Why do we obey God?

In the Old Testament it is recorded that God commanded Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to Him:

"And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt (HEB test, or prove) Abraham . . . And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of." (Genesis 22:1-2)

Reading on, we learn that Abraham obeyed the voice of the Lord: "And they came to the place which God had told him of, and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham . . . Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me." (Genesis 22:9-12)

We discussed this story in detail when I took Philosophy of Religion at UNC, and if you think about it there seem to be some troubling contradictions.

We know that God is supposed to be good. If he is good, then why would he tell someone to kill their own child? Yes, in Genesis it says that God did this to test Abraham, but is that alone a good reason? Would a god who is good ask a person to kill their own child just to stroke his vanity? To prove that he's so powerful that people will kill their own children to please him?

Of course in the end we learn that God sent an angel to stop Abraham from killing Isaac. But Abraham didn't know that was going to happen. Abraham thought this was real and he fully intended to obey the commandment. He had tied Isaac up and was holding the knife when the angel came. Since Abraham didn't know this was just a test, was it right for him to obey God? Is it right to obey God if he commands us to do something that seems so wrong?

You could argue that Abraham was right to obey God because God is powerful and could punish him if he didn't obey. But is it right to obey a God who tells people to kill their children for no reason, even if he can punish you? And if that was Abraham's motivation (which I doubt), isn't that pretty selfish to kill Isaac out of fear of punishment?

The Book of Mormon offers some insights that help clarify this.

Jacob wrote: "Behold, they [the holy prophets which were before his time, which, by the way, includes Abraham] believed in Christ and worshiped the Father in his name, and also we worship the Father in his name. And for this intent we keep the law of Moses, it pointing our souls to him; and for this cause it is sanctified unto us for righteousness, even as it was accounted unto Abraham in the wilderness to be obedient unto the commands of God in offering up his son Isaac, which is a similitude of God and his Only Begotten Son." (Jacob 4:5)

The Nephites knew that the law of Moses wasn't complete, but they kept it because it pointed them to God, and for that reason it was counted as righteousness. Similarly, obeying God's commandment to sacrifice Isaac was counted as righteousness because doing so (or at least planning to do so) pointed him to God.

Now, if you're cynical this still sounds like Abraham being rewarded because he fed God's ego by obeying him. But Jacob continues:

"Behold, great and marvelous are the works of the Lord. How unsearchable are the depths of the mysteries of him; and it is impossible that man should find out all his ways. And no man knoweth of his ways save it be revealed unto him; wherefore, brethren, despise not the revelations of God . . . Wherefore, brethren, seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand. For behold, ye yourselves know that he counseleth in wisdom, and in justice, and in great mercy, over all his works." (Jacob 4:8,10)

God is good, and we know that we do not understand all of his ways. But we also know that his counsel to us through the Spirit and revelation is wise, just, and merciful.

So Abraham obeyed God not just because he is powerful and can punish us or bless us depending on if we please him. Abraham obeyed God because he had a relationship with God based on revelation, and because of that relationship he knew that God is wise and that often there is a reason behind his commandments that we don't understand. So Abraham knew that even though it seemed very wrong to kill his only child, if God was asking it of him there must be a wise reason behind it that Abraham didn't understand.

Often God doesn't give an explanation for his commandments. (Isn't there a quote about this by Dallin H. Oaks or something?) But looking through these verses I have found a few possible reasons for why God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

1. One reason was given by the angel who stopped Abraham just before he killed Isaac: "For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me." (Genesis 22:12) So by testing Abraham God was able to learn that Abraham loved him and had profound reverence for him. And as I have just shown, it was okay for Abraham to obey, not because he was scared of being punished, but because he trusted that God had a wise reason based on his experiences obeying God in the past. Perhaps God felt a need to test Abraham because of the seriousness of the obligations associated with the Abrahamic covenant. Abraham was to become the father of descendants as numerous as the sands of the sea, so he needed to be a person worthy of that calling. "Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore." (Genesis 22:16-17)

2. Another reason was to show that God provides for those who obey him. After the angel stopped him from killing Isaac, "Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son." (Genesis 22:13) This is what Abraham had told Isaac as they were climbing up the mountain: "My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering." (Genesis 22:9) This seems to be the lesson Abraham gleaned since he called the place where this happened Jehovah-jireh, which means, "The Lord will see, or provide." (Genesis 22:14; see footnote)

3. Jacob said that when Abraham obeyed the commandment to offer up Isaac, it was "a similitude of God and his Only Begotten Son." (Jacob 4:5) Looking through the story we can see parallels between Abraham and God, and Isaac and Jesus Christ:

• "Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son." (Genesis 22:6) This is similar to Jesus Christ carrying his cross.
• Isaac was Abraham's only son, and Jesus was God's only begotten son. (God is the father of all of our spirits, but Jesus is the only person for whom God is also the father of his body).
• There is no mention of Isaac struggling. If you look at the timeline, it's possible that Isaac was an adult. Abraham was a very old man. Isaac could have overpowered Abraham or at least run away if he objected to being sacrificed. That means that Isaac trusted that there was a reason. Maybe Abraham even explained God's commandment before binding Isaac. And Isaac submitted to his father, just as Christ submitted to Heavenly Father and allowed God to sacrifice him because he knew that there was a wise purpose (our salvation).

4. Because Abraham obeyed God his story became a similitude of Christ's atoning sacrifice. This similitude became a sign for those who lived before the Atonement happened that it would be fulfilled. "Wherefore, beloved brethren, be reconciled unto him through the atonement of Christ, his Only Begotten Son, and ye may obtain a resurrection, according to the power of the resurrection which is in Christ, and be presented as the first-fruits of Christ unto God, having faith, and obtained a good hope of glory in him before he manifesteth himself in the flesh." (Jacob 4:11) Those who lived before the Atonement happened had to have faith that it would happen, and Abraham's story was a sign of hope to them that their faith was not misplaced--that just as God provided a lamb for Abraham, he would provide The Lamb to save all of us. And it is also a message of hope to us that we can trust that the Atonement applies to us too, and we will be forgiven and saved if we repent and take Christ's name upon us.

God is good. Even when he asked one of his most faithful disciples to kill his own child, he was good, because he had a wise purpose behind his commandment. And Abraham knew this because he had had many revelations throughout his life and had learned to trust in God's wisdom, so when God asked him to do the unthinkable he obeyed--not out of fear of punishment and not because he was blindly devoted or brainwashed, but because he knew God had a reason. And it turns out that he was right. Perhaps some of those reasons were the ones I have given. Probably there are more. Abraham is an example to all of us because he had built a relationship of trust and love with God, so when God gave him a commandment he may not have understood he was still willing to obey because he knew God had provided for him in the past. And we can know that God will provide for us too--that he already has provided for us, with a Lamb whose sacrifice saved us from our sins and from death.

I hate it when people ask how I'm doing. I always find myself reassuring people that I'm fine even if it's not true. I don't know why. I think I'm mentally incapable of answering "How are you doing?" with anything except "Fine." I sort of avoid asking the question of others because I don't think very many people answer the question honestly.

We are surviving. In ten days we are putting all of our belongings in a storage unit and then visiting family indefinitely. Most days I can stop my brain sequence on the present needs like cleaning the painting Ann Marie made on the table using an entire banana that was supposed to be her lunch.

The thing is it wasn't supposed to be like this. I never dreamed it would be the end of June and we still wouldn't know where we're going to live. Ryan told me the postdocs he was applying for and I just figured one of those would end up being the one. That was the plan. Get a PhD, do a postdoc, become a university professor, get tenure, settle down permanently.

I'm not worried we're going to starve or live on the streets. We have money saved and we have family who can help us. The hardest part is not knowing what's coming and not knowing when we'll know.  And since at this point the postdocs are all gone Ryan is looking at computer programming jobs and temporary teaching positions, which means even if we get a job in the next couple of months we're going to be in this same boat again in one or two years, and then whenever Ryan does get a postdoc we'll be in this same boat again a few years later when he starts applying for jobs as a university professor again.

Some days I can trust that there is a plan and that it will work out, and other days the uncertainty is really overwhelming and even getting dinner on the table is too much and my kids won't stop touching me.

So sometimes I'm not just fine. But I won't tell you that. I know we're not going to starve and I do believe Ryan when he says the Spirit has told him God is going to take care of us and guide us. But I don't handle stress and uncertainty very well and I'm tired of explaining the situation to every person I talk to and feeling like I need to reassure people that we're fine, everything's fine.

Please just keep praying for us and maybe next time you see me tell me about a book you've been reading recently or something instead of asking me to tell it all again.

finding my role in doing family history

If you look at my ancestors you will find that basically all of them were Mormon pioneers. The most recent convert is probably Rufus Black Tyler, my great-great grandfather, in the early 1900s.

One of the results of this is that the temple work for my ancestors and all their siblings and most of their descendants for two or more generations has all been done. For most of my life I didn't bother with family history other than enjoying the occasional story that someone shared. Then a few years ago my aunt sent me several life histories of my ancestors and I started transcribing them and sharing them on my family history blog. When Family Search Family Tree came out I shared the blog posts as sources.

That was probably when I started seeing just how much work still needs to be done. Not necessarily temple work, but lots of cleaning up. The church has pretty much put everything people have submitted into Family Tree, which means everything from the IGI, the Ancestral File, all those four-generation charts they encouraged us to submit, New Family Search, and more. For people like me whose ancestors have been in the church for four or more generations, that means that ancestors' pages are kind of a mess with lots of alternate names, dubious dates and places, notes and discussions with varying levels of usefulness, and sources migrated from New Family Search (Legacy NFS), not all of which are actually useful. Seeing my ancestors' pages look like this was like having an itch I had to scratch, so I started cleaning them up. If you want to get a taste of what is involved in this, check out this post I wrote on my family history blog. For some people I can get a page cleaned up in an hour, and others have taken weeks or months. Modern revelation says that when Christ comes to the earth we will be presenting him with a book with our family history. My guess is that we will be showing him Family Search Family Tree. And I think it would be better if Family Tree is cleaned up and organized with sources and accurate dates.

For the past couple of years I've been working backward on the Warthen family line. At the time I felt like that was where my focus should be and I thought that if I could get back to Joseph Worthen's siblings I could start doing some descendancy research and maybe even find some family members who needed temple work. I started with my great-grandfather, James Alfred Warthen, and cleaned up his page and the pages for all his siblings. Then I moved back to his father, Brigham Heber Worthen, and worked on him and his siblings. I really hit a brick wall with one of his sisters who kind of disappeared for twenty years and had 3-5 husbands, and I still haven't resolved that problem yet, but I decided to move on to Joseph Worthen. Joseph Worthen joined the church in Ohio and went with the Saints to Nauvoo and then Utah, but the rest of his family stayed in Ohio. Unfortunately at that point the availability of records really fizzled out. The U.S. Census only gave the name of the head of household and the number of other people in the house, and church records in Ohio haven't really been digitized yet. For several weeks I kept trying to find records with no luck, and I was starting to feel really bad about my research skills until I asked our family history consultant for help and he couldn't find anything either. It's not impossible to do research about them, but I would probably have to go to Ohio and see if I could find their church, so it would be more challenging.

That night after the kids went to bed I got on puzzilla.org to try to figure out where I could be more useful and potentially be able to do some temple work. I went seven generations back and looked at each of those people's descendancy charts and literally everyone's had four generations of descendants' work done. I don't know how accurate it all is, but clearly a lot of people have been working on this and if I am committed to doing careful and accurate research it's going to be a really long time before I find any temple work that needs to be done.

After coming to this realization I was talking to Ryan and I was literally in tears. Sometimes it's discouraging to hear speakers in General Conference talk about people who've submitted thousands of names to the temple or say that a few minutes a day can yield huge results when I don't know if I will ever find a person who needs their temple work done. I realize that most of the members of the church worldwide haven't even started doing family history and have plenty to do, but I feel like there isn't a lot of guidance for people like me whose family history has been done ten generations back and forward again. I felt so overwhelmed looking at the huge number of family members in my tree and wondering where I should start working next (I do hope to go back and look at the Warthen line eventually when more Ohio records become available, but right now I feel like they aren't trying to be found and I need to work on other people).

Soon after this, someone (I think maybe it was Ryan or my mom) pointed out that even though it's discouraging to not be able to find names of people who need temple work done, it's actually a blessing to be in this situation because that means so much of my family has already received the blessings of the temple. That thought really stuck out to me and helped a lot. I've decided to keep on with my goal to help clean up the family tree and not worry so much about the temple work. I do still hope that I can contribute in that regard, but I know I will also be blessed by getting to know my ancestors and cleaning up their pages on Family Tree.

One of my ancestors, Hans Peter Jensen, joined the church in Denmark and immigrated to Utah to join the Saints in Utah. The rest of his family stayed in Denmark. I've known for quite some time that his father's Family Tree page had a lot of problems, but I'd always heard that it's hard to do Danish genealogy and I felt intimidated by the many corrections that needed to be made. He's listed with three different wives, about 25 different children (some duplicates), and three sets of parents, and there are some other problems as well. It looks like at some point he was incorrectly merged with other people of the same name. I decided to give Danish genealogy a try and see if I could fix his page. I didn't have much luck at first because there aren't a lot of Danish records on Family Search or the other Family Search partner sites, but I started reading the Denmark genealogy wiki on familysearch.org and that helped me to figure out where to find records. I found my ancestor in five or six censuses on danishfamilysearch.com, and for the last couple of weeks I've been looking through the parish records for Voer, which is where he was born and where the family lived for several decades. It's a little challenging to read the handwritten records because they used Gothic script and I don't speak Danish, but I'm getting better at it and I've found christening records for several of his older siblings who died in infancy. I still need to find christening records for his younger siblings and then I'm going to have to start figuring out how to read marriage and death records to get more information about them. Hopefully the census records will help with that. Right now I'm recording everything I find in Roots Magic and once I feel that I have enough sources I will start making corrections on Family Tree.

So far what I've found is that the information already on Family Tree is mostly correct for the people that are supposed to be there. The incorrect merges are a problem and I'm going to have to sort out who belongs to which parents. Clearly at some point somebody did good genealogy research and recorded the right dates and places, but the problem is that up until now there wasn't really a good system for keeping track of sources and obviously it wasn't always this easy to digitize documents. That means that I'm having to replicate the research that was already done by someone else, although I do have the advantage of already having the dates and places they found. The good news is that because Family Tree is a unified family tree that everyone shares and the church is committed to preserving everything in Family Tree, this time the research won't be lost because I'm going to share all my sources. With all the focus on submitting names to the temple I guess a lot of people would wonder what the point is in doing all this work for people whose temple work has already been done, but I do feel like I'm making an important contribution by doing good research and getting my ancestors' pages organized and backed up by evidence. I also feel a connection to these family members when I find information about them.

So if you're in the same boat as I am when it comes to family history, know that you are not alone and there are ways to contribute. And if you're the first in your family to do your family history, keep track of your sources and share them on Family Search so that your descendants don't have to do all that work again!