Someone lately
brought up a fantastic point in Sunday School recently. It was brought up the
fact that we are all born with what we as Latter-day Saints call, The Light
of Christ and therefore we are naturally good people that become corrupted.
This seems to be constantly misrepresented. Although this saintly sister had a
fantastic testimony of what Moroni taught, "the Spirit of Christ is given
to every man, that he may know good from evil" (Moroni 7:16), she missed
some other important principles. She, in essence, is correct, but only halfway
there in completing her understanding of the doctrine.
I remember having a similar discussion because I thought completely
opposite. I had read Mosiah 3:19 enough times to know that we are not inherently
good. So, we may ask, how do we reconcile these two scriptures?
Easy. We look
at the principles they are teaching.
First, Moroni
never claims that man is inherently good. He claims that Father in Heaven has
offered us a gift so that we may make the appropriate choices even when we have
not been taught directly right from wrong. Never does he claim that we are
compelled to make that choice by instinct: he simply states that we have an
endowment of light, even from a young age, of the most basic differences
between good and evil insofar as to keep us from spiritual death.
When Mosiah
teaches the doctrine of the natural man, he is teaching us about that voice
that invites us to do contrary of what the Light of Christ is inviting us to
do. That voice is what he calls "the natural man"or the carnal nature
of our fallen bodies.
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One of the best illustrations of this is the classic cinematic effect where an angel, who is in the image of the character, is on one side while a little devil, also in the image of the character, sits on the other side attempting to pursued the person to do it there way.
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One of the best illustrations of this comes from the October 2009 General Conference. Elder Renlund gave a talk titled, Preserving the Heart's Mighty Change. In it he said:
"In 1980 we moved as a family across the street from the hospital where I trained and worked. I worked every day, including Sundays. If I finished my Sunday work by 2:00 p.m., I could join my wife and daughter and drive to church for meetings that began at 2:30.
"One Sunday late in my first year of training, I know that I would likely finish by 2:00. I realized, however, that if I stayed in the hospital just a little longer, my wife and daughter would depart without me. I could then walk home and take a needed nap. I regret to say that I did just that. I waited until 2:15, walked home slowly, and lay down on the couch, hoping to nap. But I could not fall asleep. I was disturbed and concerned. I had always loved going to church. I wondered why on this day the fire of testimony and the zeal that I had previously felt were missing.
"I did not have to think long. Because of my schedule, I had become casual with my prayers and scripture study. I would get one morning, say my prayers, and go to work. Often day blended into night and into day again before I would fall asleep before saying a prayer or reading the scriptures. The next morning the process began again. The problem was that I was not doing the basic things I needed to do to keep my mightily changed heart from turning to stone.
"I got off the couch, got on my knees, and pleaded with God for forgiveness."
The illustration is perfect because we have all felt that: my body tells me to sleep while my Spirit is telling me to go to Church. So what do I do? Well, that will depend on what bod is better nourished for the war.
"In 1980 we moved as a family across the street from the hospital where I trained and worked. I worked every day, including Sundays. If I finished my Sunday work by 2:00 p.m., I could join my wife and daughter and drive to church for meetings that began at 2:30.
"One Sunday late in my first year of training, I know that I would likely finish by 2:00. I realized, however, that if I stayed in the hospital just a little longer, my wife and daughter would depart without me. I could then walk home and take a needed nap. I regret to say that I did just that. I waited until 2:15, walked home slowly, and lay down on the couch, hoping to nap. But I could not fall asleep. I was disturbed and concerned. I had always loved going to church. I wondered why on this day the fire of testimony and the zeal that I had previously felt were missing.
"I did not have to think long. Because of my schedule, I had become casual with my prayers and scripture study. I would get one morning, say my prayers, and go to work. Often day blended into night and into day again before I would fall asleep before saying a prayer or reading the scriptures. The next morning the process began again. The problem was that I was not doing the basic things I needed to do to keep my mightily changed heart from turning to stone.
"I got off the couch, got on my knees, and pleaded with God for forgiveness."
The illustration is perfect because we have all felt that: my body tells me to sleep while my Spirit is telling me to go to Church. So what do I do? Well, that will depend on what bod is better nourished for the war.
That brings me
to the second point of doctrine: Mosiah and Moroni are trying to teach a
similar doctrine: that we must nourish one while suffocating the other. In
fact, it is impossible to fully satiate both appetites at the same time. Your
spiritual nourishment is what is going to arm you for battle.
Brigham Young
taught plainly concerning this, "As I have told you, your spirit is continually
warring with the flesh; your spirit dictates one way, your flesh suggests
another, and this brings on the combat." (Journal of Discourses, 3:212).
Brigham Young
further taught, "When we receive the Gospel, a warfare commences immediately;
Paul says, 'for I delight in the law of God, after the inward man, but I see
another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me
into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.' We have to fight
continually, as it were, sword in hand to make the spirit master of the
tabernacle, or the flesh subject to the law of the spirit. If this warfare is
not diligently prosecuted, then the law of sin prevails, and in consequence of
this some apostatize from the truth when crossing the plains, learn to swear
instead of to pray, become high-minded and high tempered instead of learning to
be patient and humble, and when they arrive in these vallies (sic) they
feel so self-sufficient that they consider themselves the only ones that are
really right; they are filled with darkness, the authority of the Spirit is not
listened to, and the law of sin and death is the ruling power in their
tabernacles. (Journal of Discourses, 9:287-288).
At one point I was asked "why can't my dirty thoughts stay outside
of the Temple?" but I had to remind that person that it is not Satan that
keeps it in our mind--he does not have that kind of power: only we do.
I think that this doctrine is a reminder that we are never above sin. We
are never going to be non-susceptible to those. But what a blessing that is: it
causes us to be forever reliant on the Savior. There is not a person on this
world that will ever be able to feel as if they have "overcome"
completely. We may gain the faith to have the constant companionship of the 2nd
Comforter, which is Jesus Christ, however, we will always need divine
help.
Please comment. I think that this is a topic that many people
misunderstand or do not recognize the complementary doctrine that both of those
scriptures serve as
