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Sunday, June 7, 2009
Holiness: A Protection for the Family Against the Sorties of Secularism
I recently finished reading St. Augustine's Confessions and was struck as I read by how similar the trials and
temptations he confronted as a youth were to those that we see all around us today. Evil doesn't really fundamentally change,
it just dresses up in different outfits. Speaking of the tendency in his culture for people to prefer beautifully worded but
morally bankrupt literature over simpler and less eloquent expressions of eternal truth (sound familiar?), he writes:
When one considers the men proposed to me as models for my imitation, it is no wonder that in this way I was swept
along by vanities and travelled right away from you, my God. They would be covered in embarassment if, in describing their
own actions in which they had not behaved badly, they were caught using a barbarism or a solecism in speech. But if they described
their lusts in a rich vocabulary of well constructed prose with a copious and ornate style, they received praise and contratulated
themselves. (Confessions I xvii, 28)
How true these words are of our day. How high the praise that rings in our ears from many circles for artistic expression
that "pushes the envelope". How prevalent the mocking and derision that is levelled by many in the media at those of
a simple and pure faith who love God, who love their neighbors as themselves, and who believe in Truth with a capital "T".
To stand up today and say, "I believe that God lives, is true, and cares deeply about the choices of His children on earth,"
is to invite the finger of scorn from those who believe themselves to be so learned about the true nature of life that
they have no need for "silly fables" about our origins and Eternal destinies.
In the same breath, many of these same skeptics will then posit a view of reality that requires far greater faith than
any religion ever could: Namely, the notion that all of the infinite complexity and beauty and wonder of this Creation of
God that we witness all around us could happen by mere chance. They uphold the notion that a great and cataclysmic accident,
independent of any intelligent cause, occurred at one point in the history of our universe and set the kinetic energy in motion
that would one day lead to the joy I feel when I am outdoors with my family on a clear and beautiful Summer morning.
These pesky emotions, though supernal to me are, to these scholars, mere outcomes of a chemical process that eventually
found it's way into my body over billions of years of evolutionary adaption, and had its ultimate origins in a conflagration
of primordial matter and gasses.
I hear such arguments and then I look at an ipod. Far and away a less complicated device than the human body, the ipod
is loaded with logic and rules and algorithms that enable it to perform its multiplicitous functions. We take it for granted,
and yet we understand implicitly that such a complex device requires the mind of an original designer. It would
be absurd for someone 4000 years from now, discovering an ipod in a ravine, to posit that the wind and water and
other environmental conditions of that ravine were such that they naturally yielded so complex a device.
Yet this is precisely how arguments that life is just a big meaningless accident fall on my ears. Such a view of our
existence often leads to a tragic nihilism on the part of those who accept it. Where there is no purpose and
no meaning to our choices and actions, there can be no moral cupability. And where there is no moral culpability, there is
only ultimately the sorrow and pain that results from the collateral damage of one's poor choices. Sin reigns where God is
absent or excluded from the picture. Without an Atonement, there is no escape or possibility of forgiveness. Without
forgiveness, there can be no peace and a prideful bitterness, or worse, a numbing ambivalence, takes its place. Then,
realizing somewhat just what it has done, the society that has cast God out of the equation scrambles frantically
to fix the problem some other way.
Such is a great portion of our society today, and many of us, religious or not, realize that true peace is not happening
in our lives, though we long for it. We may even wonder if it is possible for a person to have true lasting peace. In
our desperation, we longingly turn to Oprah and self-help books in search of a god who will provide a quick fix
for everything without requiring anything of us in return. We try solution after solution founded on the uninspired philosophies
of men (sometimes mingled with scripture), but never quite seem to arrive where we were promised we would. We are promised
financial prosperity, but it never quite comes our way. We are promised to be freed from our diseases and weaknesses, but
we don't seem to be getting any healthier. We are promised peace but we still come up empty. These teachings encourage us
to focus on ourselves and our own happiness, to do whatever makes us feel good at the moment, and to forget the restrictive
notion that some of our actions could actually displease a Just God.
Such an idolatrous form of worship is not what God has in mind for his children. God wants Sons and Daughters who
recognize that "this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea...the day of this life is the time for men to perform
their labors" ( Alma 34: 32), and that The natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the falll of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless
he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement
of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things
which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3: 19)
The object of our existence, the reason we are here, is to love and serve God and to strive after ever increasing holiness
through the grace of Christ, even in our trials. We must learn by the things we experience that submission to God's will in
our lives and acceptance of his Son Jesus Christ is the only thing that will ever lastingly fill that ache. For he has
a plan for us, and that plan includes making us "heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; if it so be that we suffer with
him, that we may also be glorified together."( Rom. 8: 17)
We must accept that this process will try us as Abraham. It will not be easy. There will be no quick fix. Repenance is
hard. Admitting we are wrong is hard. Submission is hard. Suffering for Christ's sake is hard. But if we are faithful
in this process of change, the loving arms of our Merciful God will wrap around us and we will hear him say "welll done, thou
good and faithful servant...for this my son [or daughter] was dead, and is alive again; he [or she] was lost and is found". ( Matt. 25: 21, 23, Luke 15: 24)
Mark Twain once quipped, "If you pick a cat up by its tail, you will learn things you cannot learn in any other way." While
the consequences of our sin can eventually lead us to repentance and learning the right way to conduct ourselves, a far
greater teacher, with far more agreeable results, comes in the form of the Holy Spirit when we truly yield our hearts to
God so that he can cleanse and sanctify our hearts, protecting us against this natural tendency in ourselves to
drift toward entropy and selfishness (see Hel. 3: 35). Peter reminds us in 1 Peter Chapter 3 that it is better to suffer for well doing than for evil doing.
We know that the things of God are foolishness to the natural man ( 1 Cor. 2: 14). When we strive for holiness in our lives, we will suffer at times for various reasons. We may have to take an unpopular
position or course in our lives. We may be ridiculed for our beliefs. We may be viewed as fools in the eyes of men, but there
is only one Opinion in the universe that really counts and it belongs to our God. When we are true to him, he will be true
to us. We will have lasting peace and it won't matter one whit to us what the "learned" of the world think of such a faith
and worship.
The philosophers and prosperitity preachers of our day promise quick solutions through the power of positive affirmations.
They promise financial security without work, health and spiritual well being without obedience, sacrifice, and repentance,
and lasting peace without Jesus. In the face of such poor theology, Jesus' clarion teachings are a beacon to us all: "Take
heed and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth." ( Luke 6: 45), and "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent"( Rev. 3: 3, 19), and "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye may have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but
be of good cheer; I have overcome the world" ( John 16: 33), and "...know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience and shall be for thy good." ( D&C 122: 7)
What God desires for us is that we accept the Atonement of Jesus Christ as a covering, to cleanse us of our
sins, and that, through him, we improve upon our lives day by day; grace upon grace. God wants transformed saints in
Christ who strive after holiness in their lives, despite their imperfections, and who see his hand in their lives, even in
the face of adversity ( D&C 59: 21). We have the promise that "as often as my people repent, I will forgive them their trespasses". That "as often" is very
comforting, though we should never think it gives us license to abuse the patience of God. What God wants for us is holiness;
sanctification; transformation:
Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves
of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his
grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of
God.
And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then are ye sanctified in Christ
by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission
of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot. ( Moroni 10:32-33)
Paul knew that the seeds of holiness and righteousness are sown in the home. He encouraged unity and harmony in the home
and counseled fathers and mothers to be righteous stewards in their divinely appointed role as spouses and parents (see Colosians 3 and Ephesians 5). In one of the most poignant of these statements on the family, Paul gave counsel to husbands in regard to the treatment
of their wives that I think is equally applicable to the way wives ought to treat their husbands and parents ought to treat
their children. He wrote, Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify
and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church not having spot,
or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own
bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it,
even as the Lord the church; For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. (Ephesians 5)
So it is that the duty of each member of a family is to look out for and care for the other members and encourage them
toward holiness. Fathers and Mothers have a particular duty to provide this encouragement for eachother and for their children;
to raise a family to God, whose hearts are united with one another and with the Lord. Where holiness is a lasting and unwavering
aspiration in a family, and where Father, Son and Holy Ghost are welcome guests, there too will be the peace that surpasses
all understanding ( Philip. 4: 7). The clamoring voices of the secular world will have no hold on the hearts of members of that family, and will have
to yield to the calming voice of He who said to the waves and the wind, "Peace, Be still" ( Mark 4: 39).
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