Area Leadership Message
Leaving Everyday Culture Behind to Find the Mind of Christ
Despite days of miracles and tailored teaching, Jesus finds His disciples bickering. Not long before, Peter, James, and John had taken up Jesus’ invitation to join Him on a high mountain where together they saw Moses and Elijah while Jesus was transfigured before them. Jesus and these chosen pupils descend the mountain into chaos, discovering that other disciples have been unable to grant the plea of an anxious father to heal his son who is wasting away. After assuring the father, Jesus heals the young boy and then, later, privately assures His disciples that they might be able to do the same if they dedicate themselves more fully to prayer and fasting1.
After all of this, having journeyed together in Galilee and arriving at Capernaum, Jesus asks his students: “What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?”2
Snapped from petty squabbles to face the wonderous Son of Man, the speechless disciples cannot bring themselves even to whisper their topic of wayside debate: namely, who should be the greatest3.
Though they are with Jesus, these disciples fail to inhabit His thoughts or mirror His actions. Without rebuke, Jesus calmly sits, calls the Twelve to His side, and explains: “If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all”4.
Out on the trail, what qualified as greatest had seemed clear, or at least clear enough to pull faithful, Jesus-following disciples into the same right-to-rule debate that afflicted the brothers of Joseph, Laman and Lemuel, and many others in scripture and daily life5. But as Jesus focuses His light on their contest, the terms change. What seemed important no longer matters, and what had been invisible suddenly shines.
Speaking to the Corinthians, Paul affirms that “faith should not stand in …
“the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought …
“but we speak the wisdom of God”6.
As adherents of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, we understand that the world is not itself the problem. Latter-day Saints embrace “all truth that God conveys to His children, whether learned in a scientific laboratory or received by direct revelation from Him”7.
As per the thirteenth article of faith and the admonition of Paul, we both believe and hope all things.
However, Jesus’ interaction with His disciples shows that we must detach ourselves from natural assumptions to let Him teach us new ways of being, a new culture.
“The natural man,” explains Paul, “receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. …
“For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ”8.
At each generation we have living prophets to guide and teach us how to detach our minds from the everyday and to have the mind of Christ. Our living prophet today, President Russell M. Nelson, does precisely this. Those who listen to him and apply his counsel will find that they shed limiting attitudes and develop the mind of Christ as they make peace9, maintain spiritual momentum10, make time for the Lord11, attend the temple12, let God prevail in their lives13, hear Him14, repent15, seek and receive revelation16, and think celestial (which in fact “means being spiritually minded”)17. We find newness of self and mind as we engage in the work of salvation and exaltation by coming to know and love Jesus Christ, caring for the needs of others, inviting all to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ, and by doing the work to unite all of God’s children for eternity.