Tell Me What You Stand For

If we preach an anti message we might as well be advertising for the opposition. If our own message is not clearly better than the other message then we better rethink our own message.

When we preach an anti message we may inadvertently be burning the bridge that divides us from those whom we wish to convert to our own point of view. Instead of reaching out we are pushing others away. Challenging another point of view is not a bad idea, but we should always carry our own banner before us, lest our own war be lost in the emotion of the battle.

When we preach an anti message it is like asking others to just trust us that there is something else better without really having an option at the moment. Not many of us are going to be excited about letting go of our dollar if we don't know what we are buying into.

We can rally around the battle cry, "In memory of our God, our Family, and our Country." But we are less likely to be willing to sacrifice our all on, "You are wrong and we know it."

Tell me what you stand for and I will know what you are against.

A Broken Heart Comes Naturally, But A Contrite Spirit...

Sometimes we are asked to bare a burden we thought we did not ask for. We assumed that our life would go as we had planned it, and our hopes and dreams, whatever they may be, slip from our grasp and fall to the floor shattered, often by those we love. Our hearts are left broken and it is apparent that we can not fix it.

Our Savior has asked us for a broken heart and a contrite spirit. (2 Nephi 2:7; 3 Nephi 9:20, 12:19.) It seems to me that God has given us all a heart that is easily broken, but a spirit that is not so easily tamed. When our hearts are broken a piece of us dies inside, but what we often fail to realize is the reward that awaits us once we learn to submit ourselves to the will of God.

In a husband and wife relationship we think that everything should be peaches and cream. We have a picture of what our life is going to be like with them and then we get married and we find out that it is hard, sometimes seemingly harder than we can bare. We may even feel that we were short changed. I believe it was meant to be that way. As our hearts are broken together we can either leave the pieces on the floor or pick them up and take them to the Lord and ask him to help us mend them.

I do believe that God does not ask us to bare more than we can bare, but often we carry much more than he asks us to carry. An unforgiving heart carries with it much more than God requires of us. It is in forgiving that our burdens are made light. Marriage has the greatest potential for both a broken heart and contrite spirit as we learn to help each other past the hurts that we inflict upon each other, and begin to realize the potential of a true companionship. It is then that we may begin to get a glimpse at how insignificant even some of the most egregious offenses really are so long as we are in the process of overcoming. 

The broken heart comes easy, it just happens. However, the contrite spirit is unnatural. It requires submission, which would seemingly contradict our desire to be free. However, in reality, submission to the will of God is the ultimate expression which leads to total freedom.

Submit yourself and you will not only find freedom, but peace. All your burdens will become light and you will have found that the shattered dreams you took to the Lord were far too small for you. What you thought was the end of any chance of happiness, was only the beginning of real happiness.

Shame Makes Us Helpless To Avoid

Shame is a string that fetters us to the stake we fear,
but feel hopeless to avoid.

Shame is an emotion we feel when we have done something dishonorable. When we ignore this emotional response and continue to participate in our dishonorable actions we begin to develop a very self destructive habit, or addiction. This addiction in the beginning could have been easily avoided had we not ignored the shame in the beginning. However, the more we feed our addiction the more it sucks the will from us to stop our actions, and shame becomes a fetter that binds us to that addiction. 

When a young elephant is captured for the purpose of enslaving it they are often tide to a small post with a rope. As a young elephant this is enough to discourage them from running away. As they grow older this massive creature could easily break the rope or possibly even pull up the post that it is bound to, but because it was conditioned early on it loses its desire try and escape. 

As human beings when we become both the hunter and the hunted we drive the stake into the ground and fetter ourselves only to find that the spirit of freedom within us begins to be awakened far too late for us to recognize what we have done to ourselves. We begin to fear the stake which we drove into the ground, because even though the string is not very strong we have become weaker than it.