General Conference Odyssey

The Unchanging, Changing Church

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Photo of General Sherman by Jim Bahn
Photo of General Sherman, the largest living organism, by Jim Bahn.

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

The first talk in the priesthood session of the April 1973 General Conference was The Aaronic Priesthood MIA by Elder Victor L. Brown. Even after reading the talk, I really have no idea what the program was, and I couldn’t even tell you if it’s still in force. (Some parts of it seemed familiar, others less so.) It’s a very odd feeling, to read a talk given nearly a decade before I was born about a bold, new program that I’ve never heard of.

It made me think of Mosiah 26, when

there were many of the rising generation that could not understand the words of king Benjamin, being little children at the time he spake unto his people; and they did not believe the tradition of their fathers.[ref]Mosiah 26:1[/ref]

Even though Alma and Mosiah’s lifetimes were only separated by a couple of decades from their children, the separation of a single generation was enough to create a wide chasm in their worldview. Alma and Mosiah’s children had to rediscover their own faith.

And it’s the same for us: every generation has to rediscover many of the truths and relearn the lessons that their parents’ generation already discovered and learned. It’s so easy to think that—because we’re members of the same Church our parents were members of—we understand the things that they did. Perversely, the complacent assumption that we get it is one of the biggest stumbling blocks that holds us back from actually going out and discovering and learning what we don’t yet know.

There’s a sense in which the Church is always the same. It’s right there in our Articles of Faith: “We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive Church.” [ref]Articles of Faith 1:6[/ref] But there’s also a sense in which every generation—and every single individual and family—has to recreate or rediscover the Church for themselves not just once, but again and again throughout their lives.

The Church—when you think of it as the actual members—changes when those members change. It also changes in reaction to the surrounding culture. That’s what prophets are for, after all, to warn the people of present problems. If society didn’t change—and if the Church didn’t need to change its programs and policies and emphases in reaction—then we wouldn’t need continuing revelation and an open canon.

The mission and the doctrines do not change, but the policies and the members do. The twin imperative of stasis and change may seem contradictory, but here’s how I think about it: It’s our job to sink our roots deep so that we can grow.

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

Desire, Ponder, Pray

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

I’ve missed the last couple weeks and this one will be short, but I thought Marion G. Romney’s talk in the April 1973 Priesthood session had some sound advice on magnifying our calling (and ultimately our discipleship). The three necessities he lists are:

  1. “a motivating desire to do so.”
  2. “search and ponder the words of eternal life.”
  3. “pray.”

Romney stresses the need for proper desires: “The desire these men were to have was not a desire to be called to an office. It was a desire to take upon themselves the name of Christ “with full purpose of heart.”” He expounds, “No one should seek to be appointed to any particular office in the Church. Such an aspiration is not a righteous desire; it is a self-serving ambition. We should have a motivating desire to magnify our callings in the priesthood, whatever they may be. We should demonstrate that desire by living the gospel and diligently performing whatever service we are called upon to render. Holding a particular office in the Church will never save a person. One’s salvation depends upon how well he discharges the duties of the service to which he is called.” But desire is not “a mere wish. It is not impassive; it is a motivating conviction which moves one to action.” This in turn leads one “to search and ponder the words of eternal life.” Sensibly enough, Romney finds, “Since we cannot “live by [the words which] proceedeth forth from the mouth of God” unless we know what they are, it is imperative that we study them. This the Lord has directed us to do.” He notes the difficulty of teaching the principles of the gospel (see D&C 42:12) without knowing what they actually are. This study leads to pondering, which Romney views as “a form of prayer. It has, at least, been an approach to the Spirit of the Lord on many occasions.” Finally, Romney concludes the list: “Desiring, searching, and pondering over “the words of eternal life,” all three of them together, as important as they are, would be inadequate without prayer. Prayer is the catalyst with which we open the door to the Savior.”

I find the habit of scripture reading without serious study or reflection to be odd. While habits and rituals are important, to approach the scriptures as an item on a list of things to do to reach the celestial kingdom seems to me to miss the point. The scriptures contain wisdom about the human condition, human nature, and God’s interaction with these two elements. The scriptures are both incredibly human and divinely inspired. We should wrestle with them, immerse ourselves in them, question them, challenge them, be changed by them. They are not magic incantations that will suddenly make you more spiritual. They are full of hard truths, cosmic myths, and glorious hope that must be chewed and digested if they are to be nourishing.

This trilogy seems to be a reinforcing cycle: as one’s desire increases, so will the searching, pondering, and praying, which will in turn increase desire. The last part–pray–is something I need to work on though. If one spends time reading and pondering, but fails to open up the channels of communication, one could miss out on even greater spiritual knowledge and inspiration.

Maybe that’s why I haven’t been translated yet…[ref]I also want to call attention to James E. Faust’s talk “Reaching the One” in which he offers compassion and empathy for those singles in a family-oriented church.[/ref]

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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 Greatest Tricks the Devil Plays

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Detail of The Temptation of Christ by Ary Scheffer. (Public Domain)
Detail of The Temptation of Christ by Ary Scheffer. (Public Domain)

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

It is not often that you hear someone share a testimony of the existence of Satan, but that’s exactly what was so striking about Elder David B. Haight’s talk on the Power of Evil. Towards the end he said plainly, “I bear witness this day that the devil is real. I have felt of his influence.”

Which raises the question: why? Why is it important to know this? Mormonism is, generally speaking, a relentlessly optimistic faith. We have very strict rules, but we don’t generally hear a lot about brimstone. The motivation is generally love rather than fear. And so it’s possible to ask—if we already have such strict standards and an emphasis on hope—does it really matter if we talk about the devil?

Well, in one sense, not that much. After all, this is the first talk that has focused on that topic that I’ve ever read. Clearly it’s not our primary emphasis and it won’t ever be.

But on the other hand, the topic was worth bringing up, and Elder Haight’s talk explains why:

Unfortunately, along with much of the world, some of our loved ones are influenced by false prophets, false Christs, and modern movements of spiritualism. Some have become victims of satanic influences because they do not understand or realize the power of the adversary who knows human weaknesses and is ever present.

The reason some are led astray is especially that “the current wave of permissiveness in many areas of our lives is being encouraged by false interpretations of our true, basic, moral principles.” I wasn’t alive in the 1970s, but I’d hazard a guess—based on what I know of the time period and what I’ve read from these talks—that the notion of agency and individual freedom was one thing that led people astray. The same kinds of mistakes are happening today.

But we have to resist the temptation to take a talk like this and morph it into something along the lines of “my political adversaries are devils; my political allies are angels.” If there’s one thing I’ve observed, from following the interplay of politics and morality, it’s the that devil knows how to play both sides of the spectrum. When anti-federalist militia members took over a federal building in eastern Oregon earlier this year, they included flags quoting the Title of Liberty and even one individual who identified himself as Captain Moroni. It’s hard to think of a clearer example of “false interpretations” of Mormonism.[ref]I picked this example because Mormons are famously politically conservative, so I wanted to show that they can be led astray in that direction as well.[/ref]

What it comes down to for me is that we should apply prophetic teachings to ourselves rather than to others. Nephi said that he “did liken all scriptures unto us,”[ref]1 Nephi 19:6, emphasis added[/ref] not that he related scriptures to their enemies. The same principle applies here. Elder Haight’s talk is a warning to examine our own convictions, our own beliefs, and our own actions. A reminder that the devil can lead even the righteous astray is an opportunity for humility and self-reflection. We must be discerning, and tribalism–political or otherwise–is blinding.

There’s a saying that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Perhaps the second-greatest trick is letting the world believe that he does exist, but convincing them that he’s always on the side of their enemies.

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To Bear Our Trials More Beautifully Than We Ever Dreamed

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More details Sculpture of Atlas, Praza do Toural, Santiago de Compostela. (Photo by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez)

Sculpture of Atlas, Praza do Toural, Santiago de Compostela. (Photo by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez)

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

As I was reading the Saturday morning session of the April 1973 General Conference, I realized that there are seven sessions for this GC! They had two each on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and then the priesthood session. That’s hardcore!

The talk that stood out the most to me was (then) Elder Monson’s Yellow Canaries with Gray on their Wings. It centers, as so many of his talks always do, on a story. In this case, an elderly woman passed away and left her two beautiful canaries to others, but left her favorite—a canary with gray on its wings—to Elder Monson, writing in a note: “He is my favorite. Billie looks a bit scrubby, and his yellow hue is marred by gray on his wings… He isn’t the prettiest, but his song is the best.”

The symbolism is straightforward, but that’s not actually what drew my attention. This is:

Can we not appreciate that our very business in life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves? To break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our todays, to bear our trials more beautifully than we ever dreamed we could, to give as we have never given, to do our work with more force and a finer finish than ever—this is the true: to get ahead of ourselves. [emphasis added]

This is one of those quotes that contains a confounding, counterintuitive twist that you won’t even notice if you’re not paying close attention. The idea that we’re competing against ourselves and not against others, that our struggle is to improve rather than to win, is as true as it is familiar. I just gave this advice to my little kids after they were disappointed with their placement in their very first swim meet. But between those bookends is something rather unconventional, the aspiration “to bear our trials more beautifully than we ever dreamed we could.”

Shifting from beating someone else to beating our own past selves is totally conventional (and very good advice), but who out there really aspires to bear trials in any sense? Overcome trials, sure. Avoid trials, even more so. But to accept trials, to bear them, and to find excellence in the endurance of them? I don’t think it’s something we generally consider.

A friend asked me the other day what I’d learned from the GCO thus far, and I mentioned a few of the things that have stuck out repeatedly (first, the consistent teachings about the family going back nearly a half century and second, the surprising gentleness of a lot of the teachings), but I forgot to mention a third that I’ve just started to pick up on: a lot of the kinds of nuance that some folks complain about not hearing from our leaders is there. The role of common sense in obedience, the importance of exceptions to the rules and—in this case—the important realization that being righteous doesn’t get you out of troubles.

Because that’s the implication, right? If sincere disciples pray to “bear our trials more beautifully” then clearly discipleship isn’t exclusively about avoiding trials (by, for example, avoiding sin and thus the painful consequences) or even overcoming trials (by, for example, having faith to be healed).

If we really embraced this, then the endemic judgmentalism that often infects our wards—a kind of small town, everyone-knows-everyone’s-business consequence of our tightly integrated communities—would be nipped in the bud. If we really understood this, then a lot of the disappointment and even bitterness that happens when faithful members can’t understand why—after doing basically whatever they’ve been taught to do—life throws tragedy, failure, and disappointment in their path.

One of the common responses my parents get to their books (like The God Who Weeps and The Crucible of Doubt) is something along the lines of, “Well, that’s wonderful and lovely, but I don’t recognize it as the Mormonism I was taught growing up.” Culturally, there’s a lot of truth to that. Culturally, Mormonism has its problems because it’s a human culture. But, theologically, a primary goal of my parents is to unearth truths and teachings that have been there all along.

When we make good choices, we do avoid a lot of unnecessary heartache and pain. When we have faith, we can overcome a lot of obstacles that would otherwise be insurmountable. But no one should assume from these two statements (which are true) that making good choices and having faith makes life easier. It’s like they say: the reward for work well-done is more work. There are two simple reasons for that. The first is that the object of our mortal lives is to grow, and we can’t grow by just doing things we already know that we can do. The second is that, quite frankly, there just aren’t ever enough good people to go around. It’s not like there is a deficit of hard work for us to take on. If we understand this, then our expectations for what we get out of discipleship are going to be radically different. Not lower, necessarily, although it might seem like that at first, but different.

If this teaching seems novel, it shouldn’t. It’s right there. It’s been there all along, baked into our scriptures (with their emphasis on progression and growth) and it’s also in the words we hear in General Conference, such as (also from this talk): “to live greatly, we must develop the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and triumph with humility.” Again, the clear implication is that a great life is going to have trouble and disappointment. There’s no avoiding them.

Just in case this sounds a bit depressing to anyone (what’s the point, if you’re just going to end up with trouble and disappointment no matter what?) here’s a little analogy I thought of. Imagine a hard-working child learning math. Over years of public school and into college, they move on from basic arithmetic, learn some algebra, eventually get into geometry, and then take on calculus and even real analysis and group theory. If this student has good teachers, then at every step along the way they are challenged. Perhaps, in terms of grades, this student is a B+ student from start to finish. That means that they are failing, on average, at 15% of the time (give or take). There is trouble. There is disappointment. There is failure. It never goes away.

And yet, looking back, this young person can see how much they have gained, trouble and disappointment and failure notwithstanding. By the time this young person has become proficient in differential equations, of course they could go back and do high school geometry more or less perfectly. But how pointless would that be?

That’s why sincere discipleship doesn’t spare us troubles and trials, disappointment and failures. Because—just as with school—the point is to be challenged.

And that is why, following President Monson, the dream of bearing our trials more beautifully is, itself, a beautiful dream.

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Reason and Truth Rattling Around My Brain

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Għallis Tower in Malta. Copyright H.J.Moyes (harry@shoka.net) Sept 2005.
Għallis Tower in Malta. Copyright H.J.Moyes (harry@shoka.net) Sept 2005.

The concluding talk of this Friday afternoon session was (then) Elder Ezra Taft Benson’s, “Watchman, Warn the Wicked,” and it was a powerful talk that I think will resonate with a lot of issues that we’re facing today. But as I looked back on the passages that I’d highlighted from these talks, there was a quieter theme that tugged at my attention.

“We are to reason as intelligently as we are able,” said Elder Bruce R. McConkie in Upon Judea’s Plains. “We are to use every faculty and capacity with which we are endowed to proclaim the message of salvation and to make it intelligent to ourselves and to our Father’s other children.” He goes on, “But after you have reasoned and after you have analyzed, you have got to stand as a personal witness who knows what he is saying.”

I like this “yes, and” approach to the alleged reason/science vs. faith/religion conflict. “Yes, and…” is the cardinal rule of improvisational comedy.[ref]I co-MCd an improve comedy group in high school.[/ref] The idea is that responding to someone else’s suggestion with a no kills the performance. You can’t ever say no in improv. Instead, you accept what someone says and add your own contribution. In this way, the communal creation incorporates the individual perspectives of the players and the whole—if all goes well—is greater than the sum of the parts.

For me, this is an ideal approach to the apparent conflicts we will see as we seek to construct a worldview incorporated modern prophets, ancient scripture, and our own moral sense and reasoned positions. I believe that the truth towards which we’re striving is generally above any of the alternative views we see down here, and that has two major implications. First, we shouldn’t be too concerned with either/or selections between different interpretations or explanations of apparent contradictions. Second, we should keep the entire endeavor of human intellectual reason in its place: part of the story. Not the whole story. And thus, Elder McConkie’s call to “reason as intelligently as we are able” but then to seek out and then stake out “a personal witness” resonates with me very deeply.

I was also struck by some comments of Elder John H. Vandenberg in his talk The Agency of Man. He said that “When reason is joined with truth, there is convincing logic that sets up the path in our hearts that leads upward and onward to a nobler life,” and also that “Reason is only compatible with truth. Error and evil, no matter how one may try to reason with it, still remain error and evil leading to chaos.”

That last one is really stuck in my brain, rattling around like a mysterious broken piece inside an electronic device. It means something, but I’m not exactly sure what.

I’m generally skeptical of the Enlightenment’s worship of rationalism. Like Jonathan Haidt, I’m an intuitionist. In that, when it comes to how humans actually think and believe and behave, rationality is neither a good model nor a useful goal. Reason—by which I mean the application of the rules of logic—seems to be an essentially valueless and therefore amoral and empty approach. It is, in my view, just a tool. A tool that can be used for good or for ill.

But that’s not what Elder Vandenberg has in mind. His view is much more pro-reason. Maybe he and I are thinking of slightly different things. Maybe my suspicion of reason is, itself, an overcorrection to the modern world’s excesses.

The most important statements of these General Conference talks are the ones that are the plainest and the most oft-repeated. Savior and home. That is the core. That is where our attention and our priorities should be. No one-off statement, or even one-off talk—is going to revolutionize my epistemological worldview at a stroke. That’s not how this works.

On the other hand, I don’t just discard or ignore what I can’t immediately process. It will go on, rattling back and forth with the other odds and ends, until one day it clicks into place.

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Doubts & People

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Keeping it short this week with a few quotes that stood out to me.

Bruce R. McConkie’s talk touched on “two commissions—on the one hand to teach the doctrines of the gospel, and on the other hand to testify by personal knowledge that we know that the things that we are proclaiming are true—” that, in his view, lead to “two premises”:

On the one hand we are obligated and required to know the doctrines of the Church. We are to treasure up the words of eternal life. We are to reason as intelligently as we are able. We are to use every faculty and capacity with which we are endowed to proclaim the message of salvation and to make it intelligent to ourselves and to our Father’s other children. But after we have done that, and also in the process of doing it, we are obligated to bear testimony—to let the world know and our associate members of the Church know—that in our hearts, by the revelation of the Holy Spirit to our souls, we know of the truth and divinity of the work and of the doctrines that we teach.

He explains that he does not mean to “minimize in any degree or to any extent the obligation that rests upon us to be gospel scholars, to search the revelations, to learn how to reason and analyze, to present the message of salvation among ourselves and to the world with all the power and ability we have; but that standing alone does not suffice…We have to put an approving, divine seal on the doctrine that we teach, and that seal is the seal of testimony, the seal of a personal knowledge borne of the Holy Ghost.” I’ve briefly written on doubt elsewhere and I think we need to be very careful with what I call “I knowism” in the Church. The tension between increased learning or continual revelation and spiritual certainty is a paradox within Mormon culture. There has been an increasing amount of pastoral works on dealing with doubt within Mormonism over the years, but unfortunately I think most are only aware of popular Church publications that disparage doubt. Some even use President Uchtdorf’s plea to “doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith” as nothing more than a battering ram against doubters meaning “you can’t have doubts.” While I agree with McConkie’s premises of knowing the doctrine (which is itself a slippery term, but I won’t go into that) and bearing testimony of it, I think we need to be careful not to overprescribe the need for intellectual certainty. As I’ve been reading through James K.A. Smith’s How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, this profound insight by Taylor should be taken into consideration when we discuss knowing and belief:

A society is secular insofar as religious belief or belief in God is understood to be one option among others, and thus contestable (and contested). At issue here is a shift in “the conditions of belief.” As Taylor notes, the shift to secularity “in this sense” indicates “a move from a society where belief in God is unchallenged and indeed, unproblematic, to one in which it is understood to be one option among others, and frequently not the easiest to embrace”…It is in this sense that we live in a “secular age” even if religious participation might be visible and fervent.[ref]Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, pg. 20.[/ref]

The cultural conditions (at least in the West) are different than that of ancient times. Approaches to how we discuss belief and spiritual knowledge may need to be too. Nonetheless, study with the Spirit. And then testify of what you’ve learned.

Moving on.

Elder Paul H. Dunn highlights a similar point made by author Michael Austin last year at By Common Consent:

We [Latter-day Saints] pride ourselves on making sure that everybody in our community has a calling, or a well- defined place–one that both facilitates, and constrains, one’s interactions within the community. The highly correlated nature of both the Church’s organization and its curriculum means that most people in it have a pretty good idea what they are supposed to do in their callings, what they are supposed to teach in their classes, and how they are supposed to interact when they visit each other’s homes.

The downside of all this organization is that it is entirely possible to confuse categorical relationships for real human connections. One is moderately important to program development; the other is the main reason we exist.

Home teaching, visiting teaching, fellowshipping, and curricular correlation are valuable programs, but programs aren’t the same thing as relationships. We must be careful not to mistake one for the other—to think that somebody who has been through training has been educated, or that somebody who has been assigned a visiting teacher now has a friend. Perhaps the greatest obstacle to the development of meaningful human connections is the belief that, through our institutional attachments, we already have them. It is a simple and ordinary belief, to be sure, which is precisely why it is so terrible.

Elder Dunn confirms this line of thinking when he states, “I understand from what the Lord has revealed to us through the prophets that people are his greatest concern…Programs, then, wonderfully inspired programs, like the Sabbath, exist to help people. If we are not careful, it is very easy to put the mechanics of the program ahead of the person. Jesus was constantly trying to put the spirit back into the letter of the law. Our first priority, I feel, as parents, leaders, and teachers should be the individual within the home or Church program.”

Never forget the point of the program is people.

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

“In the Kingdom of Our Heavenly Father No Man is a ‘Nobody.’”

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

A couple months ago, I wrote a post for Times & Seasons on the personal meaning of the Atonement. I boiled it down to one major message: I’m worth something. I rest this largely on the evangelical favorite John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” In an ancient world full of mischievous, flawed, and often indifferent gods, the idea of deity sacrificing on behalf of mortals (not the other way around) could be seen as somewhat jarring. As New Testament scholar Craig Keener explains,

Although John’s portrait of divine love expressed self-sacrificially is a distinctly Christian concept, it would not have been completely unintelligible to his non-Christian contemporaries. Traditional Platonism associated love with desire, hence would not associate it with deity. Most Greek religion was based more on barter and obligation than on a personal concern of deities for human welfare. Homer’s epic tradition had long provided a picture of mortals specially loved by various deities, but these were particular mortals and not humanity as a whole or all individual suppliants to the deity. Further, deities in the Iliad have favorite mortals, debating back and forth who should be allowed to kill whom. But they do not knowingly, willingly sacrifice themselves (though some like Ares and Artemis are wounded against their will); Hera and others back down when threatened by Zeus, and even limit their battles with one another on account of mortals (cf. Il. 21.377–380). Achilles complains that the deities have destined sorrow for mortals yet have no sorrow of their own (Il. 24.525–526). By this period, however, popular Hellenistic religion was shifting away from traditional cults toward personal experience, bringing more to the fore a deity’s patronal concern for his or her clients. Thus a few deities, especially the motherly Demeter and Isis, are portrayed as loving deities. Jewish tradition often stresses God’s abundant, special love toward the righteous or Israel…John, however, emphasizes not only God’s special love for the chosen community (e.g., 17:23), but for the world (cf. 1 John 2:2; 1 Tim 2:4; 2 Pet 3:9)…[I]n Johannine theology God’s love for the “world” represents his love for all humanity…[T]hat God gave his Son for the world indicates the value he placed on the world.[ref]Craig S. Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 568-569.[/ref]

I was pleased to hear Elder Ashton in his April 1973 talk[ref]I wasn’t really in the mood to listen to talks building up the importance of Church leadership, especially since the leader in question is Harold B. Lee. I just finished rereading the chapter “Blacks, Civil Rights, and the Priesthood” in Greg Prince’s David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism in which Lee plays a major role in blocking initiatives to lift the priesthood ban prior to the 1978 revelation. As Lee’s “daughter confided to a friend, “My daddy said that as long as he’s alive, [blacks will] never have the priesthood,” a prediction that proved to be correct” (Prince, Wright, David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, 64). Faith-promoting fluff like Elder Perry talking about how he has “watched [prophets] armed with the Holy Ghost as a constant companion, taking on enormous work loads at an age when most men would be confined to rocking chairs, and engaging in strenuous travel schedules with great enthusiasm to be anxiously engaged in building the kingdom of God” is of little interest to me (especially when you consider the history of Church Presidents being too ill in the latter years of their lives to really run the Church).[/ref] echo this important truth. After relaying a story in which he helped a friend reach his wedding in the midst of a Utah snowstorm, Elder Ashton shares,

My friend—we will call him Bill—expressed his deep gratitude with, “Thank you very much for all you did to make our wedding possible. I don’t understand

why you went to all this trouble to help me. Really, I’m nobody.”

I am sure Bill meant his comment to be a most sincere compliment, but I responded to it firmly, but I hope kindly, with, “Bill, I have never helped a ‘nobody’ in my life. In the kingdom of our Heavenly Father no man is a ‘nobody.’”

…I am certain our Heavenly Father is displeased when we refer to ourselves as “nobody.” How fair are we when we classify ourselves a “nobody”? How fair are we to our families? How fair are we to our God?

We do ourselves a great injustice when we allow ourselves, through tragedy, misfortune, challenge, discouragement, or whatever the earthly situation, to so identify ourselves. No matter how or where we find ourselves, we cannot with any justification label ourselves “nobody.”

As children of God we are somebody. He will build us, mold us, and magnify us if we will but hold our heads up, our arms out, and walk with him. What a great blessing to be created in his image and know of our true potential in and through him! What a great blessing to know that in his strength we can do all things!

According to Elder Ashton, “”I am nobody” is a destructive philosophy. It is a tool of the deceiver.” Perhaps even worse is the labeling of others as “nobody”:

Sometimes mankind is prone to identify the stranger or the unknown as a nobody. Often this is done for self-convenience and an unwillingness to listen. Countless numbers today reject Joseph Smith and his message because they will not accept a 14-year-old “nobody.” Others turn away from eternal restored truths available today because they will not accept a 19-year-old elder or a 21-year-old lady missionary or a neighbor down the street because they are “nobody,” so they may suppose. There is no doubt in my mind that one of the reasons our Savior Jesus Christ was rejected and crucified was because in the eyes of the world he was blindly viewed as a “nobody,” humbly born in a manger, an advocate of such strange doctrine as “Peace on earth, good will toward men.”

Commenting on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Elder Ashton remarks,

Please weigh the impact of the father’s response once more. He saw the son coming; he ran to him; he kissed him; he placed his best robe on him; he killed the fatted calf; and they made merry together. This self-declared “nobody” was his son; he was “dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”

In the father’s joy he also taught well his older, bewildered son that he too was someone. “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” Contemplate, if you will, the death—yes, even the eternal proportions—of “all that I have is thine.” I declare with all the strength I possess that we have a Heavenly Father who claims and loves all of us regardless of where our steps have taken us. You are his son and you are his daughter, and he loves you.

Do not allow yourself to be self-condemning. Avoid discouragement. Teach yourself correct principles and govern yourself with honor. Appropriately involve yourself in helping others. As we develop proper self-image in ourself and others, I promise you the “nobody” attitude will completely disappear. Ever remember wherever you are today within the sound of my voice that you are someone.

This flies in the face of some LDS interpretations in which the prodigal son “loses his inheritance”and, while “forgiven,” will likely only merit a lower kingdom. This fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the parable. As New Testament scholar Arland Hultgren notes,

What is so striking in [the father’s] dealings with each of the sons is that he extends unconditional love prior to repentance–indeed, even apart from repentance on the part of either son. To be sure, the younger son comes home (but that does not in itself indicate repentance…), and he makes a fine speech that sounds like repentance. But the twin facts that (1) he knows he can go home and (2) the father runs and embraces him before any speech is even allowed — these two points illustrate the father’s love as unconditional prior to –indeed, apart from — repentance. And with the unconditional love is total forgiveness. In the case of the older brother, in spite of his contemptuous comments to his father and about his brother, the father assures him that all he has belongs to him still. There is no need for the son to apologize for his harsh words to the father. According to the father, the bond between them has not been severed. The attitude of the father toward his sons is not determined by their character, but his.[ref]Arland J. Hultgren, The Parables of Jesus: A Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 86.[/ref]

I wanted to address Ashton’s talk prior to that of Elder Simpson largely because I think the two work well together, but work best when read in reverse order. Elder Simpson focused on Christian living; on the lifestyle that should come about when you recognize that there are no “nobodies.” He reminds us of the Savior’s love for each and every one of us:

It has been truthfully said that the Savior is even more concerned for our success here in mortality than we ourselves are, the reason being, of course, that he has greater capacity for concern and love than do we mortals. He also has a superior knowledge of the gospel plan and man’s potential in God’s divine, eternal scheme. As stated by one prophet, God’s work and glory is achieved through our attainment of immortality and eternal life. (See Moses 1:39.)

He then lays out how we tap into this potential:

Before the foundations of this earth were laid, a glorious decision was made allowing you and me to be our brother’s keeper. By faith and service we would be able to achieve a degree of glory in the hereafter suited to our Christlike efforts and our Christlike attainments.

Adversity, heartache, bitter disappointment, grievous transgression, and disability are but a few of the obstacles that beset the inhabitants of this world. Few, if any, escape. None would have to linger in despair for long, however, if man could just bring himself to heed that one great teaching recorded in the 25th chapter of Matthew.

“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

“Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” (Matt. 25:35–36.)

Then the righteous answered, stating that not once had they found him hungry or thirsty or a stranger; and then the Savior’s classic teaching: “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” (Matt. 25:40.)

This requires not merely monetary concerns. One of the plagues of modern American political ideologies is that both have incomplete theories of the poor and afflicted. One side simply throws money at a problem, while the other wants to rely wholly on incentives and self-reliance. Yet, Elder Simpson recognizes a more complete approach:

Every success story of the past year has been the result of special effort on the part of people who cared. They cared enough to give some time and to be sincere and compassionate; in other words, to follow the great example set by the Savior. The only joy that is comparable with the joy of the one receiving the help is the glow that seems to emanate from the one who has given so unselfishly of his time and strength to quietly help someone in need. The Savior did not seem to be so much involved in giving money. You will remember that his gifts were in the form of personal attention, in performing an administration, and in sharing the gifts of the Spirit. In fact, it was the Savior who said: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. …” (John 14:27.) We could add to peace the gift of love, the gift of immortality, the gift of eternal life, the gift of understanding, the gift of compassion, the gift of eternal justice. All of these gifts are beyond monetary consideration and could well be our gift to someone sometime, if we weren’t “too busy.” 

…No man can become “perfect in Christ” without a deep, abiding, and sincere concern for his fellow beings. This example…from James [2:15-16] cites physical needs. However, there are also emotional problems about us in every direction. Loneliness and discouragement, for example, are two of Satan’s most effective tools against us.

Simpson concludes,

If this life’s effort is to be justified, then there should be a major and continuing attempt to justify or, in other words, to conform our actions with the example of the Master. The central theme of his mortal span was purely and simply serving those about him. He fulfilled an eternal truth which should be a part of your life and my life. “And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant.” (Matt. 20:27.)

If our life’s effort is to be sanctified or, in other words, ratified by the standards of eternal truth, then our actions must be in harmony with the sanctifying principles of the gospel, which most certainly includes sincere concern for others and a concerted effort to alleviate their problems.

Leadership in the Kingdom

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Charlton Heston as Moses.
Charlton Heston as Moses.

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

The Friday morning session of the April 1973 General Conference had a remarkably clear trajectory over the course of its five talks: a smooth change of focus from the leaders to the “nobodies” of the Church.

President Harold B. Lee began, in Strengthen the Stakes of Zion, by stating that “the greatest of all the underlying reasons for the strength of this church is that those who keep the commandments of God are 100 percent behind the leadership of this church.” Following that talk. Elder Theodore M. Tuttle (in What is a Living Prophet?) observed that:

It is an easy thing to believe in the dead prophets. Many people do. For some mysterious reason there is an aura of credibility about them. It is not so with the prophet who lives among us, who must meet life’s everyday challenges. But it is a great thing to believe in the living prophets. Our salvation is contingent upon our belief in a living prophet and adherence to his word. He alone has the right to revelation for the whole Church. His words, above those of any other man, ought to be esteemed and considered by the Church as well as by the world. One day this truth will be understood.

And finally, continuing the theme of emphasizing leaders but shifting more to the concerns of the rank and file members, Elder L. Tom Perry described (in Consider Your Ways) how he had:

watched [the leaders] armed with the Holy Ghost as a constant companion, taking on enormous work loads at an age when most men would be confined to rocking chairs, and engaging in strenuous travel schedules with great enthusiasm to be anxiously engaged in building the kingdom of God. Then by observation, the realization has come to me that this great Spirit that blesses them in their activities is not a special gift to them alone, but is available to all mankind if they will but be partakers and earnestly seek it and be humbly guided by it. [emphasis added]

Emphasis on leadership within the Church is not my favorite doctrine nor my favorite cultural aspect of Mormonism. I have never been a very good follower. That is, to a great extent, why I set out on the General Conference Odyssey to begin with: to offset my innate contrarian personality. But I do appreciate the necessity of leaders for the institutional Church and—more than that—the unique Mormon theology that works to combat (to the extent that we pay attention to it) humanity’s innate fixation on hero worship and hierarchy.

Revisiting the talks I quote just now, President Lee’s discussion of a leader’s role is unconventional:

The great responsibility that the leaders and teachers in the Church have is to persuade, to direct aright, that the commandments of Almighty God will be so lived as to prevent the individual from falling into the trap of the evil one who would persuade him not to believe in God and not to follow the leadership of the Church.

Emphasizing persuasion (rather than obedience or command or compulsion) is more than just a softening of the traditional ideas of authoritarian leadership, it radically shifts the obligation away from followers and on to leaders. This is a profoundly service-oriented model of leadership.

Elder Tuttle had a similar sentiment, writing that it is the “right and responsibility of the prophets to counsel the Saints” (emphasis added). I believe that within the Mormon emphasis on leadership and conformity there is also a kernel of subversion. To lead, within the Church, is not the same thing as what we typically expect from leadership in business, or in government, or in the military.

And so we come to the last two talks of this session. In “Go, and Do Thou Likewise”, Elder Robert L. Simpson makes two points that further deepen the Mormon idea of leadership. First, referring to the greatest leader, he writes that “the Savior is even more concerned for our success here in mortality than we ourselves are.” This an echo of the uniquely Mormon teaching that God’s work and glory is “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” The kind of leadership that President Lee described—a leadership of calling and enticing rather than commanding and compelling—is God’s own form of leadership.

Elder Simpson goes farther, however. Not only is there a connection (service) between leadership of Christ and the leadership that our prophets and apostles strive for, but all of us are engaged in this same program. This isn’t some kind of exclusive responsibility of formal leaders. The difference between someone with a formal leadership calling and someone without one is a difference of degree, not of kind. Thus, “Before the foundations of this earth were laid, a glorious decision was made allowing you and me to be our brother’s keeper.” In other words: we’re all responsible for influencing (for good or ill) each other, and formal leadership within the Church hierarchy is just one specialized example of the general concept of interdependent influence.

According to Elder Simpson, the most important thing is not some kind of abstract leadership of organizations, but rather concrete concern for singular individuals. Thus: “No man can become “perfect in Christ” without a deep, abiding, and sincere concern for his fellow beings,” and finally:

There are those who associate high calling in the Church with guaranteed rights to the blessings of heaven, but I wish to declare without reservation that the ultimate judgment for every man will be on the simplest terms, and most certainly on what each has done to bless other people in a quiet, unassuming way.

All of this prepares the way for the final talk of the session, In His Strength by Marvin J. Ashton. Elder Ashton begins with a story about all the trouble he and many other people went through to help Bill get married on time despite an impending blizzard. Bill said thank you to Elder Ashton and added, “I don’t understand why you went to all this trouble to help me. Really, I’m nobody.”

Elder Ashton’s reply was both stern and loving: “Bill, I have never helped a ‘nobody’ in my life. In the kingdom of our Heavenly Father no man is a ‘nobody.’” Elder Ashton went on:

I am certain our Heavenly Father is displeased when we refer to ourselves as “nobody.” How fair are we when we classify ourselves a “nobody”? How fair are we to our families? How fair are we to our God?

And then he stated flatly:

I declare with all the strength I possess that we have a Heavenly Father who claims and loves all of us regardless of where our steps have taken us. You are his son and you are his daughter, and he loves you.

In this way, Elder Ashton has completed the shift from an emphasis on formal leadership in the beginning of the talk to the fundamental concerns of Christian religion at the end: love of individual sous, each of which has great worth in the sight of God:

God help us to realize that one of our greatest responsibilities and privileges is to lift a self-labeled “nobody” to a “somebody,” who is wanted, needed, and desirable.

My unease with hierarchy and authority is not the kind of thing that will evaporate in a day, a month, or even a year. In fact, there are aspects of that unease that should not disappear, because the conventional model of hierarchy and authority is one of inequality and coercion. The work I am engaged in is disentangling the counterfeit, worldly model of leadership from the true model of leadership in the kingdom.

This is tricky work, because the true model of leadership is something that you will never see reflected perfectly in any of our leaders here on Earth. As much as we might love and respect the Lord’s chosen leaders, they are mortals just like us, striving in their flawed way towards an ideal that can’t be reached in this life. But—through the example of the Savior and through the teachings of prophets—we can catch glimpses of that ideal.

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A Little Weird is the Best Case Scenario

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There Is Too Much, Let Me ExplainThis post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

We’ve come to the last session of the October 1972 General Conference, and it was a very strong session. Elder James A. Cullimore’s talk Home Teachers – Watchmen Over the Church ought to be required reading for pretty much everyone in the Church. I’ve never seen such a powerful, thorough explanation of what home teaching is all about.[ref]The talk also contained several quotes that further strengthen my two-fold sense that (1) family has always been central to the Church and (2) the Church is for families rather than vice versa. For example: “as the Church is concerned, the same order exists within the families as God set it up originally with Father Adam. And this same order will extend into the eternities.”[/ref]

Elder Marion D. Hanks also had some profound remarks in Every Man in His Own Place. Here’s my favorite:

The lost sheep should have an anxious shepherd seeking him. The lost coin must be searched for. The prodigal who comes to himself and turns homeward will find his Father running to meet him. Thus taught the Lord.

He also told the story of how rebel soldiers at the Battle of Missionary Ridge were pushed from their impregnable defenses by a Union advance that was actually weak and disorganized because:

The soldiers… were so isolated from each other that they had lost touch with each other. They could not hear their leaders through the din. Plainly visible to them were the large numbers of the enemy coming up the hill to attack them. Feeling alone and frightened, a few individual defenders panicked and surrendered and were soon joined by large numbers of their fellows. The battle was lost. They were not cowards; they thought they were alone.

That’s one of my primary motivations for writing (about the General Conference Odyssey or anything else that I write), because I often get the sense that there are people out there who feel that something is amiss with the trend the world is taking, but who also feel alone. I want them to know that they aren’t. So I write.

I was also struck by the humility of Elder Rex D. Pinegar’s talk (188 words) as well as Elder L. Tom Perry’s (177 words). President Harold B. Lee’s concluding talk also had some really memorable moments, such as this one:

I was at Manti, Utah, some years ago. As we came out of the Saturday night leadership meeting, there was a heavy snowstorm. As we drove to the home of the stake president, he stopped his car and turned back to the temple hill. There the lighted temple was standing majestically. We sat there in silence for a few moments, inspired by the sight of that beautiful, sacred place. He said, “You know, Brother Lee, that temple is never more beautiful than in times of a dense fog or in times of a heavy, severe storm.”

Just so, never is the gospel of Jesus Christ more beautiful than in times of intense need, or in times of a severe storm within us as individuals, or in times of confusion and turmoil.

But the one that stuck with the most was Live Above the Law to be Free by Elder Hartman Rector, Jr. In it, he taught two important principles. First, he taught that we should make our own rules that go above and beyond the minimum requirements based on “past experience and your own particular weaknesses.” Second, he taught that we should never forget that such private rules are “your own addition” and should never be “mixed up with the law.” I thought it was a pretty beautiful—and sensible—compromise between good intentions and the dangers of stereotypical pharisaism.

He also talked about the connection between loyalty and honesty:

Loyalty is akin to honesty; and if you are not honest, you are really not much good. You are no good to yourself because you lie to yourself. This is called rationalization, but it is really just lying. You are no good to your friends because they cannot trust you. You are no good to the Lord because he cannot use you—unless, of course, it would be as a bad example. If you make a mistake, all is not lost. You can always be used as a bad example.

That’s a lighter version of what he had said earlier in the talk, “Everything, no matter how dire, becomes a victory to the Lord.”

I had two conflicting feelings as I started to write this post. First, I really did enjoy this session immensely. Second, I couldn’t help but think of how crazy I must appear to some of my friends (if they’re paying any attention) for spending this much time reading religious sermons from the 1970s. It reminds me of when, while on my mission, we were visited by Elder Ballard and my friend said, “Can you imagine a group of 20 year-old guys getting this excited to hear an old man come and talk about religion?”

He was right on both counts. It was weird, by the standards of the world. And we really were excited. But that’s just part of the authentic Christian experience, isn’t it? We are, best case scenario, a little weird.

Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. – Paul (1 Corinthians 3:18)

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“That Is How Christ Feels, and So Should We”

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Over at Times & Seasons, Nathaniel responded to the recent tragedy in Orlando by addressing some of the claims that the one’s religious (specifically Mormon) upbringing could cultivate less empathy for the victims because of their sexual orientation:

One of the most important scriptures we have as Mormons is the seventh chapter of Moses in which Enoch beholds God weep. Enoch asks, “how is it thou canst weep?” God’s reply is long, starting in verse 32 and ending in verse 37. It is not short of harsh language, discussing the sins of those who would perish (“they are without affection, and they hate their own blood”) but concluding, “wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer?”

The Doctrine and Covenants states plainly that “the worth of souls is great in the sight of God,” and that value is independent of righteousness or sin. And that’s a good thing, because we are all sinners. There is no dividing line between technical sinners (good, church-going folks who make inconsequential mistakes now and then) and real sinners. There is just one group, and we’re all in it together, and there’s no justification for trying to figure out a pecking order.

We should mourn for the innocent victims of the horrific shooting in Orlando every bit as much as the innocent victims of any other mass shooting: the prayer group gunned down in Charleston, the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary or—God forbid—our own Mormon brothers and sisters if a mass shooting ever takes place at one of our ward buildings or temples. When their children suffer, Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother and the whole heavens weep. They don’t see a difference between one group and another. Who are we to claim sight where God Himself is blind?

This made reading Elder Hanks’ October 1972 Conference address this week all the more moving:

Christ’s commission was clear, and it seems to me that through him our commission becomes clear, that we are so to live that through him and his love we may be lifted up by the Father to enjoy the consequences of our convictions and our decisions.

We are here to love God and to keep his commandments, to live with an integrity that will merit our own self-respect and the respect of our loved ones and make us worthy for the companionship of the Spirit. We are here to love and serve our fellowmen, to reflect in our own lives daily our true convictions as to the priceless value of the individual child of God, to live with joy in a way worthy of the sons of God, to become the manner of men that he is.

He taught us very clearly the worth of souls and that they are very great in the sight of God. The lost sheep should have an anxious shepherd seeking him. The lost coin must be searched for. The prodigal who comes to himself and turns homeward will find his Father running to meet him. Thus taught the Lord.

Recently a stake president told of his visit, with others, to a Junior Sunday School class. When the visitors entered they were made welcome, and the teacher, seeking to impress the significance of the experience for the youngsters, said to a little child on the front row, “How many important people are here today?” The child rose and began counting out loud, reaching a total of seventeen, including every person in the room. There were seventeen very important persons there that day, children and visitors!

That is how Christ feels, and so should we.

May we all remember this on a regular basis.[ref]There were some other noteworthy quotes. Hanks touches on a similar theme to James K.A. Smith’s rejection of humans as “brains on a stick”: “No young person who is truly involved in the warmth of the kingdom need ever feel that he has no place to go and no one who is genuinely concerned about him. No one of them should ever fall for the false proposition that a human being can have his mind unbraided from his heart, sinews, and spirit—the rest of him conveniently stored away while the mind is disciplined and filled like a silo with grains of knowledge—and then the whole braided together again, with the expectation that the individual will now function in the moral, ethical, spiritually strong way we would like in our teacher or doctor or carpenter or lawyer or banker or son-in-law.”

Thomas S. Monson touches on the importance of work: “[Youth] is the training period when busy hands learn to labor—and labor to learn. Honest effort and loving service become identifying features of the abundant life…Such hands are clean hands. Such hearts are pure hearts.” And later: “Whether he be a skilled surgeon, a master craftsman, or a talented teacher, [a father’s] hands support his family. There is a definite dignity in honest labor and tireless toil.”[/ref]

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