Part 14 of ∞
Conference Talk Review: Saturday Afternoon - Todd Christofferson, "Abide in My Love"
This is a very nice message!
I always love Christianity when it does this. Instead of taking a happy person and making them feel worthless, as they often do, they're taking someone who's down and lifting them up. Go team. I like that a lot. Can't wait to see what he says next!The Bible tells us that “God is love.” He is the perfect embodiment of love, and we rely heavily on the constancy and universal reach of that love. As President Thomas S. Monson has expressed: “God’s love is there for you whether or not you feel you deserve love. It is simply always there.”
Oh yeah, I may have gotten carried away. The love of God has always got strings attached. He's the ideal Mormon parent of a wayward child, he feels love for us, but he doesn't let that love get in the way of his judgement. It's the same way a loving parent informs their adult child that their partner isn't welcome in their home. That parent still feels love, they just don't act on it! You know...like being gay. The important thing here, according to Christofferson, isn't about how God expresses his love (with judgement and eternal punishment...but he must feel really awful about it), it's about how we react to God's love. So if he condemns you to a lower resurrection and eternal torment, you should react with a thank you?...I think...thanks for loving me? Kind of?There are many ways to describe and speak of divine love. One of the terms we hear often today is that God’s love is “unconditional.” While in one sense that is true, the descriptor unconditional appears nowhere in scripture. Rather, His love is described in scripture as “great and wonderful love,” “perfect love,” “redeeming love,” and “everlasting love.” These are better terms because the word unconditional can convey mistaken impressions about divine love, such as, God tolerates and excuses anything we do because His love is unconditional, or God makes no demands upon us because His love is unconditional, or all are saved in the heavenly kingdom of God because His love is unconditional.
Christofferosn clears things up for us.
Let's go back to the example of parents with an adult child who is gay. Christofferson's point here is that the child has a loving home with loving parents who want to embrace and love them, but the only way they'll get to feel or abide in that love is if they can walk through the door. That door, in this example, has requirements like not being gay. You might have believed that doors are simply entrances that are completely unbiased over who can walk through them, but you would be wrong. All the adult child has to do is leave their spouse at home, pretend they aren't in a relationship, and act exactly how their parents want them to while at the house. Simple! It's the same deal with God. Stop being yourself, because you are awful, meet a check list of requirements, and then you can walk through God's door and feel all that awesome love that's waiting for you on the other side. I'm sorry for the language, I'll try to moderate myself, but Christofferson's version of god sounds like a royal prick.Jesus said: “As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. ”To “continue in” or “abide in” the Savior’s love means to receive His grace and be perfected by it. To receive His grace, we must have faith in Jesus Christ and keep His commandments, including repenting of our sins, being baptized for the remission of sins, receiving the Holy Ghost, and continuing in the path of obedience. God will always love us, but He cannot save us in our sins.
God may be full of love, but he's also full of wrath and justice. This is the great compromise, because God's not giving up on love but he's also not giving up on his version of justice. He'll love you no matter what, even as he unfortunately has to thrust you down to hell for a little torment. It's for your own good, and he just hates to do it. But that's what he used Jesus for. He went ahead and let Jesus be tortured so bad, both physically and spiritually, so that you wouldn't have to be. But just like love, taking advantage of Jesus' torture isn't free. Lol...they aren't just going to give it to you. Even that is predicated on your perfect obedience which means, in the context of Mormonism, obeying folks like Mr. Christofferson, the nice fellow kindly explaining how love works. Just do what we say and we'll give you a pass through the veil, then you can binge on all the love you want.
But there's an obvious problem with this conditional not conditional definition of god's love, it doesn't exactly match up with what we find in the New Testament. As matter of fact, this view is directly contradicted in a number of places which is why many protestant and evangelical churches have taken a very different view of love and forgiveness. Even the D&C, when speaking to the Universalist Martin Harris, claims that God's punishment is just temporary and that the threat of hell is just a motivational tactic. Christofferson has an answer for us nambypambies.
Did you catch that? There's a multi-tiered reward structure in heaven, and Jesus was just talking about the bottom floor. Yeah, you might be able to squeak by into the Telestial, but if you want the good stuff like being a God and creating planets and everything, then you need to get in line with the obedience program. See? No contradiction. Just Jesus preaching the bare minimum. Thank goodness we had Joseph Smith et al. to really flesh out and complete Jesus' teachings, otherwise we'd be screwed. Christofferson writes, "Abiding in His love will enable us to realize our full potential, to become even as He is. As President Dieter F. Uchtdorf stated: “The grace of God does not merely restore us to our previous innocent state. … His aim is much higher: He wants His sons and daughters to become like Him.” So you can take advantage of the cheap grace and get a cheap afterlife, or you can go all in and get something good.Some will argue that God blesses everyone without distinction—citing, for example, Jesus’s statement in the Sermon on the Mount: “[God] maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”15 Indeed, God does rain down upon all His children all the blessings He can—all the blessings that love and law and justice and mercy will permit. And He commands us to be likewise generous:
“I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
“That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven.”
Nevertheless, God’s greater blessings are conditioned on obedience. President Russell M. Nelson explained: “The resplendent bouquet of God’s love—including eternal life—includes blessings for which we must qualify, not entitlements to be expected unworthily. Sinners cannot bend His will to theirs and require Him to bless them in sin [see Alma 11:37]. If they desire to enjoy every bloom in His beautiful bouquet, they must repent.”
Besides this turd, which is the church's insistence that God's love has conditions, Christofferson says some nice things about forgiveness and perseverance. Quoting Dallin Oaks he writes, "The Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts—what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts—what we have become.” I like this because it really embodies this idea of becoming. We're shaped by our past, but God cares more for what we've overcome and who we've become as opposed to what we've done. If not for the whole rant about God's love having so many conditions, then I'd be tempted to label this radical acceptance.
He punctuates this thought by telling the story of Hellen Keller, one of which I'm very familiar, about how she overcame the obstacles she was born with and through perseverance learned to communicate and become an outspoken leader. But here's what I love about Helen Keller that wasn't said. She fought to give women the vote, belong to and campaigned for the Socialist Party, was an unabashed pacifist, and helped found the ACLU. Hey, she was held up as an example by an apostle, I think we're all obligated to follow her lead. Don't you think? No, just kidding, Christofferson just focused on how she learned discipline through obedience to her teacher.
Christofferson ends with an interesting factoid. The Garden of Gethsemane was a place where they kept an olive press, and apparently, when it's used the resulting oil comes out kind of red and blood like. Super cool right? Jesus was symbolically put on an olive press and literally bled from every pore...like olives.
