Sabbath Devotional :: The Accuser and the Advocate

Counsel for the Defense by Honore Daumier

Recently, my spouse and I were strolling through a leather market in Florence. I had wanted to buy a bag to store my wallet and water more securely. I found one I liked and tried to do a bit of haggling to bring the price down before I bought it. As we walked away with the bag, my husband paused and suggested I probably could have gotten a better price if I had bartered a little more.

WHAT?! In my jetlagged state, it didn’t take much for defensiveness to set in. How dare he imply that I’m stupid and incompetent. This is the first bag I’ve bought in years. So what if it’s a few dollars more? He’s attacking my capabilities. I’m a smart and thrifty woman! I spent more than an hour seething in angry silence. It was a very romantic day in Italy.

Eventually, a lemon soda refreshed my energies and my mood, and we were able to talk through things more productively. I was reminded again for the 100,000th time that my husband does love me, believes I am smart and capable, and doesn’t assume I would sacrifice my family’s financial wellbeing for my own vanity. But I wish I had been able to respond to my earlier thoughts sooner, and more accurately.

The impulse to accuse or to assume others are accusing you is so human and natural. In Revelations 12:10, it says “the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.”

The word “devil” is linked with accuser, slanderer and prosecutor. So the impulse to accuse and to assume accusations is something we have inherited as part of our fallen nature. We are tempted to become accusers, too — of our spouses, our children, our friends, our ward and community members, and ourselves.

The accuser whispers, “not good enough,” “faker,” “you’ll never get it.” The accuser tells us it’s our right, even our responsibility to tear down others: “you work so hard. You deserve a break,” “it’s just what he should get,” “what was she thinking, talking like that?” For me, I am tempted to accuse by creating the illusion of opposing sides, one of which I must defend from the other: pitting my husband against my family, my ward members against my personality, my children against my time. Too often I fall to accusations when I think I’m defending myself from getting hurt.

This perspective is neither accurate nor helpful. But what are we to do instead?

In Doctrine and Covenants 110:4, Christ characterizes himself: “I am he who was slain, I am your advocate with the Father.”

It seems Christ is figuratively taking the role of a defense attorney or political advocate. To advocate is to actively support a cause; to assist, defend, or argue in favor of; to render advice and aid; to plead for someone or someones.

Doctrine and Covenants 45 further explains what evidence Christ will use to plead our case.

3 Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him —

4 Saying: Father, behold the sufferings and death of him who did no sin, in whom thou wast well pleased; behold the blood of thy Son which was shed, the blood of him whom thou gavest that thyself might be glorified;

5 Wherefore, Father, spare these my brethren that believe on my name, that they may come unto me and have everlasting life.

Amazingly, it isn’t “Father, behold her 100% ministering record” or “Father, behold the number of times she read the Book of Mormon.” Although these accomplishments might be good and useful, they do not earn us the grace provided by Christ. This is the reason the Accuser’s accusations fall short: not because they are necessarily untrue (although they often are), but because they are irrelevant. Christ isn’t weighing our good parts with our bad parts to determine if we are a worthy cause to support. He accepts us, advocates for us, warts and all, because we are His.

Let me be clear that to advocate is not to excuse or ignore sin. It is not to justify abuse or low achievement, in ourselves or others. Instead, Christ responded to sin not by condoning, but by advocating. Everywhere He lifted the gaze, healed the diseased and broken, and taught and reminded of potential and of grace.

As I approach my husband, my children, my ward members, my neighbors, particularly during a season of high stress, anxiety, and division, I am trying to be a better advocate. That is, I am trying to see the grace of Christ bestowed upon everyone around me, and to remember again that every Republican, Democrat, conspiracy theorist, socialist, Russian, Coloradan, Palestinian, human is God’s child. And like all God’s children, they too, are beloved by my Advocate.