Changes

“And now behold, I say unto you, my brethren,

        if ye have experienced a change of heart, and

        if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love,

I  would ask, can ye feel so now?” Alma 5:26

We buried my father this week. One of my brothers was late for the funeral due to circumstances outside of his control. I didn’t want to start the service without him, so to try to keep those in attendance from awkwardness I spoke about my father and some of the many changes that he has gone through in his lifetime until my brother could get there. That got me to thinking about why people change. Some for good and some for bad.

How many times have you seen someone glowing from their recent baptism? Their whole being is different and they are excited about the new life ahead of them. Some go their whole lives with this glow and desire to love and serve their God. Others grow dull. For some it only takes a few months and they’ve disappeared. For others it is years later before they give up. What is the difference? Why do some endure to the end and others can’t endure through the month?

The passage above gives a glimpse of what it is like to experience the change that comes on those who make covenants with their God and Savior. How do those feelings get lost?

The verses that follow give some insight. Look at the questions it gives for self-reflection.

Have ye  walked, keeping yourselves blameless before God?

There is a need for regular repentance. Keeping oneself spotless from the world takes work. It takes a willingness to think eternally instead of temporally. Now, no one is perfect, but let’s face it, if we were we wouldn’t need the atonement anyway. That its one of the wonderful things I love about the sacrament. Each week we get to renew our covenants in our hearts.

“Could ye say,  if ye were called to die at this time, within yourselves, that you have been sufficiently humble…”

Often, this is what keeps people from real repentance. We all like to be thought well of. It is hard admitting when we’ve failed. I recently had a friend that told me about a night that they blew it. This friend told me because they felt like a hypocrite not telling me. I was never more proud of my friend than when they came to me in humbleness and told me. This person also has the humility to take the appropriate steps and face the bishop. Despite the sin, I admire this person because they didn’t stay there. They didn’t try to hide it or make excuses for it. That is repentance. That is humility.

“…that your garments have been cleansed, made white through the blood of Christ, who will come to redeem His people from their sins?”

This is a big one.  Evangelicals often accuse Latter-day Saints (Mormons) of a works based righteousness. Nothing could be further from the truth.  We are made perfect through Christ by placing our faith and covenants with Him. Sometimes, though we lose that faith. Maybe we been disenchanted because of some perceived wrong in our lives. Maybe we feel our Savior is ignoring our needs. Maybe we put our faith in ourselves and forget the need for His sacrifice. We feel like a failure and forget about the beauty of repentance. We forget we can be made whole, because we’re so caught up in our sin.

“Behold are ye stripped of pride?”

I know someone who needs to be worshipped. He’d never call it that. He’d call it being a righteous example. But, he derives his sense of worth from being looked up to and admired. This has hindered his repentance at times. He has a hard time forming healthy relationships, because he has to be completely respected. When they don’t admire him, he accuses them of being prideful and sometimes worse things.

It matters to everyone what others think, so in some ways I understand the internal struggle this man must go through. However, this is one of the most destructive forms of pride. It robs you of honesty. It robs you of accountability. And worst of all it robs you of real repentance.

We sometimes cause this problem in others with judgment. I love how President Uchtdorf once said it. We shouldn’t judge others because they sin differently than us. When we do this we make it difficult for others to repent. They need to feel a sense of love and acceptance.  I’m not saying accept their sin. I’m saying accept that they are human and will struggle with things we don’t. Before we get too cocky, let’s remember we struggle with things they don’t too.

The next time you catch someone “blowing it” ask yourself how you would feel if someone saw you in the midst of failure. How would you want them to respond to you? Once you know, do that.

Be an example of righteousness and love people to repentance. Then, maybe, we can help the faltering saints gain the glow and joy of their salvation again. Then, maybe, their changes will be great ones.

The Purpose of Freedom of Religion

I was supposed to speak in sacrament this morning. It was a topic that I cherish so I was really looking forward to it. My body didn’t agree. I kept throwing up.  I got up six different times determined to go and each time my body betrayed me.  I was quite disappointed. To ease my own disappointment I will blog my talk.  The upside is I get to be more opinionated when not standing in the pulpit, so I get to say all the things I wanted to. Some things, though true, are not best shared during sacrament. I’ll also have to pare it down to fit in this format.

There are two types of Freedom of Religion: External and Internal.

External Freedom

Whenever we hear the phrase “Freedom of Religion”, most of us think of external freedoms, such as we have in this country. It is something we should be very grateful for and I am positive we take for granted. There are citizens of other countries who would give up all their worldly possessions to have that privilege.  I think of the Romeike family from Germany who fled their country for the right to raise their children according to their faith. I think of the many members of underground churches in China. What they wouldn’t give for our rights! 

The freedom to worship according to the dictates of our conscience came at a high price. Many people gave their lives for this privilege. They gave their lives in the years following the Savior’s resurrection. On this soil, they gave their lives both during the revolutionary war and the years following the restoration of the gospel given to Joseph Smith. It is worth suffering for.

And to be quite frank, the current administration has been very strategic in their undermining that freedom. If we don’t wake up and start paying attention we may find ourselves one day wondering what happened to our freedoms. That however, is a topic for another post.

Internal Freedom

There is a second type of religious freedom, which is what I’d like to focus on: Internal freedom, also called agency.

In the book Gospel Doctrine  Joseph F. Smith says, “There are no freer people upon the face of the earth today than the Latter-day Saints.” Those who don’t know our culture and bylaws won’t understand just how true that statement is.

We are free to be good Latter-day Saints or bad ones. We’re even free to stop being Latter-day Saints altogether. If we chose we could write the bishop and ask him to remove us from the rolls of the church and he would oblige us, simple as that. There are no nasty consequences for not being a member (in the physical world). Even when someone commits a grievous sin and must be excommunicated, they are still welcome to services and homes. They are still loved and treated as a friend. And, when they are ready to return, they are welcomed back with open arms as if nothing had ever happened. The gospel calls that agency.

Those who have grown up as Latter day Saints won’t necessarily realize what a blessing that is. You may not even realize that not all churches have such a loving culture. In some faiths, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God overrules any agency of man. The cornerstone of those churches is submission. The membership is putting themselves not only under the leadership of the pastors and elders, but the rule of them as well. I belonged to such a church before I became a Latter day Saint. Early in my membership there, we had gotten a new pastor. Once his leadership started it was decided that all new members had to sign a form saying that they were submitting to the decisions of the elder board in order to complete their membership.

If a Mormon bishopric even considered producing such a form, they’d probably be released before the ink had time to dry. Coming from that type of church background, I had a little trouble adjusting to the mindset most Latter-day Saints held. Submission had been held up as the standard of righteousness for so long, that independence and agency took some time for me. Wives were to submit to husbands, children to parents, women to men, members to elders. It was a simple process of just do what you’re told.

Now, suddenly, as a Latter day Saint, I had to make all the decisions for myself and I found it challenging.  My children however, took to it like fish to water. Once they learned about agency, our whole family dynamic changed. In their young minds it meant total freedom. They no longer had to do anything. If I tried to ground them they would say, “Isn’t this taking away our agency?” They weren’t being disrespectful, they were trying to figure out what agency meant.

It took a while to get them to understand what agency really did mean. In the meantime, I had to remind them that though they had the agency to decide their actions, they would not get to choose the consequences of those actions. Should they decide, in their agency, not to do their schoolwork, I would fail them.  So, with their agency, they needed to learn wisdom in carrying  it out.

Wisdom is the key to any freedom. Like the Israelites, The Lord sets before us the freedom to choose between blessings and cursings. Take the time to read Deuteronomy 28 sometime. This is the type of choice set before us as well. 

Using Our Freedom

We have the freedom choose how to live our lives. We’ve been doubly blessed with the external freedom to make it easier to bring to pass.  Now ask yourself how do you use that freedom.

Do you invest it in things of eternal value, or do you waste in on pleasure seeking?

Do you choose to keep your covenants, or to tread them under your feet?

Do you know your hobbies or your Scriptures better?

With both freedom of religion and freedom of speech how many of your friends and neighbors have you shared the gospel with?

We can fill our lives with the blessings that come from living the gospel, or we can waste it and toss those blessings away.

What will you do with your freedom?