God's Immutable Laws

I'm sorry that I wasn't able to post this this morning. I've been having computer problems.

There’s one thing that I wish more people would understand: Truth exists. There is such a thing as unyielding, unchangeable truth that is not at all influenced by anyone’s opinions, interpretation, or disbelief. Certain things are true. Period.

In his talk Free Forever, To Act For Themselves, Elder D. Todd Christopherson gave a brief example, citing the law of gravity: Resenting the law of gravity won’t keep a person from falling if he steps off a cliff. The same is true for eternal law and justice. We can ignore or disbelieve in God’s laws, but the consequences of breaking those laws will follow, whether we believe they will or want them to or not. Truth is not subject to our acceptence of it.

Nor is it subject to reason. In the hymn, O My Father, the third line of the third verse asks a yes or no question of some doctrinal importance, then answers it “No, the thought makes reason stare.” However, I fail to see what reason, especially our limited, human reason, has to do with eternal truths. Immagine if reason DID stare at an eternal truth, saying that it couldn’t possibly be true because it doesn’t make any sense. Would the truth become untrue if it refused to comply with reason? Does the law of gravity not work because I don’t understand it? The law of gravity states that all objects in the universe are pulled on by every other object, but why? There are no strings connecting them. I’ve been told that everything has a gravitational “field,” but what about objects outside of the range of that field? And how could a small, simple object like a block of wood generate any kind of energy field at all. It doesn’t make sense to me; Therefore, it must not be true.

But it is. The law of gravity is true whether I understand it or not. And God’s laws are true whether sinners and atheists agree with them or not. Truth is not subject to reason or belief. God is God, and He’d still be God even if everyone unanimously decided that He isn’t. It doesn’t matter what we believe; God’s truths are not contingent on our faith. We can disbelieve in the hardness of a rock, but it’ll still hurt if we stub our toe on it.

So, what’s the purpose in having faith in God’s truths? If they’re not dependent on whether we have faith in them, why doesn’t it matter whether we believe in them or not? Ask your stubbed toe why it’s important to have faith in the hardness of rocks. This is just my personal opinion, so it may or may not be true, and the truth (whatever it is) is unaffected by this opinion’s existence, but I think that God didn’t make the rules any more than Newton invented gravity: he just found out about the rules and told us what they are. Another way of saying it is that God didn’t put a rock in front of our feet and make it hard so it’d hurt when we stub our toes on it. The rock was already there and it was already hard. God just told us about the rock and warned us about the pain it could cause because He doesn’t want us to get hurt. The laws of God are so immutible that I don’t think even He could change them. Perhaps that’s because they aren’t really His rules to change any more than the law of gravity belongs or is subject to Newton. We call it “Newton’s Law of Gravity” because he told us about it. Perhaps we call them the “Laws of God” for the same reason.

What’s true is true, regardless of our belief or disbelief in it. It’s unshaken by human reason, and it is not at all affected by our opinions or preferences. We may not like, understand, or agree with the law of gravity or the hardness of rocks, but that will not change the effect those laws will have on us if a rock falls on our head. The commandments are like a street sign telling us to watch for falling rocks. We can heed the warning, or we can ignore it, but I’ll tell you this: We may choose to disregard the laws of God, but we will not be able to ignore them for long.