Teaching the Great Fundamental

As a Latter-day Saint, I believe that the Lord has revealed some wonderful things in the last two centuries. Through Joseph Smith and follow through by other prophets, the Lord has given the world the Book of Mormon, the Word of Wisdom, temples, eternal families, knowledge of how to preserve those families, and a gamut of other doctrines that not only enrich my life but are the basis of everything that matters to me.

With all of these wonderful doctrines at our disposal, we might fall into the trap of forgetting what Joseph Smith taught gave life to them all. He famously said:

“The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it” (Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, 49).

Just as Christ taught that He is the Vine and the disciples the branches (see John 15:1-7), so are all doctrines of the Gospel branches or appendages of the Vine that is Jesus Christ. If we try to understand or live any principle of the Gospel without seeing it in the context of Christ and His Atonement then "there will be no life nor substance nor redemption in them” (Boyd K. Packer, “The Mediator”).

Jamie and I have noted this principle in action frequently of late. We’ve sat in lessons where, for some reason, the Spirit just didn’t reach that peak you want when you give three hours of your Sunday to marching kids off to church. But then, just recently, we’ve participated in fantastic lessons where the Spirit was so strong and we’ve commented that what those lessons had in common was being centered on Christ and His Atonement.

For example, earlier this month, there was a Gospel Doctrine lesson on Joseph Smith’s time in Liberty Jail. The teacher and the class members testified of how Jesus Christ understood Joseph’s trials and all of our trials because He has been through them and thus has the moral authority to advise us in them. The Spirit was so strong as we testified and learned about Christ and connected all principles back to Him. The “look what I know” or “look how right I am” sort of comments that sometimes usurp Gospel Doctrine class were gone as we all unified in meekness before the Son of God.

Then, just last Sunday, while visiting family in Idaho, a sacrament meeting speaker gave a talk on the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel. As she talked about faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost, she connected each one back to Christ, both His example of the principle and how the principle gives us access to His Atonement. The Spirit was so strong as she spoke and I wondered to myself how more of us could do a better job of connecting whatever principle we’re assigned to teach to the Atonement of the Savior.

And then, revelation hit me like lightning. I wrote it down as quickly and accurately as I could. The revelation consisted of questions I can ask myself as I prepare a lesson or sermon:

• How does Christ’s Atonement make this principle possible?
• How does this principle help us use Christ’s Atonement?
• How is this principle symbolic of Christ’s Atonement?
• How did/does Christ exemplify this principle?

For example, I will be teaching an upcoming Elders quorum lesson called “Continue in the Great Process of Learning”. I need to ask myself questions like “How does Christ’s Atonement make learning possible?”, “How does learning help us use Christ’s Atonement?”, or “How did/does Christ exemplify learning”. I can find answers to those questions in scriptures such as Doctrine & Covenants 88:5-11, Matthew 11:29, Luke 2:52, and the words of President Hinckley in the lesson itself.

As I begin my lesson with a testimony of how learning is connected to the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the answers to the questions above throughout the lesson (which should be easy to do with any true principle) then the Spirit will come in abundance and we elders will understand the principles taught in their proper and Living context.

All of this goes back to the sacrament prayers. Every sacrament meeting, Latter-day Saints consume the emblems of the Savior’s Atonement and promise twice to “always remember him [the Son of God]” and, as a result, are promised in return that “they may always have his Spirit to be with them” (Doctrine and Covenants 20:77, 79). One important way to keep that covenant is to ensure that every lesson, talk, and testimony we give ties back to the atoning sacrifice of the Savior and, as we do so, the Lord will keep His side of the covenant and the Spirit will abound in our meetings.

The Miracle of Loving Oneself

I am a big advocate for the concept of forgetting oneself and serving others. I have learned from personal experience that I am happiest when I’m other-minded. Focusing on the happiness of others has helped me overcome depression and minimize stress. My soul resonates with the exhortation of Jesus: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”.

But here’s the thing about the wording of that mandate. It says one must love one’s neighbor as oneself, no more than oneself. When I noticed this, it threw me off because I’ve been such an advocate of forgetting oneself to be other-minded. But it makes sense because my experience has also taught me that I can only love others to the degree and capacity with which I love myself.

Let me illustrate how important this is by pointing out three disastrous scenarios that come about because people try to love others without loving themselves:

Exhaustion: Too many of us try to help others without taking care of ourselves and end up getting burnt out. It’s like writing checks from an account without any money in it. The checks are impotent. Similarly, the love we try to give others is impotent if it is not backed by a full account of healthy love for ourselves. We become exhausted and are less helpful to other people because we don’t have enough self to give.

Abuse: Many abusers use the principle of “forget yourself and love your partner” to guilt the other person into sticking around and suffering the abusive relationship. This manipulation works because the promotion of “selflessness” is not being tempered with the idea of loving oneself. Thus, the beautiful principle of other-mindedness is mutated into something ugly and evil that allows the abuser to selfishly hurt others.

Incompleteness: As a high school teacher, I worry that some of the teenagers I observe enter in romantic relationships to try to complete themselves and it just doesn’t work. They end up being an emotional drain on the other person (and it’s really weird when both people are emotionally draining each other). I think it is better to be happy with ourselves and have developed a secure sense of self to the point that we have something to give to a partner rather than try to use romantic relationships to complete ourselves. For a beautiful sermon on this topic, check out Shel Silverstein’s “The Missing Piece Meets the Big O”. It’s great.

Now, I want to be really clear here that I’m not advocating for selfishness—I’m advocating for a healthy, confident love of oneself that is both a prerequisite for and a product of selflessness. And I know I just stated a contradiction. If it’s the product of selflessness, how can it also be a prerequisite for it? Does that mean we’re stuck in the plight of the young person who needs work experience to get a job but needs a job to get work experience?

Love is a transcendent principle. In fact, it is perhaps the most transcendent principle I have ever engaged with. And transcendent principles are usually rife with contradictions because they exist on a higher, spiritual plane and our intellects are limited to linear, one-thing-at-a-time processes. To a one-dimensional line, a two-dimensional circle is quite the extraordinary thing, rife with “contradictions” that defy the rules of the plane on which it exists—and imagine how both the line and the circle feel about a sphere! For us mortals existing in a one-dimensional world, so to speak, two or three-dimensional love is quite the miracle and quite the contradiction so it’s going to be hard to define and nail down at times.

But I know from experience that if we will engage with love for others and for ourselves, we will discover a completeness of love that will raise us to higher places and fill us with joy. And when we practice love for others, it will help us feel greater love for ourselves just as when we practice true love for ourselves, we’ll feel more able and willing to show love to others. If we try to love ourselves without loving others, we will probably end up in a selfish place. But, similarly, if we try to love others without loving ourselves, we’ll engage with a hollow fragment of love that will, ultimately, leave us burnt out, broken, or unsatisfied.

Christmas Update

At the beginning of December, I posted this post on our family Christmas traditions. I said I’d be posting more posts about how our traditions are going but honestly have not made time for it because I’ve been enjoying Christmas time so much! This one will probably be the only one I do before Christmas.

Our daily Christmas Devotionals have brought the Christmas spirit into our home and family more quickly and more powerfully than any year before! Every time someone asks me how I'm doing, I enthusiastically say I'm doing great and that I love this time of year. I find myself telling everyone how awesome our Christmas Devotionals are! I hope I don't come off as bragging—I just want to share it because it's making us so happy. It has been so wonderful to sing worshipful Christmas hymns each day and read scriptures together each day and set goals to serve people each day! I’ve learned that singing sacred music before reading scriptures really helps us kids get into scripture study more.

Also, our Church is doing this amazing Advent social media campaign called #LightTheWorld. It complements our Christmas Devotionals so well because each day there is a video that highlights something Christ did and how we can do it too in our own way! We’ve added these 30 second videos to our daily devotionals and have used the theme of each one to inform the gift we give the Savior that day.

The greatest blessing that has come of this is watching our kids get excited about doing good things. When the daily theme was “Heal the Sick”, one of our children chose to take all of the money in his little bank and give it to Primary Children’s hospital. When the theme was “Clothe the Naked”, one of them went and got some clothes and wanted to give them to people who don’t have clothes. One child likes to hold the baby Jesus from the nativity while we sing the daily Christmas hymn and always says, “I help Jesus” when we ask what gift we’ll give to the Savior each day. Seeing them do these things is such a blessing because they are doing them of their own accord.

Through all of this, I am reflecting a lot on Ebenezer Scrooge and how Dickens said that he learned to keep Christmas all year long. I wonder if there are aspects of our Christmas Devotionals that we should do even after Christmas is over. I don’t want them to become cliché or too normal for our kids so I think we’ll definitely have some aspects of the devotionals that are unique to December but maybe we can sing before scripture study all year long and maybe we can set and report on goals with scripture study somehow the rest of the year.

How have your Christmas traditions gone this year? What do you think it means to keep Christmas all year long?

Christmas Traditions

The Christmas season is such a magical time. There is something special in the air that makes me feel wonderful. But, of course, it isn’t special just because the calendar says December. There isn’t some arbitrary special feeling that comes upon people once a year because of the earth’s position in relation to the sun. It’s special because of how we as individuals, families, and a society act and think differently at this time of year.

That said, during our first three years of marriage, Jamie and I had to fight each year to “feel the Christmas magic”. It would get to be halfway into December and we’d realize that we felt terribly normal. We yearned to feel that special something during Christmas. Each year, we’d pray for help to feel the Christmas spirit and then we’d be lead to serve someone in need and worship Christ in some special way and then that special Christmas feeling would come.

After a few years of this, we learned our lesson and decided it was time to institutionalize some family Christmas traditions focused on service and on Christ. We began what we call our “Christmas Devotionals”. We made 30+ tree ornaments that each have a Christmas hymn on them as well as a scripture. The scriptures are segments of the Christmas story in the New Testament or prophesies from the Old Testament or Book of Mormon about Christ (you can read the list of scriptures and hymns we use here). We also bought an inexpensive notebook we use as a Christmas diary.

Each year, soon after Thanksgiving, we decorate our home for Christmas. We put up the Christmas tree but intentionally leave it just a little sparse with ornaments. Then, each evening until Christmas, one of the kids picks one of the special ornaments we made. We sing the Christmas hymn on it and read the scripture. Then, we get out the Christmas diary and each write down one thing we’ll do the next day to give a gift to the Savior. The gift is often in the form of helping others in some way. The next night, as we do the devotional, we talk about how it went giving those gifts and write down new ones.

We’ve learned from experience that the actions we do to give gifts to Jesus is the key to the whole thing bringing the Christmas spirit. One year, we decided to just do the hymn and scripture and skip writing down the gift. We wanted to speed up the process to accommodate small children. But we found that, without the commitment to action, we didn’t feel the magic of the season like we wanted. To go from hollow to holy, we had to not only sing and read scripture but also give of ourselves.

Other traditions have also helped us focus on Christ at this time of year. For example, we try to involve our chidren each year in giving gifts to a family in need. Jamie and I have a tradition of saying we’ll read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol each year. We have a tradition of not doing so each year—but this year will be different….

Personal traditions are great too! I like to dedicate my December personal scripture study to reading one of the New Testament Gospels or the “Fifth Gospel” in the Book of Mormon (which tells the story of Christ’s post-resurrection visit to the Americas). I rotate through one Gospel each year. I enjoy reflecting on Christ’s life, example, and sacrifice each December to remind me why His birth matters so much. Now that I’m blogging more, I’ve decided to try out a new tradition. For the month of December, I’ve revamped my blog to add some Christmas cheer and I’ll be posting short reports on special experiences we have as we go about our Christmas traditions.

Of course, it’s good to have Christmas traditions that are just fun too! We like to give gifts of course. We watch Home Alone together each year along with the Doctor Who Christmas Special. Every year, I like to welcome in the season by posting the funny parody video on Facebook. Fun and joy and laughter are part of the magic of Christmas along with service and Christ. But we’ve found that putting Christ (which includes serving Him and His children) at the heart of our festivities animates and quickens all the other pleasantries of the season.*

I hope this blog post will start a helpful thread of sharing tradition ideas with one another. So, please comment: what Christmas or Holiday traditions do you have? How do they help you feel the magic of the season?

*This makes me think of a prophetic quote given in a 1988 Christmas address, “...men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace. Whoever will lose his life in the service of God will find eternal life” (Ezra Taft Benson, “Gifts and Expectations”, Ensign, December 1988). I highly recommend reading the entire article.