Charity and Children's Books

In nursery today I was reading a book to a little boy called "If the Savior Stood Beside Me," and we came to these two pictures and it took me a minute but I had a huge insight about the Atonement and what it truly means to have our sins taken away. I'm not going to lie, I totally relate to his painting, in fact I want to get one for my house, because I've been that woman many many times, and the most recent time was so very painful and stupid and I still to this day don't know why he took me back. But here we notice that the woman is wearing a red dress, and we can assume that that is made to represent her sins, as red as blood. They are in a dark room, she's mournful, and we can assume that because Jesus is wearing white in contrast to her red dress, it indicates that he is without sin, spotless. But when we get to the next picture, they are outside, in the light, they are happy and laughing, and Jesus is now holding the red dress. And when I finally put that together, it was so very powerful. Jesus was holding the red dress, it freed her and he did that for her. It made me think of what it means to have Jesus take our sins upon him. I still don't really understand the atonement, but this was such a powerful teaching for me, another way to make it a little bit more clear, and in a children's book no less, I didn't have to buy some fancy book, or read some in depth doctrinal discussion, it was in the children's book, maybe what I need to know about the atonement in this life is so simple that children can understand it, and maybe that was my message.

Another topic discussed today at church was "charity," and it's interesting because I had actually heard a really good definition of charity, or at least made it so very easy for me to understand. I think the difficult part of defining charity is that our society has used it in so many ways that don't comply with the church's definition as the "pure love of Christ." There are charitable organizations for so many different groups, most are genuine in their intentions, but some aren't. And then what does the "pure love of Christ" even mean? It's really abstract for me. But while listening to the October 2004 general conference in my car last week, I heard something that made completely sense to me. It was in President James E. Faust's "Where Do I Make My Stand?" talk that I talked about the other day that I loved so much. And to get to my point, there needs to be a little bit of lead up. He discussed why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to bad people. Quoting President Spencer W. Kimball he teaches "if pain and sorrow and total punishment immediately followed the doing of evil, no soul would repeat a misdeed. Is joy and pace and rewards were instantaneously given the doer of good, there could be no evil- all would do good and not because of the rightness of doing good. There would be no test of strength, no development of character, no growth or powers, no free agency...There would also be an absence of joy, success, resurrection, eternal life, and godhood." I had never considered the fact that constantly rewarding our good behavior and immediately punishing our bad, takes away our agency, because we would be making good choices to avoid pain, not because we loved God and wanted to do what is right. I heard in conference once, I'm going to have to go find it, something like "God is already almost over indulgent for blessing us as much as he does, for as much as we misbehave," or something like that. It was funny but true at the same time, in fact I still remember where I was when I heard it. Anyway, he must allowed and sometimes even provide trials for us to grow and become who we truly are, the consequences of our bad choices will catch up to us sooner or later. But here he makes the connection to charity. President Faust continues "Our love of God must be pure, without selfish intent. The pure love of Christ must be the motive in our devotion." This is where I made the connection, that charity isn't just giving money or clothes to a cause, it isn't even about being nice to others, those are simply symptoms of a charitable life. What the "pure love of Christ" means is that we act a certain way, do certain things solely because we love Jesus, and we don't expect a reward, there are no strings attached. We treat others a certain way, and live lifestyles that are a certain way for the sole reason of loving God, "pure" means "only," our only motivation is the love of God. Very interesting to me, an amazing insight, and this brings me to the point where I can thinks about the first and greatest commandment "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart."