"I want to live life with you"
“Dear Jesus, please get me out. Christ, please, please, please, Christ. If you only keep me from being killed I'll do anything you say. I believe in you and I’ll tell everybody in the world that you are the only thing that matters.” This was the desperate prayer of an embattled soldier in one of Ernest Hemingway’s many short stories on war. But as this soldier’s desperation subsides, his religious fervor does as well. “The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rosa about Jesus. And he never told anybody.”
Good literature makes us look inward, but reading Hemingway can be especially uncomfortable because his characters and prose so bluntly portray the self-focused aspects of our nature. We open In Our Time or A Farewell to Arms and, in dismay, see ourselves on the page.
Like the embattled soldier in Hemingway’s story, my prayers of petition tend to be more fervent than my prayers of submission. Clearly, there is nothing wrong with praying for solace in times of despair, strength in times of struggle, or deliverance in times of danger. But even if our post-crisis gratitude matches the fervor of our mid-crisis pleadings, we do not do ourselves any favors by viewing God solely as a giver of gifts—as a means to an end rather than the end itself. How much would our prayers change if we realized that our goal is not simply to receive gifts but to be more like the bestower of all good gifts?
In his 2006 BYU devotional, Professor Joe Parry said, “Don’t you, like I, slip in prayer into seeing God as the giver of gifts—having invested our thoughts in good grades, jobs, marriage, and protection—thus making the gifts rather than the Gift-giver the object of our desires?”
Parry draws a distinction between “being a Christian perfectly” and “doing Christianity perfectly.” He said to be like God—which we are commanded to do in no uncertain terms—we must obtain a deeper knowledge of who he is rather than focusing on the rules and commandments, the “dos and don’ts” that we view as prerequisites in earning our mansion in heaven. “Don’t we spend most of our time working out our eternal salvation, our happiness, when Jesus Himself spends all of His time worrying about our eternal salvation and happiness?” Parry asked.
If we are to be judged “according to the desires of [our] hearts,” as the scriptures say, then our desires must begin to reflect the selfless desires of our Lord, even if that selflessness leads to greater personal suffering. Before Christ “suffered according to the flesh,” he began a prayer of petition saying, “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me.” But ultimately, his prayer was one of submission: “nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” For Christ, the idea of suffering was daunting, and yet his greatest desire—his desire to “succor his people”—transcended his natural desire to avert pain. He desired to be “with [us] always, even unto the end of the world,” and was thus willing to endure the suffering required to reach that end.
As Parry said, “The fact that the Son still bears in His resurrected body the scars of the Atonement suggests to me that He will always be our Redeemer, that He didn’t live a mortal life just to get it over with but rather to be able to live it with us over and over again.”
My mom’s close friend went through a traumatic experience but did not tell my mom about it for over a year because she did not want to burden others with her painful story. As anticipated, the story caused my mom considerable pain when she finally heard it. It tore her up to know that someone she loved had suffered so much all alone. But my mom wished her friend had not hesitated to share her experience. “I want to live life with you—alongside of you,” she told her friend.
Is this not what God does for us? He shares in our suffering so that he can live with and alongside us. For God, life was not just about avoiding addictions and temptations so that he could receive more gifts but about being with us, for us, and alongside of us.
I still offer many prayers of petition, pleading for my own health, grades, and future; I still tend to view obedience to commandments primarily as a means of averting punishment and unhappiness rather than as a way of becoming godlier; reading Hemingway still causes me considerable discomfort as I realize—though I generally consider myself to be a good person—that I am capable of selfishness, rudeness, and feigned humility.
With so many imperfections, I do not feel bad about regularly exclaiming, “Dear Jesus, please get me out . . . please, please, please.” Ultimately, however, to be more like God requires a willingness to “submit to all things . . . even as a child doth submit to his father.” Submitting ourselves to discomfort, pain, and suffering to live with and alongside our friends is the process by which we obtain lasting peace and fulfillment. This is why God said, “whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” Submitting to God’s will when suffering is required is not an act of surrender as much as it is an act of receiving—receiving the greatest gift of all: to be like Him.
It may seem like a burden to compound our own problems by piling on the weight that others carry. But when we choose to live with and alongside the people around us—the way God does for us—we move out of isolation and our lives become far more fulfilling than a lonely quest for individual perfection.
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