Shattering Triangles

Growing up in the south, I’d often come across Southern Baptist pamphlets that read something like this: “Have you ever stopped to think about where you’ll go when you die? Here’s a quick way to figure it out: Have you ever sinned? Even once? God’s standard is absolute perfection, so if you’ve sinned ever sinned even once, you’ve already disqualified yourself from heaven when you die. If you’ve sinned, that makes you a sinner, and sinners go to hell—it doesn’t matter how many other good things you try to do. As a matter of fact, ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23). We deserve nothing less than hell. BUT! There’s good news. God sent His Son Jesus as a perfect sacrifice for our sins so we can be forgiven, and live with Him again. And because He was perfect, all you have to do is believe in Him, and His perfection will cover us. So if you want to be saved, confess your belief in Jesus in this prayer…”

… And this is the Christian story for most Americans. God has this unflinching standard people need to meet to live with Him, which nobody does, so the solution is to accept Jesus. The gospel is all about dying and going to heaven. 

Now, the restored gospel actually tells us a fundamentally different story, but if we don’t seek to understand it on its own terms, it can be easy to get pulled back into the mainstream of our surrounding culture. What we frequently end up with is restored doctrine with a protestant twist, or protestant doctrine with a Mormon twist. 

For example, many of us still think about the gospel in terms of how to get into heaven in the afterlife. We resort back to the popular narrative about failing to give a flawless performance, and therefore needing a Savior to do it in our place. But instead of “heaven,” we say “the Celestial Kingdom.” 

This is a “triangle.” Because it isn’t exactly wrong. In the afterlife, people will be sorted into at least three kingdoms. And we do need a Savior to “get into” the Celestial kingdom. The problem is, when we try to build on Protestant premises, the other components of the restored gospel make the “how” of salvation a bit awkward—because now, in addition to being saved by a belief in Jesus, we have to factor in all of these additional requirements, like ordinances, correct authority, “enduring to the end,” and more. 

Protestant premises lead to Protestant conclusions. When we try and force the truths of the restored gospel into the mix, it’s very clear that it’s not a clean fit. “Salvation” becomes about accepting Jesus, while also meeting additional requirements that aren’t always clear cut, such as “do your best.” It leaves people desperately trying to be good enough to earn God’s mercy and love. They feel as though God is resisting them, and wonder whether their sacrifices and effort are truly enough. They question whether God really wants them in eternity. 

I remember hearing someone once comment in Sunday school that they felt like this life was a big audition, and they were “trying out” to see if they’d make it to heaven, and that that was stressful. This particularly breaks my heart, because it reflects the fact that so many members of the Church experience the gospel as an added burden rather than… well, salvation.

Some people in recent years have tried to reconcile this problem by making Mormonism a lot more protestant, only swapping “confession of belief in the sinner’s prayer,” for “ordinances by proper authority.” Then, once we’ve made the covenant to follow Christ through baptism, we’re “in” the kingdom, and will be “in” the kingdom unless we decide to leave. Christ makes up for our imperfection as we choose to stay active in the Church.

These all still miss the point. 

All that being said, I’d like to offer you a new lens through which to understand “salvation.” One which is more scriptural and personally meaningful; one which resolves the endless debate surrounding grace, works, and ordinances. One in which all components of the restored gospel fall perfectly into place, allowing the Spirit to teach us the doctrines of the gospel in greater clarity. 

The gospel is not about dying and going to heaven; it’s about bringing heaven down to earth. 

For too long, Christians have been asking the wrong question. “How do I get to heaven?” is not nearly as important as “how do I become heavenly?” The gospel isn’t a matter of securing a train ticket to a paradise retirement; it’s about fundamentally transforming who we are. When our hearts are inclined towards life and love, heaven will be the natural by-product.

“Heaven” is not just a location, it’s a condition, or state of being. The Lord is the most joyous Being in the universe. He seeks to bless us by making us like Himself. The path He offers us is not so much about fulfilling a list of tasks to get some kind of reward—it is about transformation. As Christ said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

Joseph Smith taught that, “Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith) 

Whether people realize it or not, everyone is on a quest for something akin to heaven. Everyone senses the deep void within, and seeks to fill it with something that will bring enduring joy and fulfillment. People look for it in politics, status, video games, alcohol, sex, power, dieting, food, yoga, self-development, idolizing a celebrity—you name it. Unfortunately, none of the things we come up with ever seem to satisfy the deep longing within. They leave us wanting, feeling empty, incomplete, and unfulfilled. Our modern mental health epidemic is a testament to the fact that the kind of peace and fulfillment we’re looking for is not easy to find. 

In this world, hell is our default condition. Hell is the fact we desire things that don’t serve us. It’s the fact that we naturally tend to make things worse for others and ourselves. It’s being unaware of the ways we cause suffering, or feeling powerless to stop. In other words, we’re prone to sin; and when left to our own devices, history shows that we can make the world a pretty hellish place. 

The Lord has a plan to fix this—a plan of salvation. He desires to change our very nature, which is calculated to make us miserable, and instead give us a new heart. He wants to transform us so that joy and abundance become part of our nature. As we read in Ezekiel: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them…” (Ezekiel 36:26-28). 

This giving of a new heart would later be the primary mission of Messiah. It’s very fitting that the Savior’s name in mortality was Jesus (from the Hebrew Yeshua) which literally means “salvation.” He came to give Israel a new heart, one that was united with God. As the angel told Joseph, “[Mary] shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

In other words, Jesus came not only to save us from the consequences of sin (which is inevitably suffering), but the actual sins themselves. He intends to do this by healing our brokenness and refining our hearts, so that we can say: “the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent… has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually” (Mosiah 5:2). He seeks to give us a new heart so that we desire what’s actually best for us. 

Receiving grace, or being “born again,” isn’t just a matter of saying a certain prayer or undergoing certain ordinances so that you get to go to heaven… while everyone else doesn’t. Do we really believe in a God who creates this world, only to save a few of his children by some arbitrary metric? Is God sending good people to hell just because they didn’t get their ticket punched in the right way, or by the right person?

True grace is not intended to be an experience that connects you to God in some future day, but here and now. It has the power to fundamentally transform you, breaking the chains of hell, and giving you power over all darkness and fear. It is the life force that flows to us when we are in a state of being reconciled to God. 

In this view, we understand that it is not God resisting us and our efforts; rather, it is we who are resisting Him. His light and grace shine like the sun; we are the ones who put up blinders. We are not trying to convince Him to bless us, prosper us, or give us His Spirit by meeting some arbitrary requirement. Rather, He is trying everything He can to bestow His Spirit upon us without infringing on our agency. When we stop resisting Him, He is finally able to fill us with the joy we long for but don’t know how to obtain.

The value of ordinances and covenants is in learning to bond with God in such a way that you manifest the attributes and powers of heaven on earth. To open the heavens and access other worldly experiences. To be filled with faith, hope, and love to such a degree that you overcome the world.

This kind of spirituality is not a talent. It’s not something we obtain through small incremental changes that come from the strength of our own hands. It’s the power we are endowed with when we follow the pure and unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ, and forsake all of the philosophies of men. It’s to enable ordinary and unremarkable people to manifest the miraculous powers of godliness in their life. 

To the extent that anyone has tapped into some degree of that power through religion, spirituality, meditation, service—that’s a good thing. And all good that is out there reflects just a part of what Christ is. What He intends to do is gather all good things together into Himself to give you a fulness of power and grace to overcome all the world.

What was restored through the prophet Joseph Smith is not just another claim about what boxes must be checked to go to heaven when you die. Rather, it is the path walked by Christ to obtain the knowledge and powers of heaven here and now, and bring them down into our broken world for the benefit of others.