The Third Cornerstone: The Law

Looking To Zion Lite
The Condensed Version for Super Busy Moms
(Still with fewer calories!)

The Third Cornerstone:  The Law

To Qualify as a cornerstone:
•    It must be an eternal principle
•    It must support and sustain itself
•    It must be sanctioned by Heavenly Father

The world is in constant motion, and the adversary of man is tirelessly working for our undoing.  Therefore, our Eternal Father, has blessed us today with a series of records that detail His workings among His children of the ancient and recent past.  He has also given us a prophet who gives us modern instruction and guidance, direction that when followed faithfully will help to keep us safely out of Satan’s clutches.

The laws are eternal.  They support and sustain themselves when applied in the correct spirit and without our own spin on things.  And since they were given to man, by God through His prophets, I think we can safely say that they are sanctioned by our Heavenly Father.

These laws and duties are given for our benefit, to help us govern ourselves and to draw us together.  Will we be able to follow these laws perfectly, 100% of the time?  Eventually, after a great deal of hard work and personal sacrifice. So, if we can’t follow the laws perfectly right now, and He knows that, what does Heavenly Father truly expect of us?

Nothing more than to be better than we were the day before! One step at a time.
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Looking To Zion Not-So-Lite
(Meat and Potatoes!  Mmmmm!)

The Third Cornerstone:  The Law

You know, it’s really simple to intellectualize all of this stuff; but, it’s a bear to put it into practice.  I keep reminding myself that I need to take baby steps, rather than sweeping changes.  Baby steps have staying power.  I need to take more baby steps in my life – in applying these things that I’m writing about (so I’m not a hypocrite) and in just about every other aspect of my life.  So, in honor of baby steps, I’m scaling back to just the Sunday posts.  I’ll eventually work myself back into multiple weekly posts, but for now, baby steps…

That said, let’s look at the third cornerstone: The Law.

Man!  Just writing that gives me the chills!  There’s so much weight backing that one little, three letter word.  Why does it have such a heavy, and dare I say it – negative connotation?  Are laws bad?  No.  Inconvenient perhaps, but they are not bad.  God, over the course of human history, has established rules and laws for us to follow.  He has given us organization through the spiritual leadership of His prophets.  This has been his model since the days of Adam, and it has been a model that has worked wonders in keeping God’s Children on track.  The Old Testament testifies of this, as do the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants.   Why would He deviate from a process that works so well?

He gifted unto Moses ten laws that would guide Israel to lay down the foundation for their own Zion.  He sent us His Anointed to fulfill all the old promises, and give us new rules that were more in tune with His ultimate goal.  Did He abolish the old laws?  No.  They are still as valid today as they were to the Israelites in times past.  They are there in the new laws too, being fulfilled as we obediently follow the principles that are so much more flexible, but require us to actively think more about what we are doing and how we are doing it.

But the world is in constant motion, and the adversary of man is tirelessly working for our undoing.  Therefore, God, our Eternal Father, has blessed us today with a prophet who is doing the same thing as Moses did.  Giving us laws and guidelines that will keep us safely out of Satan’s clutches.  These laws aren’t for His benefit, and in fact, I believe wholeheartedly that He’d much rather not have to constantly spell out what we need to do…repetatively.

How many times, as parents or caregivers to young children, do you wish that you didn’t have to repeat yourself over and over, sasying the same things again and again?  How many times have you looked Heavenward and wondered: “When will they get it?” – I feel that our Father in Heaven often has similar feelings about us.  The difference between our reaction and His, is that He hopes we will take advantage of all the hard earned knowledge we’ve gained from our previous hundred thousand mistakes and apply it to our current situation – and He does it with a smile, and without the eye rolling exasperation and frustration that so often accompanies our reactions.

I’m sure that we all can agree that the Laws of God are many and diverse.  Some feel restrictive, while others seem simple and straightforward.  Some feel written just for us, personally, while others…we wonder who they were meant for.  Some we feel a desperate need to cling to, and some we dismiss as being less important, or perhaps less directed towards us.  And this is all before Satan gets involved and starts splitting hairs by getting us to interpret the Law in order to justify our actions.  That is where trouble really begins.  I apologize to any attorneys out there (especially my brother-in-law Kevin), but I feel that the moment we try amending the Law to rationalize our personal beliefs and to ensure our personal gain...that’s the moment we have stepped from the safety of the straight and narrow, and into the confounding mists.  God's law is straightforward, and it embraces both justice and mercy, so all of our needs are taken care of within the laws He sets down.  It may not accommodate all of our wants, and therein lies the point of contention that Satan seeks to exploit.

When I find myself falling into this practice, or entertaining my desire to tailor the laws to justify my choices, I wonder if I’m doing any better than the Children of Israel did.  There are moments that I ask myself – am I making a golden calf, or am I remaining faithful to God’s Law and the covenants I’ve made?  And believe me, I do my fair share of rationalizing and loop-hole hunting.  Why do I do it?  I don’t like losing, or feeling like a failure.  Our world places too much emphasis on success, and it isn’t even the correct vision of success!  God’s laws aren’t about who’s better than whom, or who can be the most obedient to such and such principle.  These laws are our road map to salvation and exaltation. They are the things we have to do in order to return to live with our Heavenly Father again.

In Zion, these rules and laws are meant to give us structure and to teach us how to live harmoniously.  They draw us together and bind us as one.  We aren’t meant to punish each other over them, and they aren’t meant to be used to judge one another harshly or without compassion.  We are all on different mile markers of the same road.  And we all have a unique perspective of the journey we’ve taken on that road back home to God.  That is not to say we will not be punished for transgressing God’s laws.  No, God’s laws are very much black and white.  He does not work in gray, nor does He muddy the waters.  He is a God of Justice and Mercy, and is bound by a strict code.  He is exact in His obedience and observance of that code.  If we expect to enter into His celestial kingdom how can we expect any less of ourselves?  Does this mean we need to obey perfectly in order to qualify for Zion?

Eventually, yes. Please note that I said eventually.

It will take time for us to develop solid habits.  We’re actually laying the groundwork as we speak.  Each of the small tasks we are given to do, is a Law of Heaven applied to a real life circumstance.  When given a small task that doesn’t make sense, ask yourself this: “How does this build Zion?” or “What Law is being fulfilled by this precept that my leaders are handing down to me?”  In all truth, doing the small things is more difficult than doing the big things.  I personally believe that the big things cost us less in the long run.

We currently do not have the social structure backing us that will make fulfilling the simple tasks an easy prospect.  We are constantly at war with the world around us, just to set aside one night in seven for the sole benefit of strengthening our family.  When we think about the Law of Tithing, our thoughts are also drawn to the mind-numbing amount of bills that we are required to pay.  Visiting the sick and the needy are challenges of a completely higher magnitude altogether, in light of the taxing requirements demanded of us just to survive in the world, let alone live in it.

Being one hundred percent obedient, one hundred percent of the time is a great challenge.  Yet, when we apply the lessons we’ve learned so far…when we have laid the first two cornerstones securely, we gain strength and momentum.  Our relationship with the Savior grants us patience and an understanding, not to mention the knowledge and comfort His love brings to our lives.  Our application of the Triumvirate of Faith, Hope, and Charity makes fulfilling the multitude of little tasks that our Prophet, the scriptures, and the general leadership of the church, asks of us less burdensome and easier to bear.  Heavenly Father expects a great deal of us.  Likewise, He promises a great deal in return.

So, just what does He expect of us?

For us to progress steadily from one day to the next in perfecting ourselves.  He desires exact and abiding obedience to all of His laws – big and small.  He also expects us to falter a great deal in the process of our perfecting ourselves.  He even made concessions for when we do in the form of the Atonement!  Can we honestly believe that we will suddenly walk into Zion and…BOOM!...we’re magically going to be perfect in our obedience?  Not in the least!  And we’re being very silly if that is our expectation.  Like I hinted above, it takes time, effort, and a great many small steps in order to reach the pinnacle that we are reaching for.  Zion will come, but not until we are faithfully living all of the laws that God has given to us.

I liken it to climbing a mountain.  When I was a kid, my family and I went out to Utah to be sealed in the temple.  While there, friends took us up to Mount Timpanogos.  Somehow they convinced us to hike the trail, up to the caves.  I was eleven at the time.  I will tell you plainly, there came a point in the trek, when I was simply looking at my feet and saying to myself: “Just one more step.  Just one more, and then I’ll stop.”  That mantra got me to our destination, and through the cave, and back down the mountain again.

God knows our abilities, and it’s only when we get comfortable in our routines that He sends us trials, and challenges, and new understanding.  Each and every one of these things promtps us to take just one more step along the path to perfection.  Yet, on the other end of the spectrum, in our zeal to perfect ourselves, we often bite off more than we can chew or entertain unrealistic expectations of ourselves.  We try to run long before we’ve perfected walking.  In the immortal words of the wise old tortoise: “Slow and steady wins the race.”
We cannot perfect ourselves in a day, but within our day we can discover perfection.  We must be exact in moments, and those moments will incrementally build upon themselves.  The more exact in our obedience to these laws that we become, the closer we are to our Heavenly Father.  The closer we are to our God, the closer we become to Zion.

Do not be discouraged if your journey seems longer than your neighbor’s.  We are all unique and though the road is the same, we each will experience different things as we travel along it.  We must be true to the ideal of being better than we were the day before, as we strive to perfect our obedience.  You can only judge yourself, against yourself; and even then, do so lovingly and with an eye single to the prize.  Are you closer to your goal than you were yesterday?  Yes indeed!  Even if it is only one step closer!  That, in the end, is what makes all the difference!

Until next week,
Jeffrey