The Cost of Freedom and a Broken Heart and Contrite Spirit

This past week I visited Washington DC as part of my ongoing research project with NASA, and with the fourth of July upon us I couldn’t help but steal away and take a little time to walk through the Capitol across the mall and “remember” the ultimate sacrifices given that we might enjoy freedom, prosperity and peace. It is not perfect, but we enjoy great blessings living in this “promised land,” founded upon the premise that we look to God and put our trust in Him.

Some of my first childhood memories are of coming home from school and watching Giligan’s Island or Lost in Space and having it interrupted by Walter Cronkite providing updates of the Vietnam War. From those early days I was quite terrified of everything about war and the prospect that one day I would have to go and fight. President Boyer spoke of the cost of freedom at conference, but it came to life again for me as I walked past the monuments of Washington and Lincoln and the World War II, Korea, Vietnam Memorials, and others and was reminded again why war scared me and what enormous sacrifices we have had to pay for the freedoms we enjoy. But have we forgotten? While we have continued to fight evil in the world, and many have paid the ultimate price for which I am grateful, my generation has not experienced war at the scale that previous ones did. Ours has been more of a need to “remember, honor and revere” because without that remembrance patriotism fades, we lose our appreciation of the sacrifice and are bound to make the same foolish mistakes that could ultimately bring back the suffering and sacrifice required to regain freedom.

As I contemplated this on my walk I couldn’t help but think of how religion, and the great atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ is equally being “forgotten.” Just as we are not required to be at war as we once did, we are not required to pay the ultimate price for our sins and consequences of a fallen world, if we will look to Christ and remember Him. We do this by offering a broken heart and contrite spirit so we can avoid so much suffering, unhappiness, disappointment and live in peace with an assurance of the promised blessings the gospel brings to us in this life and more importantly in the eternities.

Of course, the Book of Mormon has many examples that illustrate the prosperity-pride-wickedness- suffering-humbling-repenting cycle. It should help us to always retain in remembrance Christ and just as looking to a brass serpent to be saved, “the easiness of the way” relatively speaking that looking to Him has in avoiding the consequences of falling trap to that cycle. I believe it is the same with respect to our patriotism, we should remain humble and grateful for the freedoms we enjoy and be willing to do our part to retain peace and prosperity.

As we celebrate the fourth of July this week I pray that we might “remember” how blessed we are and that our offerings of patriotism to our country and a broken heart and contrite spirit to our God are the most important things we can do if we are to “look and live” and avoid the perils of war and the anguish of sin.

President Nelson