What Remains Pure ~ The Only Things That Cannot Be Corrupted

 

What Remains Pure

The Only Things That Cannot Be Corrupted

There’s something in us that keeps trying to build things that can’t be corrupted.

We form communities. We organize structures and systems. Begin movements.
And underneath it, there’s a hope that if we do it right, if we’re careful enough, sincere enough, principled enough, it might hold.
That this time, it might stay clean.

But over time, something always shifts. We may have the best of intentions. But anything shaped by human hands is also shaped by human desire.

Which raises a question that’s a bit harder to answer than it seems:
What (if anything) can actually remain pure?

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. In this one we'll explore what cannot be corrupted. In Part 2, we will move into the harder question, what it actually looks like in real life to let desire be corrected.

Denver answeres the question with remarkable clarity:

“In the ‘Sunstone Conference,’ I wrote a paper; I presented part of it there called Cutting Down the Tree of Life to Build a Wooden Bridge.... But that process is the inevitable result. Aspiring men will always corrupt whatever there is that is organized on the earth.

“So ask yourself, what can remain pure? Even here, in this awful world, what can remain pure? Because there are three things that can remain absolutely unmolested and uncorrupted: the truth, which is fixed and cannot be touched by us; God’s love, which is free and available to all. Neither the truth nor God’s love requires effort on our part. But the third thing that can remain pure here is our desires. That, however, requires effort. Nevertheless, it is possible that perfection can touch each of us, as well, if we have the right desires.”

Then he adds something even more piercing:

“The fact is.... however, we all have weaknesses. We all need rest. We all need food. We all wear down. There are things that trouble each one of us, and even your desires are gonna be better than you are. At least I hope they are.

“But these three things can be perfect, and they can be pure: the truth, God’s love, and our desires.”

That idea has been really turning over in my mind.

Truth, God’s love and our desires.

The more I've pondered on it, the more I've realized these three don't just sit beside each other as isolated categories. They belong together.

Truth keeps desire from becoming fantasy.
God’s love keeps desire from becoming fear or legalism.
Desire is our willing alignment with truth and love.

That triad is powerful.

Truth without love can result in harshness.
Love without truth can become sentimentality.
And desire without either can become fantasy, delusion, self justification or raw will.

But when all three are held together, something stable appears. Something incorruptible.

Scriptures seem to treat desire in the same way. It doesn't describe desire as something to eliminate, but as something that must be rightly ordered. Desire can lead toward God or away from Him. It can bring life or destruction. I think the tension is worth exploring. The problem isn't desire itself, but whether desire is aligned with truth and God.

That led me to think more deeply about baptism.

Something about Nephi’s wording began to stand out to me in a new way, especially when I placed it alongside the idea that our desires can remain pure. Nephi asks why Christ, being holy, needed to be baptized at all:

“Now if the Lamb of God, being holy, needed to be baptized by water to fulfill all righteousness, then how much more do we, being unholy, need to be baptized by water! I want to ask you, my dear people, how did the Lamb of God fulfill all righteousness by being baptized by water? Don’t you know that He was holy? However, despite being holy, He showed mankind that in the flesh He humbled Himself before the Father and witnessed to the Father that He was willing to obey Him by keeping His commandments.” (2 Nephi CoC)

Christ didn't need cleansing. He was already holy. So His baptism wasn't about washing away sin. It was about witnessing something. It was an outward act expressing an inward reality: humility, willingness, obedience, perfect alignment with the Father.

That’s why baptism is so important, and also why it’s often misunderstood.

Baptism is a corruptible outward act that's meant to witness an incorruptible inward reality.

That inward reality is a desire to align with truth and God’s will.

“Do you have a desire to enter God’s fold.... If this is the desire of your hearts, are you now willing to be baptized.... This is our heart’s desire!” (Mosiah 9:7, Covenant of Christ)

The pattern is consistent. The outward act follows the inward desire. Baptism isn't the beginning of alignment, its the witness of it.

Christ’s baptism works perfectly because His inward desire was already perfectly pure. Ours works (or doesn't) depending on whether the inward reality matches the outward act.

That's exactly where Nephi places the emphasis. He doesn't merely say to be baptized. He says:

“So, my dear people, I know if you follow the Son with all your heart, without being hypocritical or deceptive before God but acting with pure intent, repenting of your sins, showing to the Father you are willing to take upon yourselves the name of Christ by baptism, by following your Lord and Savior down into the water according to His word, then you will receive the Holy Ghost.” (2 Nephi 13:13, Covenant of Christ)

That's a layered requirement.

Without being hypocritical - no pretending.
Without being deceptive - no self-deception.
With pure intent - desire aligned with God.

This goes far beyond sincerity.

Sincere desire is honest.
Pure desire is aligned.

You can have one without the other.

A person can be sincere and still be mixed, conflicted, self-protective, prideful, fearful or attached to being seen a certain way. Sincerity says "I really mean it" Purity says "what I mean has been refined into harmony with truth and God"

Most of us probably don't begin with pure desire. We begin with mixed desire.

I want to do what is right, but I also want to be seen as right.
I want truth, but I also want vindication.
I want God’s will, but I also want my preferred outcome.
I want to obey, but I don't want it to cost me too much.

That's not hypocrisy in the obvious sense. It may be perfectly sincere. But its still mixed.

Scripture is equally clear that desire can move in the opposite direction as well, toward self, toward the world, toward things that ultimately corrupt. That's why desire shouldn't only be expressed, but examined and purified.

So there's a progression:

Insincere desire: pretending, image management, hypocrisy.

Sincere but mixed desire: honest but conflicted, containing truth + ego + fear + self.

Pure desire: aligned with truth, stripped of competing motives, genuinely oriented toward God.

This is why Denver’s observation is no small thing. He didn't say our desires are automatically pure. He said they can remain pure, and that preserving them requires effort.

That implies a process.

Scripture goes even further and ties desire directly to ultimate outcomes:

“....raised to endless happiness to inherit God’s kingdom.... according to their desires of happiness, or to good according to their desires of good... if they’ve repented of their sins and desired righteousness until the end of their life, in the same way, they’ll be rewarded for righteousness.” (Alma 19:9 CoC)

Desire isn't incidental. It's determinative. What we ultimately receive is inseparably tied to what we truly want, and continue to want, over time.

Desire must be examined.
Corrected.
Reordered.
Purified.

And that process is costly.

It often feels like losing attachment to being right.
Losing the need to be seen.
Letting go of control.
Choosing truth over comfort.
Choosing God over outcome.

Scripture also speaks of this as an active reorientation:

“Direct all your thoughts to the Lord and always place your heart’s desires on the Lord.” (Alma 17:14, Covenant of Christ)

That's not passive language. Desire doesn't remain pure by accident. It must be directed, placed, watched and offered.

A simple test question:

If this costs me everything, do I still want it?

If the answer changes, the desire is still mixed.
If the answer remains, purity may be emerging.

That's why sincerity isn't the finish line. Its the beginning.

God receives sincerity as real.
But purity is the goal.

Then there's another distinction that becomes just as important.

Pure desire is not yet sanctified desire.

Pure desire is alignment of will.
Sanctified desire is transformation of nature.

Pure desire says, I want to obey God.
I choose truth.
I am willing, even when it's hard.

But even there, we often still feel resistance, weakness and inner conflict. The will is pointed in the right direction, but the person still feels divided and burdened.

Sanctified desire is something more.

It's when what is right no longer stands only in front of you as a command to be chosen, but begins to live in you as a power moving you from within.

It's a desire that has been received by God, responded to by God and infused with power beyond our natural capacity.

This is where grace stops being theoretical.

Nephi actually lays out the pattern in order:

Follow Christ.
With full heart.
Without hypocrisy or deception.
With pure intent.
Be baptized.
Receive the Holy Ghost.
Then comes the baptism of fire.
Then comes new capacity.

The order means something.

Pure desire, covenant act, divine response, transformation.

“Then the baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost comes, and then you can speak the words of angels and shout praises to the Holy One of Israel.” (2 Nephi 13:13, Covenant of Christ)

That's not only symbolism. Its the description of something inward being altered.

Not just forgiven.
Not just declared acceptable.
Changed.

Sanctified desire feels different from mere effort.

Pure desire still says: I want what is right, though I struggle.
Sanctified desire says: I want what I used to struggle to want.
Obedience begins to feel natural rather than forced.
Something in me has shifted.

“....their hearts had been changed and they had no more desire to do evil.” (Alma 12:26, Covenant of Christ)

That's the clearest description of sanctified desire. Not just resisting evil, not just choosing differently, but no longer wanting what once pulled you. That's the shift from effort into transformation.

Not perfection, but a new center of gravity.

This answers a painful question many of us secretly carry: "Why is trying harder not enough?_"

It's because effort alone can't remove deep-rooted pride.
It can't dissolve fear.
It can't fully heal fragmentation.
And it can't permanently reorder desire.

You can align yourself for a time.
But you can't fully remake yourself.

That part is given.

And what God is responding to isn't flawless performance, outward compliance or spiritual image. He's responding to real, pure willingness. When that becomes genuine, He begins to act on the person.

Scripture says divine gifts themselves are connected to desire. People pray for what they most desire and receive according to those desires. Even the longing for the Holy Ghost is presented this way. Desire isn't peripheral to spiritual life. It's one of its deepest qualifying conditions.

That's where the incorruptible things meet.

Truth is incorruptible.
God’s love is incorruptible.
Desire can become pure.

And sanctification is what happens when incorruptible love meets purified desire.

But this is also where the most dangerous trap appears.

Self-deception.

Not the obvious kind. Not open hypocrisy.

The sneakier kind.

The kind that feels sincere.

A person can feel deeply, speak honestly and believe they are aligned with God while still protecting ego, avoiding truth and mislabeling their own motives. This is why sincerity alone isn't enough. Sincerity can stabilize illusion.

Sincere-but-deceived desire protects itself.

Pure desire allows itself to be corrected.

That's one of the clearest tests.

When something challenges me, do I tighten and defend, or do I pause and examine?

Do I quickly conclude, They just don't understand?
That doesn't apply to me.
I've already worked through this.

Or do I ask, Is there something here I'm not seeing?
What if I'm partially wrong?
What truth might be hidden in this discomfort?

Truth often (usually?) introduces discomfort before it brings clarity.

Mixed desire wants to relieve that discomfort quickly. It justifies, explains, reframes and protects identity.

Pure desire stays in the discomfort long enough to be taught by it.

That's another test.

Did I arrive at this conclusion because its true, or because it relieved tension?

Truth often takes longer to settle.
Ego wants relief immediately.

Another test is to ask what I actually want to happen.

Not what I say I want.
What outcome I truly hope for.

I may say, I want truth.
But do I still want it if it exposes me?
If it humbles me?
If it contradicts me publicly?
If it costs me my image?

Pure desire is willing to let truth stand, even when it lowers the self.

There's a similar distortion in our longing to be seen.

Mixed desire wants to be understood, recognized as good, vindicated, properly framed. None of that is inherently evil. But it is still self-referential.

Pure desire becomes willing to be misunderstood, willing not to receive credit, willing to let truth stand without being personally affirmed.

The shift is from:

"Do people see me rightly?"

to:

"Is what is true actually upheld?"

That is a profound change.

And there's one more trap that may be even harder to detect, because it often appears in very religious people, very thoughtful people, very principled people.

Spiritual language.

We can use true ideas to align ourselves, or we can use true ideas to justify ourselves.

That's the dividing line.

Pure desire uses truth to align itself.
Mixed desire uses truth to justify itself.

That means spiritual language can either deepen self-examination or replace it.

It can become a shield.

I can speak of truth, agency, love, discernment, obedience, principle, order, charity, justice and still be using those words to protect myself from reality.

That's why its not enough for our words to sound right.

If I had no words to explain myself, would my posture still be aligned?

Because language can decorate, justify, soften and elevate.
But it cannot replace reality.

Truth is incorruptible.
God’s love is incorruptible.
Desire can become pure.

But language is not incorruptible.
Framing isn't incorruptible.
Interpretation isn't incorruptible.

So the real work isn't merely learning true principles, speaking true principles or defending true principles.

The real work is keeping desire aligned with truth.

That's where the battle is.

Not behavior or wording first. Not even conclusions first.

The deeper battleground is whether desire remains open to truth or closes around self.

And perhaps that's why Christ’s example is so precise.

He didn't need baptism in order to be cleansed. He entered the water to show the pattern. He humbled Himself before the Father and witnessed His willingness to obey. His outward act perfectly matched His inward reality.

He didn't merely say, "Copy the action."
He said, Follow me.

That means more than imitation.

It means entering the same path by which desire is purified, offered and finally transformed.

In the end, maybe this is the real gate.

Not water alone. Not performance alone. Not sincerity alone.

But the inward alignment that the outward act is meant to witness.

And maybe this is one of the most sobering and hopeful truths we can hold onto in a corrupt world:

Almost everything else can be touched, distorted or claimed.

But not truth.

Not God’s love.

Not a soul that truly wants Him.

Truth stands unmoved. Desire can be purified. But it is God’s love that carries us through both.
Underneath, all around, deeper than we can fathom - this love remains pure, and it remains for us.