Ponderings About Peter

          Yesterday in Sunday School we discussed the two instances in which Christ called Peter to His ministry:  "And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men.  And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him" (Luke 5:10-11).  "So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs...He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep" (John 21:15-17).

          There is an important question tied to these two interactions between Simon Peter and Jesus Christ.  Why did Peter need to be asked a second time to follow the Savior?  Did he somehow slip off the path and need to be called back?

         To answer this question, let's take a scriptural detour to the Book of Mormon.  In the allegory of the vineyard, God explains "And it came to pass that the Lord of the vineyard said unto the servant: Let us go to and hew down the trees of the vineyard and cast them into the fire, that they shall not cumber the ground of my vineyard, for I have done all. What could I have done more for my vineyard?  But, behold, the servant said unto the Lord of the vineyard: Spare it a little longer.  And the Lord said: Yea, I will spare it a little longer, for it grieveth me that I should lose the trees of my vineyard" (Jacob 5:49-51).  Was it ever God's intention to cut down His vineyard?  No, it wasn't.  God knew all along how things would play out.  He had preserved the root of the mother tree so that it would bring life to the re-grafted branches.  In that sense, the corrupted fruit of the vineyard was never a true setback.  It was a natural progression of things that needed to take place for the harvest to happen at the end of the season.

          How does any of this apply to Peter?  It's natural to think that Peter's return to fishing represented a setback of sorts.  However, the Spirit tells me otherwise.  Peter's misunderstanding of his role following the Savior's death was a setback in the same way that the fall of Adam was an impediment.  Peter's reacceptance of apostolic responsibility was not a return to how he used to be, but rather a step forward, beyond the commitment he made with Jesus the first time.  Peter was not guilty of any great or malignant sin.  In fact, I don't think he was guilty of sin at all.  Rather, he had progressed to a point that required him to be instructed more perfectly.  The lesson Christ taught him at the sea of Tiberius was a natural extension of his progression as an Apostle and disciple.

          Alma 42:17 describes how certain setbacks are required in order to achieve true progress.  "Now, how could a man repent except he should sin? How could he sin if there was no law? How could there be a law save there was a punishment?"  The scripture seems to imply that the ability to repent is so important that it necessitated the creation of the ability to sin, the establishment of a law, and the institution of a punishment.  While individual sins are never necessary, without the ability to sin, which is mankind's ultimate setback, we would not have the ability to progress.  Without an Apostasy, how could there have been a Restoration?  A Resurrection without a Fall?  A Garden Tomb without a Gethsemane and Calvary?  A testimony without doubt?  Similarly, without mistakes and temporary regressions in spiritual prowess, we could not become like God.  Those mistakes that we make in God's service are really not mistakes, but rather building blocks that God is using to construct us.

          It is not mistakes or lack of knowledge that God condemns, it is rebellion.  Although Peter required more training to reach his full potential, his return to fishing was not rebellion against God.  It was a misunderstanding of what was next on his path to follow the Savior.  A heart that is knitted to God's is God's, and nothing will pluck it out of His hand.  God loved us, so He sent His Son, through which we find life eternal.  If we, by the grace of God, are perfect in Christ, we can in nowise deny the power of God to save us.  "Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescensions unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things."

          Sometimes God chastises us for our sins and rebellion.  However, I also believe that there are also times when God offers words of correction that aren't intended to be a rebuke.  He desires us to serve better because of them, but not to feel like our previous efforts have not been good enough.  He is always pleased with the man of four talents who invests what he has and produces four more.  The fact that He gives him another talent of knowledge and instruction is not to be interpreted as divine displeasure.  Rather, it is a loving call to ascend to new heights.

          May we all follow Peter's example and take full advantage of the grace Jesus offers us by accepting His instructions as an affirmation of His approval, love, and confidence.

A Pavilion From Storm and Rain

          There is perhaps nothing in this life as constant as mistakes.  From the time we are old enough to start telling lies we all begin to fall short of the glory of God.

          My Mission President once said that almost every missionary comes home better than he left, but few achieve their potential.  In that way, the mission is like life.  Almost everyone grows and develops to some extent throughout their time in mortality.  But few people reach their potential.  As I fall short of what the Lord and I expect of myself, sometimes that potential can seem far away.  That moment when your decision becomes part of the past and you beg for help to do better, the instant when spiritual wounds open that you know will take more time than you would wish to close, then is the time when sorrow reigns, the heart yearns, and sometimes all of you eternity seems to shake.  I understand better in those moments Nephi's agony at letting sin "so easily beset" him.

          But those are not the only moments of life.  There are also moments of joy, times with friends and family, and moments when you let your inner light through.  Those are moments of triumph, the time when the soul and body finally exhibit what it means to be a son or daughter of God.  That is when the near-perfect spirit that is in you stares everything that is course, ugly and dark in the face and shouts:  I WILL NOT YEILD.

          There is so much destruction inside one person's head and heart.  And yet, at the same time, there is so much hope.  There is so much hope.  People do defy the consensus.  They break the odds and snap the laws of nature and thrust their outstretched hands towards eternity.  They choose to believe in a future that they cannot see even the vaguest hint of.  The Savior said himself that all things are possible for they that believe.

          Christ's plan, then, is a plan of hope, not of last chances.  Not for any mistake, small or large.  One of my greatest sources of anxiety when I do something that is contrary to the Lord's will is that my actions may have unintended consequences that affect the lives of others in ways I can't repair.  But although I don't understand how, I know that with time and the Atonement all things will be ok.

          Elder Royden G. Derrick once said of Christ and suffering of the Atonement, "We are not required to go through His trials, but we are required to be willing to go through them."  Why?  Because a sincere effort to become like the Savior will eventually mean that we love people deeply enough to be willing to sacrifice for them, and that willingness to sacrifice grows even as our faith grows.  The fact is that we don't have to sin in the exact same way as someone else in order to want to free them from their pain.  Christ never did.

          Psalm  27:5 reads, "For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock."  Isn't it good to know that we don't have to be perfect in order to be perfected?

Immense Distance

There is no way the Church can honestly describe where we must yet go and

what we must yet do without creating a sense of immense distance.

     --Elder Neal A Maxwell

          Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the distance you see between yourself and God?  At one time or another in our mortal journey, all of us will need to give, as well as receive, assistance from others.  We were never meant to make it back to the Father alone.  In fact, I believe it is impossible.  President Joseph Fielding Smith said, "Therefore our salvation and progression depends upon the salvation of our worthy dead with whom we must be joined in family ties."  In the Doctrine & Covenants we read "that they without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect."

          President Joseph Fielding Smith also said, "There must be a welding, a joining together of the generations from the days of Adam to the end of time."  In other words, although individuals must personally qualify for eternal life, the quest to be saved is more than even an endeavor of an immediate family.  Rather, it is the work of the whole family of Adam.  In my opinion, to be saved means that God accepts the human family, not just individually, but also as a whole.  After all, He once said, "And if ye are not one, ye are not mine."

          Keep in mind that there is an important distinction between eternal life and exaltation as well as between the many degrees of salvation that exist.  Notwithstanding these differences, and no matter what level of progression the above quotes and scriptures refer to, it is obvious that the Lord wants us to return to him as a unit.  Do we see it that way?  Or do we believe that salvation is an "every man for himself" proposition?

          We are literally brothers and sisters.  Somehow we manage to convince ourselves that because that is true only in a spiritual sense that it doesn't really count.  And yet in the same breath we declare that our Father in Heaven is just as literally our parent as the person who gave birth to us.  The more I see those around me as siblings, the more I see ourselves as a team, a family, all fighting towards the same goal.  We are in part responsible for their spiritual welfare, just as they are in part responsible for ours.  We were meant to lean on others when we need support, even as we support them in turn.  So what if some of us struggle more than others?  Are our literal siblings less valuable because they have physical or mental limitations, even if they were caused in part by their own lack of effort?

          There is a word for a piece of humanity who accepts their spiritual familial identity.  For a people who work and love together, with each member valuing his brother's salvation as much as his own.  It is a word that describes something that the Lord requires us to build before the coming of Christ.  Something miraculous, world-changing, and utterly achievable.  That word is ZION.

          

Man's Work and Glory

And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.

                                                                                      -- 1 Corinthians 15:49

          One of the most often-quoted verses in the LDS standard works is the words of God found in Moses 1:39, "For behold, this is my work and my glory--to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

          This is God's purpose, the focus and reason for absolutely everything that He does.  It defines him as a Being; it is the most essential element of the inner workings of the universe.

          What is your work and glory?  Do you know?

          Your knee-jerk response is probably to be exalted the Celestial Kingdom, but what does that mean for your day-to-day actions?  Are you preparing yourself to be an exalted person?

          Elder Melvin J. Ballard taught, "There is a passage in our Scriptures which the Latter-day Saints accept as divine: 'This is the glory of God--to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.'  Likewise we could say that this is the glory of men and women--to bring to pass the mortality of the sons and daughters of God."

          In other words, bringing to pass a successful mortal experience in the lives of others, especially our families, is our reason for living.  This being the case, does it make sense for us to focus our decision-making on any other objective?  To me it doesn't.  I am a literal believer of President Harold B. Lee's prophetic statement:  "The most important of the Lord’s work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own homes.”  This means that  to base our education, career, and marriage decisions on anything else is a fallacy.  It means that self-fulfillment by itself is not a good enough reason to choose a career path.  It means that we should sacrifice our day-to-day lives in behalf of our spiritual brothers and sisters, especially those within our own family. 

          When we call God our Heavenly Father, we recognize His divine nature.  Any other role in His life, whether it be teacher, administrator, judge, or logistics coordinator, is secondary.  Similarly, our calling to be earthly parents is the closest we can get in this life to being called to be gods and goddesses.  Does it make sense to sacrifice a god's life, which is like God's life, which is Eternal Life, to be a banker or statistician or therapist?  In other words, is it worth sacrificing being a Celestial Being to be a Terrestrial or Telestial one?  To one who understands the doctrine, these latter roles should only exist to the degree to which they support and make possible the greater, overarching identity of parenthood.  To have priorities higher than family is to not worship God to the greatest extent possible because, as Elder Bruce R. McConkie explained, " Perfect worship is emulation. We honor those whom we imitate."  And if the single-most essential part of God's identity is not the single-most essential part of our own, our emulation of Him is lacking.

          The creation of a family is so important because it is the beginning of the salvation of more souls than anyone involved can then imagine, worlds without end.  God promised Abraham, the great father, or patriarch, "That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore" (Genesis 22:17).  The promise of eternal increase is the opportunity to extend to spirit children the same love and blessings that God gives to us.  Therefore, the success of a single family unit in mortality will result in the happiness of more people than presently live on the entire planet in eternity. No matter how great a philanthropist's humanitarian contribution is to the world, it can never match the potential impact of the most ordinary of human parents.  There is beauty and glory in that doctrine.  It reflects in a solitary piece of humanity the splendor of the whole spectrum of creation.

Sometimes the simplest things in life are the most beautiful.  

Clinging and Piano Keyboards

          Up to this point I haven't had much difficulty in coming up with topics to blog about.  It seems like God has had so much to teach me on such a consistent basis that there is no end to the subjects that feel fresh and new to me.  This week, however, it hasn't come as easily as before.  I don't think it's because I'm suddenly less in sync with the Spirit.  In fact, I think it's a positive sign.

         There is a certain atmosphere of accomplishment I call the "maxed out" feeling.  It typically comes when I've just finished hitting my stride in some aspect of my life, such as a job, a life situation, and even and especially a particular spiritual perspective on life.  The Lord is constantly mixing things up and making things interesting.  He has a way of causing pillars of our lives that we previously thought were as constant as gravity to crumble to Pixie Stix powder.  When the Lord is actively involved, we often reach a point when, although we haven't learned everything we could possibly from a situation, the new information and experiences we would get from maintaining the status quo wouldn't be nearly as effective as it had been in the past.  That is the time for change.

          The descriptive effectiveness of the phrase "maxed out"  is limited because it implies some kind of finite barrier that we hit in our learning that completely cuts off our upper progress.  To the best of my understanding, such a barrier only exists among Satan's third of heaven and the sons of perdition.  In contrast, the "maxed out" feeling comes when our progress reaches a peak and begins to slow down.

          Oftentimes we are so comfortable in our present paradigm that we try to cling too hard to where we are or how we think because it is familiar to us.  This frequently happens in those moments when we think we have found the most important principle of the Gospel.  Said Elder Packer:

          "The gospel might be likened to the keyboard of a piano—a full keyboard with a selection of keys on which one who is trained can play a variety without limits... How shortsighted it is, then, to choose a single key and endlessly tap out the monotony of a single note, or even two or three notes, when the full keyboard of limitless harmony can be played." 

          On another occasion he said:  "Some members of the Church who should know better pick out a hobby key or two and tap them incessantly, to the irritation of those around them. They can dull their own spiritual sensitivities. They lose track that there is a fulness of the gospel, . . . [which they reject] in preference to a favorite note. This becomes exaggerated and distorted, leading them away into apostasy." 

          I think that might be my favorite quote by Elder Packer.  Oftentimes I rediscover a new spiritual note or combination of notes that I haven't heard in quite the same way before.  I get so excited that I set aside what I have been working on so I can practice hitting those notes just right.  While I'm never going to be absolutely perfect at playing them, and although a certain amount of practice is necessary to be proficient, there comes a point in time when I've gotten good enough at hitting those notes that continuing to play the same thing over and over again would cross the line from productive to irritating. 

          This doesn't mean that I should never play those notes again, or that I won't find something later on that will make them better, it just means that I need to see those notes for what they are:  a single measure in the symphony God is composing for my life.  I need to let those notes fall into their appropriate place in my life.  I should ever appreciate them but never cling to them.  I should recognize that God has an endless supply of measures for me to receive, cherish, and learn from, of which those notes are but a single glittering gem.  I know all that.

          Then why is it so hard?

          It's hard because we come to love those notes so much.  They become a part of who we are.  We want to stand by them and be loyal to them at all hazards, to tell everyone about them.  To paint murals and tell stories and write blog posts about them, not realizing that the time may come when it would be better for us to let them slip from our tightly clenched grasps and be placed a box in the corner of our hearts, to be treasured on a different day.

          Wherever you are in your eternal progression, when God doesn't hand you the topic He wants you to write about that week on a silver platter and you realize that He is beginning to work with you slightly differently from how He has in the past, let your love of the Lord propel you onward toward the next gleaming sunrise.  The one painted in the sky by your Father just for you.  The one just around the bend.