BY
ELDER D. CHAD
RICHARDSON
Area Seventy North America Southwest Area
Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah!
Jesus anointed that Prophet and Seer.
Blessed to open the last dispensation,
Kings shall extol him, and nations revere.
Praise to his mem'ry, he died as a martyr;
Honored and blest be his ever great name!
Long shall his blood, which was shed by assassins,
Plead unto heav'n while the earth lauds his fame.
Great is his glory and endless his priesthood.
Ever and ever the keys he will hold.
Faithful and true, he will enter his kingdom,
Crowned in the midst of the prophets of old.
Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven;
Earth must atone for the blood of that man.
Wake up the world for the conflict of justice.
Millions shall know "Brother Joseph" again.
During the trials of Missouri,
W. W. Phelps was reprimanded for misuse of Church funds and selling lands
contrary to counsel. As a result, he became very bitter in Far
West and turned against the Prophet Joseph Smith and the Saints.
Along with other apostates, W. W. Phelps was involved in an affidavit against
the Prophet issued in Richmond,
Missouri, in November 1838. After
Governor Lilburn W. Boggs’s extermination order, the Saints were driven from Missouri, while the
Prophet and his associates were imprisoned for months in the terrible winter
dungeon of Liberty Jail.
By 1840 W. W. Phelps had experienced a profound change of
heart and wrote to the Prophet pleading for forgiveness. In response, Joseph’s
letter concluded with the couplet “Come on, dear brother, since the war is
past, / For friends at first, are friends again at last.” 1 The Prophet Joseph
freely forgave Brother Phelps and took him back into full fellowship.
When Brother Phelps learned that Joseph and Hyrum had been
killed by a mob, he was devastated. With great power and inspiration, he
expressed his own feelings and those of the entire Church as he penned the hymn
“Praise to the Man.”
How could Brother Phelps speak of traitors and tyrants
fighting the Prophet when he himself had been one? Immediately I realized not
only that Brother Phelps was no longer a traitor but also that he must have
come to no longer see himself as one. The genuine, complete love and trust he
received from Brother Joseph helped make it possible for him not only to
forgive himself but also to erase his image of himself as a traitor.
We Must Forgive All
Unfortunately, many Latter-day Saints today continue to
carry the burden of past sins because they refuse to forgive themselves.
President Howard W. Hunter (1907–95) observed: “It has always struck me as
being sad that those among us who would not think of reprimanding our neighbor,
much less a total stranger, for mistakes that have been made or weaknesses that
might be evident, will nevertheless be cruel and unforgiving to themselves.
When the scriptures say to judge righteously, that means with fairness and
compassion and charity. That’s how we must judge ourselves. We need to be
patient and forgiving of ourselves, just as we must be patient and forgiving of
others.” 3
Apparently, many individuals do not understand the
importance of self-forgiveness in the process of repentance. The Lord, however,
makes no exceptions when He declares, “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will
forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men” (D&C 64:10; emphasis
added). This includes forgiving ourselves.
Without doubt, Satan uses this refusal to forgive ourselves
as a means of enslaving us by turning past sins into addictions. He tempts
some, for example, to believe that if they make themselves suffer enough, they
will not return to the sin. This often leads, however, to self-loathing or
self-abuse.
Satan tempts others to judge themselves harshly and to
believe they don’t deserve to be forgiven, even when the Lord is willing to
forgive them. Such individuals continue to dwell on their transgressions and
mistakes, remembering the details and thus increasing the danger of repeating
them. According to President Boyd K. Packer, Acting President of the Quorum of
the Twelve Apostles, “Preoccupation with unworthy behavior can lead to unworthy
behavior.” 4
People trapped in this cycle of sin, self-condemnation, and
further sin, tend to become discouraged. Satan also uses discouragement to
create addictions. A discouraged individual will be tempted to stop trying or
to seek solace in more sin. In contrast, the Savior beckons us forward with the
promise that we can become free from the chains of sin as we fully repent and
forgive ourselves.
Sorrow for Sin
Sorrow always follows the recognition of sin. The
destructive form of this sorrow, which often manifests itself as self-condemnation,
is related to what the Apostle Paul called “sorrow of the world,” which
“worketh death.” In contrast, he described a positive form of sorrow, “godly
sorrow,” which “worketh repentance to salvation” (2 Corinthians 7:10). A main
difference between these two forms of sorrow is their source. Worldly sorrow is
promoted by Satan. It is the sorrow of being caught, of not being able to
continue sinning, or of turning against oneself with self-loathing or disdain.
Godly sorrow, on the other hand, is sorrow given as a gift
from God to those who are willing to receive it. Godly sorrow leads us to a
full recognition of the magnitude of our sins but with the knowledge that we
can become free of them. It leads us to fully recognize the wrongs we have
committed without giving in to the temptation to see ourselves as worthless or
beyond God’s love.
There is no room in godly sorrow for self-contempt. Those
who refuse to forgive themselves thus bear a double burden of sin, for not only
do they carry the sin itself, but they also add to it the sin of
self-condemnation and refusing to forgive. Indeed, refusal to forgive is cited
in the scriptures as “the greater sin” (D&C 64:9).
We Are Not Alone
Over the years, as I have counseled with members and
missionaries, I have found that many wonderful, otherwise faithful Latter-day
Saints find it difficult to forgive themselves, even after being told that they
must do so. Some have deep-seated patterns of anger and impatience with
themselves that are hard to change.
Fortunately, we are not alone. The Savior, through His
Atonement, can help us not only to remove the sins but also to forgive
ourselves. To receive His help, we need to ask for it. And we need to be
willing, given all our mortal limitations and weaknesses, to do all that we can
do (see 2 Nephi 25:23).
President Packer taught:
“Save for the exception of the very few who defect to
perdition, there is no habit, no addiction, no rebellion, no transgression, no
apostasy, no crime exempted from the promise of complete forgiveness. That is
the promise of the Atonement of Christ. …
“… Do not give up if at first you fail. … Do not give up.
That brilliant morning will come.” 5
Love is a necessary precursor to being able to forgive
oneself. As we develop an overpowering love of and gratitude for Jesus for His
willingness to forgive us, we earnestly desire to come unto Him—to study His
life and teachings and act upon them so that we become more like Him. As we do
that, our own capacity to love grows to the point that we can indeed love and
forgive ourselves and others.
Forgetting
Forgetting is part of forgiving. But forgiving oneself
involves a special kind of forgetting. We don’t forget the sin and its effects;
rather, the memory ceases to be part of how we see ourselves. For example, when
Alma had been forgiven of his sins, he said, “I
was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more” (Alma 36:19). The fact that he could describe
his repentance to his son Helaman showed that a memory was still there. But
through Christ’s Atonement and forgiveness, that memory lost its edge of guilt
and self-recrimination.
We must keep sin in its proper perspective. Satan would
convince us that we are defined by our sins. He would have had the repentant W.
W. Phelps see himself always as a traitor. He would convince someone who has
stolen that he is and always will be a thief.
The Savior, in contrast, would have us understand that we
have sins that need to be cleansed, but we are much more than those stains. If
I spill ketchup on my shirt, I have a stain. Perhaps it is right in front where
everyone can see it. But while I have a stain, I am not the stain. I need to
recognize that there is a good deal of my shirt that is clean and white. I
believe that God sees the white shirt—the goodness in His children—and offers,
through Christ, to remove the stains. If we obsess about the stain, however, it
will become who we are in our minds and then in our actions.
Forgiveness Does Not Mean Excusing Sin
Forgiving a sin does not mean excusing it. When we forgive a
sin, we neither say it is OK nor that payment will not be required. Rather,
forgiveness allows us to turn both the final judgment of guilt and the full
payment of the debt over to the Lord. The Lord tells us in Doctrine and
Covenants 64:11, “Ye ought to say in your hearts—let God judge between me and
thee, and reward thee according to thy deeds.” Further, in Doctrine and
Covenants 82:23, He says, “Leave judgment alone with me, for it is mine and I
will repay.”
When we sin or make mistakes, our Heavenly Father wants us
to quickly resume our journey home with a new and even stronger grip on the
iron rod. The repentance of Alma
the Younger illustrates this principle of moving on. A “wicked and an
idolatrous man” (Mosiah 27:8), he was brought to a realization of his sins,
repented, and experienced a mighty change of heart (see Mosiah 27:11–37). He
chose to take the strait and narrow path, filling his mind and his life with
good works rather than remaining at the side of the road worrying about his past
transgressions. He didn’t have time for that. And neither do we.
The Savior Is Key
When we turn to our Savior, He can heal us not only of the
sin but also of the self-recrimination and the constant mental replaying of our
sins or obsessing over them. We must turn the sins and the guilt over to the
Savior in a process of complete repentance. For serious sins we will need the
help of a bishop or another appropriate priesthood leader to complete our
repentance. We then must let the Savior judge whether we or He must make final
payment for the sin. Finally, we will need the Savior’s help to feel
self-acceptance rather than self-contempt.
With the Lord’s help, we will experience a change in how we
see ourselves. I believe this is the wonderful change that happened to Brother
Phelps. Because of his repentance and his willingness to forgive himself, he
was no longer a traitor. He was able to accomplish many great spiritual and
civic works following the Prophet’s death. I believe his accomplishments would
have been highly unlikely had he not, with the help of the Prophet and the
Lord, fully forgiven himself.
I end with the chorus to Praise to the Man:
Hail to the Prophet, ascended to heaven!
Traitors and tyrants now fight him in vain.
Mingling with Gods, he can plan for his brethren;
Death cannot conquer the hero again.
