Do You Give God All His Place?

I finished again today the book L’Aventure Ambiguë by Cheikh Hamidou Kane, a profound African novel about the spiritual journey of a boy Samba Diallo who was raised on the Quran but whose faith faltered when he went to study in France. Samba had felt alone and abandoned by God in the western world and had stopped participating in the religious rituals like prayer that had filled his youth in Africa. His father wrote him in France telling him to come home, even though he hadn’t finished his studies, because he was losing his faith. He suggested that his loss of faith was his own responsibility: « Mais tu n’as pas songé qu’il se puisse que le traitre, ce fût toi.… Mais réponds plutôt : donnes-tu à Dieu toute sa place, dans tes pensées en conformité avec Sa loi ? Il ne s’agit pas de lui faire allégeance une fois pour toutes, par une profession de foi générale et théorique. Il s’agit que tu t’efforces de conformer chacune de tes pensées à l’idée que tu te fais de son ordre. Le fais-tu ?... Ton salut, la présence en toi de Dieu vivant dépendent de toi. Tu les obtiendras si tu observes rigoureusement, d’esprit et de corps, sa loi ».  (My translation: “But you didn’t imagine that the traitor could be you.... But answer rather: do you give God all his place, in your thoughts in accordance with His law? It is not a matter of pledging allegiance to him once and for all, by a general and theoretical profession of faith. You must work to conform your every thought to your doing his will. Do you do this? ... Your salvation, the presence of the living God in you depends on you. You will obtain them if you rigorously observe, mind and body, his law.”)

If we feel that God has abandoned us, we must instead look within ourselves to see if we are really seeking Him with all our hearts. Ultimately Samba’s father’s counsel was the same as what Jesus taught as the first great commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matthew 22:37). We must turn to God not by a “general profession of faith” but with all our hearts seeking to do exactly what He asks of us. We should not expect God to simply reveal Himself to us if we give only a half-hearted effort to come unto Him. Rather, we should come humbly and earnestly to Him through heartfelt prayer and an earnest study of His word. Moroni invited us in these words: “Doubt not, but be believing, and begin as in times of old, and come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him” (Mormon 9:27). Amaleki put it this way in a powerful invitation: “And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved” (Omni 1:26). If we seek Him with all our heart and soul, His promise is sure that we will find Him. This is repeated in various forms in so many passages of scripture, such as this one to the Prophet Joseph Smith: “Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:63).

            At the end of L’Aventure Ambiguë, as Samba struggled in his mind to come to terms with God and His faith, he declared in earnestness in prayer: « Tu ne saurais m’oublier comme cela. Je n’accepterai pas, seul de nous deux, de pâtir de Ton éloignement. Je n’accepterai pas. Non… Je n’accepte pas… » (My translation: “You could not forget me like that. I will not accept, alone of the two of us, to suffer from Your estrangement. I will not accept. No ... I do not accept…”) Though he was at that moment killed by the “fou” who misunderstood him, in the final chapter in a sort of heavenly experience he found resolution in God as he turned his heart fully to Him: « Je te veux, pour l’éternité ». (“I want you, for all eternity.”) We must likewise never accept to be estranged from Him but seek Him always with all our hearts.