Making Sense of Life

In order to make sense of this life we have to understand who we are. We are all individuals who have a divine origin and we must always remember that, because it makes all the difference in how we perceive ourselves and most importantly how we act.

The individual consists of two parts; an immortal spirit and a mortal or physical body. The scriptures call this combination of spirit and body the soul of man. When the soul comes into this world it is good.  We must then remember that the soul is then a child of both Godly and earthly parents.

For some reason that we do not know, when the mortal is combined with the immortal there is a condition, which is called the “natural man”.  In Mosiah we discover.  Chapter 3:19 For the ^anatural ^bman is an ^cenemy to God, and has been from the ^dfall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he ^eyields to the enticings of the ^fHoly Spirit, and ^gputteth off the ^hnatural man and becometh a ⁱsaint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a ^jchild, ^ksubmissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.

Thusly, we are to respond to the “whisperings” of the spirit.  So we should never condemn an individual, which people are very prone to do.  The individual is a child of God and as such has divine potential. In other words we should not call someone a jerk (which, by the way, one of my children was called, by someone who did not understand this principle).

Now we get to the good part.  While on this earth the individual, our soul, is, as Lehi explained, to act or to be acted upon.  This is the propose of our existence.  So now we have actions by the individual.  They are also called behavior.  The scriptures call these actions or behavior, works.  Thus when the scriptures state, “by their works ye shall know them” or ‘men shall be judged by their works in the flesh’, it means that behavior can be judged, but the judgment of the individual is left to God the Father of our spirits.  It follows that we are to find joy in our life by our good works.

God, in order to help his children in this mortal existence, gave us helps to allow us that joy that is promised to all men, or a Lehi puts it, “Man is that he might have joy”.  You will notice the conditional “might” and not the definitive “will”.  Joy is found by help from God.

These helps are called commandments.  Elder Neal A. Maxwell stated that God gave us commandments so that we would not hurt others or ourselves. If you look at the world around you, you will see that, without exception, the misery (the opposite of joy) that is present is because someone has not kept the commandments of God.  The scriptures state it thusly, “Wickedness never was happiness”. 

Remember who you are and keep the commandments.

Love,

Grandpa

The Pahoran Principle

You may think that this is a strange title for a blog post. I hope that you will bear with me as I go through this little essay.

You might remember that in the Book Mormon there was a general by the name of Moroni. Moroni did not get the reinforcements and supplies that he was looking for from the government. Pahoran was the governor of the land. We might compare him to the president of United States in our days. Because Moroni did not get the needed and expected reinforcements and supplies he wrote a letter to Pahoran chastising him for his negligence. He said he was going to take a few of his men and come and “clean Pahoran's clock”. Pahoran wrote a nice little letter back to Moroni. He did not excuse himself.  He did not retaliate.  He did not growl or complain, but simply stated what the facts were and that his land was being overrun by people who wanted a king. Moroni came and neutralized the opposition.

Pahoran did not take offense when he was being chastised. He gave a soft informative answer to the criticism and offered to be helpful.  We will all go through life with some people not understanding us and we can easily be offended. We need to practice the Pahoran principle in our life. You can find an account of this in Alma chapter 60.

Perhaps an anecdote from my own life will exemplify what I am talking about.   Early in my term as stake president we received training material from the general authorities.  In meetings of the general authorities one of the authorities was give the responsibility to present the training to all the rest of the authorities and then the training was sent out to all the stakes for training. 

Elder Boyd K. Packer gave one of the training sessions. The substance of the training was this: Elder Packer had been assigned to visit a stake conference.  When a general authority visited a stake conference in those days, the stake president usually gave the first talk and then was to assign other people to address the congregation during the first hour.  The second hour was to be given to the general authority.  Elder Packer asked the stake president who he thought would be a good speaker to invite to speak during the second hour.  The stake president thought for a moment and the name of an individual came to his mind, but when he said it, he immediately said that he did not think that would be a good choice.  Elder Packer asked him about the brother and was told that he was the inactive brother of a bishop and he would not recommend him to speak.  Elder Packer said, “You had the inspiration, call on him to speak.”   The stake president was upset and said, “Well, you are the general authority.”  The brother was called up out of the audience and came to the podium.  He began his talk by saying that he did not know why he was asked to speak.  He appeared very angry and hostile. He related his inactivity in the church and then he started sobbing and said, I have wanted to be active in the church, but I thought that no one would accept me and that the Lord did not even know who I was.  He pleaded for forgiveness and asked his brother and the stake to accept him back into the church.

The point of this training was; that sometimes the spirit needs to direct the work.  That we may miss the opportunity if we are so focused on outlining things that we do not give the spirit a chance to touch an individual’s life.

It was not long after this training that a general authority came to visit our stake.  We met with him Saturday afternoon to go over the assignments.  I presented the list of assigned speakers for the conference.  He asked me who was going to give the prayers in the priesthood leadership meeting and I responded that I would determine that by the spirit.  He was of the opinion that I was not well organized and it would have been well to make those assignments at least a week or two in advance. I was confused, because I thought he had heard the same training that Elder Packer gave.  

I did not tell him why I had decided to wait until that afternoon to make the assignments.  I did not like to be considered unorganized.  He was the presiding authority and I would do it his way. I felt somewhat angry.  I knew that my resentment was not in keeping with the spirit of the Lord.  While my counselors took him around, I went to the Relief Society Room and closed the door.  I prayed to have the feelings that I was feeling go away, so that I could feel the spirit of the Lord and have that spirit leave me with a calm and forgiving feeling.  I prayed for some time and eventually I was able to loose the spirit of contention.  I did not try to justify my actions or rationalize.  When I was finished, I went to the meeting and sat on the stand next to him and stated that I would make sure that the outline would be as he wished.

We will always be in a position where criticism or correction will be given to us, either deserved or undeserved. We will be sometimes criticized for doing the right thing or having the correct beliefs. It is a part of life.

Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, if not by his own voice by the voice of his servants, it is the same.

When this happens, remember the Pahoran Principle. 

A test of our faith

In the last three weeks I have received a number of calls from parents on the phone in the missionary department. There are calls about herbal medicines and herbal immunizations and not wanting to receive immunizations. One particular case was a call from the mother of a missionary who was assigned to go to Micronesia Guam on his mission.  She asked about the immunizations he needed to complete and I responded with a list of immunizations that a missionary needs to go to a foreign mission.  She responded that he was taking alternative immunizations and that they were herbal medicine medications that would immunize him against all of the diseases. I responded that he would need to receive the proper immunizations otherwise his mission would be changed. She continued to argue that the United States was the only country that did not recognize these alternative immunizations.  I transferred her to a different doctor.  I was not going to argue the point. On further investigation, I found that when his application was screened that the doctors that did the screening had recommended that he go his country of origin, which was the United States.

He got his call to Micronesia Guam.  The mother felt that this was a vindication of the fact that she did not believe in traditional immunizations. I looked at this as really a test of her faith. He was called to serve in Micronesia Guam. It was up to her and her son to prepare to serve where the Lord had called him by obtaining the proper immunizations.

Sometimes the Lord tests us to see if we will do everything that he asks us. The Prophet Joseph Smith said that every man, and I will add woman, will go through what is known as the Abrahamic test. It will be remembered that Abraham was asked by the Lord to sacrifice his only son by his wife Sarah. This was to be his posterity and the Lord had told him that he would have posterity greater than the sands of the sea in number, and that all the nations of the earth would be blessed because of his posterity and his Priesthood. He was asked to put that on the altar.

So Abraham took Isaac and put him on the altar. The Lord intervened in Abraham's behalf and saved Isaac.  We have multitude of descendents from Abraham.

Not all the tests, which the Lord gives us, will be of the magnitude where we have to sacrifice our child. Sometimes he just asks us to do what he has instructed his servants to do or do as they instruct us.

Marriner W. Merrill tells the story in his history of a request that came from the First Presidency of the church for members to deed all of their property to the church. He records all of the cattle, property and everything that he had which he signed over to the church.  He later recalls that the church never did come and ask for that property and he said he felt that it was a test of the faith of the people and some people that he knew failed the test.

Sometimes it's just a simple thing like getting immunizations that are required. One caller said that he did not believe in immunizations.  I wanted to respond, ‘what has that got to do with the subject? The brethren have asked that all missionaries be immunized.’ But I said nothing. Sometimes it's a test of a person's time and effort. Sometimes it's a test of loyalty and some people in the church fail that as well.

The Lord will test us and try us to see if we are worthy to do all things and to sacrifice self, our ideas and prejudices and property in order to build up the kingdom of Our Father in heaven.

Do not fail the test, because it will come sometime in your life.  I can assure you of that.

Love,

Grandpa

Health in the navel and marrow to the bones

The science of medicine was not revealed through the heavens as was the Word of

Wisdom and the Doctrine and Covenants.  We are therefore in a position to discern between the philosophies of men and the word of the Lord because we have modern day revelation and prophets to lead us.

I have received numerous calls from missionaries and mission presidents and members in regard to medical advice, which has been given by doctors to people regarding their health.  Usually it will be about taking tea, coffee, or alcohol for some ailment that the person has. The ingestion of the substance is supposed to be the treatment for the patient’s medical condition.  The word of wisdom makes no distinction between the ingestion for pleasure and medical use.  It is therefore understood that these substances are prohibited even for medical use.

Let me say at the outset that there is no medical condition that I know of that will be cured by administration of substances prohibited by the word of wisdom.  We have made many mistakes in the history of medicine in the treatment of diseases.  They were looked upon at the time as the proper treatment, but time has proven them to be ineffective or in some cases dangerous.  Thus the recommendations of the doctors today may be discarded tomorrow.

What then should we do? The best advice that I can give is to follow the prophet.  You will find that if you keep the principles contained in the revelations you will have indeed health in the navel and marrow in the bones. 

In a sense we are sometimes put in a position where we must choose between the ways of God and the ways of men.  We may have our faith challenged, but in the end we will be justified in our actions not only before the Lord, but also before man as well.

I have heard that there are some people advocating the use of green tea saying that it is different than black tea and therefore can be consumed and be in compliance with the word of wisdom.  They imply that this has in some way been condoned by the church authorities.  This shows a lack of knowledge.  The tea, which we will consider is made from the leaves of the plant Camillia sinensis   From these leaves three kinds of tea are manufactured.  Black tea comes from the leaves that are partially dried and the juices are squeezed from them and then they are fermented and dried.  Green tea is made from leaves that are steamed, crushed and dried.  Oolong tea is made from leaves that are partially fermented and then dried.  There seems to be some difference in the caffeine content of the various teas varying from 2.5 to 4.5 percent.  Coffee contains 1.5 % caffeine.  There are various tea products that are flavored with fruit or flowers.  These can be mistaken for the fruit and herbal teas such as rose hip, black currant or peppermint.  The best thing to do if you are going to use these products is to read the label and avoid products containing tea.

There is a tea popular in South America called Yerba Mate.  This is made from the dried leaves and stems of a tree Ilex paraguarensis.   In a recent study done at BYU the caffeine content was found to average 0.95 percent in 8 brands varying from .73 to 1.35 percent.  The church leaders in that area have asked the missionaries not to drink that beverage.

I would also like to address at this time the use of herbs, natural remedies and acupuncture.  The Lord indicates in the D&C that the use of herbal cures should be done with prudence and thanksgiving.  In my experience this is not the way that members of the church are using these substances in the treatment and amelioration of disease.  Just because some friend recommends the treatment is no reason to accept this as the absolute truth and to use the substance without any more information.  The Lord said prudence, which to me means wisdom and knowledge.  Most of the proponents of these therapies have no other knowledge than word of mouth recommendations and unscientific testimonials.  Many of the actions and side effects of these treatments are unknown to their users and proponents.  It is literally the blind leading the blind. 

Because something is claimed to be of ancient date, does not mean that it is not one of the vain traditions of the fathers and of questionable value.  The missionary committee has given directions that no missionary be treated with acupuncture while serving as a missionary.  All medical care given to missionaries is to meet with the standards practiced by traditional western medicine.

We believe that we are living in the dispensation of the fullness of times.  We should realize that all the knowledge, which the Lord has, will be revealed in this disposition at some time.  It will come when we are ready for it and the Lord reveals it.  Until that time we should not suffer ourselves to be lead about by every wind of doctrine, either spiritual or temporal.