John Chapter 11: Guidance and grey matter

 For years now, I've been on a kick about using our brain for brain stuff, and using our spiritual senses for spiritual stuff. I think we get too tied up thinking we can deduce, or calculate truth. I use the term calculate because as an engineer, that's how we determine what the right answer is. 

That's great if you're an engineer and you want to figure out what size that beam or column should be. That's how it should be done. Yes, there is experience, and experience can sometimes indicate what the size of that floor joist should be. That's an example from the engineering field, but it's also an example of how we think that we can use our grey matter to figure out all things. 

The concept I'm approaching may be perhaps best described as trying to hear a smell, or to feel a sight. There may be some approximations, such as a blind man using his fingers to "see" a person's face, but these are approximations at best, and are only a shadow of what being able to use your eyes means if you want to see a person's face - or a vista of trees, lakes and mountains. 

But we as humans think that the five senses we have and our own puny brains are all we need to ascertain truth. Clearly, if that were the case then we could just have a handful of smart people tell us all how life is. They would all agree with each other and we could just live their way. The problem is that the smarter that people proclaim that they are, the more they are likely to disagree with people who also proclaim their own genius. To me, it's clear that there's something missing. 

Another example of this is religion itself. If the bible were able to provide all the answers by itself through thorough study, then someone would be able to come up with a list of all truths from the bible, and we'd have only one religion. But super intelligent, well researched opinions are all over the place. There are any number of Christian religions, and they all have a team of scholars who claim they've done the research and that their way is the only way. 

But what if using your brain to deduce spiritual things is like trying to hear a smell? If we have five senses and a brain (let's call that a sixth gift), what if we're using the wrong gift still? What if we were to use a seventh gift to help us arrive at truth? Here's what I'm thinking: there is one God, and He loves us, and He'll help us if we allow him to help us. So if we're looking for spiritual truth (or perhaps any truth), why don't we go to Him? Wouldn't it be better to hear a sound than try to smell it? Isn't it better to rely on our spiritual pipeline with God than use some lesser gift to try and approach the right gift? 

Someone told me once that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then all problems look like nails. If what you really need is a set of pliers or a screwdriver but you only have a hammer, then you'll just hammer the nail in. It might work - kinda - but the result will be much less than successful. So it is, I believe, with relying on our brain for all things spiritual. There is a role for our brain, but we need the full toolbox. 

So in John 11, the religious leaders - who theoretically had the spiritual toolbox in place - sat down and decided that Jesus was doing too many miracles. Their reasoning was that men would believe Jesus, and then the Romans would come in and destroy the country. That logic may have been more fear and conjecture, but it was their logic. They decided that it was better for one man to die than they lose their country. Perhaps that was true in their minds, but what if that One Man was the creator of the universe? 

Here's a trolley question for you: if you knew that either the creator of the universe would die or a nation of his creation? What would you choose? But that's a false question. If you don't execute the Creator, there's a pretty good likelihood that good things follow. 

Contrast this with Nephi's mandate to kill Laban. In this case things were turned the other way: Nephi's spiritual pipeline with God, his spiritual gift which was well developed and strong, told him to execute Laban. His intelligence and earthly knowledge had a big problem with that. What did he pick? He knew that serving God was the highest priority. The Pharisees were serving themselves because I expect that they were less concerned about losing the nation and more concerned about losing their position. If Jesus created a new spiritual order, they would be jobless and irrelevant. That must have terrified them - so it was acceptable to them to kill Jesus - creator of the universe or not. 

So how does one develop what I'll call the seventh gift? I guess it's not that mysterious. I've been going to the gym lately. I'm trying to lose my fat belly and trying to get my chest to be more pronounced than the belly. I've seen results, but it doesn't happen overnight. It's a gradual process. Spiritual progress may be the same way - line upon line. Precept on precept. Opening ourselves up to the sunlight of the Lord. Accepting his Peace. Showing our willingness to follow him by doing what's right. Following the prompts we receive. Asking for more in prayers and building that gift. Over time, the pipeline goes from nothing, to a needle's diameter, to a straw size, then larger. 

May we find greater success and happiness by making our spiritual gift from the Lord our first sense we rely on. It's a much better way to live. 

Come Follow Me: John 7-10 Being His sheep

 So this week's Come Follow Me study lesson is John 7-10. As I approach it, I look back on the days three years ago when I was writing every day. I feel like the inspiration came more easily back then. That I could just start writing and things that I thought were deeper would just come to me. 

Being vulnerable a bit here, I don't feel that way now. I approach today's blog feeling like it's more of a thing I have to do in order to honor a commitment to myself. If I let it drop off, I let myself down - as well as who knows who else. But that's a different set of motivations than me wanting to write so I can be lifted and lift others. 

I believe that it's true that doing the right thing can come with different levels of motivation, but that doing something for a lower motivation is better than not doing it. For example, is bringing over dinner to a shut-in grudgingly better than not doing it? Probably, depending on how it's done - there are different levels to even that - but I'm thinking that doing it in a non-pissy way is better than not doing it. 

So as I read in John, it rings familiar to me that even Jesus when he walked the earth he didn't convince everybody. The God of the universe, the only perfect man, was still not able to convince everyone and bring them to the truth. Why? Of course part of it probably has much to do with agency. Another part of it likely has to do with whether we're "his sheep". 

I think most of us would say that if an angel stood in front of us and told us to do "X", we'd do it. I believe that's probably not what would happen though. We would maybe do the task grudgingly, or give ourselves a pass because we doubt whether we're up to the task. Or think the messenger was a psychotic moment - or a dream - or a hallucination, or a prank. There are excuses aplenty. 

And here's another thought: why would a God who knows us and loves us by giving us an angelic moment like that if he believes or knows that we would not follow through? An unfollowed angelic message would certainly condemn us - and a loving God wouldn't want that for us. 

So Jesus taught in a way that was uniquely him (John 4:46) and did miracles. Proof enough? Apparently not. Those who were not spiritually ready so see and accept just used the miracles as an opportunity to theorize and debate. The Lord's sheep noted the miracles, but the miracles didn't make people the Lord's sheep. 

So then for me the question is how do you become one of the Lord's sheep? Rather than argue about the Lord's guidance, how do you become the person that receives it, knows it, obeys it, and is lifted and protected for it? 

The Lord didn't leave that out in this chapter. He says "My sheep hear my voice". There may be any number of loud voices calling us in each of 1000 ways. How do you figure out which voice you follow? I think the answer is that you don't. You learn who your master is, who your shepherd is, and then you follow that voice. The more we do it, the easier it is to remember and follow that voice. When we listen to other voices, the difficulty of hearing the one True voice increases substantially. 

John 7:14-17 even gives us the pathway to become his sheep. Of course it's simple. Based on my experience, the Lord doesn't have difficult recipes. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine". So we keep the commandments. That's how we learn his voice.

I go to the scene of the meth addict who says "well if God sends me a message, I'll dedicate my life". I'd say probably not. To know of the doctrine, we need to do his will. He needs to know that what he gives us will result in a blessing to us, not a curse. 

This is the part where I try to wrap things up in a cute little ball. I don't have it. I guess at least with this blog post right now, I'm doing His will. Even if my motivations were less than excellent, I still did His will. That's more than nothing. For that, I'll give myself a win today. 

Come Follow Me: Matthew 18 and Luke 10 - Forgiveness 70 times 7

 So as a person who is as broken as any of us, I have to smile at recent events. One of my weaknesses is that I'm not very good at forgiving. I have stuff with my siblings that go back 20+ years, and I have made a number of steps, but inside me, I really have trouble forgiving them.

Then yesterday. I was invited to play pickleball. This is a game I can enjoy because it's very personal. Unlike tennis where you're too far away to talk, or racquetball where you can't hear because you're in a concrete cave, pickleball is more personal. You're only a few feet from anyone playing, and you can easily hear anybody say anything. 

So imagine my thoughts as I walk in to the court and see people that are not exactly on my happy list. In order, here's a description:

• Person one was a political opponent, if only for the HOA. I felt that I was tired of the nazi style command and control nature of the HOA leadership, so after it got bad enough I decided to stand up and resist the craziness. First this man angrily stood up and said "I want to know who is going to support the CC&R's". Well, that wasn't me. I intended to use my own head. CC&R's are what they are, but I wasn't about to warm the chair & quote CC&R's - I was going to make a culture change. A flimsy excuse was used to cancel my candidacy, and I believe this person was the one who spearheaded that. This person and I haven't talked since that time, and we tend to avoid each other in church. He was one of the pickleball players. 
• Person two is a narcissist with all that comes with that. She has to win. She'll talk about how famous she is. I could go on but that would be perhaps needlessly unkind. This is the kind of person I try to avoid because I prefer to surround myself with people who lift me. She is not that kind of person. She was another of the pickleball players. 
• The third is a well meaning dude, but playing sports with him can be frustrating. There is no rule that doesn't predictably bend his way. There is no line call that doesn't result favorably for him. For me, that feels like a mixture of a need to control and a bit of self centeredness. He's the other person on the court. 

And now I'm on the court with all of them. I can't even rotate the teams so that I'm partnered with the
most favorable one, because they're all unfavorable. 

So now I run into this week's Come Follow Me lesson and we get forgiveness as one of the main themes. I think that's super funny because it's my reminder from somewhere upstairs that I have a forgiveness problem. Forgive 70 times 7? Shoot, it's hard for me to forgive once or twice sometimes. 

So how do I forgive somebody who I believe cancelled my candidacy in the shadiest of methods? I'd like to say that maybe I recognize that everybody does stupid stuff - I certainly do. That's not enough for me though - I wish I could write it off that easily. Maybe he had a valid reason in his head for doing what he did. Maybe he was used to using the rules and the power he had to his favor. Maybe it was just a routine power play for him - a game politicians play. Unremarkable for him, life changing for me. 

Years ago, I listened for a while as another person I know well complained about this church leader and that. I asked her a question I shouldn't have: "Is it OK with you that other people are imperfect?" She blew up and was angry about that for a very long time. The funny thing is that I can give her grief about not being OK with imperfection, but I can't do it myself. I struggle just to play pickleball with people whose imperfections I see. 

Maybe it's not about finding a justification in my mind for why I should forgive (he was just being political, etc), and just forgiving. Christ can forgive him - or not. That's for Him to decide. Maybe it's as simple as me just playing pickleball - or moving ahead with life as the case may be. 

Hard. It's very hard. 

Pushing through because it's the right thing

 It's been well over 2 years since my last blog post. I had a roll going - I think it was about 140 posts or so. This blog hasn't been well read - usually I get about 30 or so that read it. From my point of view, it's iffy whether that's enough for me to feel I make a difference, and I'll certainly never make a nickel from it. 

I quit because people that I care about criticized it and me for doing it. I'm getting rich off of having a voice, they said. I'm trying to project my awesomeness, even though I and others know that I'm far from awesome. I'm trying to make somebody in a far away place think I've got things figured out. None of that would be true. 

The challenge that was given me was to read a scripture or something inspiring, then write about it. I was just reading Come Follow Me on my phone, and noticed the same thing I noticed every other time I do that kind of study: Record Your Impressions. It's front and center on the beginning of every lesson. Record your impressions. It's time for me to do that again.

What I found while I was following the challenge to read and then write, that I was growing. My inner spirituality was growing greatly. I was being lifted while I wrote things, and I was lifted after that moment. This is why I do it - or at least why I did it. I'd like to think that I've grown up enough to do what I do because I choose to do it, but apparently I'm still so weak that I'd let criticism from others stop me from making my own choices. That needs to end, and today's post will hopefully be the beginning of the new journey - or perhaps a resuming of the old one. 

So what wisdom do I have to share today? I watched President Nelson's easter message on forgiving. Normally I pass on those messages - I'm not mister eat, live and breathe church stuff, but today I listened. The message was inspiring. 

I also saw on facebook a post about forgiveness - about a preacher who was saying that we should forgive, if only because the Lord is willing to forgive us. Apparently it's forgiveness day for me. I'm going to be a bit vulnerable because I don't think anybody in my circles will read this anyway, but I've struggled for years with certain family members. From my point  of view, they turned on me when I needed support the most. I was even fired as a customer by my only brother because I was going through a hard divorce. My thought at the time was something like "well if they think the ex is their family, then that's who they'll get". It was very dark and poisonous to me, and decades later, I still haven't let it all go.

But President Nelson's message is that if we forgive, we'll also be forgiven. There is scriptural backup to that. It's funny but I gave my sister grief once for not being ok with people being imperfect. Then I turn around and get upset because I won't let her be imperfect. 

I don't have a glowing finish to this blog - I don't know how to beautifully tie up the concept that forgiveness is something we all want. But I restarted the blog, and that's perhaps enough for today. 

Maybe I'll just forgive myself for walking away from this blog and from my voice for 2.5 years. I'll do that.