Resistance is (NOT) Futile

I recently attended a community event with my husband, called Protecting Children, with its focus being on protecting children from pornography, sexual abuse and trafficking. (Here’s a link to a terrific resource for help and ideas;(https://protectyoungminds.org/blog/https://protectyoungminds.org/blog/)  It is a difficult and heart wrenching topic, yet it felt so positive to unite amidst diversity of age, circumstance, ethnicity and economics with so many within our community on something of such great concern.  The generation over who we have guardianship needs desperately for us to keep them protected even if they are unaware of it.

Still, even though the event was so beneficial, I spent much of the next days and weeks, feeling overwhelmed with the magnitude of the problem we face.  Posts and conversations by and with friends, and strangers, despairing over how to cope with the deluge of material accessible to youth, and struggling with damage done,  burdened me further.

I am by nature a hopeful, trusting person.  But anguishing over the challenges ahead  for our five children striving mightily to provide a safe, nurturing, and faith filled childhood for our grandchildren in such an environment, nearly overcame me.  Thank Heaven, I know a God who knows and loves me and guides me to the those things that keep me from such wretchedness when I desire to be lifted.  In this place of disheartenment, I was allowed to hear and notice things I might otherwise have overlooked.

First while listening to old General Conference talks by Elder Russel M Nelson, a modern apostle of God, who was recently sustained as Gods chosen Prophet upon the earth after the death of President Thomas S. Monson,  I came across one from April 1988, entitled With God All things are possible.  He began by saying,

  “I feel impressed to counsel those engaged in personal challenges to do right. In particular, my heart         reaches out to those who feel discouraged by the magnitude of their struggle. Many shoulder heavy burdens of righteous responsibility which, on occasion, seem so difficult to bear. I have heard those challenges termed impossible.”

This was for me!  I was feeling this burden to be impossible.  The whole article bolstered my flagging faith, and helped me hold on to hope that there would be a way provided through this morass our society has allowed to engulf us.  I was lifted ‘just enough’ from the abyss of despair to move forward again.

Then while listening ( I do much of my “reading” these days by audio while I clean closets, cook, garden or drive,) to a book about women of the French Resistance,  I began to wonder how much difference the resistance really made.  Was their resistance futile?  It was begun largely by communist women, many of them single, from all walks of life, from educated, to poor, shop keepers, factory workers, office jobs.  Many  were teenagers some barely more than children, others were elderly.  The resistance at first was random, without direction, often merely more than signs torn down, flags removed and graffiti on walls.  It became eventually much more purposeful and effective, but it began largely with women, who felt compelled to simply RESIST Nazi occupation.

Still, I wondered, did it ever do more than slow down the enemy?  What did it in fact accomplish toward freedom?  One early morning, the answer came to me.  What it accomplished was in the hearts and families of those who participated and in their families,  then as well as the generations to come.  In acting  with the resistance, however small or large, in the individual circumstances and opportunities of the resistors, they were declaring which side they were on.   And that made all the difference that mattered.

I know that through Christ, this battle of filth and sleaze and all other battles of unrighteousness and sin, have already been won and overcome by our Savior Jesus Christ.  All that remains is for each of us to declare in this life our colors.  Whose team do we wish to fight on?  Sure in this mortal life it is often hard to see and remember that the war is already won, when some individual battles do seem to be going terribly wrong, even to be lost.

Will I look back on my life as a Resistor or Collaborator?  Or will I be a weak bystander?  Bystander is defined on the website ushmm.org as a “catch-all term that has often been applied to people who were passive and indifferent to the escalating persecution that culminated in the Holocaust.”  I have a feeling that bystanders of that time felt little better after the war than the Collaborators.

Christ requires us to protect and care for his little ones; in fact he tells us to become like them to qualify for the kingdom of Heaven.  (Matt 18:2). Likewise, he tells us that for those who abuse them,  “It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.”   (Luke 17:2)
That is when it dawned on me, THAT is all that is required of me, that I RESIST.  That by my pen (or keyboard really), my words, actions and desires of my heart, the opportunities that come to me and the influence he affords me, that I use it to resist the plague of pornography, immorality, and sleaze that abounds.  He asks me to Stand for Him, for righteousness, to speak out against sin. I can and will be PART of the resistance!  I will NOT stand idly by.  It matters little if my works are grand what matters is that I ACT however and whenever I am able!  I felt so empowered by this realization!

And with hope again in my mind, I heard the lyrics to a song I’d "heard" many many times in my life,  without actually "hearing", while dressing after a workout in my local gym locker room;
Pat Benatar’s song, Invincible,

We cannot afford to be innocent
Stand up and face the enemy
It's a do or die situation
We will be invincible
And with the power of conviction
There is no sacrifice
It's a do or die situation
We will be invincible

It is helpful when standing up to a mortal enemy to know that you  will  be invincible.   We can have the power of conviction!

Then President Nelsons, long ago words rang with even more power.

“You who may be momentarily disheartened, remember, life is not meant to be easy. Trials must be borne and grief endured along the way. As you remember that “with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37), know that He is your Father. You are a son or daughter created in His image, entitled through your worthiness to receive revelation to help with your righteous endeavors. You may take upon you the holy name of the Lord. You can qualify to speak in the sacred name of God (see D&C 1:20). It matters not that giants of tribulation torment you. Your prayerful access to help is just as real as when David battled his Goliath (see 1 Sam. 17).
Foster your faith. Fuse your focus with an eye single to the glory of God. “Be strong and courageous” (2 Chr. 32:7), and you will be given power and protection from on high. “For I will go before your face,” the Lord declared. “I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up” (D&C 84:88).
The great latter-day work of which we are a part shall be accomplished. Prophecies of the ages shall be fulfilled. “For with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27), I testify in the name of Jesus Christ.”  Amen.

Nope, Resistance  is NOT Futile!

And I, echo his AMEN!