A Slowly Focusing Vision of the Atonement

Some of you may be familiar with “Read It Later” apps. When you come across an interesting-looking long-form article on the internet, you can use your “Read It Later” app to save it in a queue so that at once you have more free time, you can… read it later. Some years ago I was a heavy user of one of these tools, and as an ambitious procrastinator, truthfully it was more of a “Read It Never” app.

One time I saved a blog post called “For now we see through a glass, darkly, and I kind of like it”. Of course, I never read the post, so I can’t speak for its contents, but for some reason, the title stuck with me. It’s quoting Paul in First Corinthians chapter thirteen. It may be cliché, but this is one of my favorite chapters in scripture, something I like to return to often to ponder. Verse 12 is where Paul writes about “see[ing] through a glass, darkly”, or in a modern translation, “see[ing] in a mirror, dimly”. First-century mirrors were made from polished brass, offering a rather unclear reflection of reality. Per the Utah Department of Public Safety, I’m required to wear corrective lenses to operate a motor vehicle, so I completely understand this concept of blurred vision. Struggling through the blurriness, squinting for occasional clarity, is an apt description for the evolution of my testimony of the Gospel. Looking back over the years and seeing all the ways that “I thought like a child” helps me appreciate where I am today. And it gives me hope for greater clarity as “I [try to] put an end to childish things”.

A clear example of this evolution is how my vision of the Atonement has changed over my life. As a young man, I honestly just had no clue what any of it meant. Sure, resurrection, the whole overcoming death thing, that’s only something the Savior could do. But the Atonement? I knew about repentance, at least in theory, but that was just one item on the long list of things I needed to do to earn my salvation. I suppose I viewed the Atonement like a stop by the divine valet booth. “Thanks Jesus,” I say as He hands me the keys, “I’ve got this from here.” Then I slip Him a bad tip and drive off to the covenant freeway to take care of business for myself.

Unsurprisingly and thankfully, I was disabused of this idea pretty quickly once I finally made an attempt at genuine repentance. Abandoning the follies and foibles of youth while preparing for and attempting a mission required ample time on my knees and in the scriptures. I’d never had a clearer vision of my own sins, but who Jesus Christ was to me and what He had done for me was still blurry. Early in my mission, I was reading through the Book of Mormon (certainly the first time I’d ever truly read it) and I came to chapter seven of the Book of Alma. I read verse 13: “[T]he Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance,” and I felt a jolt deep in my soul. I saw a clear image of a parent standing beside a small child, sitting in a high chair, covered in a mess of food. The parent would lovingly, repeatedly reach down with a cloth, blotting out the mess the child had made of themselves. Somehow this flash of clarity helped me, for the first time, see some truth about the Atonement.

I haven’t been able to forget this image, and over time, especially now as a parent of young children, my appreciation for it has grown. We are commanded to be like little children many times in the scriptures. But what exactly does it mean to be like a little child? I could point to song fifty-five in the Children’s Songbook, “Jesus Once Was a Little Child”. The first verse goes: “And [Jesus] was pure and meek and mild, As a little child should be.” I read that, and then I think about my evening. First I had to chase down a two-year-old who had somehow gotten out of her pajamas and nighttime diaper while running down the hallway. Then I had to break up a slug fest between a seven-year-old and a five-year-old fighting over who got to hold a book that neither had cared about a few minutes prior. And then I was back to stopping the two-year-old from biting the hand of her three-month-old sister. Pure and meek and mild? I really wonder if James R. Murray (1841-1905) is just chuckling at all of us parents every time we sing his lyrics. But do you know one thing that I am certain my little children are? They are dependent, on my wife and I, for their every need. So when I’m told to become like a little child, I think it means coming to a realization of my total dependence on the Savior, jettisoning all of my pride and self-assuredness, recognizing that “it is only in and through the grace of God that [I am] saved” (2 Nephi 10:24). This is no small feat. It requires a total reset of my self-image, a rebirth where I accept my relationship as a child, dependent on my new spiritual parent, the Savior. I imagine blotting up my sins is a relatively simple task for an omnipotent being. From that perspective, the true miracle of the Atonement is when the depth of His infinite love pierces through the heart of this eternally stubborn intelligence to convince me to sit down in my high chair so He can clean me up.

So, what’s next? Once I’ve fully accepted this new parent-child relationship with the Savior, can I just go along my merry way and do as I please? Back to King James’ Paul: “God forbid!”. This new relationship requires me to stop living in fear and wasting time on self-indulgent worries about “will I or won’t I be saved?”. The Savior is telling me instead to live in faith and accept His grace, so that I can be free to do what He asks me to do: love one another. In the spirit of JFK: Ask not what the Atonement can do for you — ask what is demanded of you by the Atonement. Can I envision the events of Gethsemane and Golgotha, simultaneously the greatest act of love and the greatest act of injustice, and not be motivated to act myself? The Atonement requires me to try to share even just a sliver of that love with my brothers and sisters. It requires me to fight whatever battles I can against the ongoing injustice in the world around me. And, truthfully, this is where the Lord really knows how to uncover my weakness. As a self-avowed introvert, going out to serve others is uncomfortable at best. I hope my time here in the Ridgeview Ward will give me the courage and opportunity to change.

Ten years from now, will I come back to this and realize how much I only knew in part? Perhaps. But a lifetime of seeing through a glass, darkly, a journey of slowly focusing vision, has brought me a deep love for the Savior and His Atonement, and for that, I kind of like it.

- Ryan Johnson