Welcome to the Verbal Motivation Podcast. Where we talk about the things that motivate our lives, our religion and our relationships. My name is Nathan Vail.
This is episode number four, called commission vs omission
In geometry there is a simple property or calculation called the Transitive Property of Equality. It says that if A =B and B =C then C must equal A. Basically it is describing the relationship between three things that are all the same quantity, just with different names.
Sometimes in The Church, it feels like we give things a different name and feel better about it, without realizing it’s the same as something we know is not good. Kind of like when you eat too much cake on your birthday and expect not to gain weight because it’s your birthday cake.
I was very frustrated last month because I had an important deadline and it happened to be that we had a family vacation planned to Disneyland and that trip occurred exactly two weeks before the deadline. When the day to leave for Disneyland arrived I still had a lot of work that, but I told myself that I should go enjoy the trip for a week and make up the time the next week right before the deadline. As it happens, I came home from that trip with COVID and spent the next week sick in bed and completely missed my deadline. This is only relevant to today’s podcast because in the aftermath, I realized that both Disneyland and COVID had the same effect on my progress.
This is very much like life in that sin and distraction, though very different from each other, can have the same corrosive effect on our spiritual progression.
Sin, as a definition, could be stated as, things that separate us from our Father in Heaven. If that is true, I think it would be fair to say that anything that separates us from our Heavenly Father has the same effect as sin.
We all know what committing sin is and the importance of repenting. But the thing that bothers me is how do we repent of not doing things we are supposed to do, when in the next life there is no opportunity to do those things? We are here to have experiences that bring us closer to our Father in Heaven, but what if we don’t. What if we are just too busy having life?
It’s kind of like having spiritual FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).
Imagine you plan a once in a lifetime trip to Europe with your friends but then right before you leave you get into a fight with one of them and refuse to go. Let’s say, for this example, your friends still take the trip to Europe and have amazing experiences and see beautiful things. While they are gone you realize that you made a huge mistake and you should have apologized and gone with them. When they return, you do the right thing and apologize. They forgive you of course, but you don’t suddenly have the experiences they had without you, just because you repented or they forgave you.
Alma 34:32 speaks to this saying, “behold, the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.”
I visited an older couple about a year after moving here. I had never seen them in church and so I asked why they didn’t attend? They said Bishop White had offended them and they refused to return because of what he did. Since I was relatively new to the congregation I confessed that I did not know who Bishop White was. They said, oh he was our bishop in San Francisco. I was a little surprised by that so I asked when they had moved here from San Francisco. She said 25 years ago. 25 years they had been missing out on spiritual experiences in church. Now, I have no doubt that whatever Bishop White did was truly offensive. But who was paying the price?
We were discussing this subject in church a few years ago and a brother made the interesting comparison that being offended is like pouring gas on yourself and lighting it. Because you're the one that suffers. Now that sounds a little dramatic to me, but the point is valid.
2 Nephi 9:27 says, “But wo unto him that has the law given…and that wasteth the days of his probation, for awful is his state!”
I used to think that scripture was about a punishment that would be inflicted on us, but now I think it’s a place we find ourselves, after not preparing, like when you don’t have enough money for the groceries you're holding at the register.
As it happens, Satan doesn’t need to convert us to his way of thinking in order to beat us.
Consider this calculation…if Satan, through some form of distraction, stops us from having experiences, which stops our spiritual progression, which separates us from God, isn’t that effectually the same outcome as committing sin?
A spiritual Transitive Property of Equality you could say.
To be clear, I am not saying that being offended or working too much is a sin. I am saying that if it separates us from God, the effect is the same and we aught to carefully consider who or what distractions we allow to determine the outcome of our lives.
2 Nephi 28: 21 says, “And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security...and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.”
It doesn't matter if it’s an obsession with work, an offense from another person or a lifelong party. Whatever displaces spiritual experiences in a significant, long term way, will have the same effect on our progress as sin.
Just to further the comparison, when we repent, through the atonement of Jesus Christ, the sin is forgiven and we are restored as if we never committed that sin.
But if we come to the end of this life, how can we repent of not ever going to the temple, even though it was close or of not learning to be humble through the sacrifice of paying tithing? How do we repent of not knowing or understanding the scriptures that are readily available or of not developing a relationship with our Heavenly Father through prayer?
In other words, how can we be restored to what we never were?
Have you ever considered, as I did recently, that in the parable of the ten virgins, all 10 of them were virgins. It doesn’t say five were wicked and idolatrous. It said five were foolish, but all were virgins. That makes it sound like all 10 were good people, but 5 of them didn’t put in the time or effort to have oil.
Once again, as demonstrated in this parable, the result in the end, was the same.
Life is an accumulation of experiences. If we’ve stopped having experiences, then we’ve stopped having life.
My name is Nathan Vail and this is the Verbal Motivation Podcast.