Svithe: on sacrifice

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I've been thinking about sacrifice and it came up in Church today. In particular, I often come back to this statement from Joseph Smith:

"Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation."

Being interested in salvation myself, I have to recognize a necessary corallary, viz. If I am not willing to sacrifice all things I will never have the faith necessary unto life and salvation.

I'm reminded of Lamoni's statement:

O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee, and that I may be raised from the dead, and be saved at the last day.

I like to broaden the traditional definition of sin. I think I often broaden it beyond its true scope, but I do it anyway because I find it helpful to me.

Am I willing to give away these sins?

The sin of waiting till the last second because I know that effort will still be sufficient to impress people.
The sin of needing to be clever.
The sin of thinking I don't have to serve here if I served there.
The sin of doing enough--or even more than enough--but not all that I could possibly have done.
The sin of self-importance.
The sin of typing silly lists of sins and calling it self-analysis, pretending it will make me a better person.

Those might be a pretty good place to start.

last week's svithe