1,000th Post

This is my 1,000^th post. It’s taken almost 5 years exactly and my life has been changed in a way that I never could have imagined. In my patriarchal blessing it says, “I bless you to know that there shall be that need in your life to study, in great depth, the scriptures. I bless you that you may so study. Then, from those scriptures shall emerge, in your life great wisdom, understanding and knowledge. This shall be of so much importance in your personal life and in the lives of those for whom you are responsible, yea, those who you love, indeed.” When I was a 16 year old hearing this for the first time, I kind of rolled my eyes because I sarcastically thought “of course the scriptures are important,” and I dreaded the time when I would have to actually do it.

But 5 years ago, a friend sent me a motivational question for Memorial Day which was something like “what in your life are you not getting enough out of and what can you do about it?” I had been thinking for a while that I wasn’t getting as much out of my scripture study as I used to and decided to dig a little deeper. I looked for a study guide that would go verse by verse through the Book of Mormon with explanations and references. I couldn’t find one, so I decided to make my own. I haven’t gone back and read any of those earlier entries in a really long time but I think there was a lot of “I don’t know” and “I’ll think about that later.”
But I stuck with it, trying to do a post a day during the week, and succeeding when circumstances allowed. Looking back at that time, I had just gone through the temple for the first time, I was still confident in my ability to get remarried, but I was very insecure in my relationship with God. I’ve described it many times before that I believed God to be just like every other man I’ve ever known, misogynistic, disinterested in me at best and openly hostile towards me at worst. I truly in my heart felt that way about God, but I knew that the gospel was true and so I stuck with that, and I am so grateful that I did.
As a commemoration of my journey through the scriptures over the last 5 years, I’m going to go through some of the most valuable lessons that have come to me during that time. Then next week we will start with the Last Supper, but I didn’t want to start a one day post with that, I’d like to keep it all together for the week.
1. Who God really is – Clearly I didn’t have a very high opinion of God when I started this and that was because of my own experiences, and I have hated Him most of my life because I have suffered so intensely and I feel like he should have done something to help. A friend’s mom told me once that God is not so small that he won’t allow us to be angry with him. I was never scolded for my attitude towards him, and even this year when a tragedy kicked my family in the face, I swore at Him, and he never fought back, he allowed me to feel my feelings and comforted me when I would let him.
During my study, the first time I felt that maybe I had it all wrong was a quote I came across early in my study from Joseph Smith that said, “Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, then we are ready to believe or receive… God does not look on sin with (the least degree of) allowance, but… the nearer we got 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.” It was the term “liberal” that I was so taken with. Christianity is considered to be “conservative” in our country’s political systems and I think that I was preparing myself to accept “conservative” values by embracing who God is, values that are divisive, exclusionary, and unbending.
Back in Joseph Smith’s time the term “liberal” would not have reference to a political set of ideologies, but I read the quote in an October 2003 general conference talked by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland entitled, “The Grandeur of God.” Surely Elder Holland would have know what using the term “liberal” would have implied to his predominantly “conservative” audience, so I took that to mean exactly what I thought it meant, the Bible-thumping, sinner hating, fire and brimstone God that I was expecting was not who he was. I was raised very conservative, like 3 hours a day listening to Rush Limbaugh conservative, living in California. The conflict between the two political parties in my childhood was intense and it was also tied to religion. When I heard the term “liberal” used by Joseph Smith through Elder Holland, I started to think that maybe God wasn’t as oppressive as I thought that he was, maybe Christianity isn’t really about hate and disenfranchisement at all.
It took some time, but I started to separate God’s words and actions from the Christianity that I saw being portrayed as righteous. I was able to see that a lot of people were doing it wrong, and I also noticed that the majority of people touting Christianity didn’t actually lived it in their own lives. It was refreshing to me to learn that I didn’t need to give up my left leaning ideology to embrace Jesus. I hate the whole left vs. right concept, I hate that “conservatives” are considered Christians, which by default implies that “liberals” are essentially devil worshippers. In fact, I just figured out what I hate so much about “conservatives” claiming Christianity as their foundation, it’s very much like a “Sun God” mentality. King Charles of France (I don’t remember which one) believed that He was appointed by God to be the King of France, therefore whatever he did was right and he could do whatever he wanted without constraint.
I feel like a lot of that sentiment is being used today by groups of people who claim to be Christians. There is very much a “I’m a Christian so I can do what I want and what I say is right.” They’re using Christianity as a basis for why their personal beliefs are correct, instead of using their own personal beliefs to be servants of Christianity. I didn’t mean for this to turn into a political thing, but being able to separate political “Christianity” from who Christ really is, was liberating in a way that I have never been able to articulate before. I’m not saying conservatives and liberals are right or wrong. My personal beliefs are that I’m too conservative for California and too liberal for Utah.
Once I was able to start breaking down the walls of the God that I believed in, I was able to be slowly taught who he actually was. There are little lessons all the time, but my major revelation came after a few months of study, and it came suddenly, intensely and with crystal clear understanding. If you’ve ever watched the tv show “Lost,” in the very end of the series there is a part where people come back together with people that were important to them on the island and they touch hands and suddenly everything comes back to them in an instant. They suddenly know who the other person is, they know about the lifetime of love and feelings they had with that person and they just all of a sudden know.
That’s how it happened with me. I remember I was at work, thinking about something and all of a sudden it hit me, and I knew who God was, I knew how he felt about things, and most of all I knew who I was to Him. The only way I can think to describe him would be the world’s greatest grandfather and Santa Clause put together, times ten. It changed my life instantly. I was able to view all gospel principles and life experiences through that lens of love and things started to come together for me logically, and it was beautiful. It didn’t come the first day that I started to study, but it came soon and when I was ready.
2 – Who I am to God – Just as important as knowing who God is, was learning who I was to Him. I had never considered this to be a part of the equation. They always say “know God,” and all that, and I knew it was important and once I learned the true nature of God I was freed from mental blocks to my learning. But what was just as liberating was knowing that everything he is to me, I am to Him as well. I’m not great at explaining this part, so I’m going to share some quotes I’ve found over time that have really resonated with me on this subject. “He knew the price of those sins was death. He knew the source of those sins was you and since he couldn’t bear the though of eternity without you, he chose the nails.”
The second one also comes from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland as quoted in the April 2018 general conference talk entitled, “Pure Love.” He says, “The first great commandment of all eternity is to love God with all our heart, might, mind, and strength- that’s the first great commandment. But the first great truth of all eternity is that God loves us with all of His heart, might, mind, and strength. That love is the foundation stone of eternity, and it should be the foundation stone of our daily life.” I had always felt that the first great commandment to love God with all we have was very one-sided, and that was especially painful when I thought that God was a monster. But the truth is that he loves and is more committed to us than we ever could be to Him.
This begs the question, why doesn’t he just come out and say that? “Love me with all your heart because I love you with all my heart.” I guess it to could perceived as overbearing or overwhelming, especially since so many people don’t even know who God is. The Bible can be interpreted to portray God as angry and vengeful, someone else with a contradicting message might be difficult to reconcile without some introductory preparation from the Spirit. I remember the first time I heard the phrase in a blessing, “God is aware of you and your circumstances.” It was mind-blowing. The God of the universe knows about me? It took a while before I was able to think about that concept reasonably.
Then I think about the sky-writing message that I watched being written a couple of years ago that said, “God loves U!” with a smiley face. I thought that it was nice but we were at a public pool at the time and most of the other people saw it and rolled their eyes or snorted in disgust. Before I grew spiritually through the scriptures, I would see stuff like that and think sarcastically “sure he does,” with the underlying implication of “if the God of the universe really loved us, when why does life suck so much?” It’s a concept that can’t be learned without proper preparation, and there’s also the issue of people using the “God is love” message to push their own agendas and all the baggage that people have from those experiences. I guess I’m just saying that it’s a complex topic that seems like it should be easily understood, but in practice it can be quite difficult.
3 – The Eternal Perspective – going back to my Patriarchal blessing, there’s a statement that I hadn’t understood until right now that says, “seek to give unto others of love, encouragement, uplift and growth; yea, an eternal perspective in that this mortality is but a striving ground concerning the eternities and the blessings contained therein.” I was just going to say that it’s more about the future than the past, but that’s not really true. I learned that in the pre-mortal world those of us that came to earth already accepted the gospel and that most of us will accept it again once we can understand it a way that makes sense to us, even if that understanding doesn’t come until the next life. I learned that the gospel is both simpler and more complex than we can understand right now.
I learned that Jesus understands that many people leave the gospel because of the people who profess to serve Him, be it parents, church members, family members, etc. People’s involvement in the gospel is dictated by so many different factors and in order to be a just God, all must have the same level of understanding before anyone can really make an informed decision.
I also learned the power of choice. Part of my hatred of God stemmed from my belief that my chances of entering heaven were not as much dictated by me as they were dictated by God. Honestly, it felt like a lottery sometimes, and when I feel  like my results are based on luck, then I give up. It was Brad Wilcox’s talk entitled, “His Grace is Sufficient” that opened up a different perspective for me to consider. The whole thing is amazing, but the most pivotal part for me was, “In the past I had a picture in my mind of what the final judgment would be like, and it went something like this: Jesus standing there with a clipboard and Brand standing on the other side of the room nervously looking at Jesus. Jesus checks His clipboard and says, ‘Oh, shoot, Brad. You missed it by two points.’ Brad begs Jesus, ‘Please, check the essay question one more time! There have to be two points you can squeeze out of that essay.’ That’s how I always saw it. But the older I get, and the more I understand this wonderful plan of redemption, the more I realize that in the final judgment it will not be the unrepentant sinner begging Jesus, ‘Let me stay.’ No, he will probably be saying, ‘Get me out of here!’ Knowing Christ’s character, I believe that if anyone is going to be begging on that occasion, it would probably be Jesus begging the unrepentant sinner, ‘Please, choose to stay. Please use my Atonement- not just to be cleansed but to be changed so that you want to stay.’ The miracle of the Atonement is not just hat we can go home but that –miraculously- we can feel at home there.”
This is always how I thought it would go, then I learned that it won’t be Jesus turning people away from heaven who want to be there, everyone will be allowed to go wherever they want, so heaven, or the different kingdoms will be choices that people make for themselves, not anything that Jesus will dictate to them. Knowledge, understanding, and acceptance come with time, and people must be prepared for it through their circumstances. I’ve come to understand that the hand of God is working in everyone’s life giving everyone exactly what they need to one day be prepared for the full understanding.
The second part about the eternal perspective is the law of compensation. I have suffered in my life and everyone else has too, some to the point where we think, “there is nothing that can ever make up for the horror of this life.” But as I’ve come to understand the Atonement more, I see that Jesus didn’t just pay for our sins, he felt everything that has ever happened to us. He has given birth to every child, he has grieved every loss, he has experienced every rape, every torture, every heartbreak, every stubbed toe, every disappointment.
He is so deeply invested that he has hit every rock bottom with us and then dug a little deeper, and he did this so that he could “succor his people,” and I don’t think that this means just so he can comfort us when we are suffering, but so that he can make it up to us, he can compensate us for our pain. This is something that can only be considered from an eternal perspective. Looking at a man pulled from him home by militants and then being burned alive leaving his wife and children, it’s hard to see that there will be any way for that to be made up for in any way.
My favorite way to consider the concept of the law of compensation is from C.S. Lewis and I just quoted it the other say, saying, “(Mortals) say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory… The Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven.’” Only someone who has lived our lives with us can know exactly how we can be rewarded, and it’s frustrating to see people leave this world and think that that reward will never come. But if we remember that this life is the second act of a three act play, we can know that there is more coming, even if the future looks bleak to us now.
4 – How to Fight a War – This isn’t as warm and fuzzy as what we’ve already talked about, but I feel that this concept is so important because I’m not naïve enough to think that my son will escape the experience of going off to war. Every generation has a war, and I don’t believe for a second that my son will not be touched by it, so the only thing I can do is prepare him for it.
I remember watching Saving Private Ryan years ago and there was a part where they capture an enemy German soldier and because they are on a specific mission they can’t take him with them. A debate ensues about what to do, let him walk away or kill him and there is intense arguing for both sides. Finally, Tom Hanks decides to let the guy walk away and then when they get to the next town, that same German soldier is now back with his unit and kills one of their guys and the underlying theme is that if they would have just killed him in the first place then their guy would have still be alive.
I’ve thought about that scene many times and tried to think about what I would have done in that scenario, and I just couldn’t come to a conclusion either way. But now I know that the right answer would have been to send him away with a promise of peace. He couldn’t have kept that promise and Captain Moroni knew that when he sent away Lamanite soldiers with covenants of peace, but it doesn’t matter whether they come back and fight them or not.
Winning a war is not dependent on weapons or training or numbers, winning a war is dependent on righteousness. Some of the righteous are killed in war, but it was their time to go and Alma tells us that “those who had been slain were righteous people, therefore we have no reason to doubt but what they were saved.” One righteous man has a better chance of winning a war with a stick than a thousand wicked well armed, highly trained men. I tell my kids all the time, “What’s the most important thing to win a war?” “Being righteous.”
I learned that pre-emptive war is not sanctioned by God, we must be attacked first, with no response and better self-protection, then if we are attacked again a second time then we can respond militarily and expect God’s protection. Most people, given the chance, just want to live their lives in peace. When Lamanite prisoners were sent to live peacefully with the people of Ammon, they thrived there. Lamanite prisoners had the gospel preached to them with much success , and when the Gadianton Robbers infested Nephite lands, the people of Ammon eradicated them completely. How? By capturing and killing them all? No. By capturing them and preaching the gospel to them. Alma says that in order to avoid a war, “And now, as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just-yea, it had had more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them- therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God.”
Success in battle is not determined by your weapons or training or number of soldiers, it is determined by your righteousness. This is the lesson that I’m trying to teach my son.
I have so many more concepts that I’ve leraned that I want to talk about but it’s time to wrap this up. In summary, the last 5 years of deep scripture study has changed my life and my spirit. I have knowledge and understanding that I had never considered to be possible before. But more importantly, I have peace, hope, and a personal relationship with my Savior, and it is beautiful. I truly believe that the Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith through the gift and power of God. I’ve felt it in my mind and in my heart. I truly believe that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is Christ’s true church on the earth today. I believe that Jesus is at the head of this church and that while we are not perfect, this is God’s hand in our lives.
I’m grateful beyond words for the opportunity that I’ve had and that I continue to have to study the scriptures. I’m grateful for God’s constant attention and tutoring. I love him and I never thought that I would be able to say that. If you’ve read this far, great job and tune in next week as we move on to the Last Supper.