll try to. I can't promise perfect success, but I can promise to try my best to treat men just as well as I treat women.

Fairness and equality are tricky ideals to strive for. It's tough because any imbalance in either direction is capable of unbalancing the whole system. Being extra kind to a particular person at a particular time may be acceptable, and we do have to treat individuals differently as justice demands, but being more kind to one group of people than one is to another isn't exactly kind or just; it's biased. People should try to overcome that bias, take gender out of the equation, and treat everyone with the same (large) amount of fairness and kindness.

When Gods and Morality are Misaligned

Unlike our world, the world of D&D had many different gods and goddesses. Some of them are Good, some of them are Evil, and some of them are more or less Neutral, possibly with good or evil tendencies. Some of them specialize in certain areas, or Domains, like the Greek and Roman gods and goddesses, being the gods and goddesses of agriculture, metalcraft, hunting, etc. Sometimes, people worship these gods because their philosophies line up with their god's philosophies. For example, a person who is good would probably choose to worship a god or goddess who is good. Alternatively, one might worship a god or goddess because of the amount of time one spends in that god's or goddess's domain. For example, a farmer might worship a god or goddess of agriculture, regardless of anyone's moral leanings. 

Krusk Bloodfist is a pirate captain. He became a pirate captain mostly by accident and by going with the flow; he didn't maliciously choose to be a marauder. Morally speaking, I see him as a Neutral character. He doesn't go out of his way to hurt people without reason, but he does what he wants, including stealing, and he doesn't mind hurting the people who try to stop him. He looks out for himself and his friends, but no one else. However, despite his general lack of interest in the well-being of others, he does have some respect for women, mostly due to the two most important women in his life: his wife, Holly; and his goddess, Besmara.

Until recently, Krusk's relationship with his wife was uncertain. He returned home to look for her, but he didn't find her there. Instead, he found out that she had been kidnapped. He released her and swore vengeance on her kidnapper. This will become important in a moment.

Krusk's relationship with Besmara may recently have become as uncertain as his relationship with his wife had been. Besmara is the goddess of pirates and piracy. She is a Neutral goddess with some evil tendencies, but she has helped Krusk's crew and Krusk himself personally on multiple occasions. Krusk owes Besmara his thanks, his freedom, and his life. Naturally, he has begun worshiping her, despite knowing very little about the specific details of her tenets or of the nuances of her moral leanings. He knows she wants him to be a good pirate, but that's about it.

Krusk's lack of knowledge about Besmara's morality system influenced a key moment in the session of D&D I played tonight. Our characters were fighting their way through a monster-infested sea cave, and we found a woman who was being held captive by the monsters. Once we saved her from the monsters, she identified herself as the queen of a race of sea creatures, and some of the characters wanted to hold her for ransom, but Krusk decided to release her for a great number of reasons. She had already suffered enough at the hands of the monsters. She hadn't done anything to harm them. He didn't want her people to do anything to harm them. He felt like he would have been a hypocrite for taking a woman captive while he was actively planning revenge against the man who had taken his woman captive. And he thought that Besmara, being a woman, would have had some issues with him taking a woman hostage. Killing men is one thing; kidnapping a woman is something else entirely, or so Krusk thought.

After releasing the fishy queen, Krusk consulted with a cleric of Besmara to see whether he had made the right call. Apparently, he hadn't. Apparently, Besmara cares more about collecting treasure than respecting women, and, despite spending a good deal of time on the ocean, she doesn't much value the lives of the creatures who live there. Krusk had thought that Besmara wouldn't have wanted him to take the queen lady captive. Evidently, Krusk had thought wrong.

In a way, Krusk's situation was painfully relatable. We often have to choose between what we want to do and what God wants us to do, and we sometimes have to choose between what we think is right and what God says is right, but, phrased another way, Krusk's moral dilemma was one that we, thankfully, will never have to face. He had to choose between doing what was right and doing what his goddess wanted him to do. God will never force us to choose between doing what He tells us to do and doing what's right because He only ever tells us to do what's right. We can always be confident in the righteousness of God's commandments. We will never have to choose between doing good and obeying God.

However, that makes Krusk's predicament especially difficult for me to solve. On the one hand, he still owes Besmara several favors, and he hopes to persuade her to do more favors for him and his crew. He also owes it, both to his goddess and to his crew, to be the best, most financially-successful pirate he can be. A queen's ransom would have been a great help in that respect. And he isn't exactly a moral paragon anyway. What's the harm in crossing one more moral line? On the other hand, he isn't totally amoral either. There were some lines he wouldn't cross lightly, mostly out of respect for women, especially his wife. Even when he thought his wife might hate him, he stayed faithful to her. And now that he learned that she had been held captive for months, holding another woman captive seems especially repugnant to him. Yet, that's what his goddess would have wanted.

Krusk is, once again, torn. Previously, he had been torn between his desire to be with his wife and his desire to thank/repay Besmara for making it possible for him to return to his wife. Now that his wife is on board with him and his pirate crew, both literally and figuratively, he no longer has to choose between being a pirate and being with his wife. Now he has to choose between being the kind of pirate he wants to be and being the kind of pirate Besmara wants him to be. He has to choose between doing what he wants to do and doing what Besmara wants him to do. This is going to be a tough decision for him.

In a way, I'm glad that Krusk still has some moral challenges to wrestle with. It'll help keep his story interesting. But more than that, I'm glad that this is one moral challenge that I won't have to wrestle with myself. Unlike Krusk, I can, in good conscience, devote myself entirely to the service of my God. I can do what He wants me to do how He wants me to do it and know for a fact that I am doing the right thing. Until now, I've taken that for granted, but now I am very thankful that I will never have to choose between obeying God and doing what's right.

Dwelling on Negativity

There is too much negativity in the world and in my life right now. Not much, mind you, but still too much. I've been dwelling too long on things that upset me. That's not healthy. I don't know if ignoring problems is any healthier, but merely dwelling on them clearly isn't. I should decide to either do something about it or stop thinking about it. Either one would be better than what I'm doing now.

Encounter Difficulty

One of the (surprisingly fun) challenges that I ran into when I started running D&D games is designing combat encounters. There's a lot of math involved. Ultimately, you add up a bunch of numbers that represent how strong the monsters are, multiply to total by a modifier based on how many monsters there are (and how big the party is), then compare the product to a set of numbers that tell you how much your party can handle, based on the level and number of adventurers in the party.

What I ultimately got out of all of this is that whether an encounter is Easy, Medium, Hard, or Deadly isn't based solely on the monsters involved. They're only half of the equation. The other half is the adventurers. An Easy fight for one party might be a Deadly fight for another. That's partly why I don't think we should label any challenge as being "easy" or "difficult" without also qualifying that label by saying whom that challenge is "easy" or "difficult" for.

For example, I write a lot (assuming you count these blog posts as "writing"). I get a great deal of practice typing words onto a page on my computer. I regularly string thousands of characters and hundreds of words together into sentences and paragraphs that usually, hopefully, end up making some sense. I have a great deal of experience at writing. So, when I am called upon to write a few hundred words or a few pages on a given topic, my challenge is not in finding the 's' key or in forming coherent sentences. Those "challenges" are easy for me. Yet, I know that that isn't easy for everyone. Not everyone does a lot of typing. Not everyone speaks English fluently.  Not everyone has as much experience with writing as I have. Writing a few paragraphs can be a great challenge for some people, even though it's not that much of a challenge to me.

We shouldn't judge how easy or difficult other people's challenges are based on how easily we think we could overcome them. Something that would be easy for us could still be a terribly difficult challenge for them. So we shouldn't judge others for the challenges that make them struggle. Perhaps they just have less experience dealing with that sort of challenge than we do. Or perhaps this is another case where "the grass is always greener on the other side." We don't really know how tough other people's challenges are, and we certainly don't fully understand how tough those challenges are for them.

That's why I'm glad that our challenges are being designed by Someone who knows how much we can handle, and that each hardship in the whole human experience is tailor-made for the humans who will experience them. God gives everyone challenges that are easy enough for them to overcome but that are also difficult enough to actually challenge them. In that sense, every challenge is, in fact, challenging. So, we shouldn't be hard on anyone who struggles with anything that would be easy for us. There's a reason God gave that challenge to them instead of us, and there are reasons why God gives us the challenges He does. It's not that some people are given difficult challenges and others are given easy challenges. "Easy" and "difficult" are relative. Everyone is given challenges that are difficult for them.

Why I'm Here

Sometimes, after a person thanks me for helping them, I answer with the usual phrases everyone says, like "You're welcome" or "No problem," but sometimes, I follow it up with something that I am blessed to be able to say: "That's why I'm here."

And I mean it. I am here to help people. It's not just my job, as a writing tutor, to help people write better. It's not just my duty as a family member to help things run smoothly at home. It's not just my pleasure to make kind gestures to the people I love. It's my purpose. It's why God made me. It's why I exist. I am here, on Earth, to help people.

I consider myself extremely blessed to know that. Many people have searched for their entire lives to find their purpose. I was blessed to be born into a family and church that helped me find mine early on. Over the course of my life, I've given service to countless people, partly because they asked me to, partly because I felt like I was supposed to or had to, and partly because service sort of just became a part of me, or maybe I just realized that it was part of me all along.

Now, I don't mean to put myself on a pedestal here. I don't mean to say that I'm great at service or that I serve often and always enjoy it, because I'm not great and I don't always enjoy it. "Often" is relative, but I don't serve as often as I should. There are times when I choose not to serve my purpose.

I suppose I should work on that. Even though I don't always enjoy serving others, I should do it more often, not just because I'm supposed to, but also because I take some pride in serving others whether I want to or not. I find fulfillment in service, and I think I know why.

I know that there are probably many reasons why God created me, and helping others is only one of those reasons, but helping others is certainly one of the probably many reasons God created me. Helping others is at least part of the purpose of my existence. It is, at least partly, why I'm here.

I thank God that I know that. As far as purposes go, helping others isn't the worst. It's humble, but I kind of like that. It's simple and flexible. It's sometimes even fun! It is sometimes literally a chore, but it's not the worst chore either. I like helping people, even if I don't always like doing so in the moment. I'm glad that helping others is part of my purpose, and I'm especially glad that I know that it is. I thank God that I am blessed enough to know why I'm here.

Self-Reflection vs Self-Deception

Today, in Family Scripture Study, we read the Book of Omni, who apparently was pretty hard on himself, calling himself "a wicked man," and saying that he "[had] not kept the statutes and the commandments of the Lord as [he] ought to have done." This seems to me like a good moment of self-reflection. None of us are perfect, and it's important for us to be aware of our faults so we can strive to overcome them.

However, it's easy for wholesome introspection to devolve into something harmful, self-deception. When we look at ourselves, it's easy to see ourselves as better or worse than we really are, either minimizing or maximizing out faults. Both are harmful to our spirits through either allowing our shortcomings to persist or by allowing them to dominate our self-image. We should not allow ourselves to become complacent nor discouraged, and that means that we must be honest with ourselves about exactly how well or poorly we're doing, spiritually.

Of course, it can be difficult to judge how we're doing. Our biases, our lack of perspective, and the influence of the adversary can all skew our judgment, turning our honest self-reflection into a mistaken self-deception. That's why we shouldn't necessarily rely on our own judgment to determine how wonderful or horrible we are.

Judgment belongs to the Lord. Let's let Him tell us how well we're doing and how we can improve. Let's let Him diagnose our spiritual ills and prescribe effective remedies. Let's reduce our risk of self-deception by stopping passing judgment on ourselves. It's good to consider what we're doing and how we're doing, but the ultimate answer of how good we are and what good we should do should come from God, not us.

Contact with Family

It was recently announced that LDS missionaries will be able to call home, not just on Christmas and Mother's Day anymore, but every week. This will be a wonderful change for most missionary families, and it hopefully won't be too distracting for the missionaries. This all reminds me how wonderful it is to be able to maintain contact with family.

I'm lucky enough to live at home, so I have regular contact with some of my closest relatives, but even if I didn't, I could still call them, email them, text them, or keep in touch with them through social media. Technology has made it easy for people to communicate with each other.

And, as easy as technology has made it to communicate with our earthly family, it has always been even easier to communicate with God. We can call our parents any time we can pull our phones out of our pockets; we can pray to God any time, period, and He can talk to us just as immediately through His Spirit. Sure, our reception isn't always great, but God can always hear us, even when we can hear Him. The communication may sometimes be one-sided, but it is always available, not once a week or twice a year, but constantly. We can always, always communicate with God.

How to Express Love

I've heard a saying that would be good to share on Valentine's day, but I can't remember exactly how it went, and unfortunately, I don't remember the saying well enough to look up the exact wording. However, I can give you the gist of it. The saying basically says that everything we say is either an expression of love or a request for love.

According to this saying, every time we tell a joke or story, we're either expressing love by sharing something of some value, or we are asking others to express love for us by paying attention to us. When we ask a question, we are either requesting love in the form of any answer to our question or we are expressing love by showing that we acknowledge and value the other's knowledge and thoughts. Asking someone to do something for us is almost always a request for love, but offering to do something for someone else is almost always an expression of love for that person. Even with just speech, people can express love in many different ways. Love isn't always romantic. Sometimes, love is simply showing that you care.

This saying, if true, can likely be extended far beyond speech. Most acts could potentially become methods of expressing love, and as long as those acts are motivated by love, they will be.

We express love on Valentine's Day, but if this saying I barely remember is true, we can also express love almost every time we speak.

Strength and Goodness

In my Logic and Critical Reasoning class, we discussed how an argument can be strong or weak, or in other words, how it can be a good argument or a bad argument. And for my The Bible as Literature class, I wrote about Samson, who was clearly physically strong, but apparently not morally good. These lessons have reminded me that "strong" and "good" are not actually synonyms. Being strong is not necessarily good and being weak is not necessarily bad, though of course that all depends on what kinds of strength, weakness, goodness, and badness we're talking about.

If someone is physically strong, one could say that one is "good" at doing physical things. But that's not what I mean when I say that someone is Good. The goodness that I am describing involves kindness, justice, mercy, and charity. People are good if they want to do good; their ability or inability to do good (or to do anything at all) is irrelevant. People are good if they are good in heart. The body has nothing to do with it.

However, there is one kind of strength that can be appropriately linked to goodness, and that is moral strength. As I see it, moral strength is the capacity to stand by one's principles despite the difficulty of doing so. It's not always easy to Choose the Right, so it sometimes takes a kind of moral strength to do so.

It is or at least should be clear to everyone that physical and moral strength are not related in any way. There are many, many people, both in the real world and across all genres of fiction who are both physically strong and morally weak. Conversely, there are also many people who are physically weak but who maintain a great deal of moral strength with their pure hearts and true conviction.

Physical strength and capability are not inherently good or bad. Strength can be used for good or evil, and people can be good or evil regardless of their level of physical strength. However, in this increasingly darkening world, moral strength is becoming ever more important. There are or soon will be times when it will not be possible to be good without being morally strong.

Through practice and exercise, I intend to develop both physical and moral strength, but I know that those two kinds of strength have hardly anything to with each other and that one of those kinds of strength is infinitely more important than the other.

Deleting Old Saves

About a month ago, I blogged about how many games allow the players to save whatever progress they've made in the game. At the time, I focused on how this game-saving feature allows players to turn back time to relive game moments, change their decisions, or retry challenges. However, I recently realized that saved game files don't just let players turn back time; these save files also let the player choose not to.

Imagine that you're playing a game on your phone. You start at the beginning of the game and progress through the first few levels, but then you have to return to reality, so you save your game and put away your phone.

The next time you play your game, you don't have to start at the beginning again. You don't have to turn back time that far. You can pick up right where you left off.

So you do. You start again a few levels in, beat a few more levels, and save the game again. Every time you play the game, you can build on the progress you've made during the previous times you've played the game, and you make and save more progress each time.

Imagine, after goodness knows how many game sessions, you finally beat the game, achieving the culmination of progress made over countless game sessions. It feels pretty good. You save that completed game, then start a new game and beat it again and again and again, saving each completed game each time you beat it. Soon enough, you have a full library of saved games cataloging how many times you've beaten the game using various methods and self-imposed extra challenges. These game files create digital memories of your experiences and accomplishments within this game that have added up over years.

Then imagine that, while trying to organize the files on your phone, you accidentally delete all of your game's save files.

All of that progress. Gone.

You now have no choice but to quit the game forever or start again from scratch.

I thank God that life doesn't work like that. I'm glad that my experiences and accomplishments are recorded permanently in Heaven. Sure, there are some aspects of my life that I would like to delete or retry, but there are other aspects of my life that I want to keep forever, like my relationships with my family and the memories I've made with them. We are eternal beings, and we get to keep all the best parts of ourselves, including our personal and spiritual growth, for all eternity.

And, if we really want something deleted, God can help us delete it. We can repent of wrongdoings and have them scrubbed from our records. We can delete the sins in our pasts while saving the lessons we've learned from the experiences. We can save our progress and delete our regressions and transgressions. It's a wonderful system.

And as for the game on my phone, I'm choosing to see this as a new beginning, a fresh start that's even fresher than those times I started new games after saving old ones. I don't have those old game files anymore, but I have new adventures awaiting me, and now I have a fresh perspective on the importances of saving my progress, especially my infinitely-more-important eternal progress. That progress, thankfully, will never be deleted.

Collaborative Story-Crafting

One thing I love about running games of D&D is that it lets me help create stories. Granted, the stories I write are all very simple stories, and they're really more like outlines for stories than fleshed-out, fully-written stories themselves, but that's part of the magic. I bring my story ideas to the table, and the other players interact with the story in unique ways, making the stories theirs as much as they are mine. It's a collaborative effort, and I really love those.

I wonder how much our lives are like that. I'm sure God has plans for our lives, plans that are specific enough to have some structure but also general enough to grant us some flexibility. Sometimes we follow His plans closely, and sometimes we go off on tangents. Either way, it's a gripping story, and being part of the collaborative effort can be richly rewarding.

Still, as a new DM, I have realized how much I rely on some cooperation from my players, and as a long-time player, I've learned that the adventure is often better when we don't go too far off the rails. Players and DMs need to work together to craft the best stories possible.

I like having freedom, but I also like good stories, and I love it when stories end well. So, while I still intend to enjoy the amount of freedom God gives me, I'm also going to try to follow His plan for me. He has (at least an outline of) a great story prepared for me, and I would love to help Him tell it.

Like the Plague

In Sacrament Meeting today, one of our local missionaries gave a talk which included a parable that I had never heard before. The parable described a terrible plague sweeping the whole Earth, and doctors scrambling to find a cure. Eventually, they find a way to produce a cure, but it would require a great deal of blood from someone who had the right blood type and who had not yet been infected. The story goes that a man brings his family in to be tested, and it's discovered that his son has the right blood type and not a single trace of the plague in his blood. If the doctors extract the child's blood, they could use it to save countless lives, but losing that much blood would almost certainly kill the child.

The parable is meant to evoke empathy for our Heavenly Father, who had to sacrifice His Holy Son to save us from our sins, but I latched on to a different part of the parable, the part that related sin to a plague.

While there are many obvious differences between sin and plagues, there are some interesting similarities. For one thing, sin is contagious. When people are observed commit sin, they take a step toward normalizing that sin and thus spreading the contagion to others. Secondly, sin is deadly, at least to our spirits. If we catch the plague of sin, our immortal souls will be in serious jeopardy, and there's a fair chance we'll be quarantined out of heaven. Thirdly, sin can be difficult to treat. So plagues are curable, but most plagues resist treatment, and while repentance is always possible, it is rarely easy.

In either case, our best defense against sickness and sin is to not catch it in the first place. It's often best to avoid exposure to those who carry the illness and especially those who are not careful about trying not to spread it. For example, if we're concerned about catching the plague of breaking the Word of Wisdom, we would do well to avoid places where drugs, tobacco, and/or alcohol are sold and especially avoid those people who try to convince you to try them.

Of course, avoiding these plagues and their carriers is hardly possible in today's world. That's while it's important to immunize ourselves against such temptations as much as possible by making solemn vows not to break them. We must also ensure that we strengthen our immune systems through a healthy (spiritual) diet and a good amount of exercise.

Thinking of sin as a plague is fitting and helpful. Fitting because it functions much like a plague in how it spreads across the world, infacting as many people as possible, and fitting because it gives us some tips for how to avoid and resist sin and temptation, with the most important tip being to make sure that, to the greatest extent possible, we avoid sin like the plague.

Glorious War

I feel like I might have sent or implied a wrong message in my last blog post. I blogged about how conflict isn't always the right answer, and while I did include a small caveat to my blog post (as I usually do), I think I may have advocated peace a little too strongly, or rather, I may have advocated a potentially unhealthy degree of peace. Naturally, peace is good when you can get it, but when the stakes are high enough and the conflict can't be peacefully resolved, it is important to go to war.

Satan is not peaceful, and he cannot be entirely avoided. That leaves us with few options. As much as I would like to have Satan as a tough coach or personal trainer, I have to acknowledge that he is what he is: my immortal enemy, immortal both in that I cannot kill him and in that he is attacking my immortal soul. Granted, that still doesn't mean that I need to hate him, and I still think that hatred is toxic and should be discouraged for our own sakes, no matter how deserving the subject of our hatred is. But even if I don't hate Satan or anyone else, I still need to fight against him and his many minions as hard as I possibly can. I can't be a pacifist and still win the war for my soul, let alone anyone else's. Satan is invading my mind and heart and those of countless other people, and we need to drive him out. That means engaging in spiritual conflict. We must join, and fight valiantly in, this "glorious war."

I call it a "glorious war" for two reasons. One, it matches the tagline of the game I played yesterday. The opportunity for symmetry here is too good to pass up. And two, this war is all about glory. It's not that fighting in this war will earn us martial glory or anything silly like that, but the result of this conflict will determine which Kingdom of Glory we end up in after the war ends. Those are the stakes Satan is fighting for; he is trying to keep as many people as possible from achieving Celestial Glory. To that end, he uses against us every tactic he can think of, and we need to fight back just as fiercely in order to successfully defend our own souls and the souls of those we love.

As Elder Holland has said, "We are at war." We cannot escape it, and we must not ignore it. Satan is attacking us. We must fight back, if only to defend ourselves. Our souls and the souls of countless others depend on our valiant engagement in this spiritual conflict. So, though I would greatly prefer peace, I must admit that we have to go to war, because the "magnificent peace" I hope for can only be achieved through victory in this "glorious war."

Magnificent Peace

I spent this afternoon playing a game called Twilight Imperium, whose tagline is Pax Magnifica Bellum Gloriosum, which (according to Google Translate) means something like "Magnificent peace, glorious war." It's the kind of insanely-complicated board games where there are hundreds of game pieces and dozens of mechanics, and the objective of the game is to gather resources, trade and fight with other players for their resources, and use your resources to accomplish objectives which ear you victory points. The first person to 10 victory points wins.

I had no idea what I was doing. While the other players were building up massive space armadas and fighting epic battles for control of the capitol planet, I was sitting off in my corner of the galaxy, accomplishing small objectives here and there, but mostly gathering a lot of "trade goods." According to the lore of the game, the faction I was playing was composed mostly of merchants, so I minded my own business, figuratively and literally, figuring that, no matter who won control of the galaxy, my financial empire would probably be alright. I knew I wouldn't win the game since both of the other players had much bigger armies than I did, but I felt like I was doing alright.

But as the other players spent most of their resources fighting over the capitol, my "small objectives" started to add up. Toward the end of the game, I had more victory points than either of the other players. Then we flipped over the final objective I needed, and it turned out that I had all the Trade Goods I needed to accomplish it. Despite their massive space armies, there was nothing the other players could have done to stop me from earning the last two victory points I needed to win the game.

I share all this mostly to say that, while the game of life is sometimes won or lost in "glorious war," it is also sometimes won in "magnificent peace." I don't think I attacked any other ships that whole game. I bought some ship, mostly to just have something to do with all my resources, but I only ever used them to colonize uninhabited planets. I was a peaceful merchants' guild, and I won, mostly by accident, just by not getting caught up in the "glorious war."

In life, there is lots of contention and plenty of opportunities to join it. Many people get caught up in fighting for good causes, and they accomplish many good things. It is possible to "win" that way. But it is also possible to accomplish much good without being adversarial and getting caught up in strife and conflict. I play games with combat in it, and I sometimes enjoy the combat in those games, but the only conflict I ever want to get into in real life is the war for souls, and even then, I'll mostly only be playing defense. There is glory to be achieved in that war, but I only want to do as much fighting as is absolutely necessary to maintain a magnificent peace.

How Jesus Resisted Temptation

As I've been reflecting on the temptation of Christ, I've been taking some inspiration from His example of resisting temptation. Out of everyone on earth, Satan would probably try to tempt Him most of all. After all, if Satan could get Jesus to commit even one tiny sin, Jesus' perfection would have been undone, rendering the Atonement of Jesus Christ impossible. If Jesus went down, the whole human race would go down with Him, making Him the most prime target Satan ever had.

Yet, Jesus successfully resisted temptation every time it appeared. He overcame every temptation and stayed strong and pure for His whole life, and I don't think He tapped into His godly powers to do it. I think He resisted temptation the same way we do (or can). And if He could resist temptation without using His special status as the only begotten Son of God, so can we.

Jesus' ability to resist temptation is inspiring because we all also have that ability. Jesus likely faced stronger temptations than we will ever face, and He overcame them, probably using only the same strength we have (or can have). Jesus made it possible for us to be forgiven of our sins, but first, He showed us that it's possible for us to avoid those sins in the first place.

Ready or Not

My experiences of this evening and yesterday morning have taught me that circumstances beyond our control don't always give us sufficient time to prepare for them. They come when we least expect them, giving us a moment's notice, if that, before they plunge us into a situation for which we might not be prepared. I wasn't fully ready to run D&D tonight, and I am still not ready to die, but life isn't necessarily going to wait for me to be ready. Life happens, whether we're ready for it or not.

Still, there is one way we can make sure we are ready for at least a few of the challenges life throws at us. That way is by preparing now, long before the challenges arise. Those of us who might face an emergency situation at some point can prepare for it by stockpiling nonperishable food and other essentials. Those of who are still alive can prepared for death and judgment by putting our figurative houses in order, financially and spiritually. And those of us who might be called upon to run a game of D&D next week can prepare for it by planning descriptions for what the characters see and by bookmarking the right pages of the Monster Manual (which I will definitely remember to bring next week, whether I think the regular DM will be able to make it or not).

Some challenges catch us by surprise, but there are a handful of challenges that we know are coming. We can prepare for them now so we won't get caught unprepared when those challenges arise. Bishop Don Farimond, my seminary teacher, told me that "when the time to perform has arrived, the time to prepare has ended." The "time to perform" is coming. The time to prepare is now.

My Nowhere-Near-Death Experience

This morning, my health situation seemed a bit dicey. I woke up with some serious chest pain, pain that, for all I knew, could have been a sign of a life-threatening ailment of my heart and/or lungs. I contacted an advice nurse, made an appointment with a doctor, and went to the hospital. They checked my pulse and blood pressure. They listened to my lungs and heart through a stethoscope. They took x-rays. The results were a mix of good news and bas news, both of which being that they couldn't find anything wrong with me. My heart and lungs looked and sounded fine, yet the pain persisted. The going theory is that the pain is caused by a strained muscle, like a cramp. It's painful and annoying, but not life-threatening. The pain should go away in a few days with the aid of ibuprofen and some gentle stretches. It's already much less severe than it was this morning.

Still, those few hours of pain and uncertainty were rather telling. I may not have been dying, but I thought I might have been, and the thoughts I had in what I thought might be my last few hours of life can tell me a lot about myself. On my way to the hospital, I was allowed an opportunity to come to grips with the possibility that I might be dying. I thought about whether I was okay with dying right then or whether I wanted to stay on Earth a bit longer. For what it was worth, I asked God to let me stay. I may have been asking mostly for my own sake, but if my own sake was the only one being considered, I doubt God would have listened to me. My behavior has excluded me from asking (and expecting to get) blessings like that. That's partly why I wanted to stay: to give me more time to repent. Then again, an eternity would scarcely be enough time for that. But part of the reason I wanted to stay was the effect my passing would have had on others. There are people who depend on me, physically and/or emotionally. I have to stick around, if only so I can keep helping them.

Thankfully, it seems as though I'm going to stick around a little while longer. I have some achy muscles to deal with, but they're not so bad anymore. I expect to sleep tonight. I'm thankful for that. But I'm even more thankful that I can reasonably expect to wake up. My experiences of this morning have reminded me that I have reasons to be alive on this earth at this time. As long as those reasons still exist, I hope I do too.

Correcting Mistakes

Just a short while ago, I learned a lesson about correcting my mistakes, and my teacher was a spoon.

I was clearing the sink so I could hook the dishwasher up to the faucet and run it. The sink was filled with water and food debris, so I turned on the garbage disposal. Immediately, I knew something was wrong. The garbage disposal was making sounds it wasn't supposed to make. I turned it off and looked more closely, and I found a thin, metal spoon standing, handle down, in the garbage disposal.

I took the spoon out and inspected the damage. The end of the handle was a bit chewed up, but it seemed okay. I regretted having run the garbage disposal without being absolutely sure that it was clear, but there was nothing I could do about that at that point.

I put the spoon in the dishwasher, and I almost left it at that, but then I realized that there was something I could do to correct my mistake. I couldn't prevent the damage from having been done, but I could use a file from my multi-tool to try to repair the damage. So, after washing the spoon by hand and hooking up the dishwasher, I spent the next several minutes filing down the rough edges I had accidentally created.

Sometimes in life, we make mistakes. Sometimes we're careless, and sometimes there are things we don't know, but whether through sheer ignorance and bad luck or through any folly or failing of our own, we occasionally cause damage. By that point, the damage has been done. We can be sorry for it, and we can try to be more careful in the future, but there's nothing we can do to prevent the harm that we've already caused. At that point, our best recourse is to try to repair the damage. This often takes far more time, care, and effort than we exercised when making the mistake, or even than it would have taken to prevent the mistake, but it's important to do what we can to fix our mistakes.

Filing rough edges off a spoon is a minor thing, and I'm not sure anyone would have paid it much notice if I hadn't done it, but doing what I can to fix my mistakes is a good habit, as are apologizing and being kind, even when the recipient of that kindness is an inanimate object. I regret having damaged the spoon in the first place, but I don't regret spending some time filing it down.

Change

I think the most important message I want to remember from this week's Come, Follow Me lesson is that change and progress are always possible. Change is often difficult, but God is omnipotent. He can help us do anything. Of course, it has to be our choice, and we'll have to put in a lot of effort, but with God's help, we can make the changes we need to make, both in the world and in ourselves. So don't give up. No matter how lofty your goals are, they are achievable. Miracles happen, and that includes the miracle of change.

A Promise to a Piper

Earlier this evening, I saw a musical based on the fairy tale about the pied piper. In this tale, a town with a serious rat infestation hires a mysterious stranger (the pied piper) to deal with the rats. The pied piper lures the rats away with magical music, but, seeing how easy it was for the pied piper to clear out the rats, the town refuses to pay the pied piper their agreed price, so the piper uses the magical music to get revenge. The moral of the story is that it's important to keep your promises and agreements, partly because karmic and vengeful forces may punish you if you don't. Personally, I saw it more as a lesson to not make a promise you're not willing to keep.

Promises play an important role in our church, though we usually focus on a particular kind of promises: covenants. Covenants are two-way promises we make with God. When we hold up our end of the deal, He holds up His. These covenants often come with great blessings for keeping them, but there also sometimes great spiritual consequences for breaking them, hence my moral of not making promises you won't keep. A promise is a commitment. If you don't have the commitment, don't make the promise.

Of course, we're far better off making the promises and keeping them than we are not making the promises. Had the rat-infested town not agreed to hire the piper, they'd still have a rat problem. We have a host of spiritual problems and infestations that only Jesus Christ can heal, but there are certain things we need to do in order to access the healing power of His Atonement, which is part of what makes covenants essential. Through our covenants, we secure blessings that we couldn't get any other way. It's certainly important to make those covenants and secure those blessings. We just need to make sure  we're wise and committed enough to keep them.

Transcribing a Talk with God

Today, I had an experience that I've only had a few other times in my life, but that I definitely ought to have more often. I transcribed a conversation with God.

The methodology is simple. I went somewhere private where I could connect with God (the outdoors works great for me, when the weather's nice enough), I sat down, and I started writing. I jotted down a few sentences, and then, when a little voice in my head asked me a prompting question, I wrote the question down and then wrote down my answer to it. This process continued for about half an hour until I had filled an entire page (the length of your conversations may vary, both in time and in paper, so make sure you have plenty of both). The result was that I got to have a deep conversation with God, received some inspiration, and set some goals, all of which would have been forgotten by next week had I not written them down.

Transcribing conversations with God doesn't always work this well. The standard rules for receiving inspiration apply, so you may go on for a while just writing down your own thoughts for quite a while before receiving an impression that's tangible enough to record, but even if all you get is a feeling, write about the feeling; it'll help you retain what spiritual impressions you have and it'll show God that you're open to receive (and then record and act on) more.

In addition to the extra time cost and difficulty of writing prayers and impressions over just praying and listening, there is also an extra obligation to act on the inspiration you get, since the inspiration has been recorded as plainly as written text, and you have a written reminder of it, making it difficult to hide behind the excuse of having forgotten.

Still, the benefits are generally worth the costs. In addition to any written obligations, you will also have a record of any inspiration, guidance, or revelation that you manage to write down, which can repeatedly inspire you whenever you reread your conversation with God.

I'm glad I wrote down that conversation with God, along with all its promises both to and from God. It's not always practical, as it takes far more time than praying normally, but when it's possible, it's usually worth it.