No Coincidences

Tag: latter day saint

  • Importance of Promises (and Covenants)

    Importance of Promises (and Covenants)

    Since as long as I can remember, promises have been important to me. I’ve always said I would never break a promise for any reason. Period. I’m sure at some points in my life I have broken promises. I have this vague recollection of a broken promise or two that still eat at me. I don’t remember the details, but I remember the feeling of not keeping my word. For whatever reason, promises are something I’ve always considered immensely important, I’m not sure exactly why. Deep down inside, I’ve always thought promises were important to keep. Otherwise, what was the point? Otherwise, words were hollow and how could you be trusted?

    In Alma 23:16-25:2 of the Book of Mormon, there is the story of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis. This is the story of the Lamanites who converted unto the Lord and from then on turned away from their past traditions of murder and bloodshed. They buried their weapons of war and covenanted to shed blood no more. They took their new covenant so seriously that when other Lamanites came to war against them, rather than break their newly made covenant, they knelt before their former brothers and gave up their lives.

    As I read this story recently, a question arose: how seriously do we take our covenants? What does our word mean to us? How about when our word is a promise to God? How important do we deem that pact?

    Covenants are important. Covenants are serious. Keeping covenants is a serious thing.

    The converted Lamanites, or Anti-Nephi-Lehis, made a covenant to shed blood no more. Full stop. No excuses. When their lives were at stake, did they reconsider? Did they say to themselves, “well I promised this, but surely I’m not supposed to lie here and die over a promise”? They thought the exact opposite. Their covenant was worth more than their mortal life. These Anti-Nephi-Lehis understood the significance of covenants. There were no excuses. They had faith. They knew that if they died keeping their word to God, they would inherit a glory and reward that would be well worth the earthly sacrifice.

    Covenants with God are greater than death.

    So, I ask again, how seriously do you take your covenants?

    Have I been perfect in keeping the covenants I’ve made with God? Let’s review the first covenants I made with God when I was baptized at age 9. I covenanted to:

    1. Take upon myself the name of Jesus Christ.
    2. Keep His commandments.
    3. Serve Him to the end.

    Have I been perfect in this? Of course not. None of us are perfect yet. But I’ve tried. I often wonder how much my baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost at age 9 strengthened me and helped me to return. I often wonder how my upbringing influences my deep respect for promises. Though I haven’t been perfect, I always took these covenants seriously.

    I now take further covenants I’ve made very seriously. For example, my covenant with my wife, to be faithful to her, to love her, to serve her, to be there for her. That is the most important promise I’ve made in this life and I intend to die before breaking it.

    In a world of promise-breaking and commitment to nothing, I am ever-grateful for the covenants I’ve been privileged to make. I’m grateful for the Church of Jesus Christ that provides the proper authority for me to make promises with God. I’m grateful to be linked to God. I’m grateful for the strength covenants provide in a shaky and uncertain world.

    If you’ve made covenants that you’ve broken, I implore you to reexplore those promsies. Satan leads us to believe that once broken, we can’t mend our word. When our promise is with God, that is true, we can’t mend it. But He can. Jesus Christ suffered the Atonement so that we can come back even to make up for the promises we’ve broken. He knows we aren’t perfect. He will make the difference. I fell into that trap for stretches in my life. Thinking I’d gone too far away from God, I’d broken too many promises, disregarded too many commandments, and I couldn’t come back. The feeling of reuniting with God is the most comforting feeling in the world. Reunite with Him. He will always take us back. He will always reestablish our covenants because He loves us that much.

    Come back to Him and feel His peace.

    I am grateful for covenants and that God allows me, an insignificant little speck, to align and connect myself with Him. What power. What comfort.

  • Attack on Mormons

    Attack on Mormons

    Legend has it my grandfather has a hidden room in his home for the day that followers of Christ are rounded up like Jews were in Europe during World War II. I spent much time trying to find that room without luck. I’m still not convinced it doesn’t exist.

    Beth and I recently finished a TV show called Under the Banner of Heaven. If anyone wants to see every anti-Mormon falsehood spouted in 7 hour+ long episodes, I highly recommend it.

    A story made headlines recently. A highly recruited quarterback from Utah was visiting an Oregon football game. He left the game when the student section started chanting “f- the Mormons.”

    The play “The Book of Mormon.”

    Southpark parodies.

    Imagine another religion being treated this way. Can you picture the outrage if a student section chanted “f- the Jews” for example? I felt wrong just typing that.

    And yet the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not shielded from this. Why is that?

    Under the Banner of Heaven being my most recent exposure to anti-Mormon media, that’s where I’ll focus this post, with my point at the end. Stay with me. Even if you haven’t seen the show (and despite what I said above, I DON’T recommend it) this will still be pertinent.

    An article was written in the Atlantic about the show. That article can be found HERE.

    If you’re interested, you should read the whole article. It’s well written and helped me understand the underlying feelings I had about this show.

    Here are some highlights from that article that I agree with:

    “[It] felt like seeing my religious life in a funhouse mirror, each detail-from the sacred to the mundane-twisted and stretched and distorted to appear frightening and strange.”

    When talking about the absurd use of the phrase “Heavenly Father” in the show, “But I gave up after a few episodes [counting the weird usages of “Heavenly Father], once I realized what was going on. To say that I have never met a Mormon in my life who talks like this would be to miss the point. These lines were not intended as shibboleths for Mormon viewers-they are there to serve a stereotype, to exoticize a people and flatten their faith tradition.”

    “Under the Banner of Heaven is one of the most openly hostile treatments of a minority religious group to appear in popular American entertainment this century. It is also an unqualified hit.”

    I could go on about the flawed and insulting nature of this show.

    Elder Bednar, an apostle for our church, was asked his thoughts on the show. He responded, “We don’t like it, but we don’t spend all of our time responding to it. We have a mission to fulfill.”

    The writer of the Atlantic article stated he initially felt good about Bednar’s response. Then on further thought:

    “But almost immediately, I doubted myself. Wasn’t I just taking the same path of least resistance – above-the-fray politeness, studious nonconfrontation – that Latter-day Saints always seem to take when faced with stuff like this?”

    This is exactly the struggle I deal with. I am in a constant “polite, studious nonconfrontation”-like attitude. It’s how I was raised. I was pretty heated by the end of the final episode. Episodes 1-6 I was just “bluh.” A feeling of, “whatever. They’re making us look weird, the show is weird.” Then that turned into the show is upsetting me. I found myself having an unsettled feeling after each episode that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Truly, it wasn’t until reading the Atlantic article that full outrage started to settle inside me. How could a show treat my religion like this? Where would it be acceptable to treat any other religion like this? What’s next?

    It was to the point that I didn’t mention to friends I was watching this show because I didn’t want them to watch it. This included close friends that know me and my religion and (I hope) would see through much of the nonsense of the show.

    I hesitated to share because maybe this fear of others seeing my religion as cooky exists inside me. I know what my religion is. It’s precious to me. It’s sacred. It has provided every blessing in my life, I can’t spit upon and laugh at my Church, it’s too important to me.

    So, Bednar’s statement. I like it, in that, it’s how I would respond. Forgive. Turn the other cheek. Don’t get emotional. Don’t get upset. Above all else, don’t let them see you’re upset. But then, at what point do you stop being a cultural punching bag? Is there a point where you stand up for the church and religion that you love? After all, I know this to be Jesus Christ’s Church. Is a show like this really insulting Him? That causes real outrage inside me that I’m willing to speak out about. Spit on me, spit on my faith, spit on my church and my religion. Don’t spit on Him. Maybe that’s ultimately what got me upset. The idea being perpetuated through this show that it was Christ’s church that caused some extremist men to kill a woman and her daughter. I feel for Brenda’s family, her sister, who rightly pointed out that this show unfairly portrays her murder.

    And as the article points out, where is the apology? Where is the script before the show plays saying “Mormons are not an extremist, murdering people. This is a dramatization.”

    In an age where Disney has to apologize before The Lady and the Tramp, Under the Banner of Heaven needs no disclaimer apology for this? Remember that football player at the Oregon game, Oregon apologized for their student section’s behavior.

    As the article points out, we are moving backwards. Rather, we are being pushed backwards. Saints rarely live peacefully in a wicked world.

    What other religion could be ridiculed, spit upon, and disrespected in this way, without public outcry and support, besides the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?

    In our forgiveness, we laugh it off and shrug. But a dangerous thing is happening out there. As Satan does in any dispensation where there are Saints to God, he is stirring up the masses against us.

    This leads to my point.

    The attack of this show on a religion seems like a small enough matter. “Who really cares” some might say, as I did, initially. It does matter. The attack on religion, on faith, on Christ is increasing daily. It seems dramatic to even consider the idea that Latter-day Saints could be rounded up like what happened 80 years ago. We can trick ourselves into thinking we’ve gotten better as a world and as society since then.

    Media attack on faith and on Christ are widespread and increasing. It’s not just the Church of Jesus Christ being attacked when shows and plays and TV openly mock it, it’s all followers of Christ and ultimately Christ Himself.

    This attack is going to increase, and we need to be aware of it. I hope that all my friends and especially those who don’t believe in God realize how important this is to be aware of. Believers need the support of nonbelievers in our defense. Otherwise, this world becomes a scary world for those of faith.

    Maybe it’s time for a return trip to my grandparent’s home to search out that hidden room. I hope it’s not.

  • Judged

    Heading into my ninth-grade year my family moved.  This resulted in me attending a new ward.  I got a zone variance so I could go to the school I would have gone to if I didn’t move.  I had developed friendships through middle school that I didn’t want to give up.  The funny thing is how quickly those friendships dissolved.  Not because of falling out or anything dramatic, just growing up and growing apart.  I played basketball and that became my friend group.

    My new ward had a few guys my age.  From day one, I don’t think I ever felt like I completely belonged.  They had been friends their whole lives and I was new.  On top of that, we had no similar interests.  For example, I played sports; they played video games, and that sort of thing.

    I’ve looked back and thought a lot about those years.  During my time in that ward I started to drift further and further away.  It got to the point that I just felt unwelcome.  Back then, being a popular basketball player at my high school was more important than anything. I looked down on this group of friends that I never belonged to.  As I got a girlfriend, I started to think I was cool.  As I started to make serious mistakes, I started to think I was better than them because I was experiencing the world and I thought I was more mature.

    Then I started to feel judged by them.  I started to feel ostracized.  I still remember meeting with my bishop at the time.  He was the father of one of those friends in the group.  He was a young, kind man.  He was easy to get along with and a good guy.  I remember telling him I wasn’t worthy to bless the sacrament.  I couldn’t help but feel that he’d told his son, who’d told his friends, and the ostracizing got worse. 

    Over time, that feeling festered.  I didn’t think about it too intensely, but I had this idea that they all knew and they all judged me for it.  In hindsight, that bishop was a great guy and there’s very little chance he ever told his son anything about my transgressions.  He may have told his son to look out for me or to help me. That could have made his son think some things.  I strongly doubt he told him anything about my mistakes.  Yet, over time, this thought became something I assumed was true.

    Now I look back on these days with a much different perspective.  Something I’ve come to realize is that I was never judged by that group of friends.  They tried to welcome me and they tried to make me a member of their group.  Any judgment I felt was my own.

    It’s been a long journey to get to this point.  To come to the realization that I was the one ostracizing myself.  I was the one judging myself.  I didn’t feel welcome because I was making myself unwelcome.  It wasn’t something I realized until I looked back. Many years later I was able to see it, after some growth and real maturing. 

    What helped me come to this realization was reading the story of Cain and Abel.  The scriptures say that Cain loved Satan more than God.  Satan tricked Cain and misled him.  That’s what happened to me those many years ago. Satan tricked and misled me.  He led me to believe these good, kind, friendly individuals didn’t like me.  I allowed my pride to make me think I was better than them.  Satan promoted that thinking.  Satan led me to be mindful of the world and I followed along.

    It was only through the grace of Jesus Christ and His atonement that I was able to come away from that part of my life with an understanding of what was actually happening.  I’m grateful that time didn’t foster even more of a feeling of animosity or negativity towards the church.  I’m glad I was always able to separate perceived wrongs and unkindness of individuals from the love of my Savior.  It’s now these years later, because of my Savior, that I’m able to see I was wrong and judging myself.  I learned to love God more than the world.  The atonement of Jesus Christ allowed me to be forgiven for those mistakes I made and also gave me the perspective to see the humble kindness I was always surrounded by.

    I hope everyone out there can separate the people of Christ’s Church, imperfect as we are, from Christ Himself.  Christ loves us so much.  He knows us.  He judges us only with love.  Members of the Church always fall short.  We’re not there yet.  As long as we keep trying, maybe we’ll one day get there.  But for now, I plead for you to remember Christ is perfect, we’re not.  Make sure you have a testimony of Him first.  Everything else will fall in line.

    If anyone has felt judged or would like to share your experience, I’d love to hear it.  Thanks for reading.