Love is 3D

Becoming divorced after twenty years of marriage made me want to know why. I prayed for the Lord to tell me what my role in this failure could be, because I had considered myself the "perfect" husband and father. Through the grace of God I have seen that I was missing a most important aspect of life. I appeared on the outside to do "everything right," but I didn't know what was missing; we don't know what we don't know. What was missing was the heart! I did not come to know my family in an intimate way. 

Knowledge, or understanding, comes on various levels, or dimensions. Children can understand things on a one-dimensional level, they can connect dots, or bits of information to make a line. As we grow up, we can see how the lines fit together to make a picture.  However, as we gain experience we learn how the pictures come together to form a third dimension, adding depth to our pictures. 

I had a picture of what a family should be. It was very intricately drawn over years of thinking, learning, observing, and reading. Through my personal experience I formed opinions on how things should be, starting with: "I'm not going to make the mistakes my parents made." Moreover, I read many self-help books on marriage and family. I was also taught a great deal about the family at church. My picture seemed very real -- perfect, but it was still only 2-dimensional.  When I actually had a family I set about creating exactly what I had pictured. 

I just assumed that my wife and children would come to see that my picture of marriage and family was good. I felt like I had to give them my picture, to "teach" or "mold" them to fit my picture using various tools of manipulation. Of course, they all rebelled against me.  When my 17-year-old said, "how can you be happy when your wife and children hate you for what you believe," I replied, "Why should I let others determine my happiness?" My response revealed my sin: I didn't care what they thought, or how they felt; my heart wasn't with them. I wasn't dependent on them in any way.

Part of the problem is never learning how, but also I didn't want to let them into my heart because that would require me to change. Change what? My thoughts, my ideas, my mind, my heart, my feelings, and my desires. It's me. It's what I am inside, the core, or the heart. If I let others in then it will inevitably require a change of heart. Avoiding change is pride, which then brought fear.  To avoid admitting I wasn't perfect (complete, or whole) I had to keep them out of my heart.

It wasn't that the picture I had was wrong, it was just incomplete, or two-dimensional. It needed a third dimension to make it real. A picture of your family is not the same as having their presence. A hug is a whole dimension better than a photograph. To connect with the heart is infinitely better than a business conversation. The third dimension adds so much more -- indeed, it is life itself. The third dimension is love; it takes the picture that can only exist in your own brain, and adds color and depth. The Apostle Paul explains that perfect love is the opposite of selfishness: "Charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up... seeketh not her own." (1 Corinthians 13:4,5) Love is not proud or selfish. Because of pride I didn't love.  It's other people and their differences that give us a third dimension.

Love requires a change of heart. Connecting with people means they will change what you think and feel -- changing your mind and heart. Every person we love will change us in some way by adding their uniqueness to our picture. It is our differences that make us real; no two people are exactly alike. When we accept others by trying to understand who they are and what they think and feel, we will necessarily have to experience their uniqueness.  We don't really understand what others experience until we share it. This is why people form groups with similar experiences.  Loving those without similarities is more difficult, requiring humility and maturity. When we experience people who are different from us, we will take them into our hearts and our hearts will change. Each change adds more depth to us. The more we love, the more depth we have, adding dimensions.

Just like I did with my family, people often "love" people in order to change them to our point-of-view.  Real love requires that we just accept how they are.  If I love you, then I must experience your uniqueness.  Time is a requirement for love to grow.  The more time I spend, the more experience I have, allows me to gain greater understanding -- and love.

Because of this, the family is where we mostly learn to accept differences and connect with others. We take our family members exactly as they are and come to know them over time. We communicate with them, we watch them, we experience them and in this way come to know them intimately. Each experience with each person brings us closer together. The Family Proclamation reads: "Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities." As we share these experiences our hearts become more unified.

I have always had an exclusive concept of family: a mother, father and their children. Aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents and so forth are extended family. I now have become part of a family that is inclusive, that welcomes others into our intimate circle. Anyone who desires, and is willing to live by our family rules, may come and be accepted in spite of their differences. This requires a lot of love as each member allows their heart to change with each addition to the family. This is how we love our neighbors, adding more and more depth to our picture of life.

Ultimately, our love for our neighbor leads to love for God because we experience Him both directly and through others. After explaining that the first commandment was to love God, Jesus went on, "And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." (Matthew 22:39) By loving those around us we take Him into our hearts, changing our thoughts, ideas, needs and desires. This is the sacrifice required of all God's children, that of "a broken heart and a contrite spirit." Each week we take the emblems of His body and blood into ourselves -- His sacrifice, His love -- and make Him a part of our hearts, and as we experience Him we obtain "a mighty change of heart," or a true love for God, giving depth to our picture, making us 3D.

Thoughts are things

"The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven"   John Milton

My daughter called me last night wondering if she was loved.  She said that she had been plagued with these thoughts that nobody cared about her.  I told her I loved her more than anything in the world, and that if I had anything in the world, it was at her disposal.   She said, "Thank you," through her tears.  As I was speaking to her I began to think about thoughts.

Last week I was cleaning the kitchen and began having thoughts of discontent. I was lamenting my fate. I was thinking about how things weren't being done properly in my household. As I was wiping the stove I started to get discouraged, has I had many times in the past. However, somehow I got a sense that these thoughts weren't from me, or God, so I asked the Lord in my heart, "Are these evil spirits that are putting these thoughts into my head?" The answer was immediate and powerful, "YES!!!!" That was all.

The ethereal nature of thoughts is deceiving. We would like to think stoves exist and thoughts don't, or that stoves are real and thoughts aren't. Actually, the contrary is true. The reality in eternity is that the thoughts are real and last forever, whereas the stove is temporary.  Just like my daughter, the thoughts in my head caused a change in my heart, or feelings. I began to be discontent, discouraged, and distant. I would have rejected those who love me. In the Scriptures "reject" is synonymous with "hate." The thoughts inside the mind are so powerful as to create the kind of life I live.  What I think is what I am.

The Eternal nature of thoughts puts them in the realm of reality. They are not arbitrary or nothing, but rather more real and tangible than anything we can hold in our hands.   Nor do we create them from nothing.  Rogers and Hammerstein pointed out that "nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could." There is no ex nihilo creation. Thoughts come from somewhere. They are given to us, it is part of the war.

The war in Heaven is intricately woven into the fabric of life. Wherever life exists, the war is there. The sides are clearly drawn, there is nobody in the middle, or on the fence: whoever is not on the side of good is evil. As darkness is the absence of light, or cold is a lack of heat, evil is just "not good." Even those things that are "not bad" may be evil if they are not good.  Every arrow of God must hit exactly in the center of the target. Close isn't good. In fact, the most insidious evil is that which is close enough to good so that it cannot be easily distinguished.  Mormon explains: "every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.  But whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil." (Moroni 7:16,17)  We fight either with lies, or truth.

The truth is Jesus Christ. We are children of God so we have intrinsic value -- He loves us. The way we know He loves us is because He sent His Only Begotten Son to pay the price for our sins and transgressions. We don't have to suffer the consequences of our evil natures because He already did. This is love. Accepting His sacrifice brings us to God. Without Him there is no way for us to span that infinite gap that separates us from God. Every person born has access to this love. Knowing this, we could never be discouraged, or hopeless, or hateful, or rebellious, or apathetic or fearful. This is the two-edged sword that cuts through all the lies of Satan. It is the battlefront that is most attacked in the minds and hearts of men. If the lies can blind us to this truth we can be overcome, and lost.

The battleground is not in the material world, per se, it is in the hearts and minds of every living being. Though we cannot see the blood, it is spilt in a very real way when anyone is lost to God. The weapons, though we cannot perceive them with our physical senses, are nevertheless very real -- and deadly! Thoughts and feelings turn the soul in either direction. Those who are fighting on the side of good are doing the will of God, and those who obey Satan are on the side of evil.

Our enemy has no sword because there is no truth in him. He has "fiery darts" and "poisonous serpents" which are really one weapon: lies: "you are not good; if you can't perceive it with your physical senses, it doesn't exist; God doesn't exist; Satan doesn't exist; there is no good and evil; there is no war; you can be selfish and happy at the same time," and so forth. Anger, hopelessness, discouragement, hatred, pride, rejection, fear, rebellion, loathing, apathy, and desire are the weapons of the adversary. The evil spirits are real, and the thoughts they give to us are just as real. When we take the thoughts into our minds, we are wounded, but they do little damage. It's when we accept them into our hearts and believe them that we are truly damaged, indeed, we could die.

Fighting on the side of God requires wielding the sword of truth. Truth cuts through lies like light cuts through darkness. Darkness cannot exist where there is light because it is merely the absence of light. In the same way, truth dispels all lies so it is more powerful and wins every battle. Knowing the truth gives one power over evil.  We don't become warriors on the side of God until we can adeptly wield the sword of Truth. "Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word, and then shall your tongue be loosed; then, if you desire, you shall have my Spirit and my word, yea, the power of God unto the convincing of men." (D&C 11:21)

Our thoughts determine our destiny. Thoughts are real. God is real. Satan is real. The real war being fought every minute of every day is in our thoughts -- our minds and our hearts. Thoughts of discouragement are given to us by Satan, and thoughts of faith, hope, and love are gifts from God. By His grace He gives us the protection, the weapons, and the healing we need to fight and win. If we accept the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Savior, and bring it into our hearts, we have won the war. "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." (Proverbs 23:7)