Of Reading and Home Teaching

This will be about reconciliation in a couple of ways.

First: I read and completely agreed with a scripture today that before I read with some amount of skepticism. This is the verse:

Yea, even he commanded them that they should preach nothing save it were repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people (Mosiah 18:20).

This was something that I read as a missionary and a student and thought that there really must be something missing here. Or maybe not missing, but perhaps this verse only applied to Alma’s people. How can you possibly on preach about two things? Wouldn’t that make church a moot? Wouldn’t that make scripture reading a one-time deal, and you could stop once you read the first invitation to have faith in God and to repent of your sins? I mean, Seriously!

But something has happened to me since my graduation from BYU a year ago, and also I think in my not having a full-time teaching job with the church. I’ve essentially been divorced from any institutionalized religion. Sure, I’ve been attending my ward, but with kids and things, there’s really not as much mental exercising going on as in religion classes both as student and teacher. Not that I have anything against any of my religion classes at BYU or my experiences teaching Seminary. The change has been something very much on the individual level. I could have had this understanding all those years as a missionary and student and could have benefited very much from it; but I couldn’t, to use an oft used analogy, see the forest for the trees.

I spent my time as a missionary, student, and teacher looking for things that were, for lack of a better word, interesting in the scriptures. I thought that was what edification consisted of. And this in spite of instruction from some very wise individuals who knew better. For my Seminary students I wanted to create an intense interest in the scriptures and in their origins and forms and stuff. I figured that’s what my instructors were doing in school.

Now, though, as I read Alma’s instruction to his people I understood it maybe for the first time. My journey through the Book of Mormon this year has been centered on these two core fundamental principles. And the journey has been refreshing. I’ve begun to see myself in my own carnal state. I’ve begun to understand where my life and desires are completely out of line and to trust in the grace of God to help me out of these things.

I think I’m becoming converted.

It was the Spring of 2002. I’d recently come off my mission, and was enjoying a semester at UVSC. My favorite part was Institute. I took a class called Teachings of the Living Prophets. We learned a lot about the current First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve (at the time the longest standing group in church history–they made it nine years without a change!).

I somehow really loved learning about what each of these men did for a living before getting called into full-time church service. As far as I can remember, the stats line up like this:

4 were businessmen

4 were educators

2 were attorneys

1 was a PR rep for the church

1 was in publishing

1 was a heart surgeon

1 was in car sales

and 1 was a nuclear engineer

As a result of the Institute class these men became my role models. And when considering what I wanted to do for a living I looked to their lives as examples of good careers. There were a few things that I knew were definitely not for me.

I knew that I was not the business type. That really held no interest for me.

There’s no way I’m bright enough to be a nuclear engineer or a heart surgeon. The world would have to be pitied were I to endeavor to do either of those things.

Law? No way. I took one law class in school and … no way.

There were four of the brethren though, who spoke in ways that I just loved to hear. I loved their use of the scriptures, and their ability to expound them. They were the educators. They became my role models. That was what I’d wanted to do.

Besides, I’d agreed to that very thing in my departure interview with my mission president. To be an educator.

My first attempt at education flopped though.

The road to employment with the Church Education System, my goal and dream, ended after three semesters of student teaching.

That was it.

There are three other jobs listed above that I haven’t mentioned. It may just be irony; there was no real intent when this decision was made. But it turns out that I’m currently working in the same industry of one of the brethren.

Elder Ballard.

I liked his talk in last General Conference.

My wife and I went to Borders last night to look for books. We bought two, both dealing with the subject of death, though utterly dissimilar otherwise. One is Stiff by Mary Roach. Both my wife and I think she’s very funny, and are excited to read her book. The other book is For One More Day by Mitch Albom. I started the book last night and finished it this morning. Just a line from, and a few thoughts about, the book.

“I did what mattered to me,” she said. “I was a mother.”

This concluded a conversation between the narrator and his mom. He had just discovered, years after the fact, that his mom, who had been a nurse and a beautician, cleaned the houses of others to help put him and his little sister through college. This offended him because he thought she was above doing that kind of work. The anecdote serves to bring up the question of how we title/define ourselves.

People take titles, initials, and personal definitions very seriously. What we do for a living supposedly says a lot about us. What kind of degree someone has earned at a university gives them credibility, and sometimes a title like “Doctor.”

Not much needs said about the mother’s comment here. It was clear what was most important to her, how she defined herself.

What personal definition is most important to you?

The book sat on the toilet tank and looked rather foreboding. For one thing, it wasn’t necessarily approved reading. It was not by a general authority or published by the church, but I gave into temptation anyway, picked up the book, opened to a random page and read half a paragraph. I felt so smart having even made the attempt.

An uneducated, albeit high school graduate, missionary and his first experience with the illustrious Hugh W. Nibley. I’m pretty sure the book was one of the Book of Mormon compilations. At the time the only thing the name Nibley meant to me was Brilliant Apologetics, and I didn’t even know what that meant.

It took a few years for me to pick up another Nibley book and fortunately it wasn’t a book written by Nibley, but one written about Nibley. A Consecrated Life caught me completely off guard and demonstrated something about the man that I would have never expected.

Nibley wasn’t about spouting off academic hot air. He loved knowledge and spent his life in pursuit of understanding just about everything he could, but he didn’t write or lecture just to show how smart he was. His was a mission of the social critic, or as his son Tom called it as his funeral, as “academic prophet.” The real genius of Nibley’s writings is in the insight into humanity, such as this little nugget from “Zeal without Knowledge”:

“Sin is waste.”

He goes on (not having the paper in front of me, this will be paraphrasing) to say that sin is doing one thing when we should be doing something else, something better or more useful. That is why even the righteous need to repent daily.

Wastefulness is not making the most of the moments gifted to us by a loving Heavenly Father each and every day.

So, on the flip side, consecration is abundance. This is the thought that struck me while considering this axiom. And then this thought followed:

Consecration is lack of waste. It is continually making the best choice. It is what Jesus did. It is different than sacrifice in that sacrifice can be confined within temporal bounds in a single act. Consecration has no limit and is by its nature the consistent and persistent submission of our own desires to be in line with what is best.

There may be more to follow this, but this works as a good starting point.

President Monson wrote the First Presidency Message for this month. In it he includes counsel concerning learning from the past, preparing for the future, and living in the present.

Of these notions, I think the most difficult for me to do is to live in the present. It’s really easy for me to keep my mind so focused on things that have already happened, or anxious about what may happen, that I miss the opportunities currently around me to do some good.

Jesus was really fantastic at living in the present. He didn’t miss any opportunity to stop and bless someone. That’s why Peter could say of Him that he went about doing good. But I’m convinced that one of the reasons Jesus was able to live in the present so well was that He did the other two just as well…

Jesus was not concerned about the past. He had perfect forgiveness, which is a really incredible way to learn from the past. Refusing to forgive others is perhaps the best way to assure not to learn anything from the past. Well, that and refusing to repent of our own sins. Holding grudges and nursing guilt can only distract our minds from the sacred Now.

Jesus had faith that what the future held was His Father’s will, and He was ready for it. His preparation came mostly through readying the minds of His followers for the challenges that would face them.

It would seem, then, that the best way to follow the Savior in learning from the past, preparing for the future, and living in the present would be by obeying that very difficult commandment of loving our neighbors as ourselves.