“knew not the dealings of … God”
-this is
the root of Laman and Lemuel’s troubles!
They did not know and understand God… nor did they want to.
-much of
our suffering, unhappiness and psychological dissonance can be traced back to a
failure to understand the ways in which God works. Furthermore we somehow suppose that we could
arrange things better. Indeed the
toughest things in this life seem to be 1) submitting our will to God’s and 2)
getting to know God (and thereby “knowing the dealings of God”).
“knew not….
That God… who had created them.”
-these
two phrases are strikingly ironic to me.
How can they (we) not know the very being who created us, who gave us
life, whose “DNA” we share, who raised us, and of whose substance we are? It seems almost blatantly natural that the
offspring should know their progenitor intimately. In fact to not know, or to refuse to learn is
a gross demonstration of ingratitude and rebellion.
-it is
imperative that we know the dealings of God, that we have a solid sense of how
He thinks, what His motives are, why he acts and treats us the way He
does. Luckily, he is a generous Father
and wants us to know Him (which, itself is a fundamental attribute that we can
either believe or disbelieve). To know
the mind and will of God –a simple way of expressing “the dealings of God”- is
not an easy thing even though He wants us to attain it. There are at least two probems: 1. He
is all knowing and all powerful. We are
largely the opposite: we know very
little and our power relative to His is like a gnat on a lion’s hindend. Since we are dealing with analogies, our
ability to comprehend, to reason and to think is like a three year old child
sitting in one of Einstein’s lectures on cosmology and quantum physics. On the one hand it is laughable. 2. Our
current natures are cankered with the drives of the natural man. Because of this we operate and are motivated
by things fundamentally different than Him.
Our dealings with eachother which we can call the “dealings of man” are
centered on appetites: power, wealth,
physical hunger, sexual desire, status or fame and even positive cravings like
wanting to be loved. These motivations
cause us to see things differently, to want things differenctly to have a
mindset and orientation to life that is fundamentally different than his. It is like growing up in the Saharah desert
and trying to understand what snow, ice and penguins are. There are certainly other fundamental
differences that confound our ability to know the dealings of God but the net
result is a profound disconnect between the mind of man and the mind of
God. We are confused, frustrated and
even angered at the way he deals with us.
This is manifest by questions like, why does God allow people to suffer,
why do bad things happen to good people (like little children being slaughtered
by a gunman or millions of people being starved to death). These questions are asked in moments of deep
sobriety and are genuine expressions illuminating our lack of understanding
God’s dealings with, plan and purpose for man.
In summary, we often just do not “get” God. While I, myself, have confronted this
reality. Our lack of understanding is a
separate thing from utterly refusing to believe that he is there. I don’t understand nuclear fusion, calculus
or myocardio infarction but my lack of comprehension does not mean these things
do not exist and do not have very real bearing on my life and reality. I have painted a daunting picture of our
ability to come to know the dealings of God.
It is, perhaps, the essense of mortality and the key to our successful
eternal development so we should not expect it to be easy or for this
comprehension to come in a short period of time but it is nevertheless, not a
complicated educational process. We come
to know any complex thing by reading its instruction manual and by talking to
its inventor. We have an instruction
manual that details how God thinks, how he interacts with man and how He has
dealt with those who tend toward him as well as those who tend against
Him. Furthermore, we can talk to the
creator. He has issued an open
invitation. He has asked us to consider
him, to lend an ear toward his teachings, to direct our eye, single to His
glory. To knock, ask and open. To draw near to him. I could go on reciting the many familiar ways
he has invited us to get to know Him.
It is vital that we come to know the dealings of that God who created
us. If we do not, it leads to very different
courses of action, different comprehension of life situations, different values
upon which we base our behavior and a very different type of person we
eventually become. Nephi and
Laman/Lemuel are archtypes and examples of this process:
-the
created should trust, or at least be submissive to, his or her creator. This is difficult to dismiss. That agent who has the knowledge and the
power to create life surely has dominion and authority over the object of their
creation. It is blatant narcissism for
the created to assume in him or herself a superior role or status to their
creator and yet the family of man does it all the time. The amazing thing is that the creator allows
man to have this attitude of rebellion and self-importance.
-how has God
delt with you in the course of your life and why?
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