The Christ-Centered Life

As a youth, I first gained a desire to make the gospel of Jesus Christ an integral part of all I did while reading in the Book of Mormon. I have a vivid memory of reading the words of Nephi, who instructs us “that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul” (2 Ne. 32:9). This commandment astonished me! I could think of many activities in which I engaged on a daily basis that did not begin with a prayer offered in Christ’s name and whose intended purpose had nothing to do with the welfare of my soul. In a burst of youthful zeal, I decided to repent and alter my habits so that my life better conformed to Nephi’s description of Christ-centered consecrated living.

At the time, I spent an hour or more on most days playing basketball, and it was my great ambition to make the junior varsity team as a freshman. To this end, I shot at least one hundred free throws every day, working to improve in this significant aspect of the game. After reading Nephi’s counsel, I decided that each free throw I shot would be prefaced by a brief subvocal prayer, offered “in the name of Christ.” Teammates, watching me shoot free throws during summer league games, began to notice my lips moving and asked me what I was saying; whether because of embarrassment or modesty, I declined to share the nature of my muttered prayer with them. My performance at the free throw line did improve over the course of that summer, but I am reluctant to attribute that success to divine intervention and wonder, to this day, what our Father in Heaven thought of my well-intentioned but poorly executed attempt to insert Christ into the center of my adolescent life. (Today, with the benefit of hindsight, I also wonder whether the prayer I offered before shooting free throws had more to do with the example of Karl Malone, whose muttering before free throws attracted substantial media attention during the 1997 and 1998 NBA Finals, than with Nephi or Jesus Christ.)

The Spirit prompted me in my youth to modify my behaviors so that I could live a more Christ-centered life, but my execution of those desires was poor. Today, I wish to reflect on alternative strategies that you and I can pursue to realize this righteous desire more successfully. The idea of centering our lives around Christ carries with it important implications that I’ll try to illustrate using several metaphors: First) To live a Christ-centered life is to live a life without pet sins, without intentionally cultivated and thoughtfully justified indulgences of appetite. A Christ-centered life is one that seeks to imitate the Master in every respect, without seeking exceptions to the commandments. Second) To live a Christ-centered life is to forsake some good options in life for the best activities and practices. Placing Christ at the center of our decisions necessarily places constraints on our future behavior. Third) These constraints always liberate and empower. To live a Christ-centered life is to draw on the enabling power of Christ’s atonement with increased frequency and urgency in our lives, to be magnified by and through his grace.

Over the course of the last month, as Alana and I have begun the process of searching for a home in Fort Collins, Colorado, we’ve evaluated a number of houses that were built in the 1970s. Most of these homes, our realtor pointed out, were not built with central air conditioning units; to purchase such a home would mean relying on a window AC unit to cool individual rooms. In at least one case, the absence of a central air conditioning unit was an important factor that led us to remove a potential future home from consideration. We wanted to be able to enjoy every room in our new home all year long instead of retreating to the comfort of a single room during the sweltering summer months.

Spiritually speaking, we ought to seek for lives and homes in which the peace of Christ is a pervasive influence, not confined to church attendance on Sunday or the singular room that houses our family scripture study. In other words, you and I should make the acquisition of spiritual central air a priority; in our Father’s house are many mansions, but I bet that every one of them comes with spiritual central air! In preparation for that move U-Haul can’t possibly help with, ask yourselves: Are there rooms in my earthly home from which the spirit absents itself on a regular basis, whether because of the media associated with that room or contention that takes place inside it? Have I given up a Christ-centered life and spiritual central air for a natural-man cave? No one would buy a house with central air conditioning and then spend summer in the attic, sweating things out; neither should we spend family home evening, personal scripture study time, and the Sabbath in placing Christ at the center of our lives, only to abandon that peace for hours in a sweltering, spiritual attic, viewing unwholesome media or bickering with family members in a sauna of self-indulgence. Just as a home cooled by central air is made comfortable throughout, a Christ-centered life is one wholly devoted to the cause of the Master, without exception. There is no room in a Christ-centered life for pet sins or knowing disobedience.

For those who commit themselves to living a Christ-centered life, there can be no safe or acceptable deviation from our Master’s standards. Years ago, most playgrounds included a flat disk known as a roundabout or merry-go-round. Children would push it around and around, building up speed, then jump onto its surface and hold on for dear life, clinging desperately in an attempt to counteract the centrifugal force pulling them off the disk. This struggle to stay aboard the revolving roundabout was tremendous fun, but through experience with the merry-go-round, I also learned an important lesson. If I could just get to the center of that flat disk, I no longer needed to cling to the available handholds to maintain my balance. At the exact center of the roundabout I could sit or stand and get dizzy without having to worry about losing my balance or falling off. But the moment I lost my focus and stepped even a foot off-center, centrifugal force pulled me with increasing strength to and eventually off the disk’s edges. The same principle applies to our efforts in living a Christ-centered life. As long as we keep the Savior at the center of our lives and stand with him, we will remain protected from the perils of sin. But any intentional deviation from that refuge in the center of our spiritual roundabout courts danger and makes the prospect of re-centering our lives in Christ’s teachings and example increasingly difficult.

I love the Divine Comedy of Dante, at least in part because the poem itself is centered in Christ. Dante structured his poem in three-line stanzas of eleven syllables each, so that every stanza—every group of three lines—included thirty-three syllables. This metrical precision was meant to remind the reader of the Trinity—the Godhead—and of Christ’s age—thirty-three—at his death, when he wrought the Atonement. In this way, every one of Dante’s fourteen thousand poetic lines testify of Jesus. A Christ-centered poem cannot make do with occasional references to the Master any more than a Christ-centered life is characterized by sporadic acts of discipleship.

The Christ-centered life is given over to gospel living completely, without withholding any portion of our wills. A home with spiritual central air does not harbor secret saunas of sin or natural-man caves, and a disciple who hopes to maintain balance on life’s roundabout cannot afford to venture a single step off-center. Our lives, like Dante’s poem, must be given wholly to the Master’s service, carefully modeled after Jesus Christ’s life and teachings.

Placing Christ at the center of our lives necessarily forecloses some good options in favor of better and best practices. Allow me to illustrate with an example: In recent days I have joined several family members in the world of online Scrabble, a game in which participants take turns building words that overlap, either horizontally or vertically. An effective way to score points in this game is to play two words side-by-side. If the first player spells AWE, A-W-E, the second player might spell the word SET, S-E-T, immediately underneath, creating the words AS, A-S; WE, W-E, and ET, E-T. Thus, the first word played—which must be laid in the board’s exact center—determines the shape of subsequent play. Laying down the word CHRIST, C-H-R-I-S-T, on the first play of the game would open up exciting play opportunities but would also necessarily preclude the type of overlapping play that I’ve described, because there are no two-letter words that begin or end with the letter C. Instead, players might seek to lay down a “bingo”—an eight letter word that ends in “s.” This high scoring strategy is even more rewarding than the side-by-side play described earlier. In Scrabble terms, placing CHRIST at the center of the board sacrifices future “good” playing possibilities even as it opens up better and best opportunities.

To live a Christ-centered life likewise sacrifices good uses of our time and resources to facilitate better and best activities. Around the globe and in increasing numbers, young men and women are temporarily forgoing education—a good use of their time—in order to pursue that which is best: consecrated full-time service as an official representative of Jesus Christ. Many of us have already served such missions, but I am sure that the Lord would be pleased if you and I prayerfully prepared for additional years of consecrated service, whether in our own homes as Church Service missionaries, like Brother Fields, or while living abroad, like Sister Cantwell, Brother and Sister Jesperson, and so many more of you. Such preparations for that which is best might necessitate the present sacrifice of good purchases and activities.

Such sacrifices were often made by our Master and exemplar, the Lord Jesus Christ. I love these verses from the gospel of John: “Jesus went unto the mount of Olives. And early in the morning he came again into the temple” (John 8:1-2). While it was still “early” in the morning, Jesus had already visited the Mount of Olives—where I suspect he spent time in private prayer, as he did on other solitary visits to the mountains—and paid a visit to his Father’s house. In this particular example, the Savior rose early, sacrificing sleep, in order to prepare himself spiritually for the demands that would be made by those whom he served throughout the day. As we consider how best to modify and improve present practices in search of a Christ-centered life, consider these admonitions from the eighty-eighth section of the Doctrine and Covenants: “cease to sleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated” (88:124). As a further promise to those who obey this commandment, the Lord promises: “He that seeketh me early shall find me” (88:83). Perhaps the next step in our collective quest for a Christ-centered life might be a commitment to forgo late-night fun so that we can better use the early portions of our days, in prayer, temple service, and other activities.

After performing his early morning devotions, the Savior spent his days in serving the poor, sick, and afflicted. Our efforts to live Christ-centered lives must likewise revolve around a desire to bless and meet the needs of others. In deciding how best to begin and extend this service, I have profited from the words of C. S. Lewis, who wrote: “I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditures on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charities expenditure excludes them.” Placing Christ at the center of our lives necessarily prevents us from elevating other pursuits to that place of priority. Just as “No man can serve two masters,” no life can have two centers; “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24). Thus, to choose Christ as the central influence on and model for our lives is also to reject other influences that seek to displace Him.

When we make that commitment and place Christ at the center of our lives, we become empowered, through his grace, to do and become more than we ever could on our own. Even a very young child knows that she should begin a game of tic-tac-toe by marking the center square. This is a position of power that allows a player four different opportunities to win; no other option offers more than three opportunities for victory. The same principle—that controlling the center empowers and expands your options—holds true in the more complex game of chess. The power of any given piece is magnified when it is placed in the center of a chess board. From its position at the beginning of a chess game, when all of the pieces are lined up along the board’s edges, a knight or horse can only move to three of the board’s sixty-four squares, and one of those is already occupied by another piece! But from one of the board’s central squares, a knight can attack eight other positions; placing this piece at the game’s center more than doubles its power. Of course, in chess terms, the Savior is not a mere knight but the queen—the most important piece of the game and our lives. At the beginning of a chess match the queen is immobile, trapped by other pieces; she cannot move at all, in any direction. However, if you can position your other pieces in a way that allows your queen to occupy a central square, she can move in eight different directions and attack up to twenty-seven different squares, almost half of the board. Placing a queen at the center of a chess board empowers a player in the same way that placing Jesus Christ at the center of our lives can empower each one of us.

As we obey the commandments and receive the gift of God’s grace, the enabling power of the Atonement will magnify our capacities in both temporal and spiritual endeavors, sometimes in ways that we cannot fully comprehend. To the Philippians Paul wrote, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me,” and I believe him (4:13)! I believe that by faith, ancient prophets who lived Christ-centered lives were enabled to perform miracles. I believe that by faith in Jesus Christ, Alma and Amulek caused a prison to crumble. I believe that by faith in Jesus Christ, Daniel survived a night in the lion’s den. I believe that by faith in Jesus Christ, Moses parted the Red Sea. I believe that by faith in Jesus Christ, the brother of Jared moved mountains. I believe that as we make Jesus Christ the center of our lives, we will also work and bear witness to miracles.

Now, most of you don’t need mountains moved. Perhaps you need more hours in the day, more money in the bank, more brains in your head—or the capacity to make the hours, dollars, and brains you already have stretch further. Consider this promise, made by the late President James E. Faust: “The mechanic will be able to turn out more and better products in six days than in seven. The doctor, the lawyer, the dentist, the scientist will accomplish more by trying to rest on the Sabbath than if he tries to utilize every day of the week for his professional work. I would counsel all students, if they can, to arrange their schedules so that they do not study on the Sabbath. If students and other seekers after truth will do this, their minds will be quickened and the infinite Spirit will lead them to the verities they wish to learn. This is because God has hallowed his day and blessed it as a perpetual covenant of faithfulness.” As we make the Lord Jesus Christ the center of our lives by weekly honoring the day on which he rose from the tomb and by keeping the other commandments he has given us, we will be blessed, magnified, and empowered in all of our righteous endeavors: this is the solemn promise of prophets and apostles, to which I add my own testimony and experiential witness.

Now, in closing, let me speak of practical matters. In Roman times, the pagan prophets would make prophecies based on the flight patterns of birds. After marking out a north-south axis and an east-west axis on the ground in a pattern known as a templum, these prophets would observe birds which landed on the grid. The position of those birds, relative to the central point at which the north-south and east-west axes crossed, became the basis for pagan prophecy. Today, we do not believe in this practice, but it still represents an appropriate model for our own efforts to stay centered on the gospel and person of Jesus Christ. Instead of the Roman templum, when we wish information about our relative position to the Savior who stands at the center of our lives, we can visit holy temples and take our eternal bearings. Regular visits to these houses of worship and covenantal refuges will provide perspective on the progress we have made toward integrating gospel principles into the center, the core, of our beings.

Outside temple walls, because we are fallen, mortal human beings, the task of patterning our lives after the perfect example provided by Jesus Christ can seem overwhelming. It would be far easier to center our lives around football or Pinterest or skiing or food! But the ease of accomplishment cannot justify altering our aim. In the game of darts, throwers do not aim for the outer rings just because they are easier to hit; rather, their attention remains focused on the central bullseye. To aim at another target would constitute “looking beyond the mark” (Jacob 4:14). And speaking of darts, I must confess: I’ve never successfully thrown a bullseye. Notwithstanding this dismal record, I still enjoy playing darts and throwing at the target’s center—I find joy in the attempt, not the outcome.

Brothers and sisters, as we earnestly strive to live Christ-centered lives, we will find joy in the journey, even though we may not perform our part to perfection. As Lehi explained, “men are that they might have joy” (2 Ne. 2:25), and the Master himself taught that he came so “that [we] might have life, and that [we] might have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). That joy and abundance can be ours if we will only place Christ at the center of our lives.

Always Remember

God and his prophets rarely speak in superlatives: words like "never," "always," or "every" appear relatively infrequently in scripture and deserve our special attention. When the Lord God Almighty tells you to do something never or always, you best listen up. Within the corpus of scripture canonized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the word always is attached to some form of commandment 32 times. Those are verses that should be etched in the memory of every Latter-day Saint.

Most frequently, the word is associated with a commandment to "pray always." Fifteen separate times the word always is used in directing us to pray: Luke 18:1, 21:36; 3 Ne. 18: 15, 18, 19, 21; D&C 10:5; 20:33; 31:12; 32:4; 33:17; 61:39; 75:11; 88:126; 93:49.


But familiar as the exhortation to "pray always" might be, most members of the Church are far more familiar with a different "always" commandment. Ever week baptized church members gather together to renew the promises they made at baptism by eating bread and drinking water in remembrance of Jesus Christ's atoning sacrifice. This sacrament includes a commitment on the part of celebrants to "always remember" Jesus and our covenants with him. Some version of that commitment to "always remember" our covenants with Christ through the sacraments recurs ten different times in scripture: 1 Chr. 16:15; 3 Ne. 18:6, 7, 11, 12; Moro. 4:3; Moro. 5:2; D&C 20:77, 79.

I suspect that both of these examples will be fairly well-known to most readers. The sheer frequency of scriptural reminders to "pray always" and the weekly repetition of our commitment to "always remember" Jesus Christ helps to keep those directives foremost in our minds. But there is a third, quite specific always command that few Church members are familiar with and even fewer heed. In section 46 of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord commands the members of his church "that ye should always remember, and always retain in your minds what those gifts are, that are given unto the church" (D&C 46:10). Not only are church members to always remember the existence and nature of spiritual gifts, but the Lord also commands his people to "seek earnestly the best gifts, always remembering for what they are given" (D&C 46:8).

Most church members pray multiple times a day and we all gather once a week to renew our sacramental covenants, but how many of us regularly review the spiritual gifts available to us and the purposes for which God has given them? There is, in truth, virtually no limit to the number of spiritual gifts which God has made available to his children. In addition to the gifts listed in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Moroni chapter 10, and section 46 of the Doctrine and Covenants, Elder Bednar has spoken on the spiritual gift of "being quick to observe," and Elder Hales has described a number of spiritual gifts not listed in scripture, including the gift to ponder, the gift to be calm, the gift to study, and the gift to listen. Still more gifts are described in other portions of holy writ, including the gift of writing: "it was given unto as many as called upon God to write by the spirit of inspiration" (Moses 6:5). My point is that for any given problem, there exists a spiritual gift which would alleviate that problem or facilitate its solution. It is for this reason that God command us [me, you] to ALWAYS remember the spiritual gifts he makes available to us, so that we can take advantage of his mercy, grace and blessings.

Ask yourself: What spiritual gift would ease the burdens I now bear? What spiritual gift would help me to ease the burdens of those I love and for whom I am responsible?

Always remember, seek earnestly, and the Lord will bless you.







For the mathematicians among you, who noticed that there are several "always" commandments left unaccounted for by the above, here they are:

• "seek the face of the Lord always": D&C 101:38
• "keep all my commandments always" Deut. 5:29
• "be . . . always abounding in the work of the Lord" 1 Cor. 15:58
• "be zealously affected always in a good thing," Gal. 4:18
• "cause the lamp to burn always" in the tabernacle, Ex. 27:20
• a teacher's duty is to "watch over the church always": D&C 20:53

Farming for Children: A Different Way of Thinking About the Fall

I’ve figured out the job thing, and the book is back in my editor’s hands, so it’s time to resurrect my alter ego, the Mormon Monk. And, in honor of my book, how about a monkish meditation on Eden?

Let’s review: Eden was a place without death or disease, and it was inhabited by a man who knew so much about the natural world (theologians reading Genesis 2:19 have said) that he understood the nature of each animal as he met it and gave each its appropriate name. But transgression of divine law caused God to exile Adam and Eve from this paradisiacal existence; instead of reaping nature’s bounty, Adam would have to till the land and farm.

I’ve summarized the Eden story because it bears a striking resemblance to the narrative laid out by Kenneth Kiple in his one-volume comprehensive history of food, A Movable Feast. While most of us think about the “primitive” hunter-gatherer peoples who lived before the invention of agriculture more than thirteen millennia ago with pity, according to Kiple the growing scientific consensus is “that ancient hunter-gatherers did quite well for themselves in matters of diet and nutrition, and considerably better than the sedentary agriculturalists who followed them” (3). Why did they do so well? Because they, like Adam in Genesis, had an almost encyclopedic comprehension of the environment surrounding them: “it has been estimated that our ancient ancestors knew the natural history of several thousand plants and several hundred animals” (4). Variegated diets and a nomadic lifestyle that prevented a population density which would give rise to disease meant that these hunter-gatherers were, unlike their agricultural descendants, almost never sick:

“For example, rickets (caused by vitamin D deficiency) and scurvy (occasioned by vitamin C deficiency) are diseases documented in literary and archival sources from Greek and Roman times onward but there is little evidence of such ailments in prehistoric populations. Or again, the incidence of anemia increased steadily from Neolithic times through the Bronze Age so that the lesions of porotic hyperostosis and cribra orbitalia (a pitting and expansion of cranial bones that are signals of iron deficiency anemia) found in the skeletal remains of Fertile Crescent farmers living from 6500 to 2000 BCE indicate that about half of them were anemic. By contrast only 2 percent of the skeletal remains of hunter-gatherers dating from 15,000-8000 BCE show evidence of anemia, which seems testimony to an iron-rich meat diet. In addition hunter-gatherers had far fewer dental caries, knobby joints, and abscesses. And finally, as a rule, hunter-gatherers were significantly taller than the village agrarians who followed them, indicating a much better intake of whole protein.” (4)

To recap: hunter-gatherers possessed a better knowledge of the natural world than most scientists today and enjoyed (by historical standards) very healthful lives. The rise of the first farming cultures might seem, in retrospect, like something of a curse—in edenic terms, a Fall—as these hunter-gatherers traded “in a life of ease (contemporary hunter-gatherers work only about a dozen or two hours weekly to get food together and to make, maintain, and repair weapons and implements) for one of back-breaking labor from sunup to sundown with a narrow-minded concentration on a single crop. And they had no way of knowing that they were exchanging good health for famine and nutritional diseases, not to mention swapping plenty of elbowroom for crowded living conditions—conditions that helped open the door for plague and pestilence” (13).

In other words, Kiple paints a picture of human civilization that follows the narrative of Genesis: men live at ease with nature, then receive sickness and death as they turn to farming. As a member of a faith not wedded to traditional, literal interpretations of the Bible (The Church’s eighth Article of Faith declares, “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly,” and my personal doubts about translation leave me inclined to doubt that the earth is only 6,000 years old or that people have only been living on it for roughly that long), my natural inclination is to try and harmonize these two accounts that seem so similar, rather than to discard one or the other as less true than the other.

For instance, could Adam have been the first farmer rather than the first anthropomorphic being? And, since we are a farming people who are physiologically, culturally, and intellectually distinct from our hunter-gatherer ancestors because of our reliance on agriculture, would it even be inaccurate to say that he was the first human being (as we now understand the term)? Could it be that God created a man of the soil rather than that he created a man out of the soil?

I understand that the natural tendency would be to reject such a hypothesis out of hand, as a position out of step with prophetic teachings. And, in fact, this conjecture might be completely false (that’s why I’m calling it a hypothesis). I’m not interested in challenging prophetic authority so much as trying to reconcile two (apparently) mutually contradictory truths. But, crucially, this suggestion that Adam and Eve were the first farmers also seems to confirm or coincide with the central Mormon understanding of the Fall. Lehi teaches, regarding Adam and Eve, that if they had remained in the garden of Eden (or, in my terms, if they had remained hunter-gatherers) that “they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin. But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things. Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:23-25).

This doctrine—that the Fall was a good thing because it brought children into the world—is a uniquely Mormon doctrine dependant on the monistic Mormon belief that physical bodiesare not inherently evil. And this doctrine is compatible with my suggestion that the Fall and the invention of agriculture may be the same thing. For all of the nutritional deficiencies introduced with agriculture, farming clearly brought about at least one indisputable benefit: the sedentary lifestyle and dependable source of calories made it possible for women to have more children and to raise those children into adulthood. Farming (here associated the Fall) brought about sickness and raised mortality rates, but it also introduced vast numbers of children into the world. As a faith that celebrates the incorporation (embodiment) of spirits, this was a tremendous boon. Could it be that Adam and Eve (in this context, read hunter-gatherers) could have some children, enough to sustain a population but not enough to “be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth” (Genesis 1:28)? That Lehi was speaking hyperbolically?

I can’t answer these questions. I don’t know how old the earth was, and I don’t know how to reconcile scientific evidence for human evolution with revealed scripture. But I’ve learned to embrace my own ignorance—admitting that I DON’T understand the scriptures fully, that I DON’T understand science almost at all—as the first step to finding joy in my quest for a truth that encompasses everything I believe to be true.

As Joseph Smith so famously said, “One of the grand fundamental principles of ‘Mormonism’ is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may.” 

Be Back Soon . . .

Beloved Readers,

Please forgive me for the extended absence. I've been doing the academic job search thing and revising a book, which has left me with little discretionary time. But, since I should hear back about jobs today and my book is due to the editor on Friday, I promise a return in March.

Thanks for your patience!

The Mormon Monk

Mormon Monism

A few weeks ago I received an email from someone I love who has been troubled by a doctrine central to the restored gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When Joseph Smith received the first vision that called him as a prophet, he saw "two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name and said, pointing to the other--This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!" (Joseph Smith History 1:17). Through this experience Joseph learned that God the "Father has a body of flesh and bone as tangible as man's; the Son also" (D&C 130:22). While most Christians I know imagine an anthropomorphic God (ie, one that looks like us), the God they imagine is incompatible with the deity described by the Westminster Confession and other important Christian creeds, "a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions." By insisting that God possesses a physical body, the Mormon doctrine of divine embodiment diverges radically from Christian precedent.

[Note: for the rest of this post, I'll be contrasting "Mormon" and "Christian" views as though those two positions were incompatible. I do this for convenience to highlight one doctrinal divergence, NOT to imply that Mormons do not believe in Jesus Christ or that Mormons are not Christians.]

This disagreement over the doctrine of divine embodiment is only one manifestation of a larger doctrinal difference between Mormons and the broader Christian community. Almost every Christian sect with which I am familiar subscribes to the notion of dualism--a belief that there is an irreconcilable divide between the physical and spiritual world. Mainstream Christian theology posits that flesh and spirit are mutually incompatible, drawing on Paul's teachings that "they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" (Romans 8:8-9). This Pauline (mainstream Christian) reading of the New Testament actually rejects the notion that Jesus Christ possessed a physical body, replacing John's insistence that "the Word was made flesh" (John 1:14) with Paul's claim that God sent "his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3; my emphasis). Mainstream Christianity posits that flesh--and the physical world more generally--is inherently corrupt and sinful, incompatible with the pure spirit of God, that Jesus Christ only seemed to possess a body of flesh and bones.

Mormons, on the other hand, subscribe to monism--a belief that the physical and spiritual exist side by side on a single continuum.  Whereas dualism posits a great divide (think the Grand Canyon) between physical matter and spirit, Mormon monism views matter and spirit as two possible points on the same scale. The best metaphor may be that of a ladder where physical matter exists at the ladder's base and spirit exists at the ladder's apex: from bottom to top, matter becomes more and more refined until it becomes what we think of as spirit, but there is no fundamental divide between these two positions, no categorical difference between the two concepts. Illustrative of this belief is the inspired "translation" Joseph Smith made of the verses from Romans that I quoted earlier (Joseph's changes in bold): "they that are after the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not after the flesh, but after the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" (JST Romans 8:8-9). This alteration of the Pauline position shifts from an irrevocable disjunction between deity and flesh--anything "in the flesh cannot please God"--to God's displeasure when we lean to the wrong side of the flesh/spirit continuum--yearning "after the flesh cannot please God."

Whereas mainstream Christianity often figures the resurrection as a raising of the spirit, Mormon doctrine insists on the raising of the body and a reunion of (perfected) flesh and spirit. We believe that the possession of a body is central to happiness and, ultimately, exaltation: "spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; and when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy" (D&C 93:33-34). According to Mormon theology, the absence of a body is, in fact, one of the central sources of Satan's misery and hate towards men; he, with his angels, looks upon the "absence of your spirits from bodies to be a bondage" (D&C 45:17), and Mormons read New Testament accounts of demonic possession as indicative of devils' eagerness to possess bodies, even those of swine (Matthew 8:31).

Although this distinction between spirit and element, with an accompanying insistence that spirit and element must be joined by the resurrection in order to make eternal happiness possible seems to highlight the difference between flesh (element) and spirit, Mormon scripture insists that this difference is one of degrees rather than one of kind. Joseph Smith revealed, "There is no such thing as immaterial matter"--or, I would add immaterial spirit. "All spirit is matter but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by pure eyes; we cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter" (D&C 131:7-8).

While this insistence on the materiality of immaterial things--spirit--would have been seen as heretical by mainstream Christians in the nineteenth century, it actually accords rather well with modern understandings of the universe. For example, light seems to be an "immaterial" manifestation of the sun's power and one strongly associated with the Christian concept of God; Jesus Christ proclaimed, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). In the nineteenth century, this association with light might have seemed to bolster the Pauline teaching that Jesus Christ is an immaterial being, but scientific understandings of light confirm that light behaves as a particle (possesses materiality) even as it simultaneously behaves as a wave (in an immaterial way). My understanding of physics--limited though that may be--reaffirms my testimony in the doctrine of monism as revealed to Joseph Smith.

When we say that God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, have bodies, we do not mean that they have bodies of exactly the same type as our own; I firmly believe that the matter comprising their bodies is "more fine or pure" and may allow their material bodies to behave in what we think of as immaterial processes, just as light retains the properties of both material (particle) and "immaterial" (wave) substances. I'm excited (someday) to learn more about the science behind these teachings, but for now I am content to declare that I believe in a resurrected, embodied Savior and His perfect, embodied Father. They live!

Today . . .

I'm thinking about Isaiah. Come join me!

Two Stories About Money

Regular readers may know that I'm sympathetic to Hugh Nibley's description of money as "congealed wickedness," so I couldn't help but laugh--and think deeply--when a couple of stories recently caught my attention in which money became an important substitute for something like faith or love. Consider, for example, the recent example of an entire town in Cambodia which converted to Christianity in order to save money: 

At upwards of US$500, the cost of slaughtering a buffalo to revive a relative condemned to ill-health by the spirits has pushed the Jarai indigenous minority residents of Somkul village in Ratanakkiri to a more affordable religious option: Christianity.

In the village in O’Yadav district’s Som Thom commune, about 80 per cent of the community have given up on spirits and ghosts in favour of Sunday sermons and modern medicine. 

Sev Chel, 38, said she made the switch because when she used to get sick, it could cost her hundreds of dollars to appease the gods with a sacrificial package that might include a cow or buffalo, a chicken, bananas, incense and rice wine.

“So if I sold that buffalo and took the money to pay for medicine, it is about 30,000 riel to 40,000 riel [for them to] get better, so we are strong believers in Jesus,” she said. “If I did not believe in Jesus, maybe at this time I would still be poor and not know anything besides my community.” 

It's tempting to celebrate these conversions and the capitalist logic that inspired them, but I suspect that such a celebration would risk placing the end (conversion!) before the means (capitalism)--and I very much believe in a God of MEANS, who is more concerned with how we enter the waters of baptism than with the fact that we made it in. And as long as we're talking about money, it's worth noting that while converting to Christianity might save Cambodians money, that saved money likely won't improve the quality of their marriages. 

According to researchers at Brigham Young University, a strong interest in wealth bodes poorly for prospects of marital happiness: 

Scholars at Brigham Young University studied 1,734 married couples across the United States. Each couple completed a relationship evaluation, part of which asked how much they value "having money and lots of things."

The researchers' statistical analysis showed that couples who say money is not important to them score about 10 to 15 percent better on marriage stability and other measures of relationship quality than couples where one or both are materialistic.

"Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at," said Jason Carroll, a BYU professor of family life and lead author of the study. "There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other."

I'm not quite sure how to synthesize these two stories about money and its impact on our prospects for happiness or heaven, but I feel confident in saying that money is a more complex phenomenon than Nibley's snarkily glib quote suggests. What say ye readers--anyone willing to take a vow of poverty in exchange for improved prospects of marital bliss? Interested in shopping for a church that will save you tithing money?