Episode #245 - The Character of Christ

When we understand the character and nature of Christ, we come to understand ourselves and the power of the atonement to change our natures especially when we find ourselves in difficult trials and circumstances.

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Welcome to Episode #245 – The Character of Christ.  I am your host Damon Socha.  I hope that you are enjoying these podcasts as much as I enjoy making them.  If you do I would very much appreciate you letting me know.  I have received several messages from many of you and I appreciate each one.  The stories you tell inspire me to continue to produce this podcast.  Speaking of this podcast, in the next couple of weeks you are going to notice a format change.  I will be using guest speakers as part of a discussion regarding various aspects of mental health and living the gospel.  If you know of someone who would like to be part of this podcast, please let me know by sending me an email or a comment.  I think that we all have important stories to share that can help one another.

Today I want to focus on the character and nature of Christ.  If I asked you to describe the Savior and his nature, what would be your response.  Think about it for a minute.  I bet you came up with the normal descriptors including the quality of perfection.  When we think about the Savior, we think perfection.  But what does that really mean?  To be perfected or in this case completed.  We know from the scriptures and several general conference talks that perfected means to be complete or finished.  But what does that mean?  What does it mean to be finished or complete?  How do we know when we get there?  Most of all, how can we measure if we are even close?  It can feel like we are running a race but don’t really know how far we have yet to travel or even where the finish line is.  Perfection can seem so far distant in our lives that we often ignore its necessity.  It feels overwhelming and daunting to even consider what distance and through what difficulties we must travel to get there.  So for us members we place perfection right up there with death.  We know that it exists and one day we are likely to find it but right now it is not on the radar of our existence.  We are just attempting to make it through our day alive and emotionally intact, much less consider something as far off as perfection.  And yet the command remains that we be perfect or become perfected.

I admit that this particular commandment has caused me far more grief and distress than it should have.  I have pondered the idea and ideals of perfection and my seeming distance from it.  I even admit to giving into the idea of living a terrestrial life.  Just not built for celestial realms.  I am too imperfect to become perfect as if my distance from perfection was insurmountable.  And perhaps I don’t feel that it is insurmountable as much as I don’t have the drive or capacity to get there.  I spend far too much time dealing with my illnesses and mental health to even consider working towards perfecting my life.  I’m surviving not thriving and I feel like I am simply struggling to tread water much less swim against the current.  It does seem counterintuitive to tell someone to become perfect and then give to them weaknesses so intense that perfection appears and feels impossible.  Now one might think that I have conquered the fears of perfection and yet those thoughts of a terrestrial life continue to resonate in my mind.  By somehow lowering my expectations, I can remove the pressures of eternal life and in turn reduce my symptoms.  I don’t know if you have ever felt this way but it has been one of the more difficult experiences in my life to face what we call perfection.  That is until I more fully understood it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am still in the process of this transition in thinking and I don’t believe that my emotions have fully caught up with my rational thoughts but what I have learned has helped me to far better understand the seeming magic of the plan of salvation.  When we think of perfection, what do we see?  How would you describe yourself in a perfected state?  Many of us including myself often see perfection from a more outward perception.  For instance, we see individuals giving significant service, doing great things in the gospel and seemingly walking in a saintly path and then we compare that supposed path to our own path.  And then we start to see our weaknesses, errors, mistakes and embarrassments in painful playback movies.  We tend to measure our perfection by how imperfect we are.  We tend to look upon reducing our sins, errors, mistakes and shortcomings as the measure of who we are.  And it is rare that we take into account the positive things we accomplished, how often we have been obedient, and how much we have learned.  We tend to focus on the stains in the garment rather than the garment.  Yes the stains need removing but it is the garment that leads us to perfection.  We often think that once all those stains have been rubbed out and washed by the lamb that we will somehow be perfected and completed.  And yet that is only half of perfection and we call that justification.  We must also be sanctified, meaning made new or perfect.  And so the garment must now only be washed clean but be made perfect.  

I tend to look at it this way to help me understand the difference between the two.  If you robbed a convenience store and then paid the price in prison you would be justified but those from whom your stole would still consider you untrustworthy.  Sanctification allows you to be trusted in the store again or trustworthy.  Why is that so important?  Because it tells us something about perfection.  It is not solely about repentance and behavioral change, it is about a change of nature.  Or a refining of our nature.  When we say we want to become like the Savior.  We mean that literally.  We are striving to change our core nature to be identical to the Savior’s.  This means that we are not trying to simply change our behavior, we are working to change the emotions causing that behavior.  We are working to say as did the people at the time of King Benjamin, that they had no more disposition to do evil.  Their natures had been changed so that the core emotions driving their actions were pure and thus their actions were by nature pure.  Now King Benjamins people had a rare experience where they all experienced this change during a profound moment in time.  For us, that will be rare.  Our natures are more likely to change slowly and with time and effort and almost always under difficult trials and troubles that come to us in this life.  The Lord can only change our hearts and nature as we allow this to occur.  As we give ourselves to him.  However, and this is important to understand, the Lord most often works within our weaknesses and trials to make changes to our nature.  It seems that the pressures of a fiery trial create the necessary conditions for a change of heart.  Ether explains it very clearly in Chapter 12 verse 27.  The Lord gives us weaknesses that we might be humble.  Humility is the key component to a change of heart.  When we are humble the Lord can make those necessary adjustments in our core nature.  

So what does it mean to “come unto the Lord” or become humble as the scripture states.  We eventually reach a point in our spiritual lives where we say, “I desire celestial life.  I know that I am weak and I need significant help.  I will do or endure whatever necessary to obtain it.”  When we can honestly say that, the Lord can work with us.  However, what tends to happen to those individuals who are honest seekers of spiritual change is that the Lord places them into a series of trials meant to provide the doctrine and experience necessary for the atonement and the Spirit of the Lord to make definitive changes to our core nature.  Those trials also tend to get increasingly more difficult as we work with the Lord successfully.  We will depend upon him with greater purpose and energy as our trials deepen with a more refining fire.  As the intensity of the heat increases and our willingness to submit expands the more the Lord can do with our core intentions and emotions.  Trials can purify or harden our hearts depending upon the touch of the master.  If we endure the heat but the dross remains, then we have only suffered without purpose such as Laman and Lemuel during their trials where they noted they would have been better having stayed in Jerusalem than to have experienced the difficult trials of the journey.  They saw no value and their core emotions only became more hardened rather than changed as did Nephi’s.

The trials you face in this life are not random or without purpose.  Difficult and deeply refining trials such as mental and emotional illness are not given by random or accident.  They have significant purpose in our lives.  The trials you now face are part of the refining processes necessary for your eventual exaltation.  I have no doubt that emotional and mental illness are specific trials meant for unique individuals in the kingdom of god.  They are some of the most refining experiences one can pass through in this life.  And I have said this before and I will say it again, the experiences of mental and emotional illness often align with the emotions the Savior felt during the process of the atonement in the garden.  We have a unique perspective upon the atoning sacrifice in that we are allowed to experience a portion of what he did during his sacrifice.

As we study what we know of Christ’s life we see that he too had to pass through refining processes that allowed him to experience mortality and all its difficulties.  He too needed the experience of mortality to fulfill his mission.  He could not judge us if he did not fully understand us individually and know exactly the trials we face.  He had to experience everything we have and so I am certain that his life was filled with very difficult trials and experiences so that he would know how to provide for us when we suffer.  His character, while perfect, was informed and elevated during his earthly life so that he could experience everything necessary to bring us back to the exalted life.  He does know each of us intimately and knows how to help us to become as he is.  He knows the trials we must pass through and the changes we need within our core spiritual nature.  You are where you need to be in this life.  The change in our nature is so often a painful, deliberate process where we must fully come to see our weakness and the power of the Savior to remove it.  I hope today most of all that you come to see his hands in your life, purifying your soul.  When you get to the other side of the veil and look back with the Savior, you will see the power of the illness to allow for a powerful change of heart.  When the Lord is finished with us, we will look back and thank him for our experiences here.  While we may not feel that way right now, we will see the value of our trials and the power they possess to cause a change in heart through the atonement of the Savior.  Until next week, do your part to find humility and the Lord will do his part to make the change.