No Coincidences

Tag: heaven

  • What do we believe in?

    What do we believe in?

    My Aunt Lindsey often asks the question, “What do you know?” I usually respond, “Not much.”

    What do we really know? Anything?

    While reading Mosiah chapter 26, I came across an interesting commentary from Hugh Nibley, one of my favorite scholars. The commentary was on Mosiah 26:15 which reads:

    “Blessed art thou, Alma, and blessed are they who were baptized in the waters of Mormon. Thou art blessed because of thy exceeding faith in the words alone of my servant Abinadi” (emphasis added).

    In considering that phrase, “in the words alone of Abinadi”, Hugh Nibley asks, “Now what about childish faith? What about being gullible, etc.? Alma believed in the “words alone”? Alma saw no evidence, no proof, or anything like that? And it wasn’t the words of God; it was the words of Abinadi alone that he believed in? What’s going on here? Why is there merit in this?”

    He continues, “There is merit because Alma believed in his words alone. I would emphasize his. You are blessed because of the things you choose to believe-not by the act of believing, not just by faith. You weren’t blessed because you believed, but because you chose what to believe. Everybody chooses what to believe. The atheist is a very strong believer. He is the most passionate arguer you can possibly find, and the positivist. Where will you find greater faith and firm conviction than among economists? . . . You must believe in something, and everybody does. But the Lord said, blessed are you [Alma] because of the things you chose to believe; you chose to believe in the things that Abinadi taught.”

    I’ve written before about The Faith of an Atheist.

    What do we believe in?

    This is an interesting statement by Hugh Nibley. The idea that it isn’t our faith that is important. Everyone has faith in something. It is what we have faith in. What do we choose to believe? Do we choose to believe that this is all one dumb coincidence and we’re all here for no real reason? Or do we believe in a Savior who redeems us, a Father who loves us, and an eternity of potential?

    Like a lot of things, it’s really about agency. What do we choose to believe in? Alma chose to believe in something good, hopeful, eternal.

    People who leave the church – are they better for it? This is going to upset some people. But in my opinion, no, people aren’t better for leaving the Church. That’s not absolute, of course. Some who leave the church still donate constantly to good causes, serve others, love others, and use their time in helping others. More often than not, I don’t think that’s the case.

    Many who leave the church, instead of turning their focus to good, hopeful, and helpful things, spend the rest of their lives trying to bash, destroy, and talk negatively about the church. Why is that? If leaving the Church of Jesus Christ is a good thing, why doesn’t more good come from it instead of more negativity? Why is tearing down something, whatever your feelings on it, that brings others hope and joy, a good result?

    Is it easy to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ? With the number of people my age deciding they don’t care for the Church, or any church, I’d say membership in the Church of Jesus Christ is not super easy. A lot of people say, “The church doesn’t do anything for me.” The Church isn’t about what it can do for you. It’s about what you can do for others. When you leave the Church, what do you do for others?

    Leaving the Church is complicated. I’m not trying to oversimplify it too much. But what I think gets lost sometimes is that leaving the Church is often a selfish choice. At least it was for me. I don’t want to have to get up early for church on Sunday. I don’t want to use my Saturday morning helping an elderly person move their belongings. I want to drink. I don’t have time for a church calling like teaching a class, working with the youth, or organizing group activities. I definitely don’t have time for ministering. Yeah, checking on a couple people every so often to make sure they’re doing OK, and really help them if they say they need something, don’t have time for that. I don’t want to pay 10% of what I earn anymore. The list goes on. Someone leaving the Church NEVER thinks this way (or won’t admit it). It’s about historicity or “what they feel” or feeling lied to or CES letter blah blah. I’m not trying to say that those things can’t be hard for people. They are, and I understand that. But often, it comes back to I, when the Church’s main goal is to help us see outside of ourselves.

    Now let’s be clear. Simply going to church isn’t enough. There are plenty of people who go to church on Sunday, leave, and call themselves stalwart disciples of Christ. You may be worse off than the nonbeliever in that case. It may be worse to believe and turn away the sick and needy than to choose not to believe.

    Does some small historical question, or some big historical question, distract you from a plan called “the Plan of Happiness”? Do you choose to worry about a statement by Brigham Young or some question about Joseph Smith? Do you disregard the miraculous book that was written, the testimony of a Savior of the world, an account of that Savior visiting His children in America? Do you ignore the hopeful and positive miracles because you have doubts?

    What do you choose to believe in?

  • The Haunting of Hill House and Eternity

    The Haunting of Hill House and Eternity

    The Haunting on Hill House is one of the best shows I’ve seen. It’s been out for a while so you’re being forewarned, there will be spoilers. It’s worth watching. Keep in mind there will be some language and mature content. It is still on Netflix. If you haven’t watched, go binge 10 episodes and come back. 

    In the show, Hill House is evil. It drives those within it to madness. It entraps them and makes them make awful choices. Those who stay too long go crazy and lose themselves to the house. Multiple deaths have occurred in the house and those who die there stay there forever. 

    The show makes it clear the house is evil. The last episode begins with a quote:

    “Certainly, there are places which attach to themselves an atmosphere of holiness and goodness. It might also be said that some houses are born bad.”

    It continues:

    “This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself flying together in its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness. Never meant to be lived in. Not a fit place for people, or for love, or for hope.”

    Sounds evil right?

    Well…

    That’s why the title of this post is a “conflicted message.” The above quotes don’t fit with the ending of the show. Call it Hollywood happy endings if you must. I had a different perspective. I thought of the ending in terms of what I know about heaven, and eternity. 

    The climax of the final episode comes when one of the characters learns the true nature of the home. He learns his father always knew the nature of the home and protected his children from it. We, the viewers, learn alongside this character what has been happening all along.

    The show is based around a family who moved into the house. The mother is lost to the home and commits suicide. Before committing suicide, she brings a young girl, the daughter of the groundskeepers, with her. Extremely dark.

    The father whose wife committed this act tells the parents of the young girl that he plans to burn the house to the ground, burn the hill, and salt the earth. They beg him not to do it. Their daughter is now a part of this home. She appears as a living, breathing child, though she is none of those things. Her soul belongs to the house.

    The father agrees to keep the groundskeeping family on to protect the home and spend the rest of their lives with their now perpetually 9-year-old daughter. The father/owner of the home leaves the home, and his dead wife, and takes his kids away. He wants to protect them from the home and let them experience life.

    We learn at the end that the father would occasionally visit the home to be with his wife. His wife experiences life as some sort of dream. She doesn’t know how much time has passed. She doesn’t fully comprehend her situation. Part of her mind appears to have been lost.

    Back to the climax of the show. Many years after the initial tragedy of losing his wife to the house, we see the father come back one last time. He ends his life there so he can spend the rest of time with his wife who he loves. The ultimate emotional moment of the show comes when the groundskeeper carries in his dying wife, and with tears he sees her with his daughter and a baby. I assume it is a baby that died in the home long ago. What the old groundskeeper is seeing is heaven. He is seeing the opportunity to be with his wife, daughter, and baby forever.

    There are two ways to look at this. Either Hill House is evil and what they are seeing is a counterfeit of heaven. Those who die there will spend some amount of time there, whether it be 100 or 500 or 10,000 years, but they won’t spend eternity there together.

    Or.

    The other option is this is heaven. The family will spend the rest of time and eternity there together. I’ll take the happy ending.

    What I know of heaven is that it will be where families are together forever. Families are meant to be together. Families are meant to be eternal. While many believe the family unit is just an earthly device, I cry foul! God gave us this powerful, important, sustaining, empowering, frustrating, growth promoting unit only to see it demolished after our test here? Doesn’t make sense. 

    Families are forever. Families are eternal. It’s the great truth of the gospel. It’s a great comfort to me, as I sit here and look at my daughters. Heaven can’t be heaven unless I’m with them forever.

    There were some good themes in this show that made me think. There’s a whole other spiritual implication from this show that analogizes leaving the Garden of Eden. It was a deep show if you let it be. But the greatest message was at the end – about family, about how important family is, that there is nothing more important than being with your family.

    That is what God has given us: eternal families. What a blessing that is.

    “Love is the relinquishment of logic. The willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it, or we fight it. But we cannot meet it halfway.”

  • Be Ye Therefore Perfect

    Be Ye Therefore Perfect

    There is a message recently brought to my attention in Matthew chapters 5-7. We all know the sermon on the mount. Don’t just not kill, also don’t even be angry. Don’t just not commit adultery, don’t even lust. Be ye therefore perfect.

    What comes next though? I haven’t before considered how the next chapters lead to a great message, a culmination of how we should behave and how we should try to be.

    What does the Sermon on the Mount transition into? What is the theme of chapter 6?

    Matthew 6:1 –

    “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.”

    Matthew 6:20 –

    “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.”

    Matthew 6:38 (JST) –

    “Wherefore, seek not the things of this world but seek ye first to build up the kingdom of God, and to establish his righteousness”

    Matthew 6 is all about our motives. In chapter 5 you seek to be perfect by your behavior. Chapter 6 asks, “why are you seeking to be perfect?” Is it for the glory of the world? Is it for more temporal possessions and blessings? Chapter 6 looks at your heart and asks your intention. We should want to be perfect because we love God and we love others. We should want to be perfect because it’s right. Perfection shouldn’t be about us or what it does for us. We should want to be perfect because Christ was perfect, perfect love, and our example. Chapter 6 tells us to look heavenward in all things.

    Which leads us to chapter 7. What does chapter 7 teach us?

    The message of chapter 7 is summed up by verse 1 (JST) –

    “Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged; but judge righteous judgement.”

    You’ve worked hard to fix your bad habits, to be loving, to treat others as you want to be treated. You’ve then addressed why you’re doing these things. Your heart is pure, you love others because it’s the right thing to do you. You look heavenward. Chapter 7 is about understanding that not everyone is at the same point on their own journey to perfection. Just because someone is working along their path, and in your mortal eyes may seem to be “behind” you, they’re not. Judge not others. They’re working their way down the path of perfection just as you are.

    That said, we still judge others righteously. Righteous judgement is loving judgement.

    Matthew 7:9 (JST) –

    “Go ye into the world, saying unto all, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come nigh unto you.”

    D&C 6:9 –

    “Say nothing but repentance unto this generation.”

    D&C 15:6 –

    “the thing which will be of the most worth unto you will be to declare repentance unto this people.”

    D&C 16:6 –

    “the thing which will be of the most worth unto you will be to declare repentance unto this people.”

    D&C 14:8 –

    “And it shall come to pass, that if you shall ask the Father in my name, in faith believing, you shall receive the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance, that you may stand as a witness of the things of which you shall both hear and see, and also that you may declare repentance unto this generation.”

    What Christ’s apostles at the meridian of time were told to preach was the same thing those who were instrumental in the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ were told to preach. It’s the same thing we’re supposed to preach today.

    Repentance.

    That’s what brings us and those around us closer to Christ.

    So, work on yourself first, Matthew chapter 5. Work on your motives second, Matthew chapter 6. Then, preach repentance to those on a different part of the path than you. Preach repentance with love and understanding. Never forgetting that you’re on the path too, trying to be your best. That’s all we can ask of each other. Do your best.

    From the book 40 Years And Marching On, an article by John W. Welch (p. 228) he says:

    “First is the acknowledgment that all people are at different stages in the eternal journey toward the glory of God, which is intelligence.”

    This is the message of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s not a one-part lesson, it’s 3 parts. Be perfect – be perfect for the right reasons – accept that others are not perfect (yet).

  • Share Your Light

    Share Your Light

    In Teaching in Heaven I talked about the struggle of sharing the gospel with friends and loved ones who have such a different starting point in religious background and understanding from what I have. I talked about how this can be frustrating at times. This is a follow up to that post. This is more a reminder for myself than anything.

    When I was Ward Mission Leader, I worked with a missionary who once said, “Be disappointed, but don’t get discouraged.” This is a saying I’ve tried to remember and sometimes could be easier said than done. When that frustration builds that those around me having zero interest in something so important to me, I get frustrated. When nobody seems to want to talk about things that have eternal significance, I have to work to be disappointed but not discouraged. It was explained that disappointment is temporary and can be combatted, but once you get discouraged, that is constant, and hard to shake. It is difficult to recover from discouragement.

    I believe it’s important while we’re here to share ourselves and to share our stories. We have all been given some level of light that we can share, and we can only share that light if we share ourselves. This isn’t restricted to those in the Church of Jesus Christ. This is about everyone. We’re all here for a reason and all have something to share.

    We don’t put a candle under a bushel. We let it burn bright (Matthew 5:15-16).

    While everyone needs to share themselves, for those who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ, it’s important to remember what we have to share. It’s important we share the light we’ve been given that has eternal significance. And then, after sharing your light, don’t be discouraged. Share and love and give and know that these moments of sharing will be immensely important. Don’t let yourself forget that one day when we all remember why we were here, every person you shared the light of Christ with will want to thank you for sharing that light. And how great will be your joy in the kingdom of your Father with those people (D&C 18:15-16).

    So when the world tells you to be shy about your religion, to be reserved about your religion, to not share these important things, remember what Christ said. The world will love you not for you share things not of this world. The world hated Him, because He wasn’t of the world (John 17:14-16). Step above the world as often as you can and share those parts of you, your testimony, that will make someone greet you with a hug of love when this life is over.

    That’s what this life is all about, after all. Share your light. Don’t cover your candle.

    Be disappointed in the world and the distractions that take so many away from true joy, but don’t be discouraged.

    One day Christ will say to you, “I always knew you.”  That, and bringing others unto Him will be worth all the disappointment this world can give. 

    Share yourself.  Share your story.  Share your light.

  • Grandma, I will see you soon

    Grandma, I will see you soon

    I believe Sandra Leach was in her early 30s when she accepted the message of the missionaries of Jesus Christ. I have thanked her for that choice every day of my entire life.

    I love you Grandma. Thank you.

    The greatest gift my grandmother gave me was the gift of a gospel household and a gift of the knowledge of the great Plan of Heavenly Father.  Why is this the greatest gift?  Death should hurt.  Because I know where my grandma is going and because I know I will see her again, death becomes less a sting of bitterness and more a quiet celebration.  I know who is greeting my grandmother, I know the peace and joy she will have as she waits for us to finish our race.  Especially when a good person passes, and there’s few better than my grandma, Sandra Leach, I know where she’s going is so marvelous and wonderful.  It will be sad for us who have to stay.

    It will be a brief stay away.

    I know that Grandma has a lot to do. I know that she’s working alongside Laura now.

    Soon, one day in the near future, when my race is hopefully won, I will meet her again.  We’ll sit in some glorious place I can’t describe; I don’t have the vocabulary or ability to imagine the setting of Heaven.  We will sit and we will go over every single book she read, that she passed to me, that I read.  The books will be in the hundreds!  The notes we’ll share!  I can’t wait.  We’ll have so much to discuss.  She’ll have so much more to teach me.  Just like she taught me here, she’ll teach me there.  I’ll thank her.  I imagine there are happy tears in Heaven.  I can already see and feel tears of joy pouring from my face as I thank her for leading me there.  I will thank her for her perseverance, effort, and determination to raise a righteous home.  I will thank her for teaching my mother about God, and Jesus Christ.  I will thank her for listening to the missionaries.  I will thank her for her faith.  I will thank her for the foundation she established so I could live a joyful life leading to the ultimate joy.  That moment with her and my loved ones.  Discussing our life past and the great future ahead.

    I long for eternity.  I know eternity is just on the other side of me closing my eyes for good from this existence.  I don’t long for death.  I’m not anxious to leave all I love here.  I am excited for my future of laying a foundation of love, faith, and obedience for my daughters.  I am excited for my time on this earth to do all the things my grandmother taught me were important.

    How can I ever thank my grandma for what she’s given me?  I can only give it to my daughters and all those around me.

    Thank you, Grandma.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart and soul.

    I don’t long for death, but I am excited for it.  I am excited for eternity with you.  I have no fear of death because I know it will be on God’s time and terms.  I know it will be for a purpose.  Death will only mean temporarily leaving others to reunite with family that has gone ahead.  How great it is to have no fear of death.  How great it is to know why I’m here. Thank you, Grandma, for that gift.