Atonement, Repentance and Cooking Shows
/I was thinking this evening that perhaps part of my tenuous grasp on the understanding of atonement is I like to watch how someone did something. Don’t we all? Isn’t that why cooking shows are a thing? Since Jesus was perfect and all, we didn’t get to watch him turn away and turn back and the process of using the atonement. When do we ever get to see that really? Most people if they say anything about their experience of repentance are so vague and hush hush and act like the bigger sin would be talking about it. But how do we know how to USE the atonement when we haven’t seen the how to on YouTube? I have heard analogies like course correction and getting back on track but before I ever get on a race course I’d like to SEE HOW the driver comes out of a spin and gets back on the track. I’d like instructions and training and strategies etc. otherwise it just doesn’t make sense and I could understand why people think it’s not really for them. Just like people might think they could never cook such and such a fancy dish when they only saw the final product. 🤔
I remember one of my favorite missionaries described it as turning BACK to God.... or that's what repentance is. Both of those I sometimes feel like I could use much better understanding on. I will feel for a short while like "ahhh yes ok I get it" but then next time it comes up, it's like I have forgotten. It's no wonder that so often in the scriptures we are told "remember, remember, remember" I remember when a teacher pointing that out- seems we have kind of a forgetting issue haha. Then all it takes sometimes is one generation not teaching their kids and then those kids have NO clue! It's hard enough when they ARE taught- not all of them choose to "make it" to the other side safe and sound. The odds are even more dire when they are NOT even taught!
So Brad Wilcox shared about this kid that showed up on his doorstep asking the neighborhood if they had seen his cat. He opens the door and this kid is his COUSIN!!! But the kid's father had left the church and so obviously hadn't taught the kid about the church. But not only that-apparently hadn't even taught him who is FAMILY was!!!!! They lived UP THE STREET, and this kid didn't even know he was staring into the eyes of someone who SHARES a grandparent!!! So it then makes more sense in the scriptures how in a mere few generations you have people who forgot all about what their parents and grandparents knew and got back into bickering and behaviors that distanced them from their Creator and from their fellow man.
So back to that missionary- she talked about how sometimes we deliberately turn away from God- and sometimes we might just wander away- maybe I talked about the wandering- I could see someone being like "SQUIRREL!" And going off, then on the way back stopping to pick a daisy- and before he knows it- the grass has grown longer and he's not sure which is the way back. So she was talking about the repentance process being about turning back toward God. Then we have the atonement. We know we have the atonement due to Jesus... but then here I am reading/listening to Marianne Williamson, and she's talking about the atonement, being a mental process, where we correct our perceptions, and how it's a spiritual reset button from God. What she said seemed to make sense, but by the time I got home it had faded away already.
We forget who we are. We forget a lot. Good thing we have the opportnity to be remidned!