One lower light shining

Yesterday at institute, our teacher was gone, so we had one of the recent RMs from the ward sub in.  Although the lesson was fairly decent, he seemed to fall back on a lot of gospel cliches–words and phrases that we’ve all heard hundreds of times before.  One of those that stood out to me was “feel the Spirit.”

“Feel the Spirit” is a phrase that’s really common among us Mormons.  We say it all the time, usually in reference to coming closer to God or increasing our personal spirituality.  Yet the phrase itself denotes a passive state of mind, one where we’re just waiting around for God to make us feel good.

That doesn’t sit well with me, because I know that that’s not the way God works.  Yes, He gives us comfort–after all, “Comforter” is one of the names of the Holy Ghost–but that’s not all that He does, and certainly not the most important thing either.

The Holy Ghost’s mission is to testify of Christ and bring us unto Him, and He does that primarily by communicating eternal truths and giving us personal guidance and inspiration.  He doesn’t just exist to make us feel good–quite the opposite, in fact.  Through His still, small voice, He pushes us to repent, be baptized, keep our covenants, and endure faithfully to the end.  If we’re just sitting around doing nothing, He won’t come to us–or if He does, it’s usually to kick us in the pants.

I submit that instead of the term “feel the Spirit,” we should use the term “receive the Spirit.” This is in connection with the baptismal ordinance, which ends “and say unto you, receive the Holy Ghost.”

To receive the Spirit, we need to be striving to follow the gospel–to exercise faith, continually repent, keep our baptismal covenants, and follow the promptings and inspiration of the Holy Ghost.  We need to make place in our lives to listen to that still small voice–to tune out the distractions and actively listen.  We need to humble ourselves so that our hearts are contrite enough to follow His guidance, regardless of how it seems to contradict our own plans and desires.

In short, I hope that in speaking of the Holy Ghost, we can recognize that inspiration is not just a “feel good” thing.  It’s a vital part of our eternal salvation, and as such it requires an element of work.  Let’s not forget that.

Today I opened an old scripture journal and read the following note (in response to Mosiah 3:19):

God’s promptings work exactly the opposite way that Satan’s temptations work.  Satan seeks to destroy our agency; God seeks to affirm and protect it.  Satan will try to overwhelm us despite our intentions; God waits patiently for us to torn towards Him, then guides us personally.

We yield to Christ in a completely different way [than to Satan].  To yield to Satan, we let ourselves drift away in the sins of the world.  To yield to Christ, we don’t wait to be carried away, but we point our lives to Him and listen to the Spirit.

This makes me think of a principle I learned very early on my mission about the guidance of the Spirit.  The Spirit will not push a body at rest into motion, but will guide a body in motion in the correct direction.  If we wish to be guided by the spirit, we need to exercise the faith to move in a certain direction, and once we are actively pursuing what we feel is right, the Spirit will guide us more precisely to what we need to do.

Today I was reading in 2nd Nephi 26:

11 For the Spirit of the Lord will not always strive with man. And when the Spirit ceaseth to strive with man then cometh speedy destruction, and this grieveth my soul.

(2 Nephi 26:11)

Believe it or not, this doom-and-gloom verse actually gave me a great deal of hope and optimism. How so? I’ll explain.

In our modern, secular society, it’s very easy to find wickedness and moral corruption. Most of the time, people don’t even consider it to be wrong. People are calling evil good and good evil all over the place; just go to the movies, or listen to the music on the radio, or look at what people are wearing. Because our secular society is not informed by the gospel, our social norms often have very little to do with gospel truths and principles.

And yet, in spite of all this wickedness, our society has not been “speedily destroyed.”

Like Jonah at Ninevah, we may be tempted to ask why. After all, wickedness is everywhere! But, at the same time, it’s not all doom-and-gloom. We can still find righteousness and nobility in our culture, even outside of the church community. People who commit evil still have some good in them; they still have the ability to repent. Besides, there are still many good people in our society!

As a sign of this, we can consider the fact that God hasn’t “speedily destroyed” us yet. He hasn’t given up on us. I’m not talking about the church here, I’m talking about the people outside of the church, the people in mainstream America. If we believe in the Book of Mormon, we believe that when a society becomes completely depraved, God allows them to be destroyed. Well, we’re still here.

And if we’re still here, that means that the Spirit hasn’t given up on us yet. He’s still striving with us, despite our wickedness, urging us to repent.

What does that mean?

Well, if the Spirit is still striving with us, we should be able to feel it, to see its effects. If He’s striving with our mainstream, secular society, we should be able to see those effects within mainstream, secular society. People recognizing wickedness and evil for what it is, feeling a desire to look for something good, something true. People doing good to each other, being kind, even being Christlike from time to time–outside of the church!

I think that when we get pessimistic about the moral depravity of our modern society, most of the time we’re simply projecting our own fears and frustrations onto our view of the world, not seeing things as they really are. Yes, there is wickedness and evil in this world–but there is also the supreme potential for good, even in some of the most depraved people. A true disciple of Christ has the faith to see the good in all things. As we read in the book of Moroni:

19 Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly will be a child of Christ.

(Moroni 7:19)

Anyway, those were my thoughts as I read 2 Nephi 26 today. If we as a nation haven’t been wiped off the map, the Spirit must not have given up on us yet, and if the Spirit is still striving for us, there’s still some good in us. We just need to find it and recognize it.

President Monson came and spoke at a CES fireside Sunday afternoon at the BYU Marriott Center. Since I live within walking distance of the center, I was going to go…but then I took a nap…and when I woke up, I figured it would be easier to stay home and watch it on TV, rather than fight the crowds. That’s usually what happens when a General Authority comes through for a devotional.

President Monson framed his address around the idea that life is a little bit like Charles Dicken’s novel Great Expectations (an excellent book, by the way–one of the few required books for high school that I enjoyed).  The main character, Pip, is an orphan without many prospects except a life of hard labor, living with his distant relatives.  One day, however, a lawyer comes to him from London, with the news that an unknown benefactor has given him a fortune.  He goes from his small town to the big city with the understanding that great expectations have been placed upon him, and he spends the rest of the novel trying to live up to them.

In the analogy, Christ is our benefactor, and through His grace He has given us enormous blessings, while at the same time having great expectations that we will rise up and become something through these blessings.  We need to use the time and resources we’ve been given for our personal growth and to serve others.

I was a little surprised to hear President Monson give a lot of practical, hands on advice.  He talked for a long time about the importance of receiving a formal education, especially in today’s world.  He said that we should study hard and not slack off.

One funny story he told had to do with a kid who dropped out of college.  He called his mom three weeks later and said: “Mom, you told me that if I dropped out of college, I’d never get a job.  Well, you’re wrong; I’ve already had six!”

He spent a long time talking about hard work and the need to persevere in the things we work for.  In this regard, he repeated a lot of things that I’ve heard before.  It made me think a little bit about how I wrote my first novel last year, and how that took a lot of perseverance.  I suppose that if I treat my creative writing as a part-time job (or, dare I say, full-time job) and not as a bohemian escape from the realities of life, it would be compatible with this hard work ethic.  At least, I didn’t feel that this decision of mine to be a writer went contrary to President Monson’s council.

Besides this practical, real-world advice, he talked a lot about faith and doubt, how the one dispels the other, and we should not let our doubts destroy our faith.  He mentioned science and testimony, how we do not receive our testimony by science, and so we should not allow science to destroy our testimony either.

I haven’t personally struggled with any doctrinal or testimony issues in the past few years, but these remarks reminded me of a time when I did struggle with those things.  On my mission I came to learn, through direct experience, that God exists, that Jesus is my personal savior, and that the Holy Ghost is very real, and with us in the LDS church.  Through my experience, I came to know these things with as much certainty as anything else I know about this universe.  Ever since, I have never felt a need to prove these things to myself again–I’ve simply accepted it.  Perhaps this is a weakness, but honestly, after all I’ve been through, doubt seems so superfluous and pointless that I can’t really see myself not believing these things.

For all his practical advice about how we should better our lives, President Monson seemed to emphasize just as much that we need to serve each other.  Running the race of life is not just about going to school, getting a good job, a good wife, a good house, good car, good children…it’s about giving ourselves to other people.  He said that we cannot come to know God unless we serve Him by serving His children.

He gave an excellent quote from President McKay:

Man’s Earthly existence is but a test to whether he will concentrate his efforts–his mind, his soul–upon things which contribute to the comfort and gratification of his physical nature, or whether he will make as his life’s pursuit the acquisition of spiritual qualities.

An excellent quote, one that really struck me. I’m graduating in about a year, and I have no idea what I’m going to do after I leave this college. Sometimes, when I think about it, I feel as if I’m just taking up space in this world. I know it’s not true–if nothing else, my human relationships and how I love and serve others give meaning to my life–but it’s a scary thought. In that context, this quote really impacted me. Life should be about spiritual things, not just about eating, sleeping, working, and spending money.

Finally, he talked a lot about letting Jesus Christ into our lives–that to find Him, we need to make room for Him in our lives. Jesus stands at the door and knocks–he’s waiting for us to make Him a priority, to welcome him into our homes and our lives. We have great expectations placed upon us, but if we let Christ in, He will help us live up to them.