We sometimes underestimate the importance of being one with each other. We are here on earth to begin building a celestial character, and being able to become one with others is a big part of the celestial character. Let’s look at some of the basics of what it takes to become one with someone else.
What is the gospel of Christ?
What we are trying to accomplish in the gospel of Christ is not what general Christianity is often focused on. At some point early on in the apostasy, the leaders turned the people’s focus away from emulating Christ’s behavior to looking to their earthly leaders for examples and guidance. The leaders took upon themselves the right to forgive sin, to determine penance, and to decide what was acceptable daily behavior and what was not.
During the centuries behavior and perception in the Christian faith became something that was focused more and more on attendance at church, and less and less on becoming like Christ. Eventually, a good Christian was defined as someone who went to church at least twice a year, at Christmas and at Easter. The rest of the year there was a lot of lip service to being a Christian, but often not much else.
Coming into Christ’s restored Church can be a shock to the system for many new members. We are not a lip-service kind of organization. To be baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to become a part of an organization that expects you to join a cause. The cause is to become like Christ. That is not a once-a-week commitment, but an every day and every hour effort. Coming to realize just how much of a commitment is looked for as a new member can be daunting and intimidating. This is where ministering comes in.
Characteristics
The gospel of Christ is all about change. We are all raised in the world, and as such it is expected that all of us have at least a few worldly habits that need to be modified or even gotten rid of. We can’t expect to go to church each week and sit quietly in our seat and not have any interaction with others. Being a member of the Church means being Christlike to other members. Christ invites all to embrace his teachings in the way we live our lives. This includes such simple things as being kind to those around us, looking for opportunities to be supportive of the efforts made by others to do good and be good, and making sacrifices to change the kind of person we are to a better version of ourselves, etc. Going to church each week can’t be a private thing where we don’t interact with others. We need to be constantly seeking to find ways to be of service to others. That is what Christ would do.
Being a member of God’s kingdom on earth is a full-time commitment. We agree at baptism to represent Christ every day, all day, in any way we can wherever we might be. And our commitment is to be that way with everyone we meet, not just with fellow Saints – Saints being those covenant makers who are striving to be like Christ. This is a whole-life commitment, not a part-time effort. To be a member of Christ’s Church is much more than joining a social club, for he demands much for the blessings he offers in exchange for the covenants we make. He promises us that with faithful execution of our covenants the Holy Ghost will help us become celestial material, people who can confidently stand in the presence of God, the Father of us all with glorified resurrected bodies, ready to live in God’s presence for eternity to rule and reign in various capacities throughout the universe. What other church has that as their promise and goal?
Specifics
The focus of this week’s sections (Doctrine and Covenants 37-40) is related in one way or another to becoming celestial people. To be a celestial kind of person means that we give up whatever character traits we learned from the world in favor of better ones that will bring us everlasting happiness in the eternities. Much of what happens to us here in our time in mortality doesn’t qualify as “happy”, but by replacing worldly ways with celestial ways we can find joy and peace even in times of hardship and trial, suffering and sorrow. These are blessings only found through Christ and his teachings. We must embrace those teachings and make them part of the way we live each day. Just stating we believe in them isn’t enough to make them effective in changing our life. Only living a principle can change how we think and feel. Living a principle of goodness changes our perspective and increases our commitment. Exercising our gift of having the Holy Ghost as our constant companion brings daily revelation in the form of promptings, urges, and increased desires to do good, often in situations where we wouldn’t have considered that behavior in times past.
“If ye are not one ye are not mine.” This sentence tells us that an indispensable part of being a celestial person is that we must find a way to embrace others despite our differences. This is one of the most difficult parts of being human. There is power in being able to embrace things that are different from what we were raised with. I spent many years at BYU-Hawaii. It is one of the most culturally diverse universities in the world. If you think going to school and having a roommate from a different state in the US is difficult, try having a roommate from another nationality that is nothing like your own upbringing.
When the school was first built there is a story of a couple who were the first of their island nation to ever leave home and go to a university. They had never experienced the comforts of a western-culture home before. They were raised living in what we might call primitive conditions. So imagine everyone’s surprise when the fire department was called, because this couple had dug a hole in the front room floor to build their fire to cook dinner. They had never seen an oven or stove before. Such differences require patience and understanding in order to manage reasonable expectations. Various forms of education can go a long way in helping us understand one another.
In one of my classes where I was teaching how to behave in a western culture, I asked three students from China to stand up. I asked each of them to count out loud to three on their fingers. Each of them used different fingers and hand positions to do the exercise. They had surprised looks on their faces as they each accused the other two of “doing it wrong.” They all came from different places in the same country, but couldn’t agree on the most simple of assignments. I used this as an example that in this school almost anything you do can be looked upon by someone else as offensive or wrong. It is important to learn that even in our own families each of us do things differently from our siblings. I have found in my own family that the upbringing of our grandchildren is more different from the boy’s children to the girl’s children. My sisters all raised their children the way they interacted with our mother, but the boy’s children were raised like their mother’s family taught them.
In the gospel of Christ there isn’t a single person who comes into the fold who doesn’t have differences from everyone else. Every background is different, every preference, desire, understanding, habit, etc. is shaped by how we grew up and the life experiences we come to Christ influenced by. None of us can come to Christ and expect everyone else to be just like us. We are all different. All of our individual needs are different. And there isn’t one of us who doesn’t hope that others will be tolerant and kind to us despite those differences.
Here is a great talk given by Elder Ulisses Soares. He talks about the need to minister to those who are new to the culture of Christ. – A Friend to All
The power in differences
It is the individual differences of all the students at BYU-Hawaii that makes the school so special. We would put on culture night each semester that included people from all over the world in each of the clubs that performed. What a delight it was to see a lily-white person of diminutive size dancing the war dances with the Tongans (big, hulking, and brown), and those from places like Vietnam dancing the swing with the Western Dance club. Everyone had a ball and enjoyed themselves immensely. It is one of the most popular events of the year. Another is the Food Festival where the clubs sell plates of food from their home countries. All the students go home appreciating the differences and seeing the advantages of other cultures because of their exposure to such events. It is through their differences, and coming to appreciate those differences that those who attend the school get their strength. They learn to appreciate differences. They find joy in those differences. And they learn to get along with people who aren’t just like themselves. They are far more accepting of others’ differences than when they first came to the school.
It isn’t easy to learn to appreciate differences. We are often told to only associate with those who are like us. We are often told in our youth to avoid spending time with people who are different, have different beliefs, behaviors, etc. Sometimes that is needed, but sometimes it is deadly. It is needed when we remember that we can’t control who we fall in love with, so when we are of a certain age, taking care of who we spend our time with is important, so we eventually fall in love with someone who can help us achieve our goals of returning home to God. But at other ages spending time with those of other faiths, those of other cultures, political beliefs, social circles, etc. can be a great advantage to us. These people can help open our eyes to the vast diversity of God’s children. These experiences can help us see how much each and everyone of us are the same in that we all crave love and acceptance, and almost all have common needs. The differences become almost inconsequential when held up to the needs we all have in common.
One of the most limiting experiences we can ever have is to be exposed to only those who are just like us. This gives us a false sense of what the whole world is like. Most people aren’t like us, and we need to see that to learn to appreciate that every culture has value, and every tradition has a history that was important enough for those people to keep it alive.
Sister Christina B. Franco made a short video that speaks about the advantages of embracing each others’ differences in order to learn to appreciate the strengths of others – Love in Our Hearts
A starting list of how we can serve others
- Remember that Christ’s gospel is not a social club we attend occasionally, but a life-altering commitment that requires everything we have.
- Those new to the scope of this commitment (the new members) need constant support and encouragement to help them refrain from lapsing back into old habits. This is easier when more than just one family is helping and teaching the new member. This also applies to those returning to activity, for they have been out of practice for a while. We must refrain from being judgmental of their life choices, while we also need to help them be accepting of our weaknesses and differences.
- Those we minister to may be very different from us, but their needs are often the same.
- Try to learn from people’s differences. Why do they act like that? What strengths have they learned in their life? How can you learn from their experiences? This exercise is all about being able to appreciate why someone is the way they are, and how you can use those experiences to become a better person.
- The plan of salvation, as given to us by our Father in Heaven, is a group effort. Don’t expect to find doing everything by yourself easier than learning to include others in your efforts to do good. Group goodness is always more rewarding than solo efforts. Goodness just works that way. But it is something we need to learn to do. It is always easier to do something alone than to have to coordinate with other people, but God wants us to include each other in our goodness any time we can. This is what it means to become one with others. We need to unite in our goodness.
- Becoming one with others doesn’t mean giving up our personal identities. To become one with another is to blend our differences for the common good. Our strength in our service will increase as we learn to bring others along for the ride.
- Keep it simple. Goodness and kindness doesn’t have to be complicated, grand, or overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be financial or socially visible. The needs of the person being helped determines what we need to do. The more basic we can keep our love and assistance, the easier it will be to emulate that behavior. We are teaching and demonstrating Christ’s love for us when we serve others. Keeping it simple and direct is one of the best ways we can be of use to others.
- Seek the Spirit to help you identify opportunities to serve others. When we are always on the lookout to be of use to others, the Holy Ghost will open our eyes and point out opportunities. If you are unsure of what to say, just ask the Lord to fill your mouth with the words of love and support He wants that person to hear then start speaking. Let the Spirit do what He does best, influencing people to do and be good. Ministering to the needs of others is all about effort, not proficiency. The Spirit can work with whatever effort you are willing to put forth for the welfare of another person. Expect miracles.
Final Thoughts
Becoming one with others is not magical or mystical. Becoming one with others is a concrete series of behaviors that causes it to happen over time. When we learn to be tolerant of differences, are forgiving, patient, faithful to the friendship we profess, tireless in our commitment to fulfill our duties to one another, etc., that is when we learn that being one with each other is not only possible, but inevitable.
As we commit ourselves to the happiness of others we come to depend on them, even when we have to forgive them for letting us down. We forgive because we learn that we all have weaknesses that cause us to fall short. As we learn to forgive the weaknesses of others we also learn to forgive the weaknesses in ourselves, and we learn how often Christ forgives our own weaknesses. Strength and safety in the last days will only be available to those who learn to treat others as Christ treats us. Christlike behavior and treatment builds his kingdom, strengthens the weak, and answers prayers for help. It also teaches us to recognize how often God intervenes in our own life and keeps us afloat in these turbulent times.
I encourage you to reread the sections in this week’s lessons. Look for all the reasons we have for entering into this grand exercise of becoming one with each other. God promises and promises the wonders of eternity to those who keep His commandments and seek to become one with Him. The more we seek to move our daily focus from today’s cares to the eternal world to come, the greater will be our capacity to focus on the strengths and abilities of others, instead of the glaring weaknesses we usually see in the natural man.
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Brother Merrill, this article is so good. I needed to hear this and will save it to read regularly. It’s amazing to realize how each person feels like their way is the “right” way. And people who are different than I am are just as correct in their way of doing and seeing things. I’m finding that as I become more accepting and supportive of people with different lifestyles, some of those close to me are leary that I’m not upholding my beliefs or values. Being firm in my beliefs doesn’t mean I judge others to that standard. Only God can be the judge. Mine is to love. This article is helping me be less judgmental toward others who are different and patient with those who are like me resisting and judging my tolerance as a bad thing.