(15 Sep 2023) My call back to the ministry this morning has to do with this reality: that God is merciful to those who choose to exercise faith in him. The witness, born of life’s experiences thus far, that is mine is that one can wake up from day to day and commend one’s life into God’s hands, study his words from the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon, but also from the rest of the canonical works of scripture and the words of living prophets and apostles. You can turn your petitions to the Lord at the start and end of the day on bended knee and counsel with and receive instruction from the Divine source of truth, which truth is not after the makings of this world and its modern conventions.
The world would tell you that you are a number, a dollar amount, a player in a system. Babylon was established anciently to get gain. We live amongst the modern day reiteration of Babylon. Systems both great and small are designed to get gain. Organizations are built around this objective, to make money. We live amongst Babylon on an exponential growth trajectory, the likes of which antiquity could have never imagined.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is also among us, housed in a modern organization. Perhaps, on its outward appearances, it resembles something of similarities with modern business. From it’s organzitional structure, to its modern systems that intermingle with the rest of the world’s modern economy. We distribute food via modern highways in semi-trucks and send humanitarian relief via airplanes. We pay our tithing online thanks to the Internet and modern Banking that allows this all to happen without leaving my bed!
And yet, at its core. At the very center of this modern Church there is something far more profound and universal. It is the beating heart of the Gospel: Jesus Christ himself, the Son of the Living God. It is power, and it is strength to navigate a complex and modern world. The gospel of Jesus Christ, both gives us power to navigate through systems and organizations, and it also gives us power to define and create new systems, new ways of working for ourselves and others that value more than just money, but rather humanity.
And yet, we have to ask ourselves why? And the answers though simple to state are not always so simple to