Don’t Forget God
In Helaman 12, we see warnings about what happens when we forget God. The best way to visualize the consequences of forgetting God is to look at the state of our world today. We have war, political strife, contention, social depravity, and moral decay. One of the greatest blessings of the Book of Mormon is how clearly it illustrates the causes and effects of forgetting God and the natural tendency of people to become wicked.
However, the fact is that we were born with a veil of forgetfulness drawn across our minds so we could learn to live by faith. We can’t remember the time when we lived in His divine presence. Ironically, Jesus said that eternal life is knowing the only true God and His Son. And so, we have a predicament.
Remembering God is more than a mere recollection of some amorphous higher power. However, even a vague concept of God has some value, and that is certainly better than thinking He does not exist.
Some faith traditions say that God is incomprehensible and unknowable, which puts Him out of reach. When God is conceived in that way, not only can we not reach Him, but it also makes Him a disinterested monarch who places little value on His creations. In that situation, it seems rational to make less effort to keep Him at the forefront of thought. Critics of religion could argue that is the case when considering how they view the God of the Old Testament as arbitrarily vengeful when He commands Israel to destroy everything and everyone who stands against them utterly. I could go on a tangent on that point, but I’ll save that for another time.
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints don’t have the excuse of these misconceptions of God because of the vision Joseph Smith had in 1820, where he saw the Father and the Son. Knowing that the Father and the Son are separate and distinct individuals who look like us, or rather, we look like them, makes them relatable and relevant. The Father calling Joseph by name dispels the notion that God is a disinterested monarch and that He cares about each of us. The revelation that God is real and our spiritual father gives us an advantage in remembering Him and striving to be like Him.
Going about our lives and attending to the day’s worries puts God away somewhere in the back of our minds. Struggling with work and family needs, or you could say, taking care of expedient things, makes focusing on God that much harder. Indeed, when life is good, you could easily imagine having more time for prayer, study, and meditation. But that, sadly, is not true. A life of ease, pride, and prosperity makes it harder to remember God than almost anything else.
So, what does it mean to remember God? The first thing we can do is follow the Savior’s example. When you read accounts of Jesus’ ministry, the one thing that stands out is how he constantly refers to his Father and doing His will. Jesus made time to communicate with his and our Father in Heaven. Consistent communication with God helps us remember Him. Keeping the commandments, whether we understand their purpose or not, is another way. Comparing our actions to those of the Savior keeps us mindful of God.
Seek for revelation. As I mentioned earlier, God is interested in us individually. There is no doubt that He wants to help us navigate this existence. His way of guiding us is not to give us everything at once. If He did, two things would happen: we would be overwhelmed with the scope of our potential, and we would not experience opposition, which teaches us things we can learn in no other way. Put another way, we would not know good and evil. Revelation is a way to know what is good or evil without acting them out. God can and will show us the consequences of future actions.
Another way we remember God is by seeing Him in His creations. We are about to witness the changing of the seasons. Leaves changing color and the crisp, cool breeze are revitalizing and wonderful. Our world is glorious and beautiful, but we see God most clearly in the greatest of His creations: each other. We draw ever nearer to Him when we make more effort to see God in others.