Repentance

I gave a talk at church today. My second Sunday in Greensboro, and I'm already speaking! Oh buddy. Also, I have been given a new calling already, which will be a surprise for the next time I post. BUT! I gave a talk, and I thought that it was some-what worthy of blogland, so I wanted to post and share with you. My comparisons might be flawed in some areas, and I don't feel like I FULLY described what I meant, but you get the gist of what I was trying to convey. So here it is:

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, is an anxiety disorder. The key features of the disorder include obsessions (persistent, often irrational, and seemingly uncontrollable thoughts) and compulsions (actions which are used to get rid of the obsessions and anxiety that comes with them). A good example of this would be an individual who has thoughts that he is dirty, infected, or otherwise unclean which are persistent and uncontrollable. In order to feel better, he washes his hands numerous times throughout the day, gaining temporary relief from the thoughts each time. Performing these compulsions though, must disrupt everyday life and ruin certain aspects of life, like relationships, in order for it to be considered OCD. So if someone was so obsessed with being clean all the time that they weren’t able to have a relationship with someone because they were afraid that the person would make them be unclean, then it would constitute OCD.

One of the things that has been found to treat OCD is a certain type of therapy called Exposure Therapy. This type of therapy can be very intense because it forces patients to confront their obsessions without being able to perform their compulsions to bring their anxiety levels down. The exposure to the feared object or context without any danger is what helps the patient overcome their anxiety. The exposure therapist identifies the cognitions, emotions and physiological arousal that accompany a fear-inducing stimulus, and attempts to break the pattern of escape, which would be the compulsions, that strengthens the fear response. So basically, if they were to do this with the person that was always obsessing over being clean, they would have the person get their hands dirty, and not let them clean them for a while. This would cause the patient to have very high anxiety levels. The goal is to let the patient sit with their anxiety at its highest level until it comes down on its own, without having to perform the compulsions, or without having to excessively wash his hands. This teaches a patient that they don’t need to perform the compulsions to make their obsessions go away or to bring the anxiety down. The patient has to go through this multiple times in order to get to a level where they feel like they don't have to perform his compulsions. The reason I am telling you about this is because the Exposure Therapy is very bold. It is a very bold remedy for a sometimes serious problem that people face, but it works because it is so bold. The therapists do not hesitate in the face of actual or possible danger and neither should we.

I was asked to talk about Elder Holland’s talk about the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, and this is specifically what I was asked to do: “Elder Holland urged us in General Conference to "come boldly unto the throne of grace." He was quoting from Hebrews 4:16. What does his invitation mean?”

Hebrews 4:16 says: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” The throne of grace, to me, is essentially the atonement. So what Elder Holland is asking us to do is to come boldly to the atonement, or to boldly repent. If we utilize the atonement, or come boldly unto the throne of grace, then we can obtain mercy, and the atonement will also help us in that time of need. I want to focus mostly on the word BOLDLY, though. That’s why I talked about Exposure Therapy before.

If we think about OCD and exposure therapy as an analogy it might paint a bigger picture for you. For the sake of this analogy I’m going to relate OCD to sin, but that does not mean that OCD is a sin. For the sake of this analogy, we will think of sin in the same way that I talked about OCD before. When we sin, the last thing that we want to do is acknowledge that we did something wrong because then we would feel guilt. So, we ignore it, but this makes us more susceptible to performing that sin again, and then feeling guilt. It becomes a cycle where we feel that the only way to feel better is to just give in and keep sinning. Just like with OCD, we give into compulsions to get rid of obsessions, we give into sinning to try to get rid of guilt, or we try to bargain and negotiate that what we did wasn’t really that bad. The cycle continues until we repent.

Repentance can be likened to the exposure therapy. It doesn’t work unless you are bold. In the exposure therapy, patients are brought to the highest level of anxiety so that they can realize that the anxiety will go away on its own without having to perform compulsions. With repentance, you are asking the Lord for total forgiveness, acknowledging your sins, and even confessing of them to the Lord, and in some case to the bishop. This is a truly bold act. Repentance is sometimes a hard thing for people to face. Everyone wants to be perfect, and repenting means that we have to admit that we sinned. The natural man does not want to acknowledge that we did something wrong. Sin is part of the natural man, which is why it makes sense that we would need to be extremely bold in our repentance in order to overcome the natural man. This bold repentance means that you have faith that the Lord can heal you no matter what you might have done.

In exposure therapy, if you let a person go back to performing their compulsions just once, then he will never be able to overcome his OCD. When you repent, if you are not truly committed and if you do not exercise faith in the Lord, then you will not fully be forgiven. I know that I have done this plenty of times where I just pray to Heavenly Father and I say “Heavenly Father, please forgive me for giving my husband the silent treatment. Amen.” And then the next argument that I have with Matt, I go right back to ignoring him. That does not get rid of the sin, and it shows that we haven’t truly repented. Repentance “is much more than just acknowledging wrongdoings. It is a change of mind and heart that gives us a fresh view about God, about ourselves, and about the world. It includes turning away from sin and turning to God for forgiveness.” You have to really mean it! When I think about the atonement, and how wonderful and encompassing it is, and how much strength and endurance and love that the Savior had to have in order to perform it, I am amazed. He was definitely bold, and he did not hesitate in the face of danger. He had faith in his Heavenly Father and His will for Him. We should be bold in our chance to ask for forgiveness. It is only when we are bold in our faith that we are able to understand our Lord and Savior and what he did for us. And the great thing about it is that when we are bold and exercise faith, the Savior is there to only make us stronger. “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” The Savior’s grace helps us in time of need. Repentance is the Lord showing us how much He loves us by giving us an opportunity to have a do over.

Elder Holland talks about the parable of the laborers in the vineyard throughout his whole talk. He paraphrases the parable saying: a householder “went out early in the morning to hire laborers. After employing the first group at 6:00 in the morning, he returned at 9:00 a.m., at 12:00 noon, and at 3:00 in the afternoon, hiring more workers as the urgency of the harvest increased. The scripture says he came back a final time, “about the eleventh hour” (approximately 5:00 p.m.), and hired a concluding number. Then just an hour later, all the workers gathered to receive their day’s wage. Surprisingly, all received the same wage in spite of the different hours of labor. Immediately, those hired first were angry, saying, “These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.”

I like to look at this parable and think about the workers that were hired in the last hour. They did not work sloppily, they worked very hard, and maybe even boldly. They were given the opportunity in the final hour to show the master that they were willing to work to receive any kind of pay. Everyone worked hard, no matter what time of the day they were hired. Some of you may be like these last workers. Some of you might have found the gospel later in life. That doesn’t mean that you are exempt from repentance. Just like if we are fortunate enough to have been members our whole lives, we don’t have an excuse to sit back and say “I’ve had the gospel my whole life. I am privileged, and I can repent when it is convenient for me.” The laborers that started working at 6 in the morning were still working hard even at 6 at night. If you are someone who has had the gospel your whole life, then you should know that repentance is not something you just do once. It is continual, and that means that you should be working hard from the beginning to the end to utilize the Lord’s atonement. If you haven’t known about it your whole life, and if you are one of those people that was “hired in the eleventh hour,” aren’t you glad that you finally have the gospel and the knowledge that you can repent of things you may have done wrong? And now I am telling you that repentance is a continual process, so now you know! Utilize the atonement! If we have the knowledge of its capabilities we should all be boldly taking advantage of it. His wounds will only heal us if we let them.

I want to close with what Elder Holland said in his talk: “I do not know who in this vast audience today may need to hear the message of forgiveness inherent in this parable, but however late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.”

(Here is a link to Elder Holland's talk if you want to read the whole thing. I am a member of the LDS church, and Elder Holland is one of the apostles of the church. He is a prophet, seer, and revelator. You can peruse that website if you are interested more in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.)