7 Mistakes Even Good Members Make

On the whole, Latter-day Saints are good people.  Most of us do our best to try to live the gospel. Most of us try to be Christ-like and obedient to the Lord.  Unfortunately, even the best of us tend to fall into traps of bad thinking without even being aware of it.  This flawed thinking can interfere with our ability to fully live the gospel. These mistakes can keep us from experiencing the full blessings and joy that come with gospel discipleship.  More often than not making these mistakes can actively make us miserable.  On my blog I answer gospel questions, and in real life I talk to people of all walks of life about religion, and I have noticed a few common problems that even the best of us may have to overcome in order to progress in the gospel.

I.                 Riding the Line

When I was a young man, I was taught a parable in my Aaronic priesthood Sunday classes about truck drivers and staying away from the line:

“A man was interviewing new drivers for his transportation company. The route was very dangerous and went along several steep cliffs through a mountain pass. The interviewer asked each man how close he could safely drive near the edge of the cliff. The first man responded, “I could drive within six inches of the edge.” The second man responded, “I could drive within two inches of the edge.” The third man responded, “I would stay as far away from the edge of the cliff as I possibly could.” (Aaronic Priesthood Manual, lds.org).

God's Truth Is The Truth, Even If You Disagree With It

I have noticed lately that there are many in and around the church who expect that everything that comes from God should be something with which they agree, and if they do not already agree with a teaching or doctrine of the church, then they assume that it must not come from God.  There are those who reject Christianity and/or a belief in God, because they cannot reconcile their own beliefs with those which are taught in the scriptures or by church leaders.  There are members that persist in disobedience to prophetic counsel because they cannot bring themselves to listen to counsel with which they do not agree.  Many insist that they would obey a given commandment if only they understood it, or they claim that they will live it just as soon as they gain a testimony confirming that such a commandment is true.

The Parable of the Talents and Predestination

“No one is predestined to receive less than all that the Father has for His children.” (D. Todd Christofferson, “Why Marriage, Why Family,” Ensign, May 2015, lds.org).

The Parable of the Talents which Jesus taught to His disciples in Matthew chapter 25 can be fairly instructive when considering the question of foreordination and election, and how it governs our placement in this world and our relationship to each other.

The Parable of the Talents teaches the importance of exercising righteous stewardship with those things that the Lord gives to us while we are in our second estate.  Even though each servant in the parable received differing amounts to start with, they were each expected to wisely manage the talents with which they had been entrusted, in order that the wealth could grow and increase in their care before they had to return what they had been given to the master.

We all start out with differing gifts in life, and some are seemingly given greater advantages and blessings in this life than others, such as being born into the covenant, or living in a country where freedom and prosperity reign instead of tyranny and strife.  We also come into life with certain abilities and talents which are innate, or which we developed during our life before we came here, and it may seem that some have received more natural talent or advantageous opportunity than others.

Scripture Master Tip #16: Search For Principles

16. Search for principles. 

The scriptures are one of your best sources for finding basic gospel principles, and it is truly worth great effort to search the scriptures in order to obtain and understand them.  As you read and study the scriptures, try to “boil it down” in order to distill what you read into basic, simple principles.  Everything you read about in the scriptures can be stripped back to reveal the most basic gospel principle behind it.  For example, when you "boil it down" the ten commandments are essentially based on two eternal principles:  love God and love your neighbor.  If you truly love God, you will love your neighbor.  If you truly live these principles, nobody should have to tell you not to kill people, or steal from them, or lie to them.  Principles are the commandments by which you keep all the other commandments.  As you begin to recognize the underlying principles behind almost everything you read in the scriptures your understanding and appreciation of the scriptures and the gospel will grow and so will your ability to actively apply the gospel in your every day life.

“As you seek spiritual knowledge, search for principles. Carefully separate them from the detail used to explain them. Principles are concentrated truth, packaged for application to a wide variety of circumstances. A true principle makes decisions clear even under the most confusing and compelling circumstances. It is worth great effort to organize the truth we gather to simple statements of principle” (Richard G. Scott, Ensign, Nov. 1993, 86).

As you search the scriptures and learn to recognize and apply the principles of the gospel contained in them you will become more independent and capable of making better decisions on your own.

"Joseph Smith’s inspired statement, ‘I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves,’ still applies (quoted by John Taylor, in Millennial Star, 15 Nov. 1851, p. 339). The Lord uses that pattern with us. You will find correct principles in the teachings of the Savior, His prophets, and the scriptures—especially the Book of Mormon."  (Richard G. Scott, Ensign, May 1993, 32, 34).

The reason why learning correct principles frees us to "govern ourselves" is because principles represent the gospel in it's simplest, clearest, and most basic form.  In the light of such clarity and understanding it becomes much easier to discern right alternatives from wrong ones which helps you to make correct decisions.  Moreover, when you recognize and understand the fundamental principles behind God's laws, you no longer need to wait until someone "commands" you before you will keep a commandment.  You don't have to have something spelled out for you before you will obey it.  You will naturally seek to do what is right, because that's who you are now:  you have the power, the capacity, and the natural inclination to keep the commandments on your own without compulsion.

"If There Is No God Why Be Good?" Secular Morality Vs. Christian Morality and The Dangers of Moral Relativism

In this post I examine some of the faults and flaws inherent to atheism and moral relativism, and I also examine the real reasons why Christians elect to do what they do.  I wrote this post as a general response to many things that I have heard and seen concerning morality, moral relativism, and the respective immorality of atheism and Christianity as viewed by either side of the morality debate.  More particularly, I wrote my post in direct response to a selection from Richard Dawkin's book The God Delusion.  While I do attempt to refute some of his conclusions, I find that he raises several valid points which are worth considering by religious people, agnostics, and atheists alike.

I have deliberately avoided addressing the arguments of atheists in the past, as I do not consider it to be a productive use of my time, especially since I think that atheists and religious people should agree to disagree and get on with making the world a better place.  I chose to address this quote from Mr. Dawkins in this post in part because I think that he promotes some false assumptions that even some Christians may think that they believe, but I wrote it mainly because I believe his argument opens the door for the discussion of an important Christian principle.

"If there is no God why be good?  Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble.  When a religious person puts it to me this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: "Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment?  that's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap in your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought. As Einstein said, "if people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.'  Michael Shermer, in The Science of Good and Evil, calls it a debate stopper.  If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would 'commit robbery, rape, and murder', you reveal yourself as an immoral person, 'and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you'.  If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good.  I suspect that quite a lot of religious people do think religion is what motivates them to be good, especially if they belong to one of those faiths that systematically exploits personal guilt.

It seems to me to require quite a low self-regard to think that, should belief in God suddenly vanish from the world, we would all become callous and selfish hedonists, with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would deserve the name of goodness."  (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, 259)

Does God Always Have to Spell Things out For us?

I wrote this in response to a specific question, in which the person sought advice on how to know when (and whether it is appropriate) to make your own decisions out of your own knowledge without asking God for specific instructions or permission every single time.  They made the point that not only do we have the right to make our own decisions, but that God insists on it.  They also wanted to know what to do when the answer to your prayer is "I trust you. You decide."

I approached my response with these two seemingly contradictory passages of scripture in mind:

Psalms 3:5-6  Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

D&C 58:26-28  For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.  Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;  For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves.  And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.

Here is my response(with slight editing for clarity's sake):

A:  This is a principle that requires a degree of spiritual maturity to truly master. I think that the Lord expects each of us to "do many things of [our] own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness" because he knows that it is important for our personal and spiritual growth that we learn to act as "agents unto ourselves". Indeed, in many cases God may leave each of us to follow our own natural inclination, but our natural inclination is not (at least initially) always to seek the right thing, or the things of God, and so this necessitates that we first experience a profound change of heart. It becomes our responsibility to change our nature (through Christ) in order to correctly apply this principle, because only as a true disciple of Christ can we gain enough knowledge through the practice of faithful and persistent obedience to recognize and act upon the right choice without needing to be told.  As we gain this knowledge we will be better equipped to recognize when our natural inclinations are in line with God's own will (and what is right) and when they are not.

How to Overcome Temptation and Trials: Why the Sunday School Answers are not Enough

There is a misconception about the so-called Sunday school answers (prayer and scripture study and church attendance) that I wish to dispel:

The acts of prayer and scripture study and even church attendance, while vital components in our personal efforts to become more like Christ, do not of themselves confer upon anyone any kind of talismanic protection, be that from temptation, trial, or depredation.

Case in point:  it is common to hear people who are presented with a grievous spiritual challenge such as same gender attraction, or an addiction of some kind, etc.  who declare that they feel that if only they could pray even harder and be even more diligent in studying their scriptures then they might be able to "fix" themselves.  Their hope is that by being "more righteous than righteous" they can somehow demonstrate to God the sincerity of their desire to be rid of the "thorn in the flesh" which plagues them.  They are inevitably disappointed in this effort, which often leads to disillusionment and frustration on their part, and more often than not this leads them to give up on themselves and/or the church, or even God.

"If You're So Righteous Why Aren't You Rich?" and other dumb ideas about how God's blessings work.

This post is divided into three parts, each one dealing with a common misconception about how prayer and blessings work, and about our relationship with God.  The one dealing with riches and righteousness is number two, however I recommend that you read each part in order, as I intended each point to build off of each preceding principle.

1) God owes me blessings because I earned them through my own obedience.

This one is tricky because it arises out of a true statement made in D&C 130:20-21 which says:

There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.

This scripture is a fairly straightforward statement that says that if you want to experience the blessings that come from living the law of tithing, or the Word of Wisdom, or Temple worship or any other law of God then you have to be willing to obey that particular principle before you can enjoy said blessing. What this statement DOES NOT say is that God owes us blessings for obedience, whether that be obedience in general or obedience to a particular principle.