This past weekend was a two-fold event. First it was Pascha (Easter) and the celebration of the Risen Lord’s absolute victory over Death, Hell, and Endless Woe. Secondly, it was General Conference, a time when the entire Restored Church gathers to hear instruction from the modern Prophets and Apostles which lead the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Over the next coming weeks I will be repeatedly returning to the guidance of these seers and revelators as their inspired teachings convey to us the guidance, principles, and direction the Lord wishes us to know and do in our present day. This week I wish to focus on the talk given by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles which he gave during the Saturday Afternoon session (starting at 19:05) of the Conference. In his talk, Elder Holland addresses the problems of the world – its violence, hatred, and contention, all of which originate in Satan and wicked influences – and explains how we can find solutions to these problems can be found in the Covenant of Peace – the concepts, teachings, and ordinances that can only be fully found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the world we find wars and rumors of wars, rape, murder, greed, anger, social division, isolation, oppression, mockery, corruption, riots, mobs, and every excuse humans can think of to despise one another, kill one another, and hate our blood.
Over these, Elder Holland teaches, our Father in Heaven and the Lord Jesus Christ both weep, but they have given us both the diagnosis that causes these problems and the medicine that would treat them, eliminate them, and heal the world. Elder Holland teaches that the problems of the world are rooted in the near universal deficits of Faith, Hope, and Charity that exist amongst the human population and explains that if we really want a better world then we have to live according to the principles that will create that better world. We cannot legislate a better society into existence. We cannot point a gun at someone and demand they think and act how we wish they would think and act as that only compounds the problem of the amount of violence in the world and is not solution to it. As a result no government, no program, no law, no policy will make the world better because they never deal with the underlying problem – the corruption in the hearts of men. At best all these methods will do is create new and different ways for the same old problems to continue, if not grow worse. If we want a better world then we have to enact the principles that would create such a world, we have to live the principles of righteousness. So this article is dedicating to helping its readers do just that – to explore the principles of Faith, Hope, and Charity, how they can and need to be applied in our lives in order to create personal and universal change, and finally how all these come together to do the otherwise impossible, to create a world of peace and plenty for all people.
The Principles of Righteousness
Faith
It is important to understand that all of human society and knowledge is built off of the principle of faith. We get up each morning, go to work, spend time with our family, hang out with our friends, do everything we do because we have faith that our efforts will achieve the outcomes we desire. Even scientific study is built on faith – the faith that the laws of reality are fundamentally dependable universally and do not alter randomly or upon whim, a notion that is fundamentally unknowable and untestable and therefore built entirely upon our need to believe it is so, simple blind faith. But these are, at their core, simple faiths, shadow faiths. They aren’t efficacious in achieving the goal of creating a better world because they don’t present ways in which the world could be better. They merely depend on the genius of an imperfect being to create something better and more perfect than itself, something which cannot be done given the inherent flaws in our nature. No person or collection of people is smart enough, wise enough, or powerful enough to know what everyone wants and needs or provide those things to everyone. We cannot even make and distribute enough stuff to fix the world, how are we supposed to fix the human soul, the flaws of which are the source of most human suffering to begin with? No, our faith must be placed in something beyond ourselves if we have any hope of creating something beyond what we have already made. We must have the kind of faith that John Winthrop told his wife Margaret to have:
I know thou lookest for troubles here [meaning life here on earth] and when one affliction is over, to meet with another. But remember what our Savior tells us: BE OF GOOD COMFORT; I HAVE OVERCOME THE WORLD. See his goodness, he hath conquered our enemies before hand, and by Faith in him, we shall assuredly prevail over them all. Therefore my sweet wife, raise up thy heart, and be not dismayed at the crosses thou meetest within family affairs, or otherwise, but still fly to him, who will take up thy burden for thee. Go thou on cheerfully in obedience to his holy will, in the course he hath set thee. Peace shall come. Thou shalt rest as in thy bed and in the mean time he will not fail nor forsake thee
The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, Volume 1 pg. 428
In short, our faith must be in the Lord Jesus Christ because it is only in Him that we gain the power to weather the tempests, woes, and tribulations of life with access to wisdom, power, and comfort beyond mortality. Peace doesn’t simply become and empty theory but a reality in the heart and mind of the believer and through him or her the rest of the world.
When we have faith in Him we have faith in His teachings and in their power to transform the very hearts and natures of men such that “we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually.” (Mosiah 5:2) It is trust in this transforming power that makes the work of peace possible. The reason people resort to anger and hatred is because people believe, despite all evidence to the contrary and its universal rate of failure, that violence can be used to force people to change not just their personalities, but their very nature. People have long acknowledge the reality that Socialism can only exist through mass, continual violence and have therefore denounced it for the evils at its very core, but the reality is that all forms of the State are based upon mass, continual violence – they all are satanic. If we want to create a better world we have to give up the insanity of repeating these same failed policies endlessly and instead and faith in and enact the methods of peaceful action and change in our lives.
Faith in Jesus Christ is a principle of action that gives us the power to enact His teachings in our lives and to act according to His commands. When He commands we give up all war and killing, then we do so. When He commands us to renounce violence and trust in His protection power, then we do so. When He calls us to a life of nonviolence, then we follow. Our faith in Christ gives us power to trust in Him and His ways and the ability to love our enemies because know who they really are. They are not Jews or Gentiles, immigrants or natives, blacks or whites, rich or poor, homosexual or straight, trans or cis, Americans, Mexicans, Europeans, or Asians, etc. We are none of the invented identities that we have created, none of the fictions that we have formed to separate and divide. We are all one body, one nation, one people – the Children of God, literal spiritual brothers and sisters. And when we recognize this, when we know it, and know that the Lord suffered and died and rose again to redeem and save all of us irregardless of the mortal stupidities we have created to justify division and hatred, then we realize that nothing else matters. Our Faith if Christ gives us the truth and knowing the truth we are set free from the chains and fetters of our human lies, from our fetters of ignorance, and liberated to love one another. And when others haven’t yet realized these truths we are empowered to endure the suffering necessary to open their hearts and their eyes. Faith in Christ drives us to action, transforming our selves and then through us the world around us.
Hope
The world is a dark and cynical place, one where things like hope is often mocked and derided. Hope is seen as, at best, a sentimental sop for fools and, at worst, as a tool for the powerful to manipulate the weak. And these might be true if our hopes are based upon the ways and means of the world. As I said above, all the world’s ways have been tried and they all come back to a single method – violence – and that method has been nothing but a continual and universal failure. There is no hope in the world exactly because, being unable to overcome our own fallen and flawed natures, we have no hope of making the world into the place we wish it were. But the disciple of Christ has a source of hope that goes beyond the powers of the world which, as John Winthrop noted above, provide comfort and peace in even our most difficult trials. As the prophet Ether put it:
Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.
Ether 12:4
As we develop faith in Jesus Christ and begin the process by which our hearts and natures are transformed by Him, we find our hope for today and tomorrow increased. Why? Because we come to know that God is in control of all things. The ultimate triumph of mercy and peace is assured. And not just in the next life or in some mythic Millennial Rule, but in the present day, right now. We know the outcome, that we will one day sit at the right-hand of God, or as the Revelator explained, on the throne of God Himself. This knowledge then gives us the assurance we need to act in faith today with the surety that our actions are meaningful and efficacious. Unlike the flighty and capricious kind of hope that the world provides and upon which you can never rely upon, the hope that Christ provides is the calm and confident patience for the awaited blessings you know will come as Christ keeps His promises. In the face of violence, fear, and death this hope gives the disciple of Christ power to do for what others is impossible because they are always too afraid (of being robbed, of being attacked, of being killed, among other fears) to enact the kind of powerful and effective nonviolent changes that are necessary to reject the ways of the world and replace them with the methods of peace. Like the prophets of old, who had hope for the coming Christ millennia before his birth and maintained their hope in Him despite never seeing Him, we too have a hope that anchors our life and provides us insight and vision beyond the limits of our mortal time on Earth and can therefore act with greater ability than those whose sight is constrained to the little they can see now or know alone. (See Hebrews 11) Having hope Christians are unafraid to feel and act out of love for all people, even our enemies.
Charity
In the world charity is merely giving your money to others. Those who give a lot of money often do so to great fanfare so as to advertise their charity and kindness. But this isn’t charity. It isn’t even close to charity. It has nothing to do with charity and calling it such is a bastardization of true charity. The Prophet Mormon teaches us what charity truly is:
Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail – But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.
Moroni 7:46-47
Charity is the pure love of Christ. It is the sacrificial and universal love which Christ feels for all people, all places, all animals, and all things, to the point that He would willingly suffer indescribably, descending into the very pits of Hell to throw open the Gates of Damnation and burst open the Doors of Death, in order to Redeem and Exalt all which come to Him. This is the kind of love which the Father has for us that He would sacrifice His Son to redeem us. This is the kind of love which the Apostle Paul called “the greatest of all,” (1 Corinthians 13:13) and which the Prophet Mormon tells us that if we lack then we are nothing. (Moroni 7:44) It is the kind of love that Christ gives to us as we follow Him.
Earlier I said that hope gives us the power to love our enemies. But that isn’t really true. Because, as the Prophet Mormon teaches, Faith and Hope in Christ inevitable leads to Charity, the pure love of Christ, taking root within the heart of the supplicant. (See Moroni 7:38-48) And when one is filled with the pure sacrificial and universal love of Christ, when one even has but the seedling of such a love, but a drop of such Pure Water, one finds their ability to hate and their desire to harm others shrink in proportion to the amount to which he or she is filled by the Spirit of Christ until hating and harming others finally becomes an impossibility. For such a person it becomes impossible to have enemies because for someone to be your enemy you must first hate them and be willing to harm or hurt them. No matter how much others may hurt you, you cannot hurt those whom you love. No matter what feelings may direct their desires and their actions, Christ directs your own and his pure love dictates how you react. Thus the disciple of Christ has no enemies.
Do not mistake my meaning. I am not talking about some status which can only be attained by those who are super spiritually advanced or whose holiness is near perfect. I am talking about a real status which is open to all and which a great many of us achieve generally. But at the same time many of us shrink away from such a total sense of love. By our attitudes and desires, if not out actions, we restrict the amount of Christ’s pure love from the total level it could fill us to one which we are most comfortable with. It seems to me we do this for two reasons.
The first is that so much of the anti-Christian propaganda we are indoctrinated into in our lives would simply be revealed for the falsehood it is if we truly embraced the charity of Christ. I mean, how can one care about such fictions as human governments and national boundaries and be willing to kill in their names and for their glories when one so purely loves others that one would rather suffer and die on their behalf than ever cause harm to them? How can you murder a child by abortion or bomb an Iraqi village when you purely and truly love either? How can you shoot a “fascist” or an “illegal” when the person you are attacking is your own brother, sister, father, or mother? You cannot. You can only do these things by developing some farcical fiction which distances yourself from them and dissolves your true relationship to them, thereby allowing you to justify your own violence and brutality against them. The pure love of Christ overthrows all these pretexts for violence. As Elder Holland taught, “No one can employ a sharp tongue or unkind words and still sing on tune the song of redeeming love.” (about 32:39) And if mere hurtful words, no matter how justified, disqualify you from practicing the pure love of Christ, doubly so then for hurtful actions. Thus, the pure love of Christ fully embraced overthrows all nation-states, based as they are in violence – on hurting people who violate the edicts, orders, and laws of those in power. That is something so many of us do not want to hear because we have been indoctrinated into loving governments more than we love God, if not in thought then in actual deed.
The second reason is even more primal. Such absolute emptying of ourselves and the openness it requires often terrifies us. As C.S. Lewis once explained:
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
The Four Loves, pg. 169
The only place I would contradict Lewis here is that he says in Heaven you can be safe from all the dangers of love, but that is not so as even God weeps over the evils men rampantly commits against one another. (see Moses 7:27-40) The only safety from love is in Hell and in Heaven there is love unfeigned and unrestrained such that even God exults or weeps because He knows and is Love. The problems of the world come from refusing to embrace it and the power of the Gospel is the power of love to conquer the world not through bullets and bombs but through kindness and service. As the Prophet George Albert Smith taught, “Kindness is the power that God has given us to unlock hard hearts and subdue stubborn souls and bring them to an understanding of His purposes.” (pg. 228) Charity, Christ’s pure love in action, transforms minds, saves souls, and changes the world.
Saving The World
Do not mistake this for me saying that pure love is easy. Of course it is not. I am not offering saccharine promises of ease. After all, what we all fear most about love comes from our recognition that it calls upon us to suffer – to suffer bodily, emotionally, and spiritually to save others. As much as it means joy it also means sorrow, as much as it means pleasantness it also means painful sorrow. It may even mean suffering and death. But if that is what it means for us, well it meant all that and more for Christ and how can we expect to be spared where our Master was not? As Elder Holland taught previously, salvation is not a cheap or easy experience and all of us will be called upon to spend at least a few moments bleeding in Gethsemane and to take at least a few shaking steps towards the Cross of Calvary. This also scares us, but it is exactly in this that charity finds its power. As Gandhi explained,
The conviction has been growing upon me, that things of fundamental importance to the people are not secured by reason alone, but have to be purchased with their suffering. … Suffering is infinitely more powerful than the law of the jungle for converting the opponent and opening his ears, which are otherwise shut, to the voice of reason. Nobody has probably drawn up more petitions or espoused more forlorn causes than I, and I have come to this fundamental conclusion that, if you want something really important to be done, you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also. The appeal of reason is more to the head, but the penetration of the heart comes from suffering. It opens up the inner understanding in man. Suffering is the badge of the human race, not the sword.
Gandhi in an article for the newspaper Young India, 5-11-1931
When you love someone you will not allow them to damn themselves by oppressing you. Their evil acts, whether legalized under the color of man-made law or not, will damn them and therefore you cannot comply with their desire to make you part of their actions. From this arises the doctrine of noncompliance and civil disobedience. You cannot be robbed if you are always willing to give to those who ask money of you as King Benjamin taught (see Mosiah 4:16-21). You cannot be forced to commit evil acts if you refuse to obey the orders, edicts, and laws which command them. You can not be forced into subservience. In order to serve you must submit and if you refuse to submit then you can never be made a servant. In refusing to serve the government and obey its unjust orders you are not merely maintaining your liberty or freedom, indeed by refusing to comply with corrupt laws you may be imprisoned and thereby lose a greater amount of liberty than you otherwise would have if you had simply complied. By refusing to obey corrupt laws you will give your attacker the chance at redemption through the suffering he or she causes you and you will prevent lawmakers and law enforcers from allowing themselves to be dragged further into corruption, oppression, and wickedness by making the execution of said unjust law impossible by your refusal to comply with it. And if you are attacked then your suffering may become a thorn in their hearts and minds, stirring up their consciences to acknowledging their wrongs and bringing them to repentance – renunciation and change away from the evils they were doing.
Is this easy? Not in the least. Unlike war and state funded policing violence this doesn’t give the immediate illusion of victory. (“We made drugs illegal and imprisoned or killed all the current drug dealers and users! Victory, right!?!”) Every heart converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a triumph, but we know how many more we still have to go and it is a constant battle against our Natural Man, that chittering chimp in our primate brain that wants to solve everything through feasting, fighting, or fornicating, to not fall back into our former ways. Charity requires more than mere baptism of course, it requires our heart and minds be given completely to God. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught, this “submission of one’s will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God’s altar,” but that it didn’t occur in one grand glorious moment of being saved, rather this consecration is “both a principle and a process, and it is not tied to a single moment. Instead, it is freely given, drop by drop, until the cup of consecration brims and finally runs over.”
Though it may seem long, the good news is that this is a struggle that is completely winnable. Christ has already promised us that He can and will transform our very natures as we conform to His commandments and promised us the power of the Holy Spirit to help us to obey Him. He will through the process of our lives consecrate us to Himself and fill the howling void of sin within us with Himself. Elder Holland teaches us that as we apply the principles of righteousness in our lives – Faith, Hope, and Charity – we will be able to not just make ourselves better through our continual consecration but we will change the world through our consecration. We will, step by step and brick by brick, build Zion, the City of God, until it fills the entire world. As it does so it will transform and change the world, eliminating war, murder, violence, corruption, theft, racism, nationalism, statism (“state-ism”), and poverty, achieving the long sought goals of world peace, liberty, and care for those in need.
In short, brothers and sisters, stop wasting your time building the kingdoms of men, all of which are the antithesis of peace and which will all collapse into wrath and ruin. Focus your wealth, talents, and efforts on building the Kingdom of God through the principles of Faith, Hope, and Charity and you will achieve everything you could hope for and more. This is the way and there is no other.
