Mormons often talk about being in the world, but not of the world. Furthermore, it becomes The World™ in Mormon discourse. In the Gospel of John, there is a cosmic struggle between Jesus and Satan for “the world” (see John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). Spiritual warfare is a prominent theme not only in John, but throughout the biblical narrative. The Christian life is to “struggle…not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12, NRSV). But, asks Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve James Cullimore, “[w]hat do we mean by the “world”? President McKay refers to it as those “… alienated from the Saints of God. They are aliens to the Church, and it is the spirit of this alienation that we should keep ourselves free from.” (Conference Report, October 1911, p. 58.) Elder Bruce R. McConkie defines the “world” as “the social conditions created by such of the inhabitants of the earth as live carnal, sensuous, lustful lives, and who have not put off the natural man by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.” (Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966], p. 847.) John, in his epistle, describes the “world” as “the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” (1 Jn. 2:16.)” In short, it “does not mean the sphere on which we live, but an environment created by individuals who live contrary to his teachings.” But Cullimore’s counsel is not to detach from the world, to leave it behind. “We would not want to be free of our responsibility of being in the world by being taken out of the world…” We “are to be a leaven wherever you are” according to Cullimore. Our best bet of overcoming evil in the world is–in the words of Elder Theodore Burton–to “seek to change [our] manner of living to conform more closely to the ways of the Lord.” Burton says,
A person’s attitude is perhaps the hardest of all personal attributes to change. If your attitude is right, then your life is made right. If your heart is touched, your mind and way of thinking will change and your life will change for the better accordingly. 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, our attitude has been changed and we now desire to become like him both spiritually and physically.
Basically, as the King of Pop sang, start with the man in the mirror.
Economist Steve Horwitz once made the point, “Critics of markets sometimes say “you can’t eat GDP.” What they miss is that you can’t eat, or learn to read, or go to school, or leave a bad marriage, or do pretty much any of the basics that we might see as required for a flourishing life without the wealth and time created by the market economy.” This is why I tend to focus on economic growth: it is growth that lifts people out of poverty. This is why I’m happy to report that religion, according to a new study, is good for the economy.[ref]Religious freedom is good for business as well.[/ref] As reported in Christianity Today,
Specifically, religion is a $378 billion to $4.8 trillion boost to the US economy, the Grims found. Even at the lowest estimate, religious organizations make more than the global revenue of Apple and Microsoft combined; at the high end, religion makes the roughly the same amount as a third of the United States GDP.
The researchers’ first estimate only takes into account “the revenues of faith-based organizations falling into several sectors: education, healthcare, local congregational activities, charities, media, and food.” The largest chunk of these–healthcare–raises about $161 billion a year. Congregations raise $84 billion a year, religious schools raise $74 billion, and religious charities bring in $45 billion. Furthermore, the money is increasingly spent on social services like food assistance, parenting classes, and drug and alcohol abuse recovery programs ($9 billion in 2012).
“Their second estimate—that religion has an economic value of $1.2 trillion—adds in the price of social services provided by congregations,” the article continues.
Churches sponsor more than 1.6 million social services programs in America each year, and provide 7.6 million volunteers. More than 9 in 10 congregations actively recruit volunteers for outside projects (93%), half allow their building to be used for non-congregational purposes (50%), and close to half have groups that think about how to meet community needs (48%).
The Grims also added in the halo effect a community receives from the benefits of having a church nearby: it encourages investment in family and children; stimulates the local economy by buying goods and services; provides a place to host weddings, funerals, or large community events; may run schools or day cares; provides outdoor space for leisure activities; and augments the city’s social services.
The result: $418.9 [billion] worth of value.
When religious businesses are considered, the estimate is $1.2 trillion. “The study wasn’t perfect, the Grims admitted. It didn’t add in any of the financial or physical assets of religious groups, or subtract any negative impacts of religious groups, like fraud or abuse of children by clergy…Still, they wrote, “the data are clear.””
Glad to see religion making a big impact in the real world.
Instead of focusing on one talk from the Sunday morning session of the October 1973 General Conference, I’m going to cherry pick a series of quotes from different talks, all of which struck me with surprising resonance. These were statements I didn’t really expect to hear, but that resonated with me when I read them.
“It is unchristianlike, unfair, and displeasing to God for any husband or father to assume the role of dictatorship and adopt the attitude that he is superior in any way to his wife.” – N. Eldon Tanner in No Greater Honor: The Woman’s Role
Most of Elder Tanner’s talk reads as quite regressive by modern standards, and so his explicit disavowal of any kind of male superiority struck me as noteworthy. We often try to map the statements of Church leaders onto the political issues of our day (no matter which side we’re on). Sometimes—perhaps often—this gets in the way of hearing what they actually have to say.
“I was uncertain and ye lifted me to paths of security.” This is part of the series of statement that Elder Marvin J. Ashton suggested could be added to Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:35-36 in He Took Him by the Hand. Uncertainty and doubt are hot topics and have been for quite a while. One common thread is the idea that everyone saying, “I know” when they bear their testimonies is alienating to people who can only say, “I believe.” I think that’s right. But Elder Ashton suggests we shouldn’t let the pendulum swing too far the other direction. Those who do have the blessing of certain knowledge on specific matters can offer support to those who need it.
“Being led by the Spirit is vitally important because this is the Lord’s church and he runs it. Those who are called to serve must let the Lord run his church.” – Hartman Rector, Jr. in You Shall Receive the Spirit
I’m not entirely sure what to make of this one. It seems interesting because it seems more like a leader addressing other leaders rather than members. I’m also not sure what it means to “let the Lord run his church,” but it suggests that those with leadership callings ought to keep in mind that they didn’t necessarily get there on personal merit or latent talent. Definitely an interesting perspective.
“The Church in no way intends to take the place of the family. Its entire effort is to strengthen the family.” – Victor L. Brown in Our Youth: Modern Sons of Helaman
I’ve made the case before that one important thing to understand the role of the Church is to understand that it is ultimately a means to an end, and family is that end. In a real sense, the Church is subservient to the family. I’ve had people say this is a good idea, but they don’t know where I’m getting it. While I think it’s implied throughout the Gospel, it’s nice to have such a clear statement as this one.
“[S]alvation is not a free gift. The offer is free indeed, through the atonement of the Savior. But its enjoyment must be earned, not with any halfhearted effort, but with wholesouled, undivided, concentrated application to a program of development which is called the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.” – Mark E. Petersen in “What Will a Man Give?”
There’s a resurgence of interest in the idea of grace and mercy—as opposed to works and accomplishment—within the Mormon community. Again, I think this is a good thing. And yet again, it can be taken too far. The Mormon faith has always had a peculiarly stubborn streak when it comes to many of the eternal theological debates. As often as not, when confronted with an apparent either/or, our response is to dig in our heels and say, “Both.” This is one of those times, I believe.
Here is how I look at it. Good parents don’t really care very much about the accomplishments of their very young children. Grades and evaluations and test scores in elementary school shouldn’t really count for much in themselves. But what every good parent does are about is whether their child strives. Whether they work and play hard, apply themselves, learn and grow. That is the position we find ourselves in with respect to our Heavenly Parents. Precisely what we accomplish in this life means nothing. And it means everything. Depending on your point of view, these are both true statements.
Marvin J. Ashton’s talk had a few quotes that I think help remind us how to view others as Christ does. “Brothers and sisters,” he says, “we must learn to look beyond the flesh and see the spirit, the soul, the attitude, the real human being.” This was followed up with a short story about a recently engaged amputee and a happily married partially paralyzed woman. Seeing “the real human being” is what should inspire us to lift others up: the subject of Ashton’s talk: “In this great Church we must try to lift those who need us economically, socially, physically, and spiritually as we earnestly link hands with the Lord in “this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39.)” Toward the end of the Book of Mormon, Moroni proclaims, “And who shall say that Jesus Christ did not do many mighty miracles? And there were many mighty miracles wrought by the hands of the apostles. And if there were miracles wrought then, why has God ceased to be a God of miracles and yet be an unchangeable Being? And behold, I say unto you he changeth not; if so he would cease to be God; and he ceaseth not to be God, and is a God of miracles” (Mormon 9:18-19). According to Ashton, “Certainly the greatest miracles of our day are the lifting and healing of troubled souls. Spiritual strength is a priceless possession available to those who will endure in righteousness. The healing of the troubled soul gives health and strength to those dead in things righteous. Purity, faith, hope, and charity are restored, making the once spiritually sick whole.” He states,
Certainly the day is here when, if we are to follow in [Christ’s] paths, we must take the weary, lonely, depressed, the troubled soul, and the gospel-hungry by the hand and lift and help. Yes, we also need to lift the dishonest, the self-condemning, and those who have chosen expediency over correct principles. Countless numbers today will be able to take their first steps in the right direction when we are willing to provide the lift of confidence and encouragement and give them back that self-respect spoken of by President Lee in the opening session of this conference and to help others retain that self-respect.
“How beautiful,” Ashton says, “in the eyes of the Lord are those who take the time to lift the needy hand.” There are plenty who need lifting. We need to see “the real human being” in all of them.
I’ve been out of town the last couple weeks, so I’ve missed the past two sessions. From the looks of it, I missed an excellent one last week. This week’s session yielded some great insights and few…well, we’ll get to that.
Marion G. Romney discussed how the “Church welfare is an approach to the law of consecration—the Lord’s perfect economic program.” He notes, “In light of these teachings [from the scriptures] it seems to me that every Church member, and particularly every priesthood bearer who wishes peace and joy here and eternal life hereafter, would give bounteously of his sustenance to the poor.” Yet, he made this important point: “The basis of God’s perfect economic program is labor.”[ref]He includes this quote from Brigham Young: “My experience has taught me and it has become a principle with me, that it is never any benefit to give, out and out, to man or woman, money, food, clothing, or anything else, if they are able-bodied, and can work and earn what they need, … This is my principle and I try to act upon it. To pursue a contrary course would ruin any community in the world and make them idlers.” (Discourses of Brigham Young, 1925 edition, p. 422.)[/ref] Why? Because “[t]he dignity and self-respect of the receiver must be preserved.” This attitude toward work is something I touch on in my article for BYU Studies Quarterly:
In their book Wellbeing, Gallup researchers Tom Rath and Jim Harter point to evidence that shows, given a few years, people recover from tragic events (like the death of a spouse) to the same level of well-being prior to the tragedy. “But this was not the case for those who were unemployed for a prolonged period of time—particularly not for men. Our wellbeing actually recovers more rapidly from the death of a spouse than it does from a sustained period of unemployment.” Based on data from the General Social Survey, economist Arthur Brooks also found that one of the key elements for achieving happiness and self-fulfillment is work. This is due to its connection to what Brooks calls “earned success”: the ability to create value in our lives and in the lives of others (pg. 173).
Unfortunately, Romney attempts to use the cursing of the ground following Adam’s disobedience to make his point:
[Adam’s] was not a vindictive decree. The Lord was not retaliating against Adam. He was simply placing Adam in a situation where he would have to work to live. The ground was cursed in the manner prescribed for Adam’s sake, not to his disadvantage. Had Adam and his posterity been able to live without working, the human race would never have survived. Idleness is pernicious.
The problem is that’s not what the phrase means. As the NET Bible Commentary explains, “The Hebrew phrase בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ (ba’avurekha) [“for your sake”] is more literally translated “on your account” or “because of you.”” For example, the NRSV translates it “because of you.” This is not done for Adam’s benefit, but is done because of his transgression. While I dig Romney’s point, his exegesis here is flawed. Nonetheless, it reminds of me this quote from Elder Christofferson a few years back:
By work we sustain and enrich life. It enables us to survive the disappointments and tragedies of the mortal experience. Hard-earned achievement brings a sense of self-worth. Work builds and refines character, creates beauty, and is the instrument of our service to one another and to God. A consecrated life is filled with work, sometimes repetitive, sometimes menial, sometimes unappreciated but always work that improves, orders, sustains, lifts, ministers, aspires.
Moving along, Elder Featherstone offered bishops some practical financial advise when it came to the welfare system:
Brethren, that is a great principle in welfare. Our home food bill is no more than it was six months ago or a year ago. We had to change the mix. We feel, bishops, you might well change the mix on those who are eating out of your bishops storehouse. When potatoes are $1.69 for ten pounds, let’s switch to rice. When meat is as high as it is, let’s not do as one bishop did, continue to give one family 67 pounds of beef each month. I don’t know that there are too many families here that are eating 67 pounds of beef each month. Those Saints receiving commodities through the bishops storehouse should not be receiving more than you are using in your homes. I hope this is a principle that we will remember and use very wisely…We are trying to spend the Lord’s sacred funds in the best possible way.
I don’t have much to say about this. I just thought it was an interesting topic to be addressed in General Conference. Church leadership isn’t just about abstract concepts and otherwordly concerns. It’s about the here-and-now. It’s about costs and benefits. It’s–in many cases–about economics. In other words, respond to with enlightened self-interest to the price system as any other consumer would.
N. Eldon Tanner talked about everyone’s favorite topic: obedience. “Obedience is the first law of heaven,” he says, “and it is obedience to the laws of God that I should like to talk about particularly, because these laws affect not only our happiness and well-being here upon the earth, but are essential to our eternal life.” I’ve mentionedmultipletimes the connection of the commandments to happiness and well-being and I’m always glad to see it discussed in General Conference. Some of his other comments cover familiar ground regarding self-discipline (which could be ultimately seen as the shaping of habits):
Self-discipline is the basis of our success. Man has been given a mind to think, to ponder, and to understand and decide what he wants to do and whether or not the sacrifice and discipline is worth it; and, in the Church, whether or not he can stand the ridicule and pressure of those with whom he associates. You have been called. You have been given the priesthood. You have been given the gospel. You are an example to the world. Be a good one. The measure of our success depends on our decision, our determination, discipline, and dependability.
Finally, President Lee urges the men the to take marriage more seriously. He states,
[Marriage] has lost its sanctity in the eyes of the great majority. It is at best a civil contract, but more than often an accident, or a whim, or a means of gratifying the passions; and when the sacredness of the covenant is ignored or lost sight of, then a disregard of the marriage vows under the present moral training of the masses is a mere triviality, a trifling indiscretion.
I think there is ample evidence to support President Lee’s claims. However, I’m always bummed when concerns I share are undermined by terrible advice. For example:
Teach those [married couples] who are having problems to go to the father of the ward, their bishop, for counsel. No psychiatrist in the world, no marriage counselor, can give to those who are faithful members of the Church the counsel from one any better than the bishop of the ward. Now, you bishops don’t hesitate to say, marriage is the law of God, and is ordained by him and man and wife are not without each other in the Lord, as the apostle Paul declared.
Um, no. This is why so many in the Church go to the bishop instead of a professional and never receive the counsel and tools they actually need. Thankfully, we’re seeing more and more bishops outsource these problems to professionals with the help of Church funds when necessary. A bishop can be useful, but authority and occasional inspiration doesn’t make you a therapist. We will likely do more harm than good if we encourage struggling couples to seek unlicensed and unprofessional help.
All in all, a mixed bag of a session. But when we look at the topics–work, finances, discipline, marriage–we see that the gospel is about everyday life. Let’s not forget that.
I took the title of this talk from the first talk of this session: Elder Vaughn J. Featherstone’s “The Gospel of Jesus Christ Is the Golden Door.” The first half of the talk is primarily about the welfare program, and there were lots of interesting insights there, but then the second half had to do with work. “Brethren,” he said, “there is no substitute for work… The Lord expects us to be industrious; he expects us to be mentally and physically ambitious with all our hearts and souls.”
I like the Mormon emphasis on work, on progress, on self-sufficiency, and on freedom. To me, it is ennobling. Elder Featherstone quoted from a story by Richard Thurman near the end of his talk:
Whenever something in you says, “It’s impossible,” remember to take a careful look and see if it isn’t really God asking you to grow an inch, or a foot, or a mile, that you may come to a fuller life.
And then he made an interesting transition:
Emma Lazarus has written words which describe the great Statue of Liberty. These words have special meaning to us in the Church, for truly these same words entreating all to come to America may well apply to the Church. I will just quote the last few lines. She said:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the golden door, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
This ending is vital to anyone who wants to understand Mormonism, including us Mormons. With all our emphasis on eternal progression and self-sufficiency and pragmatism and work you may start to wonder—and some have certainly criticized—where is there room for grace? Where is there room for God’s mercy and power?
The answer is simple: we believe in both. In a nutshell, that’s why I’m Mormon. Because I believe in the tradition of both. We depend—absolutely and without reservation—on the mercy and grace of God. We are, alone and unassisted, doomed. Nephi’s younger brother Jacob explained that, without the intervention of God, “our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell… and our spirits must have become like him, and we become… angels to a devil.”[ref]2 Nephi 9:8-9[/ref] Alone, we all fall eventually succumb to moral empathy. Even after we are rescued from that fate, King Benjamin taught that “if ye should serve [God] with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.”[ref]Mosiah 2:21[/ref] There is no question: we cannot save ourselves.
And yet the question becomes: after we are saved through divine intervention, then what? That’s when the call for mental and spiritual ambition comes into play. It’s not a question of inventing our own rescue plan. It’s a question of what God calls on us to do with the plan that He put in place. The golden door is His. We just have to walk through it.
I have to start out by saying: I loved this session. Definitely one of my favorite sessions since I started this Odyssey almost a year ago. There were quotable, thought-provoking lines in every single talk, starting with LeGrand Richards’ defense of eternal marriage in Revealed Truths of the Gospel, when he said:
Personally I would just as soon believe that death was a complete annihilation of both body and spirit as to think that I would have to live on forever and forever without a continuation of the love ties that bind my wife and me together, and our family and our loved ones here in this life. Heaven will only be a projection of our life here.
The last sentence—“heave will only be a projection of our life here”—is a pretty common sentiment, I think. If you haven’t heard that exact quote, you’ve heard one like it. But the earlier statement was more personal and much more arresting. It’s one thing to have a theological commitment to eternal families. It’s another to have such a visceral loyalty and love of the ideal that you’d prefer to walk into the abyss than live alone forever.
But Sterling W. Sil had even more eye-brow raising comments in his talk: A Fortune to Share. It was full of funny, irreverent real talk. “Someone has pointed out that if there is anyone who can’t buy happiness with money,” he stated, “it must be that he just doesn’t know where to shop.” And later: “Someone said, ‘Money ain’t everything,’ and his friend said, ‘Just name me three things that it ain’t.’” Funny lines for a General Conference talk, like I said, but in both cases he had a serious point to make. After the “he just doesn’t know where to shop” line, Elder Sil said:
We can build temples with money, we can send out missionaries with money, we can erect educational institutions, operate hospitals, and pay our tithing with money. We can feed and clothe our families with money, and in many ways we can build up the kingdom of God with money.
That’s not a joke. That’s just stone-cold pragmatism. And there are very few things I love more in life than someone who takes a look at realism, takes a look at idealism, and then says, “I’ll take both.” I’ll admit: I’m a little biased here. I have a pretty cynical view of academics and intellectuals and pundits because so often the emphasis is on rhetoric instead of substance, novelty instead of accuracy, provocation instead of truth. But that doesn’t mean I accept being pragmatic instead of being idealistic. I want both. I think a life well lived is, in many ways, a long series of stubborn refusals to abandon either one. To strive for idealism and efficacy is to live a life of integrity, never giving up on the battle to bring the two into correspondence.
And then after the “name three things it ain’t” joke, he went on to say:
Money is preserved labor, it is industry made negotiable, it is stored up accomplishment. It is the medium of exchange that we can trade for things that we can take with us and a great many of them we can actually send on ahead. We can take our families with us. We can take our education with us. We can take our great character qualities with us. And money is the medium that we can use to share the treasures of the earth with others who need our help.
I have to tell you that—as an economist—I swooned.
I haven’t included all the lines from this talk that are funny and yet also profound. There are more. Go read it yourself and you will find them.
Next up was Eldred G. Smith’s talk: Opposition in Order to Strengthen Us. Once again, not a really new theme, but definitely a lot more philosophical than I would have expected in a General Conference talk. Elder Smith goes right into the idea of the Fortunate Fall. In traditional Christian thinking, the Fall is only fortunate in that it provided an opportunity for God’s grace. That would be like saying that a car accident was fortunate because it let a surgeon use their full talents to save your life. It’s not what Mormons have in mind. For us, the Fall wasn’t just a terrible mistake with a grand resolution, but in itself was fortunate:
Adam and Eve had been in a state of stagnation: no progress—no growth—no reproduction. Without a change, they would have remained in that state forever. It was necessary for a change to take place.
The Fall is fortunate, for Mormons, because it was the only way to break the impasse of stagnation and allow us the possibility of growth and development. And—just as with Elder Sil’s comments—there’s a lot more in this talk I wish everyone would read. But I’m going to move on.
William H. Bennett’s talk began with one of those really emotional stories that we often hear in talks. The problem with those stories is that most of them we’ve already heard a million times. But, in “Which Way to Shore?”, Elder Bennett shared one that was new to me. I’m not going to share it. You’ll have to read it. Here is the passage I’ll share instead:
Let me say, my brothers and sisters, that if we want to save individuals, to save the souls of our Father’s children, we must be willing to get involved and to help others get involved in meaningful ways also.
We are addicted to grand, abstract, technical policy solutions. A blog post I’ve been nursing along for several months without finishing talks about this directly. The simple version? Ever since the rise of science and rationality we have grown to view the world as a machine (instead of, for example, a garden) and our role in it as mechanics (instead of gardeners). We have little patience for slow, indirect work, for subtlety and preservation. Instead, we see problems and we want solutions. And sometimes this is possible, but often times it’s not. What’s more, however, is that it tends towards a kind of impersonal charity, and that’s a thing that can never be. There’s truth to the stereotype that we’d rather raise taxes, have the government distribute the goods, and consider poverty “solved” than reach out to people in our neighborhoods or wards who need our help. Not policies and programs and bureaucracies, but personal involvement. And that’s what Elder Bennett’s talk reminded me of.
Next up was A. Theodore Tuttle’s The Role of Fathers, and I think I highlighted about 25% of that talk. One of the passages cut a little close to home for me:
There is yet another intrusion into the home that needs to be mentioned. It is an unwise father who carries to his family his daily business cares. They disturb the peace existing there. He should leave his worries at the office and enter his home with the spirit of peace in his heart and with the love of God burning within him.
This makes sense, but it presupposes that a father has an office where he can leave those business cares. Other than business meetings, I work from home 100% of the time. My office was a standing desk in the dining room in our last house. I have a designated room in this house, which is nice, but it’s still in the home. This is one of those times where I’m going to have to think about how best to apply the principle to my particular situation. And it’s one I need to work on. I often work much more than 8 hours in a day and—when the kids are on summer break especially—it is incredibly hard for me to successfully separate my work time from family time without being stressed and without projecting that stress onto my kids, which they don’t deserve. I’m working on it. Because I’d also like to live up to this injunction:
Fathers, draw close to your children. Learn to communicate. Learn to listen. This means giving a father’s most valuable commodity—time!… To the extent we become friends with our children in unconditional love, to that extent we become like our Heavenly Father.
The last talk in the session was from (then) Elder Ezra Taft Benson: Prepare Ye. The talk didn’t hit me as hard, spiritually, but it was definitely interesting for me to read the calls to food-storage and self-reliance that so heavily influenced my parents and, through them, shaped a lot of my childhood. Like a lot of Mormons out there, we had beds made out of a mattress on top of a sheet of plywood on top of dozens of buckets of wheat. Just as with Elder Tuttle’s talk, there’s also a lot one in this for me to live up to.
I didn’t really understand the sadness other Mormons felt when Ezra Taft Benson passed away in 1994, but their obvious connection to the then President made me look forward to feeling the same kind of bond with the next man to take up that mantle: Howard W. Hunter. Sadly, his tenure lasted less than a year, and virtually all I remember is that his unofficial them was temples.
So it was particularly interesting to me that the talk that struck me the most from the Saturday morning session of the October 1973 General Conference was (1) by Elder Hunter and (2) not directly about temples at all. Instead, in Of the World or of the Kingdom?, he talked about the conflicts between the unchanging gospel and the transient philosophies and institutions of late 20th century America.
The warnings were familiar. For example:
In this day of increased knowledge, higher thought, and a modernization of the old, the simple has been overlooked and the profound sought after. The basic, simple, fundamental truths of the gospel are being ignored.
Still, Elder Hunter’s specific views on the topic were like a unique improvisation on a familiar theme, with different emphases and nuances than what other leaders have said before. This is important, because we have to see the differences in order to recognize the commonalities, and the commonalities are the most important aspects of the General Conference talks.[ref]This is a fundamental reason for having the General Conference Odyssey in the first place: you can’t spot the commonalities and differences without a large sample size to work with![/ref]
So, here’s one paragraph that struck me as worth paying particular attention to:
I believe we can be modern and enjoy the fruits of a modern world and its high standard of living, and I believe we can have the benefits of modern scholarship and scientific advances without turning to the theories of the modernist. I believe the principles of the gospel announced by the Savior in his personal ministry were true when they were given and are true today. Truth is eternal and never changing, and the gospel of Jesus Christ is ever contemporary in a changing world.
I like the optimism here, and the dogged insistence that being “not of this world” doesn’t entail abdicating either the blessing of a “scientific advances” or “modern scholarship.” The tension between religious believers (of all traditions) and the larger society often leads to monasticism in one form or another, but Mormonism aims to engage with the world, not withdraw from it. It’s just up to us, I think, to articulate why and how “the gospel of Jesus Christ is ever contemporary.”[ref]As an aside, defining modernity is tricky. I’m used to the definition that says the early modern period started in the 1500s and the late modern period ended well before World War II (Wikipedia), which would make the 1970s post-modern instead of modern. But that’s not about right or wrong, just about consistency.[/ref]
And here’s another paragraph, near the end of the talk, that I liked a lot:
The knowledge explosion of which the world is so proud is not of man’s creation. It is his discovery of portions of the unlimited knowledge and information which is part of God’s knowledge. How we use it is determined by whether we are of the eternal kingdom of God or a part of the temporary understanding of the world. The question is simply this: are we seeking to find our place in the world in the realm of worldly thought, or are we seeking to find our place in the unchanging kingdom of God?
I’m definitely looking forward to reading more talks by President Hunter and getting to know better a leader that was not with us for long enough for me to get to know him in life.
I want to start this post by pulling out a few quotes from different talks that were given during the Friday afternoon session of the October 1973 General Conference
The Church has constantly stressed the importance of the home.
[O]ne cannot forget mother and remember God. One cannot remember mother and forget God. Why? Because these two sacred persons, God and mother, partners in creation, in love, in sacrifice, in service, are as one.
I believe the second two quotes explain the first. “The Church has constantly stressed the importance of the home.” Why?
More often than not—among members and non-members alike—I think the answer is a kind of superficial association of Mormonism with good, old-fashioned, American values. Part of the history of our faith is that after brutal persecution and a period of hostile, mutual alienation, the Church worked incredibly hard to integrate into American culture and society. So Mormons are so family-centric because families are part of American values, and Mormons (at least in America) bought into the whole American dream from apple pies to patriotism to capitalism to family values.
I’m not saying that the pendulum swing between alienation and integration isn’t real, but I will say it obscures the fact that Mormonism’s emphasis on family goes much, much deeper. Our commitment to the ideals of family and home is not an affectation, it is at the core of our theology and central to our concept of life on Earth and in eternity.
The origin and destiny that Elder Stapley refers to are impossible to separate from family. We came from a home, a home where we had a loving Heavenly Father and a loving Heavenly Mother. Family and home are central to our origin. We are headed back home, to live with our Heavenly Parents again and—through the grace of Christ—to become them. Family and home are central to our destiny.
Elder (at the time) Monson’s paragraph is one that I can’t stop thinking about because it is such an arresting violation of the parallel that you expect. “God and mother,” not Heavenly Mother but earthly mothers, are “partners in creation, in love, in sacrifice, in service” and are “as one.”
I think I’ll be working through the implications of this one for a long time, but what we can say immediately is that—once again—the entire Plan of Salvation is inseparable from the concept of home and family and that includes our sacred obligation here on Earth to emulate to the best we can the heavenly home we don’t even remember.
We’re members of the house of God. And here we are on Earth—blind, fallible, and broken—playing at house. Playing at god. Nothing could be more absurd. Nothing could be more serious.
I’ll leave with one more quote:
The Spirit of the Lord will not dwell nor abide in a home where there is constant bickering, quarreling, arguing, discord, or disharmony… A happy Home is where the wife is treated like a queen and the husband is treated like a king.
If that is the aspiration we’re striving for down here, then we can also understand this much about our hidden heavenly home: that’s what it was like. We all know that there was discord in Heaven on at least one occasion, but our home before this life was defined as a place where “[Heavenly Mother] is treated like a queen and [Heavenly Father] is treated like a kind.” That is how they regard each other. That is how they treat each other. That is the first home that we knew.
In those rare, beautiful moments of transient bliss when pure family love and harmony are revealed for a moment or two through a mundane, everyday experience, eternity itself is laid bare before us.
[My wife’s] capacity to nurture others grew in me as we became one. My capacity to plan, direct, and lead in our family grew in her as we became united in marriage. I realize now that we grew together into one—slowly lifting and shaping each other, year by year. As we absorbed strength from each other, it did not diminish our personal gifts.
Smith notes,
What I hear him saying is that men and women come to marriage with a different set ofroles/characteristics, but one goal of marriage is for them to teach each other and to adopt each other’s roles. I sometimes hear in LDS venues a rather opposite idea–one I find theologically problematic inasmuch as it suggests that men and women should maintain separate characteristics, something I find incompatible with both the idea of the perfection of Christ and his ability to serve as an example for all both men and women, as well as the idea of men and women striving to themselves become perfected. His thinking here can be a great bridge from older teachings about gender difference to a newer vision where those differences can still be acknowledged but won’t be seen as limiting. I especially like his idea that, as he took on nurturing and his wife took on leading, it didn’t diminish either of them. (Contra language we sometimes hear bemoaning the loss of femininity and masculinity.)
Smith’s observation reminds me of a point made by Texas A&M professor and fellow Latter-day Saint Valerie M. Hudson regarding the telos (“end,” “purpose,” “goal”) of marriage:
What we [Mormons] understand from our doctrine is that the telos of marriage is to ground every human family in real, lived, embodied gender equality. And then, as a consequence, all reproduction would occur only within that context of gender equality. If the ideal were lived, then every son and daughter of God would be born into a family that lived gender equality, and thus each would learn how to form such a relationship when they themselves came of age. Reproduction is the fruit, not the root, of what God intended in establishing marriage.
That is why it doesn’t matter who’s fertile, and whether a marriage of infertile people is a marriage is beside the point. The test of whether you have a marriage or not is whether it is gender-equal monogamy.[ref]For Hudson, companionate heterosexual monogamous marriage is a matter of gender equality and human peace incarnate.[/ref]
I was reminded of this as I read from Elder Henry D. Taylor’s Oct. 1973 talk. In it, he states,
Marriage brings adjustments, because each has his or her own personality. Reared in homes with varying backgrounds, marriage naturally will require the making of adjustments.
Marriage, my beloved young brothers and sisters, should not be just taken for granted. It must be worked at, but realize that you can have the kind of marriage that you earnestly desire and for which you are willing to work. Marriage will require giving and taking; it will mean sharing, because life was meant to be shared. A happy and successful marriage means forgetting oneself and thinking of ways in which to make one’s companion happy. It might be well each day for the husband to think, “What can I do today to make Mary happy?” And Mary should say to herself, “What can I do today to make John happy?” A happy Home is where the wife is treated like a queen and the husband is treated like a king. And so, it is not only marrying the right partner, it is being the right partner.
Later, he says,
President Stephen L Richards, a former counselor in the First Presidency, once aptly remarked: “In the case of marital disagreement, which may lead to separation, the proper remedy is not divorce, but repentance—repentance usually on the part of both husband and wife, repentance for both acts committed and harsh words which have made a ‘hell’ instead of a ‘heaven’ out of the home.”
In order for a married couple to make a “heaven” out of their home, they must realize that repentance, love, faithfulness, humility, and forgiveness are basic essentials in achieving this noble and lofty goal.
A serene home must also be a place where the Spirit of the Lord will dwell and abide. The Spirit of the Lord will not dwell nor abide in a home where there is constant bickering, quarreling, arguing, discord, or disharmony.
Joseph Smith’s famous line about being a “rough stone rolling down [from] a [high] mountain” with “all hell knocking off a corner here and a corner there” is pertinent here. As we adapt, repent, and love within our marriages, we are polished and refined. We take on the positive attributes of the other. This is why the grand fundamental principle of Mormonism is friendship and heaven is made up of people: they make us into the gods we are meant to be.
Marvin J. Ashton’s talk
