The Things You Do (Overtly Religious)
This past week in church (priesthood) we discussed Lesson 5 in the Spencer W. Kimball manual. We are studying President Kimball and his teachings this year. The lesson dealt with prayer. I know this because I’d gotten bored listening to a pre-mission girl explain how she was frumpy and as a result of her frumpiness was serving a mission because, since joining the church, people assumed her frumpiness made her a sister missionary; and I went to priesthood even though, all day, I felt the need to go home and sleep.
In the lesson, the teacher got up and preceded his comments with a quote from the manual and then asked how we could improve our praying so that we were saying something meaningful every time we prayed. I rose my hand (first one) and spoke. In essence, here’s what I said:
I don’t think we have to say something meaningful every time we pray. In fact, I think that the rote prayers are what make it possible for us, when we need to, to pray sincerely to God. We pray because we are commanded to and we say meaningful prayers when something needs to be said. That is not all the time. Rather, our following Christ’s advice on prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be they name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done…,” is a method of prayer; and it is the method we should revert to when we prayer, but this method gives us the means whereby we can pray sincerely when our life turns sour and the prayer becomes,. “Dear Heavenly Father, I need thee now….”
In essence, you do what you have to do to get through the situation so that when there is a need in your life you are in practice. Through personal experience, the need to pray sincerely increases in time (not shared), but like everything else taught after the Beatitudes, this is meant for those who are growing within a new gospel. This is for the convert and not necessarily for someone who has been practicing for their entire lives; this does not mean that you don’t go back to the basics again and again and again (throughout your whole life) and reapply; but in this case Christ is talking to those who are really very brand new to His church.
That is one of the keys to personal piety: doing what you have to do because you have to do it. Going to church because you’ve always gone to church. Reading your scriptures because you are supposed to read your scriptures. Praying because you need to pray. Taking the sacrament because you are supposed to renew those covenants. Doing the basic things, even when you don’t feel like doing them, so that you are carried through the dark times into the light times and so that your faith and patience in God’s time increases and help carry you through the dark times so that the light times still happen.
It is a principle of faith. Faith is an active word. You have to be doing something to have faith, it is more than belief. And yet, in our vernacular, we try to combine belief, which is passive, with faith, which is active, and claim they mean the same thing. They do not. You can literally believe anything you want, but you can only have faith in something that is true and real. You can believe the sky is green; but your faith can only exist in a sky that is blue.
There are some simple guidelines that carry people forward (if you want them to). For example, if you want to study the scriptures, you have to put yourself in a position to begin studying. This is called simply reading the scriptures. To do this you have to (1) want to read the scriptures. You have to (2) set a personal goal like reading a chapter a day, no matter what. And then you have to (3) be prepared to look deeper when the need arises. This does not mean that every time you open the scriptures you will find something significant or that you will delve as deeply as you want; but it does mean that to put yourself in the right position you have to start by reading every day.
To learn to pray significantly, you have to begin by saying a prayer.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. They will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.
This is an example of prayer. You begin by addressing Heavenly Father. After that you acknowledge him and ask for forgiveness. After that you ask for what you want/need. When you have finished you pray to the Father in the name of the son, Jesus Christ, Amen.
However, in order to pray you have to pray. You have to pray to God in the name of the son. In order to make the prayer significant you have to start the process by praying. You have to use the process of prayer in order to actually be in a position to speak a meaningful prayer. You will go through times when you kneel down to pray (theoretically) and you are only going through the motions of prayer with the outcome, like scripture study or the principles of faith, that when you need to say something the words will come to you and you will be able to say what needs to be said. This cannot happen if you have not prepared the ground, first, for the times when you need to commune with deity.
One of those things that are necessary is attending church. A lot of people say that they don’t believe in organized religion. To me that is like saying you don’t believe in government. You don’t believe in family. You don’t believe in the structure of business. You don’t believe in a lot of things that are staples to society. Societal staples include religion.
Karl Marx said that religion is the opiate of the masses.
You go to church not because you believe in organized religion. Organized religion is flawed. I readily admit that; but, at the same time, I also admit that it is the best thing we’ve got. It is what allows us to learn about God, it allows us to be around others who believe in God, it allows us to fellowship with deity. This is what religion does.
Like prayer or scripture study, the process of going to church starts with going to church. You have to wake up in the morning on Sunday and go whether you want to or not. The process of going to church will lead to the need to go to church. You will do it and go and go, some days, not because you want to, but because you need to. Things will get bad. You won’t want to be there. You may wonder what the use is. The outcome, though, is that it will pass and you will be better able to serve in the future as a result of having gone, maybe served, and ultimately better prepared yourself for communion with deity.
Church, prayer, scripture study aren’t the only answers to life’s questions. You get to do a lot of things you may not necessarily want to do. Work may be a desire, but at the same time it is a necessary evil. Driving is a great thing, but commutes suck. Anything you do, you do it, sometimes, not because you want to, but because you have to. You do it because, sometimes, it is necessary to put yourself forward and say, “I don’t know, but I believe I am better off as a result of these actions,” and eventually, those actions will carry you forward to a point where it doesn’t matter anymore.
And that is important. Not working on Sunday’s, for me, is an important part of my life. I try not to do any kind of writing that might pay the bills (now or someday) on writing. I allow for the fact that school work gets to be done and other things may need to happen, but it is a day of rest. People need a day off – that is mine. But it took time, and effort, to say, “I won’t work on Sunday’s,” and eventually I can begin to dictate that as a course of action in my life. I understand, though, that sometimes people have to work on Sunday’s and that is fine for them. I do not want to force people into what I’ve decided for myself.
However, I read scriptures every day.
I pray every day.
I go to church on Sunday.
I hold a calling (a position of responsibility) whenever I am able – at present I am a clerk.
These are things that I do and they are not always easy. I’ve told people, over the years, that sometimes you go to church because you’ve always gone to church. In many cases I am told that I am wrong in that assessment because, as an active member of the church, you don’t just do things because you’ve always done them, that this is counter to what we are taught as members of the church.
God said, “Be ye therefore perfect.” I say that is an ideal. Is it nice and positive to say that being perfect is an ideal? No. But at the same time you (and I) are not likely to achieve that in our collective lifetimes. This is where the principle of grace plays an important role in religious progression. We can never achieve perfection and yet we are commanded to be perfect. If we cannot achieve it and we are commanded to become it, then something has to happen to help us achieve perfect. In this case, an intermediary is made a part of our lives. As long as we apply specific principles: pray, read scriptures, go to church, etc.; then you will be made perfect after death. It is an ideal.
One of the elements to this ideal is that you have to do what you can in this life. The outcome is that the distance will be made up. This life is not always easy. Sometimes it is very hard. Sometimes it is impossibly hard. But you plow forward knowing, hoping, praying, that you will accomplish something. This is hope. Hope, simply defined, is experience and expectation. Believe it or not, it comes after faith. As faith is an active principle, and hope is an aspect to faith, the outcome is that one precedes the other. In order to have experiences, you have to put yourself in a position to have those experiences. In order to have expectations, you have to put yourself in a position where you can know what to expect. Reading scriptures, prayer, communion with deity leads to these expectations. Going back to the beatitudes and reading them, seeing what Christ taught to new converts, and applying it in your life, leads to an increase in understanding of faith and hope.
This all leads to attaining perfection and it is perfection religion, scriptures, and communion with deity, tell us we need to succeed in mortality.
However, to succeed means that sometimes we slog through times when we don’t, necessarily, believe or want to believe and yet we do it anyway because sometimes you do what you have to do simply because you have always done it. That is how you get to a point where you read scriptures every day. That is how you get to a point where you pray often. That is how you get to a point where you go to church on Sunday. That is how all of this happens. It is not by miraculous design. It is not by mistake. And it is not by accident. You do these things because you have always done them, because you want to do them, and because, somewhere inside, you want to do them.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Zach Johnson | Bond. James Bond