In 2002 I met and rejected my first set of missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). At the time it was enough for me to attend the occasional church service from a random denomination, feel sorry for my sins and eventually return to my cycle of bad habits. I wasn’t anyone’s role model Christian, but in the grand scheme of things I thought I was a good guy. What I’ve since learned is that the choice is not always so simple as choosing between good and bad. Sometimes the more difficult choice is deciding between good and better.
Society made it difficult. You see, society says I’m okay if I smoke cigarettes but stay away from drugs. Society says I’m fine if I drink but don’t drive. Society says I can gamble in certain places so long as I don’t forget to pay my taxes. In other words, I could afford to have lenient morals and still be considered a decent citizen, so why be better when good was good enough?
When I was baptized in 2009 there were still lessons to be learned about distinguishing between good and better. For many months it was easy to attribute my lack of fervent devotion to my convert status. If I felt the urge to eat out on the Sabbath, it’s because I was a convert. If I neglected to read my scriptures it’s because I was a convert. If I felt my wife was more devout, it’s because I was a convert. It wasn’t until this past general conference when we traveled to Salt Lake City, two years after being baptized, that it occurred to me to stop converting and start living, to stop knowing that the church is true and start believing it.
What I have learned is that thanks to a full gospel and the presence of temples where we can be reminded of the plan of salvation, we can see that this life is a fleeting stop in the rest of eternity. I’m in no hurry to keep my own appointment, but when it comes, I hope I can look back and say I did better than average in my attempts to be reunited with our Heavenly Father, and I say these things in the name of his son, Jesus Christ. Amen.