Robert writes home #54 1 Oct 1995 Essay-the analogy of sin and the electric wire.

1 Oct 1995

Dear Mother,

                I hope you’ve doing okay.

                I went to visit Susie in Iowa last weekend. While I was there, Sunday, the stake pres. called her husband to be the next bishop. He won’t be installed until Oct. 24. I had a wonderful time in Iowa with Susie and Paul and kids. They took me to Nauvoo and Carthage. It was an inspiring experience. We came back from Carthage for an evening performance in the cultural hall. It was a musical about life in Nauvoo, put on by the resident missionaries. It was great. But we didn’t get home til about midnight.

                I really enjoyed the tours through the blacksmith shop and the Browning gunsmith shop. The missionary in the blacksmith shop was a cousin of the Leishmans in our ward.

                William Browning, the inventor of the repeating rifle was an inventive genius and had some slick ideas in his home. It hadn’t been really clear to me that he was a Mormon pioneer.

                I was impressed that the faith which those pioneers got to demonstrate (faith sufficient to sacrifice all earthly things) was the same faith we all must have, whether or not we have to demonstrate it, in order to be saved in the Celestial Kingdom.

                On my flight out I missed my connection in SF for the flight to Chicago, so the airline paid for a room in the Hilton and my meal and arranged for me to fly out the next morning. That would have been fun if I had had Janet with me. So I didn’t get into Cedar Rapids until Friday at about 4 PM.

                Charlie backed out into another car and did a little fender damage. The reality of having a teenage driver checked in. My insurance rates are going up $180 per year as a result. I told him he had to pay the increased rate differential. He’s really a pretty careful driver. He drives the old green suburban to seminary in LB every morning before school, a forty mile round trip.

                We caught all five sessions of conference this weekend. I really was spiritually edified by the experience.

Love,

Robert, Janet, Charlie and Sam

PS. Another essay:

Sin and the electric wire analogy.

                When you run an electrical current through a copper wire, the electricity flows without causing heat. When you run it through a poor conductor like the filament in the light bulb or a person it causes heat. The difference I’ve been told is in the molecular structure and arrangement of positive and negative charges. If the molecules are not arranges right, as in the filament in a light bulb, the friction from the resistance to the passage of the current causes it to get white hot. In some conductors, friction from the resistance is enough to burn the conducting medium up and destroy it.

                Sin is like the resistance in the wire. The current is like the power of God’s presence. If we have arranged our lives to be in harmony with the truths God teachers us, (which truths are his counsels on how to comply with the reality that is beyond our perceptional ability with these five senses) then the current can flow through our “wires” giving power without burning us out. But if we haven’t removed the resistances from our wires, so to speak, then being in his presence would be more than we could stand…like turning the electric current through a conductor with a lot of resistance. The friction; causes it to overheat.

                I see sin as a state of being inconsistent with reality in relation to achieving that goal. They require faith and discipline to implement them into our lives consistent with his commandments, we would be consumed by the heat. We are the conductors and sin is the resistance in our wires.

                If we’ll stop putting “resistances” into our wires, or in other words sinning, the Atonement will remove the resistances that have already been placed there and make it possible to be in God’s presence. But it only works for those sins that we repent of. That was the deal. Repent, be baptized and keep his commandments (sin no more) and our sins would be washed away.