God Doesn't Need a Plan "B"

In traditional Christian thought, God created a perfect plan. He created the Garden of Eden, and saw that it was good. He sent Adam and Eve as the first of His children, with it being their responsibility to multiply and replenish the Earth, and maintain life in this grand paradise. Unfortunately, they messed up. They sinned in the single way they could and partook of the forbidden fruit. They were no longer perfect, no longer worthy of living in Eden. God's very first children already ruined His plan. Infuriated, God had to create a Plan "B."

So, he created a law. He revealed this law to His servants, the prophets. One of the notable prophets this law was revealed to was Moses, hence the name "The Law of Moses." But Israel, God's chosen people, simply could not live up to the requirements of the Law of Moses. Unfortunately, man was fallen. We simply could not live up to the standard of the Law of Moses. On to God's Plan "C."

He sent His Only Begotten Son. This Messiah was able to pay the price for everyone else's shortcomings, because He was, in fact, perfect. When He suffered, He was paying a price that He did not owe. Now, if we do no more than accept His suffering for us, we can at long last return to our Father.

Now, how well does this fit in with the frequently found scriptural phrase, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8)? Or what about God's words to Malachi: "For I am the Lord, I change not" (Malachi 3:6)?

If we're already on Plan "C," who is to say that we are really on the final plan this time? What if people aren't able to live up to this new plan? What might Plan "D" be?

That simply would not be the way of an all-knowing God. That simply is not the way of our Heavenly Father.

Thanks to the Book of Mormon, these misconceptions can be cleared up.

Lehi makes the role of the Fall of Adam very clear. He tells his children, "Adam fell that men might be" (2 Nephi 2:25), explaining:

"If Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were

Do It Anyway - Mother Teresa

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.

 

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

 

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.

 

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

 

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

 

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

 

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

 

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you've got anyway.

 

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God;
It was never between you and them anyway.

-Mother Teresa

 

 

A New Look at the Adulturous Woman in John 8, by Orson Scott Card

I found this story by Orson Scott Card in his book Speaker for the Dead to be very telling about the misconceptions in the world about the nature of Christlike forgiveness.

A Great Rabbi stands, teaching in the marketplace. It happens that a husband finds proof that morning of his wife's adultery, and a mob carries her to the marketplace to stone her to death.

There is a familiar version of this story, but a friend of mine - a Speaker for the Dead - has told me of two other Rabbis that faced the same situation. Those are the ones I'm going to tell you.

The Rabbi walks forward and stands beside the woman. Out of respect for him the mob forbears and waits with the stones heavy in their hands. 'Is there any man here,' he says to them, 'who has not desired another man's wife, another woman's husband?' 

They murmur and say, 'We all know the desire, but Rabbi none of us has acted on it.'

The Rabbi says, 'Then kneel down and give thanks that God has made you strong.' He takes the woman by the hand and leads her out of the market. Just before he lets her go, he whispers to her, 'Tell the Lord Magistrate who saved his mistress, then he'll know I am his loyal servant.'

So the woman lives because the community is too corrupt to protect itself from disorder.

Another Rabbi. Another city. He goes to her and stops the mob as in the other story and says, 'Which of you is without sin? Let him cast the first stone.'

The people are abashed, and they forget their unity of purpose in the memory of their own individual sins. ‘Someday,’ they think, ‘I may be like this woman. And I’ll hope for forgiveness and another chance. I should treat her as I wish to be treated.’

As they opened their hands and let their stones fall to the ground, the Rabbi picks up one

of the fallen stones, lifts it high over the woman’s head and throws it straight down with all his might it crushes her skull and dashes her brain among the cobblestones. ‘Nor am I without sins,’ he says to the people, ‘but if we allow only perfect people to enforce the law, the law will soon be dead – and our city with it.’

So the woman died because her community was too rigid to endure her deviance.

The famous version of this story is noteworthy because it is so startlingly rare in our experience. Most communities lurch between decay and rigor mortis and when they veer too far they die. Only one Rabbi dared to expect of us such a perfect balance that we could preserve the law and still forgive the deviation.

So of course, we killed him.

Commandments: All you need is love!

The fundamental problem with the Law of Moses wasn't the Law, itself, but rather, as the Bible Dictionary puts it, "the Law was worshipped more than the Lord." The way I see it, the Mosaic Law was intended as a minimum standard. It set the bar. The Pharisees, however, started to nit-pick every detail and made it into exact limits of what they could and couldn't do. So, instead of exceeding the expectations of the Law, they - at best - would approach its expectations and jump at every shortcut they could see. In essence, they emphasized the dos and don'ts more than the symbolism and
representations.

When Christ fulfilled the Law, he didn't scrap expectations altogether. It seems much of Christianity believes that since people were not reaching the standard of the Law of Moses, Christ instead enabled us to under-perform and still be saved.

On the contrary, he concluded the Sermon on the Mount commanding perfection. The same level of perfection as our Father in Heaven, even. Now, instead of doing everything we can to approach the bar, we have the Atonement of the Christ that helps us to "deny [ourselves] of all ungodliness" (Moroni 10:32).

Day by day, repentance allows us to stand a little taller. My first companion and I had a great conversation once about our language. We were debating for a good chunk of time what words constituted swearing. Eventually, we realized we were both missing the whole point. Good language isn't about avoiding this list of ten words, and using these five other words sparingly. Really, any word that we use that has a bad feel to it, we decided to avoid. We weren't perfect with it, but as we went, words that we hadn't even included in our conversation as potential swear words felt unnatural and distasteful. This commandment, as with all others, is not about setting the bar; it's about raising the bar every single day.

Tithing, it is interesting to note, is one of only two parts of the lower law still practiced in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And yet we still make it, more than anything else, into a list of dos and donts. "Do we pay 10% of our gross income or our net income?" "Should I pay tithing on my Social Security benefits or child support?" "Do we tithe dividends made from investments, or just real income?" All these questions simply miss the point. Quite honestly, they are all fairly Pharisaic. The higher law version of tithing is consecration, where we give all that we can. That will be FAR more than 10% of our gross income and our benefits and our investment increases, I'm sure. And you know what? I don't believe the prophet will ever announce in General Conference that it is time for us to
consecrate. I believe that will come person by person, as we forget the list-making and being truly coming closer to the Lord and becoming like Him.
These examples can be extended to Sabbath day worship, the Law of Chastity, the Word of Wisdom, personal prayer, Family Home Evening, scripture study, and every single other commandment God has ever revealed to the world. The day we live these laws perfectly is the day we are translated. If

Patience unto Perfection

I learned a lot this past transfer. After a little over eight months in one area, I really came to love Freedom and all the people there. To jump into a brand new area for my first time threw me off quite a bit for a little while. I missed the heck out of some people, and while I never doubted why I was on a mission, I was certainly frustrated a time or two about things not quite being exactly how they were in Freedom, at times forgetting the countless blessings of being in Warsaw. Now, this whole ramble here is not really what my post is about, but it sets the stage for why I spent two weeks studying a lot about patience. What I learned seemed pretty cool to me.

In the closing of the Sermon on the Mount, the Savior admonishes us to be as perfect as our Father in Heaven. That is quite a statement! Luckily, in the third to last verse of the Book of Mormon, Moroni explains to us just how to go about attaining perfection:

"Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him."

How cool is that? When we come unto Christ, we can become perfect. But wait! In Ether, Moroni laments that he isn't nearly as eloquent as a writer as the Brother of Jared, and in Ether 12:27 Christ tells Moroni something interesting about what happens when we come to Him:

"And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness." 

Whoa, whoa, whoa. So if we come unto Christ, we can be perfected.... and be shown our imperfect weaknesses? Precisely. That same verse continues:

"I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."

See, Christ's Atonement isn't about just turning a blind eye towards the gaps in our strengths; it's about filling those gaps and truly perfecting us.

Now, I had introduced this post talking about patience. Well, in the scriptures, the words "patience" and "long suffering" are used pretty interchangeably. How fitting is that? When we want something and we can't have it, we quite literally suffer inside. As I've studied patience, I've found it quite literally embodies everything else that Christ has asked us to base our lives around.

"Faith embodies patience," Stephen Covey said. "It is a contradiction for someone to think or feel he has faith but lacks patience.... Patience is faith in action. Patience is emotional diligence."

So why do we have patience in the first place? Because we truly believe that good things are coming. We have faith in the promises of Jesus Christ, that any level of trial and struggle we go through "shall give [us] experience, and shall be for [our] good" (Doctrine and Covenants 122:7). Since we know that things will all work out, we might as well wait patiently for them.

Of course, it's not always so easy, but I really like the advice Paul gave in Romans 5:3-5:

"And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."

Let's just glory in these hard times, because we have faith that it is only through these challenges that we will truly perfect ourselves through Christ, our Lord! Alma said something fairly similar at the