I've written some great stuff on this blog (if I do say so myself--and I DO say so), but I actually think the overall quality of the old blog was better. (Seriously, if you like my writing, you should read some of my 2008 posts.) But I'm much more active in promoting this blog on Twitter, Facebook, Gchat statuses, etc. Regardless of which posts you read, how you find them, whether or not you leave comments, I appreciate everyone who reads what I write. Even the spammers.
I'm going to celebrate this achievement by...taking the rest of the post off! This week's Sunday School lesson is titled "They Must Needs Be Chastened and Tried, Even as Abraham." As luck would have it, my friend Will Bishop (he's on the far left of the group shot in this post) just gave a talk on that very subject in his ward's sacrament meeting, and he's given me permission to use it as I see fit in this post. Everything below is excerpted (I cut a lot out and it's still a super-long post; the whole talk was really good) from Will's final written draft, which does differ slightly from what he actually said at the pulpit, in case any of my readers were in attendance at the meeting:
Travel back in time with me to the spring of 1999. Many of you in the congregation were probably in grade school, or perhaps junior high, but I was finishing my freshman year at BYU in Provo, UT and was waiting for the envelope containing my official "call" and assignment as a missionary to arrive in the mail. It came sometime in March and I learned that I was assigned to the Spain Las Palmas Mission, that is, the Canary Islands—but that isn’t the part that is important right now. The part that matters right now is the date that I was asked to come to the Missionary Training Center, which happened to be May 19th, 1999. You see, there was this thing called Star Wars...I cannot overemphasize how big of a deal Star Wars was to me...
Now imagine my dismay and confusion when, while on the phone with my older brother in March of 1999 and telling him about my mission call, hearing him utter "wait, you go into the MTC on May 19th? Isn't that the day the new Star Wars movie comes out?" Now I was giddy and wide-eyed about getting my mission assignment that day but despite all that, I admit that my heart sank a little when those words came out of my brother's mouth. Indeed, there was a disturbance in The Force.
You see, at nineteen years old, I still loved Star Wars. It was a narrative tradition that felt very closely linked with my concept of myself as a person, my relationships with the people I cared about most, and my concept of our family. But there was this other narrative tradition, this other collection of stories and characters that had always already been a part of my existence and was ingrained in my self-concept and my understanding of relationships and family: you know, the narrative tradition about Jesus. Along with my early memories of going to see The Return of the Jedi, I have this early recollection of my mom reading to us from a New Testament picture book...in this fertile ground, the seed of my faith in Jesus Christ was planted at an early age, and by the time I was eighteen, even though it wasn’t something that came naturally to me, I felt that going on a full time mission was what I needed to do to follow Him at this stage in my life. Though this sounds lame and I knew “paying Him back” was impossible, I felt like I “owed it” to Jesus.
But now I was faced with a conundrum. In the past, there had never been any discord or disharmony between Star Wars and my efforts, such as they were, to follow Jesus Christ. Quite the contrary. But now there was a problem. Everybody knows missionaries can't watch movies and I couldn't go see the long-anticipated (at least ten years) Star Wars movie and get to the MTC on the day I was assigned. I was going to have to choose. I was going to have to make a sacrifice. I chose Jesus...
Some things are more important than others. And as such, sometimes we must make sacrifices. I sacrificed seeing the movie I wanted to see more than any other for two years. But I also sacrificed seeing my family for two years, seeing my older sister’s wedding, seeing my little brother play high school football, things that mean more to me than waiting to see the new Star Wars, in retrospect. But even these sacrifices feel like they were worth it for the wealth of experience and the opportunity I had to serve the Lord as a full-time missionary.
And I think this is how sacrifice usually works. It is simply a matter of priorities. Some things are just more important than others and as far as I can tell, our relationship with God and taking upon ourselves the name of Christ are the most important things...as we give up things “for the sake of Christ” we will ultimately gain a higher, truer fulfillment...
Giving up our sins and seems like an obvious and necessary sacrifice that one must make to follow Christ, but maybe isn’t always as straightforward as it seems in Alma 22. The Lamanite King here talks about giving up “all [his] sins” to know God, and, indeed, this is a sacrifice we must make, but it might not necessarily be something we do all at once in one colossal bonfire on the altar of burning sacrifice. Perhaps when we first become converted like the Lamanite King, such a bulk surrendering of sins might be desirable, and necessary, but it will never end there...continuous repentance and continuous sacrificing of our sins and bad habits to grow ever closer to God will be part of our life as disciples...
Now, giving up sins and doing necessary work are logical sacrifices we must make to follow Christ and move along on our long journey to inherit the qualities of God. Unfortunately, the sacrifices we will have to make will not always make this much sense. The ultimate and most extreme example of this idea comes in a story of Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac in the 22nd chapter of Genesis, where we read in verse 1,
1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
Now this story has been read and interpreted in a variety of different ways, but right now I’d like to not focus on the parallels of Christ’s Atonement and ignore the issue of God’s feelings about homicide—I really don’t think that that’s what the story is really about, anyway—and focus on the concept of sacrifice, as in Abraham was asked to make a big one. And not just a big sacrifice, but one that didn’t really seem to make sense. Why should Abraham have to choose between being loyal to God and the life of his son? This was the son that God gave to Sarah when she was too old to have children (Gen. 18), why should she have to lose him for the couple to follow God? It doesn’t seem to make sense to us because raising a son you love seems consistent with God’s desires for us, in fact the Lord pretty much made this clear to Abraham and Sarah in earlier revelations. Unlike the sins Lamoni’s father gave up, Isaac was not inconsistent with the ways of Godliness. But, as harsh as this sounds, raising Isaac also wasn’t exactly at the core of God’s eternal truth either. The restored gospel teaches that Isaac’s existence isn’t limited by his mortal life, just like Abraham and Sarah’s. In the Pearl of Great Price’s Book of Abraham, Joseph Smith revealed that Abraham received knowledge of the eternal nature of souls.
So, even though it is nice to have family members with us during this mortal existence, there are more important things, namely following the Lord and developing our relationship with Him. And I think this is really what God is trying to teach Abraham with this experience. Verse one talks about God “tempting” Abraham, but “testing” is probably a better translation. Through this trial, the Lord forced Abraham to evaluate his priorities: what was more important--his devotion to God or continuing to enjoy the company of his son during mortality? And of course, once Abraham revealed his priorities and proved his loyalty, Isaac was spared...one really important thing this story teaches us is how closely related the concept of faith is to our ability to sacrifice. When the chips are down, how much do we really trust in God and the truths the Holy Ghost has taught us about our ultimate destiny as children of divine parentage?
Gratefully, we will never be asked to make the kind of sacrifice that Abraham did. But circumstances may require us to give up good things that we cherish and which are generally consistent with the gospel in order to follow Christ. Maybe some of you have had to give up a romantic relationship because you couldn’t proceed any further and follow Christ in the way you felt you needed to. Maybe you’ve had to give up a job, a sport, or a hobby that you liked because continuing to do so would prevent you from observing the Sabbath. Or maybe you’ve had to give up a family member or friend to an early death and had to resist the temptation to become angry at God. In each of these situations, it is too easy to say, "Hey God, I’m really doing the best I can trying to follow Christ and stuff, how come you can’t make my girlfriend feel the spirit and want to join the church? How come you can’t make the soccer league change their stupid policies and quite scheduling games on Sunday? How come you just can’t make the cancer go away?" Good questions, all. But the sad truth is, I don’t think that’s how God works. We live in a fallen world, subject to death, decay, and the consequences of the less-than-ideal choices of others. I believe the Lord certainly can intervene in our daily lives if some greater purpose requires it, but all too often, He needs us to simply deal with the less than perfect world we're given to live in as mortals so we can learn to truly love and understand the eternal things, the important things, the things that this fallen world can never take away from us.
Remember that our Lord made the greatest sacrifice of all in order to secure our eternity. He even admitted that would have preferred to have not suffered that much, asking in Matthew 26:39, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt." Alas, it was not possible. So he took it, all of it to the last bitter drop, because something was more important than his comfort and health. We were.
With this in mind, how dare we lay claim to his sacrifice and call ourselves followers of Christ if we are unwilling to give up these little things we enjoy in mortality—little things that can certainly seem like big things, definitely, but in the broader scheme of things, little things indeed—how can we follow Christ if we are unwilling to emulate him in the smallest of ways and make necessary sacrifices?
Fortunately, the "good news" is, we can trust that through God’s love and the Atoning sacrifice of His son Jesus Christ, all of the pain we must experience in this life, all of the injustice and suffering and unfair sacrifices we will have to make will eventually be consumed and melted away by the divine light of godly love and joy. I don’t think it is a coincidence that this great and ultimate redemption is made possible only through the Atonement of Christ—through a divine sacrifice...
So if I can bring things full circle and return to Star Wars, I can say that, knowing what I know now, my so-called sacrifice of delaying seeing the first "prequel," Episode I: The Phantom Menace, was really not much of a sacrifice at all. I mean, as many of you know, it wasn’t really very good. And then Episode II came and was arguably even worse...you know, maybe God was doing me a favor by sending me into the MTC on May 19th, 1999. And I think that is usually how the ordeal of making sacrifices often works. It may be quite painful for a moment—and, I admit, that so-called "moment" may even be several years—but that moment passes and soon the greater glory that we as children of Heavenly Parents all have in store melts away that pain, confusion, and frustration, and our sacrifice hardly seems like much of a big deal at all. Because some things are just more important than others.
Will seemed disappointed that no one had commented. So even though I already told him I enjoyed his talk, I will comment on this post to say, Nice talk.
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