Religion

The Doors of the Sea: Interview with David Bentley Hart

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Image result for the doors of the seaIn preparation for an upcoming talk in church on “trials and their purpose,” I purchased Eastern Orthodox philosopher David B. Hart’s book The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami?. Written after the massive South Asian tsunami in 2004, Hart addresses the most common objection to God’s existence: the problem of evil. Instead of intellectualizing, justifying, and rationalizing the evil and suffering we see and experience in the world, Hart condemns it. He reminds readers that Christ was sent to conquer death and all those things associated with it. In short, death, evil, and suffering play no role in God’s ultimate purposes because these are the very things Christ’s atonement and resurrection are meant to be victorious over. Hart movingly concludes his book with the following:

[F]ortunately, I think — we Christians are not obliged (and perhaps are not even allowed) to look upon the devastation of that day — to look, that is, upon the entire littoral rim of Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal and upper Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children — and to attempt to console ourselves or others with vacuous cant about the ultimate meaning or purpose residing in all that misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation. Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, and the forces — whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance — that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred.

…As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes — and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new” (pgs. 101, 103-104).

You can see a brief interview with Hart below discussing the problem of evil below.

The Humility of an Apostle

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

President (then Elder) Thomas S. Monson was the first speaker during the Friday afternoon session of the October 1975 General Conference, but we’ll never know what talk he planned to give because he threw it away:

In the balcony to my left I see a beautiful girl of perhaps ten years. Sweet little one, I do not know your name or whence you have come. This, however, I do know: the innocence of your smile and the tender expression of your eyes have persuaded me to place aside for a future time the message I had prepared for this occasion. Today, I am impressed to speak to you.

The story that followed was poignant and sad, but the thing I couldn’t help but noticing was the amount of humility implicit in how President Monson shared this story. He mentioned others being inspired—like President Benson, who sent him to Louisiana in response to a prompting—but he never talked about any inspiration of his own.

In contrast, he described himself making the wrong decision and then being corrected by the Lord. When considering whether or not he would make the trip to visit a sick little girl, he reports that:

I examined the schedule of meetings for that evening and the next morning—even my return flight. There simply was no available time. An alternative suggestion came to mind. Could we not remember the little one in our public prayers at conference? Surely the Lord would understand. On this basis, we proceeded with the scheduled meetings.

But this was not the right decision. As he prepared to start his meeting:

I was sorting my notes, preparing to step to the pulpit, when I heard a voice speak to my spirit. The message was brief, the words familiar: “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:14.) My notes became a blur. My thoughts turned to a tiny girl in need of a blessing. The decision was made. The meeting schedule was altered. After all, people are more important than meetings. I turned to Bishop James Serra and asked that he leave the meeting and advise the [family].

And so he travelled to the bedside of a dying girl and, there he found holiness.

I have been in hallowed places—even holy houses—but never have I felt more strongly the presence of the Lord than in [her] home.

He gave her a blessing, but he does not record what that blessing contained. Only that, four days following, the little girl passed away. Some might ask why—if an apostle was guided to Louisiana and then specifically to the home of this sick girl—she could not be spared. That is an issue I will not tackle today.

Instead, I simply want to observe that President Monson’s story itself has a childlike quality of love, trust, and humility. His story was not only about a child and delivered to a child, but exemplified how we can be like children ourselves.

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

So Now We Are Civilized

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Maori troops in North Africa, July 1941 (Public Domain)

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

I took the title for this post from a story that Elder Robert L. Simpson recounted in his talk, Do It:

As Sister Simpson and I walked along lower Queen Street in Auckland, New Zealand, the other day, we came to a particular place not far from the wharf. There we paused for a few moments as I related to her the incident that took place at that very spot during my first mission.

I could still see in my mind’s eye a very old Maori couple who stood at the curb with thousands of others waving farewell to the Maori Battalion as they marched down to their troop transport and off to war.

The old couple became very excited as one young soldier glanced their way with a big smile. From their Maori conversation, it became apparent that this was their great-grandson going off to war.

His would be an atomic war with sophisticated equipment capable of killing by the thousands—so unlike the Maori wars of the late 1800s that the old Maori had participated in as a young tribal warrior.

Soon the boy was gone from view, and it was then that the old man turned to his wife and said (perhaps a little cynically), “Ka tahi kua pakeha tatou,” which in effect means, “So now we are civilized.”[ref]I added those links to Wikipedia for the curious. They aren’t original to the 1975 talk. J[/ref]

Elder Simpson went on to say “[t]hat old Maori great-grandfather had every right to question the true values of so-called civilization,” observing that: “Our jet age of atomic power and automatic everything can be helpful if used properly.”

That deeply ambiguous approach to technology is wise. Technology is a form of knowledge, and knowledge is power, and so technology is power: for good or for ill. The particular gadgets and gizmos of our 21st century world are unique: there have never been iPhones or drones before in human history. But every major technological advance—from the invention of fire to the invention of the printing press—has led us into the same kinds of confrontation. So we’ve got some great new power, now what?

With all the new stuff we’re getting, we should remember the ancient counsel: “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”[ref]Proverbs 4:7[/ref]

A final note: if you’re following along and you read this session[ref]the Friday morning session of the October 1975 General Conference[/ref], then you know I picked about the only non-political post from this session to write about. The other talks, almost without fail, were some of the most pointedly political I’d ever read, castigating liberals, welfare, and secularism. I’m passing over them without much comment for a simple reason: I’m not really sure what to make of them. I say this as someone who has been conservative his whole life—and remains decidedly right of center to this day—and yet while I basically agree with the comments I have to confess it’s an odd feeling to hear such strident political ideology from the pulpit.

I wrote about this last week, so I might as well reiterate: righteous avarice is my watchword. Too many, I think, make haste to bring their perspective into conformity with what they believe they are hearing and—in so doing—may miss the deeper message. Then there are those who simply write it off whatever they cannot reconcile as the mistakes of fallible leaders. Well, certainly leaders are fallible. And certainly it is generally the best practice to seek conformity with them anyway, and so I see the appeal of both approaches.

But I’m greedy, not hasty. And so I’m still doing my best to try and understand what was going on in these talks and what these political undertones mean to me today.

I haven’t figured it out yet.

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

Theology of Work: Flourish

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Sunday will soon turn into Monday. The sun will set on the Lord’s Day–the Christian Sabbath–and rise again at the beginning of a new work week. This intimate connection reminds me of Jewish theologian and Civil Rights activist Abraham Heschel’s comments on work’s relation to the Sabbath:

Image result for the sabbath heschelAdam was placed in the Garden of Eden “to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Labor is not only the destiny of man; it is endowed with divine dignity. However, after he ate of the tree of knowledge he was condemned to toil, not only to labor “In toil shall thou eat … all the days of thy life” (Genesis 3:17). Labor is a blessing, toil is the misery of man. The Sabbath as a day of abstaining from work is not a depreciation but an affirmation of labor, a divine exaltation of its dignity. Thou shalt abstain from labor on the seventh day is a sequel to the command: Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work [Ex. 20:9]…The duty to work for six days is just as much a part of God’s covenant with man as the duty to abstain from work on the seventh day.[ref]The Sabbath: Its Meaning For Modern Man (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005 [1951]), Kindle edition, 15-16.[/ref]

I thought of this while reading this piece on developing a theology of work in the face of growing protectionism. As the author explains (in this admittedly long excerpt),

[T]he failure of modern conservatism to combat trade protectionism is not just a failure to communicate economics; it’s a failure to promote a holistic philosophy of life and a healthy theology of work, one that’s oriented not toward a self-constructed “American dream,” but toward an authentic pursuit of full-scale freedom, good stewardship and human flourishing…Though it will pain many Americans to hear it…work is not ultimately about you. Yes, work provides sustenance and stability. Yes, it puts bread on the table and a roof over our heads. Yes, these are baseline comforts of a stable society, and yes, self-preservation is a good thing.

But we are no longer isolated hunters and gatherers. We live and work within a far-flung economy, and our hands are united with a large community of people. We are part of civilization, a glorious handiwork of human laborers — creatures made in the image of a creative God — working and collaborating together, and that is a good thing.

As Lester DeKoster reminds us, work is ultimately about “service to others and thus to God.” With this theology at our backs, the economic fruits of free trade are simply fruits: byproducts of humans working and serving together as God created us to do.

“Work restores the broken family of humankind,” DeKoster writes. “Through work that serves others, we also serve God, and he in exchange weaves the work of others into a culture that makes our work easier and more rewarding … As seed multiplies into a harvest under the wings of the Holy Spirit, so work multiplies into a civilization under the intricate hand of the same Spirit.”

…If work is about service to others, no longer should Foreigner X or Migrant Worker Y or Unskilled Laborer Z be viewed as “stealing your job,” though the frustration will surely persist. Instead, we should realize that they, like us, are finally able to participate in the global economy, offering their own forms of service and their own unique gifts and talents in new and efficient ways. They are participating in God’s grand design for work.

Through this lens, the prospect of job loss is no longer an occasion to mope about what was or wasn’t an “American job” in years gone by. The pain and nostalgia will likely endure, but we can remain hopeful and confident in knowing our work is not done. In these cases, job loss is simply a signal of how we might best use our time on behalf of others. It’s an opportunity to adapt and retool, to serve the community in new and better ways, as uncomfortable and inconvenient as it may be. That’s going to require an entire shift in the imagination of America, but it’s one that will revive and replenish far more than surface-level economic growth.

Happy Sabbath. And happy Monday.

Desiring the Kingdom: Lecture by James K.A. Smith

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This is part of the DR Book Collection.

Image result for desiring the kingdom

I’ve written about James K.A. Smith’s work before, especially his You Are What You Love. According to Smith, that was what he thought he was writing when it wrote Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Instead, he ended up needing to write a popular introduction to the Cultural Liturgies project, the first of which was Desiring the Kingdom. To recap, Smith argues against the modern idea that we are simply “brains on a stick” and that Christian life is achieved by downloading the right spiritual data into our heads. We are not so much thinking creatures as we are lovers, i.e. creatures of desire and habit. He points out the gap between what we think and what we actually want. More disturbingly, he notes that we may not actually love what we think. Our wants are often shaped by what he calls “secular liturgies”: repetitive practices and rituals that orient our desires and shape our habits. Take for example (as Smith does) the mall: the mall doesn’t tell you what to think. It doesn’t hand out a tract with a list of propositions that the mall believes. Instead, it shapes your consumerist desires as it assaults your senses with sights, smells, comforts, etc. This is why Christian liturgy is important and necessary. Christianity is not just a rival worldview, but a rival set of desires. And those desires are shaped through repetition.

The book is excellent and one of my favorites so far this year. It is far more in depth; the academic approach to the ideas found in You Are What You Love. As someone who is drawn to religious liturgy, but often bored by my own faith’s offerings of it, this was a much-needed read on a personal level.

You can see a lecture by Smith below.

Righteous Avarice

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Domenico Fetti La Perle de grand prix (The Pearl of Great Price), Detail.

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

This week, we’ve come to the end of another General Conference. We’re closing out the April 1975 General Conference, and next week we will start with the October 1975 General Conference. Nine down; 175 (and counting) to go.

There were several really good talks this session, but there was one that really stood out for me, and that was Elder Neal A. Maxwell’s The Man of Christ. In 1975, Elder Maxwell was an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He wasn’t called as an apostle until 1981, the same year that I was born. He served in that position until his death in 2004. I’m sad to say that—although I was certainly old enough to have developed an appreciation for him by that time—I didn’t. I watched plenty of General Conferences, and sometimes individual talks had an impact on me, but I didn’t follow them closely to develop an appreciation for individual speakers over the course of years. And I’m sad, now, that I missed out on Elder Maxwell. I hope we get someone like him again, some day.

The problem I have in writing this post is that I basically just highlighted his entire talk. But if there’s one theme that I could pull out, it would be what I like to think of as righteous avarice. Righteous avarice is the refusal to pick and choose even from seemingly contradictory Gospel themes. It is the attitude that says, “I’m not sure how all of this fits together, but I intend to hold onto all of it anyway, until I figure it out.” Here, let me show you an example.

According to Elder Maxwell, the man of Christ “does not divorce the Sermon on the Mount from the sermon at Capernaum with its hard teachings which caused many to walk “no more with” Jesus.” Further:

He knows that “the gate of heaven is open unto all,” but that the Man of Galilee will finally judge each of us on the basis of a rigorous celestial theology, instead of the popular “no-fault theology” of this telestial world—for Jesus is the gatekeeper “and he employeth no servant there.”

There are plenty of people who will celebrate the cuddly aspects of Christ: turn the other cheek, do unto others, the Good Samaritan, but who will recoil from some of the harder messages that Christ also taught. They believe in a Savior who is not only gracious but also permissive, and forget that Christ also said things like, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword” or that “Lord of Hosts” (e.g. lord or armies) is also one of His appellations.

On the other hand, there are also people—a smaller number, I think, but an especially hardened lot—who are too enamored with brimstone and judgment and forget that God is a love.

This is the kind of contradiction that I’m talking about. How do we simultaneously believe in a God of love and a God of judgement? And to this, righteous avarice replies: I refuse to pick just one.

There is much, much more to take away from Elder Maxwell’s talk. I just picked a personal favorite. Go ahead and read it yourself, and I’m sure you’ll find your own gems.

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

Our Lives Are Our Declaration

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Here is a quote that I stole from my father a long time ago:

To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery.  It means to live in such a way that one’s life would not make sense if God did not exist. – Cardinal Emmanuel Célestin Suhard

And here are the words of (then) Elder Gordon B. Hinckley in The Symbol of Christ in response to a minister who asked, “what is the symbol of your religion?”

I replied that the lives of our people must become the only meaningful expression of our faith and, in fact, therefore, the symbol of our worship.

Later on, he clarified exactly what he meant by this:

As his followers, we cannot do a mean or shoddy or ungracious thing without tarnishing his image. Nor can we do a good and gracious and generous act without burnishing more brightly the symbol of him whose name we have taken upon ourselves.

And so it is in that sense that “our lives must become a meaningful expression, the symbol of our declaration of our testimony of the Living Christ, the Eternal Son of the Living God.”

“It is that simple, my brethren and sisters,” he said, “and that profound and we’d better never forget it.”

Amen.

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The Hope of Broken Men

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Some thoughts from the Priesthood session of the April 1975 General Conference. Elder Romney spoke of courage, saying, “We all have a conscience, and a conscience is the root of moral courage. A truly brave person will always obey his conscience. To know what is right and not do it is cowardice.”

This is true. And it is true—to a greater or lesser degree at different times and in different ways—for all of us. That reality makes this story—which I’m going to reproduce in full—from President Kimball’s talk all the more meaningful:

There is the story told of Lord George Hall of an earlier time. It is a mythical story. Believe it or not, but at least take the lesson if you find one there. “Lord George had led an evil life. He had been a drunkard, a gambler, and a cheat in business, and his face reflected the life he had led. It was a very evil face.

“One day he fell in love with a simple country girl to whom he proposed marriage. Jenny Mere told him that she could never marry a man whose face was so repulsive and so evil-looking; and also that when she did marry, she wanted a man with a saintlike face, which was the mirror of true love.

“Following a custom of the day, Lord George went down to Mr. Aeneas in Bond Street, London. Aeneas made waxen masks for people, and his skill was so art-perfect that the person’s identity was completely hidden. As proof of his skill, it is said that many spendthrift debtors, equipped with his masks, could pass among their creditors unrecognized. Aeneas went to his storeroom, selected a mask, heated it over a lamp, fixed it to Lord George’s face; and when Lord George looked in the glass, he had the face of a saint who loved dearly. So altered was his appearance that Jenny Mere was soon wooed and won.

“He bought a little cottage in the country, almost hidden in an arbor of roses, with a tiny garden spot. From then on his entire life changed. He became interested in nature; he found ‘sermons in stones, books in brooks, and good in everything.’ Formerly he was blasé and life had no interest for him; now, he was engrossed in kindliness, and the world around him.

“He was not content with starting life anew, but tried to make amends for the past. Through a confidential solicitor he restored his ill-gotten gains to those whom he had cheated. Each day brought new refinements to his character, more beautiful thoughts to his soul.

“By accident, his former companions discovered his identity. They visited him in his garden, and urged him to return to his old evil life. When he refused, he was attacked, and the mask was torn from his face.

“He hung his head. Here was the end of all; here was the end of his newfound life and his love dream. As he stood with bowed head, with the mask at his feet on the grass, his wife rushed across the garden and threw herself on her knees in front of him. When she looked up at him, what do you suppose she found? Lo! Line for line, feature for feature, the face was the same as that of the mask. Lines of beauty—regular features.”

There is no doubt that the life one leads, and the thoughts one thinks are registered plainly in his face.

This story embodies the hope of all who wish to be good.

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The Wall of Faith

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

There were several interesting moments in (then) Elder Ezra Taft Benson’s talk, The Book of Mormon Is the Word of God, but one line stood out to me in particular: “Every man eventually is backed up to the wall of faith, and there he must make his stand.”

The world’s view of faith is not so much wrong as it is incomplete. According to the standard secular line, you should only believe things you have evidence for. And—applied correctly—this kind of default skepticism is a healthy way of confronting life.

Ultimately, however, values come before facts. That’s going to sound post-modern or relativist, but hear me out. We know that the human mind is incredibly good at seeing what it wants to see. We have all kinds of cognitive biases—like confirmation bias, in particular—and the evidence is now pretty much insurmountable that we all believe more or less what we want to believe. Which is a way of saying: values come before facts.

But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to be slaves to our passions. Because, after all, can’t we choose to value consistency? And if we do—if we seek harmony among our own beliefs and between our beliefs and the world—than our values lead us gradually and imperfectly towards truth. Because we have chosen to value truth—through a quest to find integrity between what we believe and what we’ve witnessed—we can indirectly influence the content of our beliefs.

Maybe this seems a little too abstract, but for me it underscores this bedrock reality: everyone chooses to believe in something. The idea that you can turn over your beliefs to the evidence and let the evidence dictate facts back to you is a fantasy. The world does not interpret itself. We have to reach out—with our senses, our hypotheses, and our actions—and transform the raw material of experience and idea into cohesive beliefs.

And so—not just in some vague, philosophical sense, but in a literal sense—values precede facts and no one escapes the need for faith in something. The question is: in what?

That’s why there’s a moral component to faith. Because—at its essence—faith is not a question of what a person believes (that would be merely wishful thinking, a parody of what I’m outlining). Instead, faith is a question of why a person believes and that, in turn, is actually a reflection of what a person values.

Do you value truth, and beauty, and harmony? If so, then your pursuit of these things will—not without struggle, not perfectly, and not inevitably; but ultimately—lead you towards things that are true, that are beautiful, that are harmonious.

I got into another pointless argument—thankfully a brief one—a couple of weeks ago with an ex-Mormon with a chip on their shoulder who was insistent that—as a believing Mormon, I had abdicated my freedom to think for myself to the leaders of the Church. That, because I affirmed my covenant obedience to those leaders, I was in some sense passing the buck. That’s another fundamental misunderstanding of how faith works. As President (then Elder) Benson put it so succinctly: “there he must make his stand.”

I seek to obey the Lord. And, because He has asked me to do so, I transfer a measure of that obedience to my fallible, human leaders. But if my bishop, or my stake president, or if President Monson himself asks me to do something, my decision to be obedient—or not—is still mine. Even when I am being obedient it is a choice I am making. And so—despite all Mormons have to say about authority and following the prophet—we also understand this central reality: we each make our own stand.

We can’t avoid the need for faith; and we can’t transfer that obligation to a third party. Sartre put it crudely, but not incorrectly: “man is condemned to be free.” Viktor Frankl was more eloquent:

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.

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Peter Pan, Hobbits, and Sacrifice

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This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey.

Essentially all of my writing—for the General Conference Odyssey, for blog posts, in fiction that very few people have seen—is about connections. Some times, however, I don’t fully understand the connections myself. This may be one of those times.

One of the books I read recently that really stuck with me was Robert Leckie’s World War II memoir, Helmet for My Pillow. The conclusion to his book is haunting, and I want to quote some of it here:

It is to sacrifice that men go to war. They do not go to kill. They go to be killed, to risk their flesh, to insert their precious persons in the path of destruction… That is why women weep when their men go off to war. They do not weep for their victims. They weep for them as victim. That is why, with the immemorial insight of mankind, there are gay songs and colorful bands to send them off: to fortify their failing hearts, not to quicken their lust for blood. That is why there are no glorious living, but only glorious dead. Heroes turn traitor. Warriors age and grow soft. But a victim is changeless. Sacrifice is eternal.

This is the exact quote that came to mind as I read Elder Hales’ talk, A Question of Free Agency. It is one of the most unusual General Conference talks that I have ever read, even by the standards of the often-awkward first talks from the newly-called. What I found most remarkable about the talk was the bittersweet tone that pervaded it. It seems to me that many Mormons look to high leadership calling as a kind of badge of honor, a privilege to be dreamt for, but obviously that was not Elder Hales’ attitude. When he got the call—out of the blue—to give up his career and serve he was clearly devastated. As he put it, “The call was clear. I had to let go of everything that I had known and what I had been striving for in my life to become an Assistant to the Twelve.”

And so his talk touches on the law of consecration and even laying down your life:

I have learned from Joseph Fielding Smith, and have talked to young people, about the law of consecration. It is not one particular event; it is a lifetime, day by day, in which we all strive to do our best that we might live honorable lives, that we might live the best we can in the service of others, as President Joseph Fielding Smith talked about—not as his grandfather, Hyrum Smith, gave his life when he was with the Prophet, but giving our lives each day.

These are not the sentiments of a man who has achieved a life-long ambition. They are the sentiments of a prisoner on his way to the slow-motion gallows. A calling that plenty of Mormons have coveted—and still covet—was a sacrifice for Elder Hales, leading him to say, “It is not in death or in one event that we give our lives, but in every day as we are asked to do it.”

Lots of newly called leaders ask “Why me?” The question usually arises from humility: how can I live up to this great calling? But Elder Hales’ “Why me?” is more raw and visceral, much less “How can I do this?” and much more, “Why did this have to happen to me?” Thus:

One cannot ask the question “Why me?” and dwell on it. But I will do as the prophet has said, to put behind me my past life and dedicate and consecrate all my time, talents, and efforts to His work.

I think that’s why it reminded me so much of Leckie’s sentiments about sacrifice in war. I’m not equating the two; they are very different. Elder Hales said as much himself. But there is a common thread, and that thread is sacrifice. Giving up dreams. There’s one more quote that comes to mind, this one from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan,

Mrs. Darling: There are many different kinds of bravery. There’s the bravery of thinking of others before one’s self. Now, your father has never brandished a sword nor fired a pistol, thank heavens. But he has made many sacrifices for his family, and put away many dreams.

Michael: Where did he put them?

Mrs. Darling: He put them in a drawer. And sometimes, late at night, we take them out and admire them. But it gets harder and harder to close the drawer… He does. And that is why he is brave.

There’s been a lot of hubbub recently about the fact that General Authorities receive a stipend. For the most part, I consider the entire conversation unworthy of reply. (I did engage once on Facebook. Of course I regretted it.) I’ll talk about transparency and accountability—and why such principles have nothing to do with our relationship to the Church—another time. For now, let me just point out the obvious: in accepting this calling Elder Hales was not fulfilling an ambition or securing an easy paycheck. He was giving up on every dream he and his wife had had for their lives. There are very few sacrifices more precious than our dreams, and that is precisely what Elder Hales was asked to lay upon the altar. And yet he did. And then he went out and spoke before the world of the importance of consecration. He was called, and he was answered. To denigrate his service—or the service of the other General Authorities—as somehow corrupt, or unseemly, or embarrassing is foolishness. And, as the Lord told Moroni, “Fools mock, but they shall mourn.” The Lord’s “grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness.”

That’s what I see in Elder Hales’ talk, the meekness and weakness of someone whose hands shook as he lay his offering on the altar. There was nothing majestic or grandiose in his sacrifice. It was quiet and one could easily dismiss it as inconsequential compared to the sacrifices that others have made.

But I, too, have dreams. And when I think about what it would take for me to voluntarily abandon all of them, my heart quails in sympathy with Elder Hales’. He was meek. He was weak. He was definitely a hero in the Samwise Gamgee mold rather than the Aragon or Faramir mold. But when he abandoned his dreams, he became God’s.

Let the fools mock, and bear them no grudge. Elder Hales’ reward wasn’t of this Earth and—if we are able to follow his example—neither will ours.

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