My Redeemer Lives

In going over how perfect and logical some things are, that does not make them intuitive. 

Many years ago I remember reading Robinson Crusoe. I was surprised to find a part where Crusoe is trying to teach Friday about his religion. While the drawing toward "God" seemed fairly universal, only revelation could explain about Christ.

Certainly other religions do have stories of suffering gods, and perhaps resurrection (Dionysius and Osiris come to mind), atonement for sins is different.

I remember a unit on Egypt with a picture of the heart being weighed against a feather. I was fairly comfortable that I had done more good things than bad things, so if those were weighed against each other I would be okay, but all of my heart against a feather?

And yet, that is what we believe, that we need to be free of sin. That happens not by leading a perfect life, but by repenting, and by having your sins cleansed through the Atonement.

It takes a while to grasp the importance of it. It is easy to feel like you aren't really that terrible, which is probably true. Then you might not feel the need, which is still wrong.

It is not just that Christ has paid the price for our sins. It is also that he has paid the price for the healing of those wrongs caused by the sins.

We can cause a lot of harm without meaning to, or perhaps even knowing what we have done. As we grow in charity, we learn to care about that, but as we grow in wisdom we also see the impossibility of making things right on our own.

We will also often come up against the apparent impossibility of healing on our own, whether the injuries are from our own choices or the choices of others.

He even brings our dead back to us, or us back to our living, as the case may be.

There is a way, and the way in which it was worked means that we are also understood. Everything that makes it hard to be good and kind and grow and not just do something stupid in a minute that causes problems for years...

He knows all of that, and loves us. I don't know whether that love is because of or in spite of. It might be both.

It works.

That is how life is eventually fair, and better.

That is how God can be kind, even with suffering in the world.

That is how we heal.