"If at first you don't succeed, cheat." The brother who spoke first today (10/16/16) in church said his dad told him this. I might have zoned out a bit while contemplating the quote. I forget how he applied it. It somehow got tied into the Atonement and getting help from the Savior and others because that further solidified my own train of thought.
As a nerd growing up, I played a wide variety of video games. Many of them came with a user manual that outlined how to do certain moves, where to build certain items or units, how certain bosses functioned, and so on. There was a lot of useful information there. However, it didn't spell it out and tell you exactly how to beat the game. That was up to the player to determine.
Sometimes when a game was still too difficult or perhaps the user manual wasn't as useful as one would hope, I had to turn elsewhere for help. When I was much younger, I could ask my dad to help me beat a particularly difficult part. After seeing him do it, I could usually replicate the strategy or just go on from where he did it. As the internet became more available, I could read up on a walkthrough and see exactly how someone else had done it. Sometimes these websites would include cheat codes. These codes were often an unfair advantage to beat the game: extra or infinite resources, invincibility, revealing the map, overpowered (OP) units that weren't normally available in the game.
It's often said that life doesn't have a user manual. There is nothing that exists to give you a complete step-by-step on how to get through it. No walkthroughs. No outside help. Or are there?
We have the Scriptures. While they don't always tell you exactly how to walk through life, they have some guidelines and some stories about how others did it. Sometimes you'll have to figure things out on your own, but it does appear that there is a user manual.
In addition to the Scriptures, we have some game of life experts to help us through. We have parents, teachers, mentors, and Church leaders that have progressed a little farther in the game than we have. They can provide advice and guidance on how they would approach one of the "bosses" of life. They can't beat a particular part for us because we are always Player One in a Single Player game. (There is some Multiplayer with marriage and family, but, by and large, we are in Single Player mode, always making our own choices.)
And if that all didn’t make life sound like a pretty interesting video game, there are (shhhhh!) cheat codes! Okay, so there isn’t anything so amazing as infinite resources, invincibility, or revealing the map. But we do get to call on the most OP units in the universe. We can ask our Heavenly Father for blessings that we or others need. We can receive comfort, revelation, and guidance from the Holy Ghost. And certainly not least, we can receive forgiveness and strength to overcome from our beloved Savior. He performed the ultimate, infinite Atonement and through that we can do a lot. The Atonement is probably the ultimate cheat code. It’s the code that makes everything possible and that’s pretty amazing. All that’s left for us to do is enter in the code. It’s not always easy, but it is worth it to apply this cheat code all the time.
Life has its easy levels and hard levels, and even some super, hardcore, nearly impossible levels, but they’re all possible. All we need to do is read the game guides, apply the cheat codes, and we’ll make it through. Christ has already unlocked the greatest achievements. We just need to follow Him.
