Thus Be It Ever

For years now, I have wanted to serve in the United States Military.  It was not until recent years, however, that I gave serious consideration as to why I wanted to serve, and whether I should choose to serve, based on this desire.  Recently I found my answer in the inspired lyrics of our national anthem's third verse.

O thus be it ever, when free men shall stand,
 Between their loved homes, and the war's desolation.
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the hev'n rescued land,
Praise the Power that hath made, and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust!"
And the Star-Spangled banner in triumph shall wave,
O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

In high school, I studied extensively what it truly means to be a free man, and how unique it truly is to the American experience.  A free man, according to wise men such as St. Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and many others, is a man who has the liberty to choose for himself what he is to do, and whom he is to be.  A free man should be free from coercion in this decision.  No government or band of thugs can be permitted to interfere in the life of a free man.  This kind of liberty, under the name of agency, was the key difference between the plans of God, our loving Heavenly Father, and Lucifer, the father of lies.  The freedom to choose our own paths is essential to God's plan of happiness.  Clearly the Father wants men to be free men. In the modern era, this level of freedom first existed in the United States.

As a relevant aside, consider "the war's desolation."  We here in the United States have been, by and large, spared from having the war's desolation on our own soil.  Twelve years ago today, however, that was not the case.  Our enemies struck right at us in our homes, killing over 3,000.  We were, and are, understandably shocked and appalled by what we saw.  Humans should not be killed.  The shedding of innocent blood is an abomination to the Lord. There is nothing good about combat, but I digress.

The main point of the verse is that free men, without coercion, choose to stand between the home they love, and the horror of war.  That is why I have chosen to serve.  I am a free man, and the idea of my beloved home, and more importantly, my loved ones who reside in that home, experiencing the tumult of conflict is utterly abhorrent to me.  I freely choose to stand between peril and my loved ones, though my life be taken in the effort.

I say this, not to glorify or draw attention to myself, but because I think that I am not unique in these feelings.  I am sure that, throughout the centuries, the American fighting man has had this same sense of duty to the ideas that have protected him, and protect his family.  Think of that verse the next time you see a man in uniform.  Think of him as one who has freely chosen to throw himself in the line of fire to protect what is important to him.  Pray day and night for Divine protection for him and his comrades.  He truly will conquer when our cause is just.  He will accept nothing less, because he loves you and his nation enough to sacrifice everything he has for it.  Let us truly make our motto "In God is our trust," for none else can deliver.  With trust in the Lord, and the sacrifice of the American fighting man, the Star Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave, every time.

FDR vs. the 20th Maine

On the afternoon of July Second, 1863, the 20^th Maine Infantry Regiment was given an extraordinarily daunting assignment.  Positioned on a rocky hill called Little Round Top, they represented the absolute far left flank of the Union line at Gettysburg.  They were tasked with holding that real estate against anything the Confederacy could throw at them.  If the 20^th Maine collapsed, the entire Union line would collapse.  Needless to say, the ensuing battle was fierce.  The 20^th Maine repulsed numerous Confederate attacks, sustaining heavy losses in the process.  Ammunition was running low, and the beleaguered regiment was hanging on by its fingernails.

            This is where Franklin Delano Roosevelt comes in.  He once said “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on!”  That’s all well and good for a while, but what do you do when that’s not enough?  We all have limits.  What should you do when you reach them?

            Such was the 20^th Maine’s predicament.  They were placed at the end of their rope when they were told that the line stopped with them.  Any deviance, any movement, any sway on their part would spell disaster for the cause of freedom in Gettysburg Pennsylvania.  When they stood there, bloodied and unable to shoot back at the enemy, holding on was not going to be enough anymore.  If they simply held on, they would be defeated.

            Here, their commanding officer, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, realized that tying a not and hanging on isn’t good enough anymore.  He understood something counter-intuitive.  Facing imminent death gives you certain freedoms.  If you’re going to die, why bother trying to protect yourself?  He had the vision to see that the worst kind of peril is the window for the greatest of audacity.  Knowing that his men would be slaughtered if they stayed, and knowing the enemy to be human, Colonel Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge down the hill.

            The bold plan succeeded.  The Confederate forces broke and fled in a route before the onslaught of the impossible.  The line held, and the Union army went on to win a decisive victory in Gettysburg Pennsylvania. 

            Their audacity demonstrates that, when no longer to hold on to the end of your rope, there is a store of energy seldom tapped.  When they were beyond their capacity, they realized that the enemy was as well.  The difference between utter destruction and decisive victory was the decision to spend their seemingly dying energy to succeed, rather than to fail. In short, Colonel Chamberlain understood that  holding on to the end of the rope only works if you’re willing to climb it when you can’t hold on any longer.

A Lesson Learned From a Green Beret

08 SEP 2012 found me standing at the starting line of the Judges’ Classic 5k Cross Country race.  This course is tough, comprised virtually entirely of steep hills, and I was anxious.  My heart pounding with nerves, I asked my coach, a combat-seasoned Green Beret veteran, what he would say to his teammates to motivate them before combat missions.  He responded, “I didn’t have to: they were ready before they got there.”  Half an hour after this conversation took place, I was completely unresponsive, having blacked out from heatstroke.  The coming weeks would tell me exactly what Coach Bendy was talking about.

Unsurprisingly, getting back in the saddle (or running silkies, in my case) was difficult.  Painful memories of waking up with only partial brain function haunted me.  To this day, thinking about the starting line of a race makes my palms a little sweaty.  During strenuous training sessions, I realized something: discipline trumps fear every time.  With each passing lap of the training field, I learned that apprehension flees when one grits his teeth and jumps in with both feet.

This refusal to be silenced by a lack of faith allows one to accomplish much.  After conquering himself, a man is able to shunt aside fear and do what must be done.  He is able to place others before himself, and conquer any obstacle.  Through habitually looking doubt and fear in the eye before stepping right over them, one is able to master any challenge.  Believe me when I say that there is no other way to do it.  Elder Robert D. Hales, a modern-day Apostle of God, said the following:

“We cannot expect to learn endurance in our later years if we have developed the habit of quitting when things get difficult now.”

Discipline beats fear and pain.  It’s as simple as that.

I know now that Coach Bendy’s commandos were ready before the fight because they were disciplined enough to be able to choose courage.  Through consistent hard work, they had prepared themselves to face death itself.  They knew what they had to do, and they were ready to do it.  Oftentimes, faith looks an awful lot like the discipline to press on despite the temptation to take a low road.  The sun may be hot; the miles may be long; but none of that matters if you decide that it doesn't.

Do I REALLY believe that?

Recently, I have been asking myself a rather difficult question: “Do you really believe all those fantastic stories about Joseph Smith you’ve been raised with?”  Am I so sure that he was telling the truth that I will devote my eternal soul to that belief?  To be sure, the claim that Brother Joseph made, that he saw God the Father and Jesus Christ, two separate beings, in the flesh, is truly a very bold statement.  To say this is true is also to say that the Heavens are truly open.  Prophets aren’t just a number of unknown people theoretically dotted all over the earth, but never to be considered personally.  If Joseph Smith was telling the truth, then there cannot possibly be any true church other than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  Pretty heavy stuff with very potent implications.

Must everything hinge on the testimony of one man?  Fortunately, faithful Latter-Day Saints, and any who taste the sweetness of this Restored Gospel, do not have to take Joseph’s word for it.  Allow me again to reference my time on the Hill Cumorah.  Get used to Pageant references, because there are going to be plenty on this blog.  One of the final scenes of the show depicts the Prophet, Moroni, giving his final exhortation to the people of our day.  For those who don’t know, Moroni is the final Prophet to write in the Book of Mormon.  At the time he wrote these things, he had witnessed his entire civilization and family be utterly destroyed.  He is completely alone, and he does not mince his final words.

 

“And I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you: Did I not declare my words unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust?  Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God” (Moroni 10:27,32).

I now ask myself a much easier question: “How dare anyone deny the sincerity and truth of that testimony of Jesus Christ?”  The power felt in that testimony is undeniably that of the Holy Ghost.  If the Holy Ghost confirms that those words are true and good, Moroni must have lived.  If Moroni lived, then the Book of Mormon is true.  If the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph was telling the truth.

            To answer the question I’ve asked myself, yes, yes I do really believe that Joseph Smith was a Prophet of the Most High God.  Yes, I do believe that God loves enough to keep talking to us.  Yes, I believe that Moroni lived.  Yes, I believe that Jesus truly is the Christ.  When it really comes down to it, that’s all Moroni and Brother Joseph were trying to say.  Jesus truly is the Christ. For a very powerful example, consider Joseph's testimony of the Savior:

“And now after the many testimonies which have been given of  Him (Jesus Christ), this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of Him: that He lives!  For we saw Him, even on the right hand of God, and we heard the voice bear record that He is the Only Begotten of the Father, and that by Him, and through Him, and of Him, the worlds are, and were created, and the inhabitants thereof are begotten sons and daughters unto God” (Doc. & Cov. 76:22-24).

 How dare anyone question such a witness?  I certainly cannot.  Yes. Yes I do believe.

Real Men Love Their Mommies

            It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me to hear that I love my momma.  She, alongside my father, has raised me up to have the very best preparation I could have to serve our God and King in these last days before His Son returns.  This preparation included ten years of homeschooling me full-time, sacrificing much to ensure that I had an education that was truly second to none.  All of the exemplary maternal love I have received from her notwithstanding, however, I have noticed that real men really do love their mommies.  More than a personal love of the one who gave them life, there also exists in well-adjusted males a deep-seated ache for a matriarch to love, protect, and adore.

           A few days ago, I came back from four weeks of service on the Hill Cumorah Pageant Work Crew.  For those who do not know, the Hill Cumorah Pageant is an enormous outdoor theatrical performance of scenes from the Book of Mormon, portrayed on the very location where the angel Moroni hid golden plates to be uncovered by Joseph Smith Jr. two millennia later.  Those plates would be translated by the power of God, and published as the Book of Mormon, but I digress.  The pageant is performed on an immense steel, aluminum, and fiberglass stage.  This stage must be assembled annually.  In His infinite wisdom, our Lord decided that this stage would best be constructed by 17-18 year old boys a week before the show’s cast arrives.  These boys arrive on the Hill, leaving behind their homes and all personal affairs.  For many of these young men, myself included, it is the longest period of time they have spent away from home.  In this environment of young males who are away from their mothers for the first time, a truly fascinating and sacred dynamic began to emerge: these boys immediately found surrogate matriarchs.  The Work Crew Director’s wife, Sister Hess, was called to assume such a role.  She introduced herself as “Mamahess.”  She would keep laundry moving, let us know if we were getting sloppy, and generally keep our standard of living somewhat above that of a failed state.  What proved remarkable to me, however, is how we immediately looked to her as a mother.  Not even for a second would any one of us have dreamt of disrespecting Mamahess.  She was the first to eat at every meal.  Nobody ate until Mamahess had.  We all truly loved her as a mother.  This paradigm extended still further.  The Pageant is illuminated by twelve spotlights atop twelve tall metal towers.  These spotlights were directed by Sister Howard.  Sister Howard spent long nights with the light crew, instructing, correcting, and guiding them.  It was not long at all before the name “Sister Howard” was replaced with “Mama Lights.”  She also was protected and adored by the twelve boys she served as though she truly was the one who gave them life.  Nobody asked us on the light crew to do that.  We did it because…well we just did.  It felt right, and we felt we had to.  None of this was rationally decided: it just was.

  

          This deep-seated love and respect for mothers is nothing new.  Helaman’s 2060 young volunteer soldiers pointed to the faith of their mothers as the foundation of their courage. 

“Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, if they did not doubt, God would deliver them.  And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it” (Alma 56:47-48).

At least three times in the following chapters do the young soldiers point to the faith and diligence of their mothers.  It is also interesting to note that the Stripling Warriors referred to their commanding officer, Helaman, as “father.”  The boys were looking for something to adore and feel loved and protected by, and they found it in a surrogate parent.

     

       The ultimate example of a strong, well-adjusted, world-changing man being unashamed of loving his mother is, of course, Jesus Christ.  This is very clearly seen in the Gospel of John.

“When  Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!  Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother!  And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home” (John 19:26-27).

The Savior of the World, amidst all the pains that he suffered for you and me, compounded by the agony of being tortured to death on the cross, remembered His mother.  If anyone had an excuse to forget his Mom, or was “too cool” to love and look after her, it was Him.  He didn’t forget.  With this testimony and example in mind, I think it pretty obvious that real men really do love their mommies.