My Afternoon with Bednar

I did not go to church today because of my surgery recovery. So I decided to have Elder Bednar be my church speaker today. I logged on to lds.org and found his talk from last week's CES fireside and that was my church message today.

His topic was "Truth," or rather "Things as they Really are." It was an incredible talk!! It gave me a lot to think about. He fulfilled the prophecy that Paul made when referring to the "man of sin" being revealed by the prophets before the Second Coming. Elder Bednar spoke of Satan's desire to have us 1) misuse our bodies; and 2) minimize the need for our bodies. Of course, we need to cleanse our inner vessels and keep ourselves unspotted from the world; but the second half of his talk was most intriguing. (If you haven't heard it, please take the time -- about 40 minutes -- and listen to it.)

He spoke of how spending inordinate amounts of time in a virtual world minimizes the need for our bodies. It distracts us from real-life interactions and human relationships. All we need to function in cyberspace are a brain, hands, and your gluteus maximus (for sitting purposes), we wouldn't actually need to use our bodies. The adversary is tricky. Trying to get us to obsess over things are they could be in our virtual worlds, rather than focusing on "things as they really are" in our real world.

Now I am not using this as a doctrinal excuse to not blog anymore, or visit anyone else's blog. Nor is this a ploy that the Church is using to stop people from using Facebook or Twitter or Second Life. Elder Bednar's message (as other's before his) is to not let the things of the world distract us from our eternal potential. I don't think Facebook or Blogger is evil; but I do think that we can all fall into the trap of spending more time doing these things (including watching TV or movies, or sports, or even school) than we should and neglecting those things that are most important. Shiree and I have commented on several occasions where we put the kids in bed and we spend the rest of the evening not saying one word to each other because I'm watching TV or a movie and she is blogging or Facebooking. That is not what I want our marriage to be!!

The most poignant part of his talk was at the end, when he was bearing his testimony. He spoke of God's love for us and of the day when He will "enircle us in the arms of His love," that it will not be a virtual embrace, but a real embrace. I look forward to that day!!