Staying spiritually alive

I am afraid this is going to be rather disjointed. I hope it will still have some value.

A few weeks ago we were teaching about the sacrament, and there was a question about how taking the sacrament without repenting could bring condemnation to your soul. I said that we are all in the process of being weak and trying to be better and not succeeding as well as we like, and we take the sacrament like that (though hopefully thinking about that and repenting as you take it). I then used the example that if you pretended to be good at home and at church, but were dealing drugs at school, taking the sacrament that way would be a problem.

Shortly after, I went back to that example in class and told them it wasn't a good one, but I used it because we don't like to mention drinking or sex to young people lest we give them ideas (which is only partially a joke). I also said that wasn't their biggest risk.

I told them that if they were with some friends and got pressured to drink or have sex and they did, they would know it was wrong right away, and then they would need to talk to their bishop before taking the sacrament, and also it would be a hard process so they are better off remembering that before they do it.

However, what would be easier to have happen (and I have heard through the grapevine does happen) is for them to just be kind of cold-hearted and mean. If they were snobby with the younger girls (our class has mainly young women, and our one young men wasn't their that day), or critical of the clothing of the poorer girls, or went along with the more popular girls in doing that, that would harden their hearts and could be easy to miss. It's happening in church; how bad could it be?

One of the eye-opening things on my mission was that people can know that something is wrong and still choose it, or know that something is right and not do it. Yes, there were plenty of examples before, but I had never been going around asking people to choose.

Sometimes it felt like the primary issue was that there was no sense of urgency, and I remember discussing that with my companion and wondering if it would get better. She predicted that the differences would become more obvious. That sounded logical and helpful, but now we are at a point where small children are taken from their parents, drugged, and thrown in cages, and even as the church reminds us about caring for refugees - which these people fleeing to the border are - there are members who applaud it. If that isn't obviously wrong enough, I am not sure there can be such a thing.

And, for anyone who is applauding it, that sounds like I am writing from a liberal point of view and can be easily dismissed. I assure you that the church leadership is more conservative than liberal, and yet, it becomes easy to dismiss them too. One blogger discounted an announcement because it came from the press department instead of being a member of the First Presidency speaking.

It is easy to get hardened - and I say that as someone who gets mad at conference talks pretty frequently, but then I still study them and find the good in them, and I try and do my best. Many people who got mad at the same things don't come to church anymore. That's not good either.

The only advice I can give you is to love and think.

Love people. Think about their needs. Last week when I said to think about your neighbors and if they would have difficulty evacuating? It will be hard to know that if you don't know them. The majority of them will probably not share your religious beliefs; fantastic! You need to see the good and the value in people who don't believe in you. And you need human warmth, which has some limitations on how well it can transfer through a screen.

Think about things. Don't echo the phrases you hear on the radio. If they keep repeating the same talking point, question why. Does it benefit someone they like? Does it hurt someone they don't like? and find your own ways of phrasing it, because if you find that you can't maybe there is an inherent logical fallacy in the thinking. I could give some examples, but I'm not doing that here.

Also - and this combines the loving and the thinking - cultivate your ear for the Spirit. If you are full of anger and pride and resentment, it will be hard to hear the promptings that you need. If you shut out common sense by an insistence on adhering to someone else's talking points, you can shut out realizations that way too.

It is great to have an emergency plan and kits and storage, but the most valuable means of preparedness is being open to inspiration and warnings. Don't throw that away. If you are afraid you might have, do whatever you need to do to get that back.