All You Need Is Love!

I was listening to a podcast with the author of a book entitled Letters to a Young Mormon.  It is a book written by a father for his daughter and is a series of letters containing some of the most important things he wished for her to know about the Gospel.

On the section titled “Sin,” the author provides us with a very unique understanding of how we establish our relationship with God:

"Your story, like everyone's, is a bit of a Frankenstein.  Without your hardly noticing or choosing, it gets sewn together, on the fly, out of whatever borrowed scraps are at hand.  You may have borrowed a bit from your mother, a bit from a movie you liked, and a bit from a lesson at church.  You may have stitched these pieces together with a comment overheard at lunch, a glossy image from a magazine, and a second-grade test score.  Whatever sticks.  More stuff is always getting added as other stuff is discarded.  Your story's projection of what you should be is always getting adjusted. Your idea of your shadow's optimal shape gets tailored and tailored again.

"Like most people, you'll lavish attention on this story until, almost unwittingly, it becomes your blueprint for how things ought to be.  As you persist in measuring life against it, this Franken-bible of the self will become a substitute for God, an idol.  This is sin.  And this idolatrous story is all the more ironic when, as a true believer, you religiously assign God a starring role in your story as the one who, with some cajoling and obedience, can make things go the way you've plotted.  But faith isn't about getting God to play a more and more central part in your story.  Faith is about sacrificing your story on his altar."

I love this analogy.  When things don’t go the way we want them to we get mad or frustrated or sad because God isn’t fitting into our mold.  We need to get to know God as He is, go to Him, seek Him out, learn about Him, otherwise we will be stuck worshipping and praying to a God who is nothing more than an idol.

“Jesus [asks] us to lose [our] story.  ‘Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Matt 10:39 nsrv).  Hell is when your story succeeds, not when it fails.  Your suffocating story is the problem, not the solution.  Surrender it and find your life.”

Once we forfeit our “story” at God’s feet, we are then more free to keep his most important commandments.  In the section on Faith, the author tells us where we can find God:

“Don’t look for God in the throne room.  Don’t look for him in outer space.  You won’t find him there.  Jesus claims, instead, that he’s hidden in plain sight.  God constantly gives himself to us in the inconvenient, in the hungry, the outcast, the prisoner, the sinner.  He gives himself in what we would like to ignore.”

How we can love and serve God is taught in greater detail in the Book of Job.  Job does a lot of complaining; in fact the majority of what he says is cursing his life and asking “why me?”  His friends had come to comfort him, but they can’t handle the fact that Job claims he’s innocent and is yet suffering.  To them, God doesn’t punish the innocent, and so they see Job as attacking God by calling Him unjust and incompetent. This throws up red flags for them and they caution him and berate him for coming close to blasphemy.

At the end of the story, God condemns Job’s friends and says that Job (through all of his complainings and cursings) showed greater love to God than they did.  Can you imagine what his friends were thinking?!  They just spent numerous chapters trying to defend God and He says they were less devout!

This situation is very similar and almost easier to understand in the story of the Good Samaritan.  The common understanding is that the priest and the Levite pass by the injured man simply because they didn’t love enough or didn’t have time.  While these may be valid interpretations, it is helpful to remember that it was against their law for men in their position to touch the dead, which this man appeared to be.  Perhaps there is another reason they chose not to help a man in need that also parallels the motives of Job’s comforters in abandoning their friend.

“The priest and the Levite do not want to risk ritual uncleanliness by touching a dead body.  [Job’s comforters] don’t want to risk the moral contagion of listening to Job’s blasphemous complaints against God.  In both cases, the representatives of the orthodox religion choose abstract theological purity above the physical and spiritual needs of another human being.  For both Jesus and the Job poet, it is the wrong choice….  The unconditional love that Christ requires of us cannot coexist with any ideology that requires us to reject those who do not hold it.”

How are we taught to love God?  By serving our fellow man (Mosiah 2:17); by loving those who are hungry, thirsty, imprisoned (physically, emotionally, spiritually), naked (Matt 25:40); after baptism we covenant to bear one anothers burdens, mourn with those that mourn and comfort those needing comfort (Mosiah 18:9-10).  The second greatest commandment is essentially a way for us to comply with the first.  

All of us can find more ways to serve others and to overcome any uncomfortableness when encountering people who might not choose to live the same way we do (within or without the Church).  “God is love” (1 John 4:8).  If we do not have love, God is not with us.  (1 John 4:7-21)   Our mission on this earth is to love God’s children.

Becoming a Friend to the Mammon of Unrighteousness

The following is the parable of the unjust steward as related in Luke 16:1-8 (KJV)

1. And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods.
2. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.
3. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.
4. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.
5. So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?
6. And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.
7. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.
8. And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

I've always been puzzled by this parable and never really gave it much thought.  I memorized verse 13 ("No man can serve two masters...") in Luke 16 and always knew it had something to do with the parable, but never quite drew the connection.  I'd like to take a couple minutes to describe how insight can come by taking time to ponder on the scriptures.

I recently read through the New Testament and when I got to this parable I decided that I was going to figure out what it meant.  Why would the Lord praise an unjust steward?  So this is my interpretation of the parable:

A certain man has not been a good worker.  His boss was sick of him wasting his time and money and essentially gave him his two-weeks' notice.  The worker got really worried because he didn't have any other jobs that he could quickly pick up, and he had enough pride to not want to have to beg for subsistence from anyone else.  So he set out a plan to get on the 'A' list of some of his clients so that they would help him out when he was discharged.  He then proceeded to call up all those indebted to his boss and gave each a heavy discount.  Jesus then says that the guy's boss praises him for doing wisely.

That's basically verses 1-8.  Now this is where I really raise an eyebrow.  Is the Lord telling us it's good to be dishonest?  Of course not.  But he's praising a guy who seems like he's cheating his boss one last time, and yet his boss is happy about it?  Verses 9-13 really help clarify what just happened.

9. And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.
10. He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.
11. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?
12. And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?
13. No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one,and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

We are counseled to "make ... friends of the mammon of unrighteousness", which is essentially money, or worldly wealth, or those who hold in high regard wealth, so that when we are in need (not necessarily financially) we will have friends to help us.

A simple example came to me.  I'm frequently put in a position to put this idea into practice.  When I go out to eat, get a haircut, get a babysitter, or pay for any type of service that ultimately has a cost that's partially determined by me, I try to not give the minimal amount (unless I think the service merits the minimal), but I rarely am "generous."  Why is that?  I believe that it's because I hold money ("the mammon of unrighteousness") in high regard and am very possessive of it, not wanting to "impart it freely", essentially coveting it (D&C 19:26).  I would like to consider myself a charitable person.  I set aside money for those in need, lend my time for service, etc., but reading this scripture I realize that I'm still not where I need to be.

More fully understanding this scripture I realize that by not coveting money (clinging to it, being too frugal, etc.) I will be able to make more wicked mammon friends.  Seriously, though, back to the tip example - if I stop trying to give the minimum and just try to be generous (not taking into account how much I'm out if I give 'x' percent) and give what I think would actually make the person happy, I'm freeing myself of this worldly bond and learning better to serve the Master that will be able to reward me with eternal happiness.  Money begins to become a tool to enrich lives other than my own.

To circumcise or not to circumcize?

This weeks Sunday School lesson is on Acts 16-18 and both epistles to the Thessalonians. Reading/listening to it first off was very difficult, I didn't get much out of it. I decided to watch the episode on the BYU Broadcasting site where professors of religion ("the professors" from here on out) discuss these chapters for about 25 minutes to help broaden my perspective on these chapters. I was reminded how little I know and how much more effort I need to give to understanding the scriptures and applying them to my life.

As a preface to this reading, I also listened to the discussion that included Acts 15 that discusses the question the members of the Church had with regards to circumcision, and if the newly baptized Gentiles needed to be circumcised. The professors deemed this as one of the most important chapters of the New Testament, paritally because it had to do with a major change in the tradition of the Jews that was a part of the Law of Moses, and was a move toward shedding that "burden." The outcome was that the leaders of the Church didn't feel like it was necessary to burden the newly baptized Gentiles with any aspect of the Law of Moses, that it was sufficient to admonish them to "abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood."  Oddly enough, and pointed out by the professors, the Gentiles received this message, but it wasn't taught to the Jews - which was something Paul probably was hoping for.

This brings us to chapter 16 where Paul and Silas meet Timothy, who is the son of a Greek father and believes and is converted to the faith. Verse 3 states, "Him [Timothy] would Paul have to go forth with him; and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were in those quarters: for they knew all that his father was a Greek." So even though the entire previous chapter told of the step forward of the Church to not require the newly baptized to follow the Law of Moses, why does Paul take a step back and have Timothy circumcised? The scripture says "because of the Jews...for they knew all that his father was a Greek." The professors point out that the because it was widely known among the Jews that Timothy was a Greek he was circumcised to make it easier on them to accept him as a member of the Church.

So sometimes, even though times have changed and the Church progresses forward, shedding old traditions, it's important to not expect everyone or force everyone to expect those changes to be immediate. Had he not been circumcised, the Jews would have known, and it could have hampered any success Paul and Silas tried to achieve. I understand the concept, but it still is odd to me. Did the Church not encourage Blacks to hold certain priesthood positions for a while after they were first given the priesthood, to make it easier for the Saints to accept? Or was it an issue that most Saints were ready to accept? I can't think of any other major changes. Does anybody have any comments on this process and maybe more current instances that illustrate the wisdom in this practice of not implementing new practices/doctrine from one day to the other?