Wholiness

Rockbiter: Near my home there used to be a beautiful lake, but then it was gone.

Tiny: Did the lake dry up?

Rockbiter: No, it just wasn't there anymore. Nothing was there anymore. Not even a dried up lake.

Tiny: A hole ?

Rockbiter: No, a hole would be something. Nah, it was nothing. And it got bigger and bigger.  First there was no lake anymore and then finally, no rocks.

These lines are from a movie I watched many times as a young child – The Never Ending Story. The look on the rock biter’s face when he explained how it was The Nothing that took his home filled me with what I can only describe as dread.

The idea that something could be there one minute and simply not exist the next minute terrified me. With my limited understanding of life, I thought being wiped away from reality was the worst condition possible. The concept of The Nothing was, in my mind, the very epitome of evil and it kept me up at night.

However evil The Nothing seemed to me, though, it was not the only thing that kept me up at nights. I tried to avoid evil at all costs and my definition of evil was anything that caused me to hurt or sorrow or be afraid. Things as simple as green beans, broken bones, best friends moving away; things that went against my personal desires and inclinations.

My efforts to avoid evil were in place because I wanted to be happy. I thought that if I avoided everything I didn’t like, I would find happiness as opposed to fear and misery. Yet, happiness and contentment often alluded me. In grade school, I studied the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. A line from the Declaration and the Bill of Rights have often weighed on my mind since learning about them:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript

I felt that the founding fathers understood happiness the same way I did; as if they were trying to teach me that happiness comes from fighting against cruel and unusual punishment. In my mind, cruel and unusual fit in the category of everything I didn’t like. So, it all made sense; except for the fact that I often felt unhappy.

There was a discrepancy between 2 Nephi 2:27 – Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2.25?lang=eng#24  – and what I felt. It wasn’t until I took the counsel of others to heart that things began to change.

From President Gordon B. Hinckley: Brothers and sisters, you will never be happy if you go through life thinking only of yourself. Get lost in the best cause in the world—the cause of the Lord… There is no other work in all the world so fraught with happiness as is this work. https://www.lds.org/manual/teachings-of-presidents-of-the-church-gordon-b-hinckley/chapter-14-losing-ourselves-in-the-service-of-others?lang=eng

From the Lord Himself in Matthew 16:24-25: Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. https://www.lds.org/scriptures/nt/matt/16?lang=eng

Turns out, avoiding one thing is not the same as pursuing another. When I came to terms with the fact that my poor opinion of something didn’t automatically make it evil, it became easier to seek after things that truly made me happy.

The pursuit of happiness is only valid if we are seeking after Godliness and not for things of this world, or, in other words, desires of the natural man – for wickedness never was happiness (Alma 41:10) https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/41.10?lang=eng#9 ; the natural man is an enemy to God (Mosiah 3:19) https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/3.19?lang=eng#18 .

God, who is our Heavenly Father, is a perfected being. He is omniscient and full of love and righteousness. He lives in a state of true and complete happiness, but, even in this state, does not always get what He wants or desires. The will of the Lord is always righteousness and yet His children often choose different paths.

Godliness is being like unto Heavenly Father who loves us enough to give us what we choose. His plan is perfect and His love never fails, but His desire to receive us back into His presence does not always come to pass. He has given us agency and this life to prove our resolve to seek after righteousness.

Godliness is loving like our Heavenly Father – who loves perfectly with complete knowledge and power – but it is not getting everything one desires. Our pursuit of Godliness is a direction on the straight and narrow path (2 Nephi 31:18) https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/31.18?lang=eng#17 . While this concept is simple to understand up front, it is often difficult to know where the line is drawn between wickedness and righteousness. We can keep commandments but our hearts may still be far from the Lord (Isaiah 29:13) https://www.lds.org/scriptures/ot/isa/29?lang=eng .

Christ’s example was perfection and He asked us to “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). This charge may very well seem overwhelming. At times we may question if our heart is in the right place. How do we even begin to be perfect?

Elder Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, in his recent talk entitled Be Ye Therefore Perfect—Eventually, had this to say: “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him … ,” Moroni pleads. “Love God with all your might, mind and strength, then … by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ.” Our only hope for true perfection is in receiving it as a gift from heaven—we can’t “earn” it. Thus, the grace of Christ offers us not only salvation from sorrow and sin and death but also salvation from our own persistent self-criticism. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2017/10/be-ye-therefore-perfect-eventually?lang=eng

This is a message of hope, not of condemnation. Both happiness and grace come from forgetting ourselves and striving to be more loving and charitable. Perhaps instead of trying too hard and being overly critical on ourselves for not being more like God than we currently are, we would feel relief by just trying to be a little more holy every day.

Godliness and holiness are interconnected concepts but the main difference is that Godliness is the quality of being devout in religion and belief whereas holiness is a dedication to God. One is a lifestyle while the other can simply start out as a righteous desire.

Continuous happiness for me came when I understood that evil is not simply anything I dislike. My new definition and understanding of evil became anything that goes against God’s plan. When I accepted many of my personal opinions were just that, I started to see clearly and my desire to be holy grew.

2 Nephi 2:11 – For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.

2 Nephi 2:13 – And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away.

“All things must have vanished away.” How is the state of all things vanishing away any different than The Nothing spreading its void and presenting widespread nonexistence? Here is a scriptural account that explains a void like The Never Ending Story dreamt up would exist if God’s plan were thwarted. While that will never happen – God will continue to be the omniscient Father He is – the above scripture helps me understand evil better.

Part of this God’s plan is providing opportunity for each of us, His children, to walk the path of holiness while living in mortality. Evil is not a dark void of nothingness. Instead, it is anything that counters God’s goodness and His grace and His desire to lead us back into His presence.

I had not truly been afraid of The Nothing. Eventually I realized that were I simply to cease existing, it wouldn’t matter to me. I would have no soul, no intelligence, no recognition on the part of my nonexistent un-being to care. What had disconcerted me about The Nothing was the idea of my life going to waste and not being able to do anything about it.

When I watched The Never Ending Story as a child, I wasn’t happy with where I was in life. In my thoughts of nonexistence, I felt trapped in a state where I was doomed to look back on my existence and be tormented by it. My mind had not conjured up a virtual void from or lack of existence, but an honest sense of my personal hell. 

Heavenly Father’s whole purpose is to help His children avoid this state of torment – “to bring to pass the immortality and Eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). His part is to carry out the perfect plan and our part is to accept it and utilize Christ’s Atonement to save us from the sin that inevitably besets our lives. The more we repent and strive to be better people, the more holy we become; Godliness becomes more of who we are because the grace of God empowers us.

The google definition of holy is pretty clear – dedicated or consecrated to God or a religious purpose; sacred – but the root of the word brings even further understanding of how we become holy through the repentance process. According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred [The English word "holy" dates back to at least the 11th century with the Old English word hālig, an adjective derived from hāl meaning "whole" and used to mean "uninjured, sound, healthy, entire, complete"].

There is a connection to being whole, becoming holy, and the fear of hell I mistook for vanishing from existence. In the dialogue between the rock biter and Tiny, the rock biter states that there wasn’t a hole where the beautiful lake by his home had been. A hole would have been something, yet there was simply nothing there anymore. In our physical existence, things don’t literally become nothing, holes are filled in with matter of some kind.

But, a physical void, gap or hole is a good analogy for what can happen to our souls when we aren’t becoming holy. If we are indeed un-whole, then our character literally has gaps or voids where there should be light and truth and goodness. Since these gaps have to be filled in with something, it is a perfect opportunity for Satan to come in and fill the void with darkness and filth. For, if we aren’t becoming holy by following the Lord we are becoming evil, or in other words, opposing God’s plan.

Satan – the ultimate opposition to God’s plan and the father of all lies https://www.lds.org/scriptures/pgp/moses/4.4?lang=eng#3 – fell from glory https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bd/lucifer.

The war in Heaven started because Satan wasn’t whole. He had gaps that he allowed to be filled in with pride and lust. Satan’s example of falling from glory is one of wastefulness. He had been given opportunity and status but squandered it to become the father of all lies. We too can become that way if we allow our natural man to rip holes in our souls.

We are like buckets that are meant to hold water. The more evil we become, the harder it is to hold the water because our bucket of character becomes impure in that it is full of holes – we are holey. To avoid a fate like unto Satan, who has become miserable https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2.27?lang=eng#26 in his holey state, we must get closer to God by becoming more whole. In this case, our character is a good receptacle of opportunity. Unlike the father of lies, we can still gain trust in the Lord who then provides us further opportunities and we become wholy.

The balancing act between being wholy vs holey is constant in our mortal lives. The journey of reaching perfection through wholiness is the reason we are here on earth. It is complex and takes time and maturity to master. In our efforts, it can view our character as not one, but a series of buckets that are filled based on how we react to and learn from our opportunities. Each bucket is a different gospel principle or virtue or Christ-like attribute that we are meant to perfect as we continue to strive toward perfection.

The Lord is a perfect being because all the buckets of His character are eternal – they never empty or spill and are filled to the brim. We, on the other hand can mess up and rebelliously spill out the contents of one or more of our buckets, get holes in them so they are constantly leaking, or simply not have full or balanced levels in each. Christ’s Atoning sacrifice was essential so that we have opportunity to patch up those holes and begin again to fill what was spilt or leaked.

In this light, we may ask ourselves what is more important, to focus on having each bucket equally full or to fill a choice few up to the tip top. The difficulty is that there is no cookie cutter answer. We are all so varied in strengths and abilities that what is best for one may be the worst for another. The answer is to maintain balance, but what that looks like on an individual basis will be different for everyone.

3 Nephi 18:13: But whoso among you shall do more or less than these are not built upon my rock, but are built upon a sandy foundation; and when the rain descends, and the floods come, and the winds blow, and beat upon them, they shall fall, and the gates of hell are ready open to receive them.

Christ’s own general counsel to everyone concerning balance is to not do more or less than ‘these’. Chapter 18 of 3 Nephi is the account of Christ instituting the sacrament among the Nephites. “These” is referring to always remembering Christ, repenting, partaking the emblems of the Sacrament, and praying always in His name.

Verse 11: And this shall ye always do to those who repent and are baptized in my name; and ye shall do it in remembrance of my blood, which I have shed for you, that ye may witness unto the Father that ye do always remember me. And if ye do always remember me ye shall have my Spirit to be with you.

There are not specific, individualized instructions in the scriptures on what steps each person has to take to be wholy. This is where the Spirit comes in. Mary R Durham brought this up in her talk, A Child’s Guiding Gift: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/04/a-childs-guiding-gift?lang=eng

[Joseph Smith taught, “If He comes to a little child, [the Spirit] will adapt himself to the language and capacity of a little child.” One mother discovered that since children learn differently—some learn visually, auditorily, tactilely, or kinesthetically—the more she observed her children, the more she realized that the Holy Ghost teaches her children in ways they each learn best.

Another mother shared an experience of helping her children learn to recognize the Spirit. “Sometimes,” she wrote, “[children] don’t realize that a recurring thought, a feeling of comfort after they cry, or remembering something at just the right time are all ways that the Holy Ghost communicates [with them].”]

The point is we don’t need to be so focused on perfection that we miss the daily opportunities to improve just a little bit. Our buckets of character need to be balanced and filled to reach perfection, but the good news is that when we make mistakes and become holey, we can repent and patch up those holes. I testify that as we learn about the commandments and apply the principles of the gospel, our buckets will fill up over time. And in the meantime, the Holy Spirit will direct our efforts to help us balance the levels we currently have.