I intended to post a “Part III” to my “What Righteous Political Leaders Should Look Like” series, but I don’t think that I will, at least not for a while. There are reasons for this that I will not enumerate here, but I will say that a continued study of Mosiah 2 is a very revealing exercise. Actually, a study of King Benjamin’s entire address can help us better understand what it takes to be a righteous leader and can help us better identify individuals who truly are righteous leaders.
For now, I would simply like to share some overarching principles that the Lord taught me this morning, hoping that it will benefit others to the same or better degree than they helped me today.
When he delivers his address, King Benjamin is old and approaching death. He states, specifically, that one of the reasons why he called his people to gather is because of the fact that he knew he would soon die. He was told to deliver a message. He had a duty to perform before he died and his frailty in his old age wasn’t going to deter him from doing that.
Mortality is a funny thing. One reason why I think it is necessary for us to experience mortality is that it makes obvious to us the fact that there are things that last and things that don’t. Mortality forces you to confront the fact that your time here is limited, and so discovering what is of most value becomes a race against the clock. This world would have you believe that experiences, in and of themselves, are the things that should be sought. You only live once, right? Well, actually, no. There is more to our existence than what we experience in this life. This life’s experiences are meant to give you what will help you the most outside of mortality. They are meant to help you acquire truth and, in the end, both the acquisition of truth and the transmission of that truth to others are really the only worthwhile and lasting endeavors you can engage in while you are still here.
Aging (and other illnesses and physical weaknesses) can make your mortality very real and very present, but the truth is that our lives right now are every bit as frail as what King Benjamin’s was when he delivered his final address. We need not wait for our years to advance to learn this and we absolutely shouldn’t. I believe this is why King Benjamin stresses the fact that God lends us breath daily. Our existence in this mortal sphere is both temporary and tenuous, and most of us don’t engage that reality until it gets right up into our face.
And so, what are we doing with that breath that God lends to us? King Benjamin says that we would be unprofitable servants even if we spent our whole lives in his service, but does that mean that we shouldn’t spend our lives in his service? What does being in his service look like? His work is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. He does this by imparting knowledge to us and we engage in his work as we acquire and incorporate more of his knowledge and then help others do the same.
None of life’s experiences are as important as the truth that is being communicated to you through those experiences. Situations change, but the truths that you can gain from passing through those situations stay with you, and, if you teach those truths to others, they can be of benefit to those who would pass through similar situations.
We try so hard to hold on to situations that we think will give us the most benefit—employment, health, reputation, relationships with family and friends—not realizing that these things, because of their existence in this world, are temporary. They are meant to teach us about things that are not temporary, but, in our attempts to hold on to the situations themselves, we blind ourselves to the truths they are trying to teach us and we suffer unnecessarily from our lack of truth.
Being able to let go of the situations in mortality and being able to focus on the acquisition and dissemination of truth is what enables a person to have inner peace. Your life becomes an investment in things that cannot be taken away from you. Truth becomes a part of you. You incorporate it.
I love that word—incorporate. I’ll just take a moment here to suggest some deep pondering of a few definitions of that word:
To unite; to blend; to work into another mass or body;
To embody; to give a material form to.
To form into a legal body, or body politic; to constitute a body, composed of one or more individuals, with the quality of perpetual existence or succession, unless limited by the act of incorporation;
To unite so as to make a part of another body; to be mixed or blended; to grow into, &c.
How cool is that?!?! You know, I’m really not a “touch/feel love language” kind of a person, but there are times when I just want to give certain people a hug and thank them for how they have helped me understand things and Noah Webster is on my list of people to thank someday.
It works just like the sacrament. If you read the accounts of Christ administering the sacrament, the most important part of the sacrament is not anything that has to do with the immediate situation of the ordinance itself —the officiator, the prayer, the bread, the wine. What is important is the symbolism that what the bread represents is truth and that the truth is consumed by us and broken down into its simplest forms to be taken up again and reconstituted into what makes us what is outwardly manifested to people. How beautiful is that?!?!
I feel like this post has jumped around all over the place, but I hope that someone can pick up on my continuity of thought somehow and feel as much happiness and love as what I have this morning. These thoughts have been a salve to my soul.
Don’t hold on to situations. Hold on to truth. Hold on to God, as he is the source of all truth.
19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew 6)