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Two Stupids Don’t Make a Smart

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Wikipedia: "Symphony of the Stones carved by the Goght River at Garni Gorge in Armenia is an example of an emergent natural structure." Released by WOWARMENIA for Wikimedia under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license
Wikipedia: “Symphony of the Stones carved by the Goght River at Garni Gorge in Armenia is an example of an emergent natural structure.”
Released by WOWARMENIA for Wikimedia under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license

I didn’t get a chance to make that pithy observation in a Facebook exchange this morning because my interlocutor gave me the boot. That’s OK, I may have been blocked from somebody’s Facebook feed for thinking bad thoughts, but I can’t get blocked from my own blog! You can’t stop this signal, baby.

So, just as two wrongs don’t make a right, let’s use this Columbus Day to talk about two stupids that don’t make a smart.

Bad Idea 1: The Noble Savage

There’s a school of thought which holds, essentially, that everything was fine and dandy in the Americas until the Europeans came along and ruined it. The idea, seen in Disney and plenty of other places, is that “native” peoples lived at harmony with the Earth, appreciating the fragile balance of their precious ecosystems and proactively maintaining it. This idea is bunk. The reality is that in almost all cases the only limit on the extent to which any culture restricts its exploitation of natural resources is technological. Specifically, humanity has an unambiguous track record of killing everything edible in sight as they spread across the globe, leading to widespread extinctions from Australia to the Americas and upending entire ecosystems. If our ancient ancestor didn’t wipe a species out, the reason was either that it didn’t taste good or they couldn’t. As Yuval Noah Harari put it Sapiens:[ref]Which I reviewed here.[/ref]

Don’t believe the tree-huggers who claim that our ancestors lived in harmony with nature. Long before the Industrial Revolution, homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.

Harari specifically describes how the first humans to discover Australia not only wiped out species after species, but–in so doing–converted the entire continent into (pretty much) the desert it is today:

The settlers of Australia–or, more accurately, its conquerors–didn’t just adapt, they transformed the Australian ecosystem beyond recognition. The first human footprint on a sandy Australian beach was immediately washed away by the waves, yet, when the invaders advanced inland, they left behind a different footprint. One that would never be expunged.

Matt Ridley, in The Origins of Virtue, lists some of the animals that no longer exist thanks to hungry humans:

Soon after the arrival of the first people in Australia, possibly 60,000 years ago, a whole guild of large beasts vanished — marsupial rhinos, giant diprotodons, tree fellers, marsupial lions, five kinds of giant wombat, seven kinds of short-faced kangaroos, eight kinds of giant kangaroo, a two-hundred-kilogram flightless bird. Even the kangaroo species that survived shrank dramatically in size, a classic evolutionary response to heavy predation.

And that pattern was repeated again and again. Harari again:

Mass extinctions akin to the archetypal Australian decimation occurred again and again in the ensuing millennia whenever people settled another part of the outer world.

Have you ever wondered why the Americas don’t have the biodiversity of large animals that Africa does? We’ve got some deer and bison, but nothing like the hippos, giraffes, elephants, and other African megafauna. Why not? Because the first humans to get here killed and ate them all, that’s why not. There’s even a name for what happened: the Pleistocene overkill. Back to Ridley:

Coincident with the first certain arrival of people in North America, 11,500 years ago, 73% of the large mammal genera quickly died out…  By 8000 years ago, 80% of the large mammal genera  in south America were also extinct — giant sloths, giant armadillos, giant guanacos, giant capybaras, anteaters the size of horses.

In Madagascar, he notes that “at least 17 species of lemurs (all the diurnal one is larger than 10 kg in weight, one as big as a gorilla), and the remarkable elephant birds — the biggest of which weighs 1000 pounds — were dead within a few centuries of the islands first colonization by people in about 500 A.D.” In New Zealand, “the first Maoris sat down and ate their way through all 12 species of the giant moa birds. . .  Half of all new Zealand’s indigenous land birds are extinct.” The same thing happened in Hawaii, where at least half of the 100 unique Hawaiian birds were extinct shortly after humans arrived. “In all, as the Polynesians colonized the Pacific, they extinguished 20% of all the bird species on earth.”

Ridley’s myth-busting doesn’t end there. He cites four different studies of Amazon Indians “that have directly tested their conservation ethic.” The results? “All four rejected the hypothesis [that the tribes had a conservation ethic].” Moving up to North America, he writes that “There is no evidence that the ‘thank-you-dead-animal’ ritual was a part of Indian folklore before the 20th century,” and cites Nicanor Gonsalez, “At no time have indigenous groups included the concepts of conservation and ecology in their traditional vocabulary.”

This might all sound a little bit harsh, but it’s important to be realistic. Why? Because these myths–no matter how good the intentions behind them–are corrosive. The idea of the Noble Savage is intrinsically patronizing. It says that “primitive” or “native” cultures are valuable to the extent that they are also virtuous. That’s not how human rights should work. We are valuable–all of us–intrinsically. Not “contingent on passing some test of ecological virtue” (as Ridley puts it.)

Let me take a very brief tangent. Ridley’s argument here (as it relates to conservation) is exactly parallel to John McWhorters linguistic arguments and Steven Pinker’s psychological arguments. In The Language Hoax, John McWhorter takes down the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis,[ref]AKA “linguistic relativity“[/ref] which is the trendy linguistic theory that what you think is determined by the language you think it in.[ref]You may have seen a meme about early humans not being able to see the color blue because the word for it appears later in most languages. This is precisely the kind of pseudo-scientific bunk McWhorter dismisses in the book.[/ref] Just like the Noble Savage, this idea was originally invented by Westerners on behalf of well, everybody else. The idea is that “primitive” people were more in contact with the timeless mysteries of the cosmos because (for example) they spoke in a language that didn’t use tense. Not only did this turn out to be factually incorrect (they just marked tense differently, or implied it in other cases, as many European languages also do), but it’s an intrinsically bad idea. McWhorter:

In the quest to dissuade the public from cultural myopia, this kind of thinking has veered into exotification. The starting point is, without a doubt, I respect that you are not like me. However, in a socio-cultural context in which that respect is processed as intellectually and morally enlightened, inevitably, to harbor that respect comes to be associated with what it is to do right and to be right as a person. An ideological mission creep thus sets in. Respect will magnify into something more active and passionate. The new watchcry becomes, “I like that you are not like me,” or alternately, “What I like about you is that you are not like me.” That watchcry signifies, “What’s good about you is that you are not like me.” Note however, the object of that encomium, has little reason to feel genuinely praised. His being not like a Westerner is neither what he feels as his personhood or self-worth, nor what we should consider it to be, either explicitly or implicitly.

The cute stories about the languages primitive peoples speak and the ways that enables them to see the world in unique and special ways end up being nothing but a particularly subtle form of cultural imperialism: our values are being used to determine the value of their culture. All we did was change up the values by which we pass judgement on others. Thus: “our characterization of indigenous people in this fashion is more for our own benefit than theirs.”

The underlying premise of Harrari, Ridley, and McWhorter is what Steven Pinker’s The Blank Slate tackles directly: the universality of human nature. We can best avoid the bigotry and discrimination that has marred our history not by a counter-bigotry that holds up other cultures as special or superior (either because they’re in magical harmony with nature or possess unique linguistic insights) but by reaffirming the fact that there is such a thing as an universal, underlying human nature that unites all cultures.

Universal human nature is not a byproduct of political wishful thinking, by the way. Steven Pinker includes as an appendix to The Blank Slate a long List of Human Universals compiled by Donald E. Brown in 1989. It is a long list, organized alphabetically. To give a glimpse of the sorts of things behaviors and attributes common to all human cultures, here are the first and last items from the list:

  • abstraction in speech and thought
  • actions under self-control distinguished from those not under control
  • aesthetics
  • affection expressed and felt
  • age grades
  • age statuses
  • age terms
  • …
  • vowel contrasts
  • weaning
  • weapons
  • weather control (attempts to)
  • white (color term)
  • world view

The list also includes lots of stuff about binary gender which is exactly why you haven’t heard of the list and why Steven Pinker is considered a rogue iconoclast. These days, one does not simply claim that gender is binary.

one-does-not-simply-say

I’ve spent a lot of time on the idea of the Noble Savage as it relates to ecology, but of course it’s a broader concept than that. I was once yelled at quite forcibly by a presenter trying to teach us kids that warfare did not exist among pre-Columbian Native Americans. I was only 11 or 12 at the time, but I knew that was bs and said so.[ref]He cursed me with the fires of Hell if I didn’t stop interrupting. I didn’t stop. The next day I got third degree burns. True story; I’ve still got the scars. He may have been a wizard, but I was still right.[/ref]

The point is that the whole notion of a mosaic of Native Americans living in peace and prosperity until the evil Christopher Columbus showed up and ruined everything is a bad idea. It’s stupid number 1.

Bad Idea 2: Christopher Columbus is Just Misunderstood

So, this is the claim that started the discussion that got me blocked by somebody on Facebook today. The argument, such as it was, goes something like this: Columbus looks very bad from our 21st century viewpoint, but that’s an unfair, anachronistic standard. By the standards of his day, he was just fine, and those are the standards by which he should be measured.

The problem with this idea is that, like the first, it’s simply not true. One of the best, popular accounts of why comes from The Oatmeal. In this comic, Matthew Inman contrasts Columbus with a contemporary: Bartolomé de las Casas. While Columbus and his ilk were off getting to various hijinks including (but not limited to) child sex slavery and using dismemberment to motivate slaves to gather more gold, de las Casas was busy arguing that indigenous people deserved rights and that slavery should be abolished. Yes, at the time of Columbus.

The argument that if we judge Columbus by the standards of his day he comes out OK does not hold up. We can find plenty of people at that time–not just de las Casas–who were abolitionists or (if they didn’t go that far) were critical of the excessive cruelty of Columbus and many like him. Keep in mind that slavery had been a thing in Europe for thousands of years until the Catholics finally stamped it out around the 10th century. So it’s not like opposition to slavery is a modern invention. When slavery was restarted in Africa and then the Americas many in the Catholic clergy opposed it once again, but were unable to stop it. So the idea that–by the standards of his day–Columbus was just fine and dandy doesn’t work. He’s a pretty bad guy in any century.

Two Stupids Don’t Make a Smart

I understand the temptation to respond to Noble Savage-type denunciations of Christopher Columbus by trying to defend the guy. You see somebody making a bad argument, and you want to argue that they’re wrong.[ref]Throw in the obviously implied left/right dichotomy and you’ve got partisan tribal motivations to boot![/ref]

But that isn’t how logic actually works. A broken clock really is right twice a day, and a bad argument can still have a true conclusion. If I tell you that 2+2 = 4 because Mars is in the House of the Platypus my argument is totally wrong, but my conclusion is still true.

The Noble Savage is a bad bit of cultural luggage we really should jettison,[ref]Especially when it results in bad Chipotle burritos, among other reasons.[/ref] but Columbus is still a bad guy no matter how you slice it. Using one stupid idea to combat another stupid idea doesn’t actually enlighten anyyone.

The Bell Curve of Extremism

There are basically two kinds of moderates / independents: the ignorant and the wise. It really is a sad twist of fate to stick the two together, but nobody honest every said life was fair.

To illustrate, let me introduce you to a concept I’ll call the Bell Curve of Extremism:

bell-curve-of-extremism

 

To flesh this out, I’ll use some examples from voting.

A person on the left doesn’t know who they’re going to vote for because they don’t know much of anything at all. They may not even know who’s running or who’s already in office. This doesn’t mean they’re stupid, necessarily. They could be brilliant, but just pay no attention to politics.

A person in the left knows exactly who they’re voting for, and it’s never really been in question. What’s more, they can give you a very long list of the reasons they are voting for that person and–what’s more–all the terrible, horrible things about the leading contender that make him or her totally unfit for office and a threat to truth, justice, and the American Way. This is the kind of person who consumes a lot of news, but probably from a narrow range of sources, like DailyKos or RedState. They’re not bad people, but they high motivation tends to lead to an awful lot of research that is heavily skewed by confirmation bias.

A person on the right may also be unsure of how they’re going to cast their vote, but it’s not because they don’t know what’s going on. The problem is they do, and this knowledge has led them (as often as not) to fall right off the traditional left/right axis. I called myself a radical moderate when I was in high-school. At the time, it was mostly because I was on the far left but I wanted to sound cool. Later on in life I found myself near the peak of the bell-curve, a die-hard conservative with all the answers who was half-convinced that liberals were undermining the country. But then I went to graduate school to study economics (one of the areas where I was staunchly conservative) and lo and behold: things got complicated. I fell off the peak and I’ve been sliding down the slope ever since. And what do you know, but I found out recently that radical moderates are actually a thing. They even include some of my very favorite thinkers, like John McWhorter (cited above) and Jonathan Haidt (cited in a lot of my posts). I’ve come full circle, from know-nothing moderate to know-that-I-know-nothing radical moderate.

It’s kind of lonely and depressing over here, to be honest, and we don’t often find an awful lot to shout about. Which is why the conversation tends to be dedicated by peak-extremists who know just enough to be dangerous. About the only banner you’ll see us waving is the banner of epistemic humility. And really, how big of a parade can you expect to line up behind, “People probably don’t know as much as they think they do? (Including us!)”

But one thing that I can share with some conviction is this post, and the idea that–when it comes to ideas–fighting fire with fire just burns the whole house down. There is validity to the idea that things were better before Christopher Columbus showed up. There was a helpful lack of measles and small pox, for example. But blaming the transmission of those diseases (except in the rare cases when it was important) and the resulting humanitarian catastrophe on Columbus doesn’t make any sense. He did a lot of really evil things, but intentional germ warfare was not among them. Relying on it because the numbers are so big is lazy. There is also validity to the idea that Columbus lived in a different time. Many of the most compassionate Westerners were motivated not by a modern sense of equal rights but by a more feudal-tinged idea of noblesse oblige. De la Casa himself, for example, first suggested making things easier on Caribbean slaves by importing more African slaves before later deciding that all slavery was a bad idea. And if you fast-forward to the 19th century abolitionist movements, you’ll find plenty of what counts as racism in the 21st century among the abolitionists who were motivated (in some cases) by ideas of civilizing the savages. Racial politics are complicated enough in the 21st century alone, of course we can’t bring in perspectives from six centuries ago and expect all the good guys to neatly align on bullet point of focus-group vetted talking points!

So yes: I see validity to both sides of the fight. If your goal is to win in the short term, then the most useful thing to do is double-down on your strongest arguments and cherry-pick the other side’s weakest points. This is the strategy of two stupids making a smart, and it doesn’t work.

If your goal is to win in the long term, then you have to undergo a fundamental transformation of perspective.[ref]Do you see how I avoided the buzz-phrase “paradigm shift”?[/ref] The short-term model isn’t just short-term. It’s ego-centric. The fundamental conceit of the idea of winning is the idea of being right, as an individual. Your view is the correct one, and the idea is to have your idea colonize other people’s brains. It is unavoidably an ego-trip.

The long-term model isn’t just about the long-term. It’s also about seeing the whole that is more than the sum of the parts. In this view, the likeliest scenario is that nobody is right because, on any particular suitably complex question, we are like the world before Newton and the world before Einstein: waiting for a new solution no one has thought of. And, even if somebody does have the right solution to the problem we face now, that will almost certainly not be the right answer to the problem we will face tomorrow. In that case, it’s not about having the right ideas in the heads of the read people, it’s about having a culture and a society that is capable of supporting a robust ecosystem of idea-creation. The focus begins to shift away from the “I” and towards the “we.”

In this model, your job is not to be the one, singular, heroic Messiah who tells everyone the answer to their problem. Your job is to play your part in a larger collective. Maybe that means you should be the lone voice calling from the wilderness, the revolutionary prophet like Newton or Einstein. But more probably it means your job is to simply be one more ant carrying one more grain of sand to build the collective pile of human knowledge and maybe–through conversations with friends and family–shift the center of gravity infinitesimally in a better direction.

I’m not a relativist. I’m a staunch realist in the sense that I believe in an objective, underlying reality that is not dependent on social construction or individual interpretation. But I’m also a realist in the sense of acknowledging that the last living human being to have ever understood the entire domain of mathematics was Carl Friedrich Gauss and he died in 1865. No living person today understands all mathematical theory. And that’s just math. What about physics and history and chemistry and psychology? And that’s just human knowledge. What about the things nobody knows or has thought of yet? An individual is tiny, and so is their sphere of knowledge. The idea that the answers to really big questions fall within that itty-bitty radius seems correspondingly remote. In short: the truth is out there, but you probably don’t have it and you probably can’t find it. It may very well be, keeping this metaphor going, that the answer to some of our questions are too complex for any one person to hold in their brain, even if they could discover one.

I’m not giving up on truth. I am giving up on atomic individualism, on the idea that the end of our consideration with regards to truth is the question of how much of it we can fit into our individual skulls. That seems very small minded, if you’ll pardon the pun. Instead, I’m much more interested in ways in which individuals can do their part to contribute to building a society that may understand more than its constituent individuals do or (since that seems a bit speculative, even to me) at a minimum provides ample opportunity for individuals to create, express, and compare ideas in the hope of discovering something new.

Two stupids can’t make a smart. The oversimplification and prejudice necessary to play that strategy is not worth the cost. Winning debates is not the ultimate goal. We can aim for something higher, but we have to be willing to lay down our own egos in the process and contribute to something bigger.

Obedience Out of Love

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This post is a talk that I gave in my congregation a couple of weeks ago. A few folks asked me for copies, so I thought putting it online would be the simplest approach.

Love or Fear

I have heard it said that every decision a human makes fundamentally comes down to one of only two motivations: fear or love. That’s it.

Scientists are a little less romantic about it, but they actually have the same basic concept. From biology to computer science whether you’re talking about an amoeba or an artificial intelligence the fundamental choice every agent has to make comes down to attraction or avoidance. You are attracted to the good stuff. You avoid the bad stuff. If you’re a bacterium, it means you move towards food and you move away from anything that thinks your food. So these are the two motives any creature can have: we either move towards what we want or we move away from what we don’t want.

An Irritant or a Quest

President Benson said

When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes our quest, in that moment God will endow us with power. [ref]via Elder Donald L. Staheli in Obedience—Life’s Great Challenge[/ref]

What I want to talk about is how we make that transition. How do we change our attitude towards obedience? How do move beyond the place where obedience feels like a burden and get to the place where obedience feels like a challenge? How do we turn obedience from an irritant into a quest?

I believe that it comes down to fear and love. We have to wean ourselves away from fear-based obedience and towards love-based obedience. We have to fear less and love more. It’s like Paul told Timothy:

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.[ref]2 Timothy 1:7[/ref]

Fearful Obedience

On my mission I set goals all the time. My companion and I would sit down, we’d pray, and we’d set “realistic” goals. We’d set goals that—sitting in the apartment, feeling charged to go out and do the Lord’s work—seemed easily attainable.

I don’t think we hit 50% of our weekly goals a single time. Not even once. And yet somehow, we never learned. Every week we felt really horrible about how bad our goals were going, and every week we rallied and we did the exact same thing.

The Lord can work with all kinds of tools, but I’m pretty sure that even he appreciates the value of a sharp instrument over a blunt one. As a missionary I was definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed. It never occurred to me, not even once, that the only realistic goals would be to start with what we actually accomplished last week and then build from there.

It’s not actually that I was too dumb. The truth is that I was too proud to admit how far from perfect I was. I wanted to think of myself as a good missionary. I’d wanted to serve my whole life, I was following the rules, and I truly wanted to be there. So I just assumed—naturally—given all my good intentions I had to be pretty good, right?

Well, not. First of all, that’s not realistic. That’s just wishful thinking. I try to be a lot more realistic now than I was then. (My wife doesn’t think I’m very good at that, yet.) More importantly, however, I was operating out of fear. It was fear-based obedience. I was afraid of failure. And, I have come to learn, there is a mile of difference between trying to avoid failure and pursuing success. They may look similar from the outside, but from the inside they could not be more opposite.

Trying to be obedient out of fear means that you’re in constant stress. You’re unwilling to take risks—and risks are necessary for growth. Over time, this can lead to shriveling and atrophy. You remember the parable of the talents? The rich man gives his servants 5 talents, 2 talents, and 1 talent. The story has always bugged me, because it’s the poor guy who only gets 1 talent that messes it up. I’d like the story more if it was the guy who got 5 talents who was lazy. But that’s not the point. The point is that the first two invested. They risked. They turned doubled their talents. But the last guy? He was so afraid of losing his talent he just buried it. That’s fear right there.

Still Better than Disobedience

Let me pause for a second and make a very important disclaimer. Fear-based obedience is not as good as love-based obedience, but it’s still a whole lot better than disobedience. I don’t want anybody misunderstanding me on that point, OK?

And there’s a reason for that.

The laws of nature, the laws of God, the laws of life, are one and the same and are always in full force.[ref]Elder Richard L. Evans Where Are You Really Going?[/ref]

No matter why you are obedient, you’re still going to enjoy at least some of the blessings of that obedience because the laws of God are always in full force. The laws of physics don’t care why you buckle your seat-belt, right? If you get into an accident, your motivation does not enter into the equation. If you have the seat-belt on, you’re going to be safe. If you have it off, you’re going to be in a lot more danger.

O my beloved young friends, even selfishly it is smart to keep the commandments God has given.[ref]lder Richard L. Evans Where Are You Really Going?[/ref]

So, step 1 is be obedient. What we’re talking about now is step 2, which is how to be obedient.

Look, if your option is to either be obedient because you feel like you’re supposed to or be disobedient, then go ahead: be obedience out of obligation. When I was growing up I avoided a lot of pitfalls because I was afraid. That’s the honest truth. I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I didn’t watch pornography. It’s not because I’m such an awesome, righteous guy. It’s because I was risk averse. I saw that a lot of bad stuff came along with drinking and smoking, and in general I never wanted to lose control. I was obedient because I was afraid. That’s better than disobedient. And there are plenty of days when I just don’t feel all excited about following the commandments, and I just go through the motions because it’s what I promised to do. Going through the motions is better than not doing it at all.

So, fearful obedience is better than disobedience, but it’s not that great. We want love-based obedience. This is tricky, in a way, because we’re changing horses in mid-stream. We need to find a way out of fear-based obedience and into love-based obedience. Let’s start with letting go of fear.

A Remission of Sins

I have always been struck by the phrase “remission of sins.” We pretty much always hear about it around baptism.

John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.[ref]Mark 1:4, emphasis added[/ref]

And the only other time we ever use the word “remission” is when we’re talking about cancer. I’m not a scholar. I know that the word remission has two definitions. It can mean “the cancellation of a debt” or it can mean “a temporary recovery.” And I’m not certain which one fits best with our understanding of baptism. But as I understand it, the idea of cancer going into remission and the idea of sins going into remission is basically the same. The one difference is this: when your cancer goes into remission you can’t control if or when it will come back. But when your sins go into remission you are in control. As long as you abide by the covenant you made when you were baptized, they are in remission.

What this means to me is: you don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to live in fear. When you have faith in Christ, you get to live in hope.

That’s the first key to transitioning away from fear-based obedience.

Humility

The second key is being humble. That was my biggest problem as a goal-setting missionary. I was too proud to admit how weak I was. That got a lot easier as I got older. My life, in many ways, has been a string of disastrous failures ever since I got home from my mission. I have failed at so many things and in so many ways and with such utter gracelessness that I have been blessed with the inability to take myself very seriously anymore. I am like the poor Zoramites who were not allowed into the synagogues that they had built.

because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye[ref]Alma 32:13[/ref]

This humiliation has been a great blessing. It has taught me that fear of your own sins is a kind of arrogance. It is like saying that your evil is greater than Christ’s good. It is like saying that you have the ability to dig a hole too deep for your Savior to lift you out of. And if there’s only one thing you remember from my talk, let it be this: as long as you want to be saved there are no holes that deep.

When you are humble, failure loses the power to intimidate you. That’s why the devil hates humble people, they are practically impossible to push around. When you have faith and are humble, you are ready to let go of fear.

Godly Ambition

I’m going to share one of my favorite quotes. It’s from a man named Ira Glass, and—on the surface, at least—it won’t sound very religious. But it is. You’ll see. Here is his quote:

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.[ref]The quote is all over the place. The most original source I could find was YouTube.[/ref]

This quote is about love and fear. All artists have to confront the gap between what they want to do (make good art) and what they are doing (making terrible art) and then they have to make a decision: love or fear. If they choose fear, they will quit, because the pain of failure is too much. If they choose love, they will refuse to give up. And that means they will keep on failing. They will write bad stories. They will write terrible poetry. They will take horrible photographs. And they will do it again and again and again until they get it right.

This applies to all of us.

Every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ[ref]Moroni 7:16[/ref]

We all see light and truth and kindness and beauty in our lives at some point. We love those things. And we all see our own actions and we see darkness and deception, selfishness and ugliness. And then we have to choose: love or fear.

If we choose love, then—just like the artists—we go right on ahead and keep failing. We fail at being perfectly kind. We fail at being perfectly wise. We fail at being perfectly honest. And every morning we get up and we do it again and again until one day we get it right. And that is what it means to be a saint.

A saint is not necessarily a person who is perfect, but he is a person who strives for perfection—one who tries to overcome those faults and failings which take him away from God. A true saint will seek to change his manner of living to conform more closely to the ways of the Lord.[ref]Elder Theodore M. Burton in The Need for Total Commitment[/ref]

Artists learn to be better artists by first being bad artists. They practice. And people learn to be better people by first being bad people. They practice. And the name for that practice is: obedience. When you “seek to change [your] manner of living to conform more closely to the ways of the Lord” because you love the things which “inviteth to do good” then—for you—obedience has become a quest. Keeping the commandments will always be hard, but it will no longer feel like a burden because you will understand that keeping the commandments is the path to becoming the kind of person you would be proud to be.

—

If you’d like a printable copy of the talk, here you go.

“I know who you are now, and I name you my enemy.”

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For those who haven’t read The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, Wormwood is the demon the letters are addressed to. It’s Wormwood’s job to weaken faith and encourage sin in the human he’s assigned to, and the letters are from his uncle, a demon named Screwtape, who gives Wormwood advice on how to do this.

Yesterday while meandering through Spotify, I came across the song “Dear Wormwood” by the Oh Hellos.  From what I can tell, the song is about a demon who weakened the singer’s faith since childhood and how the (now adult) singer is recognizing and trying to overcome the demon’s influence.

I’m a secularist, and by that I mean I don’t practice a religion and don’t have faith in anything supernatural. But I’m a reluctant secularist, and by that I mean I had good experiences with the religion of my childhood, I miss it and wish it were true, but I don’t actually believe it is. From that context, the song kind of hits a nerve.

You can listen to it here:

Here are the lyrics, though I recommend listening to it first or concurrently rather than reading them on their own:

When I was a child, I didn’t hear a single word you said
The things I was afraid of, they were all confined beneath my bed
But the years have been long, and you have taught me well to hide away
The things that I believed in, you’ve taught me to call them all escapes

I know who you are now

There before the threshold, I saw a brighter world beyond myself
And in my hour of weakness, you were there to see my courage fail
For the years have been long, and you have taught me well to sit and wait
Planning without acting, steadily becoming what I hate

I know who you are now

I have always known you, you have always been there in my mind
But now I understand you, and I will not be part of your designs

I know who I am now
And all that you’ve made of me
I know who you are now
And I name you my enemy

I know who I am now
I know who I want to be
I want to be more than this devil inside of me

Soul on Fire: Appreciating Elie Wiesel

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Elie Wiesel departed this world at the age of eighty seven. He has had a tremendous influence on my life, though I never met or corresponded with him. His books were always in the house when I was growing up, and I remember my mother retelling for me the plot of Dawn, but I cannot remember how old I was. Perhaps I was nine. The details have faded but the memory remains and comes to mind quite often. Honestly, it was sobering and a bit frightening to realize that no one is exempt from life’s horrors, that even I might be forced at some point to choose between two ugly outcomes. I still hope that I never will, but it was Elie Wiesel who forced me to acknowledge the possibility that it could happen.

I have not rushed to post on Wiesel’s death because I have been picking up his works again and pondering his life. He deserves as much. I confess that it has been at least a year since I last read something of his. Wiesel himself resisted tidy conclusions. Still, something that I have noticed while following  media coverage is just how much is misunderstood about Wiesel. He had his flaws and failings, of course, and valid criticisms can (or is it should) be leveled at him. There were even survivors with more compelling views on the universality of the Holocaust than his own,[ref]I’m thinking mainly of Simon Wiesenthal and Primo Levi[/ref] and Wiesel sometimes clashed with them, but he was a powerful voice for good nonetheless. Then there was the disgraceful spectacle of people like Max Blumenthal, who possess the moral stature of a Chihuahua, publishing tweet after tweet vilifying Wiesel not long after his death was announced.

Something that I can see even in many valid criticisms is that Wiesel is being judged by our own image of a Holocaust survivor and champion of human rights should be rather than by what Wiesel actually was. To understand Wiesel we must set aside such grand images as citizen of the world and its conscience, and start with the Elie Wiesel who was deported to the kingdom of night, as he would put it. A shy but ardent Hasidic youth who viewed everything through a spiritual lens. His parents had to force him to set some time aside for secular studies, such was his religious fervor. Then came the Holocaust, an outburst of the forces of evil so intense that it destroyed his ability to believe as he once did. Wiesel always wanted to recover that simple faith, but could not. This is the thread running throughout his works, the source of the enigmatic laughter and silences that fill his stories.

Night is a powerful novel. Really needs no introduction. Dawn is not as well known, but as noted above, perhaps more compelling and troubling because it deals with the internal struggle of a Holocaust survivor faced with making an awful choice. If Night is about surviving in a kingdom where God does not act, Dawn looks at the choices one must make when acting in history instead of God. Night will make you weep, and Dawn will chill you, but if you want to get at the man behind Wiesel’s public persona then read Souls on Fire. Souls is a collection of sayings, stories, and character sketches of several 18th-19th century Hasidic masters, leaders of a Jewish revivalist movement in Eastern Europe. Wiesel has written quite a bit on this or that Hasidic master. It is a prominent topic in his writings, and though I have never bothered to quantify this, I would not be surprised if he has written more frequently and directly about Hasidism than he has about the Holocaust, but everything that he wrote eventually touched upon his experience in the camps.

The Hasidic master, or Rebbe, acts as bridge between his followers, the Hasidim, and God. The Rebbe was central to how they approached the world, so telling stories about these masters practically became a sacred duty. These were stories about hidden saints and holy beggars, miracles and prophecies, uplifting the poor and downtrodden, intense longing for the Messiah as if he were due any minute, putting God on trial for neglecting his children, and a host of other colorful episodes, but most of all about the soul and how to mend it. Sometimes cryptic and paradoxical, they all share a love of truth. These stories were used to draw man closer to God rather than simply entertain. Wiesel did that, too. “I don’t believe the aim of literature is to entertain, to distract, to amuse.”

Hasidism, then, was the world of Wiesel’s innocence, where God was close, always ready to intervene on behalf of those who loved him, a world filled with warm memories of conversations with his grandfather the devout Hasid. It was he who taught Wiesel his first stories and embodied their virtues. Hasidism was about faith. Not mental affirmation, but an attitude of trust and devotion.

In the chapter entitled Disciples IV,[ref]Wiesel, Elie, Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters, Random House (New York: 1972), 164-168. All following quotations are from this chapter.[/ref] Elie Wiesel relates a Hasidic legend of how Satan protested the birth of a particular Rebbe so holy that he would draw enough followers closer to God so as to destroy Satan’s kingdom effortlessly. The heavenly court recognized the unfairness of that scenario, and decided to send a rival – a counterfeit Rebbe – whom no one would suspect of serving God’s rival.

How is one to know? How does one recognize purity in a man? And how can one be sure? I remember putting this question to my grandfather. He chuckled and his eyes twinkled when he answered: “But one is never sure; nor should one be. Actually, it all depends on the Hasid; it is he who, in the final analysis, must justify the Rebbe.”

It is hard not to see this as really being about God, about Wiesel’s relationship with him. This answer to a childhood question, I think, lies behind the anger in Night, and behind the moral calculus in Dawn. Like the old chestnut, show me your friends and I will show you who you are. With Wiesel, though, there is never a simple affirmation of man’s moral superiority to God. That is a subtle nuance which even as fine a film as God on Trial (inspired by a Wiesel experience and story) misses. Man is responsible for affirming his devotion to truth through his actions and choices, perhaps even to transform his master through them. His failure to do so can have acute repercussions because God and man are inseparably linked.

“You’ll grow up, you’ll see,” my grandfather had said. “You’ll see that is more difficult, more rare to find a Hasid than a Rebbe. To induce others to believe is easier than to believe…”

Another story is shared of a Rebbe scolding God for keeping an old man like him waiting all his life for the messiah, then Wiesel’s own memory of his grandfather blessing him to see the messiah end evil, and how that caused him to tremble in Auschwitz for his grandfather. A story about a holy dance invites Wiesel to wonder how his grandfather died. For him, it is all connected. He expressed what he experienced in the camps in terms of these Hasidic tales and sayings.

One of Hasidism’s finest tales relates that the founder of Hasidism went to a certain spot in the woods to perform a ritual and utter a prayer to avert a disaster. His successor could not remember the ritual, but knew the spot and the prayer. The next Rebbe knows only the spot, and, finally, only the story remains. This must suffice, or can it? Wiesel suggests that we might be past that stage.

The proof is that the threat has not been averted. Perhaps we are no longer able to tell the story. Could all of us be guilty? Even the survivors? Especially the survivors?

That last question alone opens up a world of anguish that the trite and easy phrase survivor’s guilt can never fathom. It also lends urgency to the task of storytelling. There are no easy answers to any of these questions which occupied Wiesel his entire life.

Two sayings of Hasidic masters are given in the chapter with no commentary. “To pronounce useless words is to commit murder,” and, “Nothing and nobody down here frightens me… But the moaning of a beggar makes me shudder.” Both of these encapsulate Wiesel’s approach as author and witness. Waste no word on things that do not teach truth and fear nothing as much as another’s suffering.

There is much more that could be discussed. Instead, read Souls on Fire, especially the moving postscript describing why he wrote it. Your time will be greatly rewarded.

To end like I began, on a personal note: I was surprised to feel no sorrow at Wiesel’s passing. In fact, I almost felt happy. I typically get very emotional thinking about the Holocaust at any length. Why not now? In Jewish thought death is often considered a passage from the world of illusion to the world of truth. Wiesel loved truth but was haunted by it. He was truly a soul on fire, so perhaps now he will be able to see things as they really are, and meet with God to reconcile differences and finally have his questions answered. A chance, I feel, to regain his childhood faith.

For me, “rape culture” isn’t political. It’s personal.

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Understand your conversations aren’t happening in a vacuum; silent victims are listening to you.

Sometimes I want to talk to people about “rape culture.” I’m putting “rape culture” in quotes because the people I most want to talk to about this often recoil at the phrase. If there was another shorthand phrase I knew to describe this situation, I’d use it, but I don’t know of any.

For clarification, when I say “rape culture” I do not mean a culture that is totally chill with violently forcing people to have sex. I mean a culture that minimizes the seriousness of sexual harassment and assault in myriad ways, most of them not purposeful but still very impactful. The cumulative effect is that far too many women have not only been sexually assaulted but—and for me this is a crucial point—they feel unable to do anything about it or even tell anyone.

(Before I continue, please note that in this post I talk exclusively about male rapists and female victims because I am talking about my personal experiences. However it’s important to understand that men are also assaulted and they also struggle to talk about it.)

I feel very strongly about this issue. I probably feel more strongly about this issue than any other social or political topic, by a lot. And that’s because, for me, this is very personal.

When I talk about “rape culture,” I’m not trying to have a political conversation or a policy debate. I’m not trying to establish whether liberals are on witch hunts or conservatives hate women or feminists hate men or whatever else. I don’t care how you feel about your ideological opposition. If I’m trying to talk to you about “rape culture,” this is what I’m trying to say:

I’ve been assaulted. It traumatized me for a long time, and it was even worse than it needed to be because I didn’t think I could tell anybody. When I eventually did tell someone, someone I trusted and loved, he told me he was disappointed in me. I felt humiliated and ashamed, and I really wished I hadn’t told him. I didn’t tell anyone else for a very long time. And I suffered for it.

And many women I love have been assaulted. It’s not my place to share their stories, but the bottom line is this: of all the women I’m closest to, more of them have been assaulted than haven’t. Many of them didn’t talk about it with anyone for a long time. And they’ve suffered for it too.

If I had just walked up to you and told you that, would your first response be “How do you know your loved ones aren’t lying to you? How do I know you’re not lying to me? Women lie sometimes. We should be talking about that.”

The women I know who don’t go public with their stories fear they won’t be believed, fear they’ll be blamed, or fear there will be reprisals against them. And I can’t reassure them that wouldn’t happen, because, from what I’ve seen, that is usually what happens. Even in the more obviously criminal situations, I couldn’t get them to tell the police. Often they won’t even tell their social circles. The men who do these things just go on with their lives, in many cases going on to assault more women who also won’t say anything. My heart breaks for those future women, who I can’t save. It breaks for my friends, who got no justice or relief.

Before this post, I’ve only told a handful of people that this has happened to me. It’s not something I want to think about, and it’s not something I want to be defined by. But I’ve decided to write about it because I’m tired of having this conversation as if we’re discussing “them”—other women, not present, who have gone through this and what it may or not be like for them and how they may or may not react to the way we discuss this. We’re not talking about “them,” we’re talking about me. We’re talking about my family and friends. And, in all likelihood, we’re talking about your family and friends too. For countless people, this is not an abstract discussion; this is our lives.

We’re not talking about a group of anonymous women. We’re talking about my friends and family. We’re talking about me.

The more vocal I am about how seriously I take this, the more women end up telling me their stories. They trust me to believe them, and they also trust me not to tell anyone. Sometimes that’s the hardest part, because I want to tell everyone. I want people to understand how common this is.

In one of my friend’s cases, I knew the guy. I fantasized about walking up to him and punching him in the face. But she didn’t want me to say anything to anyone. So when I saw the guy, I had to just act like nothing had happened. Everyone acts like nothing has happened. I wonder if he even thought about it again. She was intimidated about leaving her house, she would cry when she got home, she would make extra sure her door was locked—and he doesn’t even have to think about it again.

When I think about how many women I know—personally—who have not only been preyed on, but then shamed or intimidated into silence, I feel overwhelmed.  I’m overwhelmed with sorrow and I’m overwhelmed with rage. I feel rage at men who take whatever they want with no real concern about repercussions, and I feel rage to know they’re right not to worry. I feel rage at a society that’s quick to find reasons not to take my friends’ stories seriously, not to face how common this is. I feel rage at myself that I can’t do anything besides listen and grieve.

And you know what else? If you’re the person who can’t have even one conversation about this without saying “what if she’s lying?” – I feel rage at you.

You think because you’re not physically attacking anyone, because you’re “just asking questions,” that you’re not a part of this—that you’re innocent. You are not innocent. Every time you talk about this publicly or in groups, odds are good that someone who’s been through it is listening. She’s hearing your suspicion and condemnation, and she’s deciding she’s much better off never telling anyone. If no one knows, no one can call her a liar, man-hater, idiot, or slut. No one can use one of the most painful parts of her life to hurt her all over again. But she’s also a lot less likely to get the help she needs. And the guy who attacked her is free to go attack someone else.

And you. You who think we don’t talk enough about false accusations, who think we don’t consider how scary it is for men to hook up with women they don’t know, who think a man assaults an unconscious woman hidden behind a dumpster because of a “hook-up mentality”–you’re a part of this. Where do you think “culture” comes from? Each time you talk about sexual assault, you’re contributing to a culture of some type. You might be contributing to a culture of support, compassion, a desire to understand. But if you’re contributing to a culture of suspicion and blame, that’s on you. She hears you, and she’s shutting up, and that is on you. So I feel rage at you too.

When I talk about “rape culture” I’m not advocating for a political party or policy or position. I’m not calling for a ban on any ideas or any topics of conversations. Talk about false accusations, talk about drunken regret, talk about whatever you want. Just understand your conversations aren’t happening in a vacuum; silent victims are listening to you.

So when I talk about “rape culture,” that’ s what I’m trying to make clear. I want you to recognize that none of us are observing this from the outside; we’re all involved. Everyone who talks about this—and everyone who refuses to talk about it—is a part of this. We are all a part of this. And all I really want is for you to think about which part you’re playing.

Eternal Progression?

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Stepping_stones_across_West_Dart_-_geograph.org.uk_-_183648

Many Mormons live with the hope that their families will be together forever – such hopes are inscribed upon us in primary. We hope to live righteously and faithfully so that we can all make it to the celestial kingdom together. Many, at one point or another, experience the fear that a family member might go astray and forsake the straight and narrow, disqualifying themselves from the celestial kingdom.

What are we supposed to do, how should we react? We endeavor to be all the more devout in regards to our religious practices in hopes that our goodness can somehow affect those we love. Religion, which we had hoped would be the anchor of our family ends up sinking it in storm tossed seas. The bonds in which we had put so much faith have fractured. The grief and pain many feel is beyond comprehension as they try to understand what the consequences will be – will mothers and fathers be forever separated from their children, children their parents, siblings divided from siblings by great gates?

Many have dreamed of the possibility to progress from one kingdom to the next – that if we were not perhaps ready to receive all that we could have received by the end of this life, that we might still have the opportunity to become ready in the hereafter. There are also many who reject the idea out of hand and say it is a heresy and an abomination – though not all who reject this notion do it out of anger. However, it is often the voice which is fueled by outrage and indignation is louder than the voice of quiet hope. Where does this indignation come from?

In Luke chapter 15 we read the story of two brothers and their father. The elder brother in this story becomes angry and bitter when his brother, returning from a riotous (“sinful”) life, is greeted with celebration and festivities.

“And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment…  But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.  And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.”

The elder brother isn’t as much upset that the prodigal son has come home as he is that he has lived a life of obedience and seems to profit no more from it than his brother who has lived a life of sin. However, what the elder brother does not seem to realize is the pain and suffering which his younger brother, the prodigal son, endured as he gathered experiences from the life style which he had chosen. The older brother was never driven to the point of starvation where he would look on with envy as pigs were given more to eat than he, but rather was constantly a participant in the bounty and love of his father. The older brother did not recognize that suffering is sin’s constant companion however well it may conceal itself; we must not heap more punishment upon those who have already endured pain we know not of. We must ask ourselves who are we most akin to in this story; the younger brother, the elder, or the father? Why do we choose to live the life we do? Is religion a tool to grant us our treasures in heaven or is religion a tool to teach us to have heavenly desires?  Do we see righteousness as a way to secure greater accolades or do we hope to weave acts of habitual goodness into our moral tapestry?

Another parable found in Matthew 15 highlights this principle:

So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.  And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house.” The master of the vineyard then responds, “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?”

The laborers of the Vineyard who had been working all day did not expect more because they thought they deserved more money for their work, but because they believed they deserved more than those who had worked less. They believed themselves to have become more worthy through their works that they might be recipients of the Master’s mercy. They had become so fixated and concerned with their own standing and desires for mercy that they had forgotten how to sympathize and be joyous for others who were also in need of the Master’s mercy – a position that they themselves were in not so long ago. How quick we are to become the servant who was forgiven much but forgave little (Matthew 18:21-35). The question then isn’t if we are able to receive God’s mercy, but if we are changed by His mercy – do we desire an even more abundant out-pouring of mercy for our enemies (for if ye love them which love you, what thank have ye?).

Which of us, when partaking of the sacrament, is truly worthy of that broken body which we remember and that sacred blood which for us was spilt. It isn’t solely the act of taking sacrament which cleanses us, but the desire to partake of the sacrament. Worthiness isn’t a status to achieve or an object to obtain, but rather it is found within the desires of our hearts and soul. Worthiness is found in the desire to repent and to become something heavenly. And though it is said that faith without works is dead, works without faith is equally dead.

C.S Lewis asks a question in his book, The Great Divorce, “Is Judgment not final? Is there really a way out of hell into Heaven? There have been many who have spoken with conviction that there is indeed hope of eternal progression which is only halted by our own desires. J Reuben Clark once said,

“I am not a strict constructionalist, believing that we seal our eternal progress by what we do here. It is my belief that God will save all of His children that he can: and while, if we live unrighteously here, we shall not go to the other side in the same status, so to speak, as those who lived righteously; nevertheless, the unrighteous will have their chance, and in the eons of the eternities that are to follow, they, too, may climb to the destinies to which they who are righteous and serve God, have climbed to those eternities that are to come.” (J. Reuben Clark, Church News, 23 April 1960, p. 3)

President Clark believed that within the eternities and eons of time, progression and change are possible. Joseph Smith believed that a spirit in the lowest kingdom “constantly progresses in spiritual knowledge until safely landed in the Celestial”1 and Brigham Young believed that those who don’t inherit the Celestial Kingdom “would eventually have the privilege of proving themselves worthy and advancing to a celestial kingdom but it would be a slow process”.2

I believe that just as agency is eternal, so is progression; that progression only ceases when desires to progress cease. As long as there is more knowledge to be obtained then possibility to change exists – and that is only made possible through the atonement. President Packer once commented, “I repeat, save for the exception of the very few who defect to perdition, there is no habit, no addiction, no rebellion, no transgression, no apostasy, no crime exempted from the promise of complete forgiveness. That is the promise of the atonement of Christ.” 3

“There are only two kinds of people in the end” says Lewis, “those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’” 4 God will not force any in to heaven, that choice is ours. And it isn’t simply a choice of relocation, but a choice of repentance and becoming. As Mormon clearly says in chapter 13, “Do ye suppose that ye could be happy to dwell with that holy Being, when your souls are racked with a consciousness of guilt[?]” This life and this moment now is the best time to truly become disciples of Christ and to weave patterns of righteousness into our own very being. It is here, in the space of faith and doubt allowed to us by the suspension of knowledge through the veil that we are truly able to choose that which we desire to believe and desire to become. God has allowed us the freedom of choice not to test what we will do, but to allow us the freedom to act and believe according to our own beliefs and to learn where those beliefs lead.

 

———————————————————————————————————–

In case there are questions about the post regarding Elder Bruce R. McConkie’s well known address, I give the following thoughts.

Foremost it is important to recognize this following tidbit of information, “President Kimball was not doctrinaire, and he felt a need to intervene in doctrinal matters only when he saw strong statements of personal opinion as being divisive. Elder McConkie’s talk at BYU on “The Seven Deadly Heresies” implied he had the authority to define heresy. Among other things, he denounces as heretical… the idea of progression from kingdom to kingdom in the afterlife… President Kimball responded to the uproar by calling Elder McConkie in to discuss the talk. As a consequence, Elder McConkie revised the talk for publication so as to clarify that he was stating personal views”. Among with a few other changes, McConkie added to the end of his talk, “every person must choose for himself what he will believe.” [5]

I don’t claim to know McConkie’s thoughts or reasoning behind his conviction of this thought being a heresy – but I’ve come to reconcile his words with another truth. Believing that there is progression in the eternities to come could dissuade many from seeking to emulate the character of Christ in this life. However, if this thought were to be a truth and it served to dissuade us from choosing a life in pursuit of emulating Christ, then our spiritual maturity is much like the elder brother of the prodigal son. If only the fear of not being able to progress in the future and only being able to progress now is what roots us in the Gospel and teachings of Christ, then we have missed the meaning of those teachings entirely. The Gospel isn’t given to us to save us from future pain and misery (though that is a byproduct) but to help us choose now, this day, to become more like our heavenly parents and to know how we can work on accomplishing that goal. Importantly, the gospel isn’t there to incentivize us to do good out of the fear of being damned or for the sake of more blessings, but out of love and devotion – charity is the center of Christ’s teachings.

 

 

Sources

  1. (Franklin D. Richards, “Words of the Prophets,” CHL.; Charlotte Haven, 26 March 1843, “A Girl’s Letters from Nauvoo,” The Overland Monthly96 (Decemeber 1890): 626 http://www.olivercowdery.com/smithhome/1880s-1890s/havn1890.htm credit for Michael Reed).
  2. Brigham Young, in Wilford Woodruff Journal, 5 aug 1855
  3. “The Brilliant Morning of Forgiveness,” Ensign, November 1995
  4. The Great Divorce
  5. Edward L. Kimball, Lengthen Your Stride: The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 101

 

 

True Motherhood and True Fatherhood

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Father and Child - Small

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

The talk that struck me the most this week was Elder A. Theodore Tuttle’s The Things that Matter Most. He began his talk with an excerpt from a Deseret News article about how racing greyhounds, which are trained to chase a fake rabbit around the track, don’t even know what a real rabbit looks like. According to the editorial Elder Tuttle quoted:

We chase social pleasures on a glittering noisy treadmill—and ignore the privilege of a quiet hour telling bedtime stories to an innocent-eyed child. We chase prestige and wealth, and don’t recognize the real opportunities for joy that cross our paths.

This immediately reminded me of Jonathan Haidt’s book The Happiness Hypothesis. In the book, Haidt—a social psychologist we often cite here at Difficult Run because of his work on Moral Foundations Theory—distills important lessons from a variety of world philosophies through the lens of psychology. According to Haidt (writing in a followup book), “One of the greatest truths in psychology is that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict.”[ref]The Righteous Mind, page 27[/ref]

In The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt talks about the rider (the conscious, deliberate, rational side of our minds) and the elephant (the intuitive and emotional side of our minds). As an intuitionist, Haidt puts a lot of emphasis on the intuitive sides of our nature (the elephant). He underscores how important our intuition is (even to logical, analytical thinking) and also highlights how sophisticated our intuitive natures are. However, there are drawbacks, one of the most important of which is this:

The elephant cares about prestige, not happiness, and it looks eternally to others to figure out what is prestigious. The elephant will pursue its evolutionary goals even when greater happiness can be found elsewhere.[ref]The Happiness Hypothesis, page 101[/ref]

The elephant is the product of evolution and natural selection. It cares about prestige because status—in primates—is what provides access to reproduction. It doesn’t care about happiness or fulfillment because happiness and fulfillment are, from a genetic perspective, kind of beside the point. This is why the pursuit of prestige—nice job, nice car, nice house—is so irresistible. It’s embedded in our biological natures. And it’s a treacherous trap, as Haidt points out, because pursuit of prestige is always a zero-sum game.[ref]In game theory, a zero sum game where any player can only win what they take from another player. That is why it is a “zero sum game”: the total of winnings and losings always amounts to nothing.[/ref]

If everyone is chasing the same limited amount of prestige, then all are stuck in a zero-sum game, an eternal arms race, a world in which rising wealth does not bring rising happiness. The pursuit of luxury goods is a happiness trap; it is a dead end that people raced toward the mistaken belief that it will make them happy.[ref]The Happiness Hypothesis, page 101[/ref]

Sound familiar?

Elder Tuttle then points out that the people who are most vulnerable to being trampled when our inner elephant charges off in search of status and prestige are the people we care about the most:

Our most flagrant violations, perhaps, occur in our own homes. We chase worldly pleasures and neglect our own innocent children. When did you tell stories to your children?

Every single night I pray for help in resisting this. When you’re a parent, the days crawl and the years fly. Children are miracles from God, but—like many of God’s greatest miracles—they are in danger of being overlooked and neglected.

On Sunday I taught Gospel Doctrine and we focused on the murmurings of Laman and Lemuel in chapters 16 – 18. For the first time, I noticed a very definite pattern in the slow hardening of the hearts. At first, in chapter 16, all it took was a lecture from Nephi to bring them to repentance. Later, when Nephi’s bow broke, it took the indirect voice of the Lord (through the Liahona) to bring them to their sesnse. Later, when Ishmael died, the voice of the Lord directly was required. Finally, when Nephi started to build a ship, it took a threat of physical violence to humble them. The problem wasn’t that Laman and Lemuel murmured. Everyone murmurs. It’s that their hearts grew harder with every passing trial.

But when the penultimate confrontation came it wasn’t a result of trial or tribulation. The argument that prompted Laman and Lemuel to tie Nephi to the mast of their ship for days wasn’t the result of hardship. The spark that started that fire happened when things were going well. The ship was built, the supplies were loaded, the journey was easy, and there was no hard work to do. And that was when the greatest crisis erupted. Which explains why Elder Tuttle writes:

The trials through which today’s young people are passing—ease and luxury—may be the most severe test of any age. Brothers and sisters, stay close to your own! Guide them safely! These are perilous times. Give increased attention. Give increased effort.

You want a simple example of this? Screen-time is the easiest. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not one of those families with no TV and no screens. My wife is getting her PhD in computer science and my job is in software development. My kids are expert Minecraft players and I enjoy playing Castle Crashers with them. We’ve watched Avatar: The Last Airbender all the way through twice and started it a third time. So screens can be—and are—a part of this family. But they’re also perilous. The older your kids get, the easier it is to tell them to leave you alone and have them actually do it. An infant can’t leave you alone. A toddler can sometimes, but only for a few minutes. But a 9-year old is perfectly capable of entertaining him or herself for a few hours or more. Throw in a TV or a video game console or an iPhone and you could—if you wanted—basically live in the same house as your children and never really interact with them.

That is the peril—for them and for you—of “ease and luxury.” As a parent, I have learned that the greatest tragedy is not that your kids don’t listen to you. It’s that they do. If they hear “I’m busy” often enough, or “Daddy doesn’t have time” frequently enough, the message does sink in, and then there’s no way to take it back.

These are indeed perilous times. Growth is always risky. It is always perilous as your children grow more independent and begin to take on more and more freedom for themselves. But that ordinary course of getting older is even more perilous in our society, which makes it so easy to curate digital connections and so easy to forget the flesh-and-blood variety.

And finally there is this:

The responsibility rests on the family to solve our social problems. Youth search for security. They search for answers to be found only in a good home. No national or international treaty can bring peace. Not in legislative halls nor judicial courts will our problems be solved. From the hearthstones of the homes will come the answers to our problems. On the principles taught by the Savior, happiness and peace will come to families. In the home youth will receive strength to find happiness.

As I wrote about last week, I believe this to be entirely literal. Laws and governments are a superficial veneer on society. They are important, but they are not essential. What matters more than formal institutions are the informal ones: friendships, associations, churches, clubs and—far, far and away the most important—families. This is born out be reams of social science research (another topic we cover at Difficult Run, especially Walker Wright) which underscores the empirically validated truth that stable families are the most important ingredient for stable, prosperous, safe, flourishing, happy societies. It’s not rhetoric and it’s not exaggeration. It’s the truth: the family is the one and only solution to our deepest social problems.

The world doesn’t believe this. “The world is full of foolish schemes.” Many of these schemes are attempts to root a stable society in some foundation other than families. They will not work, and—to the extent that they lead people to turn their attention away from the life-long endeavor of nurturing families—they will lead to unhappiness and suffering.

What is wanted, first and foremost, is true motherhood and true fatherhood. And, as Elder Tuttle writes, we must “face the fact that true fatherhood and true motherhood are fast disappearing.”

He doesn’t spend as much time talking about what those concepts mean. I think the world continues to have a relatively robust account of what true motherhood is about. We continue to understand, to a greater degree than with fatherhood, the dignity and importance of mothers who nourish, protect and care for their children. But fathers—especially if you judge by the bungling, incompetent depictions in popular television—are viewed more and more as auxiliary and disposable. In contrast, Elder Tuttle describes true fatherhood this way:

Fatherhood is a relationship of love and understanding. It is strength and manliness and honor. It is power and action. It is counsel and instruction. Fatherhood is to be one with your own. It is authority and example.

The line that speaks the most to me there is that “Fatherhood is to be one with your own.” I haven’t finished processing it, but it continues to resonate long after I first read it, a bell reverberating on and on in my heart, and calling attention to a message I haven’t fully received yet.

I have learned, in my marriage and in my parenting, that the messages I’ve been taught by the world about being a husband and a father range from irrelevant to insidious. I’m still learning to sift the true meaning of fatherhood from the surrounding chaff. I don’t have it all figured out, but talks like this encourage me to keep going and help guide me along my way.

—

Here are the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week:

A Bibliophile’s Thoughts on Audiobooks

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Image by Flickr user Jeff_golden. Cropped to fit blog dimensions. Click for original on Flickr.
Image by Flickr user Jeff_golden. Cropped to fit blog dimensions. Click for original on Flickr.

I love books. A lot of my happiest memories are of whiling away long summer hours reading in the backroom of my grandfather’s book store.

Covers like this one by John Berkey defined my childhood daydreams.
Covers like this one by John Berkey defined my childhood daydreams.

But for a few years in grad school, I didn’t read very much. At one point I realized it had been several months–maybe a year!–since I had read a book cover-to-cover. I decided that simply would not do, and I started reading again. (I believe that was about the time I got into Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga.) The only other period in my life when I wasn’t reading was the time before I knew how.[ref]For what it’s worth, lots of people brag about how they or their kids start reading at age 2 or 3 or whatever. If it makes you feel any better, I started reading around age 5 or so and I don’t think that I really missed a ton getting an average start. I’m not sure a lot of great works of literature are written for the pre-K demographic. Just saying: a life-long love of learning doesn’t need a precocious start.[/ref]

I stumbled upon Goodreads at about the same time, and I’ve been tracking my reviews on there ever since. I don’t really go in for the social networking aspects of Goodreads. I basically treat it as a convenient reading journal. The best part is being able to look at a chronological timeline of the books I’ve read over the last couple of years. Individual titles or covers will bring me back to places where I was–literally and metaphorically–when I read those books. And all it takes is a glance at my bring the books back to life for me, little anchors that keep me from forgetting all the places that I’ve been.

But by far the greatest change to my reading life has been my subscription to Audible.

Getting sick was never quite as bad when I knew I could stay home from school and listen to this.
Getting sick was never quite as bad when I knew I could stay home from school and listen to this.

I have always loved audiobooks. As a kid, my go-to for getting through the flu was a dramatization of The Hobbit on cassette tapes stored in a small, wooden box. Later on, I acquired a CD dramatization of The Lord of The Rings (way before the movies were out) that I also listened through a couple of times.[ref]I tried to listen to them in the car once, but my wife stomped on that pretty hard. The 70s cheesiness that I was oblivious too was intolerable for her. Oh well.[/ref] The first few Harry Potter books (this was before the last ones had come out) also helped me get through hours of tedious desk work back in the day. But back in the day, an audiobook could set you back $50 or more, easily, and there was no way I could afford that as a replacement for used books and $7 paperbacks.

Audible has changed that, however. For $15/month, you get one audiobook. That’s good, but it’s not great. In addition, however, you can buy 3 credits for about $36 (so, more books for about $12/each.) Best of all, however, are their promotions. They send out a daily deal that offers a random book for $3-5 and frequently have other sales at $5 each. Most of these books will probably not suit your fancy, but even if only 5%-10% of them do, then you’re going to be picking up at least a couple more books every month for basically pocket change. Now, the economics of buying audiobooks being to make sense!

This is the secret to how I “read” over 100 books last year, and how I plan to get through about 120 in 2016. But you might have some questions, so let’s talk about how to get the most out of your Audible subscription (or similar) along with some unexpected pros and cons.

First: learn double-speed, love double-speed

You might not even realize this, but most audiobook apps (including Audible and iTunes) have the ability to increase narration speed while keeping the narrator’s voice at a level pitch (so you don’t end up listening to chipmunks). The math here is pretty obvious: faster narration means you get through books faster. Right now, the longest book in my Audible library is Brandon Sanderson’s monstrous Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive, The), which clocks in at over 48 hours, followed by Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves (almost 32 hours) and then Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World (about 27 hours). Most books fall in a more normal range of about 12-16 hours each, however, which means that double-speed means it takes only 6-8 hours to get through a typical book. And that’s an amount of time most people can probably find in one week.

Now, if you try to skip straight to double-speed, you’re going to get frustrated and give yourself a headache. It didn’t even occur to me to speed up the tracks until a friend suggested it. I started at about 1.25x and for a while that was all I could do. Once that was natural, however, I moved up to 1.5x and, after getting used to that, I finally went all the way up to 2.0x.

It says "Speed 3x," but it lies. It is only double-speed.
It says “Speed 3x,” but it lies. It is only double-speed.

Unfortunately, that’s the fastest you can go. Don’t get me wrong, if you look at the app you will see a button that claims you can also do 2.5x and even 3.0x, but it’s a lie. They don’t actually speed up the narration beyond 2.0x. I tested this myself back in December 2014 with the iOS version and a stopwatch to confirm, and it’s true. There are no speed increases after 2.0x.[ref]I have no idea why, and the friendly Audible customer service rep did not either.[/ref]

Second: when to listen

The conventional time to listen to audiobooks is in the car, and that’s a great one. I often have to travel in from Williamsburg, VA to Richmond, VA which is about a 1-hour trip (one-way), so every time I get four hours of listening done (remember: double speed). That’s about half a novel. Not bad! But I also work from home many days, and then I’m not in the car at all. So, what are some other good times to listen? Walking the dog is a great one, especially ’cause your dog will appreciate the extra time if you’re not in a hurry to get back. Doing chores is another great one. A lot of annoying things that have to get done (like folding the laundry) become a treat if they’re also your excuse to return to a great book. One of my favorites has also been long-distance runs.

There’s a caveat here, however. Audiobooks can be addictive. I’ve gotten in trouble on more than one occasion because I’ve got headphones in my ears (while I’m doing the chores) and my wife wants to talk to me. This, as you can imagine, is a bad scenario. Anything in life can be taken too far, and audiobooks are no exception. Be sensible about it.[ref]My wife would say that I’m not one to talk, but I’m working on it.[/ref]

Third: what to listen to

I have the most fun listening to enjoyable fiction, but I’ve also found that picking up books for $2-$5 / each makes me interested in things I wouldn’t otherwise be. I’ve gotten into a lot of history this way (most recently: a biography of the Dulles brothers[ref]The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War[/ref], another of T. E. Lawrence[ref]Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East[/ref], and also a history of the Plantagenets[ref]The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England[/ref]). You can also get a lot of Great Courses through Audible, so there’s a ton of great material on anything from quantum physics (I recently listened to a short one on the Higgs Boson) to marketing or music appreciation.

Here’s another caveat, however. When I listen to really, really interesting non-fiction I often like to enter notes into Evernote. And this is where audiobooks are less than amazing. Few things in the world frustrate me more than transcribing 40 or 50 notes from an Audiobook. I’ve done this a lot, and so here are some tips.

When you want to take a note, you can just add a bookmark with a note in the Audible app. Always type a note. Often you will think that it will be obvious when you come back, but the timing of the bookmark is not exact (especially on double speed) and if you have a lot of notes or a very long book, then by the time you come back to get your notes you might have to listen to rather long portions to remind yourself of exactly what you wanted to make a note of. In fact, if the quote is short, you should just try to write the entire quote out in the note field.[ref]Obviously this doesn’t work if you’re driving. Please don’t take notes if you’re driving.[/ref] If it’s not short, at least write the first phrase of the quote. That will make it easy to find.

As for transcription: good luck. For a while I tried reducing the speed to 1x, putting the phone on speaker, holding up to my mic, and trying to let Dragon: Naturally Speaking transcribe it. Results were mixed. Dragon could pick up on a lot of the words, but not everything. It was basically a toss-up whether manually transcribing the whole thing or fixing the mistakes in Dragon’s transcription was faster. Either way, it took about 2 minutes on average for a single note, which–if you have more than a few notes–will get very frustrating.

In other words: if you have something to listen to that you suspect is going to involve a lot of underlining, highlighting, or brain-waves: get it in paper and do it the old-fashioned way.

This doesn’t mean that audiobooks have to be light. I have listened to some great literature this way, books like Angle of Repose or Gilead, but it does skew towards fiction for me and away from the most interesting non-fiction, which I still prefer to get in hardcopy (or Kindle).

One word of caution, however. The rise of self-publishing has an impact in the Audible ecosystem as well. There’s really no easy way to separate self-published books (which are often abysmal in quality) from traditionally published books (which are only sometimes abysmal in quality). My recommendation is this: If you see something that looks interesting but you don’t recognize it, look up the book on Amazon and check out the editorial reviews. NOT the customer reviews![ref]Those can be faked, and often are.[/ref] The first thing you want to look for is not what the reviews say, but who they are from. Best case? Prominent newspapers like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. Next best case? Super-famous authors. Worst case? Authors you have never heard of and/or outlets you have never heard of. It’s not a perfect way to gauge quality–obviously–but it will help you avoid the worst of the nonsense that is out there.

Fourth: did you learn anything?

Some folks will tell you that listening to audiobooks isn’t really reading. Well, sure, literally it isn’t. But I did find a Forbes article that tackled the question: Is Listening to Audio Books Really the Same as Reading? According to the article:

So on an intellectual level, is listening to a book really just as good as reading it?

Pretty much, but it depends on the type of book. Studies on electronic media consumption are still relatively limited, and the audio book genre has been “woefully unaddressed by the academic community in general,” wrote philosophy professor William Irwin in a 2009 essay.

However, even research that predates CDs suggests that reading and listening are strikingly similar cognitive processes. For example, 1985 study found listening comprehension correlated strongly with reading comprehension – suggesting that those who read books well would listen to them well, also. In a 1977 study, college students who listened to a short story were able to summarize it with equal accuracy as those who read it.

“The way this is usually interpreted is that once you are good at decoding letters into sound, which most of us are by the time we’re in 5th or 6th grade, the comprehension is the same whether it’s spoken or written,” explained University of Virginia psychology professor Dan Willingham.

That matches my experience, and so does the rest of the article which qualifies this a little bit by pointing out that some complex text can benefit from being literally read because it lets you easily skip back to re-read difficult sections. However, in my experience, it’s also true that some books are actually better when read. This really worked for Gilead, for example, because as an epistolary novel the narration was a perfect fit.

Speaking of notes, I really do recommend using Goodreads. Trying to go back and re-enter books you already read is a rabbit hole I suggest you don’t try to go down, but writing out reviews of everything you read–and recording the start and end date for each book–is a fantastic project that starts to really pay dividends within a couple of years of starting. Give it a shot.

So, have I sold you on Audible yet? Well, first let me point out to alternatives that might save you some cash. First, check with your local library to see if they let you digitally check out audiobooks. Mine does, and I was really excited. At first. Unfortunately, the particular app I had to use with my local library was the worst-designed thing imaginable. Most egregiously? No option to increase playback speed. That was a dealbreaker for me, and the library’s selection was also pretty meh. Still, you might have more luck. (I’m going to try again when we move to a new area.) Second, you can also check out iTunesU. I listened to some really great courses several years ago when that was getting started (including a fantastic overview of modern cosmology), but eventually these courses started to rely more and more heavily on video which, you know, defeats the entire purpose of an audiobook. There’s probably still a lot out there, however, and a lot is free, so you might want to check that out.

If you are interested in Audible, however, then let me make a suggestion: join Audible.

If you use that link just above to join, I get a little commission. Which is nice. But the real reason I decided to post this today is that Audible is also having a great members-only sale: $4.95 for the first book in a series. I don’t get a commission for that particular sale, by the way. I was just looking through the options, and saw some great ones. If you like sci-fi, then there are some fantastic deals. The Three-Body Problem won the Hugo last year, and it deserved it. Leviathan Wakesis the first book in a great sci-fi series that is currently running on SyFy as The Expanse.[ref]The later books are better, but the first one is solid.[/ref]. Golden Son is my favorite book of 2015. It’s not on the list, but it’s also #2 in a trilogy and the first book–Red Rising–is on the list.[ref]The last one, Morning Star, is out on audibook in 4 days![/ref] There are lots of other legitimate books on there as well. Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch) took the Hugo in 2015, for example. Revelation Space, Ringworld (A Del Rey book), and The Memory of Earth (Homecoming) are also all very good sci-fi (or, at least in the case of Ringworld, very famous sci-fi).

So, if you haven’t joined Audible yet, now might be a great time to try. And if you’re already a member, check out that sale.

Flawed Perfection

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Stormy Sea

The other day I was eating lunch with a friend and we started talking about the idea of perfection and how we understand it and approach it within our culture. He believed it to be impossible to be perfect, but that it is possible to be perfect in regards to small and simple things.

I conceded his point, agreeing that yes, there are some things that can either be definitively done or left undone. For example, I could attend all three long hours of church (which would be quite a feat) every Sunday of every week and accomplish perfect attendance.  I have now been perfect at a small task.

So I agree that there are some things that can simply be checked off – achieved or omitted. But I believe that perfection is far more intricate and goes beyond the mere scope of completing a task with wonderful consistency.  I believe perfection cannot be found except as a product of an accumulation of many things – virtues and connections with those around us. And ultimately, perfection isn’t about avoiding sin, but rather, I think, that holiness and perfection deal more with that which we include in our lives opposed to that which we exclude from them. Avoiding sin can be done by any lump on a log. It bespeaks safety, inaction, timidity, even cowardice in the face of life’s challenges. The gospel invites us to expand, not contract, our realm of experience and knowledge. The atonement hasn’t been given to only be used in cases of dire emergency like a “get me out of jail card”, rather the atonement has been given to consistently and constantly give us life and draw us closer to Christ AND our fellow man. It is to be used every day to alleviate the suffering from sin and to help us gain knowledge and, even more importantly, compassion and love. From the parable given by the Savior in Luke chapter 7, we learn that he who is forgiven much feels an even deeper love for the Savior than he who has been forgiven less. It is critical, I think, to recognize that the woman is forgiven because “she loved much”.

However, it is important to juxtapose this parable with that of the man who was forgiven a great debt by his king in Matthew 18. In this story we do not see an outpouring of love following forgiveness, but rather anger as the forgiven man refuses to excuse the meager debts of those around him. Sin by itself is never beneficial – but sin accompanied by the repentance and the healing grace of the atonement leads to more compassion and, what one friend taught me, “mercy of the fallen”.

Recently I learned a saying with which I wholeheartedly agree: the path to happiness is not found in the path of avoiding unhappiness. I believe that just as trials and sadness are necessary precursors for joy, so is sin a precursor for perfection. Sin teaches us by experience the beauty of purity, cleanliness, and being whole. Through sin we learn how beautiful our Savior’s atonement truly is – that we, despite however wretched we may be (we are all sinners), can truly be made whole after having experienced such pain of heart and soul. In that space of forgiveness, we in turn learn to forgive and to love. In essence, we cheat ourselves if we simply try to avoid sin, but we perfect ourselves when we seek to incorporate godliness and learn better how to respond to the inevitable sin in our lives.

And that’s the point – whatever it is we endeavor or seek to do, we will be found wanting in some regard. No matter how much we do or how well we perform, we can’t earn heaven. Heaven is a place reserved for those of a particular divine nature and the tasks we have been given serve as possible catalysts or stepping stones to help shape us into such a person which I feel is shown in the Lord’s statement in D&C 29, “I say unto you that all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal.” I believe those who will be best prepared in the heavens to come are not necessarily those who lived a life more devoid of sin than the other, but rather those who have learned best how to repent.

There’s a strange perverted obsession with the notion of perfection and it eats away at many of us as well as a syndrome of “sin-aversion” (but that’s a topic for another time). If not careful, such a desire to be “perfect” can lead to a sense of entitlement which one might infer from the hymn “Come, Come ye Saint” when it says, “Why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight?” In “The Great Divorce”, C.S. Lewis talks of the wonderful mercy that we are not given that which we rightfully deserve – we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of our God and have earned hell for ourselves. Yet, despite our wickedness before Him who is most pure, we are offered mercy and forgiveness upon the condition of change and repentance – sin cannot stand in the presence of God, but repentant sinners can.

It is my wish that we would seek less to become perfect and focus more on improving ourselves – our relationships with our families, friends, and communities. Just as it says in D&C 128:18, “we without them cannot be made perfect; neither can they without us be made perfect”. I don’t believe this is speaking solely in reference to our deceased, but to the relationships of the whole human family. That isn’t to say we should simply give up on the goal of perfection – but that perfection itself shouldn’t be the goal, rather, better emulating the life of Christ and His endless charity in all facets of our lives.

Now I wish to speak plainly and clearly so as not to be misunderstood. Perfection does not include sin – in the words of C.S. Lewis there can be no compromise for hell in heaven. But I think too much of our mental capacity is spent on avoiding and distancing ourselves from certain elements of this world which causes us, inextricably, to also distance ourselves from our loved ones who might be struggling, or cause others to distance themselves from us when we are struggling.

Hong Zicheng said within the Ts’ai Ken T’an, “Soil that is dirty grows the countless things. Water that is pure has no fish”. CS Lewis writes, “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to him and bad when it turns from him”. Perfection isn’t found in the absence of sin, but the seeds of perfection are found in the presence of compassion and mercy which have stemmed from sin and steered us further on to love and forgive those who will one day compose our heavenly family.

In the Expanse of Silence

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Not long ago, I found myself asking the same questions over and over, “Do other people think that too?”

For a long time, I believed that all those encompassed under the cloak of Mormonism believed the same thing. I felt the Church was unanimous in what it believed – that the leaders of the church were there to tell us all what was right to believe and that all who believed merely agreed with that which was said. It was a world of right and wrong. It was a world of doctrine and non-doctrine. It was a world of things that should be said and believed, and things that shouldn’t.

It was a simple life: go to church, read my scriptures, pray to receive the answers I knew I should receive, listen to the leaders of the church so that I might better discipline my own beliefs to be in line with that which was true. Questions were welcome in theory, but if the answers weren’t readily available, questioning seemed to require too much work and was simply left for future days to come.

“Does everyone live like this?” I asked myself. “Do people still live like this? Are people happy living such a way?” I no longer felt I could live in such a manner. Questions creeped up and wouldn’t subside. I found myself not having answers to the questions I had, but I no longer wanted to wait for future days to come. I heard the same answers, but they no longer satisfied me. Was I going astray? Was I losing my testimony, my belief? I’d ask God for the answers but I didn’t seem to hear Him speak. Did I really expect to hear answers? I doubted God would speak to me to give me an answer to my confused and uncertain questions. I wrestled with my questions and the lack of answers.

In the expanse of silence my questions became more refined and more thoughtful. God has an amazing talent of knowing when to speak and when not to speak. I’ve come to believe that much of revelation comes in the process of questioning opposed to that of receiving an answer.

This isn’t to say that the answer isn’t important, but rather that the answer brings no fruit if the soil wasn’t first properly prepared. In wrestling with our questions we are forced to really formulate and solidify what we believe or think we believe. Asking questions helps us to realize that which we do not know and leaves us in a vulnerable state from which we can learn and grow – to experience a metamorphosis of faith.

It can be frightening. What changes will we experience? Where will we be left in the end? Perhaps it’d be best to remain inside our cocoon – though we see the fractured lines running across the membranes of our tenuous faith. Uncertain of what awaits on the outside or our capabilities of coping with it; maybe we can remain within our cocoon a little longer.
I believe to ask a question is to act on faith and hope. The sole purpose of asking a question is to find a reassuring response even if we might have given up that an answer will come or that a voice will be heard.

True and genuine questions release the contents of our hearts. The soul yearns to connect with something or someone so that it can once more feel tethered to something. Questions are the soul’s attempt to reconcile that which we don’t understand with that which we hope to believe, and it isn’t until we really begin to question that we can find out what it is we truly believe or hope to believe. It’s also in the question where we can find the cords which connect us all and see the hearts of those around us.