“I, the Lord, forgive sins unto those who confess their sins before me and ask forgiveness,“

“God will forgive you.”

That sentence often left me perplexed.  I appreciate it when someone forgives me for something I have done that has hurt them or made their life more difficult.  I appreciate not only the forgiveness that lightens my burden but I also respect the forgiver’s unselfish, generous, or peaceful nature that allows him or her to forgive the hurt, or dismay or difficulty that I have caused in his or her life.

 But, growing up, I couldn’t fathom God being emotionally hurt, or dismayed or thwarted by my sins.  God is love.  God is justice.  God is mercy.  And he’s all about agency.  He expects us to mess up.    I mean, God is not so small that He is so focused on obedience to his commandments that he feels personally offended or hurt  when I fail to obey.  He has no ego wrapped up in our compliance with his mandates. Nor does my disobedience make his eternal life more difficult.  Certainly he loves me and cares about me, but my personal recalcitrance or failures to avoid sin do not mess up his divine existence, or thwart His work, nor cause him great anguish over my ongoing imperfection.  Our God is a God of love, not a God of anguish or unhappiness over every mistake made by each of his billions of children. (What a miserable eternal life that would be)  His stand against sin is firm, but his emotional health and well being is not tied to my exact compliance or lack thereof this week.

I believe that most of the run of the mill sins we continually make don’t make God feel personally offended or thwarted, neither do they surprise Him.  Instead his response to our everyday sins that we recognize is more along the lines of consistent encouragement to get our act together better and, with His help, change.  So, forgiveness offered by God must not mean being excused and forgiven for emotionally injuring him or disappointing him by our not yet being perfect.

Yes, I know there are Old Testament and Pearl of Great Price references to God weeping or being angry.  I am not saying that He never does feel strong negative emotions.  But when He does, it is not because I or someone else failed to do something like remember to fast on Fast Sunday last month.

If I am right, and God is not personally, or physically, or emotionally, or spiritually, hurt or thwarted when I engage in less than perfect behavior, then it must mean that there is something other than personally offending Him or causing Him difficulty or disappointment that my plea for forgiveness must be about.

Lately I have been studying the topic of the mercy of God, which is a fascinating and lovely subject.  And I have found that you cannot study His mercy without also running into a lot of statements and discussions about His sense of justice and what makes Him angry.  And do you know which one thing, throughout the scriptures, always makes Him angry or sad?  It is you physically, emotionally or spiritually hurting one of his other children and not caring about it, or worse, thinking it’s cool or admirable.  THAT makes Him angry and doubles his sorrow, once for you, and the other for the person you hurt.

As a mom, I totally understand that.  In my current calling I can understand that.  I can remain pretty calm and unmoved by your messing with me, but if you willfully or ignorantly and/or arrogantly hurt one of my “kids” and don’t care enough to think twice about, or, horrifically, enjoy it,  I am mad.  I can keep my cool.  I can treat you with civility, I can even continue to try to help you, but I am furious.  Mother bear furious underneath my calm efforts to work for change.  Angry at the opportunities you had to do good in which you willfully chose to do something that hurt someone else.  And sad for you.  I am so, so sad for you.

And it will only be after you have not only changed, but also after you spoken to me about that change and your regret about the damage you did to people I love, that you will begin to feel at peace in my presence and will we be able to start to rebuild trust.

So I think that helps me understand better why the scriptures discuss confessing to and receiving forgiveness from God.  It’s when we understand not just the damage we’ve done to ourselves, but, more importantly, the callously inflicted damage, great or small, that our sins cause, or will cause in the lives of our brothers and sisters who He loves as deeply as He loves us, that we begin to understand more clearly why we seek His forgiveness as well as theirs.

“Obedience is the first law of heaven.” Where did that come from?

There is a sentance that is sometimes quoted by members of my faith, though few know where it came from.  It is this:

“Obedience is the first law of heaven.”

It was spoken by Joseph F. Smith in a conference talk on October 7, 1873. *

It is often used to advocate for compliance with laws that one does not see the reasons for, and therefore is disinclined to obey, intimating that if you don’t agree, or don’t understand, then just obey anyway, because obedience is that important.

But.   In that same talk.  Joseph F. Smith explains what he means by obedience.

“We talk of obedience, but do we require any man or woman to ignorantly obey the counsels that are given? Do the first Presidency require it? No, never. What do they desire? That we may have our minds opened and our understandings enlarged, that we may comprehend all true principles for ourselves; then we will be easily governed thereby, we shall yield obedience with our eyes open, and it will he a pleasure for us to do so.”

He is advocating an obedience that is very different from obedience for the sake of obedience.  He is speaking of an obedience that is based upon an opened mind and the understanding that we have aquired of the heavenly principles behind the law and how they play out when we live them and a clear desire on our part to live those principles because those principles are ones we want to make a part of who we are and part of the world in which we live.   It is an obedience that is totally different from “obedience just because obedience is super important.”

* https://scriptures.byu.edu/#:t27123:p565