Why are God and His Church so strict? This is a question people often ask when they find out how many "dos" and "don'ts" the Latter-Day Saints strive to live by. It's also one that gets asked when members of the Church are struggling to overcome something that's keeping them from living the gospel. The answer given in the Book of Mormon centers around the huge difference between being saved in our sins and being saved from them.
Most members of the Church have heard the story of the proverbial woman who went to the bishop for her temple recommend interview and came face-to-face with the strictness of God and His Church:
"Now Bishop, you're not going to let a tiny little cup of coffee keep me from going to the temple, are you?" she asks.
To this, the bishop kindly responds with:
"Dear sister, you're not going to let a tiny little cup of coffee keep you from going to the temple, are you?"
On a more serious note, some of us have heard stories of people who got caught in the clutches of serious sin and found themselves unable to overcome it. They lost their faith and left the Church, grumbling about the strictness of God or the Church on their way out.
The Parable of the Good Fireman
Before I continue, let me introduce a sort of parable.
Imagine you wake up one night, trapped beneath a beam, with your house burning down all around you, a fireman standing over you with his hand outstretched.
Do you want to be saved in the fire, or do you want to be saved from the fire?
Saved In Our Sins, or From Our Sins?
Too often we're guilty of expecting the Lord to re-define His standard to include our weakness. We want to break the Word of Wisdom and have our temple recommend too. We don't want to do the work and actually give up our bad habit - we just want to wish upon a falling star and be free of it. We want the joy and the blessings that come from being willing to do what it takes to keep the Lord's commandments, without having to make the sacrifice and actually do those things ourselves.We are surprised to find out the hard way that just isn't how the Lord's salvation works.
In the Book of Mormon, missionaries by the name of Alma and Amulek taught the people of the city of Ammonihah about Jesus Christ. In so doing, they contended with a lawyer by the name of Zeezrom, whose intent it was to "cross-examine" them and see if he could trip them up. It's pretty clear that Zeezrom expected this same thing - he wanted God, if there was such a thing, to save His people in their sins. He tried to use this expectation to set a sort of logical trap. I love how Amulek handled it:
"And Zeezrom said again: Shall he save his people in their sins? And Amulek answered and said unto him: I say unto you he shall not, for it is impossible for him to deny his word. Now Zeezrom said unto the people: See that ye remember these things; for he said there is but one God; yet he saith that the Son of God shall come, but he shall not save his people—as though he had authority to command God. Now Amulek saith again unto him: Behold thou hast lied, for thou sayest that I spake as though I had authority to command God because I said he shall not save his people in their sins. And I say unto you again that he cannot save them in their sins; for I cannot deny his word, and he hath said that no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of heaven; therefore, how can ye be saved, except ye inherit the kingdom of heaven? Therefore, ye cannot be saved in your sins." (Alma 11;34-37, emphasis added)
Many years later, Alma's son Helaman quoted his father's words to the city of Ammonihah in teaching his sons the same thing:
"And remember also the words which Amulek spake unto Zeezrom, in the city of Ammonihah; for he said unto him that the Lord surely should come to redeem his people, but that he should not come to redeem them in their sins, but to redeem them from their sins. And he hath power given unto him from the Father to redeem them from their sins because of repentance; therefore he hath sent his angels to declare the tidings of the conditions of repentance, which bringeth unto the power of the Redeemer, unto the salvation of their souls." (Helaman 5:10-11, emphasis added)
To ask the Lord to "go easy on us" by way of re-defining His standard - by saving us in sin instead of by saving us from sin - is to take the meaning out of both His commandments and His salvation. That's just about as ludicrous as watching a man go to his death beneath the burning remains of his house, all the while congratulating the firemen for saving him in the fire. Salvation is, by definition, being helped to leave behind a bad situation, receiving a change of heart through the power of the Holy Ghost that transforms us into people who are no longer in sin.
Christ Does Go Easy on Us
The word gospel actually comes from an old English word "godspell" meaning "good news", and the good news of the gospel is that the Lord does in fact "go easy on us". But He does it in His own way. The apostle Paul taught the Corinthians Jesus' definition of "going easy on us":
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
A prophet by the name of Hosea taught his people:
"I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them..." (Hosea 11:4-5)
The Lord wants to "take off the yoke on [our] jaws", to relieve the effort we have to keep up in the face of sin. He wants to "lay meat unto [us]", to supply us with the help and the power to keep going, to provide us with living water, but we have to be willing to "return" - to come unto Him, to change.
When firemen save someone, they usually save them out of the fire and into the ambulance. When the Lord saves us from sin, He saves us into righteousness! God's salvation is all about helping us to become righteous people, helping us escape from the clutches of sin - the behavioral consequences, not just the emotional consequences! How can we be made the righteousness of God through Christ if we are not willing to change? How can we be made the righteousness of God if we are not willing to try and be like Him? For truly the Savior has taught us to do the things we have seen Him do. He even likened our need to make the sacrifices and the effort to change to "tak[ing] up [our] cross" and "followin[g Him]", saying those who are unwilling to do so are not worthy of him. (see John 13:15, 2 Nephi 31:12, Matthew 16:24-26)
If we will be willing to do what we can to make the necessary changes, the Lord's salvation will finish the job - He being the "author and finisher of our faith". He will make us into new creatures in Christ, and He will "not impute [our] trespasses unto [us]".
The Importance of Being Willing to Endure Chastening
The apostle Paul taught the Hebrews:
"...let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth... If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; And make straight paths for your feet... Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God..." (Hebrews 12:1-15)
We have to be willing to "run the race" of "laying aside the sin which doth so easily beset us". We have to remember that the Savior "resisted unto blood, striving against [our] sins", and let that be reason enough for us to be willing to do the same. We've all had fathers who got after us when we were growing up. We didn't always understand the reasons why, but I think it safe to say most of us who had loving fathers came to thank them for their chastisement, for standing up to us when we were in the wrong. Should we not also do the same thing for our Heavenly Father? I know that if I had not been willing to accept His strictness and "strive unto blood" against certain sins in my own life, I would never have known the mighty salvation of our God! Nor would I have experienced the joy that came with being changed through the power of His atoning sacrifice. He has been strict with me, that I might learn to turn to Him for help living up to His expectations for me, and, while it certainly wasn't "joyous" at the time, now, in retrospect, I thank Him for it. He gets after us because He wants us to know the joy of being "partakers of His holiness". Rather than fight the strictness of God and His Church, we have to learn to be diligent, and hold on to the grace of Christ that can see us through and bring about that joyous change from sin into righteousness that we so desire and so badly need!
Leaving Gomorrah and Never Looking Back
Part of making change in our lives is forsaking sin. If we want the Lord's help in making needed changes in our lives, we have to go into it with the attitude that we're leaving our sin behind forever, never to look back. Granted, even with the Lord's help, we're weak, and we may find ourselves messing up and needing to repent time and time again. But we have to at least be fully committed to never looking back.
When God commanded Lot to take his family and leave Gomorrah, his wife had a hard time with it. She wasn't fully ready to leave it behind forever, knowing it was about to be destroyed. Their lives would never be the same. Because of her inability to quit holding onto what Gomorrah had to offer, she looked back and became as a pillar of salt. (see Genesis 19)
Making that change can be hard. It means being willing to do without a familiar coping mechanism or habit. It means doing hard work to push away the benefits of bad behavior. Sometimes that means not having a replacement for those behaviors while we're learning the Lord's way of doing things.
The Savior said it this way:
"When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. " (Matthew 12:43-45)
We've all felt what it is to be trying to make a change in our lives, only to fail and end up feeling like we're doing worse than when we started. We have to be willing to leave our sin behind. We have to be willing to live without dry places in which to rest while the Lord is teaching us how to enter into His rest. We have to learn to lean on the Lord for help, and to trust that His way really is better. Isaiah said:
"He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." (Isaiah 40:29-31)
We have to have His help all along the way. If we do not, we can forget what it means to have His help, forget what it means to us to be making the change, and we can slip back into old ways, and end up worse off than when we started. Life in mortality seems to have a sort of "never-land" effect on us. Occasionally, the Lord teaches us something by way of a spiritual experience, but then it's really easy to get back to "normal life" and forget about this other part of us that needs nourishing.
As King David put it, "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly." (Proverbs 26:11)
Leaving the sin behind doesn't mean we no longer feel the temptation. We have to be "watchful unto prayer", we have to "pray always lest [we] enter into temptation". If we don't, we'll find that our old ways are always waiting for us as with open arms, to welcome us "home" and say "I told you so".
When Sin Finally Becomes a Bad Thing
In asking us to leave behind our sins, the Lord really is asking us to give up quite a lot. If you have an addiction or a habit to overcome, you may sense a great deal of value in having the option to just give into it. Why would you leave that behind? In struggling with addiction myself, I found that part of what made it the hellacious nightmare that it was is the tormenting dichotomy it created inside me. Part of me knew that there was a God in heaven who loved me. That part of me found joy in being able to live the gospel and to feel spiritual things. There was this other part of me that couldn't understand why what I was doing was wrong. I found a great sense of relief and indulgence in letting myself have what my addiction offered. The problem was that doing so deprived me of my ability to feel spiritual things. I had two mutually exclusive sources of "happiness" in my life. My scripture study, prayer and church attendance continually reminded me of the great joys I had known in living my faith. The powerful pleasures associated with my addiction seemed to continually and forcefully push the joy of spirituality out of my life. It was sheer agony!
I knew that the only way I could ever resolve the battle raging inside of me was that I had to choose which one could stay in my life permanently, and which one I'd spend the rest of my life fighting to keep out. Since my addiction gave me two seconds of relief followed by days and weeks of misery and self-loathing, I knew it had to go. But that wasn't enough.
I remember being honest with the Lord in how I felt about both sides of this emotional battle. I remember telling Him in prayer, "You're asking me to give up a lot. I need to know what I'm giving it up for." I needed to know there was potential for enough joy in the spiritual side of things to make it worth sacrificing what my addiction had to offer. I needed to know there was enough help in heaven to make it possible to leave behind something I so deeply valued without tearing myself apart in the process.
For those of us caught in the clutches of sin, there comes a time when we have to ask the Lord to help us understand why need to change, and how are we going to do it without tearing ourselves apart while we're at it. It is in those times the Lord will let us have a taste of the joy that can be ours, and he'll let us have a taste of the change that can come into our lives through the transforming power of the Atonement. Feeling and knowing that - having that promise - makes deciding to trust Him and change for the better a whole lot easier! But the fact is, we still have to be willing to embrace His salvation at the expense of never having what our sins offer us, ever again.
Unalterable Decrees According to Our Desires
In my own experiences with overcoming - or deciding to overcome, I've found that the Lord respects my agency, my right to choose whether to change or not. He knows me better than I know myself, and will respect the true desire of my heart, whether I'm fully aware or willing to admit that desire to myself or not.
The Lord will not save us from something we don't want to be saved from. Think about it: if your idea of fun is getting drunk on the weekends and the Lord were to "save" you from that, would it be salvation, or would it be deprivation? But if alcoholism is your vice, and you're tired of barfing your brains out, feeling out of control, losing your family and your career, you may just get to a point where you really do genuinely want to change. That's the moment when salvation begins to happen.
Alma the Younger said it this way:
"I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire, whether it be unto death or unto life; yea, I know that he allotteth unto men, yea, decreeth unto them decrees which are unalterable, according to their wills, whether they be unto salvation or unto destruction. Yea, and I know that good and evil have come before all men; he that knoweth not good from evil is blameless; but he that knoweth good and evil, to him it is given according to his desires, whether he desireth good or evil, life or death, joy or remorse of conscience." (Alma 29:4-5)
As much as we may tell ourselves we want to change, if what we really want in our heart of hearts is to keep right on doing what we're doing, the Lord decrees an unalterable decree in heaven, allowing us to have our true desire, whether for good or for evil. As long as that desire is in effect and that decree is in place, we will find it impossible to change. This is what the scriptures mean when they refer to "hell" or "damnation" or "spiritual death". In order to make changes in our lives, we have to really, truly decide we want to change. If we will do so, the Lord will decree an unalterable decree that will put us on a collision course with all the powers of heaven that will be necessary to ensure our freedom and bring about our ability to make the desired change. When what we really want is to change, and we have the Lord's help, that change is inevitable! That's what the scriptures mean when they say the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.
An Ounce of Prevention
We sometimes seem to forget that the Lord did not give us commandments to have us experience the despair that so often comes with losing our way. He gave us those commandments to keep us from losing our way in the first place. He gave us those commandments to help us find our way back. Our Heavenly Father gives us commandments because he wants us to be happy - and safe! As my favorite Primary Song says - yes, I have one - "...children can only be happy all day when two little hands have learned how to obey." (Primary Children's Songbook #272) In order for the commandments of God to their job in our lives, we have to acknowledge His strictness in expecting us to abide by them.
A Pound of Cure
In our despair and discouragement, the other thing we too often forget is that we have a Savior! The Lord is not just the Good Shepherd; He's the Good Fireman too!
The main reason why the Lord and His Church are so strict with us is because, if we will humble ourselves and acknowledge that strictness, no matter how great - or how small - our sin, we will eventually have no choice but to come unto Christ, pleading for His help to do something in our lives that will be to us no less a miracle than walking on water. Our Savior suffered and died for us because He wants us to know the joy of having that miracle come into our lives! He wants us to know the joy of having Him supply the power we need to live up to His strictness! If we'll give our best effort to make needed changes in our lives, and if we'll accept the Good Fireman's outstretched arm, we can experience the incredible joy of being saved from sin!
Salvation From Sin - a Very Real Miracle!
You can get counseling for your psychiatric issues. You can get medication for your physiological issues. You can get needed social support for the issues that arise from trying to go it alone. But, while all of these things may help, none of them will save us from the chains of hell that continue to pull at our poor choices. For that, you'll also need to obtain salvation from sin, relying alone upon the merits of Him who is mighty to save.
As one who has experienced both the frustration of the strictness of the law and the joy of being saved from sin, I testify that, in and through Jesus Christ, if you'll do what it takes, the day can and will come when you will experience what it feels like to look in the mirror and see in your own countenance the light of just such a miracle! When you come to have that for yourself, when you realize you are finally able to live worthy before God, finally able to have that temple recommend, finally able to put behind you that horrifying addiction, or even just a nasty little habit, you'll know for yourself, as I do, just how very real the miracle of salvation from sin is!
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