I was recently thinking about how much my religion is often as much about the tangible as it is the spiritual.
For example, religion asks that we not only have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. It also asks us to take bread and water each week.
It asks us not only to follow Jesus and keep His commandments but to put on a jumpsuit and walk into a font of water to get baptized.
It asks us not only to obey God's commandments and live the gospel of Jesus Christ but to make tangible covenants that show we really mean it.
It even asks not only for people who have died to accept Jesus Christ but to be baptized by proxy by living people in jumpsuits and fonts holding little slips of paper they printed out that morning.
It's as if religion says, "It's not enough for your heart to be in it. Your body has to be in it too."
I used to wonder about what there was about the nature of the water or the words that provided the transformative effect to cleanse us or endow us with power beyond what the Holy Ghost accomplished spiritually. But now after having three kids with very literal needs, I don't care that much about the metaphysical or symbolic. Maybe we'll find out someday that most of the tangible things we did were important only symbolically to keep our minds on the right track. Maybe we'll find out it was all literal. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
But I still think there's something to the idea that our body has to be in it just as much as our heart. I think of what Jesus Christ taught about baptism both in the New Testament and in modern scripture. I think about an entire Plan of Salvation that depended on us getting mortal, fragile bodies. And tonight, I think about a little baby born in to tired parents in a tired, confused nation. And I am grateful for his literal, tangible life.
For example, religion asks that we not only have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. It also asks us to take bread and water each week.
It asks us not only to follow Jesus and keep His commandments but to put on a jumpsuit and walk into a font of water to get baptized.
It asks us not only to obey God's commandments and live the gospel of Jesus Christ but to make tangible covenants that show we really mean it.
It even asks not only for people who have died to accept Jesus Christ but to be baptized by proxy by living people in jumpsuits and fonts holding little slips of paper they printed out that morning.
It's as if religion says, "It's not enough for your heart to be in it. Your body has to be in it too."
I used to wonder about what there was about the nature of the water or the words that provided the transformative effect to cleanse us or endow us with power beyond what the Holy Ghost accomplished spiritually. But now after having three kids with very literal needs, I don't care that much about the metaphysical or symbolic. Maybe we'll find out someday that most of the tangible things we did were important only symbolically to keep our minds on the right track. Maybe we'll find out it was all literal. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
But I still think there's something to the idea that our body has to be in it just as much as our heart. I think of what Jesus Christ taught about baptism both in the New Testament and in modern scripture. I think about an entire Plan of Salvation that depended on us getting mortal, fragile bodies. And tonight, I think about a little baby born in to tired parents in a tired, confused nation. And I am grateful for his literal, tangible life.
11 And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.13 Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance.
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