2. Continuing from a previous post “*Not Half Way”
Brigham Young spoke similarly and emphatically about how all of life’s daily moments are to be used, however ordinary and simple these moments may seem to be: “It is the aggregate of the acts which I preform through life that will be exhibited in the day of judgment, and when the books are opened, there will be the life which I have lived for me to look upon. Do you not know that in the building up of the kingdom of God, the gathering of Israel, is to be done by little acts? You breathe one breath at a time; each moment is set apart to its act, and each act to its moment. It is the moment and the little acts that make the sum of the life of man. Let every second, minute, hour and day we live be spent in doing that which we know to be right.14
In fact, if not so focused, we can end up passing some of life’s major exams while still flunking some of the daily quizzes. So for serious disciples there are no ordinary people, but likewise there really are no ordinary moments.
Sobering is the only word, therefore, that I can use regarding daily discipleship. Gilbert Meilaender also very appropriately reminds us that Lewis, in The Pilgrims Regress, spoke of how discipleship involves the tether and pang of the particular,” concluding of Lewis’s insights ; “We live with this duality of our being, with our hearts both tied to what is local and unique and drawn toward the universal. Living within that tension, as the Lewis poem puts it, ‘we pay dearly’.”15
The gospel’s inward and outward standards are both high. Even when we are bestowing kindnesses, Lewis counseled: I have known people capable of real sacrifice who’s lives were nevertheless a misery unto themselves and to others, because self-concern and self-pity filled all their thoughts. Either condition will destroy the soul in the end. But til the end, give me the man who takes the best of everything (even at my expense) and then talks of other things, rather than the man who serves me and talks of himself, and whose very kindnesses are a continual reproach, a continual demand for pity, gratitude, and admiration. 16
Yes, life’s tutorials, at times, can constitute “a severe mercy,” but, viewed developmentally, such clinical experience can actually reflect instead, God’s tender mercies” (1 Nephi 1:20). Consider what King Benjamin said about the process of becoming more saintly: “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child does submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19).
Consider what King Benjamin said about the process of becoming more saintly: “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the been from the fall of Adam, and will be for ever and ever, until he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19).
Notice King Benjamin’s use for the word inflict, then think of Lewis’s instructive poem about Jesus as “Lord of the narrow gate and the needle’s eye.’17 In fact, when the development of the Christian virtues is viewed or approached other than as King Benjamin sets forth—such as acting as if these attributes are isolated from each other—troubles begin. The Christian attributes need each other just as do Christian disciples. Christian doctrines are not only strong and powerful, but they are also designed to be highly interactive. In our time, for instance, there has been needless and sad separation of mercy and justice, something, unsurprisingly, about which C.S. Lewis wrote. The Humanitarian theory simply wants to abolish Justice and substitute Mercy for it.
. . . Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants that flourish only in mountain soil, so happens that Mercy only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice: transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called a mountain variety.”18
The need for us to develop a composite Christian character is embodied in Peter’s question, “What manner of persons ought ye to be?” He then answered, most significantly, that we are to become, in His words, “even as I am,” (3 Nephi 27:27). Therefore, our being tutored cannot be episodic and still be fully effective. To be sure, we may choose not to be serious participants in that process. We may actually turn our backs on it. Nevertheless, when Jesus said, “Come unto me,” He also promised, “and I will show unto you your weaknesses,” Reassuringly, however, some weaknesses, the scriptures say, can actually become strengths (see Moroni 10:32; Ether 12;27; see also Revelation 12:17).
The necessary process is unrelenting as far as I can see, yet it is a process of full mercy and love emblematic of Father’s plan of happiness. It is the effort of a loving Father God and His redeeming Son, Jesus Christ, to do all they can do to help us during the crowded time for this short, mortal classroom. To become more like Them involves both obedience to their ordinances and emulation of Their attributes—all in order that we might return to them.
No wonder, therefore, we are repeatedly rushed to use our time wisely by forsaking the world and “[taking] up our cross daily” (Luke 9:23; emphasis added ). I seem to remember that C.S.Lewis taught us that God is serious about joy (see Letters to Malcolm 17:17). Indeed, “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25). Even so there is neither cheep joy nor cost-free discipleship. 12-14~~C. S. Lewis: Insights on Discipleship (Book craft, Salt Lake City,, Bookcraft, 1999), p.11-14 (continued. . . . with LDS perspective. . .)
