Don't trade away your covenantal birthright for worldly approval

 

The Tree, the Fruit, and the Building

Standing conspicuously and unequivocally for the Restoration will always be risky.

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By Richard B. Anderson (BS ’91, MLIS ’93) in the Summer 2024 issue Y Magazine

Think of a starving Esau sitting before a bowl of stew, contemplating whether he should trade his birthright for it to satisfy his very real hunger (see Gen. 25:29–34). Now imagine that he is always hungry and that he sits in front of that stew all day every day and that it follows him to every classroom, every meeting, every conference, and every social-media platform. That is our situation. We constantly face the powerful and corrosive temptation to trade away our covenantal birthright in order to satisfy our appetite for delicious—but never really satisfying—worldly approval.

While Esau handed over his whole birthright in a single moment of hunger, our temptation is usually to do it more gradually, one small choice at a time. We might do it with a wink or a roll of the eyes intended to show our skeptical peers that while we may be in the Church, we are not fully of the Church. We might do it when someone makes derisive comments about the proclamation on the family2 and we look at our shoes. Or when we receive prophetic encouragement to “root out racism” in the Church3 and we murmur along with our like-minded friends about Church leaders getting too “woke.”

Now let me take a moment to say, parenthetically, that I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking, “But Rick, it’s easy for you to say this—you’re already a nerd. You’re a professional nerd. Socially, you’ve got nothing to lose by standing up for the gospel!”

And, honestly, I have to concede the point: I am a middle-aged, bow-tie-wearing, banjo-playing librarian; for me, the Ship of Coolness sailed a very long time ago. With no real hipness to safeguard, maybe I have less skin in this game than most of you.

But even if I am the wrong messenger, the message is still true. We can’t keep our covenants with a wink.

Real Choices and False Choices

When it comes to the restored gospel, the chasm between what is true and what it is socially and academically acceptable to believe is just too wide for us to be able to stand with one foot on each side. Christ was either physically resurrected or He wasn’t; the Book of Mormon can’t simultaneously be a genuine record of God’s dealings with real, ancient people and a 19th-century invention of Joseph Smith; Russell M. Nelson can’t simultaneously be a true prophet called of God and someone who is merely revered as a moral and organizational leader by members of the Church of Jesus Christ.