Clean

According to Webster, clean means morally pure, innocent, upright, honorable.  I'm trying to decide what the word means to us as members of the LDS church and if we should even be using it.  These are some random thoughts:

Don't you just love a newborn? There is nothing that compares to wrapping your arms around a baby, holding it close and breathing in that wonderful smell. To me that is the smell of clean. It is innocence and purity in its most elemental form. This is beauty in its highest form. It is what I think of when I say that man is created in the image of God.

So what happens between that pristine beginning and the creation of a Hitler, a Stalin, a Charles Manson. How can a being so innocent become so tainted? Are they not also divine by nature?

Moses chapter 6 helps me to understand but let me first clarify how I feel about another scripture: 

1st Nephi 10:21

Wherefore, if he have sought to do wickedly all the days of your probation, then ye are found unclean before the judgment seat of God; and no unclean thing can dwell with God. . .

The key to this scripture is that it begins by saying, If ye have sought to do wickedly. . ..  That is the qualifier that ends with "no unclean thing can dwell with God".

This theme reappears in Moses 6 but in a larger context which I find helpful.

Moses 6 54-59 - paraphrased

The whole notion of original sin is nonsense. All children enter the world whole or free from sin.

However, life was designed so that everyone might taste the bitter and the sweet. None of us are free from sin and adversity during our mortal lives

We arrive on Earth with the freedom to choose good or evil. God made us agents with the freedom to choose our own destinies. He created us so that we would learn to know from experience what is the good. He also gave instructions (commandments) so that we wouldn't have to learn everything the hard way.

And when we make mistakes, He just wants us to stop, realize we're on the wrong path, and choose a better road. Heaven consists of a society where people choose the right. In order to be a part of that world, you may have to (most like will have to ) make some changes.

The Lord Jesus Christ who is your judge (and no other person has that right) will help you to sort out your life and become that "heavenly" person. Through Him you can be born again and become that pure infant - but this time not innocent - because you ate the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and became as the gods, knowing both good and evil. Now you are wise and pure and clean because you choose to be (are trying your best to be).

What I see in the Gospel plan is not a set of rules given by a sovereign lawgiver who says "Live by my rules or out you go!" What I understand is that mortality with all its trials and adversity is the path to godhood. Jesus is the one who loves us so completely that He alone is able to help us examine our lives and heal us from our mortal wounds - some self-inflicted, many inflicted by others. Those wounds were a necessary part of our education, our learning to prize the good.

So what then would be my definition of clean?

Clean - to be healed of the wounds of mortality so that those wounds no longer prevent us from progressing and becoming all that we can be - whether they be self inflicted or inflicted by others.

Am I clean now? only to the extent that I recognize and understand my wounds and ask for healing.

What I don't like is when the words "clean" and "unclean" becomes a judgment word and I or anyone else is made to feel bad about themselves because of mistakes they have made. Our mistakes are our education. They are intended to help us to develop our potential. We are not unclean because we do something wrong. That word is too fraught with a negative meaning - as if our nature were damaged.

I am by nature a child of God, divine by nature. In my very core essense I have divine qualities. I made forget who I am, adversity may strip away that memory, I may be taught I am worthless, I may not act as if I am divine by nature but my core, my divine potential remains there. It may be undeveloped but it is just waiting for the time of awakening when I remember who I am and then get the motivation and the power to choose a better path.

It is just better to use language that addresses are mortal condition rather than describes our being.

I also like the story in Matthew 8

And behold, there came a leper and worshiped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean

And she says put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will,; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was healed.

This story touches me because lepers were outcasts. The disease wasn't understood except to know it was contagious. Those with it were required to warn others to stay away by saying "Unclean, unclean" and yet, as always, the Savior provided a safe place for healing by reaching out and touching that which was called unclean.

Sometimes we treat others the same as those lepers. Sometimes we feel like those lepers.  There is a truth that we must always remember:  The Lord loves us just as we are.  We all need healing and like that leper the Savior will reach out to us in whatever state we maybe - just as soon as we call out for help.  He has complete faith that we will respond to His Love and follow Him.