One lower light shining

I am very impressed with the church’s youtube channel, Mormon Messages. I watched this short video clip recently and was blown away. This is exactly how I feel about Jesus Christ and His gospel. The words shared here express my testimony exactly.

I think that sometimes, in the church, we tend to compartmentalize our religion. Sacrament meeting is one thing, but Sunday school and Priesthood / Relief Society are something else. When we’re working on our food storage or our family history, we aren’t thinking about our scripture study or our prayers, and when we’re worshiping in the Temple, we aren’t thinking about our home teaching or our missionary work (unless we come to the temple with a specific related question).

When we compartmentalize our religion so much, we run the risk of losing sight of the center of it all–the thread that ties everything together. That thread is the gospel of Jesus Christ–the good news that He suffered and died for our sins that He might become our Savior and Redeemer. The church is true only because Jesus is the Christ, and every doctrine or practice, no matter how obscure, relates back to this supremely important point.

It reminds me of an excellent BYU devotional talk given my freshman year. The speaker was Thomas B. Griffith, a US federal judge, and the talk was entitled “The very root of Christian doctrine.” He told how, when he was a bishop, he and his counselors decided that every talk, lesson, and church activity would have to be explicitly and directly related to Jesus Christ. Without departing from the standard curriculum, they accomplished this–and saw a huge spiritual outpouring in their ward and stake. Truly, Christ is at the center of everything we do.

Jesus is the Christ–he is the root of everything in this church. Without him, we can do nothing–literally. He is my Savior and knows me personally. When I look beyond the daily workaday struggles of my life, I am blown away by how much He blesses me. No matter what I do–or what you may do or have already done–His arm is stretched out still (Isaiah 9:12, 17, 21).

Today was Stake Conference up in Orem for the BYU 11th stake. We don’t have a stake choir (not that I know of, anyway), but the Stake President had asked us in the 64th ward choir if we could sing.

Well, we sang today, and it was really fun!  This was the first time our stake had tried to fit everyone into the stake center up in Orem, and it was PACKED!  We had both cultural halls and both chapels filled up completely!  There was a big screen set down at the other chapel, so the people in the opposite chapel, with their backs to us, could watch through a video camera set up in our chapel.  Wow–one huge sea of heads, stretching for hundreds of yards–lots of people!

I decided to join the ward choir this semester, after my roommate suggested it.  I don’t know why I hadn’t joined earlier–I really enjoy singing, and every choir or musical number I’ve been in has been a lot of fun.  I guess I was always just too lazy doing other stuff on Sunday.

There are some things about ward choirs that can be somewhat annoying, however.  Us FLSRites (FLSR = Foreign Language Student Residence) tend to be very driven, passionate people, which can be a really positive thing in some ways, but in other ways it can be a liability.  In the context of ward choir, it means that half of us are either trying to be soloists or are trying to direct everyone else.

Then there are the usual annoyances of a volunteer church choir: people who talk with each other while the director is trying to instruct us, people who can’t sing on pitch no matter how much they practice, people who get carried away and start singing other people’s parts, people who never show up to practice but show up the day of the conference and don’t know about the little adjustments the choir has made to the piece, etc etc.

However, even with all that little stuff, it was fun going to practices, and it was even more fun singing in front of the rest of the stake!  Good times.  I’m looking forward to ward conference in April!

I can’t get enough of the Book of Mormon.  I’m doing a quick read through of the entire book, and right now I’m in 1st Nephi, finishing up with Lehi’s Dream.

Last semester I took a class on Western Political Heritage.  It was a fascinating class.  We went through a history of ancient and midieval political thought, from Homer and the ancient Greeks and Israelites through Plato, Aristotle, the Romans, and finally up to Augustine, Aquinas, and Dante.  It was eye opening to see how each empire led into the other, and how western philosophy grew and developed over history.

The Book of Mormon also has a tour of Western Civilization, from a very different perspective than we usually hear.  It’s found in 1 Nephi 11 through 1 Nephi 15, it runs from Jesus Christ’s birth to our current day–and beyond. The really cool thing about this tour of Western Civilization is that it all takes place within the narrative of one of the Book of Mormon’s richest and most complex allegories, Lehi’s dream.

The elements of Lehi’s dream are fairly simple: there is a tree with luminous white fruit that gives pure joy to those who eat it.  The people in the dream are all trying to get to the tree in order to obtain the fruit.  However, great mists of darkness rise up from the ground, causing the people to get lost.  Some people find a rod, or railing, of iron, that helps guide them through the darkness to the tree.  When they arrive and eat the fruit, however, some of the people become ashamed because there’s an enormous building full of people mocking and deriding those who have eaten the fruit.  In response, many people leave the tree; some of them drown in a river that runs between the tree and the building, others make their way into the building, and others find themselves lost on forbidden paths that take them away from everything.

The narrative is simple.  It’s the symbolism and the allegorical parallels that make the vision so rich and complex.  In the basic, classic interpretation, we have such connections as the luminous fruit = the love of God; the rod of iron = the word of God, the mists of darkness = the temptations of Satan, etc.

When you dig deeper, however, and you ask yourself “what does this symbol really mean?” you start to see some fascinating parallels.  You start to realize that everyone in this world can be placed somewhere in that dream.  EVERYONE.

And when you think about where you would be if you were in the dream, it gives you this fascinating perspective on life.  Where you are in relation to spiritual things.  Why people insult and reject the truths that you hold most sacred.  What you need to do in order to find happiness and fulfillment.

The really interesting thing for me this time was to see how Lehi’s dream provided the context for this tour of Western history and civilization.  Everything fit!  The tree, the fruit, the mists, the river, the building–everything was there, explaining something about the course and progress (or regression) of the Western world.

(I won’t give you a line by line explanation, though–for that, I invite you to read it for yourself. )

The thing that probably struck me the most was how this Book of Mormon approach to Western Civilization led to some very different conclusions than the ones we usually hear.  The last couple of chapters–14 and 15–emphasized how our modern era is an era of tremendous conflict.  Unlike modern political theory, however, they didn’t say anything about the clash of civilizations, or the rise of political Islam or China, or the many explanations for World War I or World War II–they had a very different take on the source of our modern conflicts:

10 And he said unto me: Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil; wherefore, whoso belongeth not to the church of the Lamb of God belongeth to that great church, which is the mother of abominations; and she is the whore of all the earth.
11 And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the whore of all the earth, and she sat upon many waters; and she had dominion over all the earth, among all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people.
12 And it came to pass that I beheld the church of the Lamb of God, and its numbers were few, because of the wickedness and abominations of the whore who sat upon many waters; nevertheless, I beheld that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, were also upon all the face of the earth; and their dominions upon the face of the earth were small, because of the wickedness of the great whore whom I saw.
13 And it came to pass that I beheld that the great mother of abominations did gather together multitudes upon the face of all the earth, among all the nations of the Gentiles, to fight against the Lamb of God.
14 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.
15 And it came to pass that I beheld that the wrath of God was poured out upon that great and abominable church, insomuch that there were wars and rumors of wars among all the nations and kindreds of the earth.

(1 Nephi 14:10-15)

In other words, the ultimate cause of war and armed conflicts in this world is the wilfull rejection of Jesus Christ (ie the Lamb of God) as our Savior.  When people reject Him, refuse to repent, and actively oppose His teachings (moral, ethical, doctrinal, etc), peace becomes a scarce thing in our modern society.

This also means that the greatest conflict of our age isn’t between the West and Islam, or the West and China, or Terrorism and the civilized world, or the developed and the developing worlds, Democracy and Communism, etc etc.  It’s between the saints of God, the disciples of Christ, the members of the church, and those who deride, belittle, mock, denounce, or otherwise detract from the message of the gospel and the teachings of Christ’s church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It’s not the kind of conflict you hear about on CNN, FOX News, Al-Jazira, MSNBC, BBC, or any of the other major news outlets, but even so, it is the defining conflict of our times.  And even though it sometimes can seem overwhelming, even though it sometimes feels like you’re an outsider for being Mormon, even though you see the world falling apart in so many ways all around you, there is that promise that we can be “armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory.”

I’ve seen and felt that power, both as one receiving it and one through whom it works.  I know that it comes from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and not from any other source.  I also know that it is here, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Whether you’re in the LDS church or out of it, I hope that you also come to know that power, and know that you can rely on it to bring you peace in today’s conflict-ridden world.

Here’s a thought I had while reading Nephi’s version of Lehi’s dream.

1 Nephi 11:25:

25 And it came to pass that I beheld that the rod of iron, which my father had seen, was the word of God, which led to the fountain of living waters, or to the tree of life; which waters are a representation of the love of God; and I also beheld that the tree of life was a representation of the love of God.

The prevalent view in our contemporary culture seems to be that churches and organized religions are dark, stodgy, impersonal, puritanical, and hypocritical. Our modern culture also portrays religious, church-going individuals as self-righteous, power-hungry, hyper-critical, anti-social, and closed-minded. This is the sense I get from the way the mass media portrays religious life.

Not according to Nephi and Lehi’s vision of the tree of life, however. According to that vision, true religion leads to the deepest, purest, and most fulfilling love that any of us can find. The rod of iron, a representation of the word of God as found in His church, leads us to the fruit of the tree of life, which “fills [our] souls with exceedingly great joy” (1 Nephi 8:12).

In other words, through religion–true religion–we become a loving, gentle, kind, patient, merciful, accepting, listening, and optimistic people. None of this stodgy, puritanical stereotype that our culture sometimes projects upon us. Through Christ’s church–his true church–we are filled with the “love of God and of all men” (2 Nephi 31:20).