Hypocritical Snow Forts

All right, I admit.  I tend to be a little competitive.  Maybe too competitive.  Everything is always a contest - who can lift the most at the gym, who's going faster on the highway, who gets ready for church the earliest.  But I have had to learn that winning is not always the most important thing.  You don't win when you're building hypocritical snow forts.

You see when I was 10, my brother was 14 and that January we got a foot and a half of snow.  We decided to build snow forts in the back yard, and have us a Calvin and Hobbes type war.  My brother got the monstrously huge snow shovel and started mounding up a mini mountain on his side of the yard.  I couldn't lift the big shovel, so I scooped with a smaller shovel.  I tried using buckets to carry snow, but no matter how hard I worked Chad's bulwark grew large while my mound would be difficult to hide behind.

The time came that Chad needed to go deliver papers.  It would take him three hours to fold the papers into bags and tromp through the snow to deliver them.  By then it would be dark, so we agreed to commence our battle in the morning.   I had three hours to find a solution to beat my brother, and I was going to win this war at any cost.

Destroying his fort would be too obvious.  I want a way to cheat that isn't obvious.  I need a way to build a snow fort quickly and have it be impenetrable.  I need.... the 2x4's.

In the very back of our yard was the wood pile.  It was an eclectic mix of  wood, including various sized 2x4 boards.  I quickly grabbed a couple of arm fulls and pegged them into the snow.  By putting some 2x4's across the top I had a makeshift wooden fort.  I spent the next three hours mounding it over with snow to hide the wood.  I even made the sides slope down so it would look like an ordinary mound of snow.  I finished about the time it got dark and my brother got home.  We agreed to a battle the next morning.

Sure it was cheating, but I had to beat my brother!  Since it was made of wood I knew it would be much stronger than anything my brother would make.  It looked like ordinary snow on the outside, and only I knew of the illegal strength I had hidden.

Also it meant I could hide under a wooden ceiling while my brother had only a wall.  I figured I could crawl in my comfy castle and occasionally lob snowball high over Chad's fort on his head.  He could pelt them down on me all day, but he would never realize I had a secret place I could hide from him.

The next morning Chad started hard packing his snowballs.  I crawled into my secret sanctuary and laughed at what would be my brothers humiliation.  I was too strong to be overcome.  I made my own pile of snowballs while Chad would up for his first missile attack on my fort.

What I didn't realize until later was the truth of my snow fort.  It wasn't secretly strong and mighty.  It wasn't cleverly designed so that it could not be overcome.  It was as Lehi's vision of "a great and spacious building;" (1 Nephi 8:26).  The symbolism behind the building is that it has no foundation, and without a true foundation it was destined to fall.

I have no memory of the snow fort collapsing - burying me in a pile of wood and snow.

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****   SCOTT!  SCOTT! ARE YOU OK?   *******************
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****   SCOTT!  ARE YOU IN THERE? CAN YOU TALK?    ****
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I vaguely remember hearing my brother's muffled voice calling for me as he desperately dug me out of my freezing wooden tomb.  My head throbbed, my ribs ached, and the whole world kept swirling in odd directions.   As he pulled the last of the boards off my head and helped me get fresh air he looked at the wood and asked, "What in the world is all this?"

Nephi explained what his father saw in the vision: "the great and spacious building was the pride of the world; and it fell, and the fall thereof was exceedingly great." (1 Nephi 11:36).  The wooden planks were pegged into the snow, but that wasn't strong enough to the enemy missiles to withstand. I have learned this pattern applies to testimonies too.  You can't cheat to give yourself spirituality.  Sometimes I am tempted to act spiritual - I know the right things to say in Sunday School, and I can put my scriptures out so they look like I've been reading them, but if I am actually spending my time watching movies and playing games my spiritual snow fort is being built with wood and covered over with snow.

Helaman said, " remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation... which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall."  My brother's snow fort was one big pile of snow built on the rock hard surface of the ground.  Each flake of snow is like a prayer, a scripture reading, an act of service.  Together it forms a strong testimony and a barrier against temptation.


As I limped back in the house with my brothers arm around me I explained my clever plan to have a super strong snow fort.  He laughed and apologized for ruining it, but explained that loose boards are more of a hazard than a benefit.  "And besides", he said, "you don't have to cheat to get a good snow fort.  Next time just ask me and I'll help you work on it"  and that's when I realized I had totally missed the super power I could have used.  It wasn't cheating, it was other people.  I lost out on brotherly love and service and replaced it with pride and hypocrisy, and the results left me covered in bruises.