The Logic of Going "All In"

Ever since Elder Sabin gave his talk, I knew I was going to have to write this blog post. Some years ago, I thought about the logic of being committed to one's religion, even if it's not "the right one." There are many good churches, and some are better than others. Theoretically, a person would do well to leave their church if they found a better one, but it can be difficult to evaluate churches, and conversion may not be worth the risk. If a person is born into a good church, and they convert to a better one, that's good, but if they accidentally convert to a church that's not as good, that would be a step backward for them.

Meanwhile, God judges people according to the light and knowledge they have, so if they continue in the light they have and remain faithful to the church they were born into, they'll probably fare fairly well in the afterlife. Of course, if they happen upon a church that is clearly better than the one they already follow, they should convert, but if the church they're in and the church they could convert to seem equally good, it's probably wiser for them to stay where they are.

Simply put, if a person is born into a good church, and they are faithful to it, that's a good thing. If they convert to a better church, that's better, but if they convert to a lesser church, that's worse. In some cases, the potential benefits of conversion are offset by the risks. And, of course, if a person is born into the right church, the true church, and they convert away from it, that's pretty bad.

I am certain that my church is a good church, and I have reason to believe that it's the right one, so for me to convert to any other church would be a pretty big risk. Instead, it would make sense for me to be as faithful to my beliefs as I can be, so if my church happens not to be the right one, at least I'll have been faithful to a good one.

This is, obviously, not the best reason to live one's religion, especially when one encounters a religion that may be better than the one they currently follow. I expect that God wants us to prayerfully explore all our options and to make adjustments when prompted to. But, in the absence of churches that seem and feel better than the one we currently follow it, we would do well to follow our church's teachings as far as they can take us. It may not be the best path, if our church isn't the right one, but at least we'll still have made some spiritual progress on the path God placed us on.

"All In"

The next Conference talk to blog about is titled "Stand Up Inside and Be All In," and I have to admit, this is something I struggle with. I don't play Poker, yet even I know that "all in" is a huge commitment. Going "all in" means that you're betting everything on this, and as a person who feels conservative in most senses of the word, I'm not sure I'm willing to make that bet. I'm young, but I've been around the block enough times to know that I should take just about everything with a grain of salt and I shouldn't be too sure about what I think I know. Of course, that also means that I shouldn't be too sure about the skepticism that says that I shouldn't be too sure about things, but I don't want to confuse myself; I'm just trying to be careful.

When a person goes "all in" at a poker table, they run the risk that they will lose every chip they've placed on that table. They could lose all of the money they've bet on the outcome of that game. Hopefully, that person will have been wise enough to not put too much money on the table, so they can, theoretically, afford to take that kind of a risk, but when we're talking about religion, there's a lot more at stake than money.

When one goes "all in" in a religion, they are essentially betting the welfare of their immortal soul on the odds that their religion is the right one, and with the hundreds, if not thousands of religions that exist in the world today, they can't all be "the right one." Some people have bet their souls on religions that are wrong, and that probably didn't go too well for them, and I don't want that to happen to me.

I don't want to bet my soul on the truthfulness of any religion. The stakes are just too high. Even if I'm pretty darn sure my religion is "the right one," and I am, and even if I'm almost 100% certain that my religion is, at the very least, a good religion, and I certainly am, there are just too many chips on the table for me to bet them all based on my assessment of the goodness and truthfulness of any given religion. It's not that I don't trust my religion enough, it's that I don't trust my assessment of my religion enough. It's not that I'm worried that the church may be wrong, it's that I'm worried that I may be wrong about the church being right. I am sure that my church is a good one; I'm just not sure that my confidence is sure enough to bet on.

That said, I really have no choice. I think that, even in the face of uncertainty, going "all in" in one's religion is a logical choice, for reasons that I plan to go into tomorrow. But, logical or not, betting one's soul on anything is ridiculously high stakes, and I just wanted to take a moment to appreciate that. Choosing a religion and deciding to go "all in" in it is a huge gamble. Our eternal welfare is at stake. I don't want to risk suffering an eternity in hell because I pledged myself to the wrong religion. I am not saying that Mormonism is the wrong religion; in fact, I think it's the right one. What I am saying is that, when souls and eternity are on the line, caution is warranted, and whenever the stakes are this high, one should think very carefully before going "all in."

Comprehending the Inexpressible

In his most recent General Conference talk, Songs Sung and Unsung, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland focused on one particular line of the hymn "There is Sunshine in My Soul Today." The line he chose to emphasize was "And Jesus listening can hear the songs I cannot sing." In doing so, Elder Holland took a very different interpretation of this lyric than I typically do. When I hear that line and think of why we may not always be able to sing such songs, the reason I most frequently turn to is that we simply may not have the words to express what we feel.

Prayers are often conducted verbally, by saying or at least thinking words, but that's not the only way to pray. Verbal prayers are somewhat limited by the words we know and how we can use them. Fortunately, God doesn't need to hear our words to understand our thoughts. God can enter into our hearts directly and deeply understand our feelings, even when we don't know how to describe them. Sometimes, we cannot sing the songs of our hearts because we don't have the right words, but that's not a problem for God. He knows what's in our hearts, whether we know how to describe it or not.

I am thankful for God's understanding. There have been many times when I simply started a prayer and opened up my heart to God, not thinking any particular words, just feeling, and after those prayers, I knew that God knew how I felt. We don't have to know how to talk about our feelings or how to articulate our thoughts. I am confident that God can hear and comprehend our prayers, even when we can't find the right words to say.

All Is God's

Before I move on from the topic of consecration, I want to expound briefly on something I touched on in the first of my recent blog posts about consecration. The idea is that "because the earth was created by Jesus Christ under the direction of Heavenly Father, everything on the earth belongs to them." It doesn't make sense to become too attached to what's "ours" because it's not really ours at all. God owns the Earth and everything on it. He created it. And even the things we create, we make out of things He gave us. So, when God asks us to give something up, we should try to remember that it was never really ours in the first place, and it was a blessing that God let us borrow it at all. Of course, we will still have the tendency to want to get and keep things, but deep down, we know that we won't be able to keep anything forever anyway, so it's a much better idea to use the things we have to do some good while we can. Possessions are temporary, but the rewards for using them for good are eternal.

Inertia Confirmed

I did a little bit of study on the topic of desire the other day, and I came across this little gem in a talk by Elder Neal A. Maxwell titled “According to the Desire of [Our] Hearts”:

Each assertion of a righteous desire, each act of service, and each act of worship, however small and incremental, adds to our spiritual momentum. Like Newton’s Second Law, there is a transmitting of acceleration as well as a contagiousness associated with even the small acts of goodness.

This reminded me of one of my earlier blog posts about spiritual inertia, in which I said approximately the same thing:

Every right decision we make gives us a little push in the right direction, making it easier to make good decisions in the future. . . . Good decisions, even small ones, . . . help us build up powerful, positive, spiritual momentum.

I don't know if I had read Elder Maxwell's talk before writing that blog post. In fact, I doubt I had. But I'm confident that I was under the influence of the Holy Ghost as I wrote it, so it doesn't really surprise me that the ideas that came to my mind had also come to another inspired person's mind seventeen years prior. The Holy Ghost shares truths that are eternal, including truths about eternal principles, which apparently include the principle of spiritual momentum.

When we listen to the Holy Ghost, He teaches us the same truths and principles He teaches the prophets and inspires them to share. When we are in tune with the Spirit, and feel Him reveal something to us or confirm the truth or something we say or hear or read, then we can know that it's just as true as if a prophet had said it, or even God Himself. The Holy Ghost is God's messenger. When we learn something through the Holy Ghost, or when He confirms something we learned elsewhere, we can be certain that the message is true and from God.

However, there is one slight caveat I want to add to this blog post before I post it: It can sometimes be difficult to feel and recognize the Spirit, and as we seek revelation, we may mistake a lack of a response for a positive response, or may otherwise mistake what the Holy Ghost was trying to teach us. This is why we should try to confirm our impressions by checking them against the truths taught in the scriptures and by the prophets. Just because something feels true, we shouldn't automatically accept it as gospel truth.

The good news is that there have been a lot of prophets and apostles, and they've shared a lot of truths over the centuries. If the Holy Ghost teaches you something, a modern-day or ancient prophet or apostle probably taught it too. That's what I learned a day or two ago, when I discovered that the Holy Ghost had taught Elder Maxwell the same principle He had taught me. God shares truths through His prophets and apostles, but He also shares them through the Holy Spirit. We can learn truths by reading and listening to the words of the prophets, but if we're listening to the Spirit also, it shouldn't be too surprising if God shares some truths with us directly.

The Consecration Game

Each lesson in the Primary manual comes with an "Attention Activity," something to grab the children's interest and point it toward the subject of the lesson. The Attention Activity for the consecration lesson is to play a game called "I Don't Need It - Would You Like It?" which involves giving each child a list of things they need, and then having them draw a scrap of paper out of a hat. The scrap of paper will have a word on it, matching one of the items on their list. The child will cross that item of their list, then give the next child a turn to draw a word out of the hat. If, at any time, a child draws a word they already have crossed out, they say "I don't need it. Do you want it?" and offer the item to the next child. If they don't have that word crossed out yet, they cross it out. If they already had it crossed out, they offer it to the next child, and so on. This continues until each child has crossed out every item on their list.

I like this game, but I think we can improve upon it. I like the idea of having a game simulate the concepts of the Law of Consecration, and I've had an idea for a game that may simulate consecration a little better. When the early saints adopted the Law of Consecration, they each already had some resources, which they consecrated to the church, and the Bishop then distributed what was needed to those who needed it. Perhaps another way to play this game would be to have each child start with a list of the things they needed and with a few scraps of paper. One at a time, each child would go to the "Bishop," their teacher (me), and I would ask them "What do you have?" and "What do you need?" If a child has scraps of paper they don't need, those scraps go into the storehouse (on the table). If they need scraps they don't have, they will be given what they need from out of the storehouse, assuming that the storehouse has what they need.

I think that each list of needs should be different, and each child should be given a different number of randomly-selected scraps of paper. Some children won't have any scraps that they don't need, and some children will have all the scraps they need, and then some. This will be much like life, because each person and each family has different needs, and some people simply have more than others. Some children will receive more scraps of paper from the storehouse than they contribute, and other children will contribute more to the storehouse than they receive, but in the end, every child will end up with what they need.

From there, I can talk about how each family of the early saints went to the Bishop with what they had, described their needs, and usually left with what they needed, leaving any excess behind. Anything they had and didn't need would be stored, in case somebody else needed it and didn't have it. By sharing what they had extra and making their needs known to the Bishop, each family was able to share with the others in a way that everyone got what they needed.

I'll have to make sure the lists of needs and the scraps of paper match up, so everyone's needs can be met with the scraps of paper I bring. I'll also want to try to set up certain scenarios, like some children having nothing they can contribute in excess to what they need and some children having all they need and more, so we can get a variety of experiences with contributing and receiving. I may just make sure some children have more than others at the start, so such experiences are likely to happen, though not guaranteed.

I'll work out the system further later, but I like what I've got so far. I think this will be an interesting activity and that it'll help the children understand what the Law of Consecration is and what the early saints did to make it work, and it'll hopefully be even more memorable as each child experiences this consecration simulation first-hand.

Sharing

It may be too simplistic, but I might describe the Law of Consecration as being like sharing. The Law of Consecration is kind of like sharing in that we are sharing what we have with others, though, when we share, we usually don't share everything we have, and we usually know exactly whom we're sharing with. In the Law of Consecration, we are asked to consecrate everything to the Lord, and then He distributes everything back out to everyone who needs anything. I may not want to share something with someone, but under the Law of Consecration, that's not my call.

I suppose, if I were more righteous, if I cared more about other people, if I had more charity, I might be more willing to share what I have with others, and if I had an eternal perspective, I might not feel so much of an attachment to the material objects I consider "mine."

Of course, another point that's probably important to make is that nothing on earth is really "ours." Everything we have is given to us as a gift from God, and most of it is just on loan. We get to keep our bodies (or rather, God will give us new bodies after these ones have been destroyed), but every other physical thing in this world is only borrowed. God made the Earth and shared it with us so we could have experiences on it and then return home, not so we could stay here with all "our" stuff.

In a sense, we are already sharing everything - we're just not doing it very well. We all share this one Earth and everything on it, but we could stand to share it more evenly, more generously, and more fairly. That, in a nutshell, as it could be explained to eight- and nine-year-olds, is what the Law of Consecration is: Everyone sharing everything with everyone else. Of course, the actual system is bound to be far more complicated than that, but I think that, for the sake of explanation, "sharing" is close enough to the Law of Consecration to serve as a suitable model, at least for Primary kids.