One lower light shining

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.

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.

I was reading through my missionary journals today and read something interesting:

(Tuesday May 11th, 2004) The longer I’m out, the more embarrassed I am with how I acted a week or month before. I guess it’s a sign of positive growth.

It was interesting to read that, because I’ve been feeling a lot like that recently. In fact, I’ve been feeling this way since midway through the Jordan study abroad this past summer. Here’s what I said about a particularly life changing conversation with one of my friends:

If I had any pride keeping me from being honest with myself about what I needed to change (and, let’s face it, I did), it was completely shattered in the first ten minutes of this conversation. About an hour later, I came away with my perspective completely changed. It took me a few weeks to get over the desire to repeatedly flagellate myself for being such an idiot for all this time, but when I did, I started picking up the pieces and putting myself together again.

(link to full post)

Have you ever felt like the Emperor with his new clothes when the kid pointed out that he was really naked all that time? I suppose it’s easy to feel that way when you’re going through a period of intense personal reflection and growth. You feel embarrassed for all of the stupid, selfish, shortsighted things you did (or all the thoughtful, charitable, outgoing things you failed to do). You wonder how you could have done those things and, in extreme circumstances, feel ashamed to even show your face again to certain people.

When I got back from Jordan, however, I noticed something funny: all of the people around me were unknowingly doing all of the embarrassing things I was trying not to do. I won’t give any specific examples, since I don’t want to upset any of my friends, but basically it has to do with acting thoughtlessly and not caring enough about people on a personal level.

I read a really awesome novel over the summer that has a quote that I think is pertinent to this. The novel is Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, and I think it is one of the best science fiction novels I have ever read. The quote is this:

Don’t be upset. The world is full of surprises. We’re all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we’re seldom formally introduced.

I don’t know for sure, but I think it all comes down to this ultimately. We sometimes operate under this illusion that we really know people–our friends, our enemies, even members of our family–when really, there is so much more that we don’t know and that may in fact be unknowable.

But we think that we know each other, and because of this we start to judge each other. From there, it’s easy to start to put a value on our associations, to determine whom is worth listening to, whom is worth our time; whom we want to pursue, whom we want to avoid.

But isn’t that a form of objectification? Doesn’t that run counter to the gospel? Jesus walked with sinners and taught us to look beneath the surface and see the value in other people. He saw enough value in all of us, even the most evil among us, to suffer infinitely on our behalf.

If we are to be like Jesus, should we not do likewise? Of course, we cannot suffer the way Jesus suffered, but we can step outside of ourselves and genuinely value all of the people around us, can’t we?

At least we can work on it. And if we are to work on it, doesn’t that mean that we must learn to recognize that everyone is ultimately unknowable? When we think that we completely know someone, that we have them “figured out,” that’s when we fall into the trap. Socrates was the wisest man in Athens because he admitted that he knew nothing. When it comes to our relationships with others, wouldn’t it be wise of us to do the same?

Of course, for a long time, I didn’t act this way. I thought I had everyone figured out, and from time to time I acted like quite a jerk. When I think about it now, it sometimes makes me squirm.

I guess it’s a sign of personal growth, though. My mom’s mission president had a saying that she posted on our refrigerator growing up, and that said “don’t let the ten things you did wrong keep you from seeing the one thing you did right.” That’s how I felt rereading that little piece of wisdom in my missionary journals. It’s not worth beating yourself up over it. If you feel like an idiot, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. At least you know you’re growing.