In Sunday school, we talk freely about perfection, becoming “like God,” complete, whole, flawless, exalted, all-knowing, all-seeing, possessing eternal life. We are inured to the amazing idea of becoming like God. It does not seem unnatural because God is the Father of our spirits, and it is intuitive that children will grow up to be like their parents. “Ye are gods,” Jesus tells those who wanted to stone Him because He claimed to be the Son of God. Any persecution against members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for espousing this doctrine sounds reminiscent of the charges of blasphemy made against the Savior. But the Bible speaks clearly; Jesus speaks of “...my Father, and your Father...my God, and your God” (John 20:17). Paul is candid: “The Spirit itself beareth witness...we are the children of God...and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together” (Romans 8:16-17). Latter-day Saints believe God, our Father, intends for us to mature and become just like Him. The Savior can make us into anything He wants, provided we cooperate with His plan.
It is sad to note that some Latter-day Saints hold the belief that God can make a good man like Himself, yet disbelieve that God can make a bad man good. There is a greater difference between God and a good man than there is between a good man and a bad man. It is easier to climb a flight of stairs than it is to ascend a mountain. President Monson’s recent address in conference notes that while leopards cannot change their spots, men change all the time. We are either ascending or descending; there are no level plains in spiritual progress. Hopefully our complacent plateaus have mostly upward slants.
Joseph Smith taught, and displayed, the principles of love and mercy. How do you most effectively reclaim sinners? On rare occasions, the Lord will send out prophets to “reprove” with “sharpness.” Abinadi, Alma, and Amulek could not convince their audiences to turn away from the brink of disaster. Jonah’s audience in Nineveh responded miraculously to the threat of destruction. But the majority of people do not lack information about their sins. They lack motivation to repent. They defer and delay and postpone and procrastinate because they lack the courage, or energy, or faith, or hope, to let go of their comfortable misery in sin and go looking for happiness elsewhere.
The Prophet’s attitudes come through in his actions and his teaching. “...I...having been...persecuted by those who ought to have been my friends and to have treated me kindly, and if they supposed me to be deluded to have endeavored in a proper and affectionate manner to reclaim me...” (JS—H 1:28).
We Latter-day Saints are fond of quoting Matt. 5:48: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect.” But what is the “therefore” referring to? John Bytheway pointed out that the context for this commandment is found in the preceding verses: “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans (the Judean IRS) the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect...” (Matt. 5:44-48). The antecedent clauses for “therefore” are about forgiveness towards those who hate us. Why love our enemies? Because it will help them repent and become our friends, and because it makes our behavior more like God's behavior.
“All the religious world is boasting of righteousness: it is the doctrine of the devil to retard the human mind, and hinder our progress, by filling us with self-righteousness. The nearer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls; we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs...if you would have God have mercy on you, have mercy on one another” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 241). It seems that God is very eager to forgive. In fact, He sacrificed His Son, and Jesus sacrificed His own life amid terrible suffering, just to make it possible, legal, and appropriate to forgive us. They have paid a heavy toll for the privilege of excusing our sins and stupid mistakes.
Are we willing to roll our stony hearts a few inches across the line that separates the lust for justice from a willingness to forgive? When we “dream of [our] mansions above,” do we imagine ourselves full of charity and pure forgiveness? All too often, my daydreams are about perfect health and appearance, and other petty concerns. I even dabble in thoughts of enemies wailing in the furnace of hell. This is the opposite of “like God.”
Sunday school is littered with phrases like “perfection,” “eternal life,” “exaltation,” and so forth, but what do they really mean? As I indicated above, the image often evoked is like a Christmas list of telestial concerns. We run through the catalogue of everything on sale; banquets of the richest foods, the absence of blemishes, athleticism, owning whole planets, and on and on. I heard of a Muslim professor who told his students that the description of heaven for Islam is like the inside of a supermarket; rotisserie chicken, milk, honey, wine, etc. My uncle joked that in heaven there will be raspberries the size of footballs with only one seed. You can learn a lot about yourself by examining your expectations of what heaven will include.
We strive earnestly to create a version of our conception of heaven here, however feebly. Those who value health frequent the gym; those who value physical beauty can spend endless hours and enormous funds preening and even submitting to cosmetic surgery. Intellectuals delve into learning, trying to master all sciences; craftsmen and engineers create and build and design. There are buffets for foodaholics; prostitution is still an active profession; enormous mansions always being built, regardless of the state of the economy; drugs for pleasure junkies; ways of risking life and limb for cheap thrills; and security guards, vaults, bars, guns, watchdogs, and bunkers to protect life and wealth. Will heaven be an amplification of this stuff?
The above sounds quite worldly, most of it. It represents the worse and good of the world, not the better or best. This is obvious, so in Sunday school we will preach against most of these things in favor of various virtues we are trying to develop as we strive to become like God. I worry that we also face a red herring there, a decoy. The scriptures describe virtues in long pleonastic lists. We are doomed to be deficient in at least some area of these exhaustive lists. Which ones should we be striving to compensate for, to develop? “All of them” is the knee-jerk reaction. “Be ye...perfect...” And so our discussions about the welfare of our souls can become lamentations of our weaknesses, and plans to prune them out of our systems one at a time. This can be self-defeating, a decoy that draws our attention away from the goal, the best things, and towards the good or better.
I am in no way endorsing sin here. I am saying we have limited time and innumerable options, so we had better lean our ladders on the right wall.
Moroni complained that “thou has not made us mighty in writing...I fear lest the Gentiles shall mock at our words.” Nephi also lamented, “O wretched man that I am.” Enoch wailed, “I am but a lad, and all the people hate me; for I am slow of speech...” Moses shied away from his calling also: “Who am I, that I should...bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt...I am not eloquent...I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.”
These prophets bemoaning their flaws are among the very best men who have ever lived. They were right about their flaws, but their flaws did not stop them from accomplishing their individual assignments. To Enoch: “Go forth and do as I have commanded thee...” anyway, and everything will be alright. Paul asked three times to have a “thorn in the flesh removed.” The Lord gave these men gifts to strengthen them, rather than taking away all their imperfections. The Lord told Moses, “Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I?” His response to Moroni is similar: “I give unto men weakness that they may be humble...”
Try as we might, we will be riddled with flaws until after the resurrection. We may enjoy a little success with pruning habits and planting virtues here or there. In this limited lifetime, which virtues should we be developing in our quest to become like God?
Hugh Nibley has noted that no one is very strong, brave, or smart—no one is very anything. He points out two great gifts we have here in life: our abilities to forgive and repent—angels envy us our capacity to do these things. He says we should all take advantage of them while we can, and notes that God has extended our lives for that purpose.
I endorse this course of action wholeheartedly. But there is another ability we possess in this life for which the angels envy us: our ability to marry and beget children, to form families. This may seem like a commonplace endowment among mortals, but it is nonexistent among those without bodies.
D&C 132 contains a confluence of the terms that fill our discussions of godhood, but it goes beyond using them. It defines them. “...exaltation and glory...which glory shall be a continuation of the seeds forever and ever. Then shall they be gods, because they have no end (of posterity); therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue (to have kids); then shall they be above all, because all things (especially their posterity) shall be subject unto them...Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye abide my law (eternal marriage) ye cannot attain to this glory. For strait is the gate, an narrow the way that leadeth unto the exaltation and continuation of the lives (eternal begetting), and few there be that find it, because ye receive me not in the world neither do ye know me.”
Here all those familiar terms—“exaltation,” “knowing God,” “being like God,” “living with God,” “glory,” “power,”—are defined in terms of procreation, a family context. We may be slow witted compared to the angels, compared to who we were premortally, but we have a power in this life we never had before in all previous eons: the ability to beget. God calls Himself Father, and asks us through His Son to address Him by that family title. God gave us a cluster of weaknesses in contrast to the constellation of virtues we covet, but in the midst of that weakness, the gems of forgiving, repenting, and begetting glitter. If we are too concerned with swatting at the mosquitoes of imperfections (which God installed in us anyway) at the expense of forming families, then Satan has decoyed us away from the strait gate and narrow way, from the best to the better.
Even more horrible is the belief that we must wait until we are perfect before we can get married. Yes, we must always be striving against our flaws, and yes, Temple worthiness is the bar we must clear to collect the eternal blessings of marriage, but once we exhibit that “reasonable righteousness” (Elder Maxwell), our main goal should be making and keeping the capstone covenant of sealing to a worthy spouse at the altars of the Temple.
As we survey our flaws, yes, let’s get rid of them. As we drool over the buffet of virtues presented in the scriptures, let’s ask the Lord to bless us with those best gifts missing from our suite of characteristics. But let’s also be mindful of why we want them. Be more forgiving, loving, intelligent, patient, courageous, friendly, stalwart, valiant, faithful, and all the rest, because it will make us good husbands and fathers, good wives and mothers. (Someone with millions of children would need to be all-seeing, all-knowing all-powerful, perfectly patient, merciful, just, and physically indestructible. God gives us gifts to accomplish tasks, not merely for our consolation or vanity.) That is the actual emphasis; we are not here to perfect and perfect and perfect until we feel presentable. Nephi, Moses, Enoch, and Moroni were all mindful of the gaps in their abilities, but the Lord did not give them a note to stay home from school until they recovered from their illnesses. He reminded them of who made them flawed, and told them to “go and do.”
Ugly as it may seem to us, we are burdened down with flaws by the Lord. They are part of His plan; they keep us humble. (Note that the Lord would rather have us humble and weak than strong and proud—that should tell us something about how the Lord values humility). There are, however, compensatory and novel gifts we have been given, and this life is the time to deploy them, regardless of how clumsy our weakness makes the process look. God could bestow or withdraw strengths and weaknesses with the snap of a finger. (He often does). The fact that we do not wake up completely flawless one morning can be interpreted as tacit approval of our circumstances on the Lord’s part. Limp if we must, but let’s still forgive, repent, and create families, aim at that strait and narrow gate, and not become distracted or deterred by the better, good, or bad we lack.
