No One Is Forbidden

This week's Come, Follow Me lesson includes an important lesson: "Jesus Christ invites all to come unto Him."

The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that Heavenly Father is more “boundless in his mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive” (The Joseph Smith Papers, “History, 1838–1856, volume D-1,” p. 4 [addenda], josephsmithpapers.org).

This lesson is almost alarming because it applies to everyone. Everyone can repent. Everyone is invited to come unto Christ. While that's good news for us, we should remember that that "good news" extends to even the worst sinners who ever lived. That may be why Joseph Smith said that we aren't quite ready to fully believe or receive this teaching. We understand and accept that we can repent and become pure, but so can those who have wronged us, those who have hurt the innocent, and those who have deliberately led others astray. We may not be willing to accept their repentance and forgive them, but God is. 2 Nephi 26 spent four verses in a row driving this point home by rhetorically asking whether the Lord turns anyone away, and the answer is always "No." No one is commanded to depart. No one is commanded not to partake of the Lord's goodness and salvation. No one is forbidden. (See 2 Nephi 26: 25-28.) God's door is open to everyone who takes the steps necessary to walk through it. No one is locked out, no matter who they are or what they've done. As long as they repented, nothing else matters.

It's astonishing to think that even the most famously and infamously evil people can repent and be welcomed into heaven, but even the worst sinners are still God's children, and He still loves them and wants them to change their ways and come home. God has an incomprehensibly enormous amount of love for even the worst of His children, and, as unbelievable as it sounds, we should try to develop that kind of love as well. God doesn't cut anyone off from the possibility of repentance and forgiveness, and neither should we.

Is It Okay To Be Comfortable?

This afternoon, when I was at the Temple, I noted how comfortable I felt. The temperature was perfect, and I was dressed perfectly for it. Then I wondered whether or not it's okay to be comfortable.

One of my many problems is that I am too fond of feeling comfortable. When I am in a comfortable situation, I tend to stay in it as long as it remains comfortable, even when I should be growing instead. God wants us to grow. If we're too comfortable, we might not be sufficiently motivated to grow. 

Yet, God offers us some level of comfort. President Harold B. Lee once wrote, "Somewhere I read a statement that the function of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted. In some respects, I think, this is what the Church is all about—to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted" ("The Message," New Era, Jan 1971).

So, what's the deal here? We face afflictions, so God comforts us, then we are comforted, so God afflicts us? Are we supposed to be comforted or afflicted or what?

The answer, as is often the case, probably lies somewhere in between. I think that God is okay with us feeling comfortable, as long as we don't get too comfortable. We need to keep growing, and God will spur us on if He has to, but as long as we're making progress, I thinks it's okay to feel at least a little bit comfortable with the progress we are making.

I am not, and should not, feel entirely comfortable with the person I am right now. No imperfect person should. As long as there is room to improve, there should be a desire to improve. Yet, as long as we are improving, perhaps that desire for improvement can be satisfied. As long as we are growing, maybe God doesn't need to spur us into growing. And as long as we're heading in the right direction, maybe we can take comfort in the fact that we're heading in the right direction.

Maybe being comfortable can be okay. Maybe growth and comfort can coexist. We have to grow, but it may be true that, even while growing, we can also find some level of comfort.

Collaboration

One thing I love about Dungeons & Dragons is this opportunity to collaborate. In fact, one way I describe D&D is as "a collaborative story-telling game." Each player controls one of several main characters, and the Dungeon Master controls the world those characters live in. The DM describes the scene the characters are in, the players declare what their characters try to do, a number of dice are rolled to determine how successful the character's attempt was, and the DM describes how the character's actions affect the scene.This goes back and forth, with the players and the DM describing actions and outcomes, until the story they all weave together reaches a (hopefully) satisfying conclusion. The end result is a story experience that is shaped by everyone. The DM, as the narrator, arguably has the most control over the story, but the players also control the story to a large degree by deciding the actions of the main characters. The collaboration that can exist between the players and the DM is, I think, a beautiful thing. Everyone at the table works together to make something awesome, hilarious, and fun.

I love collaboration. I love it when people work together, pool their ideas and resources, and do great things together. I love it when everyone gets to participate in the collective creation. It can be argued that one of mankind's greatest strength is the ability we have to collaborate, to create greater things together than any one of us could have created on our own. Many games and systems focus on competition, and I think competition has its place, but I also love when games and systems make room for cooperation. Cooperation and collaboration are wholesome and uplifting, and I'm glad that they're an integral part of my favorite game.

The Wonder

As I read this week's Come, Follow Me lesson with my family, the last line in the introduction stood out to me: "...the marvelous work is the work of the Lord's church in the latter days, and the wonder is that He invites all of us, in spite of our weaknesses, to participate."

In a few places in the scriptures, the Lord reminds us that He is able to do His own work. And of course He can. He's the Lord. He's basically omnipotent. He can certainly do whatever He wants to do, and He can do it better than anyone else.

However, He doesn't. Rather than doing everything Himself, God invites us to help Him.  Of course, He's not asking for our help because we're better than Him at anything. We're not, and that's kind of the point. He asks for our help, not because He needs it, but because we do.

We need opportunities to do the Lord's work. They help us to grow and become more like Him in ways that other methods can't match. By doing the Lord's work in the Lord's way, we get a feel for the Lord's character, personality, priorities, and goals. By doing what He does, we learn more about who He is, and we become more like Him by practice.

Naturally, we still have a long way to go. We are very imperfect, so when we try to do the Lord's work, we do it imperfectly. Still, the mistakes we make pale in comparison with the progress we make. Mistakes can be made right through the power of the Atonement. Progress is eternal.

I am grateful that God entrusts part of His work to us, despite how frequently we prove unworthy of His trust. Much of His work seems too important to leave up to amateurs like us, yet God makes it work, usually working our shortcomings into His Master Plan. It's incredible to watch God work, and it's even more incredible that He invites us to help.

"It's Not My Fault"

While we're on the subject of things that may or may not be the fault of a character in a Disney movie, Judge Claude Frollo, from Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, once claimed "It's not my fault if, in God's plan, He made the devil so much stronger than a man." But, of course, God did no such thing. God did not make the devil any stronger than a mortal man. In fact, God made us much stronger that the devil, in at least two major ways.

First, God gave us bodies. Everyone who has ever been born has been given a body, something that the adversary will never have, and we know that all beings who have bodies have power over those who have not. Now, I'm not entirely sure what form that power takes or how it helps us, but I know that, at least in terms of physical power, we are infinitely stronger than the adversary. Of course, I'm sure Frollo wasn't talking about physical strength when he used the term "stronger." I think it's more likely that he was talking about spiritual strength or strength of will. But even there, God gave us a strong advantage.

In addition to bodies, God also gave us the Priesthood. The Priesthood is the power and authority to act in God's name, which, in itself, is a great deal of power, but that's not all. Through the Priesthood, we can gain access to additional blessings, like those afforded to us by the sacred ordinances. We have access to a great deal of power, far more than the adversary; we just need to know how to tap into it.

We have a few other advantages, like the companionship of the Holy Ghost and the fact that God's army has twice as many spirits in it as the adversary's army, but I don't know how much those count for. The question was whether God made us stronger than the adversary, not whether he sent us more help. I suppose one could argue that one's allies are a form of strength, and I'm not going to argue with them, but I'm still not counting it. Even without our allies, we have more strength that the enemy will ever have, for more reasons than one.

Not surprisingly, Frollo was wrong. God didn't make the devil stronger than man. Rather, He made mankind much, much stronger.

"It's My Fault."

I recently had the thought that Simba's life could be a reflection of our spiritual journey, and while that thought isn't quite complete enough to blog about yet, I would like to blog about a part of it.

Missing his dead father, Mufasa, Simba shouts at the sky in anger, then weeps in despair, "You said you'd always be there for me! But you're not, and it's because of me. It's my fault. It's my fault." But the thing is, it's not his fault. Simba is not responsible for his fathers death, as he had been led to believe. Yet, this unwarranted feeling of guilt sheds some interesting light on our own situations.

Like Simba, we too are currently separated from our Father, and like Simba, we are not entirely at fault for that separation, but unlike Simba, we are partly at fault for any distance that may exist between us and our Father in Heaven. To be specific, it's not our fault that we're separated from God physically, but it is (at least partly) our fault if we're separated from God spiritually.

Our physical separation from God isn't anything for which we need to feel guilty. It's all part of the plan. We had to be born onto Earth, and God had to remain in Heaven. Even Jesus had to experience this separation while He lived on Earth. It isn't anybody's fault.

But spiritual separation is. Our sins cause us to distance ourselves from God spiritually, and while I would like to blame the adversary for tempting us to drift away from God, it's still mostly (if not entirely) our fault if we give in to those temptations. We are the ones who ultimately choose how far from God we go or how close we return or stay. So, while we're not responsible for the physical distance between us and God, we are largely responsible for the spiritual distance between us.

The good news is that, since our spiritual separation is largely under our control, we can reduce it. We can return to God spiritually long before we have to return to Him physically. We can repent, and through that repentance, we can draw closer to God. That's why I said "if we're separated from God spiritually." We don't have to be. Just like Simba did shortly after this moment, we too can go back to our Heavenly Father.

It's largely (if not entirely) our fault if we're spiritually separated from God, but it's also our responsibility and privilege to reduce that separation.

Big Picture, Little Picture

After I gave my talk, one member of the congregation told me how my talk reminded them of the big picture, presumably of mortality and/or our war with the adversary. At the same time, I thought my talk had mostly focused on the little picture, noting the little things that we need to do "every day, every day, every day." I suppose one could argue that my talk kinda did both. It considered our fight with the adversary on the largest scale possible, then focused down to the scale of the day-to-day, and then enlarged again to consider our eternal potential. I hadn't even thought about doing that. I guess it kind of just happened, and I'm lucky that it did, because it's beneficial to be able to see from both perspectives.

We need both the big picture and the little picture. If we only have the big picture, we can get lost in the abstractions and lose sight of the details. If we only have the little picture, we can focus too hard on the details and lose sight of the greater meaning. When we travel, we need to be able to see both the nearby obstacles and the distant destination. If we lose sight of our destination, we could wander around aimlessly, walking around boulders, and if we focus exclusively on the destination, we're going to run into those boulders as we try to make our way to the destination. It's important to use both perspectives.

With both a temporal and eternal perspective, we can navigate the challenges of day-to-day life while working toward our eternal goal. The big picture lets us know where we're going and why, and the little picture helps us understand how we're going to get there. I'm glad that I am able to see both of those perspectives and that I was able to share both of those perspectives with others. Both the big picture and the little picture are important, so it's important for everyone to have an understanding of both of them.

Daily Improvement

I'm currently working on my talk, trying to consolidate my notes into something I can easily carry and refer to during my talk. The section I'm on right now is the part that says we can improve daily, and while that claim is completely true on average, I wonder if that's true for each day individually. Is it true that we can get better, purer, more righteous, and stronger every single day?

Now, I'm not trying to argue that we will improve daily. I know that there are some days when we don't improve ourselves. What I'm wondering is whether it's possible to avoid days like that. Is it possible to make sure that we make at least a little bit of progress each and every day, or are there still going to be a few days on which making progress is impossible?

It may depend on your definition of progress, but I'd say that making progress, at least a little progress, is always possible. Even on our best or worst days, we can think of something we could have done better, and we can pledge to try to do better. That's repentance, and I would count that as progress. We can become better, or at least learn a bit more about how we can become better, each and every day. That's a good goal to strive for, and I'm glad that I know that it's possible.

At Least Daily

There's something I'm sure I've mentioned in my recent blog posts, but it bears emphasizing. Saying that we should pray daily or study the scriptures daily or repent daily doesn't mean that we should do those things only once per day. Daily is a minimum, not an exact goal. We are specifically counselled to pray several times per day. We really should study the scriptures at least twice per day, once by ourselves and once with our families. And we should repent as many times as it becomes necessary, which is always multiple times per day.

But really, I don't think we should keep count. At least, we shouldn't need to. Praying and repenting and studying the scriptures isn't something we should do to just cross them off of a checklist. We should do them because we're the kind of people who do them. We should do them because we want to commune with God and improve ourselves. The idea of meeting any sort of numeric goal should be secondary at best.

Granted, sometimes people need a numeric goal. On my mission, I used numeric goals as tools to help me establish habits and measure my improvement. I can understand why someone might want to set numeric goals and checklists regarding what we have to do to maintain and improve our daily spiritual defenses. But once per day isn't the gold standard for any of these goals. It's a minimum, not a maximum. We should pray and read the scriptures and repent every day, but not only once per day.

Do a Good Turn Daily

As I've been thinking about what we should do daily to overcome the adversary and as my World Religions class has been studying Jesus Christ, who "went about doing good," I was reminded of the Scout Slogan: "Do a Good Turn Daily," and I wonder if I ever fail to do that. Doing a good deed every day is almost as inevitable as occasionally committing sin, and for similar reasons. There are so many different ways to do good, we can easily do a good deed just by going about our day. And furthermore, just as the adversary tempts us to do evil, the Holy Ghost prompts us to do good. A person would have to go far out of their way to avoid doing at least one good act per day.

Of course, that's certainly not what the slogan means. The goal to "Do a Good Turn Daily" implies acting intentionally. We are supposed to do good daily, not just as a casual habit or a matter of circumstance, but as a deliberate choice. The goal isn't just to do at least one good deed each day, but to do at least one good deed each day, above and beyond what you would normally do, specifically for the sake of completing the goal. The idea is to not just rely on your habitual goodness, but to continually push it forward by being a little "extra good" every day until being "extra good" becomes the new normal and then striving to be "extra extra good," and so on. We really should be doing as many good turns each day as possible, so the goal is always "however many you normally do, plus one."

The purpose of life isn't just to become good and then stay at least that good forever. The purpose is to become perfect. We're supposed to be improving, little by little, day by day. It can start by doing one (extra) good turn daily, but it certainly shouldn't stop there.

Daily Repentance

In our daily battles with the adversary, it's inevitable that we lose a skirmish here or there. On any given day, there will always be at least one mistake we've made or temptation we've given into. Among our countless decisions on any given day, there will be a few of which we need to repent. President Russell M. Nelson spoke of this need to repent in a talk titled "We Can Do Better and Be Better":

"Nothing is more liberating, more ennobling, or more crucial to our individual progression than is a regular, daily focus on repentance. Repentance is not an event; it is a process."

The repentance process is the process of changing from the people we are now to the people God wants us to become, and this is a process that we should continue every day. Because we are still progressing and still have room to improve, we should make sure that repentance is part of our daily spiritual habits. Repentance is part of how we repair and reinforce our spiritual defenses, and it's something that we should make sure we remember to do daily.

Daily Meditation

I mentioned in my last blog post that I'm probably going to change my meditation goal from weekly to daily. There are several reasons for that change. The first reason is that I've found that it helps. It centers me in a way that nothing else does. Meditation feels like a more intense form of prayer, and that's a very good thing. I feel the Spirit when I meditate, and that helps me escape some of my vices. I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but the bottom line is that I plan to do it more often.

The best plans and goals benefit from revision. This is a simple revision I'm making to my New Year's Resolution. I should probably make a revision to the Hymns part of this goal, too, but that revision will require further thought and planning.

For now, the plan is to meditate far more often and/or to pray more seriously. The line between meditation and serious prayer is a little fuzzy, but I want to get as close to that line as I can, and I want to do that as often as I should pray. In fact, I wouldn't mind if the Prayer and Meditation parts of my goal melded together completely. I need to either pray more fervently or meditate more frequently. Since I don't have a clear distinction between those two ideas, I guess what I'm really going for is a little of both.

Daily Defenses

One of the points of my upcoming talk that is especially relevant to me is the idea of using daily habits to build up my spiritual defenses. I do several things regularly for the purpose of raising my defenses. I've been blogging for years now, and this year I also decided to pick up the habit of using Prayer, Hymns, and Meditation. All of these things help me build up my spiritual defenses and resist temptation. Of course, I should set aside time to study the scriptures daily as well, and I should probably also change my goal from meditating weekly to meditating daily, because the more I do each day to raise my defenses, the faster they'll grow and the stronger they'll become.

Defeating the adversary isn't a one-time thing. I know that now. There will never be a time when I don't have to fight off his temptations, not in this life anyway. Every day, I will have to face Satan's attacks, and every day, I need to make sure my defenses are strong enough to hold him off. That means that I need to continually repair and reinforce my defenses every single day. The more I do each day, the better. The more regularly I do those things, the better. I can't just put my armor on one time and expect it to protect me for the rest of my life. I need to put my armor on "every day, every day, every day."

I need daily habits that increase my spiritual defenses, I need as many of them as I can make time for, and I need to be diligent in making sure I do them every day.

Talk Prep - Three Ds, Four Countermeasures, and One Controlling Theme

The talk I was given to help me prepare for my lesson next week is Power to Overcome the Adversary by Elder Peter M. Johnson of the Seventy. Elder Johnson starts off by reminding us of our divine nature and destiny, and then lists what He calls "the three Ds of the adversary," which basically amount to Satan's battle strategy: Deception, Distraction, and Discouragement." Elder Johnson then spends a few paragraphs on each of these Ds, using examples to help describe them. He follows this list of Satan's tactics with a list of four things we can do to counter them, giving me a clear, if predictable answer to the question that forms the basis of my talk: "How Do We Overcome the Adversary and Find Happiness?" Elder Johnson's suggestions basically boil down to 1) Love God, 2) Pray daily, 3) Study the Book of Mormon daily, and 4) Take the Sacrament every week.

These suggestions aren't unique or remarkable, but Elder Johnson's repetition of the phrase "every day, every day, every day" gave the idea for a central controlling theme for my talk: daily. How do we overcome the Adversary? Daily. Okay, but really, how do we do it? By praying and studying the scriptures daily. Then how do we find happiness? Daily. The answer "daily" doesn't fit perfectly with each of those questions, but the concept does. We cannot defeat Satan once and for all. As long as we live, Satan will continually attack us every day, meaning that we need to continually repel him every day. This process can seem discouraging, and that's exactly what Satan wants. This will give me an easy transition into Elder Johnson's talk, describing the three Ds and Elder Johnson's proposed countermeasures.

This will lead me to my next point: that in order to win, there are things we need to do on a daily or weekly basis, including basically all the Sunday School answers. We need to pray and read the scriptures daily. We need to go to church and partake of the Sacrament weekly. We should also go to the Temple as often as we can manage it, weekly works pretty well. And we must always remember to keep our Love of God and our fellow man as our primary motivation and to try to keep the Holy Ghost as our constant companion and guide. Doing all these things (or as many of them as we can manage) on a regular basis will help us gradually build up our spiritual defenses and gain the power to resist temptation.

Of course, doing all these good things will also have the welcome side-benefit of helping us find happiness. Having the Spirit with us and successfully resisting sin are great ways to fill our hearts with joy and avoid the spiritual pain that detracts from that joy. Sure, qualifying for the Celestial Kingdom is certainly something we can look forward to, but we don't have to wait until then to find happiness. Through the companionship of the Holy Spirit, we can find peace, joy, and happiness right here in our everyday lives.

So, that's the basic idea for my talk. I'll break the ice in some way, perhaps using a few lines out of We Are All Enlisted to highlight the apparent contradiction between being involved in a high-stakes, eternal spiritual conflict and nonetheless being happy. Then I'll introduce my topic ("How Do We Overcome the Adversary and Find Happiness?") and the controlling theme ("daily") and proceed for there with the three Ds, the four countermeasures, and a reminder that The Spirit can help us make peace with our situation and find happiness in spite of it. It's a rough outline, and the introduction especially will need a lot of work, but it's a start. I'll flesh it out over the coming week using sections and subsections so I can either elaborate on all my main points to fill out all the time I'm given or so I can quickly cover the most important points if time is short. I'm the last speaker, so I'll need to be flexible enough to take any starting time and still end as close to exactly on time as possible. I have a lot of ideas to list, organize, connect, and develop, but at least now I have a plan.

Talk Prep - We Are All Enlisted

I was recently asked to give a talk in an upcoming Sacrament Meeting, and since the date of my talk is now only a week away, I had better start to get serious about it. My topic is a question: How Do We Overcome the Adversary and Find Happiness? These are two important and closely-related goals, yet it seems that many people struggle with both of them. There is a lot of unhappiness in the world today, and most of it seems to be caused by people being overcome by the adversary. Even within the church, nobody is perfect, and nobody is happy all the time. So, how can we do better?

Reflecting on this question of overcoming the adversary and finding happiness, I was reminded of the hymn We Are All Enlisted, in which the first two lines of both the song and the chorus are "We are all enlisted till the conflict is o'er; Happy are we! Happy are we!" Clearly, this song at least touches on the two main elements of my question. I hope that, by analyzing the lyrics of this song, I can find some answers.

My first clue was in the title: We Are All Enlisted. I don't know for sure, but I believe that "Enlisted" means joining a military force voluntarily, whereas "Conscripted" means that one was compelled to join. Having had a choice in the matter would make our position in this war for souls more tolerable; however, a quick Google search revealed that "enlisted" and "conscripted" aren't mutually exclusive. According the the results I got, "Enlisted" means "enroll or be enrolled in the armed services," (with no mention of the enrollment having to have been voluntary), and "Conscripted" means "enlist (someone) compulsorily, typically into the armed services," showing that one can, in fact, be "enlisted" against one's will. And, come to think of it, we didn't have much of a choice in whether we joined this war or not. As far as I know, our options were to either join God's side in His fight against Satan or join Satan's side in his fight against God. If those two were truly our only options, that's not much of a choice, and there seems to have been no option for avoiding the war entirely. We didn't join this war voluntarily. We had to join. The one choice we did have was picking which side we fought on.

Okay, so "Enlisted" was a bust. Maybe there are other lyrics in here that can help us figure out how to overcome the adversary and find happiness while we're at it.

Immediately after the first two lines in the first verse and again in the chorus, we sing "Soldiers in the army, There's a bright crown in store; We shall win and wear it by and by." This also seems promising. The "bright crown in store" alludes to the reward for victory, and the assertion that "We shall win and wear it" alludes to an assurance of victory. The prize we are fighting for is Eternal Life, the greatest of all the gifts of God. That's certainly a prize worth fighting for, and it can sometimes be enough to motivate us to fight hard enough to overcome the adversary and win it, assuming we're thinking that far ahead. Yet, too often, too many of us live in the moment, not giving enough thought to how our actions in the present will affect our consequences in the future. Fighting for the crown can motivate us to fight hard enough to win it, but only if we keep that crown in mind, even when in battle.

As for the assurance that we'll win the fight and the crown, that depends entirely on our actions. Sure, affirmations about our victory can give us the confidence to fight hard enough to win, but there are cases where that confidence might become overconfidence and/or might shatter. If we lose too many fights that we were sure we were going to win, we might stop being so sure of our eventual victory. If we ever lose to Satan, we prove that we might lose to him again, destroying our confidence that "we shall win [the crown]."

Thinking of the crown we are going to win and how certain it is that we are going to win it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy in that the motivation and confidence that that thought gives us can propel us toward victory, but both the motivation and the confidence can be undermined, so perhaps those lines aren't all that helpful, either.

The next two lines of the first verse list some of our advantages: "Haste to the battle, quick to the field;
Truth is our helmet, buckler, and shield." So, we're not going into battle unarmored, and a later verse tells us that "Jesus, our Leader, ever is near. He will protect us, comfort, and cheer," so we also have a strong ally. This, too, sounds promising, and it may allude to some practical advice for overcoming the adversary and finding happiness: Rely on truth (and the other components of the Armor of God) and on Jesus. They will help us gain the strength to secure the victory and the rewards that come with it. Certainly, relying on the Savior and Putting on the Armor of God should be in my talk somewhere, but I'm not sure this hymn is the best place to pick up this advice.

The last line of all three verses is "We're joyfully, joyfully marching to our home," which is great, except that it isn't clear where that joy is coming from. Perhaps it's simply the joy of returning home?

I'm afraid that We Are All Enlisted may not be as helpful to me as I had hoped, but that's okay. When I was giving my topic, I was also given a General Conference talk from which to draw inspiration, so I'll look there next. And besides, reviewing We Are All Enlisted did remind me of a handful of topics that I want to address in my talk, namely the Armor of God, relying on the Savior, and perhaps also the joy of returning home, so I'll still address those things in my talk, whether or not I end up including any reference to the song itself.

What I Didn't Know About My Goal

Last night, I noted that I didn't know how many times I had blogged about Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This morning, I decided to find out. I searched my blog for posts that included the word "hunchback" and counted the results. In total, not including last night or the blog post in which I mentioned the movie but didn't blog about it (FYI, this blog post doesn't count, either), I had blogged about The Hunchback of Notre Dame exactly twelve times. That was the goal I had set for myself. That was the number I was trying to hit. By the time I blogged about the movie for the thirteenth time last night, I had reached my goal over a year prior to that, but I didn't know it. I had no idea how close I was to reaching my goal, and I certainly didn't know that I already had.

I suppose that's part of the reason why good goals should be measurable and why we should keep good track of them. If we're not tracking our goals, then we have no idea how close we are to completing our goals, how much progress we're making, or even whether we're making progress at all. For all I knew, I could have been several blog posts away from completing that particular goal. I knew I had blogged about The Hunchback of Notre Dame several times, but apart from that, I had no idea where I stood in relation to my goal. That's less than ideal. It's helpful to keep tabs on our goals so we can track our progress, so I would suggest that, if you make a goal, find some way to keep track of it. That information is valuable. Without it, you could plateau, regress,  or even achieve the goal and not even know it.

Giving to Fibbers

In Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Yes, I'm still planning on writing at least a dozen blog posts about the movie. No, I don't know how many I'm on at the moment), the gypsies live in an underground area they call "The Court of Miracles," so called because the gypsies who enter The Court of Miracles find themselves "miraculously" cured of the disabilities they pretended to have while begging for money and food.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's uncommon for beggars to lie to potential donors in hopes of securing their sympathy. When that happens, I wonder if it's a morally good idea to give charitably to such liars. On one hand, I don't want to be responsible for rewarding immoral behavior, like lying. On the other hand, charity is good, and whether the beggar lied or not is a matter to be resolved between them and God.

Ultimately, I think I lean toward the latter hand. While one should try to follow the direction of the Spirit in everything they do, including donating charitably, I think it's best to err on the side of generosity and to let God judge anyone who lied to secure that generosity.

So, if I see a gypsy who claims to be disabled or a panhandler who claims to be a homeless vet, I'll try to give them the benefit of a doubt, or at least reserve judgement. Judgement is God's job. My job is to follow the example of Jesus Christ, and He was plenty charitable, regardless of the fact that literally everyone He helped was a sinner. There was once a man who told Jesus "Lord, I believe" when asking Him to cure his son, and He healed him. Perhaps we ought to do likewise.

A Better Person?

Today, someone asked me if I thought I was a better person today than I was in the past. I dodged the question, saying that, to answer it, I would need to have a lot of introspection and I would need to have had a lot of introspection. I would need to know how good I was then and how good I am now to notice any difference. But the thing is, I'm not sure there is a difference.

Sure, I'm a decent person, but I've been a decent person about as long as I can remember. Am I more decent now than I used to be? I'm not sure I can tell. I'd like to think that I've become better over time. The whole concept of Eternal Progression is built on such an assumption. The hope is that people gradually improve over time. But do we?

It may be that the change is too slow for people to detect, especially when one is talking about themselves. It may be like that boiling from scenario, only instead of boiling, we're becoming better people. I could hope that that's the case. Anyhow, I am, thankfully, not the judge of my soul anyway. Still, it would be nice to look for signs to indicate whether I'm making any moral progress or not.

Dragons Can Be Beaten

Neil Gaiman, paraphrasing G.K. Chesterton, once wrote, "Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."

This is a large part of why I love fantastical stories. In such stories, heroes face overwhelming odds and terrible opposition, and they still win. Like those heroes, we too face overwhelming opposition, and like those heroes, we too can win.

On rare occasions, I sing "The Impossible Dream (The Quest)" from Man of La Mancha, and I relate that dream and the rest of the lyrics to our mortal struggle, "To dream the impossible dream [of perfection and exaltation, and] to fight the unbeatable foe [Satan]." I justified the term "unbeatable" here because, while we can drive Satan back, we can't stop him for good. We can't kill him. We can't permanently shut him up. No matter how many times we drive him off, he keeps coming back. Through his sheer relentlessness, he is unbeatable, yet that's not quite true. Satan is beatable. The only problem is that we have to keep beating him, over and over again, for our entire lives and maybe then some. Sure, Satan is immortal, but so (in a sense) are we. Our immortal souls can endure just as long as Satan can, and if we keep fighting, we will ultimately reach a destination that is far beyond his reach. We can beat him by making it back to our home instead of letting him drag us down to his.

We can ultimately defeat Satan, and we can defeat him in our day-to-day battles as well. He may be invulnerable, but he's not unbeatable. We don't have to kill him in order to defeat him; we just need to make sure we don't let him defeat us. We not fighting to the death; we're fighting to the spiritual death, and that's a battle that Satan has already lost. Spiritual death is separation from God. Satan has already died, spiritually. We just need to make sure that we don't do the same. That's easier said than done, but it's still possible.

Satan can be beaten. It just takes an epic, heroic effort.

Different Perspectives and Understandings

In my World Religions class, I'm running into some interesting situations. The course mostly follows a particular scholar of religion who studied most of the major, enduring religions and wrote a book (our textbook) summarizing much of what he learned. This morning, we watched an interview with this man in which he discussed Christianity and Judaism. The situation I found interesting was hearing this well-traveled, well-read scholar of religion express some confusion about points of doctrine that I think are perfectly clear.

Specifically, he wondered about the resurrection. He knew that Jesus' body had be removed from the tomb, so he figured that He might have been revived, yet he wondered how Jesus was able to do things with His body that no mortal body can do, like appear and disappear at will. Personally, I think it's easy to understand that Jesus' body could have been both revived and transformed, giving Jesus' restored, physical body different properties than a human body normally has. However, even if Jesus was given the exact same body He had before with all of the same physical properties, we would still be talking about a body that, on at least one occasion, stood perfectly upright on churning waters. Jesus, being a God of Miracles, could probably do just about whatever He wanted, regardless of whatever physical limitations bodies normally have.

I think it's interesting that people with different perspectives can come to very different understandings on the same subject. This scholar, having been born and raised a Methodist and being older than I am, has studied the Christian faith even longer than I have, yet his understanding of certain principles is very different from (and in some cases, apparently lesser than) mine. Despite all of the studying he has done on the subject of this religion and many others, he finds confusing at least one point that I think is fairly simple.

This difference in perspective and understanding reminds me that I shouldn't take any knowledge for granted. I am richly blessed to have been taught the simple truths of the Gospel from my youth. Others weren't so lucky. Some people were taught different thing about God, and some people weren't taught about God at all. So, when I talk to someone about religion, I'm going to try not to make any assumptions. Evidently, not all Christians understand the process of resurrection, and I'll try not to hold that against anyone. I'm not smarter than him for feeling like I understand something that seems to confuse him. We simply learned different things; that's all. I'm sure there are many points of doctrine, both in this faith and others, that seem simple to him that would be completely foreign and bewildering to me. Neither of us should harshly judge each other for not understanding certain things.

I am grateful for the level of understanding I have, and I am also grateful that there are people with different understandings and that we can learn from each other. It's important to consider different perspectives and to remember that everyone has something to teach and learn to and from everyone else.

Flawed Heroes

I recently saw an image listing 9 traits that make a hero, and one of those traits was "flawed." According to the image, or rather, whoever made it, traits help make a hero relatable, but there's more to it than that. I like flawed heroes, not because the heroes' flaws help bring me down to earth, but because I get inspired by watching heroes overcome their flaws. Sure, it's exciting to watch heroes blast and bash their way through armies of robots and CGI monsters, but it's far more moving to watch them overcome a personal challenge or weakness because it reminds me that I can do that, too. I know that fictional heroes can do many things that I can't, but overcoming personal flaws is not one of them. They don't make superpowers for that. They can't just invent or forge some special weapon that will make it easier to fight their inner demons. They have to win those fights the same way I have to: through sheer strength of will. That's the kind of strength I most admire in my heroes. We expect heroes to be strong enough to resolve their external conflicts. However, to me, it's far more impressive and inspiring to watch them overcome internal ones.

Moral Heroes

I spent much of today watching Superhero movies, but I feel like it should be noted that not all of the "heroes" I watched always act heroically. Specifically, I watched The Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 and Avengers: Age of Ultron. In these movies, the heroes help their friends and save the day, but they otherwise don't all seem very concerned about questions of morality. Most of the Guardians of the Galaxy spend at least parts of the movie acting like jerks to each other and to other people, and Tony Stark deliberately side-steps complex moral questions in order to pursue the goal of creating artificial intelligence. It's worth remembering that the superheroes we root for aren't always heroes at all. Yes, they do good things, and we should follow those examples, but they also do some bad things, and we shouldn't follow those examples.

As with everyone, our heroes are complex. The best characters have some good traits and some bad traits, and it should also be remembered that traits that are good in some contexts can be bad in others. As with everything, we should try to take the good and leave the bad, using the spirit of discernment to determine which is which in any given situation. It's good to look up to and learn from our heroes, if they are acting heroically, but during those times when they aren't as heroic (and no one always is), we should learn not to follow their bad examples and strive to be even more heroic than they are.

"Garnish"

This morning, my mom and I had a conversation about the phrase "let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly", taken from Doctrine and Covenants 121:45. We particularly focused on the word "garnish". Various dictionaries have multiple definitions of "garnish", most of which don't seem to fit very well.

Naturally, the cooking usage of "garnish" came readily to mind, like to put some decorative herb around the edges of a plate. One can imagine a plate with a delicious steak and mashed potatoes and also a tiny sprig of parsley on the side. Mom said that it seems unlikely that that's what the scripture meant.

While I generally agree with her on that point (I think that virtue is far too important to be a decoration on the side), I also entertained the possibility that the scripture did mean something like that, like "no matter what else you're thinking about (school, work, D&D, etc.), make sure there's virtue in it."

In my opinion, this is good, important, and practical advice. Naturally, we can't think about the gospel literally all the time; life is too busy for that, and we should also set aside some time to unwind. However, while we can't think exclusively about the gospel all the time, we can look for elements of the gospel in everything we do think about. We can see how our work is a form of service. We can see how what we learns in school lines up with (or contrasts against) the truths we learn in the gospel. And we can use stories with fictional characters to provide us with examples of how to develop our personal characters in real life. It's good to find the virtue in everything we do and think about. And if we can't find any sort of virtue in something we spend time on, then maybe it isn't worth our time.

Granted, I found another definition of "garnish" which I think is closer to what the scripture probably meant. According to the Wiktionary, there's another definition of "garnish" that means "to furnish" or "to supply". The Wiktionary admits that this definition is "archaic", or, to be more specific, Biblical, as one of the examples of this form of "garnish" comes from Job 26:13, in which we read "By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens". We may not use "garnish" that way anymore, but God and/or His prophets have used "garnish" that way at least once.

Still, I like my insight as well. We should always look for the good in everything in our lives, and if we can't find it, then we should make some changes. We may not always be able to have all our thoughts supplied by virtue, but we should make sure that all our thoughts supply us with virtue. That may not be what God meant when He said "let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly", but I think it also works.

Starting with Zero XP

In many D&D campaigns, the adventurers start off with zero Experience Points (XP). As they have their first few adventures, they gradually gain XP and grow in levels and in power, eventually becoming incredibly capable Fighters or Wizards or whatever they are, but they don't often start there.

Many, if not most, D&D characters start at square one. Certainly, we all do. Babies are about as inexperienced and incapable as living creatures can be. Yet, many, if not most, babies grow up to be capable of doing great things. As they grow and learn from their experiences, they become more capable over time.

So, maybe we don't need to worry too much about where we started or where we are now. As we continue to have experiences and learn from them, we can grow in our various strengths and capabilities until we eventually come to surprise ourselves. Through the resurrection and eternal progression, we can all ultimately become as capable as we could ever dream of being. So, maybe it doesn't matter much that we all start out with zero experience.

An Act of Kindness

Tonight, I gave the players of the D&D game I run the opportunity to show me a window into their characters' souls. Specifically, I told the players that their characters had been asked to act out circus performances portraying their most heroic feats. Most of them demonstrated their skill at combat, archery, or spellcraft, showing how strong and powerful they are and how easily they can hit their targets. Yet, one of the players did something different. Instead of showing off a time he proved he was powerful, this character revealed a time when he was kind.

I enjoyed that moment when it happened, and I enjoy it even more now that I'm looking back on it. It shows just how kind, how caring, and how Good that character is. That's the kind of D&D character I would like to play and be like. That's the kind of Paladin I want to be. Not just strong and capable, but more importantly, Good. I want goodness and kindness to be my defining traits, and if I am to be judged (and I know I will be), I want to be judged for an act of kindness, and I don't want it to be an act.

This reminds me of the Hymn "A Poor, Wayfaring Man of Grief", particularly the last few lines of the last verse: "These deeds shall thy memorial be. Fear not; thous didst them unto Me." For several dozen NPCs, one of the few things they know about that character is that he is kind. I want that to also be true for me.

Rest is Restorative (Or So I Hope)

In D&D, rest has healing properties. After a good night's sleep, a character regains all their Hit Points and half of their Hit Dice and loses a level of Exhaustion. I would hope that tonight's rest is just as restorative for me, but D&D rests do nothing to help cure diseases, one of which I may currently have. I guess what I'm actually hoping for is that my rest is as restorative as a Lesser Restoration spell, but that's a 2nd level spell, so I'm not going to get my hopes up.

Anyhow, the point is that rest brings healing. Similarly, the Sabbath day of rest is meant to bring healing to our souls.

That's spiritual enough, right? I'm tired. I'm going to get some rest.

Objective Moral Truths

I was thinking about objective truths and subjective opinions, and it occurred to me that, while there are wildly different opinions on the subject of morality, there are such things as objective moral truths. God has given us specific commandments, so, while we may debate what we think is moral or immoral, there are right and wrong answers to such a debate. It's not like arguing over whether a movie is good or bad. with regards to whether an action is good or bad, it's not really a matter of opinion. Naturally, there are some gray areas where the morality of an action gets murky, but I think there are still objectively right and wrong answers, which are clear to God, if not to us.

Thankfully, we don't have to guess or debate on the subjects of morality. We can ask God what we should do, tell Him what we plan to do, ask for confirmation, and proceed from there based on the answer we get (or lack thereof). There are objective moral truths, and God knows all of them. If there are any questions about them on our end, we can ask Him and get objectively true answers.

Commanding (and Doing) the Impossible

In our latest Come Follow Me lesson, we've been learning people who followed God and His directions, accomplishing things that would have otherwise been impossible, and this example wasn't anomalous. We can do anything God commands us to do, even the impossible, mostly because we'll have His help in doing so, and nothing is at all impossible for God. It's like Nephi said "If God had commanded me to do all things I could do them" (1 Nephi 17:50). God commanded Nephi to do something that was completely outside his skill-set, yet he was able to do it because he had the Lord's guidance and help. Similarly, God gives us commandments that may feel impossible, but having His help in accomplishing them will make them possible. No matter what God commands us to do, we can do it, even if it means performing miracles. We can perform even the most incredible miracles, o long as we have God's help. So, if God ever commands you to do something difficult, even impossible, don't despair. God can do anything, and He can help us do anything, too.

The Help They Needed

When God gave Lehi's family the guidance and help they needed through their experiences with the Ball, the Bow, and the Boat, He only gave them the help that they needed. They still had to do their part, up to the limit of their capabilities. God gave them directions, but they still had to physically follow those directions. Nephi had to make himself a new bow and go hunting himself, after God told him where to hunt. And  Nephi and his brothers had to build the boat themselves, with their only help from God being the information on how to build the ship and where to find the ore they needed to make the tools they needed to build the ship. In each case, the Lehites were expected to do everything they could do, and God's help merely made up for the limits of their capabilities.

And so it is with us. Often, God only gives us the help that we really need, expecting us to do our parts. God often requires us to everything we can, only lending direct aid in the areas where our limited abilities aren't enough. Granted, it could be said that He helps us do our part by lending us breath, providing us with food, and granting us the companionship of His Holy Spirit, among other things, but even with all God's help backing us, the work is still ours to do.

It has been said that when we are on the Lord's errand, we are entitled to His help, and that is certainly true, but in many cases, God is only going to help us, not do our work for us. God will give us all the help we need, but only that much. The rest of the work is up to us.