The April 1972 General Conference did not begin strong. Its Thursday morning session was a chore to get through to say the least and displayed some of the more negative aspects of Mormonism (e.g. triumphalism, authoritarianism). Most of my notes were very critical and aimed at dismantling a number of points raised throughout the talks. However, I finally reached Spencer W. Kimball’s talk on communication. He tells of being in “cattle country” in northwest Argentina where a fire had burned down a number of telephone poles. He compares this to struggling couples: “I thought that telephone lines and telephone poles are a little like people. They are built for one purpose and sometimes serve another. They are designed to be firm and stout and to give support; but in many cases they are leaning and swaying and sagging until communications are greatly impaired, if not actually cut off. In my experience I find that in a large number of marital cases, the problem is lack of communication; the wires are down, the poles are burned, husbands and wives are jangling, and there is static where there should be peace. There is growing disgust and hate where there should be love and harmony.” In many cases, the “inability to communicate in reasonableness led to anger, hard words, misunderstandings. In time, each found another person and set up different communication lines for sympathy and understanding and comfort; and this disloyalty led to physical adventures that resulted in adulteries and two broken homes and disillusioned spouses and crushed hopes and injured children. And all this because two basically good people let their communication lines get down and permitted the security poles to drag the ground.” He shares another story of a young man who had become distanced from the Church. When asked about his habits and associations, Kimball remembers, “The answers were what I expected. He had turned loose his hold on the iron rod. He associated largely with unbelievers. He read, in addition to his college texts, works by atheists, apostates, and Bible critics. He had ceased to pray to his Heavenly Father. His communication poles were burned, and his lines were sagging terribly.” He concludes by stating, “Sin comes when communication lines are down—it always does, sooner or later.”
Now, I’m not scared of atheists, apostates, or Bible critics. I’m thoroughly convinced that we should be familiar with the thoughts and writings of such people. I was about to chalk this up to the old whitewashing of Mormon history and the labeling of all things challenging as “anti-Mormon”, but then I realized this was relational in nature, not intellectual. The two examples Kimball chooses to use are the relationship between a husband and wife and the one between a young man and the Church (and ultimately God). As I thought on this, I was reminded of psychologist and marriage expert John Gottman’s “Four Horsemen of the [Relationship] Apocalypse“:
Criticism – attacking the person’s character and implying that they are defective as a person.
Contempt – displaying a sense of superiority, making the other feel like an inferior (most dangerous of the “Horsemen”).
Defensiveness – self-victimization; lack of accountability.
Stonewalling – withdrawing from the conversation.
Without going into great detail, I was embarrassed to discover that I do all four of these things plenty when it comes to the Church. While the Church is flawed, it is nonetheless important to me. Perhaps I should try to strengthen my relationship with it by cutting back on my criticisms, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling and replace them with vulnerability, accountability, charity, and engagement.
Some General Conference sessions seem brimming with impactful revelations and guidance. And some do not.
I believe in a lot of cases the variable isn’t the session or an individual talk; it’s me. When I was a missionary in the MTC, the October 2000 General Conference was absolutely riveting. Every single session captured my full attention. On my mission, I devoured the conference issues of the Ensign, avidly reading every word of every single talk. But this was all a very drastic change from how I approached General Conferences before and after my mission. In both cases—at least until recently—it was a rare accomplishment just to stay awake for an entire Sunday session, and I frequently didn’t even try to catch the Saturday sessions. Most of the difference was simply what I brought to the table. Like scripture, you get more out of General Conferences when you put more into them.
But it would be strange to think that that’s the only variable in play. Some talks resonate more with different parts of the audience than others. And surely, if some talks stand out as legendary and unique, then other talks by definition have to be somewhat ordinary by comparison. This session, for me at least, was full of those kinds of talks.
As I read the first five talks, I found interesting things to note, but nothing that really stood out. I have itching ears. I like to hear new things. That’s not a bad trait in general—curiosity is essential to a meaningful life—but when it creates a thirst for novelty for novelty’s sake it can become a problem.
Which is exactly what I realized when I came to the last talk of the session, Keep the Lines of Communication Strong by President Spencer W. Kimball. His emphasis was first and foremost on the lines of communication within a marriage, and he begins with a story of a young couple who grew apart because of mismatched expectations and goals and, more importantly, because they stopped communicating with each other and turned to someone else for comfort:
In time, each found another person and set up different communication lines for sympathy and understanding and comfort; and this disloyalty led to physical adventures that resulted in adulteries and two broken homes and disillusioned spouses and crushed hopes and injured children.
President Kimball writes that “all this [happened] because two basically good people let their communication lines get down.” From there, he segues into a discussion about the line of communication in faith, about the necessity of maintaining a habit of daily prayer and reading the scriptures and how—without these habits—we will not have a vibrant, thriving spiritual life to fall back upon in challenging and lean times.
These points are interesting, and they are good, but they aren’t really new, are they? Isn’t the advice about keeping open the lines of communication with our spouses just common sense? Isn’t the advice about keeping open the lines of communication with our Heavenly Father just a restatement of the Parable of the Ten Virgins?
Yes and no. It depends, to a great extent, on what we bring to the message.
For me, I realized when reading President Kimball’s talk how important it was for me to slog through the first five talks of the session even though I didn’t enjoy them as much as I often do. Sometimes keeping the line of communication open isn’t novel, or exciting, or revelatory. Sometimes the conversations you have with your spouse aren’t scintillating. You’re just sharing ordinary concerns and relating everyday events. But if you only talked to your spouse when at least one of you had something really thrilling or intrinsically exciting to say, then how often would you talk at all? And, facing that kind of scrutiny, how could you possible put in the simple moments—day after day, week after week, year after year—to keep lines of communication open?
It reminds me of a quote from an amazing science fiction novel by the Chinese author Cixin Liu:
As had occurred so many times before, their eyes met and intertwined, a continuation of that gaze they had held in front of the Mona Lisa’s smile two centuries before. They had discovered that the language of the eyes that [his wife] had dreamed up was now a reality. Or maybe loving humans had always possessed this language. When they looked at each other, a richness of meaning poured from their eyes, just as the clouds poured from the … endless and unceasing. But it wasn’t a language of this world. It constructed a world that gave it meaning, and only in that rosy world did the words of the language find their corresponding referents. Everyone in that world was God. All had the ability to instantaneously count and remember every grain of sand in the desert. All were able to string together stars into a crystal necklace to hang around a lover’s neck.
The point of the secret communication between this husband and wife wasn’t what they had to say. It was that they were saying it to each other. This otherworldly communication is possible in all loving relationships, I believe, a secret language only understood by a man and wife who have built a lifetime together. And every simple, boring, commonplace exchange—when part of a grand project of keeping open the lines of communication—becomes another element to their private language.
There is this fascinating connection in the scriptures between marital fidelity and religious fidelity. Between adultery and apostasy. It’s no coincidence that President Kimball chose to emphasis those two stories in his talk about lines of communication: because in both cases, the work of maintaining the lines of communication is the work of protecting and preserving a special relationship.
Writing about the importance of love in human society and psychology, Jonathan Haidt pointed out that although we often celebrate the idea of universal love, there is actually something vital about specific love:
Although I would like to live in a world in which everyone radiates benevolence towards everyone else, I would rather live in a world in which there was at least one person who loved me specifically, and whom I loved in return. [emphasis added]
That kind of specific love is tied in some way to exclusivity. It is why idealistic, naïve arguments for polyamory—although superficially commendable: shouldn’t love be devoid of jealousy and possession?—are so foolish. The love of man and wife is sacred because they have each chosen the other in particular and above all others. And this is very similar to our discipleship, in that we must choose to love and follow God in particular and above all others.
So yes: sometimes General Conference talks are boring. Sometimes they are repetitive. Sometimes the talks are little more than just long recitations of scriptures we already know, without any new or unique twist or insight. And listening to these talks is not as much fun as listening to a talk that seems to expand our minds our souls with every word, but listening to these workaday talks is important, because the mundane and the repetitive and the commonplace are the building blocks of the sacred and the transcendent.
Keeping open lines of communication is a chore sometimes. It’s a chore with our spouses, with our children, with our family, with our friends, and with our God. But these relationships are also the treasures of eternity. They are, especially for Mormons, the whole point. A little boredom is a small price to pay. If Naaman could be troubled to bathe in the humble Jordan,[ref]2 Kings 5[/ref] then I can be troubled to read even the General Conference talks that don’t appear to sparkle. The cost of admission is so low, and we have so little to lose in paying it.
As a last observation: I believe I may have wandered a little far afield of President Kimball’s talk. I have pulled in quotes from social science and science fiction, and gone off (as far as I can tell) on a tangent of my own. If the digression has been a good one, it is also evidence of how we—the audience—have an obligation to make what we hear our own. To “liken [scriptures] unto yourselves,” is everyone’s duty.[ref]1 Nephi 19:23[/ref] Sometimes a General Conference is a delicious prepared meal, ready to be consumed. Other times, it is raw ingredients we have to cook ourselves. Sometimes, it might even feel like just the seeds to grow the plants to cook the meal! No matter. There is honor and dignity and even love in taking what we are given and making it what we desire.
The chance that I will be bored by another General Conference talk—or even an entire session—is quite high. Knowing what to do doesn’t make it easy. But this post represents the way I will try to approach them in the future. If “all things work together for good to them that love God,” clearly this “all things” must include even the boring General Conference talks, right?[ref]Romans 8:28[/ref]
And so I will read every single one. Even the boring ones. I will keep the lines of communication open.
Last week, I posted an interview with economist Thomas Sowell on his brand new book Wealth, Politics, and Poverty. At the time I was reading through the book and have since finished it. The relative popularity of the post gave me an idea:[ref]I’m almost certain the popularity had more to do with Sowell than my reading list.[/ref] I will begin posting clips from interviews and/or lectures (depending on their availability) that are based on the books I read throughout the year. Obviously, not all of these books will be published in 2016. In fact, most won’t be. Nonetheless, if you’re anything like me, you might like to know what others are reading. And if it peaks your interest, you might like to get a firm grasp of the book’s subject and potential quality prior to reading. So, I plan on making this a consistent thing.
Without further ado, here’s the next book.
New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has at times been the center of public controversy due to some of his more popular books (Misquoting Jesus, Jesus, Interrupted), largely for introducing pretty standard New Testament scholarship to lay readers. His Oxford-published Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, however, is one of his earlier academic publications. The book covers the history of Christian diversity and contention in the first few centuries. The debates and controversies among the chaos of early Christianity ranged from the nature of Jesus to the contents of the scriptural canon. It’s a fascinating and important history. I’d merely piecemealed the book over the last few years since I was already familiar with the sects Ehrman describes,[ref]I started studying the Gnostics on my mission when I was given a book on the Nag Hammadi library.[/ref] but I finally buckled down and read through the entire thing. Well worth it.
You can listen to a Beliefnet interview with Ehrman below.
I was very struck by Elder Bruce R. McConkie’s statement in How to Worship that “[God] has planted in our hearts an instinctive desire to worship, to seek salvation, to love and server a power or being greater than ourselves.” I imagine it’s a claim that would strike many as controversial, but it brought to mind quotes about the role of the sacred in the lives of atheists and agnostics.
First, there’s Jonathan Haidt (an atheist) citing Mircea Eliade’s concept of “crypto-religious” behavior in The Happiness Hypothesis. The argument is that secularists have
privileged places, qualitatively different from all others — a man’s birthplace, or the scenes of his first love, or certain places in the first foreign city he visited in his youth. Even for the most frankly nonreligious man, all these places still retain an exceptional, a unique quality; they are the “holy places” of his private universe, as if it were in such spots that he had received the revelation of a reality other than that in which he participates through his ordinary daily life.[ref]The Happiness Hypothesis, page 193[/ref]
According to Haidt, Eliade captured his feelings perfectly: “Even atheists have intimations of sacredness, particularly when in love or in nature.”[ref]The Happiness Hypothesis, page 193.[/ref]
Haidt and Eliade are from alone in making this observation. The Bonobo and the Atheist, Frans de Waal (also an atheist), describes how science can function as a religious pursuit:
Instead of turning to religion, the majority of us are agnostic or atheist. This shouldn’t be taken to mean that science answers questions of meaning and purpose, however. Even the scientists who recently confirmed the “God particle” knew that it was a far cry from confirming why we are on earth and even less whether or not God exists. No, the big difference for scientists is that the thirst for knowledge itself, the lifeblood of our profession, fills a spiritual void by religion in most other people. Like treasure hunters for whom the hunt is about as important as the treasurer itself, we feel great purpose in trying to pierce the veil of ignorance. We feel united in this effort, being part of a worldwide network. This means that we also enjoyed this other aspects of religion: a community of white-minded people. At a recent workshop, a retired astronomer teared up while discussing humanities place in the cosmos. He stopped talking for two minutes, causing his audience to become restless, before explaining that he had pursued this question since childhood. The site of images from billions of light-years ago still overwhelms him, making him realize how much we are connected with the universe. He wouldn’t call it a religious experience, but it sounded very much like it.[ref]The Bonobo and the Atheist, page 106[/ref]
If, as Eliade, Haidt, and Gleiser agree, there is a tendency towards the spiritual in all of us, then Elder McConkie’s second statement is also true:
The issue is not whether men shall worship, but who or what is to be the object of their devotions and how they shall go about paying the devotions to their chosen Most High.
Elder McConkie speaks fairly sternly about worshiping the wrong gods, and maybe a little too sternly. He says,
If a man worships a cow or a crocodile, he can gain any reward that cows and crocodiles happen to be passing out this season.
And also:
If he worships the laws of the universe or the forces of nature, no doubt the earth will continue to spin, the sun to shine, and the rains to fall on the just and on the unjust.
By contrast, however,
But if he worships the true and living God, in spirit and in truth, then God Almighty will pour out his Spirit upon him, and he will have power to raise the dead, move mountains, entertain angels, and walk in celestial streets.
I don’t disagree. I just think John Locke may add some perspective as well: “I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.” In other words, what we really believe–and what we really worship–is not so much about names or beliefs as it is about action. Which is exactly what Elder McConkie goes on to articulate with his extensive–and vitally important–list of worship examples.
To the extent that we know love, we also know an aspect of God. To the extent that we act on that love, we worship Him. And this is true, even if we do not mean to do so. It’s not about the words you say. It’s about the life you live.
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.[ref]Matthew 7:21[/ref]
In his book Born Believers, cognitive scientist Justin Barrett posits a cross-culturally developed natural religion. This natural predisposition should not be confused with theology, the latter being adaptive to culture according to Barrett. Natural religion is developed in the early stages of life and consists of several basic assumptions:[ref]See Barrett, Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief (New York: Free Press, 2012), 137-138.[/ref]
Superhuman beings exist.
The natural world displays intentional design and purpose.
Superhuman beings possess superknowledge.
Superhuman beings are invisible or immortal, but within space and time.
Superhuman beings have character, good or bad.
Superhuman beings have free will and can interact with people.
I was reminded of this while reading Bruce R. McConkie’s talk in the October 1971 General Conference. According to McConkie, God “has planted in our hearts an instinctive desire to worship, to seek salvation, to love and serve a power or being greater than ourselves. Worship is implicit in existence itself. The issue is not whether men shall worship, but who or what is to be the object of their devotions and how they shall go about paying their devotions to their chosen Most High…Thus our purpose is to worship the true and living God and to do it by the power of the Spirit and in the way he has ordained. The approved worship of the true God leads to salvation; devotions rendered to false gods and which are not founded on eternal truth carry no such assurance.”
While McConkie’s harsh tone regarding pretty much every other concept of God besides that found in Mormonism is grating, I think he saves it by getting to the title of his talk: “[T]rue and perfect worship consists in following in the steps of the Son of God; it consists in keeping the commandments and obeying the will of the Father to that degree that we advance from grace to grace until we are glorified in Christ as he is in his Father. It is far more than prayer and sermon and song. It is living and doing and obeying. It is emulating the life of the great Exemplar” (italics mine).
This emulation consists of preaching the kingdom of God, healing the sick. We are to “walk in the light,” “rise above carnal things…bridle our passions, and…overcome the world. It is to pay our tithes and offerings, to act as wise stewards in caring for those things which have been entrusted to our care, and to use our talents and means for the spreading of truth and the building up of his kingdom…To worship the Lord is to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliction and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world. It is to work on a welfare project, to administer to the sick, to go on a mission, to go home teaching, and to hold family home evening. To worship the Lord is to study the gospel, to treasure up light and truth, to ponder in our hearts the things of his kingdom, and to make them part of our lives.”
And much more.
He concludes, “True and perfect worship is in fact the supreme labor and purpose of man. God grant that we may write in our souls with a pen of fire the command of the Lord Jesus: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Luke 4:8); and may we in fact and with living reality worship the Father in spirit and in truth, thereby gaining peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come.”
McConkie has a tendency toward authoritarianism. However, this talk doesn’t really focus on obedience to authority or obedience for the sake of obedience. And though I have a slight aversion to lists, this strikes me more as a hearty display of Christian living. It is where our natural developments for supernatural belief and group association and cultural and religious instruction meet and come to full fruition. It’s where the rubber meets the road. McConkie’s talk is ultimately an exhortation to roll up our sleeves and get to work. There’s lots to be done.
The number one phrase that makes me question whether someone has opened a Bible lately is “The God of the New Testament is loving and forgiving, but the God of the Old Testament is wrathful and demanding.” I don’t know how many times I’ve heard it and read it.
In fact, there’s a lot of love and forgiveness in the Old Testament. “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”—which for the record doubles as an instance in the Bible where God is compared and described in traditionally feminine rather than masculine terms. God shows forbearance time and time again in the Old Testament despite the Israelites going astray. And after God has punished them for their transgressions, He is quick to forgive. The prophets of the Old Testament, who pronounce judgment upon Israel, always end on the note that God will restore His people. The last words of Amos are:
“…I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine, and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. I will plant them upon their land, and they shall never again be plucked up out of the land which I have given them,” says the Lord your God.
There’s also a good amount of wrath and demands in the New Testament. In Luke and Matthew, respectively, Jesus preaches the following:
“I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear him!”
“Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy,that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
You’d almost think the OT and NT were written about the same God. On a related note, Jesus talks about hell a decent amount too. Yes, Gehenna is a reference to hell. No, Jesus is not literally talking about your soul going to a burning trash pit outside Jerusalem in the afterlife. Yes, Jesus uses imagery to help his listeners understand the gravity of the situation.
Sheol/Hades (in Hebrew/Greek) is more ambiguous, mostly because our understanding of the word hell, which is an English word, is much narrower than it used to be. Rather than referring exclusively to the realm of the eternally damned, hell was used generally to refer to the abode of the dead, both good and evil. The CCC gives a good summary:
Scripture calls the abode of the dead, to which the dead Christ went down, “hell” – Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek – because those who are there are deprived of the vision of God. Such is the case for all the dead, whether evil or righteous, while they await the Redeemer: which does not mean that their lot is identical, as Jesus shows through the parable of the poor man Lazarus who was received into “Abraham’s bosom”: “It is precisely these holy souls, who awaited their Savior in Abraham’s bosom, whom Christ the Lord delivered when he descended into hell.” Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him.
All of the talks in the Sunday morning session of the October 1971 General Conference were wonderful, but the one I’d like to write about today is Elder Paul H. Dunn’s What is a Teacher? In his talk, Elder Dunn focuses on the three parables of Luke 15: the lost sheep, the piece of silver, and the prodigal son.
Elder Dunn said the he often wondered why the Lord had repeated the same basic message using three different parables. I have never wondered that. I figured it was just for emphasis, or perhaps with the intention that different audiences would relate better to different stories. But, as this example shows, the scriptures often reward those who push a little harder to understand what is going on. Thus, Elder Dunn: “And then one day it dawned. People do get lost in various ways, and here in this great chapter of Luke we find the Savior counseling how to recover them.”
The message of the first story, of the lost sheep, is that some people get lost simply because they get confused. And for those, the solutions are “Family, service, [and] brotherhood… Feeding… brings them home.”
The message of the second story, of the lost coin, is that sometimes “responsible agents… let these priceless gems slip through their fingers.” I thought this was an especially poignant way of looking at the fate of some of those who wander astray. Elder Dunn says that we can’t recover these ones the way we recover a confused sheep. “Love, care, and attention would be the process used to recover lost coins.”
Finally, and most tragically, some are lost because “their free agency takes them down that path.” In this case, “we can’t do a lot… except open our arms and our church doors and let them know they are wanted.”
As part of writing this post, I looked up Elder Dunn on Wikipedia. It turns out that he is a controversial figure, and so I thought that was worth mentioning as well. He liked to embellish his General Conference talks with personal stories that were not true. Ultimately, in 1991, he wrote an open letter to all members (with permission of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve) in which he stated that “I have not always been accurate in my public talks and writings, [and] I have indulged in other activities inconsistent with the high and sacred officer which I have held.” He asked for forgiveness and even stated that the General Authorities, after an investigation, “have censured me and placed a heavy penalty upon me.”
I don’t know what the “other activities” were, nor what the “heavy penalty” was, but I thought it was worth pointing out to show that all of us can wonder and become lost. No one is immune, and that is worth keeping in mind so that we can exercise humility in our own lives and find compassion for those who stumble. (Which, at one time or another, is all of us.)
In the film Gravity, there is a scene that–for me–captures the message and essence of the film. Following the destruction of their space shuttle by orbital debris, Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) are tethered together and making their way to the International Space Station via Kowalski’s propulsion unit. While en route, Kowalski comments on how beautiful the earth and sun are, accompanied by his ever-present country music. He begins asking Stone about her life back home and she eventually reveals that her 4-year-old daughter had died when she fell playing at school one day. Despite being in a fantastical context that was obviously capturing Kowalski’s attention, Stone’s experience suddenly becomes even more important in the moment. Her loss and her experience becomes just as deep and vast as the very space they are occupying. Instead of being left with the feeling of how small and insignificant we are in such a large universe, we leave realizing that the human experience is just as immense.
I was reminded of this scene when listening to John Vandenberg’s talk in the October 1971 Conference:
Some years ago I accepted an invitation to a fathers and sons outing, where the participants spent an arduous but interesting day mounted on horses on a trip to Bloomington Lake in the mountains of Bear Lake County, Idaho. Late at night, after the campfires had all burned out and everyone had settled down under the open heavens, I lay on my back, gazing overhead. It was a moonless night, and I have never seen such a beautiful sight. The heavens were alive with the brightness of stars and planets. How small I felt in comparison to that vast universe! A sense of appreciation came over me as I thought of God’s glory, of his handiwork, the earth, the heavens, all created for one purpose—his children, mankind. That experience has remained with me. I was overwhelmed by the magnitude of it.
The section of the Book of Moses he goes on to quote is instructive. After witnessing “the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created,” Moses declares that “I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1:8, 10). Yet, earlier the Lord told him, “And, behold, thou art my son…and thou art in the similitude of mine Only Begotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth; but there is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all” (Moses 1:4, 6). Moses draws on this knowledge later when Satan approaches and tempts him with, “Moses, son of man, worship me” (Moses 1:12; italics mine). In response, Moses declares, “Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten; and where is thy glory, that I should worship thee?” (Moses 1:13; italics mine). Following the departure of Satan, God returns and presents Moses with another vision. Following this, he learns that God’s “work and…glory” is “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). The cosmos are awe-inspiring, overwhelming, and frightening. The sheer magnitude of creation can and should be humbling. But as Vandenberg points out, “[T]he creation of the world, the plan of salvation—all this is for us.” Human life and progress is that important to God. It should be important to us as well.
One of the “requirements” according to his priest adviser as a young man was “to think a new thought every day.” Relevant for all classes and for Mormonism in general.
The teacher is a prophet. He lays the foundation of tomorrow. The teacher is an artist. He works with the precious clay of unfolding personality. The teacher is a friend. His heart responds to the faith and devotion of his students. The teacher is a citizen. He is selected and licensed for the improvement of society. The teacher is an interpreter. Out of his mature and wider life, he seeks to guide the young. The teacher is a builder. He works with the higher and finer values of civilization. The teacher is a culture-bearer. He leads the way toward worthier tastes, saner attitudes, more gracious manners, higher intelligence. The teacher is a planner. He sees the young lives before him as a part of a great system that shall grow stronger in the light of truth. The teacher is a pioneer. He is always interpreting and attempting the impossible, and usually winning out. The teacher is a reformer. He seeks to improve the handicaps that weaken and destroy life. The teacher is a believer. He has an abiding faith in God and in the improvability of the race. It was James Truslow Adams who said, “There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living, and the other how to live.” We are engaged in teaching people how to live.”
According to Dunn, the lost sheep in the Savior’s parable “are not basically sinners by nature or even choice,” but instead “get confused in what’s important. In other words, they have misplaced values.” In the parable of the lost coin, “there are those of us who are the responsible agents who, like the woman of this great teaching parable, let these priceless gems slip through our fingers.” Finally, there is “the great parable of the Prodigal Son, with the Savior saying that there are those who get lost by choice…There are those who get lost because their free agency takes them down that path. We can’t do a lot at some points to recover this kind of a person except open our arms and our church doors and let them know they are wanted”
Man is the sum result of what he thinks and does. Habit is the instrument that molds his character and makes of him essentially what he is. Habit can become a monster to tarnish and destroy, yet proper behavioral traits can bring lasting joy and achievement. To say no at the right time and then stand by it is the first element of success. The effect that both good and bad habits have on our lives is all too real to be ignored. Bad habits that violate the commandments of physical health (D&C 89) and of moral behavior (D&C 121), given by revelation to the Prophet Joseph Smith many years ago, will threaten and destroy all opportunities for real happiness.”
“Choosing good over evil and right over wrong is the crowning achievement of life, and in so doing man becomes the masterpiece of the Creator and fulfills the basic purposes of his mortal probation. An ancient prophet speaks of it in this way: “… he that ruleth his spirit [is greater] than he that taketh a city.” (Prov. 16:32.)”
“The fusing of ritual and commandment with everyday living calls for the best that is in us, that by our agency we may feel the affected condition by choosing good rather than evil, thus not only glorifying ourselves but glorifying Him who has made all things possible.”
After describing many loving, familial, yet mundane situations, he states,
Heaven is a place, but also a condition; it is home and family. It is understanding and kindness. It is interdependence and selfless activity. It is quiet, sane living; personal sacrifice, genuine hospitality, wholesome concern for others. It is living the commandments of God without ostentation or hypocrisy. It is selflessness. It is all about us. We need only to be able to recognize it as we find it and enjoy it. Yes, my dear brother, I’ve had many glimpses of heaven.”
The late political/social scientist James Q. Wilson made a name for himself studying crime (most famously his “broken windows theory“),[ref]For more on this theory, see the City Journal articles by Heather MacDonald,Charles Sahm, and George Kelling.[/ref] which eventually led him to study mankind’s innate moral sense as well as the familial context in which this sense is nurtured. This wide range of research and reflection enabled him to pen the following paragraph, which is a beautiful summary of human nature:
Evolution by selection, though of great importance to human life, is an incomplete explanation unless we first understand that what it produced were not robots that acted automatically on biological instincts but thinking, feeling people equipped by nature with a complex psychology that predisposed but did not compel them to act in certain ways…Part of the reason we help others at some sacrifice to ourselves is that they are our children; by helping them we perpetuate our genes. And another part is that we help people who are not our children in order to impress these people with our dependability and win from them some reciprocal help in the future. But these two explanations, inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism, while quite powerful, do not clarify everything…To explain all of altruism, it is necessary to first understand that what evolution has given to us is not a fixed mechanism to achieve a specific goal, but an emotion that not only serves that goal but achieves related ones as well. Let us call that emotion a desire for affiliation or, in simple language, a desire to be part of a social group.[ref]James Q. Wilson, The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 35-36.[/ref]
[W]hat if addiction isn’t about your chemical hooks?What if addiction is about your cage?What if addiction is an adaptation to your environment? …[M]aybe we shouldn’t even call it addiction.Maybe we should call it bonding.Human beings have a natural and innate need to bond,and when we’re happy and healthy, we’ll bond and connect with each other,but if you can’t do that,because you’re traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life,you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief.Now, that might be gambling, that might be pornography,that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis,but you will bond and connect with something because that’s our nature.That’s what we want as human beings.
I thought of this information as I was reading through the Priesthood session of the October 1971 General Conference. Marvin J. Ashton recounts a time he was visiting a prison and was stopped by a young man who, after talking with Elder Ashton for 15 minutes or so, said, “Thank you for talking to me.” This need to be listened to–to be accepted and truly seen–is echoed in the predicament of Ashton’s imprisoned friend, who stated,
I don’t want to blame anyone back home for my being in prison today, but it is factual that I had no family relationships. I am involved in the family home evening program at the prison. Without the parents who have been assigned to me through this social services program, many times I would have given up. These people love me as if I were their own son. I have never had that, even when I was a small boy. Now, with their help and that of others, I believe I can now make it back a day at a time. I am not proud of being in prison, but I am proud of my recent experiences while being there. We have a tendency to blame others. We don’t want to blame our parents for not loving us, because we know they do, but maybe they didn’t have the guidance and direction in their lives to apply when they were bringing us up.
These prisoners obviously had experienced social isolation on a grand scale prior to their imprisonment. This is what makes Ashton’s message so powerful:
I humbly, but with all of the power in my possession, declare to our “lost” youth, young men and young women worldwide, you can make it back from where you are. The great social services program of the Church, operating as an arm of the priesthood, lends a helping hand to our young people with social and emotional problems. As President Smith has declared to us tonight, by honoring our priesthood we can help them find their way back to joy and stability.
The gospel is freely available to all, including and especially those whose sins may be more public and legally troublesome. They are not truly lost: they can make it back from where they are. But they cannot and should not do it
alone. The gospel is communal and we as members of the community should be leading them “back to joy and stability.” This is why President Joseph Fielding Smith reminds the brethren in his opening talk that they
are to use “the priesthood to benefit mankind.” It “is given…to bless ourselves and our Father’s other children.” In a well-known and popular story, a man has a dream in which he is walking on a beach with the Lord. As he sees scenes from his life, he notices that at times there are two sets of footprints and at others only one. Realizing the hardest times feature only one pair of footprints, he questions why the Lord abandoned him in his trials. In reply, the Lord says, “It was then that I carried you.” The story is sentimental enough, but as physician and cultural historian Sam Brown notes, “While there is no doubt that Christ will indeed carry us in our lives…[h]ow could a person’s life story be told with only one set of human footprints?” “The Mormon version,” he writes, “...would have so many footprints that it would be hard to find undisturbed sand. There would be parents and siblings, friends and neighbors, visiting and home teachers, the Relief Society presidency, the bishop and his counselors, even sometimes the young women and young men of our wards and neighborhoods…At times of trial, the footfalls may become a stampede, the sand bearing the marks of an earnest crowd of saints carrying us forward.”[ref]Samuel M. Brown, First Principles and Ordinances: The Fourth Article of Faith in Light of the Temple (Provo: Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, BYU, 2014), 125.[/ref]
The need for more footprints in the sand is made even more explicit in Marion D. Hanks’ talk. He describes five things that the youth (or anyone, really) need:
First, they need faith. They need to believe. They need to know the doctrines, the commandments, the principles of the gospel. They need to grow in understanding and conviction. They need to worship and to pray, but they live in a time when all of this is so seriously questioned, when doubt is encouraged.
Two, they need to be accepted as they are, and to be included. They need a family, the most important social unit in this world; and even if they have a good family, they need the supportive influence outside their home of others, of neighbors, of friends, of bishops, of brothers, of human beings.
Three, they need to be actively involved, to participate, to give service, to give of themselves.
Four, they have to learn somehow that they are more important than their mistakes; that they are worthwhile, valuable, useful; that they are loved unconditionally.
…We need to understand their needs. They need to learn the gospel. They need to be accepted, to be involved, to be loved; and they need, my brethren—my fifth and final point—the example of good men, good parents, good people, who really care.
Each of these, including the first one, bolster a sense of belonging and connection with others. Christianity “provided an unimaginably exalted picture of the human person–made in the divine image and destined to partake of the divine nature…In short, the rise of Christianity produced consequences so immense that it can almost be said to have begun the world anew: to have “invented” the human, to have bequeathed us our most basic concept of nature, to have determined our vision of the cosmos and our place in it, and to have shaped all of us…in the deepest reaches of consciousness.”[ref]David B. Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 213.[/ref] That people are “not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike, to be cherished and adored, is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls.”[ref]Ibid., 214.[/ref] To be the victim of abuse, tragedy, shame, or loneliness is to often have one’s feelings of dignity and self-worth stripped. It is not merely a future peace or salvation that is being taught when one preaches Jesus and the doctrines of the gospel: it is an identity; a recognition that “the worth of souls” (including one’s own) “is great in the sight of God” (D&C 18:10). They “are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19; note the kinship language in my italics). They are called to be “equip[ped with] the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12, NRSV). They are called into a community. They are called to belong.
There were lots of good talks from the Priesthood session of the October 1971 General Conference. I really liked the list of 5 things that every young person needs given by Elder Marion D. Hanks in his talk, Love Unconditional.
They need faith.
They need to be accepted as they are, and to be included.
They need to be actively involved, to participate, to give service, to give of themselves
They have to learn somehow that they are more important than their mistakes; that they are worthwhile, valuable, useful; that they are loved unconditionally
They need the example of good men, good parents, good people who really care.
“There have to be standards and they must be enforced,” he later said, “but our love must be unconditional.” The General Authorities have been refusing the false choice between tolerance and righteousness for decades.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks also gave a list of advice in his talk, Strive for Excellence, this time advice for seeking “a balanced and full life of service to God and fellowman.”
Rigorous standards and high achievement in any field of learning are not at odds with faith and devotion to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In approaching any field of learning, remember the Lord’s direction to “seek learning, even by study and also by faith.” (D&C 88:118.)
Cherish and nourish your spiritual life. Seek spiritual growth at the same time that you are seeking to enlarge your learning in other areas. Nourish your spirit just as regularly as you nourish your body or mind.
Most of all, live so that you can be guided and taught by the Spirit in all your activities, including all your efforts to learn and gain an education: honor your parents; be true to the teachings of the Church; be clean and faithful in all things; and be loyal to the leaders of the Church.
But the talk that stuck with me the most was President Harold B. Lee’s Responsibilities of the Priesthood. He started out with an amazing metaphor that I’d never hear before. A mission president asked one of the missionaries to push over a pillar inside a building. “I can’t,” said the missionary, The reason? “The weight of that ceiling is all on top of the pillar.” So the mission president asked what would happen if the weight were taken off the pillar, and the missionary said that, in that case, he could probably topple the pillar. And so President Lee concluded:
Brethren, you and I are just like one of those pillars. As long as we have a weight of responsibility in this church, all hell can’t push us over; but as soon as that weight is lifted off, most of us are easy marks by the powers that drag us down.
It’s such a profoundly different way of looking at responsibility, although when it is phrased a little bit differently I think it’s more familiar: we need to be needed.
A little later on in the talk, President Lee recounts what one prisoner said about why they were in prison: “We are here in the state penitentiary because there came a time in our lives when we were made to feel that nobody cared what happened to us.”
President Lee then issued message of humility and compassion, along with a warning against self-righteousness:
You and I sit here tonight in a comparative measure of security, but the Lord help any one of us if ever we are made to feel in our hearts that nobody cares what happens to us.
Together, these two quotes (the story of the pillar and the idea that we’d be in dire straits if we ever felt no one cared about us) reminded me of the idea of privilege.
Politically, when it is often heard as “white privilege” or “straight privilege,” privilege becomes a problematic idea, in part because it tends to make people feel isolated and suspicious of each other. Someone who sees the world through the lens of privilege must always ask whether every misfortune they encounter was simply one of life’s unfortunate random events, of if they are experiencing persecution and oppression. This is a horrible way to live and it divides rather than unites people.
But there is a great deal of truth to the idea that some people have privileges that make their lives easier and that, what’s more, they often take these privileges for granted. Imagine, for example, one of those stone pillars holding aloft a heavy ceiling and thinking to itself: “I would be so much more free if only I hadn’t been placed here underneath this heavy load.” Isn’t that very similar to the way some Mormons, raised in the faith and therefore carrying the burden of knowledge of the Restoration, might feel about their own lives? Taking the high standards and high expectations of the faith and the community as a burden instead of understanding how this privilege empowers and strengthens them to stand straight and true against the forces of the adversary?
An even more poignant example is that so many Mormons—who have experienced the privilege of being raised in loving homes by their biological parents—now see the same family unit that provided so much of their formative life experiences as basically a dispensable life choice. Intentionally or not, this cavalier attitude towards the family amounts to kicking away the ladder that one has just used to climb to a higher vista.
The saddest thing about privilege is that, when we take it for granted, we may be tricked into working to destroy the privileges that we have enjoyed so that those who come after us will have to struggle through without them.
Last week, I posted 
I was very struck by Elder Bruce R. McConkie’s statement in 
Haidt and Eliade are from alone in making this observation. 
The gospel is freely available to all, including and especially those whose sins may be more public and legally troublesome. They are not truly lost: they can make it back from where they are. But they cannot and should not do it