16 January 2013

ME&C: Incremental Obedience (Mosiah 3)

A striking transition in this chapter linking King Benjamin's description of Christ to the power of his Atonement occurs in verse 12:

"But wo, wo unto him who knoweth that he rebelleth against God! For salvation cometh to none such except it be through repentance and faith on the Lord Jesus Christ."

There are so many beautiful lessons throughout this discourse that the discordant reality of sin that King Benjamin rehearses multiple times is easily forgotten or read over quickly. I remember reading the Book of Mormon with folks in Italy and trying to get them to focus on the bits about service, Christ's life, or charity rather than the bits about torment as a lake of fire and brimstone whose flames are unquenchable (v. 27).

But sin merits discussion--especially the sin indicated here. Do I knowingly rebel against God? Do you? You might initially say yes, but if we were asked in the midst of our sinning whether we were working counter to the Lord, we would likely shrug, shake our head, or dismiss the idea.

When I make mistakes or do things I know I shouldn't, I usually justify it to myself that God doesn't really care about what I'm doing. Angry, lustful, sarcastic,  or materialistic thoughts don't hurt anyone as long as they remain thoughts. He doesn't care if I watch something a little vulgar, leave someone in need for the next passerby to help, or "forget" to pray as long as I do some good deed, help the next guy, or pray harder tomorrow to balance my ledger.

In my experience, these small things are the most important. In order to know we rebel against God we must also know when we serve him. And that second type of knowledge which we use to delineate the first only comes when we make small, personal decisions to do right. Does this righteous striving raise the stakes and increase the penalty for disobedience? Absolutely. But consider the alternative.

Without knowing when we are serving him, we only think, believe, or conjecture that we could be rebelling against God. We have no emblazoned spiritual memory of immistakeable blessing with which to compare our current state. Without that certainty, we are doomed to spiritual mediocrity as we muddy the waters of life's decisions with our willful ignorance.

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