Falling to Heaven: The Surprising Path to Happiness

by James L. Ferrell

When we shun others because of their particular struggles, we begin to live a wicked lie: We are saying that our own sins are more acceptable than others’, and we are therefore implying that they need the Lord’s Atonement more than we ourselves do.

However, we risk becoming as the Zoramites if we think that being a member of the “true church” makes us the “true people” and others the untrue.

We have been given an obligation, not a stamp of approval.”

What a blessing it is to believe in a gospel that won’t allow us to use it as proof of our own goodness relative to others!

Being a Mormon, like being a child of Abraham, brings obligations but not assurances.

The only comparison that is relevant is our comparison to God, and on that scale all of us are found wanting.

The women in our lives really have taken a terrible risk by attaching themselves to us. What is also true, but what a priesthood leader is much less likely to say from the pulpit, is that husbands have taken a terrible risk marrying their wives as well. That is a message that a man will be more reluctant to deliver, as it seems self-serving, but it is equally the truth. No one gender has a corner on righteousness or the Spirit. Each of us needs the Savior equally and infinitely.

Anything that makes me feel better (or worse) than another is darkness; anything that makes me feel one with others is divine. So the natural instinct to try to lift others by helping them to feel good about themselves relative to others is exactly the wrong way to help. True happiness is found not in a belief that I am better but in the obliteration of any need to be.

We have sucked all the light and divinity from the redeeming act of forgiveness and are using it instead as a crass currency of exchange. As if love must, or can, be purchased.

repenting of my failing to love. Forgiveness is simply the word we use to describe this kind of repentance.