Religion

Ignorance Is Not a Virtue

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This is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Nathaniel quoted from Elder Haight’s talk, saying, “Modern man must replace uncertainties and doubt with a desire to know more of Jesus.”

I thought this went hand-in-hand with Franklin D. Richards’ talk on testimony:

[T]o obtain a testimony one must have a real desire to know the truth and must be willing to exert considerable effort.

The interested person must study the gospel, and the gospel is to be found primarily in the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price, the four standard works of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In this dispensation the Lord has counseled us to “seek … out of the best books words of wisdom: seek learning, even by study. …” (D&C 88:118.)

Jesus said, “… know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32.)

I feel sure that part of this freedom Jesus refers to must be freedom from ignorance, as ignorance is a deterrent to happiness, growth, and development.

Through study of the scriptures we can understand our relationship to God and how the basic gospel principles apply to our daily lives. Our study, however, should be constant and intensive, for the gospel of Jesus Christ embraces all truth.

Hugh B. Brown once wrote,

We should all be interested in academic research. We must go out on the research front and continue to explore the vast unknown. We should be in the forefront of learning in all fields, for revelation does not come only through the prophet of God nor only directly from heaven in visions or dreams. Revelation may come in the laboratory, out of the test tube, out of the thinking mind and the inquiring soul, out of search and research and prayer and inspiration. We must be unafraid to contend for what we are thinking and to combat error with truth in this divided and imperiled world, and we must do it with the unfaltering faith that God is still in his heaven even though all is not well with the world.

As much as the scriptures warn against “the learned [who] think they are wise” (2 Nephi 9:28), modern leaders also preach against ignorance. The difficulty is finding the balance between continual learning and intellectual humility. Nonetheless, it should be clear that ignorance is not a virtue.

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The Opposite of Uncertainty

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Modern man must replace uncertainties and doubt with a desire to know more of Jesus.

This statement, from Elder Haight’s talk What Does Jesus Mean to Modern Man?, has been stuck in my brain for days now. It confounds expectations. Certainty is the opposite of uncertainty, right? But we can’t manufacture certainty.

Or rather, we can, but it’s a terrible idea. Manufacturing certainty preempts faith and precludes growth. Pretending to know—when really you don’t know—is worse than blind belief, it’s like gouging out your spiritual eyes. Real conviction is not something we claim. It’s something we’re given. And—like any blessing—it’s not the kind of thing that we are necessarily given right away, the moment we ask for it.

And so if you are struggling with doubt and uncertainty, you can’t just replace them with knowledge and certainty because you want to. So, from a practical standpoint, what can you do?

I can think of no better approach than what Elder Haight suggests.

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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 Vision of All: Review at Worlds Without End

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Image result for the vision of all spencerPhilosopher Joseph M. Spencer has already made some incredibly impressive contributions to Mormon Studies, including Book of Mormon research. For example, his An Other Testament is one of the most engaging and enlightening books on the Book of Mormon I have ever read. And yet, his latest from Greg Kofford Books–The Vision of All: Twenty-five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi’s Record–surpasses it. Spencer is one of the most careful readers of scripture in Mormon Studies and this book puts his skill on full display. While a stellar combination of close textual analysis, biblical scholarship, and theology, Spencer nonetheless makes the subject(s) accessible to a wider audience by writing in lecture format rather than a line-by-line commentary (which he believes “gets dull fast and alienates most readers”). Spencer spends multiple chapters dissecting the sections of Isaiah quoted in the Book of Mormon and follows them up with how various prophetic voices within the Book of Mormon–namely Nephi, Lehi, and Jacob–interact with Isaiah’s text. One of the major strengths of Spencer’s analysis is his willingness to let the different voices (and textual variants thanks to Royal Skousen’s work) speak independently, even if they are sometimes in conflict. He also allows Isaiah to speak for Isaiah, placing his writings in their proper historical context (he mentions the problem of Deutero-Isaiah, though he doesn’t necessarily seek to resolve it).

“[T]he whole point of Nephi’s record,” according to Spencer, “is to get us to read Isaiah carefully” (pg. 47). But why? Spencer beautifully summarizes:

The purpose of the Book of Mormon, according to Nephi’s vision, is to refocus Christianity on its Abrahamic foundations, to restore to Christianity the idea that the Gentiles aren’t a kind of replacement Israel, but that they’re to be grafted into the everlasting covenant that’s still vouchsafed to Jacob’s children…Take a look at what the very title page of the Book of Mormon has to say about its primary purpose. It’s “to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel how great things the Lord hath done for their fathers, and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever.” …It’s this vision of the Book of Mormon’s purpose (to save Christianity from itself!) that drew Nephi’s attention to Isaiah. Nephi found…the most brilliant available biblical explanation of the complex relationship between covenantal Israel and non-covenantal Gentiles. The book that bears Isaiah’s name is nothing if it isn’t a kind of systematic attempt to make sense of Abraham’s covenant in the richest way possible (pg. 11).

The Vision of All is easily one of the best books in the genre. Not only is it top-notch scholarship, but it’s also a profound and enriching theological treatise on the role of the Restoration in covenantal history as well as an implicit call to the responsibilities associated with this role. In short, it is a reminder of why we study the scriptures in the first place.

I recently penned a more detailed review of the book over at Worlds Without End (I pretty much borrowed everything above from it). Check it out and be sure to pick up Spencer’s book, which came out today.

UPDATE: You can listen to a podcast with Spencer discussing Isaiah at LDS Perspectives.

The Paths We Walk

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

One of the most memorable of the talks I’ve read so far was Lost Battalions, which I read near the start of the General Conference Odyssey. The talk was by (then) Elder Thomas Monson. He has been serving as an apostle since 1963, when he was just 36 years old. That’s longer than I’ve been alive by almost two full decades. And yet because (to be perfectly honest) I haven’t paid such close attention to GC talks in the past, I’m only now beginning to get a real feel for his voice. And there’s more to it than just “tells stories.”

His talk for this week was called The Paths Jesus Walked, and it was filled with a lot of the same pathos as his earlier talk about the Lost Battalion. He described how Jesus walked the paths of disappointment, temptation, and pain. Not exactly cheery stuff, but definitely uplifting and encouraging when we feel our own paths are not all sunshine and roses:

Yes, each of us will walk the path of disappointment, perhaps due to an opportunity lost, a power misused, or a loved one not taught. The path of temptation, too, will be the path of each. . . Likewise shall we walk the path of pain. We cannot go to heaven in a feather bed. The Savior of the world entered after great pain and suffering. We, as servants, can expect no more than the Master. Before Easter there must be a cross.

I think I have heard somewhere—and I wish I could remember it—that because the Savior suffered, he made suffering sacred. Sometimes things just happen. Sometimes we or others make choices that inflict needless pain. And so not all the pain that we experience in life is necessary. But all of it can be made meaningful.

President Monson also laid out the paths we can walk, as disciples, to find that meaning. We can walk the paths of obedience, of service, and of prayer. Obedience and service make sense; they cover a lot of ground. Walking the path of prayer seems more interesting, but I like that it is included. “It is by walking the path of prayer that we commune with the Father.”

I was struck by two more things from the talk. First:

Jesus changed men. He changed their habits, their opinions, their ambitions. He changed their tempers, their dispositions, their natures. He changed men’s hearts.

And so we have to ask the question: in what ways is our discipleship changing us? Are our habits, opinions, or ambitions changing? Our tempers, disposition, and natures? Can you look inside at your own life and point to the specific ways in which your heart has been changed? If not: why not? After all, “The passage of time has not altered the capacity of the Redeemer to change men’s lives. As he said to the dead Lazarus, so he says to you and me: ‘… come forth.’”

Second, speaking of Paul (then Saul) in the time just before his conversion, he said of the Old Testament that “For some reason, these writings did not reach Paul’s need.” This struck me as an unusually penetrating and frank insight to make. We almost always hear that the scriptures are powerful. And they are, nothing here contradicts that. But they are not always—by themselves—sufficient. It’s a reminder of the limitations of men and of the limitations of any one aspect of the Gospel. It implies that discipleship has to be full spectrum or there is no guarantee that it works. We have to strive to be well-rounded saints, or we won’t be saints at all.

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

Scattered Pearls

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Shell and Pearls. Photo by Mauro Cateb. CC SA.
Shell and Pearls. Photo by Mauro Cateb. CC SA.

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

I enjoyed taking a break to cover the October 2016 General Conference last week, but now we’re back on to our usually scheduled General Conference Odyssey posts, which means we’re writing about the Friday afternoon session of the April 1974 GC.

I didn’t really catch a theme in this session, and there wasn’t one talk that really grabbed me. Instead, I just want to go through a couple of lines that stuck me from several different talks.

In Three Important Questions, Elder ElRay L. Christiansen said:

True love is not earthbound. It is as eternal as our spirits, which never die.

There is no coincidence that two of Mormonism’s most unique beliefs are (1) marriage for time and all eternity and (2) the immortality of the human soul both forwards and backwards in time. There is a part of our soul that is ageless, because not only does it have no end but it also has beginning. For souls like these, nothing but eternal relationships could possibly do.

In Hanging On, Elder Loren C. Dunn told a story about a pampered tree that toppled in a storm and contrasted it with a neglected tree—that, because it was forced to drive down deep roots for water—outlasted the gale.

I see in many people this same kind of beauty. Adversity and trial have driven the roots of faith and testimony deep in order to tap the reservoir of spiritual strength that comes from such experiences. By nature they know how to stand and fight and hang on.

Elder H. Burke Peterson spoke with frankness and directness about the role of mothers in Mother, Catch the Vision of Your Call. His call for women to not work outside the home was unapologetic, but it was not unqualified. He not only indicated that single mothers had to work—and deserved our respect and help—but went farther, writing:

Fathers and mothers, before you decide you need a second income and that mother must go to work out of the home, may I plead with you: first go to the Lord in prayer and receive his divine approbation. Be sure he says yes.

This is one of those interesting verses that complicates simplistic stereotypes and reaffirm that the teachings of the Gospel are not as amenable to caricatures as some might think. What he’s saying here is a teaching that has been reiterated more plainly in more recent years: that the guidance of General Authorities in General Conference is just that: general. It is up to us to, in humility and a spirit of obedience, figure out how to apply those teachings to our individual lives. And, as a corollary, that means that we ought to get a little bit better at minding our own business when we see folks who are departing from the general course. Maybe they’re lazy, or disobedient, or apathetic. Or maybe they’re just as righteous, obedient, and passionate as we are but walking a slightly different path.

Then we have Elder William H. Bennett, in Inertia, describing some the primary reasons that people fail to live up to their potential:

some of the more important [reasons we do not reach our potential] are failure to do adequate realistic planning; lack of desire, commitment, and dedication; failure to use time effectively; and failure to correct one’s mistakes.

It’s a very practical list, and one that I think is entirely applicable to most or our lives. I also like how it fit with Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita’s call (in the most recent GC) to “be ambitious for Christ.” If you want to realize your ambitions, then you should pay attention to Elder Bennett’s cautions.

And last but not least, two more short quotes, this time from Elder Marvin J. Ashton in A Time of Urgency:

Midnight is so far and yet so close to those who have procrastinated.

and

God listens to humble prayer. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t ask us to pray.

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

Stop Engaging “The Culture”

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So says a thought-provoking article in Christianity Today. According to the author, engaging “the culture” simply “causes us to stab blindly in the dark” and “miss our actual cultural responsibility and opportunity”:

A nation of 300 million people, especially one as gloriously diverse as the United States, does not have one monolithic “culture.” It has neighborhoods and cities, ethnic groups and affinity groups, political parties and religious denominations. There is a shared national ethos, to be sure. But that ethos is constantly being contested, challenged, and reimagined by different groups within the nation, and ignored or actively resisted by others.

Even the idea of “the culture,” in the way we now use the phrase, is fairly new. The New Testament, especially the Gospel of John, prefers the term “the world” (cosmos in Greek) for what we might call “the culture,” especially systems of ideology and influence that operate independent of God. But it also speaks of “nations” or “peoples” (ethne in Greek—today we might call them “ethnolinguistic groups”). We are called to resist being “conformed to this world” (Rom. 12:2, ESV), and to make disciples of all ethne, in the hope that they all will join in the multinational, multilingual, multicultural chorus around the throne of the Lamb (Rev. 7:9).

In short,

Instead of preoccupying ourselves with the cosmos, we are called to the ethne. Rather than engaging in largely imaginary relationships with the world system…we are called to real people in a real place. With those real people, we reflect on the concrete possibilities and limitations of the time and place we share (including, to be sure, the ways the world system presses in on us). We learn to care for what is lasting and valuable in our particular time and place, and begin to create alternatives to things that are inadequate and broken. 

The more we do this—the more fully human we become, entwined in relationships of empowering mutual dependence—the less bound and tempted we will be by “the culture.” And the less bound we are by “the culture,” the more we are able to actually influence culture around us, even sometimes up to very large scales—because we are creating and sustaining real alternatives to it.

We are to be like Paul, who didn’t seek to “engage “Rome,”” but instead “wrote a letter to actual Romans.” Similarly, “our mission is not primarily to “engage the culture” but to “love our neighbor.” Our neighbor is not an abstract collective noun, but a real person in a real place.”

Something to remember.

Obedience Out of Love

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

Love or Fear

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

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

An Irritant or a Quest

President Benson said

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

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

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

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

Fearful Obedience

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still Better than Disobedience

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

And there’s a reason for that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Remission of Sins

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

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

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

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

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

Humility

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

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

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

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

Godly Ambition

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

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

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

This applies to all of us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Back to the Future

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

I titled this post “Back to the Future” because we’re taking a break from the historic portion of the GCO to cover the October 2016 General Conference that just wrapped up. One thing I’ve definitely learned this week is that I do better with reading than listening. There are several talks that, in preparing this post, I realized that I’m going to have to read as soon as they’re available because I didn’t get everything there was to get out of them. Also, in this post I’m going to be using quotation marks even in places where I might be paraphrasing a bit. The text isn’t online yet, so I hope you’ll forgive the lack of quote-checking. I’m just going off my notes.

So, first, I want to run through some of the quotes that I liked:

Saturday Morning Session

President Uchtdorf

“One day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that the Plan of Salvation is merciful, just, and true. For us: let today be that day.”

Sister Carol F. McConkie

“We pray by the power of the Holy Ghost.” This means that all members of the Godhood are united in prayer: we pray to the Father, through the Holy Ghost, in the name of the Son.

Elder Juan A. Uceda

“When you pray, are you really praying? Or just saying your prayers?”

Elder J. Devin Cornish

“The answers to Am I good enough? And Will I make it? Are yes” as long as you don’t rationalize, rebel, or fail to repent.”

“Please take comfort from this truth: our Heavenly Father intends for us to make it.

Saturday Afternoon Session

Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita

“Be ambitious for Christ.”

Sunday Morning Session

President Russel M. Nelson

At first I didn’t like this talk because it seemed like a stretch to tell me that we could experience joy and suffering simultaneously. But Elder Nelson pressed the point home, saying that Christ focused on joy in order to endure the trials of the Atonement, and citing a friend who said, “I have learned to suffer with joy. My suffering was swallowed up in the joy of Christ.” Now the concepts are germinating in me, and I’m waiting to see what realizations eventually grow out of them.

Elder Dean M. Davies

“Spiritual experiences have less to do with what is happening around us, and everything to do with what is in our hearts.”

I loved this talk because it went to one of my favorite themes–the idea of finding the sacred and sublime in every day experiences–but I also cracked up when my wife commented that, “Some of us just hope for ordinary meetings, and not weird ones.” There’s truth to that, too!

Elder Lynn G. Robbins

“Unkind things are not usually spoken under the influence of the spirit.”

Sunday Afternoon

Elder Brian K. Ashton

Repentance is not a backup plan.

Elder K. Brett Nattress

“If all that your children knew of the Gospel is what they had learned from you, how much would they know?”

Elder Dale G. Renlund

“Repentance is not only possible, but also joyful because of our Savior. . . I invite you to feel more joy in your life. Joy in the knowledge that the atonement of Jesus Christ is real… and joy in choosing to repent.”

Now, there’s one more thing that I want to talk about. There were a ton of talks about questioning, doubt, and faith crises. Elder Craig C. Christensen said “Joseph Smith had questions, but luckily he did not let his questions overwhelm his faith.” Elder Basset said:

“The Church is making great efforts to be transparent. Even after that, the members are unsatisfied with some things that can’t be understood through study. That is because some things can only be understood through faith.”

Elder Ballard said:

“Before you make the spiritually perilous decision to leave, stop and think about what you have felt here and why you have felt it. Where will you to go find others who believe in personal, loving Heavenly Parents? . . . Where will you to go find people who live by the values you share?”

And he made this incredibly powerful statement that I’m sure will have echoes and reverberations in my mind for many, many years to come: “Jesus understand our infirmities, including the loss of faith.”

He also said:

“My heartfelt plea is that we will encourage, accept, and understand those who are struggling on the path. We need to minister to one another. Just as we should open our arms in a spirit of welcoming a new convert, so should we embrace and support those who have questions and are faltering in their faith.”

Elder Rasband was perhaps the most direct about it, stating at the outset that a friend’s faith crisis had led to his talk, and making memory his theme:

“Recall, especially in times of crisis, when you felt the Spirit and your testimony was strong. I promise that if you avoid things that do not build your testimony or that mock your beliefs, your testimony will come back. You will once again feel the safety and warmth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

He concluded: “Do not forget. Please, do not forget.”

But in some ways the most powerful of all these talks was the one given by Elder Quentin L. Cook, who talked about stumbling blocks, including “the philosophies of men.” What struck me most–and I only picked up on this as I want back through his talk–was that he cited President Heber C. Kimball from back in 1856:

We think we are secure here in the chambers of the everlasting hills, where we can close those few doors of the canyons against mobs and persecutors, the wicked and the vile, who have always beset us with violence and robbery, but I want to say to you, my brethren, the time is coming when we will be mixed up in these peaceful valleys to the extent that it will be difficult to tell the face of a Saint from the face of an enemy to the people of God. Then, brethren, look out for the great sieve, for there will be a great sifting time, and many will fall; for I say unto you there is a test, a TEST, a TEST coming, and who will be able to stand? This church has before it many close places through which it will have to pass before the work of God is crowned with victory.

This is a pretty apocalyptic-sounding prophecy, and so it’s no coincidence that Elder Cook specifically erected a barrier against overcorrection. It’s pretty clear, from his talk and from President Kimball’s quote, that the chief danger comes from what is popular and what is intellectually favored today. And so it is that Elder Cook says we should avoid people who put too much emphasis on particular aspects of the Word of Wisdom or spend extravagant amounts of time and money prepping for the end times. It seems pretty clear that Hollywood and the Ivory Tower are the source of greatest confusion, but that our response has to be to stand our ground, not overcorrect in the opposite direction.

When I looked up President Kimball’s quote, I found it’s been used in many places. (It was new to me, however.) One of those was a 1990 Ensign article by President Hinckley[ref]A City Upon A Hill[/ref] who–after citing just the last parts of the quote–wrote:

I do not know precisely the nature of that test. But I am inclined to think the time is here and that the test lies in our capacity to live the gospel rather than adopt the ways of the world.

President Hinckley also said, “I do not advocate a retreat from society.”

I am eager for transcripts of these talks to be released. I especially want to re-read all the talks in this section carefully.

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Guidelines for Voting

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First 1960 Presidential Debate. (Wikimedia commons)
First 1960 Presidential Debate. (Wikimedia commons)

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

The first talk of the first session of the April 1974 session was Guidelines to Carry Forth the Work of God in Cleanliness by President Spencer W. Kimball, and it had some interesting counsel, given that last night I was up later than I would have liked to be in order to watch the first presidential debate. President Kimball “reaffirm[ed] some vital members which concern us.”

One is our civil obligations. We are approaching election time, when we must choose again those persons who will represent us in positions of responsibility in our civil government—federal, state, and local.

I had to look up the 1974 elections. It was a midterm year, following just a few months after President Nixon’s resignation. What struck me the most about the counsel that followed, was how it called on us to be active participants in our nation’s politics. President Kimball quoted the twelfth article of faith:

We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.[ref]Emphasis added.[/ref]

Then he cited from the 1835 “Declaration of Believe regarding Governments and Laws in general,”

We believe that all governments necessarily require civil officers and magistrates to enforce the laws of the same; and that such as will administer the law in equity and justice should be sought for and upheld by the voice of the people if a republic, or the will of the sovereign. [ref]Emphasis added.[/ref]

And then a 1951 First Presidency Statement:

A threat to our unity derives from unseemly personal antagonisms developed in partisan political controversy. The Church, while reserving the right to advocate principles of good government underlying equity, justice, and liberty, the political integrity of officials, and the active participation of its members, and the fulfillment of their obligations in civic affairs, exercises no constraint on the freedom of individuals to make their own choices and affiliations … any man who makes representation to the contrary does so without authority and justification in fact. [ref]Emphasis added.[/ref]

Of course, in addition to the call to active participation in politics, there were two more things that stuck out to me. First: the emphasis on the moral caliber of our representatives. (That’s not as clear in these quotes, but it’s a consistent theme.) Second: the concern about “partisan political controversy.”

People have to make up their minds how to vote this year as in all years, and I’m not going to try and sway anyone directly. I just wanted to remind people of those three basic facts:

  1. Mormons have an obligation to actively participate.
  2. We should support representatives of high moral caliber.
  3. We should avoid “partisan political controversy.”

And, as a final thought, in the end I think it matters a lot less who we vote for than why. And that is because the fabric of society—the individual lives of citizens and their relationships with each other that is based on personal values and culture—will always be more important for the fate of a nation than the particular legal system or leadership that it happens to have at any point in time. Laws can be reformed or changed with a pen stroke. Society goes deeper, is harder to corrupt when it is healthy, and harder to heal when it is broken.

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Deep Commitment

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Underwater World, vai Wikimedia Commons
Underwater World, vai Wikimedia Commons

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

First, an update. Today we’re covering the Sunday Afternoon session of the October 1973 General Conference, and that means we’re wrapping up our sixth GC since starting on this Odyssey. Next week—on September 27th—we’ll start with the Friday Morning Session of the April 1974 GC. Then the week after that—on October 4th—we’re going to be putting the GCO on a one-week hiatus. We’ll be posting that week, but our posts will be in reaction to the October 2016 GC. We’ll pick up again on October 11th with the Friday Afternoon session of April 1974 GC.

Now, back to the last session of the October 1973 GC. I found a definite theme in this section. In The Need for Total Commitment, Elder Burton defined a saint as “not necessarily a person who is perfect” (thank goodness!), “but a person who strives for perfection.”

I believe we must become so immersed in the gospel of Jesus Christ that we become physically as well as mentally more and more like the Lord himself. We must yield our whole hearts to him. What we then do is done not because we are asked to, nor because we are forced to, but because we want to. Neither pressure nor force can be exerted upon us from outside, when what we do is done because it is our own choice and desire. It then makes no difference to us what other men may think, or say, or do. Our hearts being committed wholly to God, what we do is done out of our love for and our trust in him. We then serve God in every way we can because we have been converted.[ref]I don’t understand the “physically as well as mentally” aspect of the quote, and I’m setting that aside for now.[/ref]

In God’s Way to Eternal Life, Elder Brockbank continued that theme:

We can attain perfection by knowing and loving God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind; and by loving our neighbors as ourselves. This leaves no love for the devil or for the darkness of the world.

I particularly liked the end of his statement. One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past few years—although I haven’t managed to turn it into a post yet—is the importance of negative space. Of not doing something. Of not acting. Of simply being unmoved. I try so hard every day and every week to squeeze more of out of my time, to get closer to accomplishing every item on my list. I never make it, but—as I’m slowly starting to get closer—I’m learning again and again that what I don’t do is sometimes the only way to get to what I do want to do.

In any case, both of these statements brought a fresh understand to something (then) Elder Kimball said in the first talk of the session, The Rewards, the Blessings, the Promises. He said,

There are depths in the sea which the storms that lash the surface into fury never reach. They who reach down into the depths of life where, in the stillness, the voice of God is heard, have the stabilizing power which carries them poised and serene through the hurricane of difficulties.

It takes a great deal of commitment to “reach down into the depths of life,” but that is indeed where we can find “the stillness.”

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