Technically, since we have free agency, we could live perfectly. We, technically, could choose all the right things and choose to not lose our patience and be kind and serve everyone and judge no one.
The problem is that we don’t, from the start of each day, know everything that is right.
Maybe we feel justified at the time for being disdainful towards someone, but then at the end of the day we are praying and the spirit prompts us to change our hearts and desires and realize we made a mistake and ask God to pardon our misstep.
Learning.
Experience.
Growth.
These things are why God does not ask us to be perfect. They are why He doesn’t ask us to get every principle of the Gospel exactly right, today. Because He knows our capabilities, that we wouldn’t always have knowledge of the right thing to do on the first, second, or third try, and that even if we did, we wouldn’t always choose it.
Instead, all He asks is that we try to learn a little more, act a little more obediently on that knowledge gained, and that we love a little more unconditionally, each day.
He has asked for our whole hearts, but He understands our condition, and that we must grow to want to give him our hearts before we can ever fully do it, because that is our nature as selfish beings.
I had an experience with this a few nights ago. I was feeling horrible and guilty about everything I had not done right that day and I was praying about it to God when I had a strong impression that I should call my mom.
Following this impression made me feel so much better, just hearing my mom’s kind and loving voice on the other end.
And it was then that I realized why that was so important for me to do.
We hear so much about God’s unconditional love: how nothing could ever affect it, how He is always there for us. But that concept that people teach has always felt like an intangible idea, sounding nice on paper, but not a real, solid truth that I could fall back on during hard times. I think this has gotten worse in quarantine because most of my time is now spent in my own head.
They say you only accept the love you receive.
This means that for me, when I’m feeling down on myself and like a failure, that little voice in the back of my head that reminds me, “God doesn’t think you’re a failure; you’re perfect to Him,” doesn’t make it very far in my brain before it’s smacked down and subconsciously ruled as untruth. Because something so kind and accepting could never be true.
This whole process has left me with some mental scarring to say the least, with the most backwards result being how I view repentance. Years of guilt and habit have led me to connect two very, very non-related concepts as if they were synonymous: repentance, and God’s love.
Now, since when I’m by myself, the love of ‘God’ that I am eligible to receive is granted on the condition of my good choices, then the opposite must also be true:
when I don’t make good choices, God loves me less.
If I had to pick one sentence that represented the biggest source of unhappiness in my life, it would be that.
I have been haunted by that idea for as many years as I can remember. Because if God’s love is a variable instead of a constant, how on earth can my own self-love be anything but another variable as well? I needed a prototype, something or someone to model my own love after, and the one that I latched on to was a very incomplete And twisted version of God’s love.
So, back to the phone call with my mom. I think God uses the angels (like my parents and Grandparents) in my life who love me unconditionally (which is the most Christlike attribute one can acquire, i think), in order to show me a real, concrete example of what it feels like to have someone’s love no matter what.
Nope, no exceptions, no if, ands, or buts. You are loved, here and now, and every other factor in your life can change and have NO effect on that constant love.
God loves you, even when you don’t.
Never doubt that.
God doesn’t doubt you, even when you doubt yourself.
Never doubt that.
God’s proud of you, even when you aren’t.
Never doubt that.
“You need to try to not be so hard on yourself baby”
-my mom to me on the phone. She is loving, but also understands my limits and why I am struggling, and is here to help me while I learn to overcome them. And that is what Christ is like, I believe.
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