True Repentance

I read a post at By Common Consent about a married man with a non-member wife. They have 3 kids, 8, 10 & 12. They started attending church and the wife is interested in joining the church. He meets with the Bishop and confesses an affair 7 years ago that was short lived and he has not repeated those actions again. He has been faithful for the last 7 years. If his wife found out, it is likely that she would divorce him. Those are the salient points, more details can be read here. The post then asks what you tell him as Bishop?

My opinions have been on both sides of the issue, to tell his wife or not. The "repentance" process outlined by the church says that he needs to tell his wife. However, is this really the best thing for the family? I remember the first time I heard a similar situation. I was listening to Dr. Laura about 10 years ago or so. She had a caller who was LDS. She did not let him tell him the name of his religion but he provided enough details such as wearing garments and calling his pastor a Bishop that anyone who was LDS would have known and understood his dilemma. In this case, he had a wife who's father had been unfaithful to his mother. She had brow beaten him and showed a severe lack of trust in their relationship. Somewhat in retaliation he had an affair. He did not say how long it lasted, but intimated it was short. They had young children, but I can't remember ages or number except they were very young. He regretted it. He asked if he should confess to his leader and said that his wife would have to know because he would likely be excommunicated or other parts of the LDS repentance process that he couldn't hide from her. She had been quite clear that if he ever had an affair, she would divorce him. At the time Dr. Laura's response bothered me. She said that he was never to tell his wife or anyone else. He has young children and his first responsibility was to hold the family together for the sake of the children.

It bothered me. How could he possibly repent if he didn't follow the "process" and how could he just flat out not tell his wife. Times have changed and so have I. My understanding of repentance had deepened and so has my understanding of family life. I did not agree then, but I do now.

Preserving a family for the sake of the children is ultimately more important. As long as the couple can maintain a household where the children feel safe, then the children are better off living in a two parent home. There I go, I have just angered the liberals, but its true. I look at my own son, he benefits from having both of our influences and guidance. Ultimately, it comes down to the antithesis of what caused the affair. You have to be unselfish. Put your own need for absolving guilt away because you need to do something for your kids. It is a no brainer.

Will this work in every situation. No. There are some situations where children are better off not having one or the other parent around. Where they are dangerous and need to be supervised. However, here are two men that regret their actions, one who has proven his faithfulness for 7 years. Look at his situation. At the time, his wife would have just had their third child so they had 3 children under the age of 4. They were probably overworked, underpaid and he needed something. Through his affair, he learned that he really loved his wife and he turned his horrid mistake into positive action. I can't excuse the mistake. It was horribly wrong and quite clearly what the church considers the sin next to murder. For good reason. Look at the mess it caused or could cause. There was no excuse, period! Yet he brought some good out of the situation.

Chances are neither wife was perfect and their actions contributed to their husband's bad decision. I do not blame them as it was the husbands actions and the wives are not ultimately responsible. However, they could also change to provide an more loving environment where a husband doesn't feel a need to seek elsewhere. Men are really simple creatures. We just want to be loved. With all the bravado and bread winning, men need the comfort and security a good woman can provide. They need to feel safe and like they are doing a good job. Some counselling in both situations would be warranted. They should work on improving their relationship.

Like I said in one of my comments to the original blog post. Often we get too caught up in the how to's of repentance. We look at the actions we need to accomplish to be considered absolved of sin by the church. However, we often, very often, very very, often (made my point yet) miss the true point of repentance. That is to change. The word means change. The first man had demonstrated change and had shown his commitment for 7 years. The second had the chance to show change over time. The church process is meant to facilitate change. We must not forget that. If that change has taken place or comes by other means, what is the purpose in putting someone through that process. The process does not save them, their commitment to the Saviour and willingness to change does. As Jesus said to the adulteress, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." - John 8:11

Failing to Fail

Failure is part of life. Failure is good. I have failed plenty of times at plenty of different things, and my life has been the better because of it. Failure is an opportunity to learn and should be viewed as a positive rather than a negative. That doesn't mean it hurts any less, but rather than dwelling on those feelings of uselessness and defeat, we should channel them into something more productive.

I remember the first time I even heard the concept that failure was not a bad thing. I was 27 or 28 years old!! I was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. He talked about failure and how it was an opportunity to learn. It was at that point, I looked back on all my failures and realized all of the things I had learned not to do. My life was better because I had learned that some things didn't lead to a better life. From then on, I couldn't look at my failures as negatives because I allowed them to teach me.

I recently had a conversation with a friend that was down because his life was not what he envisioned. He had failed to reach some of his goals through a series of life choices both in and out of his control. I felt bad for him, but I also realized that sometimes our failures cause a permanent change in the course of our lives. There are some failures that we cannot recover from. They cannot be fixed or undone. To deal with these instances, we must refocus our lives on what is important. SLou has been so instrumental in helping me find what was important in life. Once I focused on building personal relationships and having a happy family, the other problems of life did not seem as important. My failure to become rich and famous so far in my life, helped me to realize that I already had that which made me most happy.

Most things we try in life are not going to result in success. This morning, I attempted to win some Christmas money on the radio. This radio station is rather large and I have never had more than a busy signal. I was about to stop dialing when the thought hit, "I won't win if I don't try." Well.....I kept dialing and I finally got a ring and another and another, about 30 in total. Then the line busied out. I could have been distraught because I didn't win. However, I was way to stoked on the lesson I finally realized. If I don't try I won't win. That made my day. I could have been upset I wasn't caller #10, but I had actually gotten past the busy signal stage so I was excited. (Not head over heals excited because $200 would have been nice, but excited none the less.) This insignificant little example really isn't important in the grand scheme of things, but it does teach the principles we can apply to more weighty matters.

Failing to fail is just giving up. You can't accomplish anything if you don't try. Does failure hurt? Yes! Is it any less disappointing? No! If it wasn't disappointing then we wouldn't be motivated to succeed. The test is in how we deal with it. Our culture has set the precedent that failure is bad and that you are less of a person for not accomplishing your goals. That is a sad state of being. To always be depressed because life threw at you a chance to learn and grow. The plant that grows strongest is the one that has had to dig its roots deep to reach the water. The one that has had to grow thick and strong to stay standing in the storm. The one that has grown to reach toward the light. Do not be discouraged over failure, simply learn from it and grow. No go out and fail!!

Huked on foniks wurkt fer me!

So as a break from the more heavy topics of the last few days, I thought I would share a little story about Bubs from last night. Either in a fit of holiday cheer or a last minute dash to get Christmas all put together, SLou and Bubs were wrapping the last of my holidays gifts. That is gifts for me and not from me, I think. She had just labelled one for me and handed Bubs the pen and he added "POPA". Now he has been practicing his letters and some of the sounds, but at 3.5 years we haven't really pushed him to learn to read quite yet. However, he spends time watching all of those educational kids shows such as Super Why?. It came as no surprise that he could write a few letters, he does that all of the time (though he has this fascination with writing right to left, not sure about that.). But when SLou yelled down the stairs to tell me the he had just written "pope-ah," Bubs quickly corrects her and says he wrote "papa." Say them out loud and it will make sense.

So either Bubs has finally made the mental step to equate letters with words or it was a fluke. If it was true then he had learned the word "POP" and decided that an "A" at the end would make "POPA." Which also means he is beginning to understand phonics. Though the possibility exists that it was just a random group of letters as he had been writing random combinations of letters a few days before and telling me they were words. Personally, I would like to think my son is brilliant, so I'm going to assume he actually meant it. I might try to get him to write it again, but there is usually not a repeat performance. Thankfully, we are getting him Hooked on Phonics for Christmas. He might actually learn something, or he could keep watching TV. And they say watching TV is a waste of time........

Changeable God?

I had a big post written and it kind of went off topic, so I will save it as a draft and see if I want to use it later. I was reading something today about God not changing yet he does things differently from time to time. That elicited a thought, that it is not God that changes, but man that changes. God is the same yesterday, today and forever, but fallible man forces him to adjust his plan to suite our needs.

Many people will cite the fact that God does not change to criticize changes within the church. The post I read earlier specifically mentioned polygamy. Other topics could be Blacks and the priesthood, changes in the temple ceremony, reorganization of church leadership structures and most of all perceived changes in doctrine. All of these can be explained another way, man has changed so God must adapt.

The first hurdle is determining exactly what God want to say to us. Strangely, that really isn't always easy. Even in the scriptures their are things that sometimes seem to contradict each other. As men, we sometimes don't listen or understand. God calls holy men as prophets, but even they are subject to the weaknesses of mortality. They do their best and seek to better understand God. God has promised that he will not let them lead us astray, but he does not promise that they will tell us everything or even that they will be told everything all at once.

While we should listen to the prophets and heed their counsel, we should not abdicate our responsibility to seek communication with God. The prophet is not there to be our go-between, that is Christ's role and we should seek truth from God through Christ under the direction of his prophets.

Sometimes, people will attribute things to the unchanging laws of God that really aren't a part of them. They will say that something cannot be changed because it is God's law, but in reality it is not. It is simply our finite, mortal, flawed human understanding of the eternities. A good example is the changes in the temple ceremonies. They teach eternal principles and have eternal consequences, but the exact practice of them is being tweaked on a fairly regular basis. In many ways the mechanics are changed to make it more accessible to more people while the principles taught remain unchanged.

The biggest problem is that man is not constant. We change our minds and wills throughout our entire life. We are learning and growing. We do not have the wisdom and eternities of experience, in our mortal state, that God does. Though we lived before we were here and we will live again after death, we started this mortal experience with almost nothing. We are learning from scratch here. We cannot hope to obtain the Godlike wisdom and perfection in the mere 80 or so years we live here. Thus, we are in need of constant direction.

That direction changes to our needs. It guides us to help us live the eternal principles and even to help us learn what those principles are. Our limited ability to perceive the will of God makes life a circuitous path rather than a straight one. God has allowed us to live the eternal principle of agency, that means he has to deal with that choice. So we won't be perfect. God knows this and has planned for it already. We should not despair, rather celebrate that we have the chance to learn by our experience, even if God has to change his instructions to meet our needs once in a while.

Did they really fall away?

Who has fallen away? What does it really mean to fall away? Are those that are struggling really falling away?

I have had struggles in my day with the gospel. I have had my doubts from time to time. However, those times of struggle became a strength to me. It is where I learned to hold to my testimony. It is where I learned to become a better person and treat others with more respect.

Perhaps we should stop looking at people that "fall away" from the church with such pity. They are just hear learning the lessons of life. I think that God knows exactly where he placed them and what they are experiencing. He has not given up, he is teaching them.

Through all of the dark times of my life, I have never felt truly alone. I have always felt guided as though I had something to learn. It was hard at times. Now when situations come up, instead of despairing at my lack of faith, I look for the lesson and I find the light again.

Civility

While going through several of my draft blog posts, I found this one that I wrote shortly after the last General Conference. I thought it was time to share it.

I wasn't going to do it! I was going to stay out of the fray and let other battle out their very deeply held convictions and feelings about a certain talk at General Conference. I have resisted. I have ignored Facebook group requests and postings by friends on both sides of the issue. But, I can't any longer. I am tired of the lack of civility in discussing anything.

Elder Boyd K. Packer's latest General Conference Address (text link coming soon) has caused quite the stir. I'm not going to comment upon my opinions about it other than saying I was not offended by it and found it a well prepared, well thought out civil discourse. There was nothing hateful, mean, spiteful or said as a personal attack. While all may not share his opinion (Even I don't subscribe to everything he said), he did not present them in a way that degraded people.

Why then do we have to debase ourselves in uncivilized discussions? Why do we resort to ad hominem attacks at each other. I'm not complaining about just those that oppose what he said, but those that are in support as well. Why can we not accept that when someone thinks differently than us, they are not necessarily stating that we are bad and evil?

Civil discussion is the only way that we will begin to bridge the gaps, heal the wounds and move forward.

Good Rebellion

Can those that rebel against the church be doing it a favor? Yes! Let me clarify that I speak of the body of the church, the men and women that make up its general membership and not the core doctrines and ordinances or even the organization as a whole. Many people find some way of expressing that the LDS Church's core doctrines are true but sometimes the people aren't. Meaning that we should accept what the church teaches and not necessarily the way the lay membership behaves and acts. However, the beliefs and actions of the lay membership are as much a part of the fabric of the church as the core doctrines. It is a cop out and excuse to think that ones actions as a member of the church do not directly reflect upon the good name of that church for better or for worse.

My mother had a friend who brought a visiting family member to our home. The family member saw inside the refrigerator when my mother opened it to get something out. As my mother was closing it, this lady ran over opened the door and looked inside. She exclaimed, "You are the first Mormon I've seen that did have beer in your fridge." As looking in people's refrigerators is not a common practice and she did live in Utah, she probably had met many that didn't have beer in their refrigerators. Though the ones close to her that she spent time with did. Even though it was a small group compared to the whole church, it significantly shaped her view of Mormons as a whole because she knew that we aren't supposed to drink.

The Lord found it important enough that the church share the same beliefs that he spent a great deal of time speaking to the people in 3 Nephi about their doctrine.

3 Nephi 18:34 And I give you these commandments because of the disputations which have been among you. And blessed are ye if ye have no disputations among you.

3 Nephi 11:35 - 36 Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and I bear record of it from the Father; and whoso believeth in me believeth in the Father also; and unto him will the Father bear record of me, for he will visit him with fire and with the Holy Ghost. And thus will the Father bear record of me, and the Holy Ghost will bear record unto him of the Father and me; for the Father, and I, and the Holy Ghost are one.

Christ wishes us to be one of heart, mind and soul. That we may embrace and share his doctrine. People sharing common beliefs is a major tenant of the gospel and is one of the many reasons for correlation. While in the bloggernacle and DAMU, correlation is often used as a dirty word, it is an attempt by weak, mortal men to unify the doctrine of the church. To seek to obey the commandment of God to have no disputations among us.

The other point that must be established is that we learn "line upon line and precept upon precept." Things that are clear to some, may not yet be clear to others. We learn piece by piece growing in faith and doctrine. This causes some discordance between members as some have different understandings than others. We must accept that no one person has all the answers, including the church leadership. Even the prophets and apostles have to inquire from the Lord from time to time his will concerning matters and points of doctrine. It will take an eternity for us to gain the knowledge and understanding we must have to become like God.

So where does rebellion fit in? I'm not talking about out and out apostasy, where someone rejects God and actively works against the church. I'm talking about those, especially in the younger generation, that stand up for what they believe. They state that some of the old, antiquated ideas that are often bandied about in the church are false or incorrect and we should seek a more correct way of living or acting. There are many leaders, especially on the local level, that rule their dominion and try to force obedience through silly rules or practices that are not part of the core doctrines of the church. Thank goodness for those that stand up and rebel against those practices. That is why we fought the War in Heaven, we stood up for our freedom to worship and learn.

I have noticed a definite shift in the thinking of the church and its membership in recent years. There are more of those that are not willing to just sit there and take it, but want to stand up for the truth and right. I see the transparency opening up in the leadership with the publishing of the new Church Handbook of Instructions. They listened to the cry for more openness and a better understanding of the workings of the church.

You may not think that one voice can change a decades old incorrect practice, but when that one voice joins with the other voices in courage and strength it can create a big change. Remember the Lord works through small and simple things. Your small and simple voice can help the Lord work His purposes. We must constantly be seeking for Zion and the truth. We have not made it yet and so changes must be made. Even the church as a whole must grow and develop as an organization as much as its individual members. Though some of our beliefs differ, we are a group of Saints seeking the Lord and we should continue to seek to be one in him. If not for the voices that stand up and "rebel" against wrong ideas that seem to creep into the hearts of some, we would not continue to move forward.

Happiness

Much has transpired over the last few years of my life and even the last day or two that has caused me to realize that I am happy. I once wasn't happy, but now I am. It's not that life's challenges have gone away and life has become more simple. In fact, just the opposite. Between Bubs and Slou (who are wonderful), bills, a career, a business, a church calling, a church assignment and so forth, life has become more hectic and busied. One would think that my level of happiness would have diminished because I didn't have as much time for myself. What I realized is just the opposite, I'm boring and would rather spend time with others.

One major misconception with happiness is that people think external sources will make them happy. It could be toys, money or even other people. They think they will be happy when such and such happens or when this problem goes away. The awful truth is that happiness starts with you. You must want to be happy. Let me say that again, you must truly want to be happy. If you have some reason for remaining unhappy, then you will never be happy. Second, you must change the attitudes that cause your unhappiness.

Another major misconception is that being happy somehow shields you from the atrocities of life or that those that are happy don't have any problems. Again, not true. A happy person still has sadness, hurt, anger and heartache. They just have learned to deal with them in healthy ways so they don't become what life is about. Happiness is not a moment to moment emotion, but rather a general state of being.

Though bordering on trite, the old glass half empty/half full euphemism is quite accurate. Those that are happy tend to find the positive purposes in every situation. From a Gospel perspective, they see the light in the darkness and find the lessons in trials. Everything in life is a lesson to help them learn and grow. They enjoy the knowledge and lessons they receive.

It is not an exhaustive list, but here are a few key points that will help you find happiness:

1. You grow into happiness, not just find it somewhere. It is a process of changing your thoughts and ideas so that they breed contentment instead of contention.

2. You must accept yourself as you are not what you want to be. That doesn't mean you won't work on becoming better or that there are things about yourself that you don't like. It means that rather than agonizing over your weaknesses you accept that you have them and accept that as you work on them you will become more like the person you want to be.

3. You must be selfless. The key to ultimate happiness is looking beyond yourself. Having a purpose beyond your own happiness. That is why you grow into happiness. If you are too focused on fixing 'you' or making 'you' happy, then you miss the point. It is more that you focus outside of yourself and then down the road you realize that you have become happy.

4. Have a plan and a purpose. Set goals for your life and in all areas of your life. Know what you are going to do each day.

5. Lastly, have fun! Really, find time to have fun and spend time having fun with others.