General Conference Odyssey

So Now We Are Civilized

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Maori troops in North Africa, July 1941 (Public Domain)

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

I took the title for this post from a story that Elder Robert L. Simpson recounted in his talk, Do It:

As Sister Simpson and I walked along lower Queen Street in Auckland, New Zealand, the other day, we came to a particular place not far from the wharf. There we paused for a few moments as I related to her the incident that took place at that very spot during my first mission.

I could still see in my mind’s eye a very old Maori couple who stood at the curb with thousands of others waving farewell to the Maori Battalion as they marched down to their troop transport and off to war.

The old couple became very excited as one young soldier glanced their way with a big smile. From their Maori conversation, it became apparent that this was their great-grandson going off to war.

His would be an atomic war with sophisticated equipment capable of killing by the thousands—so unlike the Maori wars of the late 1800s that the old Maori had participated in as a young tribal warrior.

Soon the boy was gone from view, and it was then that the old man turned to his wife and said (perhaps a little cynically), “Ka tahi kua pakeha tatou,” which in effect means, “So now we are civilized.”

Elder Simpson went on to say “[t]hat old Maori great-grandfather had every right to question the true values of so-called civilization,” observing that: “Our jet age of atomic power and automatic everything can be helpful if used properly.”

That deeply ambiguous approach to technology is wise. Technology is a form of knowledge, and knowledge is power, and so technology is power: for good or for ill. The particular gadgets and gizmos of our 21st century world are unique: there have never been iPhones or drones before in human history. But every major technological advance—from the invention of fire to the invention of the printing press—has led us into the same kinds of confrontation. So we’ve got some great new power, now what?

With all the new stuff we’re getting, we should remember the ancient counsel: “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”

A final note: if you’re following along and you read this session, then you know I picked about the only non-political post from this session to write about. The other talks, almost without fail, were some of the most pointedly political I’d ever read, castigating liberals, welfare, and secularism. I’m passing over them without much comment for a simple reason: I’m not really sure what to make of them. I say this as someone who has been conservative his whole life—and remains decidedly right of center to this day—and yet while I basically agree with the comments I have to confess it’s an odd feeling to hear such strident political ideology from the pulpit.

I wrote about this last week, so I might as well reiterate: righteous avarice is my watchword. Too many, I think, make haste to bring their perspective into conformity with what they believe they are hearing and—in so doing—may miss the deeper message. Then there are those who simply write it off whatever they cannot reconcile as the mistakes of fallible leaders. Well, certainly leaders are fallible. And certainly it is generally the best practice to seek conformity with them anyway, and so I see the appeal of both approaches.

But I’m greedy, not hasty. And so I’m still doing my best to try and understand what was going on in these talks and what these political undertones mean to me today.

I haven’t figured it out yet.

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Righteous Avarice

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Domenico Fetti La Perle de grand prix (The Pearl of Great Price), Detail.

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

This week, we’ve come to the end of another General Conference. We’re closing out the April 1975 General Conference, and next week we will start with the October 1975 General Conference. Nine down; 175 (and counting) to go.

There were several really good talks this session, but there was one that really stood out for me, and that was Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s The Man of Christ. In 1975, Elder Maxwell was an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He wasn’t called as an apostle until 1981, the same year that I was born. He served in that position until his death in 2004. I’m sad to say that—although I was certainly old enough to have developed an appreciation for him by that time—I didn’t. I watched plenty of General Conferences, and sometimes individual talks had an impact on me, but I didn’t follow them closely to develop an appreciation for individual speakers over the course of years. And I’m sad, now, that I missed out on Elder Maxwell. I hope we get someone like him again, some day.

The problem I have in writing this post is that I basically just highlighted his entire talk. But if there’s one theme that I could pull out, it would be what I like to think of as righteous avarice. Righteous avarice is the refusal to pick and choose even from seemingly contradictory Gospel themes. It is the attitude that says, “I’m not sure how all of this fits together, but I intend to hold onto all of it anyway, until I figure it out.” Here, let me show you an example.

According to Elder Maxwell, the man of Christ “does not divorce the Sermon on the Mount from the sermon at Capernaum with its hard teachings which caused many to walk “no more with” Jesus.” Further:

He knows that “the gate of heaven is open unto all,” but that the Man of Galilee will finally judge each of us on the basis of a rigorous celestial theology, instead of the popular “no-fault theology” of this telestial world—for Jesus is the gatekeeper “and he employeth no servant there.”

There are plenty of people who will celebrate the cuddly aspects of Christ: turn the other cheek, do unto others, the Good Samaritan, but who will recoil from some of the harder messages that Christ also taught. They believe in a Savior who is not only gracious but also permissive, and forget that Christ also said things like, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” or that “Lord of Hosts” (e.g. lord or armies) is also one of His appellations.

On the other hand, there are also people—a smaller number, I think, but an especially hardened lot—who are too enamored with brimstone and judgment and forget that God is a love.

This is the kind of contradiction that I’m talking about. How do we simultaneously believe in a God of love and a God of judgement? And to this, righteous avarice replies: I refuse to pick just one.

There is much, much more to take away from Elder Maxwell’s talk. I just picked a personal favorite. Go ahead and read it yourself, and I’m sure you’ll find your own gems.

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Our Lives Are Our Declaration

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Here is a quote that I stole from my father a long time ago:

To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery.  It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist. – Cardinal Emmanuel Célestin Suhard

And here are the words of (then) Elder Gordon B. Hinckley in The Symbol of Christ in response to a minister who asked, “what is the symbol of your religion?”

I replied that the lives of our people must become the only meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship.

Later on, he clarified exactly what he meant by this:

As his followers, we cannot do a mean or shoddy or ungracious thing without tarnishing his image. Nor can we do a good and gracious and generous act without burnishing more brightly the symbol of him whose name we have taken upon ourselves.

And so it is in that sense that “our lives must become a meaningful expression, the symbol of our declaration of our testimony of the Living Christ, the Eternal Son of the Living God.”

“It is that simple, my brethren and sisters,” he said, “and that profound and we’d better never forget it.”

Amen.

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The Hope of Broken Men

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Some thoughts from the Priesthood session of the April 1975 General Conference. Elder Romney spoke of courage, saying, “We all have a conscience, and a conscience is the root of moral courage. A truly brave person will always obey his conscience. To know what is right and not do it is cowardice.”

This is true. And it is true—to a greater or lesser degree at different times and in different ways—for all of us. That reality makes this story—which I’m going to reproduce in full—from President Kimball’s talk all the more meaningful:

There is the story told of Lord George Hall of an earlier time. It is a mythical story. Believe it or not, but at least take the lesson if you find one there. “Lord George had led an evil life. He had been a drunkard, a gambler, and a cheat in business, and his face reflected the life he had led. It was a very evil face.

“One day he fell in love with a simple country girl to whom he proposed marriage. Jenny Mere told him that she could never marry a man whose face was so repulsive and so evil-looking; and also that when she did marry, she wanted a man with a saintlike face, which was the mirror of true love.

“Following a custom of the day, Lord George went down to Mr. Aeneas in Bond Street, London. Aeneas made waxen masks for people, and his skill was so art-perfect that the person’s identity was completely hidden. As proof of his skill, it is said that many spendthrift debtors, equipped with his masks, could pass among their creditors unrecognized. Aeneas went to his storeroom, selected a mask, heated it over a lamp, fixed it to Lord George’s face; and when Lord George looked in the glass, he had the face of a saint who loved dearly. So altered was his appearance that Jenny Mere was soon wooed and won.

“He bought a little cottage in the country, almost hidden in an arbor of roses, with a tiny garden spot. From then on his entire life changed. He became interested in nature; he found ‘sermons in stones, books in brooks, and good in everything.’ Formerly he was blasé and life had no interest for him; now, he was engrossed in kindliness, and the world around him.

“He was not content with starting life anew, but tried to make amends for the past. Through a confidential solicitor he restored his ill-gotten gains to those whom he had cheated. Each day brought new refinements to his character, more beautiful thoughts to his soul.

“By accident, his former companions discovered his identity. They visited him in his garden, and urged him to return to his old evil life. When he refused, he was attacked, and the mask was torn from his face.

“He hung his head. Here was the end of all; here was the end of his newfound life and his love dream. As he stood with bowed head, with the mask at his feet on the grass, his wife rushed across the garden and threw herself on her knees in front of him. When she looked up at him, what do you suppose she found? Lo! Line for line, feature for feature, the face was the same as that of the mask. Lines of beauty—regular features.”

There is no doubt that the life one leads, and the thoughts one thinks are registered plainly in his face.

This story embodies the hope of all who wish to be good.

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The Wall of Faith

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

There were several interesting moments in (then) Elder Ezra Taft Benson’s talk, The Book of Mormon Is the Word of God, but one line stood out to me in particular: “Every man eventually is backed up to the wall of faith, and there he must make his stand.”

The world’s view of faith is not so much wrong as it is incomplete. According to the standard secular line, you should only believe things you have evidence for. And—applied correctly—this kind of default skepticism is a healthy way of confronting life.

Ultimately, however, values come before facts. That’s going to sound post-modern or relativist, but hear me out. We know that the human mind is incredibly good at seeing what it wants to see. We have all kinds of cognitive biases—like confirmation bias, in particular—and the evidence is now pretty much insurmountable that we all believe more or less what we want to believe. Which is a way of saying: values come before facts.

But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to be slaves to our passions. Because, after all, can’t we choose to value consistency? And if we do—if we seek harmony among our own beliefs and between our beliefs and the world—than our values lead us gradually and imperfectly towards truth. Because we have chosen to value truth—through a quest to find integrity between what we believe and what we’ve witnessed—we can indirectly influence the content of our beliefs.

Maybe this seems a little too abstract, but for me it underscores this bedrock reality: everyone chooses to believe in something. The idea that you can turn over your beliefs to the evidence and let the evidence dictate facts back to you is a fantasy. The world does not interpret itself. We have to reach out—with our senses, our hypotheses, and our actions—and transform the raw material of experience and idea into cohesive beliefs.

And so—not just in some vague, philosophical sense, but in a literal sense—values precede facts and no one escapes the need for faith in something. The question is: in what?

That’s why there’s a moral component to faith. Because—at its essence—faith is not a question of what a person believes (that would be merely wishful thinking, a parody of what I’m outlining). Instead, faith is a question of why a person believes and that, in turn, is actually a reflection of what a person values.

Do you value truth, and beauty, and harmony? If so, then your pursuit of these things will—not without struggle, not perfectly, and not inevitably; but ultimately—lead you towards things that are true, that are beautiful, that are harmonious.

I got into another pointless argument—thankfully a brief one—a couple of weeks ago with an ex-Mormon with a chip on their shoulder who was insistent that—as a believing Mormon, I had abdicated my freedom to think for myself to the leaders of the Church. That, because I affirmed my covenant obedience to those leaders, I was in some sense passing the buck. That’s another fundamental misunderstanding of how faith works. As President (then Elder) Benson put it so succinctly: “there he must make his stand.”

I seek to obey the Lord. And, because He has asked me to do so, I transfer a measure of that obedience to my fallible, human leaders. But if my bishop, or my stake president, or if President Monson himself asks me to do something, my decision to be obedient—or not—is still mine. Even when I am being obedient it is a choice I am making. And so—despite all Mormons have to say about authority and following the prophet—we also understand this central reality: we each make our own stand.

We can’t avoid the need for faith; and we can’t transfer that obligation to a third party. Sartre put it crudely, but not incorrectly: “man is condemned to be free.” Viktor Frankl was more eloquent:

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

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Peter Pan, Hobbits, and Sacrifice

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Essentially all of my writing—for the General Conference Odyssey, for blog posts, in fiction that very few people have seen—is about connections. Some times, however, I don’t fully understand the connections myself. This may be one of those times.

One of the books I read recently that really stuck with me was Robert Leckie’s World War II memoir, Helmet for My Pillow. The conclusion to his book is haunting, and I want to quote some of it here:

It is to sacrifice that men go to war. They do not go to kill. They go to be killed, to risk their flesh, to insert their precious persons in the path of destruction… That is why women weep when their men go off to war. They do not weep for their victims. They weep for them as victim. That is why, with the immemorial insight of mankind, there are gay songs and colorful bands to send them off: to fortify their failing hearts, not to quicken their lust for blood. That is why there are no glorious living, but only glorious dead. Heroes turn traitor. Warriors age and grow soft. But a victim is changeless. Sacrifice is eternal.

This is the exact quote that came to mind as I read Elder Hales’ talk, A Question of Free Agency. It is one of the most unusual General Conference talks that I have ever read, even by the standards of the often-awkward first talks from the newly-called. What I found most remarkable about the talk was the bittersweet tone that pervaded it. It seems to me that many Mormons look to high leadership calling as a kind of badge of honor, a privilege to be dreamt for, but obviously that was not Elder Hales’ attitude. When he got the call—out of the blue—to give up his career and serve he was clearly devastated. As he put it, “The call was clear. I had to let go of everything that I had known and what I had been striving for in my life to become an Assistant to the Twelve.”

And so his talk touches on the law of consecration and even laying down your life:

I have learned from Joseph Fielding Smith, and have talked to young people, about the law of consecration. It is not one particular event; it is a lifetime, day by day, in which we all strive to do our best that we might live honorable lives, that we might live the best we can in the service of others, as President Joseph Fielding Smith talked about—not as his grandfather, Hyrum Smith, gave his life when he was with the Prophet, but giving our lives each day.

These are not the sentiments of a man who has achieved a life-long ambition. They are the sentiments of a prisoner on his way to the slow-motion gallows. A calling that plenty of Mormons have coveted—and still covet—was a sacrifice for Elder Hales, leading him to say, “It is not in death or in one event that we give our lives, but in every day as we are asked to do it.”

Lots of newly called leaders ask “Why me?” The question usually arises from humility: how can I live up to this great calling? But Elder Hales’ “Why me?” is more raw and visceral, much less “How can I do this?” and much more, “Why did this have to happen to me?” Thus:

One cannot ask the question “Why me?” and dwell on it. But I will do as the prophet has said, to put behind me my past life and dedicate and consecrate all my time, talents, and efforts to His work.

I think that’s why it reminded me so much of Leckie’s sentiments about sacrifice in war. I’m not equating the two; they are very different. Elder Hales said as much himself. But there is a common thread, and that thread is sacrifice. Giving up dreams. There’s one more quote that comes to mind, this one from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan,

Mrs. Darling: There are many different kinds of bravery. There’s the bravery of thinking of others before one’s self. Now, your father has never brandished a sword nor fired a pistol, thank heavens. But he has made many sacrifices for his family, and put away many dreams.

Michael: Where did he put them?

Mrs. Darling: He put them in a drawer. And sometimes, late at night, we take them out and admire them. But it gets harder and harder to close the drawer… He does. And that is why he is brave.

There’s been a lot of hubbub recently about the fact that General Authorities receive a stipend. For the most part, I consider the entire conversation unworthy of reply. (I did engage once on Facebook. Of course I regretted it.) I’ll talk about transparency and accountability—and why such principles have nothing to do with our relationship to the Church—another time. For now, let me just point out the obvious: in accepting this calling Elder Hales was not fulfilling an ambition or securing an easy paycheck. He was giving up on every dream he and his wife had had for their lives. There are very few sacrifices more precious than our dreams, and that is precisely what Elder Hales was asked to lay upon the altar. And yet he did. And then he went out and spoke before the world of the importance of consecration. He was called, and he was answered. To denigrate his service—or the service of the other General Authorities—as somehow corrupt, or unseemly, or embarrassing is foolishness. And, as the Lord told Moroni, “Fools mock, but they shall mourn.” The Lord’s “grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness.”

That’s what I see in Elder Hales’ talk, the meekness and weakness of someone whose hands shook as he lay his offering on the altar. There was nothing majestic or grandiose in his sacrifice. It was quiet and one could easily dismiss it as inconsequential compared to the sacrifices that others have made.

But I, too, have dreams. And when I think about what it would take for me to voluntarily abandon all of them, my heart quails in sympathy with Elder Hales’. He was meek. He was weak. He was definitely a hero in the Samwise Gamgee mold rather than the Aragon or Faramir mold. But when he abandoned his dreams, he became God’s.

Let the fools mock, and bear them no grudge. Elder Hales’ reward wasn’t of this Earth and—if we are able to follow his example—neither will ours.

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Reawakenings, Rituals, and Routines

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

A constant theme in several talks of the Saturday morning session of the April 1975 General Conference was spiritual transformation as a daily practice. For example, Sterling W. Sills borrowed from a previous talk to describe our rebirth(s) or “human reawakenings” (emphasis mine) Notice the plural. He notes that “no one is limited to merely two births [i.e., physical birth and baptism]…we can be born again as many times as we please. And each time we can be born better.” In one of my favorite quotes from his talk, he says,

In 1932, Walter Pitkin wrote a great book entitled Life Begins at Forty. But that is ridiculous. Life begins when we begin, and we may begin a new and better life every morning.

Someone once asked Phillips Brooks when he was born, and he said that it was one Sunday afternoon about 3:30 when he was 25 years of age, just after he had finished reading a great book. Just think how many thrilling, exciting rebirths we can have as we study the holy scriptures and as we fill our minds with the word of the Lord and get the spirit of righteousness into our hearts.

Image result for get born again gif

These multiple rebirths are meant to eventually lead us to “some future Easter morning” when “we may be born again into [God’s] presence to live with him in the celestial kingdom throughout eternity.”

The idea that rebirth is not a single event can also be found in Robert D. Hales’ talk:  “I have learned from Joseph Fielding Smith, and have talked to young people, about the law of consecration. It is not one particular event; it is a lifetime, day by day, in which we all strive to do our best that we might live honorable lives, that we might live the best we can in the service of others…” Consecration is found in the scriptures, but its covenantal form takes place within the temple. I’ll return to this momentarily.

Mark E. Peterson provides a slightly different angle to Sabbath day worship:

What can we do to protect ourselves under these hazardous circumstances? How can we better help our young people to remain unspotted from the world? The Lord gives us the answer, and says that it can be done by sincerely observing the Sabbath day. Most people have never thought of it in this way, but note the words of the Lord in this regard: “That thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world”—note these words—“that thou mayest more fully keep thyself unspotted from the world, thou shalt go to the house of prayer and offer up thy sacraments upon my holy day.” (D&C 59:9.)

In short, “we are commanded to change our usual routine and go to church and worship God on the Sabbath.” I think the comments on consecration (and, by implication, the temple endowment) and Sabbath day observance are important. These practices interrupt our daily routine–interrupt our participation in what philosopher James K.A. Smith calls “secular liturgies”–and reorient our hearts toward the kingdom of God. Our daily “cultural practices and rituals” are, according to Smith, “liturgies…We need to recognize that these practices are not neutral or benign, but rather intentionally loaded to form us into certain kinds of people–to unwittingly make us disciples of rival kings and patriotic citizens of rival kingdoms.” Mormon philosopher JamesE. Faulconer says of the temple endowment,

Those participating in Mormon temple worship do not merely hear the story told in the ritual or watch someone ritually reenact it. They take part in the reenactment, moving from place to place, performing specified actions as part of the story. Ritual participants memorialize Adam and Eve and the founding events of the Christian human narrative by reenacting the story of Creation, Garden, Fall, and life in the world…Having ritually become Adam or Eve, each celebrant finds himself or herself identified in a symbolic order given by the Father and mediated by the Son, an ordering of not just individual lives, but of the cosmos and the community, as directed by and toward God…The celebrant acts out the story and, returning to the temple to do proxy work for the dead, acts it out again and again, doing the ritual for others and becoming more and more ingrained in its celebration. In doing so he lives and relives the founding story that makes sense of human life. The celebrant ties the memorialized past of Adam and Eve to his present, making that present into something new through the memorialized link…The Mormon commemoration of Adam and Eve serves a critical function similar to the Jewish celebration of the Sabbath or of Passover: it recalls to its participants events in history that define who they are and how they should be in the world, and it does so by putting those events into a narrative of self–and communal–identity that is ordered by God. Remembering the past of the Creation and the Fall serves to assure that celebrants will live int he world in the ways required by the order of Creation and Fall. Taking part in the temple ritual, the celebrant becomes part of the divine narrative, no longer merely an individual cut off from God.

Sabbath observance can offer similar reorientation. As I’ve written elsewhere,

There are two major strands of thought found in the scriptures regarding the reasons for the Sabbath. The first largely dominates the books of Genesis and Exodus and hearkens back to the Creation. As we read in Exodus, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy…For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Ex. 20:8,11; cf. Gen. 2:2; Mosiah 13:16). Scholars have recognized for some time that the sequence and literary structure of Genesis 1 parallels that of ancient Near Eastern temple building, thus depicting the Creation as a cosmic temple (for fruitful scripture study, try comparing Genesis 1 to the building and dedication of the Tabernacle or Solomon’s temple). Within this context, God resting makes much more sense. “Deity,” explains Wheaton professor John Walton, “rests in a temple, and only in a temple. This is what temples were built for [in the ancient Near East]. We might even say that this is what a temple is—a place for divine rest.” With Genesis 1 as a temple text, it is worth noting that the Sabbath is the first mention of “holiness” in scripture and was later put on par with the temple itself: the Sabbath became a sanctuary or temple in time, while the temple became a Sabbath in space. This is why the temple and the Sabbath could be profaned in similar ways. In summary, the first interpretation of the Sabbath entails Creation, divine rest, and holiness.

The second train of thought is found mostly in Deuteronomy and the later prophets. The Deuteronomist version of the commandment reads, “Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it…And remember that thou was a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out of thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut. 5:12,15). This follows an admonition in which the entire Israelite household is told to cease from labor, including servants, foreign guests, and even animals (vs. 14). The reminder and celebration is that of liberation and the Sabbath itself acts “as an affirmation of human freedom, justice, and equality” by providing rest for all living beings. Therefore, the second interpretation is about remembrance, deliverance, and (given its connection to other practices such as the sabbatical years and Jubilee) social justice.

These rituals and practices help shape our habits and desires. As we participate in them, our daily choices and routines will change as well. Multiple rebirths will occur as the natural man slowly dies. Then we will become “saint[s] through the atonement of Christ the Lord” (Mosiah 3:19).

Profoundly Worth It

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

The talks from the Friday session of the April 1975 General Conference were not messing around. Some of these talks were the most direct, hardest-hitting that I have ever read.

In Faithful Laborers, Elder Dunn described the incredible costs borne by the early missionaries to Samoa, documenting fatality after fatality and concluding:

A price has been paid for the establishment of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the land of Samoa. It is interesting to note that much of that price was paid by little children. I suspect that there are many obscure cemeteries in many of the nations of the world similar to that little plot in Samoa. They are a mute witness to the trials and suffering that went into the beginnings of missionary work in this dispensation.

Up to this point, I was not sure where he was going with what seemed like a fairly typical talk about the sacrifices of those who went before, and how we ought to be encouraged by them, and so forth. But that was not his point at all. Elder Dunn had something much more direct in mind. He described a World War II general who, touring the front, kept asking, “Can you see them?” Finally the soldiers asked him what he was talking about, and the general explained that he was talking about the ghosts of the fallen. “They’re your buddies; they are the ones who gave their lives today, yesterday, and the day before. They’re out there alright, watching you, wondering what you are going to do; wondering if they have died in vain.”

And then Elder Dunn turned this quote—and his earlier stories of men, women, and children who died in Samoa—onto us, his audience:

I wonder, young man, how successful you would be in convincing a young father who had buried three of his babies in an obscure graveyard halfway around the world because of the gospel of Jesus Christ that a mission is too much of a sacrifice because you want to buy that car or that stereo, or you don’t want to interrupt your schooling, or for some other reason.

As members of the Church, I wonder how convincing we would be in telling someone that we are just too busy and maybe just a little embarrassed to share the gospel with our neighbor, especially if that someone were a young father who had buried his bride while on his mission and sent his little girl home to be taken care of by relatives while he finished his service to the Lord.

There is no possible reply to these questions other than to work harder, which is precisely Elder Dunn’s point.

And next we move to Elder Faust’s equally hard-hitting The Sanctity of Life. Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion throughout the nation, was decided in January 1973, and by 1975 the number of abortions was already well on its way to 1,000,000 per year, where it stayed until 2013. It’s always perplexing to me, given the Church’s clear statements on abortion, that you can still find so many Mormons who insist that legal elective abortions—that is, abortion as a method of birth control—are compatible with the Church’s teachings. This is awfully hard to reconcile with the strong language employed in this talk (and several others), where Elder Faust stated that “making it legal to destroy newly conceived life will never make it right. It is consummately wrong.” I was impressed to find that his argument referred to “insurmountable evidence” that unborn children are distinct from their mothers, concluding that

One of the most evil myths of our day is that a woman who has joined hands with God in creation can destroy that creation because she claims the right to control her own body. Since the life within her is not her own, how can she justify its termination and deflect that life from an earth which it may never inherit?

And for those pro-choice Mormons resting their hopes on the separation of private morality from public legality, he states flatly that “These and all others are entitled to a defense in their unborn, natural state of existence.”

Of course it’s possible to argue that the “defense” he speaks of is purely about voluntary persuasion, but that dog won’t hunt. For starters, find me the pro-choice Mormon who is out in front of abortion facilities trying to use persuasion to erect such a voluntary defense. The reality is, the leaders have done all but spell out in black and white: “elective abortions should not be legal,” and if they took that last step and did spell it out, so what? Pro-choice Mormons would ignore that, too.

And now we come the last talk of the session, Elder L. Tom Perry’s moving tribute to his wife, titled simply, A Tribute. I don’t like tributes, generally speaking. I don’t like it when folks bear their testimony of their spouses or friends over the pulpit instead of testifying of Christ. I confess I don’t even like the frequent statements of brotherly love between the apostles. Call me a grumpy old man if you must, but the best I can muster for these tributes is begrudging tolerance.

Elder Perry’s talk was in a different category. Not just because it was particularly moving, although it was, but because his tribute was an exemplar of gospel teaching. I have had to give a blessing telling someone that it was OK for them to go. It took me two tries, however, because I was too afraid to say the words the first time. I cannot imagine having to say them in a blessing for my own wife, as Elder Faust did.

And yet, this is how he concludes:

“And it shall come to pass that those that die in me shall not taste of death, for it shall be sweet unto them.” (D&C 42:45–46.)

I understand this scripture now as never before. Even though there is great loneliness without her, her passing was sweet because of the way she had lived.

In tribute to her today, I recommend to you her way of life. I watched service consume pain. I witnessed faith destroy discouragement. I have seen courage magnify her beyond her natural abilities. I have observed love change the course of lives.

This was the hardest week for me yet to keep up with the General Conference Odyssey I helped to launch. I’ve never finished the talk, written my own piece, and published the post all so late in the day. I have only an hour to spare.

But—hard as it was for me to accomplish the goal this week—it was profoundly worth it.

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Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!

The Lord Delights

by
Ananias restoring the sight of Saint Paul by Pietro De Cortana (Public Domain)

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Some General Conference talks hit me with such unexpected force that I can never be sure if there is something particularly forceful in the talk, something especially resonant in the hour, or some coincidence of circumstance that makes it stand out so clearly from the other (also good) talks of the session. I can’t explain it, but it’s what happened when I read Elder Marion D. Hanks’ talk, Trust in the Lord. I hope I can share a couple of reasons why I loved it so much.

The Lord delights to bless us with his love.

The idea that there is a God who not only does bless us with love, but who delights to do so is arresting. It reminds me of a quote from Jonathan Haidt that has always stuck with me:

Although I would like to live in a world in which everyone radiates benevolence towards everyone else, I would rather live in a world in which there was at least one person who loved me specifically, and whom I loved in return. (The Happiness Hypothesis, page 131)

Specificity is vital, and it goes both ways. God is not merely some generic, omnibenevolent abstraction. God is a title that refers to persons, like Jesus Christ and His Father, and they recognize and love each of us individually. This simple idea, that “The Lord delights to bless us with his love,” can pass by unnoticed like just another ornate phrase, but you should stop and really consider what it means. There is a person out there who sees you, who loves, and who is positively delighted to be able to bless your life.

But Elder Hanks’ talk is not all sunshine, and that is what made me love it all the more:

The power that remade Paul, that poured in love and washed out hostility and hate, did not save him from the great travails, from Nero’s dungeon or a martyr’s death. Christ lived in him, he said, he had found the peace of God that passed all comprehension. Nothing, not tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, death, life, angels, principalities, powers, things present, things to come, height, depth, nor any other creature, could separate him from the love of Christ… Christ died on a cross, and won his victory; his disciples and followers also have been subject to the brute forces and foibles of this world, yet through enduring faith they have shared and will share in that victory.

The Problem of Evil is confounding, and yet I find that religion is never deeper, or more beautiful, or more vital than when it confronts this problem head-on. The idea of a loving God seems so absurd in contrast with a world full of tragedy, war, disease, and disaster. And yet, doesn’t the idea of a God being executed and hung on a cross seem just as absurd? The world mocked Christ and misunderstood His supreme victory as an ignominious defeat, confusing the end of His life with the beginning of our hope. This is a mistake we’ve made before.

Elder Hanks is not speaking theoretically, nor in the abstract:

I am not really thinking in the abstract, but I’m thinking of many noble souls who have met difficulties with courage, like my mother and many others who had little to rely upon—who had little but ingenuity and will and courage and faith. I’m thinking too of a more recent scene—a beautiful young face whiter than the hospital sheet upon which she lay, her sorrowing parents nearby grieving, as a relentless disease consumed her life. Comfort came to them in the quiet knowledge of the nearness of a Savior who himself had not been spared the most keen and intense suffering, who himself had drunk of the bitter cup.

It is awful what some of us are asked to go through. And—in terms of principles like fairness or justice—it is just as awful that so many of us are inexplicably not required to pay the same high price. I don’t think I could ever love or even respect any leader—including a God—who asked their followers to go through what they were not willing to do. But Jesus is not the kind of leader. Jesus did not shy from the shadows; he walked through the deepest shade.

This talk is more than a meditation on suffering and joy and darkness and light. It is a stirring and humble call to action:

We know that the Lord needs instruments of his love. He needs a Simon Peter to teach Cornelius, an Ananias to bless Paul, a humble bishop to counsel his people, a home teacher to go into the homes of the Saints, a father and mother to be parents to their children.

This is one of those talks that makes the General Conference Odyssey worth it for me. No matter how hectic and stressed my life becomes, my soul needs testimonies like these.

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Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!

The Home Is Our Peculiarity

by
Hancock homestead, July 23, 1910 (Public Domain)

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

With the Sunday afternoon session of the October 1974 General Conference, we’ve come to the end of our eighth general conference. It’s hard to believe that we started this Odyssey way back in December 2015. There were several talks that I really liked from this session, but the one I’m writing about is President Spencer W. Kimball’s Ocean Currents and Family Influences.

The central metaphor is right in the title: “Currents have much more power to control its course than the surface winds.” President Kimball urges us to develop powerful currents in our homes:

I have sometimes seen children of good families rebel, resist, stray, sin, and even actually fight God. In this they bring sorrow to their parents, who have done their best to set in movement a current and to teach and live as examples. But I have repeatedly seen many of these same children, after years of wandering, mellow, realize what they have been missing, repent, and make great contribution to the spiritual life of their community. The reason I believe this can take place is that, despite all the adverse winds to which these people have been subjected, they have been influenced still more, and much more than they realized, by the current of life in the homes in which they were reared. When, in later years, they feel a longing to recreate in their own families the same atmosphere they enjoyed as children, they are likely to turn to the faith that gave meaning to their parents’ lives.

But here’s the line that stood out to me the most:

My brothers and sisters, the home is our peculiarity—the home, the family, is our base…family life, home life, children and parents loving each other and dependent upon each other. That’s the way the Lord has planned for us to live.

It connected two different themes: the family and being a peculiar people. In addition to President Kimball’s talk, President Hinckley’s talk (A City Set Upon a Hill) and Elder Victor L. Brown’s talk (The Blessings of Peace) also talked about being “a peculiar people.” In what sense are we becoming a peculiar people? Well, as the world goes in one direction, the Church will refuse to go along. And, apparently, a central point of divergence will be the family.

Something to keep in mind in coming years.

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Check out the other posts from the General Conference Odyssey this week and join our Facebook group to follow along!