Walker

This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

In his book Born Believers, cognitive scientist Justin Barrett posits a cross-culturally developed natural religion. This natural predisposition should not be confused with theology, the latter being adaptive to culture according to Barrett. Natural religion is developed in the early stages of life and consists of several basic assumptions:[ref]See Barrett, Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief (New York: Free Press, 2012), 137-138.[/ref]

• Superhuman beings exist.
• The natural world displays intentional design and purpose.
• Superhuman beings possess superknowledge.
• Superhuman beings are invisible or immortal, but within space and time.
• Superhuman beings have character, good or bad.
• Superhuman beings have free will and can interact with people.
• Moral norms exist and are unchangeable.
• Life after death.

Author Michael Shermer has referred to these predispositions patternicity and agenticity. He defines patternicity as “the tendency to find meaningful patterns in meaningless noise,” while agenticity is “the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents.” Shermer concludes, “We are natural-born supernaturalists.”[ref]See his book length treatment The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies–How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (New York: Times Books, 2011).[/ref]

I was reminded of this while reading Bruce R. McConkie’s talk in the October 1971 General Conference. According to McConkie, God “has planted in our hearts an instinctive desire to worship, to seek salvation, to love and serve a power or being greater than ourselves. Worship is implicit in existence itself. The issue is not whether men shall worship, but who or what is to be the object of their devotions and how they shall go about paying their devotions to their chosen Most High…Thus our purpose is to worship the true and living God and to do it by the power of the Spirit and in the way he has ordained. The approved worship of the true God leads to salvation; devotions rendered to false gods and which are not founded on eternal truth carry no such assurance.”

While McConkie’s harsh tone regarding pretty much every other concept of God besides that found in Mormonism is grating, I think he saves it by getting to the title of his talk: “[T]rue and perfect worship consists in following in the steps of the Son of God; it consists in keeping the commandments and obeying the will of the Father to that degree that we advance from grace to grace until we are glorified in Christ as he is in his Father. It is far more than prayer and sermon and song. It is living and doing and obeying. It is emulating the life of the great Exemplar” (italics mine).

This emulation consists of preaching the kingdom of God, healing the sick. We are to “walk in the light,” “rise above carnal things…bridle our passions, and…overcome the world. It is to pay our tithes and offerings, to act as wise stewards in caring for those things which have been entrusted to our care, and to use our talents and means for the spreading of truth and the building up of his kingdom…To worship the Lord is to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. It is to work on a welfare project, to administer to the sick, to go on a mission, to go home teaching, and to hold family home evening. To worship the Lord is to study the gospel, to treasure up light and truth, to ponder in our hearts the things of his kingdom, and to make them part of our lives.”

And much more.

He concludes, “True and perfect worship is in fact the supreme labor and purpose of man. God grant that we may write in our souls with a pen of fire the command of the Lord Jesus: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Luke 4:8); and may we in fact and with living reality worship the Father in spirit and in truth, thereby gaining peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come.”

McConkie has a tendency toward authoritarianism. However, this talk doesn’t really focus on obedience to authority or obedience for the sake of obedience. And though I have a slight aversion to lists, this strikes me more as a hearty display of Christian living. It is where our natural developments for supernatural belief and group association and cultural and religious instruction meet and come to full fruition. It’s where the rubber meets the road. McConkie’s talk is ultimately an exhortation to roll up our sleeves and get to work. There’s lots to be done.

And I totally dig it.

This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

In the film Gravity, there is a scene that–for me–captures the message and essence of the film. Following the destruction of their space shuttle by orbital debris, Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) are tethered together and making their way to the International Space Station via Kowalski’s propulsion unit. While en route, Kowalski comments on how beautiful the earth and sun are, accompanied by his ever-present country music. He begins asking Stone about her life back home and she eventually reveals that her 4-year-old daughter had died when she fell playing at school one day. Despite being in a fantastical context that was obviously capturing Kowalski’s attention,  Stone’s experience suddenly becomes even more important in the moment. Her loss and her experience becomes just as deep and vast as the very space they are occupying. Instead of being left with the feeling of how small and insignificant we are in such a large universe, we leave realizing that the human experience is just as immense.

I was reminded of this scene when listening to John Vandenberg’s talk in the October 1971 Conference:

Some years ago I accepted an invitation to a fathers and sons outing, where the participants spent an arduous but interesting day mounted on horses on a trip to Bloomington Lake in the mountains of Bear Lake County, Idaho. Late at night, after the campfires had all burned out and everyone had settled down under the open heavens, I lay on my back, gazing overhead. It was a moonless night, and I have never seen such a beautiful sight. The heavens were alive with the brightness of stars and planets. How small I felt in comparison to that vast universe! A sense of appreciation came over me as I thought of God’s glory, of his handiwork, the earth, the heavens, all created for one purpose—his children, mankind. That experience has remained with me. I was overwhelmed by the magnitude of it.

The section of the Book of Moses he goes on to quote is instructive. After witnessing “the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created,” Moses declares that “I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1:8, 10). Yet, earlier the Lord told him, “And, behold, thou art my son…and thou art in the similitude of mine Only Begotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth; but there is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all” (Moses 1:4, 6). Moses draws on this knowledge later when Satan approaches and tempts him with, “Moses, son of man, worship me” (Moses 1:12; italics mine). In response, Moses declares, “Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten; and where is thy glory, that I should worship thee?” (Moses 1:13; italics mine). Following the departure of Satan, God returns and presents Moses with another vision. Following this, he learns that God’s “work and…glory” is “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). The cosmos are awe-inspiring, overwhelming, and frightening. The sheer magnitude of creation can and should be humbling. But as Vandenberg points out, “[T]he creation of the world, the plan of salvation—all this is for us.” Human life and progress is that important to God. It should be important to us as well.

Other Noteworthy Quotes & Insights

Paul H. Dunn:

One of the “requirements” according to his priest adviser as a young man was “to think a new thought every day.” Relevant for all classes and for Mormonism in general.

The teacher is a prophet. He lays the foundation of tomorrow. The teacher is an artist. He works with the precious clay of unfolding personality. The teacher is a friend. His heart responds to the faith and devotion of his students. The teacher is a citizen. He is selected and licensed for the improvement of society. The teacher is an interpreter. Out of his mature and wider life, he seeks to guide the young. The teacher is a builder. He works with the higher and finer values of civilization. The teacher is a culture-bearer. He leads the way toward worthier tastes, saner attitudes, more gracious manners, higher intelligence. The teacher is a planner. He sees the young lives before him as a part of a great system that shall grow stronger in the light of truth. The teacher is a pioneer. He is always interpreting and attempting the impossible, and usually winning out. The teacher is a reformer. He seeks to improve the handicaps that weaken and destroy life. The teacher is a believer. He has an abiding faith in God and in the improvability of the race. It was James Truslow Adams who said, “There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live.” We are engaged in teaching people how to live.”

According to Dunn, the lost sheep in the Savior’s parable “are not basically sinners by nature or even choice,” but instead “get confused in what’s important. In other words, they have misplaced values.” In the parable of the lost coin, “there are those of us who are the responsible agents who, like the woman of this great teaching parable, let these priceless gems slip through our fingers.” Finally, there is “the great parable of the Prodigal Son, with the Savior saying that there are those who get lost by choice…There are those who get lost because their free agency takes them down that path. We can’t do a lot at some points to recover this kind of a person except open our arms and our church doors and let them know they are wanted”

Alvin R. Dyer:

Man is the sum result of what he thinks and does. Habit is the instrument that molds his character and makes of him essentially what he is. Habit can become a monster to tarnish and destroy, yet proper behavioral traits can bring lasting joy and achievement. To say no at the right time and then stand by it is the first element of success. The effect that both good and bad habits have on our lives is all too real to be ignored. Bad habits that violate the commandments of physical health (D&C 89) and of moral behavior (D&C 121), given by revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith many years ago, will threaten and destroy all opportunities for real happiness.”

“Choosing good over evil and right over wrong is the crowning achievement of life, and in so doing man becomes the masterpiece of the Creator and fulfills the basic purposes of his mortal probation. An ancient prophet speaks of it in this way: “… he that ruleth his spirit [is greater] than he that taketh a city.” (Prov. 16:32.)”

“The fusing of ritual and commandment with everyday living calls for the best that is in us, that by our agency we may feel the affected condition by choosing good rather than evil, thus not only glorifying ourselves but glorifying Him who has made all things possible.”

Spencer W. Kimball:

After describing many loving, familial, yet mundane situations, he states,

Heaven is a place, but also a condition; it is home and family. It is understanding and kindness. It is interdependence and selfless activity. It is quiet, sane living; personal sacrifice, genuine hospitality, wholesome concern for others. It is living the commandments of God without ostentation or hypocrisy. It is selflessness. It is all about us. We need only to be able to recognize it as we find it and enjoy it. Yes, my dear brother, I’ve had many glimpses of heaven.”

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Here are the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week. You can also follow along with our Facebook group.

• Strategies for Seeking the Lost (Nathaniel Givens at Difficult Run)
• LDS Conference October 1971- Shame, the Potemkin ’50s, and Generational Wonders (J. Max Wilson at Sixteen Small Stones)
• Where Are We and Where Are We Going? (Daniel Ortner at Symphony of Dissent)
• The Starry Heavens and the Moral Law (Ralph Hancock at The Soul and The City)
• “The True Gift” (Michelle Linford at Mormon Women)
• Lost People (SilverRain at The Rains Came Down)
• Life, and Living, With Simple Purpose

This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

The late political/social scientist James Q. Wilson made a name for himself studying crime (most famously his “broken windows theory“),[ref]For more on this theory, see the City Journal articles by Heather MacDonald,Charles Sahm, and George Kelling.[/ref] which eventually led him to study mankind’s innate moral sense as well as the familial context in which this sense is nurtured. This wide range of research and reflection enabled him to pen the following paragraph, which is a beautiful summary of human nature:

Evolution by selection, though of great importance to human life, is an incomplete explanation unless we first understand that what it produced were not robots that acted automatically on biological instincts but thinking, feeling people equipped by nature with a complex psychology that predisposed but did not compel them to act in certain ways…Part of the reason we help others at some sacrifice to ourselves is that they are our children; by helping them we perpetuate our genes. And another part is that we help people who are not our children in order to impress these people with our dependability and win from them some reciprocal help in the future. But these two explanations, inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism, while quite powerful, do not clarify everything…To explain all of altruism, it is necessary to first understand that what evolution has given to us is not a fixed mechanism to achieve a specific goal, but an emotion that not only serves that goal but achieves related ones as well. Let us call that emotion a desire for affiliation or, in simple language, a desire to be part of a social group.[ref]James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 35-36.[/ref]

To be human is to be social.[ref]See Matthew D. Lieberman, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect (New York: Crown, 2013); Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage, 2012).[/ref] With increased socialization being linked to our evolutionary development as a species (i.e. “the social brain hypothesis“), it is little wonder that covenants, kinship, and community play such an integral role in Mormon theology.[ref]Covenant language was kinship language in ancient Israel. See Frank Moore Cross, “Kinship and Covenant in Ancient Israel” in his From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998).[/ref] Isolation or alienation does violence to this fundamental element of our human nature and often leads to unfortunate outcomes, possibly even addiction. As British journalist Johann Hari explains,

[W]hat if addiction isn’t about your chemical hooks? What if addiction is about your cage? What if addiction is an adaptation to your environment? …[M]aybe we shouldn’t even call it addiction. Maybe we should call it bonding. Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond, and when we’re happy and healthy, we’ll bond and connect with each other, but if you can’t do that, because you’re traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life, you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief. Now, that might be gambling, that might be pornography, that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis, but you will bond and connect with something because that’s our nature. That’s what we want as human beings.

I thought of this information as I was reading through the Priesthood session of the October 1971 General Conference. Marvin J. Ashton recounts a time he was visiting a prison and was stopped by a young man who, after talking with Elder Ashton for 15 minutes or so, said, “Thank you for talking to me.” This need to be listened to–to be accepted and truly seen–is echoed in the predicament of Ashton’s imprisoned friend, who stated,

I don’t want to blame anyone back home for my being in prison today, but it is factual that I had no family relationships. I am involved in the family home evening program at the prison. Without the parents who have been assigned to me through this social services program, many times I would have given up. These people love me as if I were their own son. I have never had that, even when I was a small boy. Now, with their help and that of others, I believe I can now make it back a day at a time. I am not proud of being in prison, but I am proud of my recent experiences while being there. We have a tendency to blame others. We don’t want to blame our parents for not loving us, because we know they do, but maybe they didn’t have the guidance and direction in their lives to apply when they were bringing us up.

These prisoners obviously had experienced social isolation on a grand scale prior to their imprisonment. This is what makes Ashton’s message so powerful:

I humbly, but with all of the power in my possession, declare to our “lost” youth, young men and young women worldwide, you can make it back from where you are. The great social services program of the Church, operating as an arm of the priesthood, lends a helping hand to our young people with social and emotional problems. As President Smith has declared to us tonight, by honoring our priesthood we can help them find their way back to joy and stability.

The gospel is freely available to all, including and especially those whose sins may be more public and legally troublesome. They are not truly lost: they can make it back from where they are. But they cannot and should not do it
alone. The gospel is communal and we as members of the community should be leading them “back to joy and stability.” This is why President Joseph Fielding Smith reminds the brethren in his opening talk that they
are to use “the priesthood to benefit mankind.” It “is given…to bless ourselves and our Father’s other children.” In a well-known and popular story, a man has a dream in which he is walking on a beach with the Lord. As he sees scenes from his life, he notices that at times there are two sets of footprints and at others only one. Realizing the hardest times feature only one pair of footprints, he questions why the Lord abandoned him in his trials. In reply, the Lord says, “It was then that I carried you.” The story is sentimental enough, but as physician and cultural historian Sam Brown notes, “While there is no doubt that Christ will indeed carry us in our lives…[h]ow could a person’s life story be told with only one set of human footprints?” “The Mormon version,” he writes, “...would have so many footprints that it would be hard to find undisturbed sand. There would be parents and siblings, friends and neighbors, visiting and home teachers, the Relief Society presidency, the bishop and his counselors, even sometimes the young women and young men of our wards and neighborhoods…At times of trial, the footfalls may become a stampede, the sand bearing the marks of an earnest crowd of saints carrying us forward.”[ref]Samuel M. Brown, First Principles and Ordinances: The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple (Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, BYU, 2014), 125.[/ref]

The need for more footprints in the sand is made even more explicit in Marion D. Hanks’ talk. He describes five things that the youth (or anyone, really) need:

First, they need faith. They need to believe. They need to know the doctrines, the commandments, the principles of the gospel. They need to grow in understanding and conviction. They need to worship and to pray, but they live in a time when all of this is so seriously questioned, when doubt is encouraged.

Two, they need to be accepted as they are, and to be included. They need a family, the most important social unit in this world; and even if they have a good family, they need the supportive influence outside their home of others, of neighbors, of friends, of bishops, of brothers, of human beings.

Three, they need to be actively involved, to participate, to give service, to give of themselves.

Four, they have to learn somehow that they are more important than their mistakes; that they are worthwhile, valuable, useful; that they are loved unconditionally.

…We need to understand their needs. They need to learn the gospel. They need to be accepted, to be involved, to be loved; and they need, my brethren—my fifth and final point—the example of good men, good parents, good people, who really care.

Each of these, including the first one, bolster a sense of belonging and connection with others. Christianity “provided an unimaginably exalted picture of the human person–made in the divine image and destined to partake of the divine nature…In short, the rise of Christianity produced consequences so immense that it can almost be said to have begun the world anew: to have “invented” the human, to have bequeathed us our most basic concept of nature, to have determined our vision of the cosmos and our place in it, and to have shaped all of us…in the deepest reaches of consciousness.”[ref]David B. Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 213.[/ref] That people are “not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike, to be cherished and adored, is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls.”[ref]Ibid., 214.[/ref] To be the victim of abuse, tragedy, shame, or loneliness is to often have one’s feelings of dignity and self-worth stripped. It is not merely a future peace or salvation that is being taught when one preaches Jesus and the doctrines of the gospel: it is an identity; a recognition that “the worth of souls” (including one’s own) “is great in the sight of God” (D&C 18:10). They “are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19; note the kinship language in my italics). They are called to be “equip[ped with] the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12, NRSV). They are called into a community. They are called to belong.

And so are we.

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Here are the rest of the blog posts for the General Conference Odyssey this week. You can also follow along via our Facebook Group.

• Mormon Privilege (Nathaniel Givens at Difficult Run)
• LDS Conference October 1971- Spiritual and Secular Education in the Service of God (J. Max Wilson at Sixteen Small Stones)
• Yes, you can get there from here (Daniel Ortner at Symphony of Dissent)
• Don’t Do Acid (John Hancock at The Good Report)
• Our Virtue – Faith and Education (Ralph Hancock at The Soul and The City)
• Commandments and Compassion (Michelle Linford at Mormon Women)
• Becoming a Male Mother (Silver Rain at The Rains Came Down)
• The Way Back into Love (Chastity Wilson at Comfortably Anachronistic)
• It Takes Men and Women (Jan Tolman at LDS Women of God)