Arise from the Dust

I went through a difficult divorce a number of years ago. I did not want to get divorced and I needed to deal with my intense feelings. My solution was to view all points of the divorce academically and through the lens of my theology. What led to it, what did it mean, and where did it take me.

This is not a talk, though portions of these findings have been used in talks. This is more like a collection of notes and analysis. It is an attempt to tell the truth about a temperature: I was lukewarm. I was not a good provider, I was not a good leader; I was fine with “sufficient for our needs,” and not only at church. I was fine with sufficient socially, I was fine with sufficient in the body. Sufficient is a respectable word for the line of least resistance.

Lukewarm

President James E. Faust taught from Revelation 3 a warning aimed at fence-sitters:

I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.¹

Elder Neal A. Maxwell named the same condition in another way: “Satan need not get everyone to be like Cain or Judas. He needs only to get able men to see themselves as sophisticated neutrals.”²

I was that able man who had a form of godliness. I had language, meetings, and a temple recommend I had not yet surrendered. I did not need to become Cain, I only needed to stay uncommitted enough to be socially acceptable. President Faust went on. “Since the time of the Savior there have been those who believed, but who for social pressure would not stand up and be counted.” John writes of the chief rulers who believed on Him and would not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue. “For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.”³

Now there are individuals who try to serve the Lord without offending the devil. They raise in the minds of many truth seekers the vexing question, is there not some middle ground upon which peace may be secured and maintained? Must the choice lie irrevocably between peace on the one hand, obtained by compliance with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and contention and war on the other hand?⁴

There is a quote I return to often: it is following the lines of least resistance that makes rivers and men crooked.⁵ I was not alone in the lukewarm desire to be socially accepted, and that turn from a principled, Christ-based marriage is what caused our downfall.

A Form of Godliness

Paul warned Timothy what the last days would look like from the inside of a respectable house:

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts.⁶

I read that list differently now than I did at first. Now I do not use it as a weapon against a former spouse, or against a culture and society as a whole. Instead I read it as a mirror: lovers of their own selves, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.

Depression, and Leaving

Depression asked the old question: why me? I had sat through Job and was tired of hearing it. I knew the talks, teachings, and pithy sayings, but knowing all those did nothing to stop the floor from going out from under me. Elder David R. Stone asked how Israel could have forgotten the Lord who brought them out of Egypt. They were constantly pressured by what was popular in the ambience in which they lived.⁷ My reasons for leaving were doctrinal, at least that’s what I told myself. Knowledge, the way the world wants knowledge, was my golden calf. I wanted the Lord to tell us plainly—why didn’t He? President Harold B. Lee recorded a scientist’s answer to that complaint: it is likely we would not understand if He did. It might be like trying to explain the theory of atomic energy to an eight-year-old child.⁸

“All too often,” Elder Stone says, “we are like puppets on a string, as our culture determines what is ‘cool.’”⁷ Eventually, I voluntarily surrendered my temple recommend. I believed that was the most honest thing I could do at that time. Lukewarm men keep the card and lose the fire. I stopped pretending I was anything but unworthy.

Returning

There is a line from Interstellar I love, because for a while it just hit home: we used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.⁹

C. S. Lewis wrote, “Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.”¹⁰ I did not come back because I had become worth dying for. I came back because He had already done it, and I wanted His sacrifice to mean something; I hoped the Atonement would help me make sense of things. President Lee said that to become converted, according to the scriptures, meant having a change of heart and the moral character of a person turned from the controlled power of sin into a righteous life.⁸ Conversion, in that definition, is not an event one can point to, but is a continuous turning.

Arise from the Dust

Elder D. Todd Christofferson taught from Lehi’s plea to his sons:

The prophet Lehi pled with his rebellious sons, saying, “Arise from the dust, my sons, and be men.” By age, Laman and Lemuel were men, but in terms of character and spiritual maturity they were still as children. They murmured and complained if asked to do anything hard. They didn’t accept anyone’s authority to correct them. They didn’t value spiritual things. They easily resorted to violence, and they were good at playing the victim.¹¹

We see some of the same attitudes today. Some act as if a man’s highest goal should be his own pleasure. Permissive social mores have “let men off the hook” as it were, so that many think it acceptable to father children out of wedlock and to cohabit rather than marry. Dodging commitments is considered smart, but sacrificing for the good of others, naive. For some, a life of work and achievement is optional.

We must arise from the dust of self-indulgence and be men! It is a wonderful aspiration for a boy to become a man—strong and capable; someone who can build and create things, run things; someone who makes a difference in the world. It is a wonderful aspiration for those of us who are older to make the vision of true manhood a reality in our lives and be models for those who look to us for an example.

At one point my son, bursting with his love for me, told me he wanted to be big and fat “like dad!” That was a shock like cold water to the face. I let him know that being big and fat wasn’t a good thing, and was definitely not a goal worth pursuing. But what kind of a father would I be if I told him that, and did not do the same work in my own body? What kind of a father would I be if I did not show our children my faith by my works?

“We are men of action. Lies do not become us.”¹² It is never too late to be what you might have been. I do not say that as a proverb that erases the years. Some blessings, once missed, do not return in the same shape. I say it as a refusal to stay in the dust because the dust is familiar. We must find our place in the stars.

Elder Christofferson continued:

In large measure, true manhood is defined in our relationship to women. The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles have given us the ideal to pursue in these words:

The family is ordained of God. Marriage between man and woman is essential to His eternal plan. Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity. … By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families.¹³

I failed that charge in the years I was lukewarm. Naming the failure is not the same as finishing the repentance, but a man who will not name it cannot arise from it.

Heed Them Not

Lehi’s dream ends with a great and spacious building full of people who have already gone in, pointing the finger of scorn at those who are still at the tree. “But we heeded them not.” And then the sentence that should frighten anyone who has ever wanted to be liked: “For as many as heeded them, had fallen away.”¹⁴

They seek not the Lord to establish his righteousness, but every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world, and whose substance is that of an idol, which waxeth old and shall perish in Babylon, even Babylon the great, which shall fall.¹⁵

The counsel is short, but can be hard to live: heed them not. In this modern world it feels as if we are mocked by those in the great and spacious building for holding to the iron rod. We are. The mockery is not evidence that the rod is wrong. It is evidence that the building is still open, and people still enter.

Why I Stay

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.¹⁶

I stay because I desire peace. This Roman proverb is old but accurate to this day: if you desire peace, prepare for war. President Thomas S. Monson put the same idea in priesthood language: when the time for decision arrives, the time for preparation is past.¹⁷

Over the last five months I lost fifty-five pounds. Over the last eight months I’ve returned to church, baptized my son, and requalified for a recommend. Our family has changed in many good ways. Things are not easy, but we became more disciplined, and more able to weather the storms of life.

The root of disciple is the same as the root of discipline. Discipline is not rules, regulations, or punishment. It is not compliance, obedience, or enforcement. Discipline is not something others do to you, it is something you do for yourself. Discipline is not obedience to someone else’s standards to avoid punishment, it is learning and applying intentional standards to achieve meaningful objectives. Discipline is a choice. Discipline wins when motivation dies.

Jocko Willink, that patron saint of modern manhood, compressed it to three words: discipline equals freedom.¹⁸ Patrick Rothfuss wrote that there are three things all wise men fear: the sea in a storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.¹⁹ Be the man Mr. Rogers thinks you are, but remember that comfort is death. I have learned that in a gym, in the scripture, in life, and I have learned it in the temple. I continue to learn it in the long work of not going back to lukewarm, and in the continual turning of true conversion and discipleship.

We’ve always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible. And we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that. Or perhaps we’ve just forgotten that we are still pioneers. And we’ve barely begun. And that our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us, that our destiny lies above us.⁹

I am done being a sophisticated neutral; I would rather be peculiar than praised. Satan will always focus people on rights and privileges without ever mentioning responsibilities, and I’ve lived on that diet long enough.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.²⁰

And this, which I have kept as a prayer:

For all we ought to have thought, and have not thought;
all we ought to have said, and have not said;
all we ought to have done, and have not done;
I pray thee, God, forgiveness.²¹