The Reason for My Resolution

The following is the genesis for my New Year's Resolution this past year - and the New Year's Resolution that will post tomorrow for 2009. In order to re-introduce the rationale behind my effort to those who were not here last December to read it, I am re-posting it today:
-----------------------------------------------------
OK, the title (The Problem with the Popular Perception of Perfection) is intentionally over-the-top alliteration, but it accurately reflects one of the biggest problems of the apostasy - and, I believe, one of the greatest obstacles in understanding the heart of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The great commandment "in the law" is, in summary, "Love God and everyone else." However, the great culmination of Christ's penultimate sermon (The Sermon on the Mount) is a powerful commandment outside the law - and, in a very real way, is the practical application of the command to love. This foundational command is contained in Matthew 5:48: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which art in Heaven is perfect."

Apostate Christianity has addressed this commandment in two ways: 1) by applying a legalistic meaning ("never make a mistake/commit a sin") and, based on the impossibility of that definition, 2) turning it into a suggestion - something one cannot hope to achieve but a nice platitude regardless. ("Try not to make mistakes/sin, but realize it doesn't really matter in the long run.") While this sounds fine - and even laudable - to most people, it totally destroys the power and beauty of the command itself. It is my conviction that someone simply cannot understand the atonement (and the full grace that makes "atonement" possible) if they accept and internalize this apostate definition of perfection.

The footnotes to Matthew 5:48 make a critical definition distinction - one that changes the entire meaning and empowers the command in an amazing way. Footnote (b), which is attached to the word "perfect", defines it from the Greek thus: "complete, finished, fully developed." This means that the verse can be read as follows:

"Be ye therefore complete, finished, fully developed, even as your Father which art in heaven is complete, finished, fully developed." What an amazing difference!

I am planning on delving further into the practical application of this principle in future posts, since I don't want this one to be a novella all by itself, but suffice it to say here that this definition changes fundamentally how our quest for perfection should be understood and approached - and, at the most basic level, lies at the heart of nearly every aspect of the atonement (grace, repentance, faith, works/fruits and, perhaps most importantly for many - especially women - guilt, shame and spiritual/emotional freedom).

If you take nothing from this post but one message, take the fact that you do NOT need to feel ashamed and guilty and overwhelmed by your "incomplete, unfinished, partially developed" state. The world teaches that such a state is irreconcilable with God; Matthew 5:48 says otherwise - saying it can be done - and the practical way to do so is provided, as well.

That practical process is what I will address in upcoming posts about my New Year's Resolution for the upcoming year.

An Incredible Spiritual Experience

Road Trip, or Conversion Happens at the Darndest Times - Tracy M. (By Common Consent)

Worshiping Among the Spirits

I believe that the temple structure of vicarious work is meant in part to pay homage to the dead (to recognize and honor every child of God, no matter their worldly significance) and to keep us connected to our ancestors and all of humanity in a way that prevents us from adopting a social evolutionist’s natural arrogance. ("Each succeeding generation is better and smarter than the last.") I also believe that the temple is our own version of the Buddhist shrines in individual houses - our own way to include our ancestors in the greatest blessings of our lives. There we worship among the spirits of our kindred dead.

We visit the graves where their physical bodies were buried, but we also visit a place where we believe their living spirits can see us and attend us and sometimes communicate with us. It is our way of saying, “We have not forgotten you, and we will not let go." I have not experienced open communication often, but I have experienced it on occasion - and there is nothing more sublime and intimate.

Hilraious, but Disturbing, Christmas Gift Idea

Christmas - The Wiz (Mormon Mommy Wars)

Those of Us Whose Mortal Tears are Slight

Thoughts on the Meaning of the Birth of Jesus - Brad (By Common Consent)

Recreating the Christmas of My Youth

Dane, comment #1 on Picard and Bergson on Christmas - Stephen P. (By Common Consent)

“It was the kind of Christmas I can’t seem to capture today. Or do I?”

I’ve struggled with that since my mission, trying to understand why I can’t seem to recreate the sense of Christmas from my youth.

The best answer I’ve found so far is that freedom from responsibility is essential to the “Christmas feeling”. It’s knowing that everything is alright, no one is expecting anything of you, and that if you take a few hours (or days) to sit and read a good book, the world won’t fall apart.

Other people’s Christmas experiences are different from mine (I guess that addresses your words on Bergson), but I believe that peace and freedom from stress are what made Christmas special for me as a child, and what I, as a husband and parent, find much harder to create.

-------------------------------------------------

May we recognize our dependence on Him whose birth we celebrate this day and allow that realization to grant us the peace and freedom from stress we used to feel as children. May we celebrate his childhood by rediscovering ours and putting away the stressful counterfeit that the world has built around our childhood celebrations. Our adult responsibilities need not rob us of the magic and wonder of this day, but it requires a conscious decision not present in the days of our youth. Then we simply could experience it; now we must "recreate" it in our own unique circumstances - whether that be surrounded by family or alone.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, one and all.

My Christmas Wish

My highest wish for all of my kids (including those who were born outside our biological family) is that they remember who they are collectively and learn who they are individually - that they think for themselves - that they be happy with who they are but be willing to let go of who they don't want to be (even if they never accomplish that fully in this life) - that they come to know their Father and His Son - that they come to understand "the grace that so fully He proffers" them - that they see repentance not as a burden of guilt but rather as an exciting process of growth and completion and discovery - that they become truly peculiar treasures, together and alone - that they find that certain someone without whom they will never be perfect (complete and whole) - and that, with that certain someone, they carve out lives that will satisfy and challenge and reward and fulfill and complete.

My wish is that this madhouse our kids' friends call The Hotel will be able to accommodate boarders eternally, even if in both the here and now and the hereafter that simply means a moment here and there as we watch our children establish homes (and perhaps hotels) of their own. If I see this wish fulfilled, I will live and die and live again happily - even if nothing else I desire comes to pass. If they can be as happy as I am, living as half of an eternal whole, I will praise God eternally for the love He has allowed me to experience and the joy He has given me.

Embedding the Christmas Spirit into Our Very Souls

Carl Clifton Booth: The Good Shepherd of West Dallas - Ardis Parshall (Keepapitchinin)

My Dream: A Collective Mighty Change of Heart

I would feel like I had died and gone to heaven if every member in my ward and stake openly and sincerely invited everyone they knew to sit with us as we worship in Sacrament Meeting simply because they love them and want to share our worship with them - no other strings attached.

I would love to see our chapels packed to overflowing during Sacrament Meeting, even if many of the attendees left the building and didn't stay for the other two hours - because they weren't interested in the instruction that occurs in those meetings.

I would love to sit with a gay friend and his partner and their daughter, to smell cigarette smoke residue in the pew behind me, to wave to the girl in the tank top in the back, to see what tattoo or earring the man in front of me had added the previous week, to be surrounded by every shade of skin imaginable, etc - even if I had to wish them a blessed week after Sacrament Meeting ended, and even if I had no realistic hope in them ever being baptized and joining the Church.

In all seriousness, I believe that if we lived the true heart of the Gospel better, these friends would be among us - especially if our efforts to share the spirit of our worship were not tied to "conversion" but were focused more on simple friendship and fellowship - on the joy and spirit and peace of our worship. I think many would accept the occasional talk about the Law of Chastity or the Word of Wisdom or Modesty in Dress, if it wasn't directed in a judgmental way at them and their lifestyle - if they knew our standards didn't change our love for them. (I realize many would not accept it, but I believe many would.)

I have no problem telling the missionaries to stay away from a friend who comes to church with me, if that is what that friend wants. What matters to me is that my friend is there with me.

Of course, I want that friend to accept the Gospel, be baptized and receive the blessings of the Gospel that enrich my life - but that's not a condition of my invitation to worship with me. I wish with all my heart that we could open our arms and embrace anyone who walked through our chapel doors, sincerely and lovingly and unconditionally - and that we brought more diverse people with us through those doors. I don't think we have to compromise our doctrinal standards to do so, but we certainly have to experience a collective mighty change of heart.

Not Being "of All Men Most Miserable"

I like to think of faith as the motivation behind our actions - the hope that drives us to do things that otherwise might be illogical or indefensible. When someone asks about why faith is important, I share something like the following:

Faith is critical, because we act according to our beliefs and hopes - and many of our actions are based on the belief (hope) that they will be worth it somehow, even as we can't see exactly how they will be worth it. We can't see the end, but we believe (hope) it will be worth taking action now. Take away the basic concept of faith (removing the religious connotations), and you essentially destroy the motivation for selflessness and sacrifice and service - and society, to a large degree, hinges substantially on selflessness.

“On (this) hang all the law and the prophets” was said about love, but underlying love is the asusmption (the faith) that love is a good thing - that acting and sacrificing because of love is worth it in the end. Not seeing the end, that belief is faith.

For example, I know we never would have taken in troubled kids if we didn’t believe our efforts would help them (or, at least, one of them) somehow, somewhere, sometime - since we experienced difficulty and pain along the way. Without that “faith” (the hope in something we couldn't see), those kids still would be living in their own private Hell.

Faith, at its most basic level, has to exist in this world, imo, or life simply isn’t worth living. Those who feel life simply isn’t worth the end result (who have no faith/hope in the outcome, whatever that might be) “are of all (wo)men most miserable”.