Being Ourselves with the Lord

Last year I was at a dinner with some people I know and love, and I left early. I said goodbye, but rather than walk out immediately, I sat down in the hallway, out of sight, to put my shoes on. I could still hear the conversation around the table after I left. I won’t say what they talked about, but it was fairly obvious to me that my absence had changed the tenor of the conversation. They felt freer to discuss certain things in my absence. It hurt to know that these people I loved did not feel they could be themselves around me.

I wonder if Jesus feels the same way about our attitudes toward Him. How would our behavior change if He were to arrive? Perhaps we would sit up straighter, act more respectfully, speak more quietly, shove various magazines under the rug, change the channel on the t.v., and so on. Would we be frightened and tempted to flee? If we are happy and laughing and excited and joking and fascinated before Jesus walks in the room, and we shut down and clam up after He walks into the room, the nonverbal message is clear: Go away. (Of course none of us would SAY that, or even intentionally mean it, but how else can you interpret such behavior?) Even if we are grateful to the Lord for His blessings, many of us inadvertently project the attitude of, "I am more comfortable with You at a distance." When Jesus cast the legion of devils out of the man at Gadara, the entire village asked Jesus to go away. They preferred the company of a man possessed with devils to One who could heal him.

Little children don’t feel shame or embarrassment readily. They run into the living room without clothes, inform everyone about the condition of their toys, and excitedly share information about everything else going on inside them, from their emotions to their bowels. I wonder if this is part of the reason that Jesus preferred their company—they hid nothing from Him; they could just be themselves in His presence. Jesus shouted about this quality when He recognized it in an adult: "Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" (John 1:47). Is it that rare in adults? Do we usually lose our full compliment of openness after childhood ends?

We adults tend to hide our true selves behind a front. The Lord created Adam and Eve naked, but Satan tried to get them to hide from the Lord. This is an irony, since no one can hide anything from Him; He is omniscient. It is as though He is standing next to each one of us, watching our days unfold, second by second, hour by hour. "...when we undertake to cover our sins...the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man" (D&C 121:37). We even hide our sins from ourselves, sweeping them from our consciousness with raucous entertainment or anything else that can drown out the voice of the Spirit.

It is interesting that we run away from the Being who has our best interest at heart, and prefer the company of less benevolent people. We are frightened of the One who will save us. If He were to walk into the room with us, we would probably try to be perfect and dignified and respectable, to hide our flaws. But He knows them better than we do. It seems He would rather discuss those with us, to extricate them from us, rather than leave them festering in the dark. (Fungus and sin grow best in darkness.) If we come to Him, He will show us our weakness. It is difficult to discuss our flaws openly, but He gave them to us in the first place (see Ether 12:27). Toes that can be stubbed, brains that forget, organs gushing with heavy passions under which we stagger; He built everything. He sees and hears all our thoughts as though we were dictating them aloud, including all the anger, jealousy, rebellion, depression, and unrighteous desires. As President Eyring noted this General Conference, we can only hide the Lord from ourselves; we cannot hide ourselves from Him.

Jesus invited all sinners to come to Him, and He accepted their company on condition that they repented (“go and sin no more” to the woman taken in adultery; He also accepted the attention of the sinful woman who anointed His head and feet at dinner). But His most cutting condemnations were reserved for those whom He called “hypocrites,” literally “stage actors” in Greek. Isaiah foretold that Jesus would have “no beauty that we should desire him.” Externally, the Pharisees of His day were “whited sepulchers,” but internally they were “full of dead men’s bones.” They made an art of whitewashing their cracks and flaws. It is telling that not one man who brought the woman taken in adultery felt qualified to stone her after Jesus told them to do so if they had no sin. Jesus is completely qualified to condemn us for our sins because He is sinless, yet He is more patient and forgiving than anyone.

William Tyndale gives us Faith personified as a woman: “Faith, when she prayeth, setteth not her good deeds before her, saying, ‘Lord, for my good deeds do this or that;’ nor bargaineth with God, saying, ‘Lord, grant me this, or do this or that, and I will do this or that for thee;’...But she setteth her infirmities and her lack before her face, and God’s promises, saying, ‘Lord, for thy mercy and truth, which thou hast sworn, be merciful unto me, and pluck me out of this prison and out of this hell, and loose the bonds of Satan, and give me power to glorify thy name.’ Faith therefore justifieth in the heart, and before God; and the deeds justify outwardly before the world, that is, testify only before men, what we are inwardly before God.” I hope God laughs at our demanding petulance and willingness to bargain with Him, as though He did not already own the things we offer. I think the Lord wants us to come to him, privately, with our dirt showing (not to air our dirty laundry, but to come to Christ with it so He can clean us). No performance on our part can fool Him (the way we try to fool each other). We must be open, authentic, genuine, and sincere with the Lord.

Prayers offered in this blank and sincere way feel better, and I have discovered they are answered more readily. It is "counted evil unto a man, if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such" (Moroni 7:9). On the other hand, Zenos says, "And thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity; and it is because of thy Son that thou hast been thus merciful unto me, therefore I will cry unto thee in all mine afflictions, for in thee is my joy; for thou hast turned thy judgments away from me, because of thy Son" (Alma 33:11).

My father once told me that God sees everything, all the horrible things that people are doing everywhere, and that He was certainly not surprised by anything I had ever done. Rather than thinking of getting perfect on our own, and then going to God, our repentance should involve Him intimately from the beginning. (We use the phrase "repentance process" as though all men everywhere had not been commanded to repent all the time, from the moment of accountability to death. There is no end to the process, unless we want to stop progressing.) We can discuss all the details with Him, and Jesus will succor us (literally "run to help" us) in our infirmities.

Those who come to Jesus, with great faith, great love for Him, great submission and humility before Him, and do the things He asks, will be blessed with a clean record in heaven, strength to do the impossible, and a clean heart filled with righteous desires on earth. Rather than hide God from ourselves with denial and pretense and tinsel cosmetics, let's come to Him as we are.

Backdoor Blessings

We are commanded to "seek," "ask," and "knock;" to cry over our fields and families; to ask the Lord that we may receive the desires of our hearts. I agree with and practice all of that. But a different paradigm of receiving blessings has recently opened to my mind, and I would like to talk about it.

Our final reward will come to us "without compulsory means" (D&C 121:46). So many blessings come to us while we are otherwise engaged, not seeking them. The Midrash tells a story of Abraham, who was still denied children through his beloved Sarah. He was old and feeling ill at the time, but it was a hot day, and so he sent his faithful servant out into the inferno of the desert to look for wanderers who might be in peril. His servant found no one. He sent him out again, and went himself to look for anyone who might be in danger. He found no one, but when he got back to his tent, three heavenly visitors were there. One of the messengers then promised Abraham that he and Sarah would have a son, Isaac. Abraham's greatest desire was granted to him while he was otherwise engaged, not concerning himself with his own desires. While this account is not in the scriptures, it is true to life. Many blessings come when they are least expected.

Zachariah was performing his priestly duty in the Temple when the angel Gabriel appeared and declared that he and Elizabeth would be healed of their infertility and have a son, who grew up to be John the Baptist.

Rebekah probably was not looking for a husband when she began hauling hundreds of gallons of water to refresh the camels of Abraham's servant, but that act was a sign to him that she was meant for Isaac. Rachel was herding sheep the day Jacob saw her coming to the well—not exactly walking the red carpet, but she still attracted a suitor.

This kind of surprise blessing is common in life. Yet many of the things we pine for most fervently fail to materialize. I wonder if we can become so preoccupied and frantic with what we want that we stumble over our own feet in the attempt to get it. "The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear" (C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed). Can we drive off longed-for blessings by grasping at them too frantically?

Agency is the medium in which the plan of salvation is played out. It governs all interactions between intelligent entities. Compulsion is reviled by the plan, only applied when people choose their way into damnation. If we could be compelled to be loyal, our loyalty would be empty. One preacher expressed concern that Latter-day Saint preoccupation with agency, freedom to choose, might engender pride. I respond that without freedom to choose, there is no authentic humility. If we could not choose to rebel, our choice to be obedient would be as meaningless as a valentine from a robot. Yes, we can be compelled to be humble, but the willing humility is clearly preferred (see Alma 32).

We are commanded to love God first and foremost. I wonder if clutching frantically at a particular wish can make it a false god in our hearts. Our love of the thing surpasses our love for God; why should He provide us an idol? Abraham's encounter is instructive; he was deeply concerned with the well-being of his fellow man—a hypothetical fellow man, someone who might be lost in the burning wasteland, and he went seeking to rescue anyone who might be in danger. In the process of turning his heart outward, away from his own desires, the Lord saw fit to bless him with his greatest desire of all, when he was not even concerned about it. It was apparent that his hopes were not impairing his ability or willingness to serve; what harm could granting him his hopes do? On the other hand, my experience has been that setting up an idol in the heart prompts the Lord to slate it for destruction.

Perhaps griping or complaining about the absence of a particular blessing from God puts a crimp in our relationship with Him so that we cannot appropriately receive it. Our anxious clamoring might be tantamount to an unbridled passion. Would the Lord be guilty of promoting our bad attitudes and selfishness to grant such a wish? "Thy will, not mine," is the attitude we are supposed to be fostering. And saying those words without the heart behind them is not going to fool the Lord into giving us what we really want. There is no way to fake pure motives. (1Ne. 3:7 gets a lot of airtime; how often do we quote the verse before: "Therefore go, my son, and thou shalt be favored of the Lord, because thou hast not murmured.")

Consider Alma's people in captivity. They wanted deliverance as their greatest desire: "And Alma and his people...did pour out their hearts to him; and he did know the thoughts of their hearts."

But God does not deliver them immediately:

"And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage. And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions."

The next verses are valuable in teaching us why the Lord puts us through trials, and why He lets us out of them:

"And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord. And it came to pass that so great was their faith and their patience that the voice of the Lord came unto them again, saying: Be of good comfort, for on the morrow I will deliver you out of bondage" (Mosiah 24:12-16).

They were cheerful, patient, submissive, and had great faith, even though they were in bondage, the opposite of the thing they desired. The Lord did not deliver them to make them happy; He delivered them after they learned to be happy without the thing they wanted most. Or, after they showed that His promise of deliverance was sufficient to make them happy, regardless of their circumstances.

This paradox may be at the heart of why we do not receive some blessings. Grateful kids are easy to bless—who wants to be generous to jealous, impatient, whiny kids? "Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye are little children, and ye have not as yet understood how great blessings the Father hath in his own hands and prepared for you; And ye cannot bear all things now; nevertheless, be of good cheer, for I will lead you along. The kingdom is yours and the blessings thereof are yours, and the riches of eternity are yours. And he who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious; and the things of this earth shall be added unto him, even an hundred fold, yea, more" (D&C 78:17-19).

Choose One, Not Both

Today the stated goal of American culture is to "have it all." We want to forgo the inconvenient law of the harvest, to have our cake and eat it too. We want to sacrifice nothing. But we cannot have everything, even if we have the money, because we are mortal. Finite time makes this life the perfect test—we can choose only one thing at a time, and time is limited.

"This puts us in the position of the fairy-tale hero who is introduced into a cave of incredible treasures and permitted to choose from the heap whatever gem he wants—but only one. What a delightful situation! I can think of anything I want to—absolutely anything!—with this provision: that when I choose to focus my attention on one object, all other objects drop into the background. I am only permitted to think of one thing at a time; that is the one rule of the game" (Hugh Nibley, Zeal Without Knowledge). We can only choose one thing to love, one thing to think of, one thing to prize at a time. The one we choose shows who we really are.

Jesus plead for some other way than what He was going through in Gethsemane: "For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men" (D&C 19:16-19).

Jesus describes the main source of the agony (though betrayal, abandonment by friends and derision by His own people, and physical tortures also accompanied it): "Wherefore, I command you again to repent, lest I humble you with my almighty power; and that you confess your sins, lest you suffer these punishments of which I have spoken, of which in the smallest, yea, even in the least degree you have tasted at the time I withdrew my Spirit." (Verse 20, emphasis added).

It was the deliberate withdrawal of the Spirit that caused His unimaginable agony. Heavenly Father withdrew the light, His radiating power, "...the light which shineth, which giveth you light...through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings; Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space—The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things" (D&C 88:11-13). Jesus was in outer darkness in Gethsemane, and again on the cross according to Brigham Young. Jesus felt the punishments we would have felt if we were sent to outer darkness to suffer for our own sins. All of them.

When we make unrighteous decisions we lose that same light. This loss is proportional to the degree of wickedness of our behavior, and the rebellion in our hearts.

Most of the time, our bodies and spirits can be comfortable simultaneously. Sometimes, however, the Lord asks us to choose one or the other.

The rich young ruler is an example of one who was asked to make this choice. Jesus tailored a commandment to his needs. Jesus asked him about the commandments he was keeping. But then he showed the man that he was breaking the first commandment—he loved his wealth and property more than God. Jesus proved it to him by asking him to surrender his riches, and the young man stumbled over his own heart. He went away sorrowing because he lost the Spirit. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, I will impart unto you of my Spirit, which shall enlighten your mind, which shall fill your soul with joy..." (D&C 11:13). Wealth in and of itself is not bad; but in this instance, this young man was asked to choose between having the Spirit and having his wealth, his carnal security and status. The rich young man came unto Jesus (slid up to him on his knees). Instead of giving him a pass, the Lord brought him to a crisis, a dilemma, and forced him to tip his hand and show what he was really made of, what he actually valued. "And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness..." (Ether 12:27).

Job is forcibly stripped of all his prestige and possessions, yet will not forsake the Lord. Lying in a pile of rags and ashes, he laments his outward discomfort, yet his lengthy testimony shows that the Spirit is still burning brightly within him. Imagine them in their predicaments, side by side: the rich young ruler on one hand, and Job on the other. One in robes and rings, the other in rags. Both are sorrowing; which one would you rather be, given the choice? Would you rather have a comfortable body and an uncomfortable spirit, or an uncomfortable body and a comfortable spirit? Which do you shield from harm, your five senses, or your conscience? I would rather be covered in ashes and have a clean conscience.

We are natives of heaven, a place that enjoys the full glory of God. This earth has much that is good and beautiful, but none of it is worth losing the slender thread of light that connects us with heaven—the Spirit. We no longer enjoy a fullness of our premortal glory, but we can enjoy a portion of it. Any loss in this area is painful. C. S. Lewis explains it with characteristic clarity and wit: "God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there" (Mere Christianity, p. 54).

Ironically, when we choose to comfort our bodies at the expense of receiving light, the loss of that light which animates our whole body, spirit, and mind makes food less appealing, makes colors drab, makes sleep unquiet, makes vistas and sunsets dull, makes lemons and chocolate unsatisfying; loss of light essentially robs life of its joy. Everything becomes a gray and brown homogeneous mish-mash. The very things for which we abandoned the Spirit are diminished and muted by the Spirit's absence. No physical stimulus quite succeeds at drowning out the dull, cold sting of guilt.

Even worse, when we make one concession to evil by refusing to sacrifice what the Lord asks, we inevitably make other concessions to sin as well: "Therefore, they must needs be chastened and tried, even as Abraham, who was commanded to offer up his only son. For all those who will not endure chastening, but deny me, cannot be sanctified" (D&C 101: 4-5). "The devil has no power over us only as we permit him; the moment we revolt at anything which comes from God, the devil takes power" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 181). Whenever we rebel at anything that comes from God, even the uncomfortable sacrifices, the adversary takes power. (I have noticed that the first thing he persuades those under his influence to do is damage their bodies, whether by drugs, alcohol, deafening music, tattoos and piercings, overeating, a messed up sleep schedule, or simply idling away our lives till it is time to die, to the exclusion of real living. The more we waste time, or damage our health, the less time we have to repent. Conversely, those who obey the Lord are typically preserved in their health, simply by avoiding those things forbidden by God, and so the test and opportunities for repentance are prolonged and multiplied.)

If we are going to suffer either way—if we are all going to be "tried even as Abraham"—then we might as well take the plunge, and gag down the nasty medicine of sacrifice. There is something satisfying about watching flames consume what is on the altar; the Lord can restore anything, as he did with Job. Bodies can be resurrected, lands redeemed, and crops continue to grow year after year. Flecks of gold dust can be sifted and melted and forged into rings and crowns.

I am acutely aware of the inadequacy of each person, including myself, when it comes to giving up our most prized possession at the Lord's request. I do not want to give the impression that the Lord is a cosmic bully, a spoil-sport who takes away our lunch money and destroys our joys. He will not ask more of us than we are able to give (see 1Ne. 3:7). But He will test us, and to think otherwise is to invent a fake, more convenient Lord. Listen to the Brother of Jared's plea: "Now behold, O Lord, and do not be angry with thy servant because of his weakness before thee; for we know that thou art holy and dwellest in the heavens, and that we are unworthy before thee; because of the fall our natures have become evil continually; nevertheless, O Lord, thou hast given us a commandment that we must call upon thee, that from thee we may receive according to our desires. And I know, O Lord, that thou hast all power, and can do whatsoever thou wilt for the benefit of man..." (Ether 3:2,4). We are not fooling anyone; the Lord knows just how pathetic we are in the face of certain prospects and burdens.

Yet He is anxiously engaged in the work of getting us all on task, repenting day and night. That tells me that there is good reason for each of us to hope. Yes, sacrifice is intimidating, but the Lord is merciful and patient with us, watching while we choose whether to obey Him.

Another oft-overlooked fact is that the Lord owns everything already. He does not need the things we part with; rather, He needs us to show ("witness" in the sacrament prayers) that our hearts really do belong to Him instead of possessions.

A comforting facet of sacrificing to the Lord is that He gives us back more than we give. We cannot get the Lord in our debt. Lehi gave up his cozy den at Jerusalem in exchange for two whole continents. If our hearts are not right, the Lord will respect our agency, and we will go away sorrowing. But if we give Him what He asks of us, we will always get back more from the Lord than we surrendered.

Deny Not the Power of God

Joseph Smith went into the Sacred Grove to ask a question that had been asked by millions of believers before him: which of all the churches and creeds is right? The Lord's response sounds angry to me:

"I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: 'they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof'" (JS-H 1:19, emphasis added).

Ten years later, when Joseph is translating the Book of Mormon, the remedy for that situation becomes apparent in the words of Moroni, who brings us full circle:

"Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot" (Moroni 10:32-33, emphasis added).

Jesus complained to Joseph in the Sacred Grove that the ministers of the day uniformly rejected the ability of Jesus Christ to change our very natures, and the Book of Mormon is, among so many things, a manual that teaches the minimum qualifications we need in order to experience the "mighty change of heart" available to all (if only we know where to look). An anomaly is present in Moroni's words. If we are "perfect," how can anything be left to work on? Why does he indicate that there is room for improvement, namely, sanctification?

Perfect here must mean something other than flawless—it more likely means "keeping the whole law." No matter how we bring our behavior into alignment with God's will, it qualifies us as "perfect" in this context. But perfect behavior, whether through willpower ("denying ourselves of all ungodliness," quitting cold turkey, white-knuckling our way through temptations), or by the strengthening power of Christ to resist temptations ("be perfect in Christ"), is not the ultimate end for us—there is more. When we attain and maintain righteous behavior through the grace of Christ, and love God, and "deny not" that it is through grace that we are able to maintain our righteous behavior, THEN we have unrighteous desires weeded out of our hearts by God Himself, rather than managing our unrighteous desires.

The absence of this concept from the Christian world has led to two main schools of thought: denial of our fallen nature (hypocrisy, like the Pharisees whom the Savior called "whited sepulchers"), or denial of God's ability to change us, coupled with the corresponding idea that salvation must be possible without having evil desires weeded out of our hearts. The first idea involves hiding our sins and putting on an air of piety; the second involves a weird self-righteousness about having given up trying to change, a kind of pride in having realized that one is hopelessly flawed, a natural-born Sinner. Inducing feelings of guilt for sin is the main function of the Holy Ghost for each mindset. The first spends all day condemning sinners, and all night partying in secret; the second spends all day partying in public, lulled to sleep at night by the assurance that they are bound for heaven no matter what they do. The term "spiritual rebirth" (actually the "mighty change of heart") is watered down to refer to a moment of shouting and exuberance, accompanied by a heavenly get-out-of-jail-free card.

Of course, these mentalities bleed into each other, and I guess there is a spectrum, a continuum between them, and adherents can settle themselves anywhere in between the two flawed extremes.

[22 October 2012, Update: While knowledge about the power of Christ to change our hearts is muddled in the teachings of many religions, desperation drives many people to seek for this power in their own lives. When flaws and vices are no longer socially acceptable, or become destructive, many people look outside of organized religion for help. Here are the twelve steps of the AA program:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

These steps are drenched in humility, and require faith in "a Power," though unspecified. Compare this language to 3Ne. 9:20, or to Ether 12:27, and you will see abundant overlap and similarities. They may not know what to call it, but the authors and practitioners of these principles are unwittingly tapping the sanctifying power of the Atonement and receiving the grace of Christ, although they may not even know His name. It is like operating with a blindfold, not knowing exactly who is giving the help, or where that help is coming from. But God is no respecter of persons, and anyone who meets the qualifications in the above scriptures will also receive the promised blessings, even if they are only a preliminary form that precedes the permanence of the official stamp of ordinances. Those who come to God in faith, with broken hearts and contrite spirits, will receive grace, regardless of misunderstandings about who is on the other side of the veil working the miracle. This is attitude precedes salvation, but does not eliminate the need for water baptism and other ordinances.]

Jesus repeated the mantra of repentance, the need for changed behavior AND nature, throughout His mortal ministry. The four gospels are a litany of what to do and what not to do, one commandment after another. He intensifies the Decalogue, moving obedience into the mind and heart as well as hand, mouth, and foot. Jesus was giving us the what of the higher law in the New Testament; the Book of Mormon provides the clearest instructions about how. It teaches us exactly what we need to do to qualify for the change of nature necessary to clear the raised bar of the New Testament law. Hence Joseph's statement that we could get nearer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon than any other book.

I will try to concentrate the major themes here: repentance (changed behavior, seeing the world with a new view), humility (offering a broken heart and contrite spirit, submitting one's will to God's), faith in Christ, loving God with one's whole heart, coming to Christ with all these things, and receiving the ordinances of salvation (baptism, laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, etc.) are necessary precursors to that mighty change. Once we meet all these qualifications, we are able to experience a change of heart. One way to think of it is that we give our hearts to Christ, and He gives us His heart. But it must be our whole heart, not part. When we love anything more than Him, we are disqualified from experiencing a complete change of heart. (Joseph Smith also taught about a preliminary change that occurs in those who recognize the truth of the gospel, "seeing the kingdom," which leads them to repent and be baptized, "entering the kingdom.")

This is the essence of what had been lost from the earth. In the Grove, Joseph learned what was missing; the Book of Mormon restores that fundamental knowledge to the earth, and also has living, ordained ministers associated with it, who can perform the necessary ordinances. The first principles and ordinances of the gospel (faith in Christ, repentance, baptism, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost and subsequent rebirth, and enduring to the end) are the only way available for us to access the power of the Atonement to change our natures. How can we tell when the Atonement is active in us? When we feel the Holy Ghost. How can we tell when our natures have changed? When sins that used to "easily beset" us are no longer temptations; when we find ourselves responding with apathy to Satan's invitations to sin, and instead long for the things of God, things of truth, things that fill us with light and knowledge. Spiritual rebirth, this mighty change, is also accompanied by the activation of our dormant spiritual gifts, whatever they may be. We go from being "sifted like wheat" (mediocre, average, indistinguishable from the rest of struggling humanity, relying on the arm of the flesh, our own strength and wisdom) to being armed with the power of God, being led about by the Spirit, becoming the answer to prayers offered by those whose paths we cross. In other words, the Lord will use us in this state. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). When guided by the Spirit, we show up where we are needed, often not even knowing why we are guided there.

The Lord identified the root of Joseph's problem (as well as the world at large), and gave us the solutions through him. Instead of repackaging the dogma of no new revelations and apostate beliefs in a closed cannon, Joseph Smith carried a message of direct communication between God and ALL men, women, and children who would meet the qualifications:

"The best way to obtain truth and wisdom is not to ask from books, but to go to God in prayer, and obtain divine teaching" (History of the Church, 4:425). "God hath not revealed anything to Joseph, but what he will make known unto the Twelve, and even the least Saint may know all things as fast as he is able to bear them..."(Discourses of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 150-151). "...the things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out. Thy mind, O man! if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost heavens, and search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broad expanse of eternity—thou must commune with God" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 137). "A person may profit by noticing the first intimation of the spirit of revelation; for instance, when you feel pure intelligence flowing into you, it may give you sudden strokes of ideas, so that by noticing it, you may find it fulfilled the same day or soon; [that is,] those things that were presented unto your minds by the Spirit of God, will come to pass; and thus by learning the Spirit of God and understanding it, you may grow into the principle of revelation, until you become perfect in Christ Jesus" (History of the Church 3:381).

President Monson renewed that call to follow the Spirit and be used as instruments of God this last General Conference. ("...never...postpone a prompting [from the Spirit].")

I do not know of anyone else, or any other denomination, encouraging people to go to God for revelation. How could they control the results? How could they know people would have the same revelation? By contrast, Joseph insists that this is not only desirable, but necessary. Far from denying the power of God, he revels in it, and invites all to come and partake with him. Instead of consulting one's own wits, or a manual, we are encouraged to go directly (immediately! before we are even baptized) to the Source of light and truth. From the beginning of the process to the final day when we stand in God's presence, we are commanded to establish and strengthen ties of direct revelation from Him until we come safely home.

Birth, Bath, Burial, and Trajectory

(Here is yet another letter, written over a year ago, to the same friend/mentor. I post it here for my convenience. I tell him about having taught Elder's Quorum that day, and an additional symbolic meaning of baptism that had recently come to my attention—it symbolizes our trajectory through eternity, the plan of salvation. Additional thoughts added today are in brackets.)

As promised, here is the essence of my Elder's Quorum lesson:

I have only physically baptized one person in my entire life. She was a wealthy woman who felt an emptiness in her life, and had found the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to fill the emptiness. She told her online friends that she was "doing the Mormon thing."

My mission companion and I had been told that showing the baptismal font to the prospective convert was a good idea, so we took her to the part of the stake center where the font was housed.

As I parted the curtain that separated the font from the rest of the room, the lady I was going to baptize in it looked in over my shoulder. There was a spider crawling in it. A precocious young man darted in front of me, saw the spider, and declared, "Unholy water!" He left as quickly as he had arrived.

Our investigator expressed her apprehension at the thought of submitting to baptism. When we asked her what the source of her misgivings was, she declared that it was scary that "you drown people."

I grew up in the Church, had been baptized at eight years of age, and took the ordinance for granted—"I can't wait until I'm eight/for then I'll be baptized you see" goes the primary song. But to an objective observer, the idea of being immersed backwards in water seemed scary. It had never occurred to me that there is a risk involved in baptism. Being dipped backwards in water is a very compromising position. If the baptizer chose to, he could hold you under water and drown you.

After she was baptized, the lady we were teaching had a message for me to deliver to someone else, with me as her representative. As far as my ability to deliver a message on her behalf, she was not concerned. "I trust you," she said. That vote of confidence touched me, but only later did I see the connection to baptism. If you are being dipped backwards under water, you must have implicit trust in the one performing the ordinance.

Birth, bath, burial and resurrection, are all legitimate interpretations of the symbolism you can derive from baptism. There is another, broader meaning to the ordinance, one that recently came to my attention.

Baptism means to dunk, or immerse, but art and film depictions of the ordinance do not portray that small moment when the person being baptized is under the water. What is happening under there? The person being baptized and the one performing the ordinance stand together in the water, equals seeing the same light, hearing and smelling and breathing from the same air. But once below the surface, the one receiving the ordinance cannot breath. Hearing is distorted, smell and taste are impossible, touch is limited to the generic sensation of cool wetness, and sight is obscured at best, or absent when eyes shut in response to the water. All five senses are muffled and diminished in their effectiveness. Even our sense of up and down is confounded.

The words of the ordinance begin by naming the person to be baptized, but they also explain who the baptizer represents: "...in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost..." The entire Godhead is represented by one person.

Where did we begin, before the creation? We were in the presence of God. We enjoyed his light, his love, and our Elder Brother, Jesus Christ, was also there. Our perspective was from the top of a mountain which we had spent countless eons climbing, "receiving our first lessons" and subsequent ones from all-knowing Parents. (Can you imagine living with almighty, all-knowing beings and having less than a college education in philosophy and the sciences? I cannot. [I imagine the smartest mortal being a mental pygmy in comparison to anyone who had lived in the presence of God for millenia.])

Then a plan was presented, and it was so intimidating that one third of us opted not to go with it. What was the threat? Spiritual death—falling from our exalted stations, leaving God's presence and losing our memory of Him behind a veil—and physical death, losing our bodies immediately after we had acquired them. How did we have the courage to face these immense obstacles?

Rev. 12:11 "And they (we) overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death."

We had courage to face the enormous risks of this mortal experience because we trusted Jesus' commitment to be our Savior, our Rescuer. "Here am I; send me." He agreed to get us out of this dark and dreary existence in one piece. Yes, we agreed to descend into the murkiness of life, but in the eternal scheme, it was only a brief blink of an eye: "Thine adversity and thine affliction shall be but as small moment."

The Atonement is the way God holds onto us, binds us to Him. Jesus holds on to us; He is bound to our Father; they will get us out of this, and send the Spirit to guide us as their personal representative. Together they will get us back up to where we started, resurrected, reunited, At-One with our Heavenly Parents again.

But our participation is also required. God holds onto us, but we must also hold onto Him. How?

Adam was taught by messengers how to get back to the presence of God: Faith in Jesus Christ (this engenders hope, charity, and general good works); Repentance (stop doing bad, start doing good); Baptism (immersion in water as a sign of covenant to always do the will of God and remember His Son); and the baptism of the Holy Ghost (actively receiving and following Him back into the presence of God). These principles constitute the way in which we reach for and grasp God's redemptive hand. They allow us to access the justifying, sanctifying, purifying power of the Atonement.

The ordinance of baptism symbolically encapsulates the plan of salvation. We begin in the presence of God, submit to His will and trust Him to get us out of this mess, and hopefully reemerge with rejoicing, and warm embraces with those we previously left before we started a new phase of existence. And there is a spider lurking down here, but we need not fear, if we hold on to God. He will bring us up again.

Are there any mysteries beyond the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel? Yes, but if you review the scriptures and other ordinances, you begin to understand that 1. The "mysteries" are rearrangements of these original principles and ordinances, and 2. Your introduction into these mysteries depends on how successfully you live and apply them.

(That is the essence of my lesson to the Elder's quorum today; the following are supplemental insights and quotations.)

Alma 26:22 "Yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God; yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which never have been revealed..."

1Ne. 10:18 and 19 "if it so be that they repent and come unto him....the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost..." Our application of the simple principles qualifies us to enjoy deeper insights and knowledge, which the Lord is eager to bless us with (D&C 121:33).

Just as fire is not always destructive, darkness is not always evil [at least, not without good uses]. The Jews were descended from slaves who probably welcomed sundown as a relief from the burdens of the day, a chance to interact with family. The Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday night, at sundown. Night was more sacred than day in Jewish tradition; the sun obscures the sky and directs our eyes to the mundane temporal tasks, while the night unveils the wonders of eternity to the eye and the mind. The sun points our eyes downward, while its absence allows us to look up into infinite wonders.

The old Temple is constructed to reflect this. The outward ordinances of sacrifice were performed by Aaronic Priests, but the Holy of Holies was hidden from all but the Melchizedek priesthood. 2 Chronicles 6: 1, 2 "The Lord hath said that he would dwell in the thick darkness....But I have built an house of habitation for thee, and a place for thy dwelling for ever." The Holy of Holies was completely dark, separated from all outward sources of light. When the high priest entered on the Day of Atonement, the light of the Lord's presence would illuminate the dark room as they conversed.

A pioneer who experienced immense hardship as a member of the Martin and Willie handcart companies said, "We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but did you ever hear a survivor of that company utter a word of criticism? Not one of that company ever apostatized or left the Church because every one of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives for we became acquainted with him in our extremities." The darkest times are the moments when Jesus arrives in person.

Mosiah 24:13, 14 "And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort... I will...ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs...and this will I do that...ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions."

In a quiet moment, a group asked Brigham Young, “President Young, why is it that the Lord is not always at our side promoting universal happiness and seeing to it that the needs of people are met, caring especially for His Saints? Why is it so difficult at times?” His response was instructive:

“Because man is destined to be a God, and he must be able to demonstrate that he is for God and to develop his own resources so that he can act independently and yet humbly.” Then he added, “It is the way it is because we must learn to be righteous in the dark.” (Brigham Young’s Office Journal, 28 January 1857; emphasis added.)

In this small moment of submersion and darkness, we can still find the Light of the world, and he is with us, holding our hand to bring us back up again.

That's the guts of what I shared with you, and my Elder's quorum today, and I hope you keep sharing those simple principles with us in your class.

The "Why" of Ordinances

[The following is a letter I wrote to a teacher/mentor/friend of mine over a year ago. I cut and paste it hear for my convenience.]

As a missionary, I had that same question put to me—why do we perform ordinances? I heard myself say that they make us like Jesus—take us down the same path he trod. I have since ruminated on the question, and the answer I have so far has fleshed out a bit.

I have heard it said that the “whats” of the Gospel are milk, but the “whys” constitute the meat. Having made that distinction, I would like to try to get into the meatier subject of why God requires us to participate in ordinances.

1. Order and Laws

God operates within a framework of laws, inside “a house of order.” Brigham Young taught, “Our religion is nothing more or less than the true order of heaven—the system of laws by which the gods and the angels are governed….There is no being in all the eternities but what is governed by law.”

“The Gospel…that has been revealed is a plan or system of laws and ordinances….The laws of the Gospel are neither more nor less than a few of the principles of eternity revealed to the people, by which they can return to heaven from whence they came.

“Our religion…is a system of law and order. [God] has instituted laws and ordinances for the government and benefit of the children of men, to see if they would obey them and prove themselves worthy of eternal life by the law of the celestial worlds” (Discourses of Brigham Young, pg. 1). Ordinances govern us because there are covenants associated with them.

2. Facilitating Spiritual Rebirth

It seems to me that God is trying to make us into miniature versions of His Son, Jesus Christ. Part of that process is ordinances—Jesus submitted to all of the ordinances we also receive. Joseph Smith said, “If a man gets a fullness of the priesthood of God, he has to get it in the same way that Jesus Christ obtained it, and that was by...obeying all the ordinances of the house of the Lord.” (Documentary History of the Church, Vol. 5, p. 244.)

How do we grow? We cooperate with God, and he cultivates us as we submit ourselves, all we have, to Him. Jesus is referred to as the Son of God because he received not the fullness at first, but grew from grace to grace (D&C 93:12-14). How much more do we need to grow in that same grace? As a youth, I sang “I am a child of God,” and therefore found confusion in scriptural passages about “becoming” sons of God (see Moses 6:68, Moses 7:21, Mosiah 27:25, 3 Ne. 9:17, Moroni 7:48, Moroni 7:26; John 1:12; D&C 11:30, D&C 34:3, D&C 45:8). We are children of Heavenly Father, but to get back to Him requires overcoming spiritual and physical death. Christ becomes our new spiritual father in this process, and so we are still heirs of His Father. Joseph Smith taught, “Being born again, comes by the Spirit of God through ordinances.” (History of the Church, 3:392; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith about July 1839 in Commerce, Illinois; reported by Willard Richards.)

“The gospel requires baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, which is the meaning of the word in the original language—namely, to bury or immerse. … I further believe in the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, [as evidenced] by Peter’s preaching on the day of Pentecost, Acts 2:38. You might as well baptize a bag of sand as a man, if not done in view of the remission of sins and getting of the Holy Ghost. Baptism by water is but half a baptism, and is good for nothing without the other half—that is, the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The Savior says, ‘Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.’ (John 3:5).” (History of the Church 5:499; punctuation modernized; from a discourse given by Joseph Smith on July 9, 1843, in Nauvoo, Illinois; reported by Willard Richards).

In the King Follet Discourse, Joseph also said, “The baptism of water, without the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost attending it, is of no use; they are necessarily and inseparably connected…” (History of the Church, 6:316).

All ordinances essential for salvation include this reception of the Holy Ghost and being more and more reborn, or born again, as part of their ultimate end.

The ordinance of the sacrament is a contract—various parties and their obligations are named, and the reward for compliance on our part is that “we may always have his Spirit to be with [us]” (D&C 20: 77, 79).

In D&C 109, Joseph Smith is offering the dedicatory prayer, which was given to him by revelation.  “And do thou grant, Holy Father, that all those who shall worship in this house...may grow up in thee, and receive a fulness of the Holy Ghost...” The culminating, crowning ordinances offered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints still retain that original objective—being born again, becoming the sons and daughters of God, “by the Spirit of God through ordinances.”

“All covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections, associations, or expectations, that are not made and entered into and sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise, of him who is anointed, both as well for time and for all eternity, and that too most holy, by revelation and commandment through the medium of mine anointed, whom I have appointed on the earth to hold this power (and I have appointed unto my servant Joseph to hold this power in the last days, and there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred), are of no efficacy, virtue, or force in and after the resurrection from the dead; for all contracts that are not made unto this end have an end when men are dead” (D&C 132:7). God operates within a system of order, and ordinances formalize our spiritual progress. Ordinances are like mile markers on our road to salvation. We receive them as we become able to keep the covenants associated with them—baptism is administered after age 8, priesthood responsibilities multiply as ability and maturity accrue, and the endowment is reserved for the spiritually mature.

3. To Formalize Jesus’ Ownership or Adoption of Us

Obedience is ownership in heaven, according to Brigham Young:

“What have you to give for life everlasting? You are your Father's. We cannot own anything, in the strict sense of the word, until we have power to bring into existence and hold in existence, independent of all other powers. One will say, “I have given a thousand dollars towards building up the kingdom of God,” when strictly he did not own a dollar. You take the money you have in your possession and put it in another place, or to another use; and though you thus use millions of gold and other property, unless you do so with that spirit of charity in which the widow cast in her mite, it will avail you nothing.

“We have received this and that, but it is not ours; it is committed to us as agents. We have nothing of our own, and will not have until we have power to sustain our own lives. You have not power to sustain your own lives, and yet you have done much. You can own nothing until you have filled your missions on earth, and gained power with the Almighty, when you will be clothed with glory, power, and dominion. When the Lord says, ‘This is yours, my son; I give you power to control all under your jurisdiction;’ then you can consider that your own” (JD 8:118 − p.119, Brigham Young, July 8, 1860). “The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter will be an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth, thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever” (D&C 121:46).

The Lord frequently refers to us as His throughout the scriptures. If we get into heaven, it will not be because of our good works; rather, it will be because everything we have done ads up to a reality that we belong to Jesus, and therefore he has a claim on us. “…I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them… Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me…” (John 17:9-10, 24). Ordinances are another way to formalize this belonging to Him—they demonstrate, witness, show that “[we are] willing to keep His (Jesus Christ’s) commandments which he has given [us].” All our covenants have something to do with following His instructions to us, as well as His example. We belong to Him, we follow Him, and ultimately become Him. Spiritual rebirth implies inheriting traits from our Parent.

4. Ordinances Are Milestones in Spiritual Progress

“The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life.” (Julie B. Beck, “And upon the Handmaids in Those Days Will I Pour Out My Spirit” April 2010 General Conference). Lehi and his family were not sent into the wilderness without guidance—they received a “ball or director.” Each of us is given the gift of the Holy Ghost. “Joseph Smith said to Brother John Taylor in his day: ‘Brother Taylor, you watch the impression of the Spirit of God; you watch the whisperings of Spirit to you; you carry them out in your life, and [this] will become a principle of revelation in you, and you will know and understand this Spirit and power.’ This is the key, the foundation stone of all revelation.” (The Discourses of Wilford Woodruff, 45–46). Could this life be construed as an extended exercise in learning to follow the Holy Ghost? And why would we need the guidance of the Holy Ghost or experience with and an understanding of its influence in the eternities? This life is a preparation for the next, and I doubt seriously that the most important skill we can acquire here will be obsolete as soon as we depart this life. Those who enter the Celestial Kingdom also receive a tangible source of information—a white stone, or Urim and Thummim of some kind.

Ordinances, I believe, are not a series of bizarre rituals thrown at us, devoid of rhyme and reason. They are steps leading back to God. When Moses came down from the mountain the first time in Ex. 19, the plan was to have all of Israel come up the mountain to meet Jehovah. The people fearfully refused, asking that Moses be a go-between instead. The Melchizedek priesthood was taken away, and they were given a Tabernacle, then a Temple, focused on outward, symbolic ordinances. It showed how to prepare to finally get back to that invitation to ascend the mount, the steps of preparation and worthiness the people lacked the first time they were called up. Without the ordinances of the Melchizedek priesthood, we cannot get back to God (D&C 84:19-22).

“When you climb up a ladder, you must begin at the bottom, and ascend step by step, until you arrive at the top; and so it is with the principles of the Gospel—you must begin with the first, and go on until you learn all the principles of exaltation. But it will be a great while after you have passed through the veil before you will have learned them” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 1976, 348).

Joseph continues in the King Follet Discourse: “All the minds and spirits that God ever sent into the world are susceptible of enlargement. The first principles of man are self-existent with God. God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself. The relationship we have with God places us in a situation to advance in knowledge. He has power to institute laws to instruct the weaker intelligences, that they may be exalted with Himself, so that they might have one glory upon another, and all that knowledge, power, glory, and intelligence, which is requisite in order to save them in the world of spirits.”

When we are ready to take another big step toward God, with the Holy Ghost as our guide, we qualify for that added knowledge and light through new ordinances.

5. Permanence

If a contract is not made under the auspices of the priesthood, it is canceled in the next life. Does it make sense to charge a man with stealing if he dies before he can repay a loan? God’s eternal time table cannot be held hostage to the requirements and schedules of this temporal world. How is it that such feeble and inconstant beings as ourselves are not only expected, but required, to make promises that we know are currently beyond our capacity to keep? (“Always remember Him” is a promise I make every week, yet I will later forget where I set my keys. Does the time when I sleep conflict with “always remember?”) I think that the nature of our covenants says more about God than us; he is eternal, and so all contracts we make with him are cast in that framework of permanence and absoluteness. We keep the covenants as best we can, and the Atonement makes up the difference when we are humble and penitent, willing to obey and try again. Ordinances allow the best things in us to become permanent. Words like “seal,” “bind,” and “confirm” imply that the end results of covenants and ordinances extend into the eternities.

6. Symbolic Learning Devices

Three dimensional acts—being immersed backwards in water, having hands laid on one’s head, eating bread and drinking water each week, the ordinances of the Temple, are all more vivid and memorable than scratching one’s name on a piece of paper to sign a contract. Yet ordinances also constitute our signature on a dotted line, our way of demonstrating willingness to do certain things. And we know that God will also do certain things in return, when we keep our end of the deal.

Being dipped backwards in water is instructive for us—birth, bath, burial and resurrection are all legitimate interpretations of the symbolism of the ordinance. The sacrament shows us how dependent we are on Jesus for our physical and spiritual nourishment. Kneeling at altars show that marriage involves sacrifice. An altar is not an ATM or slot machine, or bank teller window. We do not go to altars to make withdrawals, but deposits. Rewards for sacrifices are determined by God, and we show our kinship and similarity to Jesus only to the extent that we are willing to sacrifice in the similitude of the Son of God (D&C 138:13).

Symmetry

Though I cannot cite examples for every ordinance, I suspect that there is a corresponding action on Jesus’ part for every covenant we keep and every ordinance we participate in—a kind of reflexive balance, Newton’s “opposite and equal reaction.” For instance, we eat bread and drink from a sweet cup (originally wine) when we partake of the sacrament. By this act, we show we are willing to take Jesus’ name, His obedience, onto ourselves, to always remember Him. If we are called by His name, do we not also inherit everything that He deserves? (All necessary ordinances unite our names with the names of God, His Son, and the Spirit.)

In the Garden of Gethsemane, after the first administration of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus drank a bitter cup. He took our names, our soiled reputations onto Himself, and suffered immensely. He undoubtedly remembered each of us, and He still does. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me” (Isaiah 49:15-16).  He always remembers us too.

Summary

Ordinances prepare us to ascend back into God’s presence. They teach through symbolism. Ordinances create an identity between us and Christ—we adopt his name, behaviors, and characteristics. They officially bind us to Christ, and make our commitments to obey Him eternally formal, efficacious beyond the grave. (That is the great power of the priesthood; it allows contracts, agreements, oaths, bonds, covenants, relationships, etc., to survive from this world to the next. What you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven (Matt. 16:19).) To go where Jesus goes is to enter heaven; what greater gift than to be permanently, legally bound to Him? Ordinances allow us to receive a greater influence or portion of the Spirit. And the Spirit cleanses us and changes our nature, and guides through the dangers of life, eventually ushering us back into the arms of our Father in heaven.

That is my answer to the “why” of ordinances, though I’m sure there are more reasons God has us participate in making covenants this way.

President Lorenzo Snow taught: “There is a way by which persons can keep their consciences clear before God and man, and that is to preserve within them the spirit of God, which is the spirit of revelation to every man and woman. It will reveal to them, even in the simplest of matters, what they shall do, by making suggestions to them. We should try to learn the nature of this spirit, that we may understand its suggestions, and then we will always be able to do right. This is the grand privilege of every Latter-day Saint. We know that it is our right to have the manifestations of the spirit every day of our lives. . . . From the time we receive the Gospel, go down into the waters of baptism and have hands laid upon us afterward for the gift of the Holy Ghost, we have a friend, if we do not drive it from us by doing wrong. That friend is the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, which partakes of the things of God and shows them unto us. This is a grand means that the Lord has provided for us, that we may know the light, and not be groveling continually in the dark.” (In Conference Report, Apr. 1899, p. 52.)

That is the essence of what I have tried to express here.

I'm sure all that above is bare bones compared to the real answer to the "whys" that the Spirit could teach me if I were ready for more, but it's pretty good for now. That's one thing Elder Maxwell expressed; the "inexhaustible" nature of the Gospel.

Anger—Divine?

The Book of Abraham tells us that the Lord came to Abraham in the middle of the night, while he was receiving revelation through the means of the Urim and Thummim, put His hand on Abraham's eyes, and showed him the universe. In the middle of this advanced astronomy lesson, wherein the Lord compares the stars to Abraham's posterity, the Lord suddenly says the following: "...there is nothing that the Lord thy God shall take in his heart to do but what he will do it" (Abr. 3:17). This statement always seemed like a non sequitur to me. Why this bit of information about the nature of God is in the middle of Abraham's vision of the physical heavens, I do not know, but I am very grateful it is in there.

How much time have I wasted yearning and pining for that which I know quite well will never be? One implication of being omniscient is that God never has false expectations. For me, at least, false or unmet expectations are the major source of grief and anger. The light is green, yet the woman applying her makeup in front of me is struggling to pull up her tent stakes and remember that her mirror is attached to a set of wheels. Miss perfect thinks I'm not. Negative emotions ensue.

Jesus was the first fruits of the resurrection, and the resurrected Christ went out of His way to demonstrate to His disciples that the body they laid in the tomb on Friday was the same body now standing before them. All His physical faculties were restored. He ate fish and honeycomb, and wept. I assume because of these details that He also retained the mortal ability to experience anger.

He takes nothing into His heart unless He is going to do it. My heart is a mess much of the time—longing, frustrated, sad, despairing, angry. Why do I need the capacity to feel such emotions? Will these ugly colors always be a part of my emotional palette? Will they be resurrected with me? Or, in other words, does God get angry?

There is a tendency among the milktoast set of Mormons to equate Jesus with "cuddly." I think C. S. Lewis hit nearer the mark when He allegorically cast a lion to represent Jesus. Neither tame, nor safe. "Therefore I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not" (D&C 19:15). This warning to Martin Harris has been published as a warning to all of us. If anger is always bad for mortals, why is it appropriate for God to feel anger?

I posit here that it is appropriate to feel anger only when 1. The angry person is personally responsible for administering justice to someone, and 2. The person for whom anger is felt actually deserves to be hurt. We read of various "good guys" in the Book of Mormon becoming angry, such as Captain Moroni or Teancum. But that is only when they intend to end the life of someone who merits death. In other words, the necessity of violence is the only justification for anger.

We are rarely responsible for administering justice to other mortals. "...Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" (Romans 12:19). Why are we commanded to "forgive all men" (D&C 64:10), whether they deserve it or not? Anger may be a legitimate divine attribute, but it comes very easily—we need no practice. We also lack the knowledge and finesse to administer justice in precisely beneficial amounts. And how often does genuine smiting occur? It is a last resort for the Lord. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is a divine virtue that God exercises on our behalf frequently. It comes with great difficulty, and we have limitless opportunities to practice here in mortality—ourselves, family, friends, enemies, even recalcitrant inanimate objects, like car keys or plumbing.

Listen to Enoch plead on behalf of us, his descendants: "And it came to pass that Enoch continued his cry unto the Lord, saying: I ask thee, O Lord, in the name of thine Only Begotten, even Jesus Christ, that thou wilt have mercy upon Noah and his seed, that the earth might never more be covered by the floods. And the Lord could not withhold; and he covenanted with Enoch, and sware unto him with an oath, that he would stay the floods; that he would call upon the children of Noah..." (Moses 7:50-51). We are indebted to the interceding and pleading on our behalf of Jesus Christ, Enoch, Moses, and many other faithful prophets who ask the Lord to give us just one more chance to repent.

"Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive; and at the same time more terrible to the workers of iniquity, more awful in the executions of His punishments, and more ready to detect every false way, than we are apt to suppose Him to be..." (The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, 509).

Far be it from me to try and drive us back to the apostate view of God as distant and cruel. He is our Father. There are provisions for everyone's salvation—it is called the "plan of salvation," not the plan of damnation. But He has more in mind for us than ease and comfort, and so the course is strict, the way is narrow, and the rod employed to smack us when we wander is sturdy.

I am acquainted with the Lord's mercy and grace, which He dispenses to me in generous amounts on a daily basis. But we live in a culture in which "nice" has nearly become the highest unwritten law (perhaps THE highest law). Truth, goodness, morality, and other essential virtues make way for the unstable virtue of tolerance. How dare you hurt that person's feelings by pointing out the truth? seems to be the prevailing attitude. I am by no means extolling rudeness or the belligerent cruelty that parades itself proudly on talk radio today. Gentleness and refinement are also on the list of divine attributes. I hope we do not make the mistake of conflating our present false traditions with the eternal culture of heaven. Jesus said, "I am the truth..." which is more intense than saying "I am honest." But Jesus could do a lot more tongue lashing than He did in scripture. One man actually made the mistake of asking "what lack I yet?" and went away sorrowing. Jesus could have given that same dose of discouraging medicine to everyone He met, all day, every day. But He was patient, willing to plod at our pace, rather than break our teeth with the truths we are not ready to hear. I believe we should follow that example.

When ARE we supposed to administer correction? As far as I can tell, the only time the scriptures authorize critical comments is "...when moved upon by the Holy Ghost" (D&C 121:43). How can we tell when we are prompted by the Spirit, rather than spleen, to correct someone? If we manage to show forth "afterward an increase of love," it is good evidence that we were prompted by the Spirit. This is a standard I would like to see modern political discourse live up to. This may ultimately prove impossible, since private correction, rather than public, also seems to be one of the finer points of the divine mode of correction (see D&C 28:11). Embarrassing others for their flaws tends to entrench them in their ways, rather than heal them of their folly (see JSH 1:28).

Beyond all that, more often than not (I guess upwards of 9 times out of every 10), what is needed by the sinner is not new information; rather, it is new motivation. Critics are rarely dispensing new revelations. Everyone on a diet has the general idea of how to lose weight. Knowledge is not lacking. Consistent, unbreakable motivation is the missing key. Where does such motivation come from?

"Charity never faileth" might refer to its consistent and indefatigable nature, but I wonder if the phrase might rightly be construed as an advertisement for the cure-all of genuine love when it comes to solving relational problems: "Brute force not working for you? Is that loved one still manifesting sin? Is your marriage strained to the breaking point? Try CHARITY—it never faileth!" That honey draws more bees than vinegar is obvious, so why is it so easy for us to forget and spray vinegar like a skunk? Why is it that "...the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, [is that] they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion" (D&C 121:39)? Probably because we care more about ourselves and our precious property than the people we are angry at—we lack love towards them. So the condition of the paint on the cupboards outweighs our concern for their belief in our affection, and that fact becomes apparent when our tempers boil over. That is never the case with God, who administers justice with the benefit of the offender in mind (think of Alma the Younger in his coma; the instant enough was enough, the Lord showed an increase of love).

The late Steven Covey uttered a phrase in an instructional recording, and it has never left me: when working with people, "slow is fast, and fast is slow."

"When persons manifest the least kindness and love to me, O what power it has over my mind, while the opposite course has a tendency to harrow up all the harsh feelings and depress the human mind" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pg. 240). If God is "administering the strap" to us, it must be because all other recourse has failed, or would fail if tried. Meanwhile, our unbounded love and generosity toward the faults of others will motivate them to overcome them more than pointing out what they are already well aware of.

Rather than present the world with a diluted version of God, it would be better in my opinion to present Him as full of love and patience, yet also capable and willing to feel anger and administer pain. He has warned us, and the rest of the world, and we should not contradict or amend His words to make ourselves comfortable in a society that practices niceness at the expense of truth or morality.

Sacrifice and Glory

[The following is a letter I wrote to a friend a year ago. It repeats many ideas I have written elsewhere, it is a bit lengthy, but it is convenient to simply cut-and-paste it here.]

Jesus’ statement in the Garden of Gethsemane, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt,” is the supreme example of submission. Sacrifices are intimidating to say the least. But such submission brings a gift that comes through no other means. When we submit our wills to God’s, we receive the Holy Ghost to a greater extent, to the point that it actually begins to change us. Much has been said about receiving light in our eyes, of having Jesus’ image “graven upon our countenances” (Alma 5:19). John records Jesus’ prayer the night he entered Gethsemane: “And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5). His sacrifice was linked somehow to His premortal glory.

Moses’ face shone when he came off from the mountain, and the people were so fearful that they requested he wear a veil. What was the circumstance in which this manifestation occurred? The people had just sinned by making the golden calf, and Moses was going before the Lord, pleading for the Lord to “forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written” (Deut. 32:32). In other words, Moses requested that if the Lord sent them to hell, send Moses there too. He was not just risking death; he was risking spiritual death. He was willing to give all, to die in every sense to “make an atonement for” their sin (Deut. 32:30). “And he said unto Moses, Thou canst not see my face at this time, lest mine anger be kindled against thee also, and I destroy thee, and thy people; for there shall no man among them see me at this time, and live, for they are exceeding sinful. And no sinful man hath at any time, neither shall there be any sinful man at any time, that shall see my face and live” (JST Deut. 33:20). Deut 34:30 “And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.” Moses’ willingness to risk harm to himself, to put it all on the line, to die, preceded the radiant beams of light coming from his face.

Abinadi also scared people with the immense glory shining from his face. Abinadi begins to recite the Ten Commandments (like Moses), and King Noah decides it is time to kill him: “…now when the king had heard these words, he said unto his priests: Away with this fellow, and slay him…” Upon hearing his death sentence pronounced, Abinadi’s face begins to shine: “…the people of king Noah durst not lay their hands on him, for the Spirit of the Lord was upon him; and his face shone with exceeding luster, even as Moses’ did while in the mount of Sinai, while speaking with the Lord.” What was it that caused his face to shine? I believe it was his willingness to die. “Ye see that ye have not power to slay me, therefore I finish my message…and then it matters not whither I go, if it so be that I am saved.” He believed his life was still forfeit: “But this much I tell you, what you do with me, after this, shall be as a type and a shadow of things which are to come” (Mosiah 13:1, 5, 7-10).

There are many recorded instances when Joseph Smith’s face shone with that same kind of luster. Wilford Woodruff recorded that “he called the Twelve together the last time he spoke to us, and his face shone like amber. And upon our shoulders he rolled the burden of the Kingdom, and he gave us all the keys and powers and gifts to carry on this great and mighty work. He told us that he had received every key, every power and every gift for the salvation of the living and the dead, and he said: ‘Upon the Twelve I seal these gifts and powers and keys from henceforth and forever. No matter what may come to me. And I lay this work upon your shoulders. Take it and bear it off, and if you don’t you’ll be damned.’” President Woodruff spoke into an early phonographic recorder in 1897: “At that meeting he stood on his feet for about three hours and taught us the things of the kingdom. His face was as clear as amber, and he was clothed with a power that I had never seen in any man in the flesh before.” Joseph’s words from that same meeting: “It may be that my enemies will kill me. And in case they should and the keys and power which rest on me not be imparted to you, they will be lost from the earth. But if I can only succeed in placing them upon your heads, then let me fall a victim to murderous hands if God will suffer it, and I can go with all pleasure and satisfaction, knowing that my work is done, and the foundation laid on which the kingdom of God is to be reared in this dispensation of the fulness of times” (In Declaration of the Twelve, Brigham Young Office Files, 1832–1878, Archives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah).

He was willing to die. Benjamin F. Johnson recorded the following private conversation between him and Joseph: “‘Oh! I am so tired—so tired that I often feel to long for my day of rest. For what has there been in this life but tribulation for me? From a boy I have been persecuted by my enemies, and now even my friends are beginning to join them, to hate and persecute me! Why should I not wish for my time of rest?’ His words to me were ominous, and they brought a shadow as of death over my spirit, and I said: ‘Oh, Joseph! how could you think of leaving us? How as a people could we do without you?’ He saw my feelings were sorrowful and said kindly: ‘Bennie, if I were on the other side of the veil I could do many times more for my friends than I can do while I am with them here” (They Knew the Prophet: Personal Accounts From Over 100 People Who Knew Joseph Smith, Hyrum L. Andrus and Helen Mae Andrus, pg. 94).

Jesus is called “The Lamb of God,” Moses is associated with the death of the first born and the blood of the Pascal lamb, Abinadi taught from Isaiah 53 about the Savior, “…he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter…,” and Joseph Smith said “I am going like a lamb to the slaughter” (D&C 135:4).

The ability and willingness to part with one’s most precious possession seems to be a trait of God. Jesus speaks to His Father throughout the ordeal of the Atonement, yet we do not hear the Father responding. But the incident of Abraham offering Isaac gives us a symbolic look at Father in heaven during the Savior’s ordeal. Both of them were making a sacrifice, not just the Savior. Just as Abraham and Isaac were willing to go through with the sacrifice God required of them, the Father and the Son were also willing to make their Ultimate Sacrifice. Doing the right thing, no matter how painful, seems to be a trait of Godhood. God’s actions are dictated by truth, not by convenience, instinct, or comfort. For Abraham, and Jesus, the outcomes of their offering were visible with an eye of faith. God gave His Only Begotten Son, His only perfectly obedient child, for the possibility of reclaiming His other children. Abraham received a promise of unlimited posterity when he showed his willingness to offer Isaac.

We are not left out of the loop. Rev. 12:7-11 “And there was war in heaven…and Satan…was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.” How did we triumph in the war in heaven? “And [we] overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of [our] testimony; and [we] loved not [our] lives unto the death.” Jesus’ prayer for premortal glory to be restored (John 17) was also in the context of His own death and sacrifice.

Sacrifice and the Pattern of the Old Temple

The Old Temple shows us a pattern of sacrifice and reward, repeated over and over again. There are various objects and stations in the Old Temple. Each was set up to teach the people through symbolism. But it was not the familiar Menorah or the table of Shewbread the Lord ordained for His people to see day and night. It was the Altar of Sacrifice, placed right next to the gate in the open air courtyard, visible to all. This large, square platform was connected to the ground by a ramp, was almost cube-shaped, and resembled a giant barbeque grill. Blood, fire, and smoke, along with the smell of burning hair, fat, and flesh, the bleating of sheep and the bellowing of cattle, all accompanied the Altar.

It stood as a vivid reminder that if one were determined to approach God, sacrifice was a requirement. It also echoed the beginnings of the world—Jesus had to agree to pay for our sins even before creation could proceed. The blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled on everything; the priest himself, and all the furniture of the Temple, even the Ark of the Covenant, were all touched by the blood. It is as if the sacrifice legitimized everything that happened from that point forward.

After the initial sacrifice, the next piece of furniture we come to is the Brazen Sea, what we would immediately recognize as a baptismal font upon twelve oxen. We sacrifice first, and then we receive a cleansing and a new birth as a reward. Smoke and blood are washed away as we emerge from the water, clean and whole and new. We abase ourselves in a prominent public place, and receive our reward in a submissive, almost hidden point representing a grave.

The Table of Shewbread is also square-shaped, and altars are sometimes called “The table of the Lord.” We know what sacrifices are connected with partaking of the sacrament—a kind of intermediate righteousness in which we struggle with less carnal commandments. No one who murders or commits sexual sins, or is dishonest, can partake of the bread and water. But those who struggle with the refining process, giving up profane language, taking the gospel seriously, getting out of bed early, not overeating, and other mid-range sins, partake of the sacrament to get a weekly wash and a fresh start. We evaluate our progress at giving up the little sins that cause us to stumble. We remember the Savior, and our great dependence on Him to be saved.

The sacrifice associated with partaking of bread and water is followed, in the Old Temple, by a massive increase in light—the Candlestick, or Menorah, representing the Tree of Life. Made of solid gold, its seven lamps burn olive oil continuously. Water, or refreshing and cleansing and rebirth are the reward for our first offering; oil, the substance used to anoint kings, and the light it produces, is our reward for our intermediate offering.

The next offering is one of prayer and unity. The process of going through the Temple to this point has been one of getting cleaned up—shedding sins at the Altar and the Table, and receiving washing and light in return. Now we come to another altar, the Altar of Incense, a miniature version of the giant Altar of Sacrifice outside. The Table had twelve loaves of bread, one for each tribe. There were also twelve rocks of incense on the Table. When we are clean enough, what we have left to offer God is clean enough to be used to build, rather than be destroyed. Sacrifice is destructive (throw away those movies, books, magazines, friendships, behaviors, etc.) Consecration is constructive, because what is left behind is so refined that the Lord can actually use it to build something.

The priest would enter the Temple and put stones of incense on the Altar of Incense. All twelve tribes were symbolically offered up in this manner. The outer Altar was smoking black and noisy, covered in blood and hair. This inner Altar was quiet, private, and the smoke was white and sweet, ascending up before the veil of the Temple separating the Holy of Holies from everything else. The priest would pray for himself, for Israel, and for the strangers who knew not God. This prayer was offered day and night. Zachariah was offering this prayer at the Altar of Incense when Gabriel appeared and told him that he and his wife were healed of their infertility. Consecration involves offering our all to God in order to build up his kingdom, and Zachariah and Elizabeth got that opportunity.

The reward for this last sacrifice is the presence of Jehovah Himself. One day of the year, the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies, and the elements of each sacrifice were present. Blood from the outer Altar, incense from the Table lit with the fire of the inner Altar, were present in the Holy of Holies. The blood was placed on the Ark, and the smoking incense was put through the veil in a pan to fill the room with smoke. The room was entirely dark, but the High Priest would enter, and if the all was well in the ordinances of the Temple, the Shekinah, the presence of Jehovah, would light the darkness of the room. (The admitted differences between Solomon’s Temple and the Temple of Herod were 1. The absence of the Ark, and 2. The absence of God’s presence.)

Sacrifice, reward, sacrifice, reward—that was the pattern of the Old Temple.

Sacrifice and the First Principles and Ordinances

Sacrifice requires faith in God. If all action is dependent on faith, how much more is the action which requires submission and childlike trust towards Father in Heaven? Our faith in Christ leads us to make a sacrifice “in the similitude of the Only Begotten” (D&C 138:13).

Repentance and sacrifices are inextricably bound up, not only because repentance involves giving up sin, but because of the requirements of the plan of salvation. Moses 5:4-9 “And Adam and Eve, his wife, called upon the name of the Lord, and they heard the voice of the Lord from…the Garden of Eden…And he gave unto them commandments, that they should worship the Lord their God, and should offer the firstlings of their flocks, for an offering unto the Lord. And Adam was obedient unto the commandments of the Lord. And after many days an angel of the Lord appeared unto Adam, saying: Why dost thou offer sacrifices unto the Lord? And Adam said unto him: I know not, save the Lord commanded me. And then the angel spake, saying: This thing is a similitude of the sacrifice of the Only Begotten of the Father, which is full of grace and truth. Wherefore, thou shalt do all that thou doest in the name of the Son, and thou shalt repent and call upon God in the name of the Son forevermore. And in that day the Holy Ghost fell upon Adam, which beareth record of the Father and the Son, saying: I am the Only Begotten of the Father from the beginning, henceforth and forever, that as thou hast fallen thou mayest be redeemed, and all mankind, even as many as will.” We are to sacrifice, not matter how righteous we seem by comparison to others. Our repentance and sacrifice link us to the Atonement.

Baptism requires a sacrifice. It represents the death of the old man, and the resurrection or birth of a new man. It represents a bath, a cleansing from sin. It also denotes great humility, since being dipped backwards in water is an extremely compromising position. The sacrificial animals in the Old Temple were washed at various ceremonial lavers by the priests before they were offered. Jesus (THE Lamb of God, the actual Sacrifice for sin) was also baptized by an Aaronic priest, John the Baptist. John bore witness that Jesus was in fact the Lamb, and was called to do so.

Our ability to obey the commandment, “…receive the Holy Ghost,” is directly tied to our willingness to sacrifice. We no longer shed blood when we offer sacrifices. (Killing a sheep back then was parting with wealth, a source of livelihood and life itself; food, clothing, and status were proportional to the size of one’s flocks. Imagine driving a new car into the parking lot of the Temple, and having a deacon flip a switch to crush it into a cube of scrap metal.) 3Ne. 9:19-20 “And ye shall offer up unto me no more the shedding of blood; yea, your sacrifices and your burnt offerings shall be done away, for I will accept none of your sacrifices and your burnt offerings. And ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit. And whoso cometh unto me with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, him will I baptize with fire and with the Holy Ghost, even as the Lamanites, because of their faith in me at the time of their conversion, were baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost, and they knew it not.” I know of only one phrase in the scriptures that uses stronger language to describe the reception of the Holy Ghost. D&C 109:13-15 “And that all people who shall enter upon the threshold of the Lord’s house may feel thy power, and feel constrained to acknowledge that thou hast sanctified it…And that they may grow up in thee, and receive a fulness of the Holy Ghost…” (emphasis added). Notice the shift from outward, public sacrifice, to an inward, deeper one? This is characteristic of all Jesus’ modifications to the old law—he intensifies the commandments by making them a matter of the mind and heart as well as behavior. “Don’t commit murder” is easy—“Don’t get angry” requires much more of us. This shift reflects Aaronic and Melchizedek functions—Aaronic is outward ordinances, Melchizedek, inner.

Willing Sacrifice and a Changed Heart
Humility does not generate homogeneity. This attitude sets the greatest leaders and prophets in the kingdom apart from others. It is one thing you can point to, amidst people of different mindsets, professions, and gifts, as a common element. Below are some quotes from modern prophets that reflect their submission to God. Notice how each quote embodies humility, yet the individual expressing the submission gives it his own personal flavor.

Joseph Smith

“I made this my rule: When the Lord commands, do it” (Joseph Smith Jr., History of the Church, 2:170).

President Thomas S. Monson

“The sweetest experience I know in life is to feel a prompting and act upon it and later find out that it was the fulfillment of someone’s prayer or someone’s need. And I always want the Lord to know that if He needs an errand run, Tom Monson will run that errand for Him” (President Monson, “On the Lord’s Errand”).

Gordon B. Hinckley

President Hinckley’s struggles as a missionary are well known, but only half of the story is told. Some mistake his father’s letter for the punch line of the story—that President Hinckley, through his own strength and diligence, gritted his teeth and pulled himself up by his bootstraps through his tireless work ethic. His penchant for tireless work was real, but that is not the main point. He described what happened:

“When I arrived there I was not well. I felt I wasn’t getting anywhere in the missionary work. I became discouraged. I wrote a letter to my father and said ‘I’m wasting my time and your money. I don’t see any point in my staying here. And in due time a letter came back from him, in which he simply said, ‘Dear Gordon, I have your letter of such-and-such a date. I have only one suggestion: Forget yourself and go to work.’”

“I pondered that, and next morning in our scripture class, we read that great statement of the Lord: ‘He that saveth his life shall lose it; he that loseth his life for my sake and the Gospel’s shall find it.’ It touched me—that statement, that promise, in conjunction with my father’s letter, prompted me to go upstairs in the little bedroom at 15 Wadham Road, Preston, Lancashire where we lived, and get on my knees and make a covenant with the Lord that I would try to forget myself and go to work. I count that as the day of decision in my life. Everything good that’s happened to me since then, I can trace back to the decision I made at that time” (From the video Gordon B. Hinckley: Man of Integrity). Another description of the experience gives further insight: “That July day in 1933 was my day of decision. A new light came into my life and a new joy into my heart. The fog of England seemed to lift, and I saw the sunlight. I had a rich and wonderful mission experience, for which I shall ever be grateful” (“Taking the Gospel to Britain: A Declaration of Vision, Faith, Courage, and Truth,” Ensign, July 1987, 7). He met the qualification of a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and was subsequently baptized with fire and with the Holy Ghost.

President Boyd K. Packer

“I’ve found in my life that it has been critically important that this was established between me and the Lord so that I knew that He knew which way I had committed my agency. I went before Him and in essence said, ‘I’m not neutral, and You can do with me what You want. If You need my vote, it’s there. I don’t care what You do with me, and You don’t have to take anything from me because I give it to You—everything, all I own, all I am.’ And that makes the difference.” (President Boyd K. Packer, That All May Be Edified, pg. 272).

“Just after my call as a General Authority 16 years ago, in a stake conference where I accompanied President Boyd K. Packer, he said something I have not forgotten. As he addressed the congregation, he said, ‘I know who I am.’ Then after a pause, he added, ‘I am a nobody.’ He then turned to me, sitting on the stand behind him, and said, ‘And, Brother Andersen, you are a nobody too.’ Then he added these words: ‘If you ever forget it, the Lord will remind you of it instantly, and it won’t be pleasant.’” (President Packer, quoted by Elder Anderson, “Come Unto Him,” April 2009 General Conference).

President Henry B. Erying

“We are safe on the rock which is the Savior when we have yielded in faith in Him, have responded to the Holy Spirit’s direction to keep the commandments long enough and faithfully enough that the power of the Atonement has changed our hearts. When we have, by that experience, become as a child in our capacity to love and obey, we are on the sure foundation.

“From King Benjamin we learn what we can do to take us to that safe place. But remember: the things we do are the means, not the end we seek. What we do allows the Atonement of Jesus Christ to change us into what we must be. Our faith in Jesus Christ brings us to repentance and to keeping His commandments. We obey and we resist temptation by following the promptings of the Holy Ghost. In time our natures will change. We will become as a little child, obedient to God and more loving. That change, if we do all we must to keep it, will qualify us to enjoy the gifts which come through the Holy Ghost. Then we will be safe on the only sure rock.

“Like you, I have felt what King Benjamin meant when he said that we could become like a little child before God. I have prayed, as you have, to know what to do when choices that I faced would have eternal consequences. Over many years I have seen a recurring pattern in the times when the answers to such a prayer have come most clearly.

“Once, for instance, I prayed through the night to know what I was to choose to do in the morning. I knew that no other choice could have had a greater effect on the lives of others and on my own. I knew what choice looked most comfortable to me. I knew what outcome I wanted. But I could not see the future. I could not see which choice would lead to which outcome. So the risk of being wrong seemed too great to me.

“I prayed, but for hours there seemed to be no answer. Just before dawn, a feeling came over me. More than at any time since I had been a child, I felt like one. My heart and my mind seemed to grow very quiet. There was a peace in that inner stillness.

“Somewhat to my surprise, I found myself praying, ‘Heavenly Father, it doesn’t matter what I want. I don’t care anymore what I want. I only want that Thy will be done. That is all that I want. Please tell me what to do.'"

(Conditional surrender is not surrender at all in this context. Our submission cannot have conditions and stipulations and price tags all over it.)

“In that moment I felt as quiet inside as I had ever felt. And the message came, and I was sure who it was from. It was clear what I was to do. I received no promise of the outcome. There was only the assurance that I was a child who had been told what path led to whatever He wanted for me” (President Eyring, “As a Child,” April 2006 General Conference).

Ezra T. Benson

“Men and women who turn their lives over to God will find out that he can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace. Whoever will lost his life to God will find he has eternal life” (President Benson, New Era, May 1975, p. 20).

Wilford Woodruff

“Be it known that I Willford Woodruff do freely covenant with my God that I freely consecrate and dedicate myself together with all my properties and affects unto the Lord for the purpose of assisting in building up his kingdom even Zion on the earth that I may keep his law and lay all things before the bishop of his Church that I may be a lawful heir to the Kingdom of God even the Celestial Kingdom,” and then lists his property (Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 1:16, Dec. 31, 1834). (This was the first anniversary of his baptism.) “I made a firm resolution that I would seek the Lord to know His will, to keep His commandments, and to follow the dictates of His Holy Spirit….I was determined to…spend my future life in the maintenance of these convictions” (Wilford Woodruff, His Life and Labors, 26-27).

Brigham Young

“I have heard a great many tell about what they have suffered for Christ’s sake. I am happy to say I never had occasion to. I have enjoyed a great deal, but so far as suffering goes I have compared it a great many times, in my feelings and before congregations, to a man wearing an old, worn-out, tattered and dirty coat, and somebody comes along and gives him one that is new, whole and beautiful. This is the comparison I draw when I think of what I have suffered for the Gospel’s sake—I have thrown away an old coat and have put on a new one” (Discourses of Brigham Young, 348).

These are modern examples of prophets with submissive, humble, obedient attitudes. There are also venerable non-priesthood holders who express this attitude of submission. Scripture records this attitude of humility in sacrifice. When Mary was hailed by Gabriel, she also submitted to the Lord’s will for her. Her response echoes her Son’s later statement of submission to God’s will: “…Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). Again, each person listed above puts their signature spin on the central principle of submissiveness and humble obedience to the Lord.

Unprofitable Servants

God owns everything already. Why are we asked to give Him things? In all this giving, offering, and sacrificing, the thing the Lord wants is us, our whole being, our total love and devotion. Things we offering as sacrifices are things He already possesses. Giving them up shows ourselves and the Lord that we love Him more than what we part with at His request. This is the idea of a “heave” offering. You take the item and throw it over a wall into an enclosure, showing you no longer have access to it. The Lord can take anything from us, whether it is on our side of the wall or not. Our agency is inviolable to Him; that is what He is really after, the only thing we really CAN give Him. The worth of gold and silver, sheep and cattle and oxen and cars and money is negligible to the creator and owner of stars and planets. But the worth of souls is great in the eyes of God.

William Tyndale expressed it beautifully, that sense of unconditional surrender to the Lord, and the acknowledgement that we are “unprofitable servants.” As difficult as our sacrifices may seem to us, we really are not doing anything for the Lord He cannot already do for Himself. King Benjamin calls us “unprofitable servants” even when we are giving our best. Tyndale says, “Faith, when she prayeth, setteth not her good deeds before her, saying, ‘Lord, for my good deeds do this or that’; nor bargaineth with God, saying ‘Lord, grant me this, or do this or that, and I will do this or that for thee,’…But she setteth her infirmities and her lack before her face, and God’s promises, saying, ‘Lord, for thy mercy and truth, which thou hast sworn, be merciful unto me’” (S. Michael Wilcox, Fire In The Bones: William Tyndale, Martyr, Father of the English Bible, pg. 101). All things are God’s anyway; He is just asking us to return a few of them to Him to show we love Him more than the things we are sacrificing. (Often the Lord will give us more after one sacrifice, and see if we are willing to then give THAT up; this can go on over a lifetime.)

Notice also in Tyndale’s quote the absence of any conditions for sacrifice. Daniel 3:5-12 “Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of…all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?” 14-18 ...if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, answered and said to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” They are in fact cast into the furnace, AND delivered from it. Verse 25: “Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.” Mosiah 24:14 “And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions.”

The real opportunity of sacrifice is not God’s; it is ours. “For this cause came I into the world,” said Jesus of His own sacrifice, and it is the same test we are undergoing. Abr. 3:25 “And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.” The antecedent for “herewith” is the materials of which this earth is made, including the elements of our mortal bodies. Do we horde them, love them, and serve them, or do we subordinate that tendency in favor of God’s commands? This life is our time to prove our willingness to do that very thing, though the opportunity to demonstrate loyalty to God is rarely mentioned in talks about trails and pain. Occasionally, we get a happy physical body, and a joyful Father in heaven, at the same time. But in sacrifice, God pulls us in one direction, the flesh pulls us in another direction, and we must sacrifice one to hold onto the other.

Sacrifice Makes Obedience Real
All sacrifice is obedience, but not all obedience is sacrifice. If we get some strange command from the prophet, such as “Everyone is to wear blue on their person every Sabbath,” we shrug our shoulders, ask why, but we wear blue anyway. “No big deal,” we say. But if the prophet were to say, “Ice cream is prohibited under the Word of Wisdom,” how many of us would surrender our recommends rather than comply? “Ouch! That’s hard!” Sacrifice makes obedience real to us, vivid in our hearts and minds. It calls on us to assess our priorities. How is my heart organized? Is the Lord at the top of the pile, or is he subordinate to my affections for this or that thing?

I believe spiritual rebirth is a process for most people, not because we are waiting for the Lord, but because the Lord is waiting for us to reach the point where we are willing to give up anything in preference to Him. The instant we meet that qualification, we are reborn. Alma the Younger and Lamoni’s Father are examples of this. They deposited their whole soul, sincerely, in the Lord’s hands, and were immediately blessed with instantaneous rebirth. The rest of us mumble and fumble, halting between two opinions, and the Lord marks our progress as we reorder our hearts with Him at the front of the line.

Upon understanding this idea—rebirth is a function of our willingness to give all—we may be tempted to think that we can make a one-time convenient deposit of our own choosing, and “get it over with.” But a broken heart and a contrite spirit means giving our whole self, including our futures. That means that we are always on call. We cannot make a one-time deposit, and then go out to play.

The Lord can ask for sacrifices through Church leaders, as at Kirtland:

“Now go with me to a place called Kirtland, Ohio, and recall that on one occasion when the people are asking ‘Why, O why when we hardly have enough for hominy and milk do we have to build a temple? What is a temple? And why at such great cost?’ At one point the prophet replied, ‘The Angel Gabriel couldn’t explain it to you now. But have faith and continue and the Lord will make it plain.’ Well, according to the late Elder John A. Widtsoe, the cost of that building, using the measuring rod of the widow’s mite—what they had proportional to what they gave—the Kirtland Temple cost more per capita than any building in American religious history. An unprecedented sacrifice! That sacrifice was met, as you all know, with an unprecedented outpouring of the Lord’s Spirit” (The Temple and the Atonement, Truman G. Madsen, Abridged from a lecture delivered in Saratoga, California, October 16, 1994).

The outpouring of the Spirit and heavenly manifestations are proportional to the magnitude of the sacrifice.

Also, the Lord demands specific, tailor-made sacrifices of individuals. We do not determine what or when we sacrifice to the Lord. (Cain paid dearly for trying to sacrifice, yet not at the Lord’s request.) We must stand like waiters in a restaurant, and wait upon the Lord. We hand Him the menu of our possessions, time, talents, bodies, and everything else, and wait for Him to pick something. Often he will ask, through the Holy Ghost, for the thing we are least ready to part with. “Don’t attend that college, refuse that scholarship, don’t date that person,” are all potential sacrifices the Lord can ask us to make through the still small voice of the Spirit. And we can argue that there is nothing bad about them. Indeed, education and marriage are commandments, things we must wisely pursue. But there is one law that trumps all others—obedience to God. Nephi and Abraham were asked to take human life rather than follow the injunctions of the written law, and they followed that voice of the Spirit as though it were commandment from Sinai on stone tablets, or booming voice from the sky.

“God will feel after you, and He will take hold of you and wrench your very heart strings, and, if you cannot stand it you will not be fit for an inheritance in the Celestial Kingdom of God” (Joseph Smith, quoted by John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, 24:264). Sacrifice often means giving up good things as well as sins.

Abraham is the greatest mortal example of this. How could he kill his own son at God’s request? He was not just sacrificing Isaac, but all the house of Israel (we were on that altar too!). Sarah would have left Abraham. All of their converts would have rejected the Gospel on hearing what Abraham had done to his miraculously-born son. What kept that knife suspended in the air? “How could Abraham undertake the task?...How did his heart not break? How did not…Abraham…fall dead on the altar?...It is by the power of faith he stands there, the knife…raised to strike” (W. P. F. Noble, quoted by E. Douglas Clark, “The Blessings of Abraham,” pg 214-15).

We do not determine what or when we sacrifice to the Lord. But the more willing we are to sacrifice, the more we become like the Lord. I believe that the essence of humility is strict deference to the truth. Whatever the truth indicates is best, that is what God does. Eternity, worlds, bodies, lives, pain, sacrifice, all conform to invisible, weightless, intangible truth. You cannot hold a pound of truth. What does it smell like? Yet it is the hinge on which eternity swings. (Compare that to our world, wherein the truth is mutilated to accommodate anything, to deceive and get rich and powerful, to avoid discomfort and sacrifice.) But in heaven, truth is followed with exactness, and the result is the discomfort of sacrifice. God and Christ did not want to sacrifice, but they knew that for God to give His Only Begotten, and for Him to Suffer, would ultimately lead to the most good down the road. They could see the end result of the sacrifice before it was visible materially in the present. Faith precedes our sacrifices, too.

Isaiah 53:11 “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.” There is the sacrifice.

12 “Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” There is the payoff—we, His children, are able to be saved from sin.

John 3:14-16 “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Love for us was the motivation behind the great and last sacrifice, and it is easy to forget that it was our pain Jesus was bearing in the garden and on the cross. Perfect love casts out fear; maybe that is what propels us through the sacrifices we are called on to make—the intimidation is real, but the love for God and others gives us courage to face our sacrifices.