A Perfect Dad

I've always been amazed by the simple test that NASA gives to astronauts. Can you live with only yourself for 24 hours? I love that J. K. Rowling gave the same challenge to Sirius Black when he was in Azkaban. If you had to live alone, could you do it? Do you care about what others say so much that it determines how you live your life?

I'm getting really frustrated by the LGBT arguments regarding tolerance. All this talk about who is tolerant and who is not just puts a sour taste in my mouth. I'd like to take a slightly different approach to my thoughts:

Picture a perfect father. He wants to you to become like him. Your father is all knowing and all kind and all perfect. In order for your father to remain perfect he must abide by the following rules:

1. He must respect your free agency
2. He loves you unconditionally
3. No unclean thing can enter His presence

I'd like to first tackle the 3rd point. Why can no unclean thing enter the presence of a perfect being? Because as an unclean being with a perfect knowledge of its guilt it would feel so utterly uncomfortable to be in the presence of such a being. Remember every little imperfect act that you did, every unclean thought, every piece of blackness that has ever been in your soul. Thanks to imperfect knowledge and memory loss it is possible for us to develop a tolerance for such behavior in this life. However, you'll remember it all, perfectly. Can you comfortably bare to be in proximity to a perfect being?

So, what would a perfect father do to help you refrain from having a single piece of guilt on your conscience? He'd give you commandments and cautions. One of the biggest cautions that he has given his children is how to treat his other children. Thus some of the greatest laws that he has given us are in regards to the birth, development, and death of his children.

1. The law of chastity: You cannot have sexual relations with any other individual than your husband or wife to whom you are legally and lawfully wedded.
2. Love thy neighbor as thyself
3. Do not kill

The law of chastity is meant to accomplish so much more than its basic definition. It is meant to allow us to live free from remorse of harming others, allow the birth of children into a loving and supported home so they can receive the help they deserve as they grow. It is meant to help us control our thoughts, passions, desires. It is meant as a protection to us and our father's other children.

Now, our perfect father knows that we are imperfect beings. He knows that our minds wonder. He knows that it's literally impossible for an unclean thing to satisfy the demands of justice. When a perfect being becomes imperfect, the price needed to pay is a perfect sacrifice. Well, the imperfect being can no longer offer a perfect sacrifice. Thus, a Savior, a perfect being, must satisfy the demands of justice for the unclean beings to again become clean and perfect. This is why our Heavenly Father has provided Jesus Christ to atone for our sins.

Now let me ask, where! in the base definition of the law of chastity does it discriminate between attractions to opposite or same gender? It does not. Having sexual relations with any individual outside marriage is not abiding by this beautiful law. And this law is as real as the law of gravity. If you step off a cliff you will fall. You will feel unclean by not abiding by this law, even if you feel quite numb to that guilt's effects in this life.

So, how do we protect ourselves from breaking this law? Just like any other law we are trying to not break. We don't even get close to it. We put out all thoughts from our minds of breaking this law. We do not do actions that might entice us to get closer to breaking this law. Such actions include co-habitation. They include becoming too physically intimate.

Since Heavenly Father wants us all to return and become like Him he wants all marriages to not only be legal and lawful in the country and world in which they are performed, but for them to be legal and lawful in the law of eternity. They must be sealed. He has said that marriage between a man and woman is the only eternally accepted marriage.

No matter what county, state, country, or world you live in/on marriage is not eternally accepted unless it is performed under the above qualification.

All in all, what this means is the following.

1. For marriage to be eternal it must be between a man and a woman performed by the authority of God
2. For us to feel guiltless and be clean in the presence of God we must abide by the law of chastity

If we can't abide by these laws and/or do not repent of these laws if broken than we cannot become like Heavenly Father. Thus bringing us full circle to the first law which our Father upholds, He must respect our free agency. If you do not train to be in the NFL, you cannot play in the NFL. If you do not train to become like Heavenly Father, you cannot become like Heavenly Father.

The above has discussed the concepts from an actors perspective. It helps to answer the question, what must I do in regards to my personal conduct. The next question is, what must I do in regards to other's personal conduct?

Well, our Dad has the laws that are given to us.

1. He must respect your free agency
2. He loves you unconditionally
3. No unclean thing can enter His presence

In order to become like Him we must learn to live by these laws. We must respect other's free agency. We must love unconditionally. We must learn to not allow uncleanliness into our lives that might jeopardize our training to become like our Father. What does this mean? This means everything!

It gives us a perfect roadmap to live our lives. We cannot force others to do as we see fit. When others do things that we don't understand or don't see eye to eye with we can have the reassurance that we must love others unconditionally. We cannot allow uncleanliness to enter our lives. There is a very huge distinction between uncleanly acts and different acts. But that is a discussion that I do not want to get into at the moment.

Now, if you are unsure how to follow this roadmap, discuss it with your Father. Remember, he's a perfect, all knowing, all loving Father. He begs you to talk to him. He will listen, always. Why? Because He loves you unconditionally. Sure, there will be gray areas. There will be areas of difficulty for some that are straight forward for others. But that's the beauty of being different! We can keep trying. We can keep learning. We can keep growing. For that is how our Father learned.

Please start training to become like God. Don't you want to become a God?