Light and Truth

Last night my son was working really hard to help out around the house and get some of the younger kids to bed. During that service he was attempting to render, something happened with a sibling, mean words were said, and he stormed out and ended up crying on his bed telling me again how bad and useless he was. He told me through tears that when people say mean things about him, he believes them. He recounted to me some things that had been said to him weeks previous which I wouldn’t have thought would have mattered or stuck with him, but they were clearly on him mind and bringing him down. I reflected on our conversation as I listened to a podcast about section 93 of the Doctrine and Covenants, and this phrase really stuck out to me: “I have commanded you to bring up your children in light and truth” (v40). My job as a parent is to help him see light and truth, especially about himself and who he really is. As I sat there with him, not sure quite how to get through to him, I thought about the challenges he will face when people do not treat him how he should be treated—as happens inevitably to all of us. What he needs most is to understand light and truth to combat the falsehoods that will seek to bring him down. He, like all of us, needs to have a witness in his heart by the Spirit of the truth of this marvelous revelation so that when lies meant to bring him down come his way, he can respond with Moses: “Get thee hence, Satan; deceive me not; for God said unto me: Thou art after the similitude of mine Only Begotten” (Moses 1:16).

               This revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants teaches profound truths about who we are and who God is, and this knowledge will surely help all of us to combat the lies of the evil one here in mortality about our identity. The Lord declared, “Ye were also in the beginning with the Father” (v23). What a glorious doctrine! We lived before this life, and we were with the Father, the Great God of the Universe, where we were prepared to come here to the earth. “Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be” (v29). The revelation declares indeed that we are eternal beings: “For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy” (v33). We have always existed and will always exist, and our destiny is to receive a fulness of joy like our Father. Before this life we lived with the Father and “every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning,” and because of the redemption of the Savior, when we came to this earth “men became again, in their infant state, innocent before God” (v38). We are not inherently evil beings, but because of the atonement of Jesus Christ we were innocent when we came to earth and have the potential “receive a fulness” like the Savior and our Father as we learn to keep the commandments (v27). The Savior declares to each of us, “If you keep my commandments you shall receive of his fulness, and be glorified in me as I am in the Father; therefore, I say unto you, you shall receive grace for grace” (v20). I hope with all my heart that my son will come to know these truths which teach us of “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (v24). We are spirit children of the Father, divine souls in pursuit of a divine destiny, eternal beings with the potential to become even as God and His Son are. So when Satan yells to us that we are only a “son of man” and cries “with a loud voice” and “rants upon the earth” and commands us to worship him, we can declare with power: “[God’s] glory has been upon me, wherefore I can judge between him and thee. Depart hence, Satan” (Moses 1:18-19). We have eternal light and truth to guide our way and if we hold fast to that, we can always “forsake that evil one” (v37).