The Simplicity of the Gospel

One of the worst moments of my life came the day of my ordination council. That sentence is one of those insert joke here lines, but seriously, the moment that I am about to share with you is both funny and serious at the same time.

My ordination council was incredibly uplifting and awesome until my final question. The one man in the room whose question I was afraid of, was about to ask his question. After a brief pause he sighed and looking almost defeated asked me a question far too easy for a man of his intellect. He asked me to tell what the atonement meant.

Now some reading here will gasp and say that is no easy question. However as a believer there is no question that should be answered as easily as that one. Basically I was asked to define the Gospel, and I froze. After what seemed like an hour, but really was only about 30 seconds, the questioner told me that he would give me the answer if I needed help. He did this in a very sincere, genuine and loving way I might add. I said I didn't need help and then proceeded to answer the question.

You might be thinking why did I freeze? In that moment of time every thing I had ever read, written or been told to read on the atonement flooded my mind. Every theory, every opinion overwhelmed my grey matter. I was overcome with way too much information and therefore became afraid. I had allowed my mind to overcomplicate the one basic and most simple truth that defined me as an individual.

For the last three-plus years since that day, that memory has haunted me. I vowed that day that I would never allow myself to freeze up again when I was asked to define the Gospel. The problem today is that we take such a simple and beautiful truth and complicate it so much that it can almost make no sense to understand it. Yet we expect those who have never heard to know what we are talking about when we use such words and then are quick to condemn them when they don't understand. The Gospel is simple, but it isn't shallow. It is rich and deep. It is filling and quenching. It is life, but it is simple. It is so simple that you have to approach with childlike abandonment to receive it, yet so profound that some of the greatest minds in all history have been stumped by it. To those who have been awakened by the Gospel, let us never lose sight of its simplicity and its beauty and let us be transformed by it every moment that we live.