Contention and the blessings of service

What is the Spirit of Contention?

Last week I borrowed a pair of skis from my brother to go to opening day at Snowbird, and while I came down the middle of the groomed run with a million people around me, I hit a rock that, I found out later, destroyed my brother's skis (see picture!). I called him and he was very nice about it, said they were just extra skis anyway.

The following week, he asked me very directly to not use them again. I didn't like that. It was Saturday evening, I was returning to my house in Salt Lake, and I became so angry and frustrated because of the conversation. The extreme feelings of the story are what proves my point: I had this ridiculous and unreasonable feeling that filled me for almost an hour with dumb convictions like, "Fine, I'll just never ski with my brother again," or, "If all he cares about is skis I'll just buy him 10 new pairs then it will be his problem."

There are sections of the scriptures that I have to interpret in my own words every time I read them or I don't understand them. A good example is 3 Nephi 11:29, "For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of men to contend with anger, one with another."

If I just skim over that phrase, my brain throws back a "Does not compute" response. The interpretation that I've adopted is that whenever something happens that makes me filled with whatever that feeling was after that conversation with my brother, that is the bad spirit that this verse is talking about. It is totally illogical, but controlling enough that it can make me feel negative about my relationship overall with one of my very best friends, with whom I have nearly all very positive interaction.

Filling in the blanks that doctrinally explain what happened in this story, it connects to a General Conference talk from Elder Bednar a while back. He cited two scriptures:

"Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them" (Psalms 119:165)

And the antidote for bad feelings:

"Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you. …

"For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?

"And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so?

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:43–44; 46–48).

Part 2: A fortunate situation to fall into

Before my parents left for Asia last Thursday, they asked me to promise that I would clean up the leaves in the backyard before the snow fell. When I arrived home on Saturday, just following the conversation with my brother, I knew that I might not have another chance to clean up the leaves. So I got to work at about 6:30pm, in the dark. There were a lot of leaves, eventually 16 large trash bags full, and I worked until 9pm or so.

After working about 15 minutes, I started just chuckling about how dumb my feelings had been. After 30, I forgot about them. And 15 minutes after that, I remembered that I had felt that way, but I didn't feel it at all anymore. So service (love they neighbor) turned out to be the appropriate antidote.

I sipped the scriptural antidote of love (serve) thy neighbor (your parents) and my symptoms disappeared-- in the most natural way in the world, my anger left and peace (the psalm) replaced it.