This week I want to talk about refining our perspective on why we are here on earth, and on what we are hoping to accomplish while here.
This is the first of several open spots where the old commentary doesn’t cover material covered in this year’s Come, Follow Me manual. I’m afraid you are left with just my current commentary today. ;)
Bear with me
In order to make my perspectives more clearly defined, I first need to give you the background of where they come from. If I appear to be rambling about things, and you can’t figure out where this subject or that subject came from or where it is leading, please be patient. It should all tie together in the end.
To start with, I want to reference some verses from Moses 7. Enoch has been caught up into heaven and is speaking with (I assume) both our Father and His Son. Some of Enoch’s comments only make sense to me if both the Father and the Son are present for the conversation. So this is being viewed by me as a three way conversation. I hope this is correct, for that is how I see it. I’m going to take this slowly and present background information as I go verse by verse for a number of verses. God is weeping. I assume this means the Father. Enoch witnesses this and marvels. He has questions.
31 And thou hast taken Zion to thine own bosom, from all thy creations, from all eternity to all eternity; and naught but peace, justice, and truth is the habitation of thy throne; and mercy shall go before thy face and have no end; how is it thou canst weep?
Think about Enoch’s four qualifiers for defining those who live in the presence of God – peace, justice, truth and mercy. How plentiful are any of these qualities in the world we live in? This life is difficult, because it lacks the boundaries and protections that existed when we lived with God. It is precisely because we are cut off from His presence that we are able to do as we like and not suffer immediate consequences. This is why we call this life a probation. We are being tested to see if we will remain true to our eternal upbringing or if we will follow the desires inherent in the flesh, which are powerful. God is asking us to choose to follow Him. He promises to help us overcome the desires of the flesh so we can achieve greater things than can be done without a physical body.
Even Christ, who was perfect, couldn’t be exalted and have eternal increase, the hallmark of those in the Celestial kingdom, without obtaining a body first. Clothing our spirits with a physical form is the last step to obtaining exaltation. But first we must have a body that can be resurrected to the status of exaltation. Hence we have earth life, the precursor to being able to be exalted. This final step in our progression is where we are put to the test to see if this is really what we want. Being exalted is a lot of responsibility. We must learn to master ourselves before we can master the cosmos. Note that God does not rule by his physical strength, by intimidation or cruelty, but by love and the spoken word. He speaks and the elements obey His wishes, for He never speaks out of turn or carelessly. His every word is treated as law. All of it is done out of mercy, kindness, and love.
Enoch sees the Father, the ultimate example of love and kindness weeping over the wickedness of the people of earth and marvels that someone so magnificent as God could weep over the perversions of a fallen people. Such things never come near God. He is not personally affected by their wicked deeds, yet He weeps for them.
32 The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency;
It appears that our agency, as we currently know it, was given to us upon entering mortality. That is how I read that verse. I am assuming we had some form of agency in the premortal world, but it appears that what we have here in mortality is an expanded version, for we have a physical body with which to make our choices, something we didn’t have in pre-earth life.
What is the knowledge God refers to? It is the ability to comprehend the opposites of life and death, love and hate, health and sickness, pleasure and pain, etc. These things were limited without a body to experience them with. Earth life brings with it experiences very new to us. It is easy to get caught up in the flow of suffering we never knew while in God’s presence or the pleasures of just having a body and all of its feelings. All of these new experiences make life difficult to navigate, because everything is new, and unlike the eternities, everything is temporary and always changing.
Satan has taken the mundane necessities of life and turned them into artforms. We come from a place with no time, for we have all of eternity. Now our life here is measured and short in duration. We gain a sense of urgency we didn’t have before. Satan has turned that situation into multi-billion dollar industries that pander for our attention. Cosmetics try to keep us looking younger for longer, health specialists will promise to keep you feeling younger longer, medical industries pander to feeling better as we age. And the list goes on. All of these are distractions for the real reasons we are here.
The goal of the Adversary is to keep us focused on anything but the reason for being here in the first place. There are a million and one different things he has created to keep us off task. We all have to work, but he has made work the end all and be all of our existence. By getting caught up in the importance of a job and the income it brings, we forget that we are not here to work, but to learn to be like God. Everything we do that is needful for living is actually needful, but that isn’t the reason we are here. This makes life even more difficult, because it is so easy to get lost in all the many distractions that make us forget our purpose for this life.
Our agency is moral in nature, that is why I aways refer to it as moral agency. We can’t just choose anything we want. All of our significant choices are moral in nature, to do good, to love, to be patient, to be longsuffering – in short anything that is of a Godly nature. Or we can choose anger, selfishness, impatience, degeneracy, or any of the physical traits that pander to the pleasures of having a body and of living in this brief mortal life. These are the only choices on which we will be judged. Does our choice bring us closer to God or further from Him. Anything that takes us away from being more like God is what God is saying is wicked. By definition then wickedness is rooting our behavior in mortal life, and not looking beyond this life to the rest of eternity. We should be preparing for our time there. This is why this life is a probation, not an end destination.
Absolutes
33 And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood;
34 And the fire of mine indignation is kindled against them; and in my hot displeasure will I send in the floods upon them, for my fierce anger is kindled against them.
Commandments are funny (read “strange”) things. We think of a command as authoritarian and coming from a place of exercised power, like a monarch commanding someone kneel before them. Think about how God talks to us. If He suggests something be done then we assume it is discretionary, and easily discarded, for it was only a suggestion. How important could it be if it is only a suggestion?
God could give us an urging to do something, but again, that may just be a personal opinion He feels strongly about. Nothing He can say to us is as important as a direct command. A command is a necessity, a law for which, if ignored, there is a punishment affixed. God loves us, His children, and the commandments we have been given are all based out of love for our welfare. Commandments are the laws of happiness. I love to say that. When we obey a commandment it leads to peace and love. When we “break” or ignore a commandment it ALWAYS leads to suffering, sorrow, or some other unpleasantness. Commandments are our friend, not our nemesis.
This is the absolute I am referring to. God’s way of life is the ONLY way to find lasting happiness and joy in the eternities or in this life. All of His commandments lead to experiencing this way of life. It makes all our interactions one with another more pleasant, less confrontational, and more peaceful. We should be clamoring for more of His commandments, because this is always the result of living each of them. Yet, for some reason we fight having to live them. Go figure. But if you look at your scriptures, only two options are presented to us. We either choose the way of eternal life (keeping the commandments and all that entails) or choosing eternal death, which means not being able to live in the presence of God, away from the happiness that could have been ours if only we had made better choices. And in the extreme, there are those who rebel against God’s way of living so far that they are cast out of all polite society to suffer in darkness for eternity. Why any of us make these poorer choices is more than I can fathom.
Not loving one another, living without affection, and choosing to hate their own blood or kin is what God says qualifies them for the punishments he has prepared for the wicked. Remember that this is the definition of being wicked, choosing a life other than that of eternal happiness.
Please note that choosing a life of happiness is not a matter of checking a box on a survey. “Yes, I think I will choose happiness.” No, happiness means becoming someone who is happy and who spreads happiness wherever they are. It means to be happy like God is happy. This is what the gospel of Christ is all about, becoming happy for eternity. That’s all. There is no big secret to the gospel of Christ or what is expected of us. God just wants us to learn to choose to be the kind of people who value joy over the misery of this life. That choice is only so hard because Satan has created so many diversions to making and keeping on the course towards experiencing happiness. We must make the choice then put our heads down and stop looking at all the offerings to the contrary presented to us on a continual basis. We must become single minded in our focus to become godly in our own right. That is where it is difficult.
God’s sorrow
35 Behold, I am God; of Holiness is my name; Man of Counsel is my name; and Endless and Eternal is my , also.
36 Wherefore, I can stretch forth mine hands and hold all the which I have made; and mine eye can pierce them also, and among all the workmanship of mine hands there has not been so great as among thy brethren.
37 But behold, their sins shall be upon the heads of their fathers; Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom; and the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of mine hands; wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?
38 But behold, these which thine eyes are upon shall perish in the floods; and behold, I will shut them up; a have I prepared for them.
As powerful as God is, it is among His own children He finds the greatest disobedience, the greatest wickedness. He wants us to become His sons and daughters by obeying His commandments, but instead so many of us choose the ways of the world, Satan’s distractions, and we become his sons and daughters, because we choose to follow the commandments of the world in place of those we received from God. We do things on God’s sabbath that violates His day, sporting events, shopping, entertainment, etc. We place our values and priorities on elevating ourselves in the world at the expense of elevating our neighbor and caring for the poor. BTW (by the way) have you ever noticed that caring for the poor is almost always the number one concern God expresses when we are called to task for our disobedience or neglect? Even in the definition of Zion we read that it was Zion BECAUSE there were no poor among them. Yet in the world the poor are considered pariah, outcasts, people to be avoided or tolerated.
The poor
What discussion on Zion is complete without a little love for the poor? First let’s look at our perception of the poor in this life then I’ll switch to the poor in a Zion society.
The world treats the poor as a measurement of a society’s success or failure. So many of the programs of government are aimed at alleviating poverty, often at the expense of those who haven’t experienced poverty. This is not a voluntary thing, but a mandated taking from one group to give to another. Society generally views the poor as undeserving, lazy, willing to take advantage of the goodness of others for their own gains, etc. The view is not positive. Unfortunately, when we think of the Zion society where there are no poor among us, we tend to put this kind of image of the poor into the picture. Not true.
The righteous poor are industrious, hard workers. They are honest in all their dealings. God fearing. Good parents, and willing to help those around them. What’s missing in their lives is the financial opportunities that have come to the wealthy. God has blessed some to come into wealth with ease, while others struggle their whole lives and never are able to leave their impoverished conditions. These are the poor in the Zion society. They are worthy of all the help people can give them, for they are grateful and willing to repay that kindness with kindness in return. These are the poor God is referring to when He talks about Zion and having no poor among them.
I had difficulty with the definition of Zion and the whole having no poor among them bit for a long time, because I was still thinking that the poor in Zion would be like those who have children just so they can get more welfare checks. It wasn’t until I realized that if they are spiritually worthy of being in Zion then they are good, honest, hardworking people who just lack opportunities in this life. Those people are worth giving to abundantly, especially if I have more of something than I need. Who better to give it to? This kind of giving and receiving is a source of joy for both the giver and the receiver. We all benefit from looking out for our neighbor in such a community. We almost all have times in our lives when the shoe is on the other foot and we are the ones in need. And aren’t we so grateful when others don’t judge us and give generously and in a spirit of helping? It makes all our hearts turn to God to give thanks.
Speaking of turning hearts to God, this process of giving and receiving is one of the ways we become of one heart and one mind. This is how Celestial citizens behave, they look out for one another. One never needs to worry about their life situation, because they know their backs are being watched by all those around them. No one will let us fall without helping us back up and dusting us off to see if we are okay. This is what makes keeping the commandments so worth it. Seekers of joy won’t find it in the world, but they will find it by learning to live like God does.
Bitterness of soul
This is sort of a side note to the general topic. Enoch saw Noah, the ark, and the flood. In the depths of his soul he mourned for those who were lost to punishment because they had lost the ability to love one another and only hated and sought that which brought misery.
43 Wherefore Enoch saw that Noah built an ; and that the Lord smiled upon it, and held it in his own hand; but upon the residue of the wicked the came and swallowed them up.
44 And as Enoch saw this, he had of soul, and wept over his brethren, and said unto the heavens: I will refuse to be ; but the Lord said unto Enoch: Lift up your heart, and be glad; and look.
My first reaction to verse 44 was “What? God was just weeping over these same people and now when Enoch weeps God tells him to “Lift up your heart, and be glad.” What’s that all about? I had to think about it for a while, but it occurred to me that sometimes I weep, and I am surprised at my own weeping. Don’t know why, I cry all the time. But then I remembered that, for example, when I sing hymns I am fine, unless I let the words sink into my heart. Then I weep with gratitude, or because I am overwhelmed with the blessings I have had. I think it was much the same here for God.
God sees and knows how we will behave eons before the behavior even occurs. But when He stands still and witnesses what we do to ourselves, seeing the misery we bring upon ourselves by our choices, His heart aches, and He weeps. He knows there is also a bright side, and this is what he is helping Enoch to see. God proceeded to show Enoch the spreading of mankind over the earth once again, and the eventual birth of the Savior. This lifted Enoch’s spirits.
Back to Zion
What I hope I have painted a picture of in all that has come before this, is a realization that Zion is a difference of attitude or perspective. Instead of focusing on what the world says is critical to your success, we look to God’s instructions from His prophets and use God’s roadmap to direct our course through life. We are only here to prepare for what comes next. This life is not the end of existence, but a pit stop before getting back to finish the race. We have much to learn while we are here.
The world teaches us to focus on self, to lift ourselves above others, to claim all that we can for ourselves, because our happiness depends on getting as much as we can in this life. But no mention is ever made about what comes after this life, because in the world there is only this life. The afterlife is considered a fairytale used by the weak the the simple to humor themselves, because the truth (to the world) is that once we die it is game over. We cease.
The gospel of Christ seeks to focus us on learning to take our physical desires and channel them for the betterment of others. To care for others, uplift one another, to support each other in our difficulties and challenges. We need to learn kindness, charity, humility, and all the other godly virtues. The gospel is a way of life, not a single choice made on a survey. It takes practice, every day, every hour. Our focus needs to be on eternity, not on the next sales call.
There is a real balancing act that has to take place for each of us on a very personal level. We have to live in this world. The world must be dealt with. Income must be made, a life secured for our spouse and family, and all the intricacies of navigating a world run by Satan have to be handled. But in the midst of all that our focus needs to be learning to be like Christ. We must always choose to practice the kinder version in situations, the more patient way, the more tolerant position, etc. To do this we must come to rely on the Holy Spirit in all that we do. With practice we learn to do a lot for ourselves, but we never outgrow His help. If anything, the more we use the Spirit to guide us, the more we realize how indispensable His guidance is. He is, after all, the keeper of the record of heaven, the dispenser of truth, and a God in His own right.
The promised perspective
So this is where I wanted to take you when we started. We view the world and Zion with jaded eyes. Our perspective sometimes needs a refresher course to see things the way they really are. Zion is all about becoming united with our brothers and sisters in the gospel of Christ to achieve the communal success of all our fellow covenant makers. Zion is a way of living, one where we look out for one another more than we look out for ourself. Our focus is like Christ’s on the welfare and success of everyone. When everyone is flourishing, whether because they are already comfortable in life or if they are financially challenged, when everyone has their needs met, and all are working steadily towards the same goals of spiritual uplift for all, it is then that we have become a Zion people. As long as we are still mired in the cares of this world, Zion is a long way off. Each person must individually find their own way to balance the needs of earth life with the necessity of becoming godly in our attitudes and behaviors. Only the gift of the Holy Ghost can reveal the path to us.
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