God Wants to Treat Us

My last blog post was very important to me. I put before the world cherished thinking about the competing mindsets of Mammon and Consecration. I talked a lot about ways to give away the money that we have. Then, just a few days after posting, I ran across someone else’s blog post about consecration that caused my thinking to evolve (1).

You see, while I still stand by everything I wrote in my last post, I was committing in a subtle error in our I applied the principles therein in my personal life. I was falling into the fallacy of confusing Consecration with the denial of luxuries. I wanted so much to give away everything to God and dedicate my worldly goods to helping others that I felt guilty whenever I indulged in earthly things and, even worse, my heart criticized others who did likewise.

But the blog post (by my friend Nom Joti Kaur) pointed out that the mortal Jesus, our Great Example of how to be in this life, was not an ascetic (a person who “abstains from all forms of indulgence, usually for religious reasons”). She also shares a really cool experience she personally had:

One day, she worshipped in the temple (where Latter-day Saints covenant to keep the Law of Consecration) and was praying there for help with some hard things she was going through. The Spirit told her to get a manicure and a pedicure. It might seem strange to be lead to “selfishly indulge” in such things right after covenanting to give all to the Lord but she points out that God wanted to treat her and it was a good thing to accept that (this is the Reader’s Digest version—I highly recommend reading the full account in her own words).

This made me think of a similar experience I had when Jamie and I were approaching a recent wedding anniversary. We had big plans to live it up, going to our favorite restaurants and thrift store shopping together (something which we really enjoy). I was feeling guilty about the whole thing though because I knew that the money we’d spend that day could be given to the poor or some other worthy cause. I prayed about my concern and the Lord gave me a feeling of peace that said to me, “Enjoy your anniversary plans. They’re a gift from me. Receive them as such with gratitude.”

This allowed the guilt to go away and Jamie and I had a lot of fun and strengthened our love for each other and for being alive. The word “consecration” refers to dedicating someone or something to a sacred purpose. The word comes to us from the ancient practice of throwing offerings over a wall or barrier at the temple—where the offeror couldn’t access them anymore—they were literally “set apart” from the possession of the giver and transferred to God’s space (2).

When I consecrate all that I have and are to God, it is no longer mine. It is to be used for God’s purposes, not my own. But what’s amazing is that God’s purposes can include treating me! This ties into Doctrine & Covenants 59 (which I referenced in my last post). This revelation mentions all sorts of things God puts on the earth which He wants us to enjoy with gratitude.

And that’s the thing, this is the paradigm shift that comes with consecration: I stop thinking, “I earned all this money so I deserve to buy this thing for me,” and instead think, “All of these resources belong to God and He has chosen to treat me with some of them.”

But how do we make this shift? One thing that has helped me is to apply the following exhortation from Nephi to money: “Ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul” (2 Nephi 32:9).

I am trying to talk with God about every purchase I make. Since I’ve consecrated all my money to Him, it makes sense that I would consult with Him every time that money is spent. I am trying to make the best decisions I can about where to allocate money and then take those decisions to Gpo and seek His approval. Even while at the store, when I see something I think I might purchase, I can pray in the moment in my mind and tell the Lord about it. I find that the Lord tends to approve every purchase I choose to make. I think this is because He doesn’t want to command in all things (God rarely micromanages His stewards). But seeking His approval and telling Him why I’m going to buy the thing with His money sure does change how I see purchases!

And when He approves a decision to buy something for me that I’ll enjoy, it does not feel like something I’ve earned but a gift from Him. And that is a beautiful thing.

Footnotes:

(1) I am so grateful that we seekers of truth in mortality have the opportunity to exchange ideas with one another. When done right, this can be the wonder of Sunday School and the wonder of the internet. Each of us has a limited time to learn in mortality and has vastly different personalities and experiences. Thus, each of us will naturally discover different aspects and pieces and perspectives of the Truth. It is wonderful that language allows us to share what we’ve discovered with one another so that we all might profit and get closer and closer to that One Great Whole.

(2) Nibley, Hugh W. “Breakthroughs I would Like to See”. Approaching Zion. vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1989).

The Bottom Line

God lives. I am utterly convinced that is true. And I’m convinced He speaks and that His messages are timely. One very timely message was given through Joseph Smith in Missouri on August 7, 1831, and is now known as Doctrine and Covenants Section 59.

This revelation was addressed to people who had just moved to, what was to them, the edge of the inhabited world to create the ideal society. They had high hopes for the sort of life they’d build and the Lord gave them instructions on what that life should look like. First (vv. 1-15), He exhorted them to treat each other well and keep the Sabbath, which is an important cornerstone of holy living, then (vv. 16-24), in discussing the blessings of Sabbath observance, He transitioned to beautiful words on how to engage with the resources of the land.

God told them (and all of us who seek the Good Society) to use the land’s resources and live abundantly. He tells us to use animals and plants for food, raiment, shelter, and aesthetic enjoyment but He also puts an important condition on this use—it must be done with gratitude and judgment, without “excess, neither by extortion” (vv. 20-21).

Let’s take a look at that word “extortion”. In the modern and 1828 Webster dictionaries, the definition of the word refers to taking something by force or abuse of power. The Lord is telling us we can’t be taking resources that way. But there’s more. The modern definition also cross-references us to the word “wring”. This is natural because the Latin roots or “extortion” (ex = “out” and tort = “twist”) originate “from the wine and olive presses... meaning to squeeze out the last drop, another way to make a margin of profit—putting the squeeze on, wringing out the last drop” (1).

One can imagine wringing the last drop out of the grapes or wringing a rag and getting every drop out of it until it’s dry. I propose that the Creator is telling us that extortion, wringing every last drop out of the resources He’s provided, is wrong and forbidden. We are to partake of the things of the earth with gratitude and wisdom but never with excess nor extortion, i.e. never taking everything that we could.

And this brings me to the title of this article: “The Bottom Line”. Always expanding one’s bottom line is a natural and normal thing to do in business. It’s a measure of success and something the stock market demands. But in order to continually maximize profits and minimize expenses, one must be continually squeezing out more and more.

This leads to all sorts of behaviors that just aren’t good for the beautiful people, animals, and earth which God created. In order to continuously expand the bottom line, people are asked to work excessive hours for less and less compensation in less and less safe conditions which makes it hard for them to live after the manner of happiness (or live at all) and devote time to their families and the Lord’s work. Animals are treated horribly to produce food that is of lower and lower quality. The earth is plundered for metals and other resources to make gadgets that are built to break or become inadequate in a short time so people will buy the next model, always with the intent not to do what is best for people or Creation or God’s work but to look out for today’s and tomorrow’s bottom line.

Instead, God has taught a more excellent way. He encourages us to live with gratitude and charity, content with having the essentials we need today (see 1 Timothy 6:8; Matthew 6:11; Luke 12:22-34) and focused on giving to others (see Acts 20:35; Luke 18:22; D&C 4:5-6). This might not be the natural way of doing business but the Lord expects much more of us than to be natural (see Mosiah 3:19). He wants us to stop wasting our time and energy on things that aren’t really important (see 2 Nephi 26:31 and 9:51) and devote ourselves to making a better kind of culture, the Good Society: Zion.

This might seem a bold thing to say. I know it is. It is because it goes against our current culture. But the Gospel always leads people to do things that are opposed to what the world’s custom. Jesus said in the Old and New Worlds that we cannot serve God and Mammon (Matthew 6:24; Luke 16:13; and 3 Nephi 13:24). The word “Mammon” does not just mean general worldliness but refers specifically to everyday business practice. Again from Hugh Nibley, “The Hebrew word for financial activity of any kind is mamonut, and the financier is a mamonai; that is, financing is, quite frankly, in that honest language, the business of Mammon” (2). We can’t live in the Zion way that God wants us to live and abide by the common sense rules of business.

The Law of Moses, albeit a “lower law”, used the letter to train people to do all sorts of things that go against the principle of the bottom line. The Book of Deuteronomy is full of directives that, like modern tithing, prescribe a specific action that people are to do that gets in the way of them advancing their bottom line (3). For example, within the Law of Moses, if you have a vineyard or field, you are not allowed to prevent passerbys by from taking some food nor is the passerby allowed to make a profit by taking more than is needed in the moment (see Deuteronomy 23:24-25). And there’s the law of gleaning (made famous by the story of Ruth) which says that after one’s first pass at harvesting, one cannot go back and get any fruit that was missed—it must be left for the less fortunate (see Deuteronomy 24:19-21). Every seven years, all debts are to be forgiven (see Deuteronomy 15:1-2) and all slaves/servants are to be released and given the resources they need to be successful freemen (see Deuteronomy 15:12-14). None of these practices make good business sense. None of them increase the bottom line. All of them require the practitioner to intentionally do something less economically efficient in order to help others. They are meant to condition the Lord’s people to avoid excess and extortion and practice charity.

Christ fulfilled Moses’ Law and now we’re to live a higher one; higher because it does not so often spell out exactly what to do but prioritizes principles that we must figure out how to apply. These principles include the exhortation against excess and extortion, Jesus’ statements about serving God and Mammon, and the Law of Consecration which allowed Enoch’s people, the Lehites, and the early Christians to live the model lifestyle with all things in common among them. The specifics of how to apply this lifestyle are spelled out in detail in the Doctrine and Covenants (see Sections 42, 48, 51, 54, 56, 63-64, 72, 78, 82, 85, 92, 96, 104, and 119, among others).

I suggest that we who yearn for Zion can do things as individuals, as families, and as professionals to practice neglecting our bottom lines in favor of consecration. We each need to ponder and council and pray to figure out to do this within our own circumstances but here are a few ideas:

• Consider the real cost of things. If we learn that a product which costs less money actually costs a lot in terms of resources plundered or people exploited, we might choose not to purchase it. 
• Similarly, we might choose to spend less time trying to make or save money when that time could be given to helping people and doing the Lord’s work. 
• Make business decisions that, while not good for the organization’s bottom line, are the right thing to do.
• Give more fast offerings, humanitarian donations, and contributions to other worthy causes. When deciding how much to give, consider giving until it hurts. Here are some quotes to consider on this topic.
• Prioritize eternal things by making family time paramount. “We might all ask ourselves: do our children receive our best spiritual, intellectual, and creative efforts, or do they receive our leftover time and talents, after we have given our all to our Church calling or professional pursuits?” (Tad R. Callister).
• Make business decisions that allow ourselves and our employees / coworkers to prioritize family time.
• Study consecration and pray to know how to apply what we learn. Here are a few places to start: 
• https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2010/10/reflections-on-a-consecrated-life?lang=eng
• https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/01/to-prepare-a-people?lang=eng
• https://www.lds.org/ensign/1979/02/living-the-principles-of-the-law-of-consecration?lang=eng
• https://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1114&index=17
• All of this will be hard because Mammon is built to make these things hard to do. Pray and fast for help.

Some who read this might be thinking, “This is all good for people who have plenty but I have very little. I’m a victim of the Mammon machine! I just need to survive!” I get that. That’s a very understandable way to think. King Benjamin says to such:

And again, I say unto the poor, ye who have not and yet have sufficient, that ye remain from day to day; I mean all you who deny the beggar, because ye have not; I would that ye say in your hearts that: I give not because I have not, but if I had I would give. And now, if ye say this in your hearts ye remain guiltless, otherwise ye are condemned; and your condemnation is just for ye covet that which ye have not received (Mosiah 4:24-25).

This helps us see that the opposing ways of Mammon and Consecration involve actions for sure but, at their core, they are mindsets. If we shun the mindset of Mammon and embrace that of Consecration, we will be OK and we’ll start finding ways to consecrate. And when we do that, we’re saying to God, “I’m not relying on the money the world says I need to get by. Instead, I’m relying on You.” God does not abandon those who rely on Him. I know that His promises to those who take no thought (3 Nephi 13:28-32), yoke themselves with Him (Matthew 11:30), and seek first the kingdom of God (3 Nephi 13:33) are true. He takes care of those who give everything to Him.

I pray that all of us will pray to know if the principles presented here are true and that we’ll pray to know how we should each apply them. I pray we’ll allow the Lord to hasten the time when you and I can live together in Zion that it might be written of us, “Surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God” (4 Nephi 1:16). I testify that prioritizing the bottom line will never bring happiness and that there is one real Way to joy and that Way is Jesus Christ. As we become His disciples and prioritize what He’s taught us to prioritize, we’ll find ourselves doing things differently than most people and that kind of different, like God’s beautiful Creation, is very good.

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Footnotes:

1. Nibley, Hugh W. “Work We Must, but the Lunch is Free”. Approaching Zion. vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1989), 203–51. I highly recommend reading the entire article and the entire book. I think I can honestly say that, outside the scriptures, this book has had a more positive effect on my family’s lifestyle than other book I have read.
2. Nibley, Hugh W. “Our Glory or Our Condemnation”. Approaching Zion. vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1989), 20-21.
3. Once again, I discovered this concept by reading Hugh Nibley: “How to Get Rich”. Approaching Zion. vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and FARMS, 1989).

Best Turkey EVER!!!!!

As I wrote about in a previous post, we don't eat hardly any meat. But we do eat a little bit of meat in the winter. By a little, I mean like one meal / week and only a little bit at that meal. And we do our best to eat meat from animals that were treated well while alive. We measure the "winter" in which we eat meat as starting on Thanksgiving and ending on Easter.

So, tomorrow, we will be making turkey.

And while working on a cooking television show years ago, I learned the absolute best way to cook a turkey. Here it is (ingredients and needed supplies in bold):

1. Cut up a large apple and a large onion into diced pieces. Mix them together along with 2 cloves worth of minced garlic. Stuff the inside of the turkey with half of the onion, apple, and garlic mix along with 2-3 sprigs of Rosemary.
2. Put the turkey in the pan with the white meat side down. Put a cup or two of water in the pan. Cover the whole bird with olive oil and then lots of salt and pepper. Take the remaining apples, onion, and garlic and put in all over the top. A bunch of it will fall in the water. That's great.
3. Cover the whole thing with aluminum foil but make sure the aluminum foil doesn't actually touch the turkey.
4. Cook the whole thing for however long the instructions say to cook that much bird for. Every 45-60 minutes, pull it out and basque it and put it back in.
5. When you only have 30-45 minutes left, pull the whole bird out and flip it over. Put it back in and let it cook without the aluminum foil. After the cooking time is complete, pull it out. Do not cut into it for 15-30 minutes or the moisture will escape. But once that time has passed, carve it up and serve! I guarantee it will be the best turkey you have ever eaten.

But, of course, Thanksgiving is still Thanksgiving without the turkey. For example, there are plenty of people who are vegetarian all year round who enjoy a wonderful holiday. But Thanksgiving isn't Thanksgiving without Thanks. So, here's to all of us giving some. In that spirit, here and here are links to two previous posts on gratitude. I hope you find them helpful :)

Living in the Now

Jamie and I have big plans for the future. When we sold our house over a year ago, we intentionally chose to rent next so that we could keep ourselves flexible to move on to the next big thing when all lines up correctly. We plan on moving closer to our family for the first time in our marriage, securing a good amount of land where we can produce as much of our own food as possible, and creating a lifestyle where neither of us works more than 20 hours/week so we can make family time and service to our community the center of our lives. We are so excited for these plans! A day does not go by that we do not make mention in our home of the magical “some day” when we’ll have the life we’re working for.

But the way I think about that future changed this week (and no, I’m not talking about the presidential election). I received a blessing this week—let me explain what that is: in our church, when we’re sick or going through a hard time, we follow the Biblical counsel in James 5:14-15 and call on our brothers in the faith to come and give a “blessing”. The person or people giving the blessing put their hands on the recipient, invoke the Savior’s name, and listen to the Holy Spirit to know what blessings to promise the person and what words of counsel or comfort to say. I’ve received and given many blessings in my life. It has been a beautiful way to increase a sense of community and also get help when I needed it. Countless times, blessings have helped me make positive and needed tweaks in life. In fact, the big goals our family has for the future came as a result of blessings Jamie and I received.

On Monday, a good friend and I gave each other blessings. Both of us were feeling anxious for the future. I was yearning for our goals to come more quickly and he was worried about the future of his love life. The blessing he gave me told me that God is pleased with the goals that I have and He smiles upon my enthusiasm toward reaching them but that He also wants me to focus more on the present. I was told that the experiences and relationships I enjoy while living in our current apartment will become precious memories but that I will miss out on that if I don’t live fully in the moment.

So, I’ve been trying to make mental course corrections this week. I’ve been thinking of teachings of Jesus such as “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin…. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” And how He taught His disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” rather than pray for tomorrow’s bread. I’ve also been thinking about gratitude and some of the teachings of Buddhism. I love how Buddhists recognize that everything will decay and pass away but rather than be pessimistic about this, they use it as a reason to be profoundly grateful that things do exist as they do now. This attitude can help one live with wonder in the moment.

This doesn’t mean that I’m giving up on planning or saying, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” I still believe that “if ye are prepared ye shall not fear” and still hold on to the goals we have for the future. But I was worrying too much about if we were doing enough to prepare for those goals. That worry was fear and it wasn’t helpful. We will steadily do what we need to do to reach our goals but we won’t worry about it. We’ll enjoy now and make memories now.

All of this makes me think about what Stephen Colbert said on Tuesday night about the election. If you haven’t watched it, then head on over and check it out. It’s great! He talks about how maybe the internet has created a world where we’re all politicking too much and we’re not really living. He’s not saying that we shouldn’t do our due part to be informed, vote, and influence policy in good directions but he is saying that we need to spend the majority of our time living. We need to live now.

So, I’m trying to make “live in the moment” more than a cliché. I’m not yet sure how to do that entirely. And would very much appreciate any advice from any of you. In the meantime, I went with my kids to the park the other night. We ran on the sidewalk that encircles the park over and over again, jumping over each crack. We all laughed and, in that moment, there was nothing in the world other than us, laughter, and connection. It was pretty great. We were alive.

On the Folly of Underestimating the Merits of Gratitude

I didn't use to care much for the idea of "gratitude". I thought it was a pretty cliche concept, limited to the trite lists people make during Thanksgiving and well-intended Sunday school lessons. So many other virtues seemed so much more powerful and important. Like the virtue of charity. There's a powerful concept. The word embodies the idea of loving people in the noblest, purist way possible and is described with phrases like "never faileth", "thinketh no evil", "rejoiceth in the truth", "endureth all things", and "the pure love of Christ". Now, that's a virtue with umph. But gratitude just seemed so ... cute and nice ... but not that important.

I remember the first time I thought there might be more to gratitude. I was showing a cut of a documentary I made to a small test audience. The doc was about Gladys

Alard, a very active octogenarian Cuban refugee who fled her homeland when former college crush Fidel Castro took over. She came to the States where she now lives a vibrant life full of service and Salsa dancing. There's a part where Gladys is loading the dishwasher and says something about how grateful she is to the Lord for the dishwashers we have in this blessed country. I put that moment in there because I thought it was endearing. But one of my friends in the audience saw more. She let out a sound that said she'd heard something profound (you know the sound I'm talking about: it's that sort of a gasp mixed with a tone of inspiration and says, "I just learned something important").

After the screening, we were talking about how impressive it is that Gladys is so active at her age (as illustrated by one moment in the film when we see her busting Salsa moves that put most 20-somethings to shame as she says, "I am 82 years old but I feel like I'm about 50"). One of the points I assert in the film is that Gladys has so much life in her old age because she loves so much (remember, I was big on the virtue of charity) but my friend (the one who made the inspired gasp sound) surprised me when she said that she felt like Gladys is so active because she is so grateful.

That hit me hard. Maybe there's more to this gratitude thing.

Then, a few years later, I was working on a reality TV show called The Generations Project that followed people as they learned about their ancestors. The research for one of the episodes put me in contact with Utah's resident Japanese Buddhist priest (he's Jodo Shinshu Buddhist to be precise). I was intrigued by the fact that, according to Jodo Shinshe Buddhism, gratitude is the greatest virtue there is. They talk a lot about "living with gratitude". Every doctrinal stance I discussed with them goes back to gratitude. They believe that gratitude is the ultimate motivator that will help one to do good.

The priest explained to me that the incense in the Buddhist temple represents the good influences in one's life (such as those received from one's parents and ancestors and from Buddha himself) and that, when one leaves the temple, he or she has the scent of the incense on them still, representing how those influences stay with us. Because we're grateful for them, we do good things and thus their smell is still upon us. He explained that gratitude for life will motivate one to be good to one's parents. Gratitude for one's current possessions will make theft and coveting unappealing. Gratitude for the good things one enjoys in his or her country will inspire patriotism.

The priest further explained that Buddhism focuses on how temporary everything is. But this does not mean that things do not have value. In fact, Buddhism sees more value in things because they are so temporary. Since my dinner table will not last forever, I need to take extra care to appreciate it now. Appreciate everything about it: how well its legs hold up its top, how well it supports the weight of the food I eat, how well it elevates the food to the level at which I sit so I can eat comfortably ... you get the idea. Buddhism helped me to see that gratitude is more than a list of good things. Gratitude is seeing every good thing in the world. Gratitude is being content with life as it is. Gratitude is happiness because gratitude sees and enjoys everything good that is here right now.

My sister recently posted this link on Facebook. It is a Huff Post article by one Rachel Mary Stafford in which she talks about how her busy, task-oriented personality blinded her from seeing and enjoying all the good around her. She describes how her very whimsical daughter helped her awaken to the need to slow down and see all the beautiful things around her. Rachel Stafford doesn't use the word "gratitude" but she's describing the same concept I learned from the Buddhist priest.

Then comes the issue of expressing gratitude through prayer. About two weeks ago, I read this article by Henry Eyring, a leader of my Faith. He talks about how Jesus promised that "the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you" (John 14:26). Eyring pointed out that one way that God speaks to us is by giving us blessings so, if we want it, God is happy to send the Holy Ghost to bring to us remembrance of our blessings.

Prior to reading this, I was struggling to feel like my prayers were very sincere. I felt this was the solution I was looking for. I decided to begin every prayer with a petition to be able to remember the blessings God had given me recently. Rather than fill my prayers with trite phrases like "I thank Thee for this day", I began thanking God for really specific things like being able to have certain fun experiences with my kids, for being able to accomplish certain difficult tasks, or for specific ways He has helped me become a better person. What's most important is that I found it much easier to really feel gratitude for these things and that made my prayers so much more powerful.

I do not believe in a God who commands us to thank Him for things so He can feel good about Himself. I believe He gave the commandment to express thanks in our prayers because He knows doing so helps us be happier. Being more grateful in my prayers has helped me to be more grateful. It is easier to appreciate all the good around me. Like Gladys Alard, the Buddhist priest (I sure wish I remembered his name), and Rachel Mary Stafford, living gratefully has enabled me to really live.

And thus I feel the need to offer Gratitude an apology. I am sorry I underestimated you. You are not trite or dull. You are so much more than nice. You hold your own beside your sister virtue Charity. In fact, can we even have Charity without your special contentment that leads us to envy not and to bear, believe, hope, and endure all things? Charity is preceded by meekness and I can think of few better ways to become meek than to choose to live in awe at all God has given. Thank you, Gratitude, for your patience with me. I hope to never underestimate you again.