He is Risen: A Belated but Necessary Easter Post

Mormon friends: do you ever get tired of reading in the Book of Mormon about the Nephites and the Jaredites going through the infamous pride cycle over and over again? I mean, do you just sit down to read Helaman or Third Nephi and go uuugggggghhhh?

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And do I need to remind any of you here of the number of times that this happened with the Israelites in the Old Testament? Just as soon as Moses had them going straight, something would happen and they would start murmuring. AGAIN. And their life in the Promised Land was no bed of roses, because they would repeatedly forget the Lord, break the commandments, worship idols, and then end up in bondage to their enemies.

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In our day, the pride cycle can happen in our personal lives, but in society at large it doesn’t seem so much a pride cycle as a long downward slope. And just when you think the world has hit the bottom, things keep getting worse. We turn to the scriptures, and we see the exact same thing: war, wickedness, sin, and destruction. If the Gospel is in the scriptures, then where is the part with the “good news”? The scriptures were written for our day, to help us get through. But seeing more examples of what we’re already seeing doesn’t seem to give much comfort, much less answers.

It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out that those ancient peoples are US. And it probably doesn’t take much more thinking than that to realize that the wicked people who are ripening for destruction are not meant to be our role models.

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So what do we look for? We read about the people who stayed righteous in the midst of all that wickedness and all of their personal trials. We read about Abraham, Joseph the son of Jacob,and Moses; Joshua, Gideon, Ruth, Deborah and Barak, Samuel, Elijah, Hezekiah and Isaiah. We read about Lehi and Nephi and Alma and Alma the Younger and Nephi son of Helaman; we read about Mormon and Moroni and Ether. We read about Jesus Christ. We read about the people who followed Him, His mother Mary, Peter and John and the apostles, Stephen and Paul. What are they writing about their experiences and the lives of those who came before them? What are they learning that they want to share with us? How do they stay righteous in a wicked, difficult world?

This goes for the Book of Mormon, too! (Pinterest)

In His final sermon to His apostles, Jesus shared the secret: “In the world ye have shall have tribulation. But be of good cheer: I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

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Jesus overcame the world. He rose above the sin, the sorrow, the despair, the grief, the lust. He rose above everything evil in this life. He descended below all things, and was thus able to overcome all things.

He did not get caught in the Pride cycle: HE BROKE THE CYCLE.

He is Risen, not just above death but above sin and above pain and suffering. Above repeated human errors and mistakes.

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HE. BROKE. THE. CYCLE.

AND BECAUSE HE DID, SO CAN WE.

In the Intercessory prayer (John 17) He asked the Father not to take his disciples from the world but to keep them from the evil. We are still supposed to be a part of this mortal experience. We came to experience the pros and the cons. But the cons don’t have to make us weaker. Christ can help us overcome the things that are difficult. Christ made it possible for us to be stronger than our pains, our temptations, our sufferings through His Atonement.

He is the Light of the world. He is stronger than the darkness.

All those people in the scriptures who still managed to make it through even though they were surrounded by wickedness and evil and destruction? They made it because they chose Christ.

In one of his last letters to his son Moroni, Mormon wrote a harrowing description of the atrocities committed by both the Nephites and the Lamanites. And then he said something to Moroni that I think we should all listen to: “My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever” (Moroni 9:25, emphasis added). Believing in Christ doesn’t necessarily make everything around you perfect or solve all your problems. BUT believing in Christ can help you to be all right when everything else is chaos.

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As he is abridging the record of the Jaredites, Moroni takes a chapter to write out some of his feelings on the subject and some of his experiences in coming to know the Savior. He says that he had prayed that God would “give unto the Gentiles grace, that they might have charity.” But God’s response was,” If they have not charity it mattereth not unto thee, thou hast been faithful; wherefore, thy garments shall be made clean. And because thou hast seen thy weakness thou shalt be made strong, even unto the sitting down in the place which I have prepared in the mansions of my Father” (Ether 12: 36-37). We don’t have any control over what other people choose. But if we are faithful, then our own salvation is assured. Peace in this life. Eternal Life in the world to come. We will be able to overcome the world and have that reward.

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In Paul’s second epistle to Timothy, we read Paul’s counsel to those who were trying to stay true to the faith in a time of difficulty. The Great Apostasy--the time when the true Church would be corrupted and the truth of the Gospel lost--was at the doors. “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (2 Timothy 4: 3-4). Paul would soon be going to his own martyrdom (vs. 6-8). But Paul’s counsel was simply to be ready for whatever came, and to stay true to the faith. In the previous chapter, he had reminded Timothy to “continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of.” The message for us today is the same: stay true to what you know, do the things you know are right. Doubt and fear can and will be overcome.

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In the book of Revelation, we read of God’s promises to those who “overcome” the sins and temptations that were plaguing the seven churches: they would be clothed in white, named in the book of life, have part in the first Resurrection, receive eternal life, and live in the presence of God (Revelation 2-3). And as recently as the last general conference, Elder Neal A. Andersen gave a talk on the attributes of those who overcome the world as Christ overcame it. Overcoming the world, Elder Andersen said, is not done in a single moment but over a lifetime. But it can be done. Christ overcame, and he will help us to overcome.

The Miracle of Christmas

I work at a thrift store and donation center. I was going through stuff at work one day when I found a Nativity set. I pulled it out of the bag to make sure all of the pieces were still together. It was a nice set, but it was missing the baby Jesus. I threw the whole set away. There was no point selling a nativity set if it didn’t have Jesus.

There is no point having Christmas if there is no Jesus.

There is no point having Christmas without His Atonement for us.

There is a point if we believe Christ and not simply believe in Him. If we believe that what He did--lived his life for, suffered and died for--to heal us and redeem us--if we believe that what He did can make a difference here and now in our lives--in my life, in your life--then there is hope.

Hope in This Life

If there is any gift I want to give to my readers, as few of you as there are, or as many as will

come across this single article, I would like to share the gift of hope.

Thanksgiving night, I went to bed feeling weighed down. Some of my friends had been having relationship problems and I just felt bad for them. And I started to wonder about my own future, and how I was supposed to keep living my life if people were capable of being so horrible.

But then I woke up and I felt peace. And I had a lot of thoughts about why I or any of my friends needed to give up. And it just so happened that my scripture reading for that morning was Alma 14, where Alma and Amulek witness the martyrdom of innocent women and children at the hands of unbelievers. A therapist I had worked with in college had used that story to teach me about perspective. Yes, awful things happen. And sometimes we can’t do more than just sit and watch. But God has a plan to make everything right. If you can’t do anything else, trust Him.

We live in a fallen world where everyone falls short of the ideal. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep trying to do the right thing. It is still possible for friendship and kindness to exist between people of different backgrounds. It is possible to have peace in your heart, and peace between you, your friends and your family and everyone around you.

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The world wants to focus on the negative--to bring out every flaw, every failing that proves that living according to our conscience doesn’t work. But they’re wrong. You can do that, and still have peace.

What you have to remember to do is to focus on the positive. Think about the miracles that you see in your everyday life. Think about the people around you who are succeeding without attention in the media--the people who don’t have everything. Look at those who are making their lives work in spite of opposition. 

There is opposition in all things. Where there is great darkness and evil, great good can rise up to meet it.

Every single person around you is a son or a daughter of God. Every single person is capable of good. Every person has the light of Christ inside of them. I may not live like I believe that, but I want to.

All things that are good come because of Christ. Because he paid the price to justice, the Father can give us mercy. We have good things that make our lives richer, and we have the personal peace that makes it possible to balance our lives. In moments when we are discouraged, we have His goodness to lift us up and remind us that we are not alone. When we face the greatest despair, our Greatest Hope reminds us that there is still good in the world. There is still much to live for and to love. Peace in this life and joy in eternity are still possible.

Courage and Charity

The ideas I have shared above are what I believe to be true. But we may not be able to see that truth because of the sadness we see around us in reality. People make bad choices. They reject the light of Christ. They refuse to see the people around them as sons and daughters of God. And not every person you are close to or want to reach out to is going to choose to follow the same path you are on.

You have to remember that judgment is ultimately the Lord’s. You don’t really know what other people around you are capable of becoming, not the way He does. The test is, can you love them here and now, based on what you see? Can you know when to say “Yes”...and when to say “No” ? Charity, the pure Love of Christ, comes when we trust Him and choose to love even though that love could hurt us. It is courage.

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There are bad people out there who will twist good things to their own image, including your own good intentions. Even people you trust and depend on will disappoint you even if they didn’t intend to hurt you. Can you love and still do right by the people you care about even in face of the fear that they will fail you? 

What do you choose to believe, when everything you believe in is questioned? Can you say 'no, that’s not true, I don’t want to believe that,' to every doubt in your head? 

Choosing to believe that Heavenly Father understands and cares for us, choosing to believe that all the people around you are his children and should be treated as such, choosing to believe that God’s ways are better even if we don’t understand how or why they work--that choice takes courage. We may have to actively choose courage every single day, every waking moment when we are faced with adversity. Sometimes making that choice may not be enough to keep bad things from happening. But as President Monson says, “Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, I’ll try again tomorrow.” Courage is what gets you to try and then get up and try again when you fail.

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Choosing to go on in the face of disappointment and adversity, choosing to go ahead and try for as good a life as possible in spite of the risk of falling up short, of not being as good as everyone else, in spite of living in a world full of the worst influences, is courage. And that courage comes from hope in something greater. That courage to live a Christian life in defiance of the pervasiveness of the world comes from the Atonement. It comes from God. It is our choice to use it. But it is possible. The miracle of Christmas is that that Christ came to bring us that hope, to guarantee that promise from Heavenly Father that we would not be left comfortless. It is my Christmas prayer that I will find this hope in my own life, and I hope that some of you reading this will be able to find it as well.