This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 1997 Conference.
I used to think that, like Joseph Smith, I had a "native cheery temperament." But then I started to wonder if it was just that I (unlike him) had led a relatively easy life! And lately, as the tests of parenting have gotten more difficult and the world around us seems to be getting worse and worse, I've worried that perhaps I am, in fact, becoming a rather gloomy person! Hmm.
So, I liked President Faust's talk where he took a balanced look at some of the gospel ideals of justice and mercy and faith. I especially liked this part:
Indeed, moral standards must be maintained. In large measure, those who are disobedient punish themselves.…Those entrusted with judicial responsibility in the kingdom of God must see that the Church remains clean so that the living waters of life flow unimpeded.
However, true religion is not looking primarily for weaknesses, faults, and errors. It is the spirit of strengthening and overlooking faults even as we would wish our own faults to be overlooked. When we focus our entire attention on what may be wrong rather than what is right, we miss the sublime beauty and essence of the sweet gospel of the Master.
Judgment, the weightier matter of the law mentioned by the Savior, cannot be separated from the other two: mercy and faith.…I am frank to admit that when I say my prayers, I do not ask for justice; I ask for mercy.
I like the reminder that true religion is more about the "beauty and sweetness" we find through Jesus Christ than about anything else. We are so blessed by his mercy and love! And I think this counsel applies even when we are thinking of ourselves and our own failures—that we shouldn't be looking primarily for our "faults and errors," but thinking more about strengthening—and asking how God can make our weak things become strong.
I noticed recently that although Mormon is the person I credit for coming up with that idea—God making our weak things become strong—it actually appears much earlier, in 2 Nephi 33:4: "And the words which I have written in weakness will be made strong unto them."
I love imagining Mormon knowing and loving and pondering Nephi's words, and then eventually adding to them with his own testimony of how God works through our weakness. And then I love how President Faust's words in this talk add to and enlarge that message even further. Certainly humility and acknowledgement of sin and weakness are important, but our attention, our focus should be most of all on Jesus Christ and what He will do—what He is doing—to strengthen and save us.
Other posts in this series:
I remember—by Rozy
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