This installment is titled Good Cheer, Part 3, where Denver discusses how we can be of good cheer even when the world around us seems to be getting darker.

Take any event at any time, in the Book of Mormon for example. You have the family of Lehi and what went on there, or later in time during Alma and Abinadi in the courts of King Noah. Take any of those circumstances and ask yourself: Let’s assume that that was happening today. Let’s assume God was doing things today similar to what He was doing back then. What would that look like? How would that unfold? What would be said? What would the response be? How would you react to that if it were going on today? How would you decide if something like that were happening now, whether or not it was authentic and of God? How would you go about deciding that in your own day, in your own time, among your own people, within your own family, what is happening is of God and not of men? 

I don’t think that just because something gets enshrined in scripture we should lose sight of the fact that it has always required faith, it will always require faith, and it doesn’t matter what proofs you can muster for or against belief in something. At the end of the day either God is behind it or God is not. And if God is behind it and your heart is open to it, you’ll recognize it; you’ll receive it. 

The problem we have as people is we don’t really believe the Book of Mormon. We believe in long ago and far way. The Book of Mormon is telling us, “Hey, Gentiles, among you, in your day, in your time, there are going to be things that God necessarily is going to have to accomplish.” What would that look like? What would that unfold like? How would that come rolling forth? Many of the people about whom scriptures are written, and the pivotal moments in which choices have to be made before great things unfold, have remarkably humble beginnings, almost inconsequential, so much so that the biblical record entirely omits Lehi. So much so that the people chosen by the Lord to flee before the fall of Babylon, and to start a new civilization on the other side of the world, remained entirely obscure to the world from the moment they left Jerusalem until the time that the Book of Mormon rolled forth in 1830.

Lot chose to live in Sodom. What’s up with Lot? Maybe they had good music. Maybe it was fashion. Maybe they had great art. (I’m pretty sure they had great performance art, I’m just not into that.) When Abraham went to recover his nephew and the angels came and Lot bargained, it wasn’t Abraham who was out to destroy the wicked, and it wasn’t Lot that was out to destroy the wicked, it was the Lord. The Lord is going to take care of the abominations that are out there. Our responsibility is to invite people to see a better way, to conceive of a higher and more noble way to live life. Our job isn’t to rebuke and condemn and to belittle. 

There are really two forces at work in all of creation. One force is generative, creative, and positive. It fabricates new things. It is ongoingly surprising and life-filled and wonderful. What’s opposed to that are the forces of degeneration, decay, negativity, entropy, destruction. There isn’t enough being done in order to bring that positivity, that creativity, that newness into this world. Even though children are born every day, and life starts over all new again with the birth of every new child, our minds are preoccupied by the forces of negativity and what opposes us. I could spend all day every day responding to negative arguments and negative comments, and if I were to do that I wouldn’t get anything new done, covered, accomplished, or out there. 

When we take a message out to people about the restoration of the Gospel, the work of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, the offering of the Covenant, the expected coming Zion, there is no reason to deal with the criticism. It’s going to collapse on its own. Here’s a great bit of advice: If the criticism ...