Religion

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

How (Not) To Be Secular: A Lecture by James K.A. Smith

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Years back, Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor published his 800+-page tome A Secular Age. I actually checked it out from the library once, got about 15 pages into it, and didn’t pick it up again until I had to return it. I realized that it was something I’d have to spend a lot of time not only reading, but chewing on. Given that I was still a newly-married undergrad, I decided to revisit it at another time.

I still haven’t tackled Taylor’s book, but I did recently complete James K.A. Smith’s How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. Smith’s book acts as a summarized walkthrough of Taylor’s, illuminating and at times taking issue with the some of ideas presented. By reading Smith’s book first, I feel prepared to take on the entirety of Taylor. In short, Smith and Taylor argue that the Western world has become a disenchanted one in which belief in God is just one option of belief among many:

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]

Shifts towards secularization led us to see ourselves as free agents closed off to external meaning, influences, and forces. Social ties and hierarchies were no longer seen as being grounded in higher, sacred orders. Reality was no longer a cosmos full meaning and purpose, but merely a universe full of chaos and chance. The secularity of the modern age is inescapable even for the most ardent believer. But this isn’t a subtraction story (i.e., the loss of superstition) as much as it is a change in sensibilities; a change in the water we swim in so to speak.

I’m certainly not doing the book justice in my brief summary, so I’ll just say this: anyone interested in making sense of our secular age, but hesitant to read 800 pages on the subject, should check out Smith’s book. You can see him lecturing at BYU’s Wheatley Institution below.

Soul on Fire: Appreciating Elie Wiesel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Jew Who Helped Invent the Modern Islamic State

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MuhmmedAsad

Despite the misleading title, Tablet has an excellent essay by Shalom Goldman on Muhammad Asad, one of the most important Muslim thinkers of the 20th century. What makes Asad’s story particularly remarkable is that he was born Jewish, in what is now western Ukraine. After converting, Asad gained such proficiency in the Quran and other classical Muslim texts that lifelong Muslims such as the founders of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan sought his advice on how to run a modern state in harmony with religious values. The essay is not a blanket endorsement of Asad (and it only scratches the surface) but if you want to go beyond the headlines when it comes to Islam, sharia, and just politics and religion in general, this is a great place to start.

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

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!

Pro-Life Atheist at Reason Rally

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atheists-against-abortionLife Matters Journal has a new piece by an atheist who attended Reason Rally 2016.  It includes her reflections on attending an event where it is assumed everyone is pro-choice because, well, logic, science, and reason.  Her main takeaways  are that many people don’t know the science, those that do know the science are willing to discriminate, and there is a religious nature to pro-choice adherents.  It’s an interesting piece that you can read here.  She writes,

For some reason though many of the same people who claim to trust only hard scientific evidence are willing to deny these basic biological truths in order to continue supporting the violence of abortion.

There is no reason for the secular community to be as pro-choice as they are; in fact as lovers of logic and reason it would only make sense for more atheists to be pro-life. I fear that the reason the pro-choice side is so successful with nonreligious people is partially that pro-lifers have marketed ourselves as a fundamentally religious/Christian movement.

I’ve written about pro-life atheists before.  I think, in general, the pro-life movement hasn’t found a way to balance the fact that many pro-lifers are religious, but a  lot of the hearts and minds they need to change are not.  Thankfully atheist and agnostic voices have been getting stronger in the community, like at Secular Pro-Life.  I say thankfully because, even though I am Mormon, I’ve always been more swayed by, or felt more comfortable sharing, logical and scientific arguments.  In policy decisions  I think those arguments can reach more people.  Any movement that has science and ethics on its side should not be afraid to use those benefits.