Tag Archives: Eternal Progression

NT 16: Admitting that I Lack

Posted in Come, Follow Me, New Testament 2019 by

While speaking with a friend today I experienced a profound moment in which I revealed something about myself that I didn’t even realize was true. We are all sick at my house, the weather is terrible, and I “needed” to run an errand; so I called a friend to sit with my kids. But in the process of feeling embarrassed about asking for help with a non-essential errand I realized that my impulse to call was actually driven by a feeling of loneliness. What I really needed was interaction with another adult––I needed to talk, to let a friend know I wasn’t feeling well, and to feel healed by sharing my burden.

I wondered later if that’s how the rich young man felt who came to Jesus asking, “what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17, NT). The rich young man who was doing a good job of being a decent human being, who was keeping the commandments,  felt the need to talk to someone about his life and his eternal trajectory. Did he realize he was missing something in his quest for eternal life? Was he merely seeking to justify himself? Was he looking for a pat on the back? Did he have any sense of what he lacked (but maybe hoped that wasn’t really it)? Jesus, piercing the young man’s soul, answered, “One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor…” (ibid. verse 21, NT).

It is shocking to feel like you have a handle on life and then be forced to acknowledge that you’re missing something crucial. I needed human interaction and compassion, the rich young man needed to let go of his grasp on worldly wealth. Both needs necessitated recognition of the truth and humility to act. Change is painful but it can also be liberating once we get over that initial hurdle.

To become a richer human being––a fuller, more complete person––is the process of a lifetime. But it requires us to ask hard questions along the way about our progress and performance, and be ready to act on the answers we receive from family, friends, and God. It requires us to share our best and worst selves, to open up, to ask, “What do I need to change? How can I improve? What weakness needs strengthening?” as Elder Larry R. Lawrence suggested in his October 2015 conference talk “What Lack I Yet?”. The answers may shock, upset, grieve us, or we may have sensed that lack all along. When we humbly accept and act, we enter onto a plane of deeper experience that helps us transform, little by little, into the divine individuals God knows we can become. And all those little changes gradually accumulate to make us more like the perfect Savior who has been supporting, enabling, and helping us all along.

 

Day 79: The Nature of God

Posted in Book of Mormon Insights by

Mormon 9:9

One of the great truths restored to the earth through Joseph Smith in 1820 is the nature of God: Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are three separate and distinct Beings. They work together in unity as the Godhead to “bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39, PoG). God the Father and Jesus Christ the Son have resurrected bodies of flesh and bone. The Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit which enables Him to fulfill his office and responsibilities.

The Book of Mormon sheds further light on the character of God. Moroni teaches in Mormon 9:9, “For do we not read that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in him there is no variableness neither shadow of changing?” This recurring theme highlights several additional truths also treated in The Book of Mormon: God had a plan for His children at the creation of the world and He has the same plan today; God offers mercy to all who repent regardless of when they lived on earth; God required baptism before Christ came to earth and He still requires it for entrance to heaven; God fulfills all His words and promises today, just as He has done since the foundation of the world.

But as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I also believe in eternal progression. As eternal beings we have the opportunity to progress and develop to become like God. The implicit notion is that God also continues to progress and develop because, “As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be” (President Lorenzo Snow, see article for source).

I remember teaching a very bright young man on my mission and I shared these two seemingly contrary beliefs in the course of a lesson. The young man thought he had caught me in a doctrinal dilemma: How can God be both unchanging AND capable of progression? What I learn from The Book of Mormon and continuing revelation is that God IS God because of core, eternal characteristics. He is goodness personified, honest, just, merciful, and more. God’s core characteristics don’t change but He can and does become more good, more merciful, more loving, more kind, more godlike and more perfect.

One of the things I find so beautiful about the Restored Gospel is that we have the opportunity to grow and progress in like manner to develop those crowning eternal characteristics.