Chapter 6: The Deep Things of the Heart

Repentance is not something that is done some or even most of the time. It’s an all or nothing affair.

While the big, often public changes are an absolutely essential part of repentance, reconciling to your conscience in deep, private ways is even more important.

The Lord explained that our deep motivations are the source of the larger, external, more noticeable sins:

11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man.
19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. (Matthew 15)

A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. (Matthew 12:35)

All good outcomes are received commensurate with how continuously and deeply honest you are. All good outcomes can only come to the degree that you yield your thoughts, actions, and words to what you believe is best.

You can’t offend your conscience without harming yourself. All good outcomes flow through your conscience.

Don’t excuse “a little sin”

We must avoid the temptation to excuse ourselves for our sins:

7 Yea, and there shall be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; and it shall be well with us.
8 And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God.
9 Yea, and there shall be many which shall teach after this manner, false and vain and foolish doctrines...
11 Yea, they have all gone out of the way; they have become corrupted.
14 ...they have all gone astray save it be a few, who are the humble followers of Christ; nevertheless, they are led, that in many instances they do err because they are taught by the precepts of men.
15 O the wise, and the learned, and the rich, that are puffed up in the pride of their hearts, and all those who preach false doctrines, and all those who commit whoredoms, and pervert the right way of the Lord, wo, wo, wo be unto them, saith the Lord God Almighty, for they shall be thrust down to hell! (2 Nephi 28)

Most supposed Christians believe that Jesus forgives and saves everyone who asks.

It is astonishing to me that anyone who proclaims to believe in Jesus would believe this statement, which is completely opposite to everything he taught.

To be forgiven, one must stop doing what they know is wrong and do what they know is right, all the time, no exceptions. To be saved, one must learn and do what is necessary to become like God is, meaning to know what he knows, to do as he does, and to desire what he desires.

If you believe in Jesus, you will act, think, and desire as he did and does. If you do not act, think, and desire as he did and does, you do not believe in him.

If and only if you become the person he teaches you to be will he save you. This is how he saves you.

You should ask yourself:

• What do you say you want?
• What do you actually want?
• What do you do?

How well do these three things align? What changes could you make so that they align perfectly?

Don’t “just do your best”

One flavor of the “it is ok to sin” doctrine is the idea that your best is somehow less than total obedience to God. You will find this belief in the following common sayings:

• “We try, but we will never be like Jesus.”
• “God just needs our best; he does the rest.”
• “God understands.”
• “That's what the atonement is for.”

Those who believe that God can tolerate sin in the least degree ignore his word: “the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.” (Alma 45:16) Those who knowingly engage in sin are cut off from God’s presence. Even partial sin leads to complete condemnation, according to God’s word.

Therefore, thou son of man, say unto the children of thy people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression: as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness; neither shall the righteous be able to live for his righteousness in the day that he sinneth. (Ezekiel 33:12)

God cannot save sinners in their sins. He can only save sinners from their sins.

If your best is less than your understanding of the ideal, you are excusing yourself for sin. You will not have peace of mind or forgiveness in this life or the one that follows.

Don’t sin “just this once”

Another flavor of “it is ok to sin” is found in the excuse of occasional sin.

Salvation is not about sinning less. It is about not sinning at all.

For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. (James 2:10)

Giving control to your conscience is not a part-time decision. There are no breaks:

For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19)

You must actively choose to submit yourself in all things to your conscience, and you must continuously reaffirm this choice at all times, and in all places, for as long as you live.

There is no such thing as a little sin or a secret sin

Another flavor of “its ok to sin” is that some sins are small and, therefore, harmless.

There is no such thing as a little sin. Even small things form steps on paths to great outcomes:

...out of small things proceedeth that which is great. (D&C 64:33)

You have no way of telling which “little” infraction is actually a critical step away from something of great value to you:

6 Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.
7 And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls. (Alma 37)

God weighs so-called little sins quite heavily:

10 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.
11 If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? 
12 And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own?
13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Luke 16)

We must always remember that the little things are the big things. Our conscience must be obeyed, even in and especially in the smallest of things.

Your conscience includes accountability for all the little things that no one else knows about. Your conscience will not excuse you for deviating in the least from your true best, even if everyone around you thinks the world of you. Your conscience will not excuse you for deviating from your ideal, even in ways where no one else will ever know.

For example, it is easy to give the impression that you care about other people when others are watching you. Some people say all the right things and participate in charitable giving, but don’t actually care very much about anyone else. As soon as it is inconvenient to help others, they stop. When their conscience prompts them to do something that will cause others to judge them poorly, or when it costs them something they want, they will ignore the needs of others.

This ought not to be so.

If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? (1 John 4:20)

Your conscience will not give you a pass when you knowingly do less than your best, even in the deepest, most hidden parts of your desires and acts.

There is nothing that is hidden with God.

Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? (Isaiah 29:15)

Seeking deep to hide your counsel from the Lord is to lie to yourself in the motives for your actions or the actions themselves.

Don’t “lie a little”

Dishonesty is a special sin that is worth specific attention. It’s a sin we treat differently than the rest, in that it is generally regarded as too offensive to call someone a liar, even if they indisputably are, or to call someone out for lying, even when they obviously are. Interestingly, no one likes being called a liar, even people who love lying.

In today’s deeply dishonest culture, where lies are professed as if they were religious mantras, critical thinking capability has become a rare jewel. The beliefs, words, and actions of the majority are so obviously false that a child could see through them—if you could find one who has not already been brainwashed by their parents, peers, or public schools.

We tend to treat dishonesty as most view drinking alcohol—there is no harm as long as you don’t do it too often. It is a mistake to assume that dishonesty is a matter of frequency. In reality, it is more like feces’ ability to contaminate clean water: exactly how much are you comfortable drinking?

Exactly how much dishonesty does it take before a person is a liar? Instead of calculating in terms of how often you need to drink before you are an alcoholic, we ought be thinking in terms of how many times you need to rape someone before you are a rapist.

Dishonesty, no matter how infrequent, will permanently prevent a person from encountering the most valuable outcomes in life. To claim otherwise is to claim that what you do in life doesn’t impact the outcomes you receive. To claim that occasional dishonesty does no harm is to believe that your actions don’t matter. They do.

Dishonesty is sold as something that has the power to make life better for yourself or others. This is itself a lie.

Everything we say, do, or think while knowing it is not true makes it harder for others to know, do, or say what is true. Everything.

Everything we say, do, or think while knowing it is not true makes it harder for us to know, do, or say what is true. Everything.

Lying causes harm to yourself and others. Your dishonesty will make it harder for others to believe you, and harder for you to believe other people.

When it becomes frequent, dishonesty has a shocking ability to render someone totally devoid of decency and common sense, and can quickly convert what was a normal person into someone capable of the most horrendous atrocities.

The greatest evils are only possible because of “little sin”

When we think of great harm, we think of overtly evil people-those who in a truly malevolent fashion derive satisfaction from hurting people. But these people are not responsible for any substantial amount of evil in this world. Left to themselves, their influence does not reach far before good people restrain them. In order to achieve any measurable evil, these people require many henchmen who are willing to tolerate or support them. It is the supporting people—people who are, in their minds, doing far less harm than the overtly malevolent— that cause the greatest harm in the world.

It has been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Whether or not this is true, a similar phrase would be, which is that the road to hell is paved with people who willingly did what they knew was wrong under the first blush of opposition. These are people who cracked under the pressure of losing their job, or disappointing their inlaws, or being ridiculed by their peers. These are the people who are “just doing their job,” or who put up their arms and say “what else could I do? I'm only human.”

If it were possible to sin without incurring lasting effects on your conscience, these people would not be such a threat to the world. But it isn't. Everything conscience-related is cumulative. You cannot deviate in the least from what you know is right without reducing your ability to do or even see what is right in the future.

The road these people willingly descend is a road of enslavement. They accept lightweight cords of bondage, thinking it is easy to break them if the need arises, without realizing that these cords will grow in strength without them noticing (see 2 Nephi 26:22).

Churches are complicit in excusing sin

One reason so many people think it is ok to sin is that this is what they hear at church.

What church do you know of that does not teach that you can sin a little and still be saved? When a church teaches an idea that is antichrist, they make it so that anyone who will actually believe Jesus must first disavow the church’s dogma. If that church makes it so that those who disavow that idea are disavowed by the church (by excommunication, shunning, silencing, or even a polite invitation to not come back), that church is itself antichrist.

One need not search widely for an answer to the question “why are modern Christians so different from ancient ones in their experiences in life and with God?” The answer is very simple: their religion is extremely different. If you want to experience what ancient Saints did, you need to live the same way they did. You need to understand that total submission to what is right, all the time, is the price of entry to God’s kingdom and that his voice inside of you via your conscience is the source of that instruction.

One reason organized religion is so fruitless and dead is because it is filled with lay people and leaders alike who are liars. They have not entered into “the gate” by deciding to only do what is right. In fact, they all teach that this is impossible.

Too many Christians think that obedience to their denomination’s list of rules causes God to ignore their choice to disobey their conscience on everything else. This is as false as it is pernicious. As Isaiah described:

Wherefore the Lord said, Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men: (Isaiah 29:13)

The opposite of the precept of men is the conscience. The conscience supersedes fixed rules, especially when these rules are made by men.

God does not want us to worship him only through prescribed and rote rituals. The Lord condemned the religious leaders of his time for focusing on the least important things while neglecting the more important things:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. (Matthew 23:23)

You must absolutely promote your conscience to the highest authority and motivator in your life.

The Lord said:

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (Matthew 6:33)

He was not making a polite suggestion.

Adjusting to the fact that God has instructions for you on all things, and that you are responsible for keeping them, is quite a jump.

Most professed belief in God does not come through the believer’s conscience, but rather in the form of ideas blindly accepted from another who likewise lacks any evidence for what they believe. This kind of belief not only harms the holder—doubly harming them by keeping them from the truth while convincing them they already have it—but also does great damage to those who would come to believe in Jesus if they were not surrounded by so many obviously fake Christians.¹

Recall that your conscience is informed by the sum total of your experiences: by your reflections on your observations. God works through your understanding. If you are blindly obeying some instruction from some person, you have not undertaken the effort necessary to “ask” God about what it is he wants you to do about it. It is in your understanding of what is said or done, and not in what is said and done itself, that he will lead and guide you personally.

While it is true that God works through his servants (and everyone and everything else in creation, for that matter), he does not do so independent of himself. He retains all dominion in all truth, and nothing is valuable outside of what comes from him:

`Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. (John 5:24)`

One of many outcomes that follow from this is that everything he expects of you will flow through your conscience.

As an example of how God’s personal instructions work, consider what the Lord said after asking Peter who he thought he was:

13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar‑jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16)

While everyone had an opinion of who Jesus was, the Lord asked Peter what he thought. While Peter had witnessed the same actions and words of Jesus as others had, his interpretation was his own. The Lord knew that Peter’s belief was the result of Peter’s choice to submit to his honest understanding of what he had experienced with Jesus. The Lord said that God’s work through an individual's understanding was the rock on which he would build his church—it was the very means he would use to build and administer his kingdom.

Jesus did not impose his own knowledge onto Peter, but rather worked persuasively through Peter’s own understanding. If the teachings of Jesus Christ himself were not worthy of bypassing the individual’s understanding, quickened by the Father, does any preacher or pastor or prophet have any right to dictate to you what you should or shouldn’t do without first giving you reasons sufficiently persuasive to make the choice yourself?

It is possible to obey an alleged commandment from God without reflecting on whether it truly is from God. As long as you operate according to anything but your conscience, you are contrary to God:

6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.
9 And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition. (Mark 7)

Traditions and commandments of men are not an alternate path to God. They will keep you from him, because there is no other way to him except through what he tells you in your mind and in your heart.

Principles are more difficult than rules

Hardly anyone in this world reconciles themselves to their conscience. Most people struggle even with the far easier task of reconciling to a fixed set of commandments. It is much harder to submit to one’s conscience in all things, with the understanding that this is God’s voice to you.

It is much easier to keep all or nothing rules than it is to actively apply principles. It is easier to always or never do something than it is to do it only when it benefits.

It is easier to make a one-time sacrifice than it is to make a sacrifice continually. When we make a one-time sacrifice—whether by obeying a fixed list of commandments or by making one big decision—we are dealing in the realm of what is completely known and expected. We only have to decide once, and what is right is obvious.

When we submit to continuous sacrifice, we see that everything is a case-by-case basis, that the unexpected lies around every corner, and that we can never let our guard down, take it easy, or rationalize sin “just this once.” The case-by-case nature of principles provides unlimited opportunity to be dishonest in small ways, rationalizing almost anything the person might want to do while pretending to still keep the principle.

The rich young ruler thought he wanted to follow God, but he was under the false understanding that he could do so merely by obeying a list of commandments. Jesus tested his willingness to make a one-time sacrifice by telling him to sell all he had and give it to the poor. He also invited him to make the continuous sacrifice of leaving his former life to follow Jesus full-time. The man failed both tests.

Those who are not willing to give everything in a one-time sacrifice--including all their wealth and even their lives--are without question unwilling to follow Jesus full-time. It is harder to obey Jesus daily than it is to obey him once.

Obedience to God is not the same as obedience to others

Far too many people include concern for what others may think when considering their obedience to God. It is impossible to outsource your conscience to another.

What you do externally needs to be driven internally. You are not a slave to someone else’s script. You are not playing a role that has been given to you.

No matter your surroundings or circumstances, you can and must actively direct your life according to the dictates of your internal compass. No one else’s opinion of you will affect whether your conscience delivers to you unshakable peace of mind or inescapable guilt.

How you perform in relation to other people is also irrelevant. You are not in competition with anyone else. You are in competition with yourself. Will you do what you believe to be right, at all times and in all places?

Your reputation according to your religious leader, parent, spouse, or child does not indicate your standing with God. If anything, the approbation of others suggests you are contrary to God:

33 But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven.
34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10)

Jesus frequently commended people considered unworthy by the public.² He also promised that those who follow him will be hated by others to the degree that they are like he is.

Not only does it not matter what others think about the way you direct yourself in obedience to God, your choice to follow God at all times and in all places is guaranteed to put you at odds with all other people who know and obey him less than you:

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. (Matthew 10:22)

It doesn’t matter what other people think about you. Trusting in anyone else is placing the arm of the flesh before God. It is idolatry. It is leaning on a broken reed.³