Families under Covenant

I devote this post to a translation of a portion of the March 31, 2012 Priesthood Session address, Families under Covenant, given by Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

President Eyring:

There is a father listening tonight who has come back from inactivity because he wants the assurance of that gift [eternal life] with all his heart. …

That father listening with us tonight knows the path to that glorious destination. It is not easy. He already knows that. It took faith in Jesus Christ, deep repentance, and a change in his heart that came with a kind bishop helping him feel the Lord’s loving forgiveness.

Translation:

Is choosing eternal life hard?

Is the path to eternal life intrinsically difficult?

Is the willing exercise of agency to come to Christ “not easy”?

We Latter-day Saints seem to think so.

Many of us routinely characterize the quest for the greatest of all the gifts of God as a vexing, precarious, nearly impossible feat, which conclusion is one of the many bitter byproducts of the pervasiveness of legalism in the restored church of Christ. Like an incessant downpour of acid rain, the process view of sanctification, fueled by piecemeal personal righteousness and the allegedly attainable mastery of divine law, eats away at our faith, optimism, and spiritual well-being.

After all, if we are to become like Jesus by force of our own will and effort (enabled from time to time by divine help), then we have a long way to go. And only a select few, we rightly reason, will likely reach their destination.

How hard is it to believe?

How hard is it to turn to the Lord?

With its often violent, tragic, and iniquitous history, the world offers numerous and plentiful examples of people who do not believe and who do not turn to the Lord. Why should we not rationally infer from their multitude of apparent failings that coming to Jesus is just plain unworkable?

In the Book of Mormon, Lehi has a vision of a divine tree that bears supernatural fruit with the power to make him happy (see 1 Nephi 8).  Finding himself in a “dark and dreary waste” (1 Nephi 8:7) in the dreamscape, he calls on the Lord for help. Then Lehi sees the tree. He walks to the tree. He freely takes its fruit. And he is happy.

Given the way many of us understand the path to salvation and the manner in which we receive the gift of eternal life, we seem to want to modify Lehi’s dream to more accurately reflect the reality of redemption.

Instead of walking across a field, Lehi should summit Everest to find the tree.

Instead of reaching out and taking the fruit, Lehi should obtain it by his compliance with the strict and oppressive terms of capacious contract (at the very least he should pay for the fruit).

Instead of stealing the fruit from someone else’s tree, Lehi should plant his own tree and eat its fruit (spiritual self-reliance).

If anyone in the Book of Mormon knows just how difficult believing in and turning to the Lord is, Alma, son of Alma, should know (see Mosiah 27, Alma 36). Contrary to his own knowledge, he spends his youth persecuting the church of Christ.  Wicked Alma almost crosses the point of no return. He comes just short of incurring the full wrath of God.

After an extended period of willful iniquity followed by a life of devotion to the Lord, Alma tells his son Helaman:

O my son, do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way; for so was it with our fathers; for so was it prepared for them, that if they would look they might live; even so it is with us. The way is prepared, and if we will look we may live forever (Alma 37:46).

True, Alma explains to his son Corianton that “whosoever murdereth against the light and knowledge of God, it is not easy for him to obtain forgiveness …” (Alma 39:6). Alma foolishly embraces such a flight plan prior to his one-sentence plea of faith that releases him from a terrifying vision of hell. But the “not easy” part arises from being in a condition in direct opposition to the light and love of God, not in the actual path to salvation, a course Alma begins where he cries out: “O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death” (Alma 36:18).

I do not deny the horrors of the coliseum, the dispiriting misery of months of unjust imprisonment in the “jail” at Liberty, Missouri, the suffering and death of saints in all ages of the world. The sum total of the hardship and persecution heaped on disciples of Jesus of Nazareth defies comprehension.

Rather, I affirm the blessed hope of Christ found in the attainable gospel of Jesus:

Yea, verily I say unto you, if ye will come unto me ye shall have eternal life. Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, him will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me (3 Nephi 9:14).

We may find ourselves subject to the evil machinations of others and the vicissitudes of fallen mortality, but I suspect that we make coming to Jesus as easy or as hard as we choose to make it.

For a more comprehensive discussion of the attainable gospel of Christ, see Chapter 12: The Attainable Standards of Salvation in the book Redeeming Grace in the Canon of the Restoration (Amazon CreateSpace and Kindle).

The Absolute Atonement

Is Christ the author and finisher, or the broker and enabler?

Is his atonement absolute, or conditional?

Is its highest blessing a completed, perfected gift, or a body of rules—the contractual terms and commandment means that grant us the opportunity to spiritually self-actualize?

In his book Love Wins, Evangelical Rob Bell accurately describes the absolute atonement of Christ taught in the New Testament and Book of Mormon:

Jesus meets and redeems us in all the ways we have it together and in all the ways we don’t, in all the times we proudly display for the world our goodness, greatness, and rightness, and in all of the ways we fall flat on our faces (p. 190).

Lehi says as much (2 Nephi 2:8).

So does Mormon (Moroni 7:24).

So why do we Latter-day Saints not understand the atonement this way? Why do we look at it as merely affording us a series of stepping-stones that proceed off into an infinite horizon?

Why do we view the atonement as a beginning, where it is an end?

Why do we speak of resurrection, a gift of atonement, as an eternal minimum, to be built upon by us and what we do, where in fact the highest resurrection is actually an eternal maximum that we cannot build upon or improve?

I want to hear the absolute atonement preached from the pulpits of the Restoration.

I want to hear the Author and Finisher preached from the pulpits of the Restoration.

I want to hear the correct and true nature of eternal life preached from the pulpits of the Restoration.

Absolute intercession, not conditional intervention.

Condescension, not contract.

Salvation made perfect, not an unending, open-ended engagement.

I want the gospel of the canon of the Restoration—the beautiful, attainable gospel of Jesus.