One morning as I sat on my couch in Vanuatu looking out at the bay, I noticed that the door frame made a perfectly parallel line with a line of tile on our veranda.  If I tilted my head a little to either the right or to the left, the lines were no longer parallel.  The line formed by the door frame, and the line formed by the tiles were about one inch apart.  If I held my head just so, the two lines would stay just one inch apart even if they were to be extended clear across the bay.

In other words, if the two lines were to be extended clear across the bay to the hilltop of the island on the other side, the two lines would arrive at the same place.  If I tilted my head, the two lines diverged.  By the time they reached the top of the hill on the other island they were hundreds of feet apart.

I imagined that one line was me.  The other was God.  God doesn’t move.  He is unchanging.  His course is one eternal round.  If I want to arrive at the place where God is, I must not tilt to either the right or the left.  I must keep myself parallel to His course.

There was a time when it might be said that I was perpendicular to God.  I didn’t know Him.  I didn’t know if He even existed.  Like Korihor in the Book of Mormon I might have thought that “whatsoever a man did was no crime,” “and that every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength.”  (Alma 30:17).

I might have wanted to think that, but I didn’t feel good about it.  In fact, I felt dirty.  I felt unclean.  I felt guilty.  I tried very hard to ignore those feelings, but deep down I desperately wanted to feel clean.  Like Zeezrom in the Book of Mormon, I was “harrowed up under a consciousness of (my) own guilt” (Alma 14:6), but I didn’t know what to do about it.

Most people are in that same position.  They’re perpendicular to God.  They would like to have a clean conscience, but don’t know how to achieve it.  As a boy I thought that if I could just refrain from my bad habits, then perhaps I’d feel good about myself.  I was just a boy, no more than 8 or 10 years old—and I felt dirty.  I made a long list of my bad habits, and resolved that I would never again do any of those things.  But within 24 hours, I’d done them all again.  I was powerless to change my ways, so I did the only thing I could do:  I burned the list.

There was one thing that held out hope to me, however.  I’d heard about the Bible, and that it had the power to change lives.  As a very young teenager I tried several times to read it, but I couldn’t understand it.  I gave it up as another lost cause.  I consigned myself to a life of unhappiness.

How many other people are there in the world like that?

Then as a 19-year-old I was given a Book of Mormon.  I began reading, and to my surprise and delight, I understood it.  Lights came on in my head and all around me.  I learned about repentance, and how it is done.  I learned that Jesus Christ had already paid for my sins through His Atonement, and that He was willing to remove those burdens from my soul if I would covenant to follow Him.  I learned that I could be like king Benjamin and “answer a clear conscience before God.”  (Mosiah 2:15).  I learned from Alma that I had a choice between “joy or remorse of conscience.”  (Alma 29:5).

When I finished the Book of Mormon, I was glowing inside.  I opened the Bible, and wonder of wonders, I could understand it!  I found the same voice speaking to me from the Bible that I’d felt and heard in the Book of Mormon.  The Book of Mormon had opened my understanding and had given me a basis for understanding the Bible.  The two books supported and testified of one another.

I entered the waters of baptism, and was baptized, just as Jesus was, by one holding the proper authority.  I gave away all my sins.  Jesus took them.  Why would He want them?  It was because He loves me.  I covenanted to follow Him and to keep His commandments.  I went home, and I cried like a baby.  I sobbed in a manner that I hadn’t done since I was a child.  I felt clean!  I felt clean for the first time in my life.

My life was no longer perpendicular to God.  I’m doing my best to be parallel now.  I find myself sometimes tilting my head.  Because of my conscience, or the gift of the Holy Ghost, I always know when I’ve tilted and when I’m veering away from that parallel course that I’m striving to maintain.

I miss the temple.  It was my privilege to spend one day every week for four years working in the temple.  My course during those four years was the most parallel to God’s that it’s ever been.  I had to be pure to work there.  I had to have “a clear conscience before God.”  (Mosiah 2:15).  I won’t even see a temple for the two years that I’m here in Vanuatu; but thanks to the Savior’s Atonement, and thanks to the principle and gift of repentance, I have the means to make and keep my life parallel to the Lord’s.