Today I read Romans 9 which to me seems to be about the Israelites rebelling against God and a little bit of their history in doing so. I sometimes wonder what life would be like if we didn't have the veil to cause us to forget our previous life with God. I think this land would be a lot better, but there would still be problems. We know this from Alma 13. Not everyone obeyed Heavenly Father with the same degree of obedience in the pre-mortal life. Even though they were in the presence of God Himself, some were still disobedient. I believe it was President Harold B. Lee who once said that our conditions in this life were based on our obedience to God's commands in the previous life, similar to our conditions in the next life will be based on our behaviors in this one. I am summarizing of course but that is the gist of what he said.
If you don't believe me that life would still have its problems if we remembered who we were and where we came from, all you have to do is take a look at society. We are all familiar with the phrase when the cat is away the mice will play. How do your co-workers act when the boss is not around? How do your fellow drivers drive when there are no policemen around? Did your siblings always do what is right when your parents were gone? It is the nature of the natural man to be disobedient, to do what is best for him or herself. History is full of stories of such people. However, the ones we always seem to revere are the people who put aside their nature and did what was best for the common good instead. People like Mother Theresa, Bono, Gandhi, and others throughout history. These men and women are well known for their humanitarian work and tireless efforts to assist others. In some cases they even put their own lives and health at risk to do it! We all love the stories where someone has to sacrifice themselves for the good of others, yet none of us wants to be that sacrifice. We recognize that it is nobler to serve than to be served, we just seem to have trouble connecting the dots and doing it ourselves.
Paul also mentions that the Israelites, or the seed of Rebecca were elected for certain things. Predestination and foreordination, two principles that are completely misunderstood by most because of what is written in the Bible and what was taken out, either on purpose or by accident. Predestination is the idea that you are either already saved or already consigned to hell and there is nothing you can do about it. It is a false doctrine that very much advocates do what makes you feel good because you cannot change your fate one way or the other. This idea takes one chain of thought from the scriptures and completely ignores all the rest of them. We know that the truth is actually that we are the author of our own salvation with Jesus Christ being the finisher. The check is already written, it's just up to us to cash it.
Now, the correct principle that predestination comes from is called foreordination. Alma explains this principle quite nicely in Alma 13. Essentially, God has called certain people to do certain things in this life. Most notably involving the Priesthood of Melchizedek. Joseph Smith taught that any man who receives the Melchizedek Priesthood in this life, was foreordained to receive it in the previous life. Likewise Abraham in his writings teaches us that those who hold certain sacred callings, such as prophet or Apostle, were ordained to such in the pre-earth life. This is the correct principle, not that God has already decreed who will be saved and who won't be. Such thinking is only by those who want to live a life of debauchery and not face up to the consequences, either now or later. Now I do believe that God already knows who will be returning to Him. For one thing, time is different for God than it is for us. I don't know how that works because I am mortal, but I believe it. Secondly, God knows us. Just like our earthly father, if we grew up around him, could guess with a reasonable success rate how his child might react in a given situation, so too can Heavenly Father know how we will act because He knows us infinitely better than our earthly father does.
Now some might argue that this is God controlling the outcome. Such thoughts are entirely incorrect. It is as absurd as accusing someone of causing a dropped pencil to fall to the earth because it was known and correctly predicted that such would be the outcome. We know a dropped pencil will fall because we correctly understand the principle of gravity, not because we had some sort of control over the pencil falling. Likewise God understands us in a way that we cannot comprehend and as such it is as easy for Him to determine what we will do as it is for us to know that a dropped object will fall to the earth. Heavenly Father knows us even better than we know ourselves. It is not hard to think He might know how we will react to a situation.
To me, given that Heavenly Father knows me so well, it is an opportunity. It is a chance to work with Him to improve myself. He knows me better than I know myself, what better person to ask for help in identifying ways to help me improve? I remember before I met my wife, I wasn't living all of the commandments. In addition I was not regularly reading the scriptures either. I was not the type of man that would attract the type of woman I wanted to marry. So one day, I kneeled down by my bed and prayed. I prayed that Heavenly Father would help me make the changes that I knew I needed to make in order to be the kind of husband my future wife desired to have. It was an easy prayer to say, it honestly was, but the ramifications of such a prayer were hard indeed. I had to give up certain things.
I used to have quite a collection of rated "R" movies that I enjoyed very much. I will freely admit that I had more than I thought I did. After my wife and I decided to get married she stated that I did not have to get rid of them right away, but she did not want any rated "R" movies in the house when our children arrived. I agreed to this and went on my way. About a week later I was in the temple and I had the thought that if I was going to eventually get rid of my rated "R" movies, why should I wait? Would the passage of time make it easier to do it? I reasoned that it would not. So as soon as I finished my temple session I went straight home and packed them all up and took them to a local store and got rid of them. As I stated I had a lot more than I thought I did. I also took the opportunity to get rid of some other movie that might not be the best even though they weren't rated "R" as well as a few video games that I probably shouldn't have been playing. When I told me wife, who at the time was just my fiancee, she was dumbfounded and couldn't believe what I had done for her. Truthfully I had done it for myself and for Heavenly Father, but she is what made it possible.
I truly believe that my prayer to Heavenly Father months before that, and I continued praying for it for days and weeks and months, it wasn't just a one time prayer, helped me do that. It was a bit of a challenge because it required me to change. But I knew that Heavenly Father could and would help me make such changes. I believe that if I had not prayed and asked Heavenly Father to help me make those changes, I would not have been able to do that on my own when I did and it would have been a stumbling block for me down the road that might have caused contention with my wife. When we understand that God knows us so perfectly that He can help us overcome anything, if we will ask Him for help in changing our very nature, He will do it. With His help we can accomplish anything. We only need to ask. Until tomorrow.
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