Self Righteousness and Making your Calling and Election Sure Mormon Style

I was thinking a little bit today about how it seemed so easy to knock on doors and talk with people while I was on my Mormon mission compared to trying to witness with people now. I think part of it is that I struggle with trying to figure out whether the facts that I know from the Bible are really facts, or the twisting of facts that were ingrained in me while I was a Mormon. The other part could be because I was so swept away in my self-righteous all-knowing attitude that if I didn't know the answer, I would make up an explanation that sounded correct and state it as fact.

Imagine for a minute being told your entire life that you were to become a god and that Jesus would help you get to heaven after all that you could do. The struggle I find in this is that you doubt that you are going to make it to heaven because you keep breaking the rules, so in order to make yourself feel better, you focus completely on the rules you keep well and the things that you do to make up for the areas in which you falter. This in turn makes you start looking at other people like, "well, if I can keep this rule, why can't you?" and the cycle goes on and on until you are so caught up in the sin of self righteousness that you deny that anyone else could be right about any subject that you have even a smidgen of knowledge in.

The only thing that you have left to strive for at this point is making your "calling and election sure." For more of an idea about what the Mormons think about this concept, please review the following article (with a grain of salt knowing that it comes from the Mormon Church) in the Mormon Church's Magazine (The Ensign) titled, "The Accepted of the Lord: Making your Calling and Election Sure." My friends and I believed this to mean that after you have done everything that you need to do to become perfect your calling and election will be made sure and that you will be translated like Elijah was "in the twinkling of an eye."

It is no wonder that Mormons struggle with depression knowing that with every sin, they fall farther and farther from their goal of making their calling and election sure. How great is our God that He has sent His Son to bridge the chasm and cleanse us of our sins if we turn from them and trust in Jesus, and that he is preparing a place for us in heaven without "all we can do!"

"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.
"I acknowledge my sin unto you, and my iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah.
"For this shall every one that is godly pray unto you in a time when you may be found: surely in the floods of great waters they shall not come near unto him. Your are my hiding place, you shall preserve me from trouble; you shall compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.
"I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you shall go: I will guide you with my eye. Be not as the horse, or as the mule which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto you. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked: but he that trusts in the Lord, mercy shall compass him about. Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, you righteous: and shout for joy, all you that are upright in heart." -- Psalm 32