My Side-by-Side God

Finishing the Course Together

As announced here, Tyler Johnson invited authors to contribute essays as part of the Covenant Life series. This is the first invited entry in that series.

“As saints, many of us . . . live with a constant fear that we are failing to please [God], to measure up, as if He were looking for reasons to deny us the winner’s cup. We lose sight of the fact that God is running the race with us, not waiting at the finish line to declare us victor or loser.” —Terryl and Fiona Givens, All Things New

“Travis, I noticed you haven’t signed up for the youth triathlon yet.” Despite my best efforts to evade the conversation, my bishop caught me after a young men’s lesson and asked me why I had yet to sign up for the upcoming triathlon. I was the only one who hadn’t signed up. “Is it a matter of paying for the sign-up costs? Do you not have a bike to use?” he kindly interrogated. “We have ward funds we can use to help cover entry costs, and I’m sure there’s someone in the ward who could lend you a bike!” I was prepared with excuses but they were mostly invented. I easily could have fit the triathlon in on a Saturday, my least busy day of the week. I was just too embarrassed to tell him the real reason why I hadn’t signed up. While I excelled at many things as a teenager, I was never very athletically gifted. I hated it whenever we did anything athletic as a youth activity. I had no interest in participating in the upcoming triathlon.

My bishop knew me well, so I’m certain he could see through my excuse and understood why I was hesitant to participate. He looked me in the eyes, smiled, and gently pushed back. “I would strongly encourage you to try and fit it in if you can. I understand a triathlon might sound daunting, but I know you have what it takes to do it. Plus, I know the rest of the teachers in your quorum will really miss you if you can’t make it.” He then added, “I’d also hate for you to miss out on the pizza and wings we’ll be getting after we all finish the triathlon.” Shoot, I thought. He got me there. As much as I hated athletics, I could never turn down free pizza and wings. I caved to his gentle pressuring and my love of free food.

On the morning of the triathlon, I felt immense dread. I tried to think of ways that I could get out of it. Maybe it’s not too late for me to fake a stomach ache, I thought. They might even pity me and let me join for pizza and wings afterward. Ultimately, I gave up the excuses and participated in the triathlon. First was the swimming portion, which consisted of four laps back and forth across an ice-cold outdoor pool (did I mention this triathlon took place in February?). After completing the swim, I ran shivering to my bike to complete the biking portion, which consisted of a 10-kilometer bike ride, every inch of which I felt. It didn’t help that my bike chain kept inexplicably popping off of the chainrings, forcing me to stop several times during the ride to fix it. As one of my peers passed me beside the bike trail where I had stopped to fix my chain, I heard him call out, "Don't stop now, Travis! You got this!" Apparently, he thought I was either taking a breather or giving up. Looking back, I can appreciate his attempt at encouragement. However, at the time, I was deeply annoyed by it. I would have liked to respond, Wow, thanks for stopping to help! Did you even notice me struggling with my chain? Encouragement is not what I need right now. I need a new bike! Throughout the bike ride, I alternated between exhausted pedaling and angry attempts to fiddle with my chain, all the while trying to tune out well-meaning shouts of, “You got this, Travis!” coming from people passing me by with seeming ease.

The final segment was a 2.5-kilometer run. Beginning the run, I felt like I had no reserves left. I jogged slowly but began to notice people around me who were walking. That sounded great to me. I didn’t want to do this in the first place, and I’ve had to deal with a bunch of dumb stuff up to this point, I reasoned. So, I think I’ve earned the right to walk for the final kilometers of this stupid triathlon.

Just as these thoughts entered my head, I noticed someone jogging beside me, matching my speed instead of passing me by. It was my bishop, who encouraged me to come in the first place. While I knew he and some of my other leaders had also signed up to run alongside us, I thought for sure he had passed me a long time ago. But here he was, red-faced and breathing heavily. He huffed out, “How are you holding up, Travis?” I answered honestly. “I’m tired. I think I’m going to walk the rest of the way.” Panting, he said, “Don’t give up just yet. I know you’re better than that. To be honest, I’m pretty tired too. But I told myself I would run the whole race. So how about you help keep me accountable? You don’t let me stop running, and I won’t let you stop running until we’ve both crossed that finish line. Deal?”

Something in me couldn’t say no to that idea. His proposition felt different than the earlier yells of “You can do this!” He wasn’t giving passing encouragement and speeding away. He was staying at my side the whole time, present in my suffering. Not only was he aware of my suffering, but he seemed to share in that suffering. He was drenched in sweat and seemed just as tired as I was. I felt he understood what I was going through, so his proposition felt like it came from a place of sincere concern and love. I agreed, and we kept running. Several times I wanted to quit, but every time he noticed me slowing down, I would hear his hoarse, breathless voice saying, “You can do this. I’m right here.” I was also breathless, sore, and completely exhausted, but I kept running. His total commitment to our deal invigorated me to hold up my end by finishing strong. After what felt like the longest 2.5 kilometers of my life, he and I both ran across the finish line. I did eventually get to chow down on pizza and wings with the rest of the youth, but that reward paled in comparison to the rush of accomplishment and the newfound closeness I felt with my bishop that day.

Elder David A. Bednar described ordinances and their accompanying covenants as “authorized channels through which the blessings and powers of heaven can flow into our individual lives.” I have often wondered what this means exactly. Why is it that God’s power and blessings strengthen me when I enter a covenant relationship with Him? How does it work? I think the answer to that question largely depends on what we envision God’s role in a covenant relationship to be. Growing up, I usually heard covenants described as two-way agreements between God and us. In this framing, God recognizes that living a Christlike, gospel-oriented life is hard, so he adds an incentive structure to gospel living, offering blessings in exchange for following his commands. In essence, this is a cosmic version of the pizza-and-wings promise. The strength we receive comes by remembering that we will be compensated for our efforts at some future point after all this is over. This framing of covenants may be a useful and easy way for Primary children and new converts to understand what a covenant is, but it falls short in a number of ways. If covenants are about relationships, as many church leaders have emphasized in recent years, then this two-way agreement concept portrays our relationship with our Heavenly Parents as an employer-employee relationship; God becomes the divine carrot-dangler rather than the Divine Father and Mother.

Furthermore, as Hannah Packard Crowther writes in her book Gracing, this contractual understanding of covenants causes us to view our discipleship “as precursors to some future grace. We prove ourselves first, and then God opens the heavenly gates later.” In other words, we end up framing our relationship with God as something that begins in the future, not the present. Thus, the actions that make up a covenant-keeping life become our means of earning a relationship with God. God’s love is for the future, not the present. To paraphrase an idea from Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, those who strive to walk the covenant path with this mindset “may say and do the right things, but they do not feel the right things.” When covenants are reduced to contractual agreements of future reward, they are a fleeting source of heavenly strength. Even more seriously, they lead to a shallow kind of relationship with Christ and our Heavenly Parents that portrays them as distant and uninvolved in our lives.

Other times, God’s role in our life is described as something like a heavenly cheerleader. In addition to future rewards for walking the covenant path, God promises encouragement along our journey. Instead of a distant employer or an absentee parent, God gives power through moral support. For some people, this relationship with God may be comforting and strengthening, but for me and many others, it still falls short of providing comfort and power in hard times. I am reminded of my fellow racers who shouted words of encouragement to me as I struggled on the side of the road. Those shouts of attempted encouragement felt like empty words because they missed what my problem was. Instead of stopping to see what I needed, they offered a generic encouragement, then kept biking. As well-meaning as they were, they didn’t see and understand my struggles deeply. I can see why this version of a relationship with God can seem unappealing as well. A God whose robotic, rehearsed answer to all of our pains and frustrations is, “You got this, buddy! Keep going! Do your ministering! Magnify your calling! Don’t take that sip of coffee to power through your term paper! Don’t stop!” still feels absent in many ways. Maybe not physically absent, but emotionally detached—like he doesn’t truly know us. And a God who doesn’t know us is not a God with whom someone deeply struggling along the covenant path will connect and find refuge.

Elder Robert M. Daines eloquently articulates, “When prophets and apostles”—and I would also include God—“talk of covenants, they aren’t like coaches yelling out from (red velvet) bleachers, telling us to ‘try harder!’ They want us to see our covenants are fundamentally about relationships. . . . They are not rules to earn [God’s] love; He already loves you perfectly. . . . Covenants are the shape of God’s embrace.” Elder Daines clearly points out how both of these ways of picturing God’s role in our covenant relationship fall short. Neither the contractor God nor the cheerleader God provides power through their relationships with us.

All allegories have limits, even limits their authors don’t see. Nevertheless, as I reflect on that triathlon all these years later, I think the power we receive from honoring our covenants is a lot like the strength and invigoration I felt while my bishop ran beside me, saying, “You can do this. I’m right here.” The role my bishop was playing is what I feel most accurately represents God’s role within a covenant relationship. Not an employer or a cheerleader but rather a collaborator. Honoring our covenants isn’t like being hired to do grunt work, but rather invited to join in the work of divinity. A work that our Heavenly Parents themselves are doing. As Melissa Inouye beautifully taught in her book Sacred Struggle, “God is not standing around guarding the pearly gates of the border fence of heaven at the top landing of a really long escalator. Instead, in Jacob’s allegory of the vineyard, God is running around in the dirt. . . . God is digging in manure, pruning and cutting, raking and weeding . . . kneeling in the dirt. . . . God is working for us, with us, among us.” Viewing my covenant obligations in such a light imbues them with added meaning and significance, which motivates me to stay with them. Additionally, God’s investment and collaboration make a covenant relationship uniquely empowering, thus allowing it to become a divinely “authorized channel through which the blessings and powers of heaven can flow into our individual lives.”

Living a covenant life is challenging. It takes a lot of patience and energy. I often fail in my strivings and progress more slowly than I’d like to. But those strivings have felt much more meaningful when I imagine that God is truly by my side. Not far in the distance nor shouting from the bleachers, but matching my speed and running alongside me. He is panting and sweating and speaking to me in raspy tones in between coughs, wheezing as he says, “You can do this,” while unceasingly assuring, “I’m right here.” And it is that very image of God that allows the blessings and powers of heaven to enliven my work and strengthen my resolve as I walk the long, hard path of a covenant life.

Travis Hicks is a doctoral student of developmental psychology and an amateur scholar of Latter-day Saint culture and doctrine.

Art by Pablo Picasso.