A talk delivered in the Temple Ridge Ward in Bountiful, Utah, on February 26, 2023.
My name is Mark Melville. I’ve officially been in the ward since December, but I began visiting in late July. I grew up here in North Salt Lake. Currently I’m working part-time as a research assistant for the Church History Department, and soon I will also be starting another part-time job as an editor, but they haven't told the other applicants, so I’m not allowed to tell you where yet.
Over the years, I have thought a lot about faith, and there are essentially four pillars to my testimony: (1) Jesus Christ as our example, (2) a sense of community, (3) a heritage of faith, and (4) the commandments, a way of life. I will be discussing these four pillars.
Jesus Christ as example
This is the Church of Jesus Christ, which means He is the one we are supposed to emulate. For example, in 3 Nephi 27:21, the Savior tells the Nephites, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, this is my gospel; and ye know the things that ye must do in my church; for the works which ye have seen me do that shall ye also do; for that which ye have seen me do even that shall ye do.”
Jesus did many things that appeared unpopular to the religious people of His day. In Matthew 9:10–11 we read, “And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.
“And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?”
I suppose the Pharisees might have thought it was dangerous and unrighteous for Jesus to be spending His time with the people they viewed as sinners. They might have thought he was condoning their sinning. They might have thought sinning was contagious. But Jesus knew a higher law. “But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick” (Matthew 9:12).[1]
Following Jesus is not always easy, and there are a lot of things he said that I don’t think we are really quite prepared to do. “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44) is not easy. “Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor” (Matthew 19:21) is not easy. “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62) is not easy.
Serving a mission provides many important and valuable life lessons, and one of the important lessons I learned was learning to love people we might consider to be “sinners.” I grew to know and love recovering criminals, drug addicts, and others who were on the margins of society. I must admit that I have not always maintained that kind of love since I have been home from my mission.
If there is one hymn in our hymnal that I think deserves to be canonized as scripture, it’s #220, “Lord, I Would Follow Thee.” “Who am I to judge another when I walk imperfectly? In the quiet heart is hidden sorrows that the eye can’t see.” In this last general conference, Sister J. Anette Dennis spoke about a hunting dog that was acting improperly, and the owner didn’t know that the dog was wounded.[2] We don’t know what wounds people have and why they act as they do. I feel regret for ways that I judged some of my roommates for acting strangely a decade ago, not knowing the things they were going through.
Fortunately, the gospel of Jesus Christ means that we are not stuck in our failures and our shortcomings. The whole purpose of the atonement is that we can always become better.
Community
One of my favorite passages of scripture is 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul talks about the body of Christ. Our chapter heading for this chapter is infuriatingly inadequate, because the body of Christ takes up literally half the chapter, but the heading doesn’t even mention it! The scripture committee must have been sleeping on the job to let that one through. The chapter says:
“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. . . .
“For the body is not one member, but many.
“If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
“And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?
“If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?
“But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him” (1 Corinthians 12:12, 14–18).
When I was attending the family ward, I taught a youth Sunday School class. One lesson, I had the kids draw people, but I had them pick out a few body parts on slips of paper, and they were only allowed to draw people with the body parts they picked randomly. The results were nightmare fuel. I couldn’t even keep the drawings or take pictures of them because they were so horrifying. A person made up only of hands would not be much of a person. Similarly, it wouldn’t be much of a church if everyone acted the same. We all have different life experiences, and we can learn from each other as we teach and comment in Sunday School lessons, show up to activities, clean the building, and give talks. I find it kind of baffling when people say, “I don’t need a church to be close to God, I just need to go to the mountains.” I like mountains as much as anyone, but having a church community is one of the great blessings of religious life, and in many ways that’s how we can come close to God. And I say that as an introvert.
In this last general conference, one of my favorite talks was from Elder D. Todd Christofferson. He said, “We cannot permit any racism, tribal prejudice, or other divisions to exist in the latter-day Church of Christ. The Lord commands us, ‘Be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine.’ We should be diligent in rooting prejudice and discrimination out of the Church, out of our homes, and, most of all, out of our hearts. As our Church population grows ever more diverse, our welcome must grow ever more spontaneous and warm. We need one another.”[3]
Similarly, in October 2020 general conference, Elder Quentin L. Cook said, “With our all-inclusive doctrine, we can be an oasis of unity and celebrate diversity. Unity and diversity are not opposites. We can achieve greater unity as we foster an atmosphere of inclusion and respect for diversity.”[4]
I suppose all of us here understand the importance of finding a place to belong. I doubt that twenty years ago, any of us would have expected to be in a singles ward in our thirties and forties. There may be a variety of reasons for this. Some of us, such as myself, may be queer. Some of us may be widowed or divorced. Some of us might simply not have found the right person. There may be any variety of reasons we are where we are. One of the things I have valued most about this ward is how vulnerable and open everyone is. Frankly, it can be difficult to be part of a church that is run by married people who often preach about the importance of marriage. But luckily for us, this is the Church of Jesus Christ, not the church of the nuclear family.[5] We are all part of the body of Christ as we lift and support each other.
Heritage
For many years, I have had the privilege of spending time in the history of the Church, and doing so also helps me feel part of a community, part of the body of Christ, not just today but going back generations. On my dad’s side, I have ancestors from the early days of the Church. Apostle Amasa Lyman was part of Brigham Young’s vanguard company to arrive in Utah in July 1847. On my mom’s side, my grandparents joined the Church on Guam in the 1960s. But all the Saints, regardless of our bloodline, are our spiritual ancestors. I am inspired by the example of earlier generations of believers. I gain strength through them.
Many of our pioneer ancestors accomplished heroic things. But they failed too. They tried things that did not work. Sometimes they did things that were actively hurtful. If they had room to make mistakes, it gives me permission to forgive myself for making mistakes, and also to forgive my fellow Saints for making mistakes today.
For example, in the early 1850s, John Taylor was on a mission in France, and Brigham Young had asked him to look for new ideas that would be useful in Utah. He discovered that in France, they extracted sugar from sugar beets, and he thought that would be a valuable idea, because sugar was scarce in the desert. So he bought a bunch of French sugar beet seeds and some equipment for extracting the sugar. It was a major hassle getting the equipment across the plains. Once they got here, actually extracting the sugar didn’t work. There was one batch of molasses that was so bad even the hogs wouldn’t eat it. Decades later there was a successful sugar industry, but in the 1850s it failed for a number of reasons.[6]
For me, I don’t think, “Oh, what dumb pioneers. What were
you thinking, trying to manufacture sugar?” No, I am impressed by their
determination, their efforts, and their ambition. Sugar House today is still
named for the unsuccessful sugar factory, and the manhole covers in the
neighborhood have sugar beets on them, and there’s a giant beet in front of the
library.
We don’t call the area Failureville.[7] I need to remember that if I fail in my efforts, it does not make me a failure, nor does it disappoint the Lord. Failure is a part of life and a part of learning and growing.
Another of my favorite stories that I’ve come across comes from 1856. Here in Bountiful we have the Tabernacle on Main Street, which was built by Augustus Farnham. He was the mission president in Australia, and he led a group of converts on a ship to the United States. One member, John Jones, was assigned to keep a journal of the goings-on on the ship. Some of the members were consistently helpful—and others were consistent in other ways. One man regularly got drunk and became violent, so much so that they had to threaten to lock him in irons. On one occasion, there was a fight between a Sister Mapstead and a Sister Moyes because Sister Moyes called Sister Mapstead a name I don’t think I should repeat in sacrament meeting. Later, John Jones described another quarrel between these women and said Sister Moyes was “the agressor as usual.”[8] What kind of Church member am I going to be? Am I going to be someone who is “the aggressor, as usual,” or am I going to be someone who is helping out, as usual?
Commandments
Living the gospel can be hard. And yet, we have been given commandments that help us become better people.
I especially have a strong testimony of the Word of Wisdom, especially concerning alcohol. And science is on our side. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, “The Guidelines also do not recommend that individuals who do not drink alcohol start drinking for any reason and that if adults of legal drinking age choose to drink alcoholic beverages, drinking less is better for health than drinking more.”[9] Sometimes I envision what our world would look like if everyone chose not to drink alcohol, and it would be a much better place.
Last summer, my grandfather turned ninety years old, and he attributes that to joining the Church. His brothers and father all died before they reached their mid-seventies. Alcoholism was a big problem in his family, and he likely would have headed down the same path.
I must admit, part of why commandments resonate with me is because I am a rule follower by nature. For example, when I was five years old, I came home from preschool to find that my family was tending some kids who had used sidewalk chalk on the driveway. But it was called sidewalk chalk, not driveway chalk, so I took the hose and washed off all their drawings. I need to be careful not to let my nature lead me to judge others or become self-righteous.
Of course, all the commandments lead us to the two great commandments, to love God and love our neighbor. In Romans 13 we read, “Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
“For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
“Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:8–10).
Recently Elder Gary E. Stevenson spoke about these two great commandments at the UVU institute. He said, “When Jesus said the first and the second commandments, He didn’t say one is more important than the other. He said, ‘and the second is like unto it.’”[10] We show our love for God by loving our neighbor. I don’t think it is possible to love our neighbor too much.
Living the commandments helps us become more like the Savior. He is the one we are to follow. We as a community of Saints are always striving to become like him, just as our forebears have done for generations. And when we fail, that’s what repentance is for.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] These verses are quoted in
the Killers’ song “The Calling,”
so I always think of that when I hear them.
[2] J. Annette Dennis, “His
Yoke Is Easy and His Burden Is Light.”
[3] D. Todd Christofferson, “The
Doctrine of Belonging.”
[4] Quentin L. Cook, “Hearts
Knit in Righteousness and Unity.”
[5] Thanks to my friend David Doyle for this insight.
[6] See Mary Jane Woodger,
“Bitter Sweet: John Taylor’s Introduction of the Sugar Beet Industry in
Deseret,” Utah
Historical Quarterly 69, no. 3 (Summer 2001): 247–63.
[8] Augustus Farnham
Immigrating Company journal, July 14, 1856, 83;
August 13, 1856, 140,
MS 7779, Church History Library.
[9] “Dietary
Guidelines for Alcohol,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
[10] Mary Richards, “Elder
Stevenson teaches how to build on the 2 great commandments,” Church News,
February 3, 2023.
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