I Am Still Me: Spirit, Body, Covenant, and Christ

A 15-Minute Conversation with Latter-day Saint Friends of my Eternal Brother

I want to talk about something very simple that has become profound to me:

I am a CHILD OF GOD. I was a Spirit before this my mortal life. I am a Spirit LIVING through this mortal experience. After this mortal life, I will still be me.

That understanding changes the way I think about our bodies, our families, our covenants, the Sacrament and especially our Eternal Brother Jesus Christ in whom we say things in the name of unto God our Eternal Father through the power of the Holy Ghost.

I Am a Child of God

Before somebody knew my name on Earth, God knew me. Spirit knows me.

Latter-day Saints teach that we lived with God before mortality. We weren’t nothing waiting to become something. We had an identity before receiving these mortal bodies.

That makes me think differently about the words “I am.”

My body is tremendously important but, my body alone isn’t the complete definition of me. My body gives my Spirit a mortal experience.

That is one reason the foreign idea to some that “our bodies are temples” means so much to me.

A temple is physical but, its’ importance isn’t merely the material from which it is constructed. What happens within it gives the building sacred purpose.

I see my body similarly.

Through this body I can see you.

I can hear you.

I can speak to you.

I can hold my children.

I can work.

I can create.

I can cry.

I can laugh.

I can make mistakes and experience their consequences.

I can serve somebody.

I can choose.

And through your Body, your Spirit becomes comprehensible to me through what you choose to do with it.

I cannot simply look at another person’s Spirit. I come to know that person through their words, choices, expressions, actions, and relationship we me and my household.

Mortality gives us an extraordinary opportunity to comprehend one another.

Born Into a Covenant

I also think deeply about the fact that I was born in the covenant.

Within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that phrase has a particular meaning connected with the sealing of parents and children.

But it has caused me to think more broadly about inheritance.

There are things about mortal life that I did not choose.

I did not choose my ancestors.

I did not choose when I would be born.

I did not choose the body through which I entered mortality.

And my children did not choose me before I became their mother in mortality.

Yet here we are.

Family gives us relationships before we’re old enough to comprehend what those relationships mean.

Then comes agency.

Eventually I have to decide what I believe.

I have to decide what I will covenant.

I have to decide whether I will follow Jesus Christ.

Being born into something and choosing it for myself are therefore different experiences.

And I think both matter.

Why the Sacrament Matters to Me

That brings me back to the sacrament.

Every week we hear:

“O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ…”

Think about that order.

God, the Eternal Father.

His Son, Jesus Christ.

Then us.

We take the bread.

We take the water.

We remember Him.

We witness our willingness to follow Him.

And we receive the promise that we may have His Spirit to be with us.

That isn’t merely a Sunday ritual to me.

It describes a relationship.

The sacrament makes me stop and ask:

What did I do with my agency this week?

Did my actions show something of Christ?

Did I hurt somebody?

Did I learn something?

Do I need to repent?

Do I need to forgive?

What am I going to do differently tomorrow?

The bread and water are physical things helping my mortal mind remember something eternal.

That is beautiful to me.

Jesus Christ Has Already Completed the Journey

And this brings me to Jesus Christ.

I don’t seek to be Jesus Christ.

I seek to follow Him.

He is the one who has already accomplished the journey that I am still experiencing as a child of God.

He existed before mortality.

He received a mortal body.

He experienced hunger, exhaustion, friendship, rejection, grief, pain, love, temptation, service and choice.

He died.

His spirit continued.

And He was resurrected.

Spirit and body were reunited.

He remained Jesus Christ.

His identity wasn’t erased by mortality, death, or resurrection.

That matters tremendously to me because resurrection means that eternity isn’t about escaping our individuality.

God isn’t asking everybody to become the same person.

Christ’s invitation in 3 Nephi is:

“What manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am.”

I understand that as an invitation to become Christlike while remaining the individual child of God that I am.

To learn His love.

His integrity.

His courage.

His forgiveness.

His obedience to the Father.

His willingness to serve.

His ability to speak truth.

His mercy.

His comprehension.

Mortality Gives Us Comprehension

That word—comprehension—has become important to me.

Maybe mortality isn’t simply a test where we’re trying to collect enough correct answers to get back into heaven.

We’re experiencing something.

We are learning things through bodies that we couldn’t experience in exactly the same way without them.

Consider motherhood and fatherhood.

A person can understand the definition of parent.

But becoming responsible for another human being creates a different kind of comprehension.

The same is true of forgiveness.

I can define forgiveness.

Then somebody actually hurts me.

Now I have to discover what forgiveness means when forgiving is difficult.

I can define charity.

Then somebody needs something from me when I am exhausted.

Now I have an opportunity to comprehend charity.

I can talk about agency.

Then someone makes a choice I desperately wish they wouldn’t make.

Now I begin comprehending what it means for God to give His children agency.

Mortality turns definitions into experiences.

My Body Is Part of That Education

That makes the body extraordinarily sacred to me.

My body isn’t a disposable container that my spirit eventually throws away.

The Restoration teaches something much greater.

Death temporarily separates spirit and body, but resurrection reunites them.

Jesus Christ demonstrated that.

The resurrected Christ could tell His disciples:

“Handle me, and see.”

The wounds themselves testified that this was the same Jesus.

His mortal experience mattered.

His identity remained.

And through Him, resurrection comes to us.

So when I call my body a temple, I’m talking about something sacred that allows my eternal identity to experience mortality.

My spirit experiences this world through it.

And other people experience something of my spirit through what I choose to do with it.

And That Changes How I See Everyone Else

If that’s true about me, I have to remember that it’s true about you.

The person irritating me is a child of God having a mortal experience.

The stranger is.

The person who disagrees with me is.

My children are.

My parents are.

My ancestors were.

The person sitting beside me in sacrament meeting is.

We are individual spirits encountering one another through mortality.

Sometimes beautifully.

Sometimes painfully.

Sometimes imperfectly.

And somehow we’re supposed to learn how to love one another through all of it.

That makes Christ’s commandments much bigger than rules to me.

Love God.

Love one another.

Those commandments teach spirits how to exist eternally in relationship with other spirits.

My Celtic and Ancestral Lens

I also recognize that I sometimes describe these things through an ancestral or Celtic lens.

For me, ancestry, land, family, inheritance, and generations carry spiritual meaning.

I don’t need to claim that every personal interpretation I have is official Church doctrine.

It isn’t.

There is value in knowing the difference between:

“The Church teaches…”

and

“This is how I understand it…”

Those can exist in the same conversation.

My ancestry can influence the language through which I understand belonging.

My experiences can influence how I understand motherhood.

My questions can influence how deeply I search.

But ultimately, when I’m talking about my discipleship, I return to Jesus Christ.

The Question I Keep Coming Back To

So when I take the sacrament, the question isn’t simply:

“Am I a Latter-day Saint?”

For me the deeper question is:

“Am I actually following Jesus Christ?”

What did my spirit do through this body this week?

What did somebody learn about me from my actions?

What did I learn about them?

What did I learn about myself?

What did I learn about God?

Where did I fall short?

What can I repair?

What can I do differently?

And what did Christ teach me?

Then I take the bread.

I take the water.

I remember Him.

And I continue.

Because my mortal story isn’t finished.

I am still learning.

I am still choosing.

I am still gaining comprehension.

And I am still me.

Jesus Christ has already demonstrated where this journey ultimately leads.

So I don’t follow Christ because I want to lose myself in Him.

I follow Christ because I want Him to teach me what a child of God can become.

And someday, through His Resurrection and Atonement, spirit and body will be reunited.

I will still be me.

You will still be you.

Christ will still be Christ.

And our mortal experiences will have become part of what we comprehend eternally.

That is why the simplest statement I learned as a child continues to become bigger to me the longer I live:

I am a child of God, like he I say things in the name of,

JESUS CHRIST@ LDS.ORG

http://LDS.w3connect.com