Saved by Grace, pt. 2

How do we receive grace?

Grace can be thought of as a gift or favor. A gift has no value if unreceived. Christ has laid down his life and paid for our sins, now He is waiting for us to receive that act into our lives. For grace to be effective in our lives, we must accept it.

Consider the following example (Randall D. Hughes, “God’s Saving Grace” ). You receive a check for a large sum of money. The check has no value to you until it is cashed. You didn’t earn the check, it was freely given, but to put it to good use, you must first cash the check to make it effective. Christ already wrote a check for your sins. You can receive it and cash it if you like, but the check is there and is given freely.

Perhaps a more relevant example is that of a drowning man who cannot reach the shore through his own actions (Christoffel Golden Jr., “Words of the Early Apostles: Grace,” Ensign, Oct 2003, 48–52). A lifeline can be extended to him, but unless he grasps onto the line he cannot make it effective in his survival. We are all drowning in the waters of sin. Under no circumstances can we extricate ourselves under our own actions or power. Christ has reached out the hand of his salvation and waits for us to grab on. He waits for us to receive his grace. We don’t earn his help by attempting to swim, he offers his hand freely. In like manner, grace is not earned, but our acceptance of it is necessary for salvation. That acceptance is based in repentance, but can also be thought of in terms of the first principles of the gospel: faith, repentance, baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost.

The belief in grace brings happiness

The Atonement and, indeed, all grace is given through the love of our Heavenly Father. It brings great joy to me to contemplate that despite my shortcomings and overall wretchedness, Christ loves me and stands ready to forgive me. This is a principle of the gospel that brings peace and joy to my life and is the core of my belief in God.

A French philosopher named Pascal argued for the belief in God in what is called Pascal’s Wager. Consider that a man may believe in God or not. Let us examine the four possible scenarios in which this man may find himself: 1) he believes and God and, in truth, God does exist; 2) he believes in God, but in reality there is none; 3) he does not believe in God, but God does exist; and 4) he does not believe in God and, in fact, there is none. Each situation has a payoff or reward. When a man believes in God, it doesn’t matter whether he is right or wrong, since at the end of the day, either he is correct and is exalted or he is incorrect and it doesn’t matter since he’s dead. The man who doesn’t believe in God, however, when he finds that there is, in fact, a God and having rejected the truth will have a lot of explaining to do.

Pascal argues that the dominant strategy is to believe in God whether or not He exists. One criticism of Pascal’s argument is that the two choices are not equal in effort; that is, it requires much more of a man if he is to believe in God. I would argue that that is true, but also that the effort required to believe and follow God pays off in this life. For instance, my belief in, and testimony of, the Atonement of Christ brings hope and joy to me. The act of striving to follow Christ blesses my family, my community and in a small way, the entire world. Therefore, the benefit of the joy and peace that believing in the Atonement bring me outweigh the effort it takes to accept Christ in this mortal life right now irrespective of whether there actually is a God.

I don’t mean this to sound as if I don’t believe in God – I firmly do. But any doubts that I have about the gospel or the church can be minimized by remembering the happiness I receive when I think on the Atonement of Christ and try to apply it to my life and behavior. Living by the teachings of Christ and knowing that he will forgive you is the best way to live a happy life.

 

Saved by Grace, pt. 1

The next few posts  will be parts of my husband’s talk on grace, given on February 17, 2008. I’m posting it in pieces because it is long. I loved the conclusions he made.

Grace: A Necessity

Introduction

The topic for my talk today is grace. Now, if you are like me, the first thing that comes to mind is “Works! Faith without works is dead! You can’t be saved without effort!” I want you to suppress those “greenie missionary” thoughts and really contemplate on the role of grace in LDS theology. This is a talk, so no one is going to argue with me and I certainly don’t need to defend Mormon doctrine to any of you, so I feel comfortable in saying, as Nephi does, that “it is by grace that we are saved.”

The full verse of Nephi’s proclamation is found in 2 Nephi 25:23 and reads, “For we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God; for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.”

This is a weighty verse since there are key words with multiple meanings and connotations. So as not to be paralyzed by semantic arguments, let’s define some of these phrases carefully.

Dallin H. Oaks, in a talk 10 years ago, gave 6 different definitions for the salvation while addressing the question of being saved. Without going to that level of detail, I wish to put forth working definitions for ‘grace’, ‘saved’, and the phrase ‘all we can do’.

From Bible Dictionary we read, “The main idea of the word [grace] is divine means of help or strength, given through the bounteous mercy and love of Jesus Christ.” A standard dictionary gives the following definition, “a favor rendered by one who need not do so; unmerited divine assistance.” Finally, one LDS author wrote “Grace is God’s love in action. It is his doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves.” (“I Have a Question,” Ensign, Jul 1989, 59–61)

So, in the simplest terms, grace is simply help from God. Of course, the greatest help that any of us can receive is forgiveness of our sins through the Atonement of Christ. This is the grace that Nephi is talking about – the unmerited favor from Christ, given through love, that allows you and me to overcome sin and become clean to stand before our Father in Heaven, that is, to be saved. In some sense, Grace (with a capital G) is the Atonement of Christ. This falls in line nicely with King Benjamin’s words “that salvation [is only] through the atoning blood of Christ.” (Mosiah 3:18)

One appealing aspect of this definition of grace is the inclusion of idea of grace being unmerited. We do not earn it, we don’t even deserve it. Christ gives it freely. Quoting Lehi, “salvation is free” (2 Ne 2:4), that is to say, Christ freely paid for our sins and satisfied the demands of justice. Again we see that the Grace of God is most important when equated with Christ’s sacrifice in our behalf. Revisiting Nephi’s words “it is by grace that we are saved”, we can interpret this as “through Christ’s atonement we are saved.”

As I mentioned earlier, Dallin H. Oaks outlined six different definitions of salvation. For this verse, I think we can say that when Nephi talks of being saved, he means exalted in the Celestial kingdom.

The trickiest part of the words of Nephi deal with the final phrase “after all we can do.” I say tricky because some could argue that “saved by grace, after all we can do” qualifies grace to be earned and we just said that grace is unmerited. However, the qualification is not on grace, but rather on salvation. Salvation is obtained only by the combination of grace (i.e. the Atonement) and “all we can do.”

So what is “all we can do?” As I pondered this question it seemed that no one could look back at his or her life and say “I did all that I could do.” Even limiting the discussion to just this morning, could you say with certainty that you did all you could do? Couldn’t you have spent a little more effort in prayer or been a little more patient with a family member? Clearly, even fulfilling our own potential, let alone being perfect, is impossible. So “all we can do” must mean something else. I propose that all that we really can do in relation to our salvation is repent. What more can you do? True repentance is the act of pleading for the grace of God while trying to follow the path of Christ. It is my firm belief that all we can do is repent.

Examining Nephi’s words once more “it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” can be interpreted as “salvation is obtained through the Atonement of Christ if we are willing to accept that Atonement and repent.”

To recap, grace is unmerited divine assistance, the best of example of which is the Atonement. We can return to live with God only through his grace which we accept by following the teachings of Christ and practicing repentance.

Junior High

I’m feeling a little self-conscious here, kind of like the nerdy girl in junior high that has no friends and doesn’t really know how to make them. She is not very good at sports, so the sporty girls don’t like her. She isn’t rich enough to have the popular crowd back her up, especially since she dresses in purely thrift-store findings. She’s not into radio or popular music, so all the different groups don’t really relate to her in any way. She has conversations with people in class, only to feel ignored the next day. She is constantly wondering if she said something wrong, if she offended someone with some idiot thing that came out of her mouth when she was trying to sound erudite.

I am way too self-involved. Blogging seems like such an indulgence of my selfishness. I only ever talk about myself, even in comments on other blogs. I think I might do that in regular conversation, too. I just noticed this a few days ago, so now I’m wallowing in self-pity, wondering how to fix it. But I can only think about the dumb stuff I do and say, which seems counterproductive. I’ve even thought about deleting my blog, but that seems like the juvenile faked suicide attempt, just to see if anyone notices. I’d love to not care, but I’ve been that poor nerd girl all my life. I guess I haven’t really left junior high. I don’t know why I think I need to feel important.

The other day, I dropped off a bunch of clothes to a homeless shelter. After I got the stuff out of the trunk, the man said, “Thank you. God bless you.” Then I told him that wasn’t all, that there was more in the front seat. I got out a huge box and gave it to him. He said, “The Lord will truly bless you. You must know Him.”

“I wish.”

All I want is to get my faith back and have a few people to share it with.

I suck at tests

If there really is a God, and this really is a test, what sort of a mean test is it?

I’ve been living in a fog for the past couple of years. The fog has thickened to the point where I cannot see my hand if I hold it in front of me. I keep trying to tell myself that just because I don’t hear any voices, that doesn’t mean there’s no one else there. Sometimes I feel crazy.

I’m fighting with an institution that makes me feel guilty for questioning it, and that makes me hate it. Yet I loved it for so long. I served it. I helped it grow. I didn’t feel to question it, because I was told that you can’t use logic to explain it, and I always had those warm, happy feelings you get when you hear stories of miracles, of God’s love, of Christ and family and eternity and peace. The same feelings I get from reading weird O. Henry stories, or watching The West Wing.

I always told myself that God loved me, like he loves all his children. But if I wanted to give my kids a test, I wouldn’t do it by throwing them into the wild and not answering when they called. What is this? Are we trying to see if I can survive despair? Are we waiting to find out if I can “endure” whatever is thrown my way? Or is it really a test of whether I will try to change my circumstances, rather that sticking it out and being miserable? Or the classic, I’m supposed to just change my attitude, right? And then everything will be so bright and cheerful. If I can only put my mind to it.

I don’t feel loved.

Anger Management

In church on Sunday, we had a lesson that I can’t remember now. I was dutifully finishing my project of finding an anagram of my full name, which I’ve been working on for a little while. It’s so hard to make an anagram that makes sense grammatically. Anyway, there was one part of the lesson that prompted a response from the woman who was sitting next to me, with whom I differ greatly in the area of personal faith. She is sure she has found the truth, and follows instructions to the letter, even if she thinks they’re stupid. She believes that her obedience is a symbol of her love for God, and doesn’t think it’s important to find out why some rules are in place, or even if they’re really rules, or simply cultural traditions. She’s not stupid, and she has given this considerable thought. Her husband, a man who converted after they were married and she decided to go back to church, feels the same way.

This woman began her comment with an explanation of how frustrated she gets when she is angry, because she reacts with rage, with loss of control. Other women in the group nodded, a few commenting on the same lines. I stopped my anagram, because I was so surprised at all these seemingly mild-mannered women, who apparently thought of themselves as having anger-management problems.

Many of the women talked about how hard it was, especially with small children who don’t react in reasonable ways. One woman brought up the fact that when she is feeling uncontrollable rage, it’s generally because she is not prepared to deal with the situation. If something comes up that throws a wrench in her plans, or if a child is behaving irrationally, then she gets easily frustrated and gives up trying, and yells instead.

I was so grateful to have been there for this discussion. I have been trying on and off to control my anger, most especially with my wonderful little kids, and I have felt like such a circus freak. I know we never see each other at our worst, I mean, who screams at their kids when they have friends over? Yet I find such comfort in the fact that so many women in the same room professed to have the same weakness as I. It makes me feel so much more normal, more a part of the group, instead of an outsider looking in.

I never knew I had such a small store of patience, until I had kids. That’s the ultimate cliche, that you have kids to learn patience, but it is really true. My husband told me before we were married that he never got mad, but our kids have sure proved him wrong.

It is so heartening to find out that it’s not just families with a history of chemical imbalance that have a hard time staying calm. It’s not just my family. Other people have been through it, and have learned over the years (years!) how to remain calm, and react with love and patience. It can be an acquired skill, it can become a strength.

I just wonder if all the stress-related ailments I have will go away after I learn how to be peaceful.

It take all kinds of folks

I wish I could write a post here every day, especially since all the people that read my stuff early on have long since given up. It was nice to have people that would encourage me, and show kindness where it wasn’t deserved, even knowing I was bitter and a little ranty.

I’ve moved to a different plane, but it’s not necessarily a better one. I’m still Mormon. I’m still having pain about what I can’t decide. I still love many of the core beliefs of Mormonism, but I don’t know which parts are true.

I have gotten a calling, even before my husband, in our new ward. I’m the new organist. Is that a total shock, or what? I got my music degree 7 years ago, and this is the first time I will be THE organist. I will have a reason to practice, and I will be able to contribute to other people’s worship in a way that they don’t yet anticipate. The previous organist was so relieved when she found out she would be released. She didn’t know how to use the pedals, and she requested all the hymns a YEAR before she would have to play them. She seemed really nervous.

I told the guy who issued the calling that it was probably the only one they would get me to do, and my husband was surprised. I’ve always believed that you don’t say no to a calling, but now, I couldn’t do any sort of doctrinal teaching to any age group where I would feel comfortable. I can’t teach what I don’t believe, and I don’t think they would like me getting in there and saying, “Well, some people believe that Joseph Smith saw God. I’m not saying he did for sure. I don’t even know for sure, but you can decide for yourself.”

I can play hymns and help people to enjoy their singing. I can help people better understand the words of the songs through my choice of registration (organ stops that produce the different sounds) and interpretation. I can draw attention to the beauty of the melody, and the strength of the words. I can help people feel welcome and calm, or joyful and excited, or contemplative.

I can do this, and I don’t have to go against any of my beliefs. I can still give service to people who also serve me.  I can still behave in a way that I believe is worthy of being called “Christian.”

I’m going to Hell with the gays. Yay!

We had our realtor over last night to discuss the final things that need to be done to our house before closing. He’s a fairly nice guy, and very eager to just be done with the house, so he agreed to everything we said.

The funny part happened when my 5 year old son walked past, with his blue toenails. Mr. Realtor said, “Hey, you’ve got blue toenails!” I told him that my boys love painting their toenails, and he grimaced, and said, “They’ll get over that.”

I thought, “I hope not!” but said, “Well, my brother, who is 27, still paints his toenails.” And my husband mentioned that my brother is gay.

Mr. Realtor frowned, and said he had a gay brother too. He then explained how he had “laid it down” for his brother, and told him, “You know I love you, but you’re going to Hell. You’re just going to Hell.” He then told us that he wouldn’t normally talk about this with customers, but knowing our background…

I was shocked, but willing to move back to talking about the house. My sweet husband, however, had the guts to disagree with Mr. Realtor. He plainly explained how he believed that, whatever people’s challenges in this life, we will be judged according to our capabilities, and mercy will be able to mitigate our circumstances. Mr. Realtor, a Born-Again Christian, disagreed. He believes strongly that when you cross the line, you are plain and simply going to Hell. I tried to tell him that if you continue to love and accept a person who has done things you don’t agree with, that person is more likely to come around to your view than if you condemn them or disown them, but I don’t think he agreed with that either.

My husband kept trying for a while, and insisted that there wasn’t a one-size-fits-all ruler for judging all humans. It didn’t work, but there was no contention. After Mr. Realtor had left, we talked about how, in Mr. Realtor’s view, we were probably going to Hell too, since we’re Mormons. Ah, well.

Reverence/Discipline

In the joint Relief Society/Priesthood meeting today, we had a lesson on reverence. Who knew that this would be a topic that could arouse contention in the people present? Some were incensed that there were others who whispered or even talked during Sacrament Meeting, some were peeved at those of us with children. Not babies, but 3-6 year olds who still didn’t know how to keep quiet or just hold it for a whole hour without having to take a trip to the bathroom. They were also mad that the parents would interrupt the meeting by getting up with said children, to remove them to said bathroom.

I was amazed at how quickly the discussion devolved from having respect and awe for a higher power, to keeping yourself and your family silent during a meeting. In my opinion, it was a case of getting the topic for the lesson, reading the title, and inferring that the intent was to teach what we tell the 5 year old reverence is, rather that teaching the principle of respect and awe. I think I was just redundant.

The funniest part, however, was when someone read a quote that had been distributed by the teacher. I wish I had been paying attention to who they were quoting, but I was busy fuming that the lesson was still going on 5 minutes after 2:00, when we had been admonished earlier in the same meeting to pick up our crazy kids from the primary before doing any other business, because our kids are more important than any other business that could possibly go on, and to respect those poor primary and nursery workers who have just had them for two hours. Nevertheless, on goes the meeting.

So the quote was about practicing reverence and teaching it in the family. It said something about how there are certainly emergencies when a child needs to be taken out of Sacrament meeting, “but it should be the Father that escorts the child out.”

The father? Why the heck should it be the father? That seems to fly in the face of all the reassurance we keep getting that we’re supposed to be a team. If it’s the father who is teaching reverence, why is the mother the one who’s supposed to stay home doing the nurturing, instead of joining the workforce? Are there really different ideas or character traits that each parent should be teaching? I’m not explaining this well, because I’m typing as fast as I can to get this done in the next 5 minutes.

I just don’t understand the reason for this comment. It just seems to hearken back to the more sexist and less logical ideas that the father is the one to do all the punishing, to be the bad guy.

I asked my husband why it should be the father, and he replied, “Oh, it’s so we can take them to the Father’s Room. That’s where they keep a bunch of belts and whips.”

Once again, I married the perfect man.

Faith, Hope, and Lunar Landings

Is it just me, or are the aggressively anti-Mormon people out there sounding a lot like all the other conspiracy theorists? I’m not saying there’s no basis for the questions being asked, but it sure seems like a lot of mad people use the formula, “Well, if ____, then why ___?” Like, “If Joseph Smith really saw God and Jesus, why are there so many different accounts of that so-called First Vision?” Or, “If Neil Armstrong was really the first person to walk on the moon, then who took the picture?”

I guess what I’m saying is, maybe we really don’t have all the answers. Maybe there are people out there that really do know more that we do, really have more experience, and aren’t just trying to subjugate the masses. Maybe if we learned a little bit more about the moon landing, we would find out there was a long arm with a camera on it, coming right off the lunar module.

Maybe God really is there. Maybe he really did talk to Mr. Smith. Maybe someone made up all the different accounts of the First Vision, with malicious intent. Maybe people don’t remember things like they happened. Maybe what was important to one person was an un-memorable event to another. Maybe people’s words don’t come out the way they intend. Maybe some people understand words of others in a way that is the opposite of what other people hear. Maybe our brains pick and choose what they want to hold onto, and what they want to toss in the trash. Maybe some people do it on purpose.

Is that what faith is to other people? The ability to suspend disbelief, with the hope of one day understanding what seems improbable, or even impossible?

Is it just a hope?

More on music in the church

I appreciate the women at Exponent II and this wonderful post on church music. They are much more Christian than I.