Question: I want to understand more about the way you live the Gospel, but I don’t know the right questions to ask because I know so little about this for you. Would you explain more and give me some examples? I think we live the Gospel very differently and I would like to know what yours is like. The drive for transcendence – what exactly does that mean to you? How is religion your inherent motive? I wish I knew what my questions were more fully here.
Answer:
Perhaps it is a symptom of too long in academia but I have to start off by declaring my caveats. The way I understand the gospel now is not the way I understood it before my mission, during my mission, or even a year ago. So this is a snapshot of what it means to me right now. I expect it will continue to change as I continue to learn and grow.
At the heart of my belief is a deep down sort of gut wrenching certainty that there is somewhere somehow a being in the universe that is very different from me in that it contains more knowledge and power than I do and has enormously more perspective and that this being cares about me. I don’t know for sure where that certainty comes from. There have been experiences where I just knew because my heart was screaming at me and my mind was agreeing. But those experiences have always been temporary; soon afterwards the rational brain grabs hold again and tries to stifle what it can’t explain. The net result though, is something that abides in me that knows there is a God and as a result there is a devil and good and evil and right and wrong and commandments and laws that we need to follow. There are consequences to life. There is a higher plane to existence than the daily struggle to be.
The most frequent feeling this gives me is that I need to trust him. I need to rely on that power even when I don’t understand it. Trust goes arm in arm with love. The concept of sin comes from the belief that there are some things that God likes more than others. Scriptures, prophets, hymns, church, feelings of the soul, devotionals, spiritual thoughts, and the stories of the universe all push towards the things that God If you likes. The part of me I like best wants to live in the way that pleases God most. It’s an internal striving that yearns to be better, to live purer, to be cleaner, to love deeper, to remove any doubt or anger or lust or gluttony from within me.
But I am a man. There is plenty within me that is tired, that wants to rest. That desires to eat too much and sleep too often; to seek low class entertainment or live for myself. I have those pulls just like everyone else. And sometimes I listen to them.
So what does the perfect harmony in the universe do when his children live below the standard that he lives by? He forgives us, but cannot ignore law. If there are not consequences to sin then why would be bad that we sinned? The consequence of sin is that someone has to suffer. And we do suffer when we sin. But our suffering can’t save us. It’s like life is a million foot mountain we are climbing. If we used every step perfectly we would be able to climb the mountain. But if we make one false step, or stop and rest, or get distracted by an unusual goat, we won’t have enough time to make the summit. We might suffer a great deal because of turned ankles or delays but no matter how much suffering we do we can’t take back the lost time.
This is why we need Jesus Christ. We can’t save ourselves. We make mistakes and any mistake is too much. So Christ is there to make up the difference, all the difference, between whatever we actually do and the near impossibility of doing everything right. He can make up for the lost time. He can recover the unrecoverable. Repentance is just another way to say change. Really change for the better. Any time anyone becomes a little better it is through the principles of repentance. Repentance requires an expression of faith that we can change, that we can live higher, more nobly, where we become less focused on ourselves and more focused on each other.
But you understand the basics of the gospel. The gospel is really just the principles that make us live as God lives. The whole point of living the way God lives is first, it pleases him. If we love him, then we want to please him. Second, the purpose of our existence is to be happy. God created us to be happy. His instructions and desire for us to live as he lives is because the greatest possible happiness we can experience is by living his way.
So when I say I’m motivated by a desire for transcendence it means I want to be more like God. More patient, more holy, more merciful, more kind, more loving, more caring, more thoughtful, more peaceful, happier, wiser, cleaner, purer, truer, and so forth. I want to give up the carnal which is in me. I want to move past desires for self and the petty small parts of my nature. The Gospel is how this is done.
I want to be the higher being that President Kimball said I could be. I want to live so that my will is sacrificed to God completely, so that I have no more desire for evil. I want to live so I don’t feel guilty. I hunger to be good. In a sense, I want to be perfect. But I don’t really care what I am. I really just want to belong totally to he who created me and able to do what he needs me to do.
So how do I live the gospel? I figure the clear commandments are easy. It’s pretty easy to know if you have been baptized, or paying your tithing, or fornicating, or smoking tobacco. So the basic commandments are sort of a baseline, like the general assumption. Of course you live those ones. The hard commandments are the more abstract ones. How do you love one another? How do you avoid vanity while striving for perfection? How do you worship with all you heart might mind and strength? How do you establish the cause of Zion? Those are the laws I ponder and worry over as I interact with people around me. One I just thought about comes from D&C 4. If you have desires to serve God you are called to his work. I have desire and I do feel called. But a short while later it says: “And faith, hope, charity and love, with an eye single to the glory of God, qualify him for the work.” There is a difference between being called and being qualified. I am called. I want to be qualified. This means improving my hope, charity, love, faith and the focus I have in doing the work of the Lord always, even when I’m collecting insects in a stream in the High Uinta Mountains.
I hope I’m communicating this well. I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you were looking for. But this is what I know. There is a God in this universe and he loves me. I want more than anything to be worthy to be with him, to feel the warmth of his presence and be graced by the joy of his smile when he sees me. To be pleasing to him is what transcendence means to me.
A few weeks ago I sang a version of Nearer my God to Thee in the conference center for a scouting event. The altered last line was “Nearer, nearer, nearer, nearer, to thee, to thee, thee.” In writing it seems strange but for some reason I burst into tears almost every time we got to that part. That is what I want. Like a drop of water joins in with a bucket of water. Like a flashlight gets swallowed by the brightness of the sun. Like a magnet gratefully clutches to a fridge. You can also see hymn 102 for this idea.
That’s why I go the church every Sunday. That’s why I keep my temple recommend current, serve in the priesthood, keep my oil vial full, try to fulfil my calling in ways that don’t just check a box but change a life, give freely of my income and means, pray to be of use, watch for souls in pain, read scriptures, work in the temple, attend ward activities (even ones I don’t like), go to institute, engage in gospel study and dialogue. Works don’t save you, but works will draw me closer to my Savior. Works will make me more like him whom I love.
I feel vaguely discontent with this answer. It’s too long and doesn’t say enough. But, I learned long ago that if I perfected every draft I wouldn’t have many papers. Sometimes you just start working and the perfection comes along the way.
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