The Righteousness Cycle

Today in Sunday School we were discussing "the pride cycle."  This cycle is seen repeatedly in the Book of Mormon.  The people are righteous, so the Lord blesses and prospers them.  They set their hearts on riches and get prideful, and stop being so righteous--they put themselves into classes, look down on others, and stop taking care of the poor.  All of a sudden they abandon the Church of Christ and start building up churches to get gain.  After a period of wickedness, they have negative consequences.  War, perhaps.  The Lord leaves them to their own strength, which of course is weak, and they are compelled to be humble.  They reach out to God in sackcloth and ashes, lamenting the fact that they didn't listen to the prophets.  After sufficient repentance, the Lord forgives them, they keep the commandments, and live righteously again.  It happens time and time again.

We began discussing how to just stay at the top of the cycle--being righteous and being blessed by God.  In my personal study this afternoon I thought more about the subject.  What if the righteousness cycle went like this?

Being righteous--continually being stirred up in remembrance--humbling ourselves--repentance
Then it loops around in a cycle.

Another theme in the Book of Mormon is the idea of remembering.  That we need to remember the Lord in order to have his Spirit to be with us.  That we need to remember what He did for our forefathers and be grateful.  So we need to be continually stirred up in remembrance, by attending church, reading our scriptures, writing/rereading our journals (to remember the great things the Lord has done for us!), and having gospel conversations.  This might remind us of something we should do or something we should stop doing, in order to improve and become closer to Christ.

This will naturally lead us to humbling ourselves.  Instead of waiting for God to compel us to be humble, if we are constantly immersed in remembering the gospel, we will naturally find things that humble us.

Once humble, we can approach God and ask for His grace.  We can repent of our sins and ask for increased virtue.

And thus we increase in righteousness.