Retreating to Mulek

Out of the following four items, which is both the lowest priority and the action I've been taking for the last hour or so? Is it A) Blogging, B) Studying the Scriptures, C) Sleeping, or D) Reading Scientific Explanations of Hypothetical (and Usually Cataclysmic) Situations?

Clearly, humans are not the wisest of creatures. I should be sleeping right now. I should have blogged hours ago. I should wrap up this blog post, quickly read a scripture or two, and then go to bed. Actually, maybe I change the order of a pair of those.

We've gotten to the war chapters in our family scripture study, which is good news for me because I tend to see a lot of good strategies in these chapters. Sometimes, the strategies detail what Satan tries to do against us, and sometimes, they explain what we can do to counter him. For the chapter we read tonight, Alma 52, I can't tell clearly whose strategy we're looking at.

In Alma 52, Captain Moroni has Teancum and his men decoy an army of the Lamanites out of the city of Mulek, a stronghold they had taken, and lead them on a wild goose chase toward the Nephite city, Bountiful, where Lehi and his army were secretly waiting. When the Lamanite army saw a fresh and strong army of the Nephites, they started to retreat, but were blocked by Moroni and his army, who had followed them all that way. With the Lamanites outwitted into leaving their stronghold and allowing themselves to become surrounded, they were easily defeated.

Of course, I could use this to illustrate the importance of not leaving your stronghold (not lowering your standards, not leaving the church, etc.) no matter what opportunities present themselves, but that'd be too easy. Besides, while skimming through the chapter, I found something else.

At the start of the chapter, this same Lamanitish army woke up to discover that their king and commander, Amalickiah, had been assassinated, and that Teancum and his men were ready to attack them. Rather than fighting, the Lamanites retreated to their stronghold in Mulek, where they might have been safe, had they stayed.

In life, sometimes we face hardships and challenges we didn't expect to face, and may well be too much for us to handle. In those times, we may do well to fall back onto something solid, something we can depend on, something like the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Like a stronghold, the Gospel and our personal testimonies of God's existence and His love for us can give us the strength we need to carry on through our trials. My faith in the existence, omnipotence, and compassion of God helped me see past a particularly difficult experience that I once had, and it gave me hope that everything would work out, which, according to God's wisdom, it always will.

Unfortunately, God's wisdom isn't the only controlling factor in our lives. There's also our foolishness to consider. God provided us with a stronghold, but we sometimes allow ourselves to be tricked into leaving it. We sometimes abandon the safety of keeping the commandments, or neglect the protection of doing the daily and weekly things that maintain our faith. Sometimes, we forget the core principles of the gospel, and when we do, we frequently find ourselves facing tougher challenges than we can handle.

Of course, as soon as we find ourselves facing unexpected difficulties, we should return to our places of strength, but by the time the challenges arise, we may already be too late. It was too late for the Lamanites to return to Mulek when they saw the army of Lehi because the army of Moroni had shut off their way of retreat. Rather, we should return to our strongholds as soon as we realize we've left them. We should start praying and studying the scriptures regularly and fervently as soon as we realize we've stopped. We shouldn't wait to be surrounded by our enemies before we decide that we'd rather be surrounded by the walls of our forts.

Then again, I'm not sure it can ever really be said that it's "too late" for us to repent and to turn onto Christ. His arms of mercy are always open, and while it's true that we should never leave the safety of His Gospel, it's equally true that we frequently do, and that what's important then is that we return to Him as soon as possible. We will get coaxed out of our strongholds from time to time, but when we do, we should return to them as soon as we can, and I believe that if we always try to return to the gospel as soon as we learn that we've strayed from it, that God will always make it possible for us to do so. We can always retreat to Mulek, even though it's infinitely better that we never leave it.

The Future You Picked

The other day, while doing homework, I listened to the Wall-E soundtrack on Youtube. The last song on that soundtrack is called "Down to Earth," and it includes the line "Did you feel you'd been tricked by the future you picked?" According to my interpretation, the line was aimed at the people who went to live in a spaceship called the Axiom, and subsequently missed out on many of the experiences we have on earth, but I think it could also apply to those of us who chose to leave heaven to experience life on earth, and those of us who give up the prospect of returning to heaven to more fully enjoy life on earth.

First, we chose to come here. There weren't many other options, but still, we made the choice, but I don't think we fully understood the ramifications of our choice. We had no experience with pain or difficulty. We knew that earth life would be unpleasant, but I'm not sure we understood the meaning of the word. We agreed to go before we fully understood what our decision meant and what the consequences would be. Of course, we had the advice of our Father and we trusted His judgement that, while unpleasant, this was an experience we needed to have, so we signed up for God-only-knew-what, and here we are.

Do you feel that you had been tricked? Sometimes I think about how hard life is, and I wonder if I really knew what I was getting myself into, or if I still would have gone along with God's plan, had I known all that it would entail. If I knew then how much pain and struggling I would experience on earth, would I have still agreed to go? Maybe not. Maybe I had been tricked. But still, if what God said was true (and what He says always is), this is an experience that I need to have, and when it's over, I'll be grateful it happened. Perhaps I had been tricked, but if not now, at least someday, I'll be glad I was.

However, there are others who are being tricked who aren't going to be so glad when they find out what's really going on. In life, we make countless decisions between good and evil, and Satan always tries to convince us to make evil choices. Usually, his attempts involve a good deal of trickery, trying to convince us that what he wants us to do isn't really a sin and that there won't be any consequences. But of course, there will be. There are consequences to all of our choices, including our sins, and the consequence of sin is suffering, if not now, at least in the future.

Have you been tricked by Satan into choosing a future that takes you away from God? That was a rhetorical question, but the answer is yes. We all have. We've all sinned at least once in our lives, and odds are that we'll be tricked or at least persuaded to commit sin several more times in the future.

The good news is that there's hope. The future we've chosen for ourselves doesn't have to be permanent. We won't be stuck on Earth forever, and we don't have to stay stuck in a life of sin. Through Christ's Atonement, we can still be cleansed from sin and return to live with God. We can choose a new future for ourselves, an eternity of life in heaven with our Heavenly Father, if we're willing to be righteous enough to be worthy to live there. At the end of Wall-E, the captain of the Axiom chose a new future for himself and his ship's passengers, and they returned to the place where they had been and where they again wanted to be. Through the power of the Atonement and the mercy of Jesus Christ, we can do the same.

Are We Willing to Pay the Price?

It's time to revisit Elder Carlos A. Godoy's talk, The Lord Has a Plan for Us! Something I noticed in rereading this talk was a pair of pointed questions Elder Godoy asks in the second section of his talk: "Are we willing to pay the price for our decisions? Are we prepared to leave our comfort zones to reach a better place?"

Every act, every choice, has a consequence or a price. Are we willing to pay the prices our decisions entail? Yesterday, I told you that I want to be more righteous. Am I willing to consistently put in the effort to proceed with the almost always difficult and sometimes seemingly hopeless endeavor to improve? Alternatively, I could give up on myself and stop trying to improve, but that choice comes with a price, too. Am I willing to live with the consequence of having to live with a version of myself that's no better than I am now? Every action or inaction has a price. Do we fully consider the consequences of decisions as we decide which choice to make?

Part of our problem is that we tend to be rather short-sighted. We sometimes don't consider the consequences we'll face later if we don't make the right choices now. The other night, it would have been easy to stay in bed and not read my scriptures, and the consequences of that choice would have been too far down the road to realize the connection between the choice and the result. The reverse is sometimes also true. We see the difficulty of making righteous decisions, but we don't always see the blessings that'll eventually come from it.

Or, we may hear of and desire the blessings, but not want to have to go through the trouble of being righteous to get them. We know that heaven is a wonderful place - one that we want to be worthy to live in. We also know of the blessings God grants to the righteous and the joy we feel from doing what's right and having the Spirit with us. Doing good has good results. But first, doing good requires sacrifice. Are we willing to make those sacrifices to get those blessings? "Are we prepared to leave our comfort zones to reach a better place?"

Whether we choose to do things the hard way or the easy way, there are going to be consequences. To be wise, we have to consider not only the immediate results of our choices, but their long-term results as well. Then we need to decide, are we willing to suffer short-term discomfort now to gain long-term peace later, or are we willing to accept long-term consequences later to enjoy short-term comforts now?Both choices come with a price. Which price are we willing to pay?

Choosing to Change Now

Last night, after blogging, I really wanted to go to sleep, but then I remembered one thing that a prophet said was more important than sleep. With my head on my pillow and my eyes closed, I reasoned to myself that I had already done a little bit of scripture study, in a sense. I had just read and blogged about one or two verses of scripture, hadn't I? Wasn't that enough? In response, the Spirit asked me whether that I wanted that spirit - the spirit of weariness, of "I've already done enough" - to continue to control me in the afterlife.

Last night, I blogged about Captain Moroni still being Captain Moroni after he died, and how that was pretty cool. The flip-side of that message is that when I die, I'm still going to be the same person I am now. If that's not something I'm okay with, I had better change myself now.

I know that, in the afterlife, there will be opportunities for growth and improvement, but I'm not sure how easily that change will come. And why wait? If the way you are now isn't the way you would like to remain forever, why not start making the desired changes today?

Last night, I had the opportunity to be lazy or to put in a little bit of extra effort to study the scriptures, and I'm glad to say that I made the right choice. I can't remember hardly anything that I had read, but I remember that I chose to read it. It takes far more than one act to overcome a habit of procrastination and laziness, but that one act was a step in the right direction, and the more frequently we make decisions based on how we'd like to be, the sooner we'll become our ideal selves. It's not going to happen overnight, and not even dying is going to bring about the changes we want to see in ourselves, but every time we make a good decision, especially when it's difficult, we change ourselves for the better.

There are many things that I'd like to change about myself, but to be brief and vague, I'd like to be more righteous. It isn't always easy to choose the right, but the more I do it, the more I'll become the person I want to be, and that makes it worth the extra effort.

Present Tense

In my old, paper version of the Book of Mormon, the chapter heading of Alma Chapter 48 says that Captain Moroni "rejoiced in liberty and freedom and was a mighty man of God." When I read this in our family scripture study this evening, my mom informed me that the digital version says that he "rejoices in liberty and freedom and is a mighty man of God" (emphasis added). When I thought about this, I was struck with this truth - Yes, Captain Moroni was "a mighty man of God," and he still is. (Never mind that the rest of the chapter heading, including the part about Amalickiah inciting the Lamanites against the Nephites, is also written in present tense. That's not important right now.)

This thought reminds me of Alma 34:34 and of the concept of eternal progression. Alma 34:34 says that "that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world." That is, when we die, we'll still be the same person that we were at the time of our death. Captain Moroni was a strong follower of God during his life. I assume that he remained a strong follower of God up to the time of his death. And, judging by the chapter heading of Alma 48, I would suppose that he remained a strong follower of God even after his death, and remains so to this day. It's not that he was a good man, but isn't anymore, it's that he was a good man, and still is.

It's hard to imagine Captain Moroni still being "around" today, but if a soul is immortal, I guess he must be. Still, it's hard to imagine him as still being Captain Moroni. I would have thought that death was the quintessential life-changing experience. Surely, we would change during our crossing over, but maybe we change less than I thought. Maybe we don't change at all. Do you think Captain Moroni still gets angry as much as he used to? It's hard to say. Maybe as part of our eternal progression, we can lose the negative aspects of our personalities without losing the positive ones, thus becoming better people while still being us.

I think a part of why I think this is a strange concept is that I don't understand how death wouldn't change us, when people in mortality change every day. Maybe change is more difficult in the afterlife? Or maybe, in the afterlife, we see more clearly what parts of ourselves do and do not need to change. I'll have to look into this later.

In the meantime, the moral I want to take from this message is to endure to the end, to keep on keeping on, and to keep all of my good attributes as well as I can. Being a mighty man of God is part of what made Captain Moroni a good role-model. It's good to hear that he hasn't lost that attribute, even after all these years. He is still a mighty man of God, as he once had been. I hope that I become a mighty man of God and that I can keep that attribute literally forever.

Prepare for Your Miracle

As many of you know, my home State of California is currently experiencing a drought. As such, we've been preying for rain regularly for several weeks, and this morning, it looked as though we might get some. I was doubtful, however, so I almost went out in my usual, light, non-rain-resistant jacket, expecting the clouds to clear without much rainfall (which is ultimately what happened, but that's beside the point). As I was getting ready to leave in my non-rain-resistant jacket, the thought came to my mind that I should wear my less comfortable, rain-resistant jacket, for multiple reasons.

First, just in case. It looked like it might rain, and it couldn't hurt to be prepared in case it did. But more than that, if you pray for a miracle, you shouldn't put yourself into a position where it would be a bad thing for you if God answered your prayer. God is good at turning misfortune into miracles, but only a human would be foolish enough to turn a miracle into misfortune. If you pray for rain, don't put yourself into a position where it would become a bad thing if you got some.

Also, leaving the house unprepared for rain after having prayed for rain shows a certain lack of faith. Yes, it's completely up to God whether He answers our prayers affirmatively, and what we ask for may not ultimately be in our best interest, so God does sometimes withhold they blessings for which we pray. Yet, God is also a generous and loving God, so we shouldn't be too terribly surprised if He gives us the blessings we ask for. If we pray for rain, and then look up and see clouds, we shouldn't be too awfully shocked if it rained that day. It didn't, but I shouldn't have been surprised if it did.

In the end, I chose to wear my rain jacket, and it did sprinkle a little bit in the morning. It wasn't quite the rain that we needed, but it was enough to make me glad that I had heeded the prompting to grab my jacket. I plan to wear, or at least carry, my rain jacket tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, so just in case God decides to surprise us with the rain we've been praying for, I'll be prepared to be out in it.

Scripture Study - More Important Than...

Continuing on with Elder Scott's talk, I'd like to share something he said about studying the scriptures.

Don’t yield to Satan’s lie that you don’t have time to study the scriptures. Choose to take time to study them. Feasting on the word of God each day is more important than sleep, school, work, television shows, video games, or social media. You may need to reorganize your priorities to provide time for the study of the word of God. If so, do it!

We are all busy - some of us more so than others. We all have a terrible number of things to get done. And sometimes, it seems that scripture study ends up pretty low on our list of things to do. It's not that we don't think scripture study is important. It's that there are other things that we need to do first. We need to get a project done for work, or we need to write an essay for school, or we need to get some sleep before we collapse. It's not that we consider scripture study to be a low priority; we just have other priorities that are higher.

But Elder Scott reminded us that if we don't have time to study the scriptures, it's because we're spending too much time doing for other things. I think we can all agree that TV, video games, and social media are less important than scripture study, but that hypothetical belief in relative levels of priorities isn't always reflected in how we spend our time. And we know that scripture study is important, but so are school, work, and sleep. Is Elder Scott really saying that we should put school, work, and sleep on the back burner for a few minutes (probably even longer than a few minutes), to read the scriptures?

Well, yes. The scriptures are one of the best sources for messages from God. He communicates with us through the scriptures. If He has a message for us, it's probably in there somewhere. Certainly His Spirit is in the scriptures, and gaining the Spirit can help us with everything else. We may need to sacrifice some time, and even some sleep, to study the scriptures, but according to prophetic counsel, if that's what it takes, we should do it. It's not always going to be convenient. It may sometimes be unpleasant, or even risky, to put scripture study above work, sleep, and school, but a prophet of God has counseled us that that's what we should do.

Apparently, scripture study is pretty important - at least more important than a lot of other things we could be doing instead.