Apathy

Topics without scriptures: Anxiety.

In the scriptures, the theme of "apathy" is most often addressed in two ways. The first of which is our general concern for God and for His commandments. The second is our apathy for the poor. Or in other words, for being lax in our love for God and our love for our neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40).

Focusing on the first one, what it means to have apathy towards God and His commandments is summed pretty well in 2 Nephi 28:21:

21And others will he ^apacify, and lull them away into carnal ^bsecurity, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the ^cdevil ^dcheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.

In other words, one of Satan's most effective methods is to convince people that everything is fine and that they do not need to be paying attention or working hard. God's reaction to these type of people can be found in Revelations 3:16:

16So then because thou art ^alukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will^bspue thee out of my mouth.

Note that God is not saying that we are not of worth or that He does not love us, He is saying that in all honesty when we become slacker we really are not useful. To bring it home, have you ever been assigned to a project group or committee where there is that one person who really just does not care? How frustrating is it when you know how useful that person could be, but instead they really are just holding everyone else back?

God's call to us is simple, to wake up (Romans 13:11) and get moving (Alma 34:33) with special emphasis on taking care of the poor (Alma 34:28). God does not want a little bit of who we are, He wants our "heart, might, mind and strength" (D&C 4:2) because anything less won't be enough to face the trials that come to us.

Remember, the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is apathy.

Antichrist

This entry is actually anti-climatic. With an entry like "antichrist" you would expect some high spirited show-down, but in reality it is pretty simple. An antichrist is just anyone who is against the gospel of Christ.

The scriptural definition of "antichrist" can be found in 1 John 2:22:

22Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son.

Another definition can be found in the LDS Bible Dictionary:

A word used by John to describe one who would assume the guise of Christ, but in reality would be opposed to Christ. In a broader sense it is anyone or anything that counterfeits the true gospel or plan of salvation and that openly or secretly is set up in opposition to Christ. The great antichrist is Lucifer, but he has many assistants both as spirit beings and as mortals.

So an antichrist could be anyone against being a good person in general or saying that Christ wasn't who he says he was. With that last one there could be lots of people who would fit under the category of antichrist, but I think where it becomes a problem is when you start trying to convince others of your ideas or telling Christians themselves that they are deceived. You can argue points this way and that, but in the end you can't argue faith.

An example of an antichrist who came to a tragic end can be found in Jacob 7. In short, there is a man named Sherem who openly opposed the gospel declaring that there was no Christ. He was so confident in himself that he sought out the current prophet Jacob to try and prove him wrong.

I've been in situations like this. I'm not saying that I'm a prophet, but I've kind of found these situations more than a little pointless. As I said before, you can't argue faith. If someone has it, you can't really smash it. If someone doesn't have it, you can't argue it into them. I have rarely met someone who for reasons of faith are bitterly against our church, but instead have problems with some historical or scientific reasoning that doesn't make sense to them. I've kind of realized that whether a religious conversation is going to go well with mutual respect or if it is going to turn into me sitting there while they spew angrily at me can be based off of their response to two questions. Both of which it would be a good idea of we all answered ourselves either with a "yes" or a "no":

1. If you had all of your scientific and historical questions answered and resolved, would it be enough for you to enter the water's of baptism and unite with us in our faith?

2. If God gave you a personal revelation confirming to your heart in a way that you could not deny, that this was the true church and that you were to join it, would it be enough for you to enter the water's of baptism and unite with us in our faith?

Answer

In learning about other religions, I've discovered that one of the key doctrines we teach that many other churches do not is the principle of revelation. We believe that there are two channels of communication that we can receive from heaven, one directly from God through the Holy Ghost, and one through the priesthood using prophets and other leaders. Elder Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave a great talk or sermon on this last fall called Two Line of Communication.

What it boils down to is that God answers prayers. If you really want to know how you should be living your life, he has provided a way for you to learn - whether it is directly from the Holy Ghost or more plainly explained by one of his servants (Amos 3:7), there is always instruction available. Especially now with the internet and technology, our access to the scriptures and to the living prophets is un-paramount. A teacher once made the comment that he was reading about an angel appearing to a prophet in the Book of Mormon named Alma the Younger, and was contemplating on what a miraculous one-on-one experience that must have been. Then he turned on his computer and started watching a video of one of the latter-day prophets speaking. It was then that it hit him that there really was no difference. Both provided support and spiritual instruction in a way that was beyond basic human experiences.

The scriptures in the Topical Guide for this topic tended to deal with either showing an example of God answering, or instruction on how we should answer. The scripture that meant the most to me while studying was 1 Peter 3:15 that says:

15But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

So in response to that call, below is what I have written as my answer for the "reason of the hope" that is in me for why I know that God answers prayers. It is from my Mormon.org profile answering the question "In what ways have your prayers been answered?":

When I was a little girl, I took an alphabet book with me to preschool for show and tell. At some point during the day, it got lost and I was really upset. But I went behind the bookcases and knelt down and prayed and within 10 minutes it was found. When I was in high school I had some negative people in my life that would spend a lot of time breaking me down emotionally. I would pray beside my bed every night, and every night I would get a feeling of peace as if someone who really did love me was putting their arms around me and hurting just as much as I was that I was going through a hard time. When I was trying to figure out what school to go to for college I did a lot of praying, but wasn't getting any clear answers. Then I went to visit a school I applied to in Ohio and went to an institute class there. While sitting there I got a feeling and asked in my heart "I'm going here aren't I?" and received a clear voice in my head "Yes, you are." When I was in college I was put into a situation that was not a positive one. I prayed about it and was told to stay. By the end, I was heartbroken and felt as if my entire soul was drained. After some soul searching for several months, I realized that I was made stronger by being there and that God was watching me to make sure that I was not hurt beyond my breaking point. It was not a very positive answer to live through but sometimes answers are like that. We're God's hands on Earth and sometimes that means really being put to work. When my husband and I started dating everything clicked together so perfectly. I prayed a lot about whether I should marry him. He was not LDS and I knew I should be worried about it, but it was like there was a barrier inside me keeping me from worrying. So I moved ahead with our relationship. Later on, after he came out of the water when he was baptized, I had a feeling like I was looking into a mirror when I was with him - knowing that I was suppose to marry him.

Anointing, Anoint

Topics without scriptures: Anna; Annas; Annunciation; Anointed One.

If you read the Bible, you will see the practice of anointing with oil from the days of Moses down to the Apostles. It was meant as a ceremony that sealed someone to a certain mission or duty - in the case of the sons of Aaron it was to be priests. It is also used in calling kings in Israel.

Though I do not know everything, in my experience we use anointing today according to the direction found in James 5:14:

14Is any ^asick among you? let him call for the ^belders of the church; and let them ^cpray over him, ^danointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:

In that anointing we use special consecrated oil, which is ordinary olive oil you buy from the store that then goes through a ceremony to become consecrated or set apart for the healing of the sick.

I went into this a little more in depth in a earlier entry for Administration to the Sick, so I am just going to say how amazing it is that this church is so biblical. Every now and then, if you are paying attention, you can pick up on these things that were true and used thousands of years ago, and though the implementation may have changed, we are still using them. The gospel has always been true.

Anguish

When I was little I would break things on accident and more often than not I was afraid of the punishment. Then, while on my time out, I would have a degree of anguish in my heart for the suffering I was being forced to endure. Most people when they read about the agony of Hell assume it is from being punished, but I would suggest another type of agony.

This agony I first experienced when I was older. I was in six grade and was hungry during class, so I pulled out some pretzels to snack on. My teacher caught me and confronted me in the middle of her lesson in front of the whole class. I was on the whole a good kid and I thought very highly of my teacher. The resulting feeling was a terrible agony of letting down my teacher and wishing that I could run from the room. At that moment I couldn't bare to be in her presence even though she had moved on with the lesson. In spite of how highly I felt towards my teacher and how much I wanted to be with her, I could not with the knowledge of letting her down.

I believe this is really what Hell will be like. I do not believe that God will torture us for eternity, but I do believe that when we come to a recognition of our sinful state and how we have "let him down" that we will be tortured inside ourselves.

But I also believe there is hope. My favorite story of hope is the one of Alma the Younger. He was described as the "vilest of sinners" who went about "spiritually murdering" the followers of God with his false preaching. Then an angel of the Lord appeared and chastised him, leaving him unconscious for three days. During those three days, he learned what anguish meant:

8And it came to pass that I was ^athree days and three nights in the most bitter^bpain and ^canguish of soul; and never, until I did cry out unto the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy, did I receive a ^dremission of my sins. But behold, I did cry unto him and I did find peace to my soul.

9And now, my son, I have told you this that ye may learn wisdom, that ye may learn of me that there is ^ano other way or means whereby man can be saved, only in and through Christ. Behold, he is the life and the ^blight of the world. Behold, he is the word of truth and ^crighteousness.

You can try and ignore or numb guilt, but the only way to permanently remove it is through Christ. From everything that I have experienced, I can promise that it will not be easy, but it will be possible. Most importantly it will be worth it.

Anger

There is a book that has an interesting spin on anger called "How to Hug a Porcupine" by Dr. John Lewis Luna. In this book, he said that the first natural reaction to an unfavorable

situation is frustration, but from there it is really our choice what happens next. I would add that sometimes, like river beds that have been carved out of the earth from years and years of water taking that particular path, that it is hard to change which direction our emotions go, but like anything with the Savior it is possible to change.

Anger is not a source of power. It is a chaotic emotion that takes away our control and ability to make choices. It has a lot of energy behind it, energy that can lead us to do things that we normally would not be able to do, but usually those are also things that if we were thinking clearing we would not want to do do them. Acts in anger almost always lead to regret - no matter what the reason or how badly you were hurt or offended. In the end, anger has nothing to do with the other person and punishing them, and has everything to do with how much control you have over yourself.

In this last General Conference of the Church, Elder Boyd K. Packard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gave a message on letting out anger go - and he made some very piercing and honest remarks about the realities we face.

There are so many scriptures speaking on anger and how one should not be angry. But is there such a thing as righteous anger? I would say no, not as we see the definition. God's anger may have been provoked, Moses may have destroy the tablets containing God's Law at the sight of the Israelite's sin, and Christ may have purge the temple of shops with a wipe - but I do not believe it was the kind of uncontrollable anger that we are familiar with on a daily basis. I believe it is more of a calculated frustration that is meant to teach us something more than simply lashing out to punish us. Like how an angered father will send his disobedient child on a time-out, he's trying to teach him something instead of satisfying some flaring emotional need.

To end this topic, I wrote something the other day while feeling quite grumpy from a particularly bad day of pain. I now find myself repeating it in my own quest for self-control.

Hard times - pain, grief, hunger and all the conditions that take away my comfort and peace - will always destroy me and create a new creature. It is my choice what that creature will be - an animal or an angel.

Angels, Ministering

In my last entry I touched upon what the broad definition of an angel is and how we along with those who have gone before can be angel's to God (see D&C 130:5). I would like to expand on the specific word "Ministering" and what it means.

In this month's Ensign (the LDS monthly magazine for adults) there was an article about how we can minister to each other. In this article, Sister Allred defines our roll as ministers to each other as:

Observe and anticipate needs. For instance, if a sister you visit has an upcoming test at school, perhaps you could make her dinner sometime during the week so she can have more study time. If the brother you home teach is looking for a job, introduce him to people who might be able to help.

There were other sections in the article about praying with them and watching over their spirituality, but for ministering she said that looking over and acting on the individual needs of people is what it is all about.

When thinking about angel's in the scriptures who ministered, I found that they too were looking out for specific needs. When Gabriel visited Mary, he had a specific message to give her and specific comfort to give. It was not just a random visit to give a practiced, generalized message about spirituality. This is also true of the angel who visited Alma after he was kicked out of Ammoninhah for preaching the gospel. He needed a pick-me-up and some specific encouragement, not a random quote from a past prophet about being good.

When we minister to each other, it is not just the service or the teaching, it is really paying attention to an individual need and doing our best to address it. God's kingdom may be a community, but it is a community of individuals who have needs that God expects us to meet as best we can.