When I was a teenager, if someone asked me about Mormonism, about what differentiated it from other faiths, I usually listed off a few outward expressions of what made our church stand apart:



Three hours of church

No drinking or smoking

No sex before marriage

Tithing

Dressing modestly

No rated-R movies

Since these things tended to outwardly distinguish me from the rest of my friends quite notably, they became what I thought were the “biggest deals.” They came to define my religion, becoming the benchmark of a successful Mormon in my mind. No coffee or beer? Wore sleeves to prom? Didn’t see American Pie? Check, check, check. I’m a success!

I see now that these things easily became my standards of success because they were measurable. They were the outward stuff. Anyone could see them and check them off lists.

Inner vs. Outer

As I’ve grown older I’ve come to see the gospel as much, much more than those “outward” commandments. I’ve grown to trust and love the inward ones as well:



Love

Faith

Repentance

Hope

Charity

Gratitude

Devotion

Goodness

Kindness

Humility

These inward features have largely formed my new standard of “successful” righteousness. But there is one main problem with these new measurements: they are almost impossible to measure!

Do I have enough humility? faith? Do I love enough? I don’t know! How much is enough, anyway?

I think it is human to want to know how we’re doing, how we’re measuring up. We yearn to know if we are doing OK. As humans we also crave acceptance and validation. Often in this quest to know where we stand, we gravitate toward that which is easiest to measure—outward commandments.

Additionally, in order to know where we stand, we want to know where those around us stand so we will have points of reference, so these outward commandments become further ingrained as benchmarks. It is easier to see if someone is showing their shoulders than to determine how much faith they have, so we tend to judge that instead—both in ourselves and in others. (Facebook makes this brand of judging so easy!)

This isn’t a new phenomenon. The people of Christ’s time became so focused on those outward measurements of righteous success that they forgot almost entirely the inward stuff, which is why Christ spent most of His efforts preaching and discussing inward improvement.

So often this realization wants to make us reject all the outer (bad measurement—not as important). But it’s not a contest between the outward commandments versus the inner commandments. Neither should be neglected. Certainly they go together, but the danger for the Pharisees is the same for us—when the outward stuff is our primary benchmark, we miss the mark—both in judging others (which we really should leave to God) and in judging ourselves.

As President Uchtdorf recently warned: “How easy it would be to select our favorite gospel topic, draw a bull’s-eye around it, and then make a case that we have identified the center of the gospel. … The two great commandments are the target.” Those two great commandments he’s talking about are loving God and loving our neighbors. Unfortunately, neither of them can be easily measured with a checklist.

Seeking the Spirit

Wanting to know how we stand with God isn’t a bad or unworthy desire. So if we can’t measure our success on the outward stuff, how do we measure how we’re doing? The best answer I’ve found to this quandary I found in Preach My Gospel. Perhaps at no other time in my life was I as desparate to know if I was successful than when I was a missionary (since those outward standards of success, like baptisms, were not working out for me). Then one day I read, “You can feel certain that the Lord is pleased when you feel the Spirit working through you.”

Huh, that’s it? That’s so easy! I felt the Spirit all the time!

I found myself equally eager and frightened to believe this statement. But it stuck in my mind. I read it, reread it, printed it, and laminated it. Satan knew just how to get me down, and that was by making me feel like I was a constant failure. When I was tempted to believe that, each time I felt the Spirit I would think, “I’m not failing right now. I’m succeeding. I feel the Spirit.” That helped me keep things in check because it was shocking how often I was tempted to feel like a failure and how often that feeling kept me from feeling the Spirit.

How do you know if you are successful? You feel the Spirit.

Can it really be that simple?

Well, it depends. “Feel the Spirit” may be an overly simplistic measurement, since a feeling could be a one-time event. Living with the Spirit, praying for the Spirit, repenting regularly so we can keep the Spirit, and loving the feeling of having the Spirit would all be better measurements. Because when we feel the Spirit, we feel God. Done with regularity, we become close to God. And if we’re truly close to God, we’re treating ourselves and others as we should. Since at the end of our days God is going to put us where we are most comfortable, if we are most comfortable in His presence, that’s where we’ll end up. And that is the ultimate success, right? Eternal life with God.