Sunday, May 18, 2014

Backsliding

I found myself today reading the Teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith during sacrament meeting.  Convenient to the ordinance, I was studying the Plan of Salvation and specifically, the atonement of Jesus Christ.  President Smith bore such beautiful, powerful testimony of the truthfulness and power of Christ's atonement for us.  He tells us that "The driving of the nails into his hands and into the Savior's feet was the least part of his suffering...His great suffering occurred before he ever went to the cross.  It was in the Garden of Gethsemane, so the scriptures tell us, that blood oozed from every pore of his body; and in the extreme agony of his soul, he cried to his Father." (63)  As a missionary, I was able to see a glimmer of hope come to the light of a single mother of three as these two unknown white men told her that she was not alone...she was loved.  I've seen a man covered in tattoos beg for a way to be clean from the things he regrets.  I've seen myself change into the man I am now.  And, because of Christ's atonement and example, I see the man I can yet become.

There is a common saying in America:  "Freedom isn't free!"  This points to the courageous men and women that have fought so valiantly for our freedoms here.  The only price I've had to pay for my freedom is taxes, but comparatively, I have paid nothing.  Not unlike our freedom fighters, Christ rallied for our freedom.  We were trapped by the communistic grasp of Adam's fall:  no matter what we did, we would still be unclean and lack a perfect body.  Christ took the challenge, accepted the weight, and stood in our place as the punishment for everything you and I have and will do came raining down on him in the form of blood seeping from his pores.  He eliminated that deficiency remaining only the separation of body and spirit to be solved.  After his famous prayer in the garden, he was tortured and taken to Golgotha and hung on a cross.  He died.  In Japan, some told me that I couldn't very well worship someone who couldn't even beat death!  But oh, what joy there is in knowing that there is more to this story!  Three days later, his spirit was again united with his body and he eliminated death's final hold on us.  We are free, but should always remember the cost behind it.  And, as President Smith tells us, "No man could do what he did for us.  He did not have to die, he could have refused."

He could have backed out?!  He could have said, "Forget the moochers, they can try and find their own way back!"  He voluntarily took our pains and sins.  He begged with God to provide another way so that he wouldn't have to endure such pain.  He didn't want to do it.  As I said, it was voluntary, so it isn't like it was even an obligatory compulsion.  Naturally, he had told everyone in Jerusalem and Capernaum and the surrounding areas that he was to be the savior, so to bail out would have been rather awkward.  But, he could have used the excuse, "You try it!" because if the only perfect man who ever walked the earth couldn't do it, nobody else could.  And that's exactly it.  Nobody else could.

How often do we find ourselves not willing to do things asked of us?  Often these are tasks that we might feel are our obligation, but really we still have the choice whether or not to comply.  In an attempt to guide us to true and lasting happiness, our loving Heavenly Father has given us commandments, or rules, to follow.  But how often are we faced with a scenario that challenges our resolve to follow these fundamentally simple guidelines?  We try to fight the man, but we forget that the man is the man that created the world and all things.  I, myself am guilty of backsliding, or sticking my heels in the dirt to try and inhibit my progression forward.  These are things to me that are legitimately hard.  To others, they are rookie mistakes.  Backsliding is bad, but repentance clears out all our wrongs.  However, if we fail to repent, or change from what we're doing, we have a promise:  "But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of the pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit-and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink-".

Christ provided the way.  It's there.  Allow yourself to be changed.  It is so scary to fall into the hands of God, but it is more rewarding than anything you could ever do alone.  In this world of dark, how nice it would be to be guided by a light.  Let your light be Jesus Christ.  And when that is your light, "Let your light so shine."

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