Because god is the author of prosperity, principles govern.

I first became enamored with the idea of principles determining everything that happens, good or bad, when I started reading Stephen Covey’s book, “Principle Centered Leadership.“  I loved the concept that if I center my life and choices on principles, I will always be happiest and the most productive possible.

Principles do indeed govern.  Because God has a perfect understanding of principles, he can accomplish anything he wants.  His will is perfectly aligned with principles so he will never want anything that would violate principles.  As I was reading the book, Covey kept referring to his “7 habits of Highly Effective People” and using terms that are in that book.  I felt I was missing some context and decided to read that one before I continued with Principle Centered Leadership.  As I finished both books, I felt a keen desire to align my life better with principles.  It was the only way to make sure that my family and myself would be the happiest we could be.

Let me explain my belief in God, and how my realization about principles is both a result from and a source of my continued belief in the existence and infinite goodness of God.

I grew up in an LDS home, meaning that my parents were active members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (sometimes known as “the Mormons”).  We were taught the precepts of the Church and its history to be just as true as anything else we learned in school.  I never had any reason to doubt what they have taught me growing up, and now that I am an adult, I have a strong conviction that the religious beliefs they taught me are true.  As most good Mormon young men do, at the age of 19 I voluntarily served a full time mission for my church.  I was called and served in the Northeast region of Brazil, in the Brazil, Recife South Mission, after 3 months of training in Provo Utah, which started in July of 1993, until I returned home in August of 1995.

Either by nature or by nurture I am a bit shy.  I have always been reluctant to initiate a conversation with people one on one.  As you can imagine, this was a source of struggle for me on a mission where part of what I am supposed to do is to strike up conversations with people I have never met.  After a bit of soul searching and forcing myself to step outside the realm of comfort, I eventually became competent at making what we called a “street contact.”  This timidity does not extend into a lesson/teaching type setting.  Once I am teaching someone about something I feel somewhat competent my inhibitions seem to disappear and some people feel they can’t get me to shut-up.

One time I was teaching a lesson to a family, and it just occurred to me that I had never had what many other converts to my faith have described as the “moment they knew for sure” that the Church was indeed true.  It really bothered me so much that I felt completely incapacitated to continue teaching.  Since we teach in companionships, my companion completed the lesson and we made an appointment to come back.  All the way back to our apartment I just felt like a hypocrite for teaching people that it was true, when I didn’t really have any experience that I could point to that said, “this is why I know it’s true.”  I reconciled that I could still testify that I believed it was true, but I wanted to know why so I struggled with this for most of my time as a missionary.

One day as I was attending worship services, someone was giving a talk about how happy they were because of the message that the missionaries had shared with them.  They talked about how their life was happier and they lived with hope, rather than despair at all the horrible things that happen in the world.  It clicked.  I had an epiphany.  All of the happiest times in my life, when I felt the most hope, and peace, and love, came as a result of the teachings that I had learned from my parents and the religion in which they brought me up.

Now, what does this have to do with prosperity?  It has everything to do with prosperity.  One of the biggest fallacies in life is that prosperity and wealth mean having an abundance of material possessions.  If you look at the origins of both of those words, you will see that they come not from having a lot of things, but from being truly happy.  Now don’t misunderstand.  There is nothing evil, wicked, mean, bad and nasty about having things.  It is just no substitute for true happiness.  True happiness does not even really come from having other people in your life.

Both the importance of having other people and material things in your life are insignificant and immaterial to wealth and prosperity, if you do not first have that hope and peace that comes from knowing who you truly are – a child of God, with infinite potential for growth; and have some idea of where you want to go and what you want to do when you get there.

Now many protestant Christian religions believe that we only become children of God when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior.  I believe that accepting the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ is absolutely essential and fundamental for happiness and peace in this life.  All of us are imperfect, make mistakes, and even do evil, wicked, mean, bad and nasty things sometimes.  We often consume more than we produce.  The only people of whom anyone could say otherwise are Christ and various fictional characters, which are really just analogous to Christ.  There is no excuse for it, and no justification for being less than what we have the potential for being, but it is a truth that every individual must come to grips with and accept in order to correct it.  Christ’s atonement is the only way to correct it.

The truth that I have come to know is that all of us are children of God.  As such, we are gods also, or at least can be the moment we recognize our potential, and act to fulfill it.  We become more aware of our potential as we choose to fulfill the potential of which we are already aware.  The more of it we become aware, the more of it we can choose to fulfill.

This is where other people and material possessions come into play.  Material possessions are merely tools that we use to either fulfill our potential, or reduce it.  Using those material possessions to create value for other people is how we fulfill that potential.  Using those material possessions merely to consume value and only for our own personal gratification are how we reduce our potential.

This is not to say that personal gratification is bad, in and of itself.  Man was made to be happy.  Gratification is one way that we can increase our happiness, if it’s source is a knowledge of our divine potential. The only true way to be happy is to know that you are reaching that potential by creating more value in the world than you are consuming.  You literally become a creator … or, a god.

Next post will be about how this whole process begins with the recognition of the importance of I benefit from the process.  In the words of Rick Koerber’s second principle: Faith begins with self-interest.