The Mormon Monk

Prophetic Promises Regarding the Book of Mormon

2012-01-03T14:43:00.005-05:00

Most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will begin a year-long study of the Book of Mormon this year. As President Ezra Taft Benson famously noted, study of that book is associated with a number of inspiring promises:

“Let us not remain under condemnation [see D&C 84:85],with its scourge and judgment, by treating lightly this great and marvelousgift the Lord has given to us. Rather, let us win the promises associated withtreasuring it up in our hearts.”[1]

“Concerning this record the Prophet JosephSmith said . . . ‘a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts thanby any other book.’” (BoM Introduction)

“Parents who [read and talk about the Book of Mormon withtheir children] faithfully will be blessed to recognize early signals ofspiritual growth in or challenges with their children and be better prepared toreceive inspiration to strengthen and help those children.”[2]

“Regular reading of and talking about the Book of Mormoninvite the power to resist temptation and to produce feelings of love withinour families.”[3]

“Youth of all ages, even infants, can and do respond to thedistinctive spirit of the Book of Mormon. Children may not understand all ofthe words and stories, but they certainly can feel the ‘familiar spirit’described by Isaiah.”[4]

“I bear witness that parents who consistently read and talkabout the Book of Mormon with their children, who share testimonyspontaneously, and who invite children as gospel learners to act and not merelyto be acted upon will be blessed with eyes that can see afar off (Moses 6:27)and with ears that can hear the sound of the trumpet (Ezekiel 33:2-16). Thespiritual discernment and inspiration you will receive from the combination ofthese three holy habits will enable you to stand as watchmen on the tower foryour families—‘watching . . . with all perserverance” (Ephesians 6:18)—to theblessing of your immediate family and your future posterity. I so promise andtestify in the sacred name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.”[5]

“I offer a challenge to members of the Church throughout theworld and to our friends everywhere to read or reread the Book of Mormon. . . .Without reservation I promise you that if each of you will observe this simpleprogram, regardless of how many times you previously may have read the Book ofMormon, there will come into your lives and your homes an added measure of theSpirit of the Lord, a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to Hiscommandments, and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son ofGod.”[6]

“The effect of the Book of Mormon on your character, power,and courage to be a witness for God is certain. The doctrine and the valiantexamples in that book will lift, guide, and embolden you.”[7]

“Every missionary who is proclaiming the name and gospel ofJesus Christ will be blessed by daily feasting from the Book of Mormon.”[8]

“Parents who struggle to get a witness of the Savior intothe heart of a child will be helped as they seek for a way to bring the wordsand the spirit of the Book of Mormon into the home and all the lives in theirfamily. That has proven true for us.”[9]

“Prayerful study of the Book of Mormon will build faith inGod the Father, in His Beloved Son, and in His gospel. It will build your faithin God’s prophets, ancient and modern. It can draw you closer to God than anyother book. It can change a life for the better.”[10]

“[The Book of Mormon] can help with personal problems in avery real way. Do you want to get rid of a bad habit? Do you want to improverelationships in your family? Do you want to increase your spiritual capacity?Read the Book of Mormon!”[11]

“It is not just that the Book of Mormon teaches us truth,though it indeed does that. It is not just that the Book of Mormon bearstestimony of Christ, though it indeed does that. But there is something more.There is a power in the book which will begin to flow into your lives themoment you begin a serious study of the book. You will find greater power toresist temptation. You will find the power to avoid deception. You will findthe power to stay on the strait and narrow path. The scriptures are called ‘thewords of life’ (D&C 84:85), and nowhere is that more true than it is of theBook of Mormon. When you begin to hunger and thirst after those words, you willfind life in greater and greater abundance.”[12]

“There is another reason why we should read the Book ofMormon: By doing so we will fill and refresh our minds with a constant flow ofthat ‘water’ which Jesus said would be in us ‘a well of water springing up intoeverlasting life’ (John 4:14).”[13]

“If we would avoid adopting the evils of the world, we mustpursue a course which will daily feed our minds with and call them back to thethings of the Spirit. I know of no better way to do this than by daily readingthe Book of Mormon.”[14]

“I am persuaded, my brothers and sisters, that it isirrational to hope to escape the lusts of the world without substituting forthem as the subjects of our thoughts the things of the Spirit, and I know thatthe things of the Spirit are taught with mighty power in the Book of Mormon. Ibelieve with all my heart, for example, that if our young people could come outof our homes thoroughly acquainted with the life of Nephi, imbued with thespirit of his courage and love of truth, they would choose the right when thechoice is placed before them.”[15]

“If our young folks become familiar with the teachings ofthe Book of Mormon, they will not only be inspired by the examples of Nephi,the 2,000 sons of Helaman (see Alma 53), and other great Book of Mormoncharacters to choose the right, they will also be so schooled in the principlesof the gospel of Jesus Christ that they will be able to know and understandwhat is right.”[16]

“I feel certain that if, in our homes, parents will readfrom the Book of Mormon prayerfully and regularly, both by themselves and withtheir children, the spirit of that great book will come to permeate our homesand all who dwell therein. The spirit of reverence will increase; mutualrespect and consideration for each other will grow. The spirit of contentionwill depart. Parents will counsel their children in greater love and wisdom.Children will be more responsive and submissive to the counsel of theirparents. Righteousness will increase. Faith, hope, and charity—the pure love ofChrist—will abound in our homes and lives, bringing in their wake peace, joy, andhappiness.”[17]

If you know of other prophetic promises regarding the Book of Mormon, please share in the comments, and I will add your contribution to the list (as I update it periodically).

[1] President Ezra Taft Benson, “The Book of Mormon: Keystone of Our Religion,” Ensign 16.11 (November 1986): 5-7.

[2] Elder David A. Bednar, “Watching with All Perseverance,” Ensign 40.5 (May 2010): 41.

[3] Elder David A. Bednar, “Watching with All Perseverance,” Ensign 40.5 (May 2010): 41.

[4] Elder David A. Bednar, “Watching with All Perseverance,” Ensign 40.5 (May 2010): 42.

[5] Elder David A. Bednar, “Watching with All Perseverance,” Ensign 40.5 (May 2010): 43.

[6] President Gordon B. Hinckley, “A Testimony Vibrant and True,” Ensign 35.8 (August 2005).

[7] PresidentHenry B. Eyring, “A Witness,” Ensign 41.11 (November 2011), 69.
[8] PresidentHenory B. Eyring, “A Witness,” Ensign 41.11 (November 2011), 69.

[9] PresidentHenry B. Eyring, “A Witness,” Ensign 41.11 (November 2011), 69.

[10] PresidentHenry B. Eyring, “A Witness,” Ensign 41.11 (November 2011), 70.

[11] ElderRussell M. Nelson, “A Testimony of the Book of Mormon,” Ensign 29.11(November 1999), 71.

[12] PresidentEzra Taft Benson, “The Book of Mormon: Keystone of Our Religion,” Ensign16.11 (November 1986): 5-7.

[13] President MarionG. Romney, “The Book of Mormon,” Ensign 10.5 (May 1980): 65.

[14] PresidentMarion G. Romney, “The Book of Mormon,” Ensign 10.5 (May 1980): 65.

[15] PresidentMarion G. Romney, “The Book of Mormon,” Ensign 10.5 (May 1980): 66.

[16] PresidentMarion G. Romney, “The Book of Mormon,” Ensign 10.5 (May 1980): 66.

[17] PresidentMarion G. Romney, “The Book of Mormon,” Ensign 10.5 (May 1980): 67.

Women and the Priesthood

2011-12-29T23:44:00.002-05:00

Some time ago one of my students asked me for my views on why women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not hold the priesthood. The Church has already addressed that issue at mormon.org with a quote from the late President Gordon B. Hinckley, but his answer is largely circular, saying, in essence, that "women do not hold the priesthood because God has said that women should not hold the priesthood." While President Hinckley's explanation may be true, it hardly addresses my student's desire for understanding as to why God has directed Church leaders not to ordain women to the priesthood.

Of course, having acknowledged the potentially frustrating circularity of this response, I should note that, according to the groundbreaking research of Robert Putnam and David Campbell in American Grace, female members of the Church are more satisfied with their relationship to the priesthood than women in any other American denomination. Putnam and Campbell find that approximately 36% of Mormons think that women's influence in religion is "just right"; evangelicals are the next most satisfied group, and only 15% of them think that women's influence in religion is "just right" (chart, p. 245). More than any other religious group Mormons are satisfied with women's religious roles--and Mormon women are actually more satisfied than men: “Mormon women are overwhelmingly opposed to women as (lay) priests, but Mormon men have more mixed views: 90 percent of Mormon women as compared to 52 percent of Mormon men. In short, Mormons, especially Mormon women, appear to be the only substantial holdouts against the growing and substantial consensus across the religious spectrum in favor of women playing a fuller role in church leadership” (244). Nine out of ten LDS women oppose female ordination to the priesthood, largely because they feel as though they already have a perfectly proportioned role--one that is 'just right'--in church governance.

These statistics suggest that 90% of my female readership (and 48% of my male readership!) may not be interested in what I am about to write, so I dedicate this post to the tithe of Mormon women who might still be interested in what I have to say. But before I can address the question of why Mormon women do not hold the priesthood you--and I--need to come to a mutual understanding as to what we mean by "the priesthood." In one of my favorite General Conference talks of recent memory, President Boyd K. Packer reiterated the standard Mormon definition for the priesthood: "Priesthood is the authority and the power which God has granted to men on earth to act for Him." That definition is wonderful, but it tends to be interpreted very narrowly. There are a multitude of activities which you and I--indeed all of God's children!--have both the divinely-given power and authority to undertake, on God's behalf, that fall outside the traditional definition of priesthood ordinances.

We all have (or are entitled to have) both the power and authority to: exercise our faith through fasting and prayer on behalf of others with physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual needs; bear testimony that Jesus is the Christ; and (when married) conceive and raise children. All of God's children have both the power and the authority to act on His behalf in these matters when they are living in obedience to his commandments. Members of the Church do not, however, commonly refer to these activities as priesthood service, reserving the term priesthood service for ordinances such as anointing the sick and baptizing or for administering most organizational divisions of the church. The priesthood certainly embraces such functions, but it also encompasses many more activities that are not traditionally acknowledged under the umbrella of priesthood power and authority.

Our narrow application of the word priesthood imposes artificial limitations on an expansive scriptural concept. The Doctrine and Covenants reveals that the full name for the priesthood is "The Holy Priesthood after the Order of the Son of God" (107:3), and the Book of Mormon helps us to understand the reason that the priesthood is known by that name. Alma explains that the priesthood is a "holy calling . . . prepared from the foundation of the world for such as would not harden their hearts, being in and through the atonement of the Only Begotten Son" (Alma 13:5). In other words, the priesthood constitutes a calling to live in remembrance of and, to the best of our limited capabilities, in imitation of the selfless service of our Savior, through the enabling power of his grace. There is nothing inherently masculine about living in remembrance and in imitation of the Savior, through the power of his grace; indeed, I have argued that mothers--who suffer physically in order to give life and then spend most of the rest of their lives giving selfless service so that their children might have life and have it more abundantly--most closely approximate Jesus Christ's salvific sacrifice. This priesthood calling, described by Alma, encompasses much more than the ordinances with which we traditionally identify the priesthood.

The point here is that I believe we are being somewhat disingenuous when we say that women are not allowed to hold the priesthood--that this is a moot question. To be sure, women are not ordained to priesthood offices, they do not officiate in its essential ordinances, and they do not hold keys of administration. I have no clear explanation as to why these limitations exist in mortality, but Elder Robert L. Backman reminds us that the eternal destiny of every righteous woman is "to become a queen and a priestess, and to inherit the fulness of the glory of God" ("Women and the Priesthood" in Priesthood [Deseret Book, 1981], p. 152). If it is the eternal destiny of women to become priestesses, I am fully persuaded that they have the opportunity to participate in priesthood callings such as those described by Alma during mortality, and that most faithful female members of the Church already do so--even if we do not normally designate their contributions as priesthood service. This is something that I believe most members of the Church intuitively understand--which is why most Mormons are satisfied with the ecclesiastical role of women.

In essence, we've been asking the wrong question. The question should not be, "Why don't women hold the priesthood?" but "Why don't we commonly recognize that the priesthood is greater than the sum total of its ordinances--that one need not be ordained a priest in order to act as a ministering angel?" (See Doctrine and Covenants 13).

Ayn Rand: The Most Important Person You Know Nothing About

2011-11-26T17:04:00.001-05:00

In June 2010, when the Tea Party was still an emerging political force, I read a book that did more to help me understand that movement and late twentieth-century/early twenty-first century political and economic debate than years of news consumption and reading. The funny thing is, I didn't pick up Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made because I wanted to understand Ron Paul and the Libertarian movement, Alan Greenspan, or the Tea Party. I picked it up because I happen to love her most famous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged (I don't really care for We, the Living or Anthem). Heller's title ostensibly refers to the fictional worlds that Rand created and lived in, but--as NPR recently suggested--the world in which we live is more and more a world made after the image of Ayn Rand.

Chances are that you've heard of Ayn Rand, notwithstanding the academy's scorn for her books. You've likely heard her name because her novels are tremendously popular. Heller writes,

"In a 1991 survey jointly sponsored by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month Club, Americans named Atlas Shrugged the book that had most influenced their lives (second only to the Bible). When the Modern Library asked readers in 1998 to name the twentieth century's one hundred greatest books, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead were numbers one and two on the list; Anthem and We, the Living were numbers seven and eight, trumping The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, and Ulysses" (xii).

Literary critics asked to list the hundred best books did not mention Rand's name. In other words, Rand is tremendously popular but her work is virtually ignored by those who profess to teach the most important and influential literature of the twentieth century. Why? That neglect (by largely liberal academics) likely stems from Rand's "Objectivist" philosophy which makes self interest (or answering and acting upon the question, "What is best for myself?") the most highest individual priority and social good. Objectivists, who followed her philosophy, even founded their own conservative political party:

"Her ideas roared and shouted within a new group of young right-wing libertarians who were disgusted with the economic policies of the Republican Party and determined to found a party of their own, which they called the Libertarian Party. In its 'Statement of Principles' it rejected 'the cult of the omnipotent state' and called for the restoration of each individual's right to exercise sole dominion over his own life. It recommended a speedy return to the gold standard and, when seeking its first presidential candidate in 1972, it chose Rand's erstwhile friend John Hospers. Its founders and members, many of whom were self-declared Objectivists, almost universally revered Rand as the guiding light and most courageous exponent of limited government and free markets" (Heller 383-83).

The Libertarian Party has yet to win a major electoral contest, but many of its cherished principles--especially the limitation of government power and the restoration of individual rights--have been adopted by the Tea Party, which is a large part of the reason that a Republican presidential candidate like Rick Perry, in an attempt to curry favor with the Tea Party, proposed abolishing three agencies of the federal government (go ahead and watch--you'll laugh!). The Tea Party, which is currently fighting for control of the Republican Party and waging an uncompromising fight against Democratic lawmakers, is a movement inspired by Rand's books and ideas--which makes her life something worth studying.

Rand is Russian--she grew up in the turbulent years following the Russian Revolution and preceding World War II. Her family was extremely poor--they celebrated special occasions by eating "cakes made of potato peelings, carrot greens, coffee grounds, and acorns" (Heller 46). Rand moved to Chicago and then Hollywood, scraping her way to success by writing screenplays and then novels. Rand is, in this sense, a self-made woman (notwithstanding the aid and sacrifice of family members)--an admirable all-American story.

But if Rand's success in pulling herself up by her bootstraps is admirable, other aspects of her life are less so. Despite her insistence that Objectivism--and everything in her life--was governed by impeccable logic, she was extremely superstitious and believed in different forms of the supernatural:

"One night Rand spilled salt on a restaurant table and surprised the Hills by throwing a pinch of it over her left shoulder, an ancient rite to blind the devil. Most uncharacteristically, Hill also observed her in the role of witness to a UFO. One Saturday afternoon, Rand greeted the Hills by beckoning Ruth upstairs, into the immense master bedroom, where tall glass windows lined a wall to the left of the bed. 'Do you see those junipers?' she asked, pointing to a row of twelve-foot bushes about half an acre from the house. 'A UFO came by there last night.' Stunned, Hill asked for details. 'It was hovering just above the junipers and flying in slow motion,' she said. It was round and its outer edges were lighted, she continued, and it made no sound. By the time she woke [her husband] Frank and led him to the window, it had moved out of sight' (Heller 608).

In addition to these apparent lapses in logical thought, Rand was conducted her personal life without regard to widely held standards of morality. Rand was addicted to amphetamines for most of her working life and was militantly anti-religious (which may have something to do with the Tea Party's ambivalence towards moral issues). During her married life she indulged in an affair with Nathaniel Branden, a married man twenty-five years her junior. Rand demanded complete obedience from Branden and anyone else who claimed to be an Objectivist. Branden wrote that Rand's inner circle all had to accept the following "implicit premises" transmitted to students of Objectivism:

Ayn Rand is the greatest human being who has ever lived.
Atlas Shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world.
Ayn Rand, by virtue of her philosophical genius, is the supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational, moreal, or appropriate to man's life on earth.
Once one is acquainted with Ayn Rand and her work, the measure of one's virtue is intrinsically tied to the position that one takes regarding her and her work. (Heller 302)

Rand presided over a sort of cult that revered her person; perhaps the best annecdote to make this point is one concerning her eventual "intellectual heir" and the man who founded and currently heads the Ayn Rand Institute: Leonard Peikoff. A member of Rand's 1970s inner circle reported that "Sometimes she would wipe the floor with [Peikoff]. You'd think he had threatened to kill her. I finally said, 'How can you let her do that?' He said, 'I would let her step on my face if she wanted'" (Heller 385).

The champion of individual liberties seemed--at least in these instance--to have had little respect for the liberties of Branden (who didn't want to sleep with her but felt compelled to do so) and Peikoff. This inconsistency also applied to her financial principles. The champion of a free market and capitalism's potential to make all prosperous, Rand kept her money in a savings bank all her life; she never invested it.

Heller's biography is one of the best I've ever read--and it chronicles the life of a woman who continues to dramatically shape American political debates, despite the fact that most people who invoke her name or her novels know little if anything about her. Few know that Alan Greenspan spent every Saturday night, from 8 PM to 4 or 5 AM Sunday morning, over the course of years listening to Rand speak. You want to understand Greenspan's ideological origins? Learn about Ayn Rand. You want to understand the Tea Party or the Libertarian Party? Learn about Ayn Rand. You want to understand John Boehner's politics? Learn about Ayn Rand. For these reasons, and many others, Rand's life is one worth understanding, and her novels are worth the reading.

Even if you, like most of the academics who have ignored her novels, disagree with her ultra-conservative principles, you should learn about Ayn Rand. As Sun Tzu taught, the first principle of war is to "know your enemy."

Patience, the Indispensable Virtue

2011-11-14T00:48:00.001-05:00

Courage is a glamorous virtue. We celebrate biblical heroes like Deborah and David--men and women of action who defied the odds and came off conquerors. Other virtues, if not exactly glamorous, are at least associated with marvelous blessings. We all want to have the faith of Mahonri Moriancumer, who moved mountains; the wisdom of Solomon, who confounded liars and the learned; and the purity of Enoch, who took a whole city to heaven. Courage, faith, wisdom, purity: these are among the most attractive, desirable virtues. Patience is not.

I know what you are thinking. You want to be more patient. But why? What great blessing will attend your patience? Patience will not move mountains, no one will collect your patience into proverbs, and patience probably will not inspire the Lord to translate you ahead of time. After all, if you have learned to wait patiently, why would he prioritize your return? Job's name is synonymous with the virtue of patience, but I know no one who aspires to weeks of scraping painful boils with potshards while listening to the philosophical banter of 'friends.' Nobody aches for a chance to demonstrate patience. Face it--the only reason we wish for patience in the first place is because we want to forget the frustration of waiting impatiently, of wondering when that email will arrive, when we'll get a raise, when our trials will be over, when that better time in life will come. We do not wish for patience so much as we wish for temporary amnesia, the ability to forget our dissatisfactions for a time.

As a virtue patience "is despised and rejected of men" and "hath . . . no beauty that we should desire" it (Isaiah 53:3, 2). But here's the thing: patience, the willingness to delay gratification and to accept affliction or annoyance as an essential component of progression, is the very essence of godliness. Thus, we are to "continue in patience until [we] are perfected" (Doctrine and Covenants 67:13). But if patience is an underrated virtue, so too is impatience an underrated sin because impatience, the unwillingness to delay gratification or accept affliction and annoyance as an essential component of progression, is the defining characteristic of Satan.

We commonly speak of Satan's rebellion as a sin of pride. The late Ezra Taft Benson explained that "In the premortal council, it was pride that felled Lucifer, 'a son of the morning.'" In support of that claim President Benson cites 2 Nephi 24:12-15, but those verses say nothing of pride. Rather, they paraphrase Lucifer's ambitions: "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High" (2 Nephi 24:13-14). From my admittedly limited perspective, there is nothing particularly prideful about Satan's desire; to be sure, he wants to be co-equal with God ("I will sit also . . . [and] will be like the Most High"), but that hardly seems inappropriate. If we really believe that God's primary goal is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39) and that the faithful will receive "all that my Father hath" (Doctrine & Covenants 84:38), then Satan's desire hardly seem blasphemous. He did not want anything that the Father is unwilling to give. The problem was not what he desired but when he wanted it and how he intended to acquire it. Satan wanted to receive exaltation and godhood immediately without enduring any of the afflictions or annoyances that would make him more like God; he was impatient.

As a counterpoint to Satan, consider the example of our elder brother, Jesus Christ. This most righteous, most faithful, most intelligent of God's progeny agreed to spend his pre-mortal, mortal, and post-mortal existence helping you and I--mere spirit children with divine learning disabilities, as compared to the incomparable Christ--to acquire that which he already possessed. Imagine a brilliant math professor at MIT condescending to teach a group of first grade schoolchildren addition and then remaining with those children for years, teaching them every successive mathematical concept until they were finally able to discuss non-commutative algebra and homotopy theory with the professor on an equal basis. Such a process, repeatedly delivering lessons so basic that you know them by heart, lovingly correcting students' rudimentary errors with encouragement, and respectfully answering their ignorant questions day in and day out for years, is an apt description of the Savior's mission as he labors selflessly at the incredibly slow and personal work of tutoring, redeeming, and perfecting as many of us as will remain in his "class." He waited patiently in the pre-mortal existence until the meridian of time to receive a body. During the thirty years before his mortal ministry commenced, he "waited upon the Lord for the time of his ministry to come" (JST Matthew 3:24). As a post-mortal being, he has voluntarily delayed--or perhaps permanently given up--the perfecting of his body so that every one of God's children may "[b]ehold the wounds which pierced my side, and also the prints of the nails in my hands and feet" (Doctrine & Covenants 6:37). In patience, as in all other things, Jesus Christ is our perfect example.

We often speak of faith, hope, and charity as the three essential, Christ-like virtues, but patience is a prerequisite to each of these desirable attributes. King Benjamin taught that when we exercise faith and obey God's commandments He "doth immediately bless [us]" (Mosiah 2:24), but despite the immediacy of God's response, we rarely--if ever--recognize those blessings right away because God desires to "prove you all, as I did Abraham" (Doctrine and Covenants 132:51), who waited twenty-four years for Isaac's birth to fulfill God's promise. Faith is predicated on a willingness to wait patiently for things "not seen" to become visible (Hebrews 11:1). Thus Alma teaches in his parable of the seed that faith grows as we "nourish the word . . . with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof" (Alma 32:41). Without patience faith is fruitless; as Jesus taught in the parable of the sower, "he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for [just] a [short] while" (Matthew 13:20-21).

Dieter F. Uchtdorf defined hope as an "abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill His promise to us," and hope, like faith, is a product of patience. Adam and Eve trusted that Jesus Christ would come to crush the serpent's head, but that hope was grounded from the beginning in an understanding that salvation would only arrive "in the meridian of time" (Moses 6:57). Thus hope in Jesus Christ was, from the beginning, an exercise in patience, a hope in some far off futurity. Since the mortal ministry of Jesus hope has required an equal amount of patience as we wait for his Second Coming, the day and hour of which "no man knoweth" (Doctrine and Covenants 49:7). As Paul teaches, "if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it" (Romans 8:25), and we "through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope" (Romans 15:4). Hope is patience in practice.

Charity, like faith and hope, is likewise grounded in patience. Paul and Mormon both begin their famous descriptions of charity with the words, "Charity suffereth long" (1 Corinthians 13:4; Moroni 7:45). The key word in this description is long; anyone can put up with and even love another human being for an hour, a day, a six week mission transfer. Charity is a patient love that embraces others, despite their flaws, for eternity. Faith, hope, and charity are the idealized virtues we celebrate, but none of them are possible without patience. The Lord commands us in the Doctrine and Covenants to "have patience, faith, hope, charity," and the order of those virtues is significant (6:19). Charity might be "the greatest of these," but patience is the virtue that must be acquired before faith, hope, and charity can be attained (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Patience is the indispensable virtue not only because it is the basis for faith, hope, and charity, but also because impatience is one of the only trials that every single member of God's family will confront. For the most part God allows his children to face different challenges in life; in one of my favorite General Conference quotes of all time President Packer explained that "Some are tested by poor health, some by a body that is deformed or homely. Others are tested by handsome and healthy bodies; some by the passion of youth; others by the erosions of age. Some suffer disappointment in marriage, family problems; others live in poverty and obscurity. Some (perhaps this is the hardest test) find ease and luxury. All are part of the test, and there is more equality in this testing than sometimes we suspect." One of the reasons there might be more equality in these disparate challenges than we suspect is because everyone--whether rich or poor, sick or healthy, young or old--must cope with trials of impatience. Surely some ancient monk struggled to curb his impatience while combing through handwritten copies of the Bible for a verse whose reference he couldn't quite remember. Today in my Sunday School class I listened to a woman complain that when she attempted to search for a scripture online, her internet browser didn't load fast enough. Both of these individuals, despite their vastly different circumstances, struggled with patience because patience is relative. There is ALWAYS something about which we could be impatient because patience and impatience are states of mind, not circumstances. You may not know whether you will struggle with trials of health or homeliness, with challenges of penury or prosperity, but every one of us can bank on the fact that life will try our patience. Tests of patience are part of every mortal experience, and for that reason patience is an indispensable virtue, the virtue that no one can afford to be without.

The apostle Paul compared mortality to a race, but our lives are more marathon than hundred-meter dash. Accordingly, Paul instructed us to "run with patience the race that is set before us" (Hebrews 12:1). It is not enough to perform a single good deed and then "dream of your mansion above"; only by "patient continuance in well doing" will our search "for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life" be rewarded (Romans 2:7). It is not enough to forgive the faults of others one time or even seven times; we must "have patience with" (Matthew 18:26, 29) our fellow men and forgive "until seventy times seven" (Matthew 18:22) or our Father in Heaven will deliver us "to the tormentors" (Matthew 18:34-35). For this reason the Savior taught that "In your patience possess ye your souls" (Luke 21:19). Patience will preserve us from damnation and prepare us for perfection; thus we must "continue in patience until ye are perfected" and "let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing" (James 1:4) so that we can add "to patience godliness" (2 Peter 1:6).

Patience is an indispensable key to exaltation, but it is also, I would argue, the attribute most important to our temporal progress and happiness. Speaking to his Latter-day Saints, the Lord taught that for those who bear affliction "patiently, your reward shall be doubled" (Doctrine and Covenants 98:26). This principle--that patience is rewarded with a double portion--reminds me of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment

in which children were left alone in a room with a marshmallow and told that they could either eat the marshmallow immediately or wait until an adult returned, at which point they would receive a second marshmallow, doubling their reward. Children who were able to exercise patience and wait for the second marshmallow grew up to be significantly more successful; they had higher SAT scores and lower rates of social recidivism. If patience is correlated with intelligence, it is also correlated with good health; a new study links impatience to obesity, suggesting that exercising patience will save your soul, boost your grades, and trim your waistline, all at the same time. Now THAT'S what I call an indispensable virtue.

Oh--and congratulations; if you made it to the end of this post, you're probably already righteous, skinny, and smart because you're certainly patient.

Chiasmus and the JST in Hebrews

2011-10-10T23:45:00.000-04:00

Using the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible is problematic, at least in part, because Joseph Smith never completed the project. Robert Matthews, the late professor of religion at Brigham Young University, made the JST his life's work and concluded "that the work of revision was an on-going process that was never quite completed, and that, had the Prophet lived longer, he might have revised many more passages." What makes the work of interpretation more difficult is the fact that Joseph Smith's revisions frequently overlapped; when he revised the same biblical passage multiple times, early revisions were overwritten with new language. Matthews explains that "where there are multiple manuscripts of the same chapters, the later manuscript is more extensive and contains additional revisions over the earlier."

There are places, accordingly, where I struggle to make sense of the Joseph Smith Translation--or where I feel that some truth contained in the language of the King James Version of the Bible has been lost in his revisions, perhaps because that passage required further clarification and revelation. I'm more willing to accept those passages, however, because other changes in the JST clearly restore something missing the in original text. One such passage shows up in the first chapter of Hebrews, where the Joseph Smith translation of verses six and seven restores the clarity of Paul's chiasmus.

In Hebrews Paul uses the Old Testament to testify that Jesus Christ was the Messiah promised by the prophets, and he opens his epistle to the Jews with a chiasmus (verses 5-14) that centers around two messianic psalms:

For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? And again, when he bringeth in the firstbegotten into the world, he saith, [JST: And let all the angels of God worship him, who maketh his ministers as a flame of fire. And of the angels he saith, Angels are ministering spirits.]

But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. (Quoting Psalms 45:6)

Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows (Quoting Psalms 45:7)

And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands (Quoting Psalms 102:25)

They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. (Quoting Psalms 102:26-27)

But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?

The chiasmus contains three major movements:

RED--Rhetorical questions demonstrating that the Son is higher than the angels, who are ministering spirits;
BLUE--Verses from the Psalms explaining that the Son's mission and character are eternal and unchanging;
GREEN--Verses from the Psalms stating that the Son qualified himself for his salvific role in the pre-existence (in the first verse, he was anointed for his redemptive mission because he "loved righteousness and hated iniquity"; in the second, he created the earth "in the beginning).

Paul's purpose here is to remind Jews of what they already believe regarding the Messiah so that he can demonstrate to them that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. To that end, he quotes from the Psalms and writes in chiasmus, a form of Hebrew poetry. Joseph Smith's translation contributes to that chiasmus in a small way by restoring the description of angels as "ministering spirits" to verse seven of the King James Translation, which corresponds to the "ministering spirits" in verse 14. I seriously doubt that Joseph Smith understood that changing verse seven would restore an ancient Hebrew poetic form that he probably didn't know existed, but his revision restores unity to Paul's chiasmus.

I don't always understand the inspiration behind Joseph Smith's inspired revisions probably, at least in part, because those revisions were never completed. But changes like this one--that clearly restore textual coherence in ways that Joseph Smith probably never realized--have led me to accept the JST as an inspired, if incomplete, addition to canonical scripture; they are yet another testimony of Joseph Smith's seership.

"Covet to Prophesy"

2011-09-27T08:29:00.002-04:00

In his first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul encourages the saints at Corinth to prioritize the gift of prophecy above the gift of tongues: "desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy. For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue . . . no man understandeth him . . . But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification" (I Cor. 12:1-3). The gift of prophecy, in this context, is that described by John in the book of Revelation, where he explains that "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" (Rev. 19:10). God's messengers have always taught that this gift is one we should all be seeking for, and Moses exclaimed, "would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit upon them!" (Num. 11:29).

Paul reiterates this impassioned exhortation of Moses, desiring that every saint in Corinth would testify of Christ: "I would that ye all . . . prophesied" (I Cor. 14:5). Then, having invited the saints to testify of Christ, Paul reminds them that the ultimate purpose of seeking for the spirit of prophecy is to warn and prepare their neighbors: "For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" (I Cor. 14:8). I love this metaphor, the notion that our testimonies ought to sound like a trumpet, and it's one that appears throughout the scriptures. Alma cries, "O that I were an angel, and could have the wish of mine heart, that I might go forth and speak with the trump of God, with a voice to shake the earth, and cry repentance unto every people!" (Alma 29:1). The Lord commanded Oliver Cowdery that "at all times and in all places, he shall open his mouth and declare my gospel as with the voice of a trump, both day and night. And I will give him strength such as is not known among men" (D&C 24:12; see also 33:2, 36:1, and Isaiah 58:1). Having commanded Oliver Cowdrey to testify with the force of a trumpet, the Lord promises him strength "to go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded" (1 Ne. 3:7). That command and its accompanying promise still applies to missionaries today (D&C 42:6), and David O. McKay reminded us that every member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a missionary.

I love Paul's comparison precisely because there is NOTHING uncertain about the sound of a trumpet, and there should be nothing uncertain about our testimonies as we trumpet them to others. The Jews of Corinth, who Paul preached to, would have been familiar with the commandments given to ancient Israel in Numbers. There God instructs the people that "if ye go to war in your land against the enemy that oppresseth you, then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets; and ye shall be remembered before the Lord your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies" (Num. 10:9). Blowing a trumpet in ancient Israel was a call to arms against the enemies of God, and Paul's call to prophesy similarly asks us to raise the voice of warning. When Israel blew their trumpets God promised to give them "strength unto the battle" (Ps. 18:39), and that promise still applies today. If we will open our mouths to testify with a certain sound, God will use our trumpet-like voices to bless those around us by "warn[ing] them to flee, or to prepare for war, according to their danger" (Alma 48:15). Our testimonies of Christ, our clarion calls of hope in the Atonement, may be the means by which someone else receives "strength unto the battle," but only if we--like Paul--"covet to prophesy" (1 Cor. 14:39).

What Does Victoria's Secret Have in Common . . .

2011-08-28T22:25:00.000-04:00

. . . with the Ensign? Lingerie, apparently. I won't be holding my breath waiting for that article to be reprinted.

Asking Might Be Uncomfortable . . .

2011-08-15T18:17:00.002-04:00

. . . but not asking could be worse. Time for another personal pornography interview with the ones you love; this could be the most important FHE you ever held.

Great Are the Words of Isaiah: Chapter 1

2011-08-09T09:18:00.002-04:00

When Nephi copied out chapters from Isaiah, he did so "that whoso of my people shall see these words may lift up their hearts and rejoice" (2 Ne. 11:8). Isaiah's words prompt rejoicing, at least in part, because he testifies of Jesus Christ's willingness and ability to cleanse us from sin: "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isa. 1:18).

Modern revelation clarifies the meaning of Jesus Christ's invitation to reason with him: "And now come, saith the Lord, by the Spirit, unto the elders of his church, and let us reason together, that ye may understand; let us reason even as a man reasoneth one with another face to face. Now, when a man reasoneth he is understood of man , because he reasoneth as a man; even so will I, the Lord, reason with you that you may understand" (D&C 50:10-12). Reasoning with the Lord is not a process of convincing him that we are worthy or ready to be forgiven; he already understands our spiritual status perfectly. Rather, reasoning with Jesus Christ is a process by which we come to understand and accept his will. The Bible Dictionary explains that "prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them" (752-53).

Of course, (then) Elder Joseph Fielding Smith taught that this verse of Isaiah--contrary to popular interpretation--does not refer to an individual's relationship with the Lord but to Israel's collective covenant relationship with God: "This quotation from Isaiah is quite generally misunderstood. It is clear from a careful reading of this first chapter in Isaiah, that this remark had no reference to individuals at all, but to the House of Israel . . . So we see that this passage does not apply to individuals and individual sins" (Answers to Gospel Questions, 2:179-80). As previously noted, the opinions of apostles are not infallible, and this is one case where I'm going to have to disagree with Elder Smith. Not only do I think this verse applies to individuals, I'd be willing to wager a whole lot of bananas that Isaiah wrote it with reference to one individual in particular: Job.

After Job has lost everything and is struggling to maintain his faith in God, his three "friends," Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar come to persuade Job that he should acknowledge that he has brought God's judgments on himself through sin. Job responds with the lament that, "I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that thou [God] wilt not hold me innocent. If I be wicked, why then labour I in vain? If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt thou [God] plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him [God], and we should come together in judgment" (Job 9:28-32). Compare Job's lamentation with these verses from Isaiah: "Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool" (Isa. 1:16-18). Four linguistic and thematic parallels tie the passages together, suggesting that Isaiah writes in response to Job, presenting his words as an answer to Job's complaint.

Recognizing Isaiah's interest in responding to Job provides insight on three fronts:

First, one of Isaiah's concerns is presenting an anthropomorphic God. Job is concerned that God "is not a man, as I am," so it would do no good to reason with him or "come together in judgment." Isaiah reassures Job and Job-like sufferers everywhere that Jesus Christ understands the mortal experience, our pains, sorrows, temptations, and physical ailments. This passage is one of the Bible's hidden gems that highlights the essential similarities between God and man.

Second, Job--who has lived a good life but suffered anyways--worries that God is unforgiving and capricious, more interested in finding a reason to condemn than a reason to forgive. Isaiah assures Job that he has God all wrong; Jesus Christ is searching for opportunities to forgive and forget our sins, not reasons to cling to them. Isaiah rejects the idea of a distant, powerful, willful Calvinist God; Job worries about a God of justice, but Isaiah promises a God of mercy.

Third, understanding that Isaiah responds to Job can also help to answer a scholarly debate about the date of Job. Most scholars suggest that Job is a book no older than the 4th century BC; since we know that Isaiah was written no later than the 7th century BC (so that Nephi could take it with him to the Americas), Job is also older than the 7th century BC. Of course, the same point might be made by Jacob, who paraphrases Job: "For I know that ye have searched much, many of you, to know of things to come; wherefore I know that ye know that our flesh must waste away and die; nevertheless, in our bodies we shall see God" (2 Ne. 9:4). Compare Jacob's reassurance with what is arguably the most famous verse in Job: "And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God" (Job 19:26). Jacob suggests that he--and many other Nephites--have internalized the promise of Job, which means that they certainly had access to his words. God promises that all things shall be established in the mouth of two or more witnesses, and these two prophets (Isaiah and Jacob) establish the antiquity of Job, as a book of scripture extant before the 7th century BC.

Mild Drinks

2011-08-03T22:43:00.000-04:00

There's a lot that I don't get about the gospel. Heck--there's a lot that I don't get about specific gospel principles, like the Word of Wisdom. For instance, I've always wondered how to interpret Doctrine and Covenants 89:17, where the Lord explains that "wheat [is] for man, and corn for the ox, and oats for the horse, and rye for the fowls and for swine, and for all beasts of the field, and barley for all useful animals, and for mild drinks, as also other grain." There's a lot that I don't understand just in this one verse--is wheat supposed to be the optimal feed for people and corn for cattle? This certainly can't be exclusionary, right? So why make the distinction at all? And what about rice?

Again, I'm profoundly aware of my ignorance. And the bit about "mild drinks" made from barley has always confused me. The only "mild drink" made from barley that I know of is beer--and prophetic counsel forbids alcohol. But when I read about this study claiming that non-alcoholic beer boosts the immune system and this study claiming that non-alcoholic beer prevents cancer, I had to wonder--is the Doctrine and Covenants encouraging us to consume O'Douls?

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

2011-07-27T20:52:00.001-04:00

Ok, so you didn't ask for a post on the semantics of reception. But, I've written one, and now you get to decide whether or not to receive--read? internalize? act on?--it.

During his post-resurrection minister Jesus Christ appeared to his apostles behind closed doors, "where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews" (John 20:19). After giving them verbal instructions, "he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost" (John 20:22). This injunction to receive is one that Jesus Christ adapted to multiple occasions. When Pharisees asked him whether it was "lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause" (Matt. 19:3) Jesus responded with the admonition that marriage is be a permanent institution, not a coupling of convenience:

"Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder" (Matt. 19:4-6).

Jesus rejected divorce and remarriage "except it be for fornication" (19:9), and his disciples--not the Pharisees!--observed that "If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry" (19:10). The Savior responded by teaching that "All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it" (19:11-12). The object or ideal we are to receive in this last sentence is not wholly clear, but I like to think that "it" refers to the doctrine of marriage he's just explained--or, indeed, to a spouse "received" in the spirit of that doctrine.

Certainly Orson Pratt used that language to describe his own marriage; in 1835, he "baptized Sarah Marinda Bates, near Sacketts Harbor, whom I received in marriage upwards of one year after." Christ's biblical commandment to "receive" is preserved in the saving and exalting ordinances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in directives to receive the Holy Ghost or to receive a spouse. But what does such a directive entail?

English language speakers generally use the verb "receive" in a passive sense that involves little or no action on the recipient's part. Students receive grades from teachers (whether they like it or not); murder victims might receive a blow to the head; and family members might receive news of a loved one's passing. To receive, in these instances, requires no action on the part of the recipient. But receiving the Holy Ghost--or receiving a spouse in marriage--requires action, not inert passivity. When, in the game of football, a wide receiver stretches out his hands to catch a pass from the quarterback, he must act aggressively in order to receive:

So too with individuals who wish to receive the Holy Ghost or a spouse; reception requires action. Elder Bednar made this point with reference to promptings from the Holy Ghost, exhorting us to open a pathway into our heart. Quoting from Nephi, Elder Bednar taught that " 'When a man speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth [the message] unto the hearts of the children of men' (2 Ne. 33:1). Please notice how the power of the Spirit carries the message unto but not necessarily into the heart. A teacher can explain, demonstrate, persuade, and testify, and do so with great spiritual power and effectiveness. Ultimately, however, the content of a message and the witness of the Holy Ghost penetrate into the heart only if a receiver allows them to enter."

Receiving the witness of the Holy Ghost is a matter of (actively) preparing a pathway into our hearts and a place within our hearts where he can dwell. If we wish to obey Jesus' injunction to "Receive the Holy Ghost," we would do well to imitate the example of a Shunammite woman described in the Bible. This woman of faith, having seen the prophet Elisha pass by her house regularly said to her husband, "I perceive that this is an holy man of God, which passeth by us continually. Let us make a little chamber, I pray thee, on the wall; and let us set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick: and it shall be, when he cometh to us, that he shall turn in thither" (2 Kgs. 4:9-10). This faithful woman was not content with allowing Elisha to visit when he knocked on her door; desiring his uplifting and edifying presence in her house on a regular basis, she made her home into a place that was ready to receive the prophet at any moment, a space whose comforts might entice this man of God into visiting her more regularly.

If we want the Holy Ghost to dwell with us, we can't wait for Him to knock on the door, then sweep our dirt under the rug and run around the house searching for a place where He could sit comfortably; rather, we must make our hearts into homes where He always will feel welcome. Only when the Holy Ghost is able to touch our hearts at every hour of the day, as Elisha was able to visit the Shunammite couple whenever he pleased, will we be in full compliance with Christ's commandment to "Receive the Holy Ghost."

The same logic, of course, applies to the work of receiving a spouse. After many wedding ceremonies today, the newly married couple will gather to greet their friends and family for the first time as husband and wife at a wedding reception. This idea of a wedding reception is actually derived from the practice of astrology; according to the Oxford English Dictionary [GATED], the word reception was first used to describe "two planets being received into the other's house, exaltation, or other dignity." A nineteenth-century astrology text cited in the OED explains that "Reception is when two planets are mutually posited in each other's essential dignities." I love this definition, which applies beautifully to the need for a husband and wife to actively receive one another in marriage.

To be posited in the essential dignities of another is to comprehend the worth of that individual and to position those dignities or worthy attributes at the center of your relationship, to privilege the dignity and worthiness of that spouse above all else. In other words, to "receive" a spouse or be "in reception" of a spouse is to center your relationship on the divine (Remember the word's origins in the stars!) worth of your spouse, to recognize him or her as a child of God and to base your relationship on that fact.

Other scriptures provide additional insight as to what it might mean to appropriately receive a spouse. I personally treasure the counsel given to Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith in the Doctrine and Covenants as they worked together in a close partnership to advance the kingdom: "Admonish [Joseph Smith] in his faults, and also receive admonition of him" (6:19). Surely this counsel should also apply to husbands and wives who have covenanted to receive a spouse in marriage. After all, a wife who has centered her marriage around the essential dignities of her husband will likely find little to admonish him for, and a husband who recognizes the essential dignities of his wife would be willing to receive her admonitions in a spirit of meekness.

Every member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has covenanted to receive the Holy Ghost, and every couple who has been sealed by the priesthood in a temple of God ought to receive his or her spouse in the manner of Oliver Pratt. To receive is not merely to passively accept but to actively prepare a place for, to entice and welcome, to dwell on the dignity and worth of the individual being received, and to welcome admonition from that companion. I find it significant that we have been commanded to enter into the same type of relationship with our spouse that we engage in with a member of the godhead; keep that in mind when next you head to a wedding "reception."

Great Are the Words of Isaiah: Chapter 22

2011-07-10T08:46:00.004-04:00

At the end of chapter twenty-two, Isaiah speaks of a steward, Eliakim, in Messianic terms as the savior of Judah:

"And I will clothe him with thy robe, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy government into his hand: and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to the house of Judah. And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father's house. And they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house, the offspring and the issue, all vessels of small quantity, from the vessels of cups, even to all the vessels of flagons" (22:21-24).

This beautiful metaphor describes the Savior as a source of strength that will support all of the trials and tribulations of his covenant people; he will carry burdens both large (flagons) and small (cups). He can carry those burdens because he, unlike us, is able to support them--he is "in a sure place." The word sure here is a translation of the Hebrew verb 'aman, and with this word Isaiah seems to be drawing a distinction between Christ's ability to bear our burdens and the inability of (even great) mortal men. When Moses was confronted by the complaints of Israel in the wilderness he, in turn, complained to the Lord:

"Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers? . . . I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me" (Num. 11:12, 14).

Moses cannot bear the burden (massa'; Num. 11:11) that Christ will bear (massa'; Isa. 22:25). He cannot act as a "nursing father," which is another translation of 'aman. But Christ--who has "conceived all this people" is "able to bear all this people alone." He is our foster-father (another possible translation of 'aman) who adopts us into his family, who carries and nourishes us like a nurse: "For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:26); "as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the [W]ord, that ye may grow thereby: if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious" (1 Pet. 2:2-3). Christ is 'aman--or, perhaps, as Joseph Smith transliterated, Ahman.

In the Journal of Discourses Orson Pratt recorded "one revelation that this people are not generally acquainted with. I think it has never been published, but probably it will in the Church History. It is given in questions and answers. The first question is, 'What is the name of God in the pure language?' The answer says, 'Ahman'" (2:342). Of course, while that particular revelation may not have been included in the Doctrine and Covenants, its substance was; Christ refers to himself in the Doctrine and Covenants as "your Redeemer, even the Son Ahman" or Son of God (78:20). It seems quite likely to me that the Hebrew verb 'aman (which, like Ahman, bears more than a passing resemblance to the Egyptian name for God, Amon)--a word that describes a nourishing father--is a linguistic descendant for "the name of God in the pure language."

The Book of Mormon prophet Jacob seems to have recognized this connection between Ahman, the name of God, and the Hebrew aman. Before his first sermon (on Isaiah!) Jacob tells the Nephite people "I will read you the words of Isaiah . . . that ye may learn and glorify the name of your God" (2 Ne. 6:4). He proceeds to quote two verses from Isaiah (49:22-23), including the promise that "kings shall be thy nursing fathers [aman]" (2 Ne. 6:7). In the Hebrew from which he was reading on the brass plates, this verse of Isaiah would have answered Jacob's promise to teach the Nephites "the name of your God," as he explained the nurturing nature of a Heavenly Father (aman/Ahman) who would gather scattered Israel together again.

When we read Isaiah 22:23, then, we might do so in the following manner: "And I will fasten him [Christ] as a nail in Ahman's place." Christ is the nail that bears us (all those vessels) up, that keeps us in the proximity of Ahman, in a manner analogous to the way in which a servant was bound to his master by a nail thrust through his ear into the doorpost of his master's house (Ex. 21:6; Deut. 15:17). No one else, not even Moses, was strong enough to take Christ's place as the nail; mere mortal men, Ezekiel explains, are like a flexible vine: "Shall wood be taken thereof to do any work? or will men take a pin of it to hang any vessel thereon?" (Ez. 15:3).

Only by accepting Jesus Christ as the Nail in a sure ('aman, Ahman, foster father, nourishing) place can we be saved; we must give ourselves up to his mercy and strength as a vessel and burden that we cannot bear alone.

Golden Plates in the New World

2011-07-09T08:41:00.000-04:00

So I've just been doing a little reading in Christopher Columbus's letters. On his second voyage to the Caribbean Columbus took along Diego Alvarez Chanca, a physician who wrote a letter describing the voyage to his hometown of Seville. Chanca--like everyone else who traveled to the New World--spends a lot of time talking about gold, and I was struck by the way in which he describes native practices of shaping the metal:

"At the time of their departure [the explorers'], he [Guacamari, the native chief] gave to each of them a jewel of gold, to each according as each seemed to merit. This gold they fashion in very thin plates" (Jane 56).

Chanca's phrase is Spanish is actually, "Este oro facian en fojas muy delgadas," which could also be translated, "this gold they fashion in very thin pages." In other words, among this group of Native Americans on the island of Hispaniola, all gold was first shaped into very thin sheets that Chanca thought resembled the pages of a book. The gold might subsequently be reshaped into masks or jewelry, but first it was formed into thin plates. I'm sure that someone at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship has already made this connection, but it seems worthwhile to point out that Native peoples living in the Americas regularly fashioned their gold into thin sheets or pages centuries before Joseph Smith saw the gold plates given him by Moroni.

Temples and the Tree of Life

2011-06-20T00:24:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, while I was in Boston for a conference, Daddy Monk--who's a sealer in the Boston Temple--asked me whether I knew of any connection between the temple and the tree of life. He was interested, at least in part, because the Boston Temple is decorated on the interior with a tree of life motif; all of the woodwork represents that theme. I didn't have my sources with me on my trip, but since I'm home and since today is Father's Day, now seems like an appropriate time to answer his question. I love you Daddy Monk!

Temples and the Tree of Life

The first point that needs to be made is that temples have always been thought of as a representation of the garden of Eden. As Lawrence Stager explains, "the Temple of Solomon--indeed, the Temple Mount and all Jerusalem--was a symbol as well as a reality, a mythopoeic realization of heaven on earth, Paradise, the Garden of Eden" (BAR 26:03). The apocryphal Book of Jubilees also bears testament to the truth "that the Garden of Eden is the holy of holies" (8:19), a place similarly sacred to the temple. In order to make the link between temple and Eden clear Solomon decorated his temple--like the Boston temple--with a garden motif. In Solomon's Temple David Seely and William Hamblin note that "Solomon's Temple was profusely decorated with floral motifs" (12): "And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops and open flowers: all was cedar; there was no stone seen" (1 Kings 6:18; see also 29-35). The entire interior of Solomon's Temple, in other words, was carved and decorated to resemble a garden.

Other verbal parallels link these two spaces where God dwelt with man. Seely and Hamblin write that "The same Hebrew word, hithallek, used to describe God 'walking to and fro' in the Garden, also describes his divine presence in the Tabernacle (Lev. 26:12; Deut. 23:14). The same word God used when he commanded Adam and Eve to 'work' in the Garden--avodah--is used to describe the 'service' of the Tabernacle performed by the priesthood. The precious onyx stones mentioned in Eden decorated the Tabernacle and were worn on the shoulders of the high priest (Exodus 25:7; 28:9, 20)" (13-14). The temple is, for all intents and purposes, meant to be a second Eden.

Just as the garden of Eden contained a tree of life, so too did the temples designed by Jehovah contain a symbolic tree; Seely and Hamblin write that "the lampstand (menorah) is described as a tree--which in time became associated with the Tree of Life" (12). Moses describes this lampstand in Exodus, when he records Jehovah's instructions regarding the temple: "And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold . . . and six branches shall come out of the sides of it; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side: three bowls made lke unto almonds, with a knop and a flower in one branch; and three bowls made like almonds in the other branch, with a knop and a flower: so in the six branches that come out of the candlestick" (Exodus 25:31-33). This candlestick or lampstand was designed in the shape of an almond tree, and that symbolic almond tree which lit up the Tabernacle and then the temple came to represent the tree of life.

That an almond tree came to represent the tree of life is highly significant; the almond tree, in the Old Testament, is a symbol of the priesthood. When Moses and Aaron face a potential rebellion among the twelve tribes the Lord instructs Moses to "speak unto the children of Israel, and take of every one of them a rod according to the house of their fathers, of all their princes according to the house of the their fathers twelve rods: write thou every man's name upon his rod" (Num. 17:2). So Moses gathers twelve rods, one from each of the tribes, writes the name of each tribe on the rods, and "laid up the rods before the LORD in the tabernacle of witness. And it came to pass, that on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness; and, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds" (Num. 17:7-8). Aaron's rod, the rod of Levi, the rod representing the only tribe that holds the priesthood--bloomed with almonds. The link between almonds and priesthood is reconfirmed in Jeremiah--when, after the Lord announces that "before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee" (Jer. 1:5), he helps Jeremiah recognize his priesthood stewardship by showing him "a rod of an almond tree" (Jer. 1:11).

Recognizing the almond tree's priesthood significance is crucial because it suggests that the tree of life--both in the temple and in Eden--is a representation of the priesthood. The priesthood is the source of life (and, as the menorah attests, light). A lampstand in the temple that represents both light and (the tree of) life would have been the symbolic, Old Testament equivalent of these verses in the Doctrine and Covenants describing the priesthood: "And the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings; which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space--the light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God" (88:11-13).

Today we no longer light temples with menorah (although many chandeliers in various temples have seven bulbs; check it out!)--and most temples, Boston notwithstanding, no longer employ obvious portrayals of the tree of life. But the idea that the menorah and the tree of life represent--the priesthood that is the light and life of the world--IS still present in temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and for that we should be grateful.

I'm off for an almond snack before bed; good night!

A Unique Religious Experience? Why?

2011-06-12T23:48:00.000-04:00

A week or so ago I had occasion to teach my students about an amazing conversion experience. We read the account of a relatively young person who was quite anxious about the state of his soul. In the midst of this anxiety, he began praying, but was overcome by darkness and pain during an attack by Satan. Eventually, however, the skies seemed to open, revealing her Savior behind the dark clouds that had obscured him.

Wait, what’s that you say? You think I’m talking about Joseph Smith?

Oh, right—you were probably remembering this account in Smith’s History:

“. . . amidst all my anxieties I had never as yet made the attempt to pray vocally. . . . I kneeled down and began to offer up the desires of my heart to God. I had scarcely done so, when immediately I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction. But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the Sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound. When the light rested upon me I 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!”

Of course, I can—in retrospect—see how you might have thought that I was describing the first vision of Joseph Smith (especially since I used masculine pronouns to describe my unknown convert). But I was actually talking about a woman named Harriet Ruggles Gold Boudinot (whose letters you can read in this fascinating collection by Theresa Strouth Gaul).

She was most famous for her interracial marriage to the Cherokee Elias Boudinot, but her deathbed conversion experience should, I think, be of interest to every member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

“In the evening her greatest distress commenced. I thought the last struggle had come, and, added to her bodily suffering, there seemed to pass over her mind a desponding cloud. In the agony of her distress she was heard to exclaim, ‘Lord have mercy upon me—my friends, pray for me! Oh, it is terrible to have even one doubt or one cloud!’ She would occasionally say, ‘Patience! patience!’ A friend told her to look to the Saviour, he would not leave her nor forsake her. ‘You feel that you can trust him, and believe that he will do all things right?’ ‘Yes, [188] yes.’ She afterwards, the next day, told Mr. N. that at these times of extreme bodily pain and suffering, Satan, the great adversary of her soul, was trying to take advantage of her weakness, by suggesting doubts and fears, but she had been enabled to look to the Saviour, and that all the clouds which oppressed her were removed—that there was then a clear sky between her and her Saviour. This was but a few hours before she died, and but a short time before she became unable to speak.

“Early in the morning of the last day, 14^th, after the most distressing night she had had, she requested a number of her friends to come to her bed. Upon my inquiring how she did, she said, ‘I am in great distress, (meaning bodily distress,) I hope this is the last night I shall spend in the world—then, how sweet will be the conqueror’s song!’ I inquired whether her darkness was removed. ‘Yes.’” (187-88)

It should be clear that the conversion narratives of Joseph Smith and Harriet Boudinot have a lot in common. Why does it matter that we recognize their commonalities? Too often in Latter-day Saint culture, we promote a culture of exceptionalism even though we have a lot in common with other Protestant religious movements of the nineteenth-century. Recognizing what we have in common—restoring the religious context in which Joseph Smith experienced and wrote about his first vision—can help us to see what it is about the Latter-day Saint tradition that is truly unique.

Joseph thought of his vision as a conversion experience, which is why it resembles Harriet’s so much; but you’ll notice a few important differences—A) Joseph actually saw two beings, God the Father and Jesus Christ. B) Those figures were embodied. Those two facts are the key, distinguishing characteristics of Joseph’s vision—the things that differentiated it from many of the competing religious claims of the time.

The Mormon Position on Immigration Reform

2011-06-10T14:56:00.000-04:00

Stop what you're doing. Go read THIS really important statement just released by the Church.

Now that you're back, let me note that the position advocated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is, I would argue, substantially the same position that I articulated a few months ago with one important difference: while the Church supports policies that would allow illegal immigrants to remain within the country permanently, it is not necessarily committed to providing a path to citizenship (which is how I had interpreted its earlier, more vague statement regarding the Utah Compact--and, I should note, this still seems the prevailing sentiment, even if the Church is willing to compromise on it).

The bottom line--and I'm talking to you, Publius Sakharov--is that "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is concerned that any state legislation that only contains enforcement provisions is likely to fall short of the high moral standard of treating each other as children of God" because the "bedrock moral issue for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is how we treat each other as children of God." To quote myself, "we ought to see immigration reform and legislation as an opportunity to reach out to and bless those of our neighbors who are suffering, and Church members should be able to respond articulately when others raise objections to comprehensive immigration reform; it's part of being a good neighbor."

Notes on the KJV: Saving Face, or Can't Buy Me Grace

2011-05-29T10:31:00.000-04:00

In his talk at Ohio State University’s conference on “The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife,” David Richter pointed out several glaring inaccuries in the KJV translation. However, the more interesting aspect of his presentation—at least to me—was his work detailing the Hebrew word play lost in this (and, frankly, every other) English translation.

The trouble with translating Hebrew is that the language has a VERY limited vocabulary. Because there are so few Hebrew lexemes, every word carries multiple significations; the language uses variations of the same word to represent many different ideas. For this reason, reading Hebrew is more an art of interpretation than a science of translation/substitution. (Incidentally, during the conference one speaker pointed out that the ambiguity of Hebrew is so significant that some scholars wonder whether it was originally intended to be a spoken language. Can you imagine listening to someone speak and wondering which of five meanings each of his words carried? On the other hand, maybe that’s an argument for orality; body language and social context might have made it much easier to understand.) English has almost the exact opposite problem—there are so many words that the language allows you to say precisely what you want to say in almost wholly unambiguous terms. As a result, translating Hebrew into English always means stripping ambiguity and multiple meanings from the text in exchange for one clear statement.

Richter’s example of this principle in Genesis sheds some light on the conclusion of the Jacob-Esau story. As Jacob makes his return to Edom, he sees [MXNH] or “God’s host” of angels preparing the way (Gen. 32:2). Remembering that when he left Edom fourteen plus years ago Esau wanted to kill him, Jacob decides to divide his caravan into “two bands” [plural of MXNH] (32:7); then, if [MXNH] “one company” (32:8) is smitten, the other will escape. He hopes to find “grace” [XN] (32:5) in Esau’s sight, so he sends “a present” [MNXH] (32:13) of goods to Esau. The wordplay of the Hebrew here is that Jacob’s hoping for grace [XN] for his company [MXNH], but he sends a payoff [the NX in MNXH], which is the inverse of grace [XN]; he’s trying to BUY grace, that which cannot be bought.

Esau recognizes Jacob’s shiftiness when they two finally get together; he asks, “What meanest thou by all this drove [MXNH] which I met? And [Jacob] said, These are to find grace [XN] in the sight of my lord. And Esau said, I have enough [yesh li rav], my brother; keep that thou hast unto thyself” (Gen. 33:8-9). Esau rejects Jacob’s attempt to purchase his forgiveness, to sanctify the stealing of his blessing. Jacob hears Esau and, perhaps offended by his brother’s refusal to forgive, rubs Esau’s face in his subordinate circumstances: “Take, I pray thee, my blessing that is brought to thee”—I’ve brought you the equivalent of the birthright and blessing I stole; it’s just as good!—“because God hath dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough [yes li kol]” (Gen. 33:11). You’ll see that the English spoken by Esau and Jacob is identical: “I have enough.” But the Hebrew is NOT the same. Esau’s words mean, “I have plenty”; Jacob’s mean “I have it all.” In the end, after Jacob’s reminded Esau that he has taken EVERYTHING, he agrees to take Jacob’s bribe; Jacob is allowed to buy grace [XN] with a present [mNXh].

Jonathan and David: Three Takes

2011-05-22T18:21:00.000-04:00

The story of David and Jonathan--their friendship and loyalty in the face of danger and almost certain death has inspired men and women for millennia. A seventeenth-century poet and distant ancestor of mine, Anne Bradstreet, commemorated their love and mutual respect in these words, spoken by David:

"O lovely Jonathan! how wast thou slain?

In places high, full low thou didst remain

Distrest for thee I am, dear Jonathan,

Thy love was wonderfull, surpassing man,

Exceeding all the love that's Feminine,

So pleasant hast thou been, dear brother mine."

Recently, I learned of another prominent early American figure who idealized the friendship between David and Jonathan, calling on that bond as a way to sanctify one of his own friendships. When John Adams was studying law under the tutelage of Colonel James Putnam, he met another young lawyer named Jonathan Sewall. As lawyers Adams and Sewall rode the Massachusetts circuit together, traveling with a judge from one small town to another, bringing justice--or at least legal closure--to the people. Sewall and Adams frequently shared a room and sometimes a bed on these trips; there was no Marriott waiting for them in eighteenth-century Charlestown. As a result of their constant companionship, the two men grew very close; Adams recalled that "he always called me John, and I him Jonathan, and often said to him, 'I wish my name were David.'" Adams loved Sewall as a brother and friend--but he recorded this story in order to make the point that he loved his country more than anything else in the world. Sewall, you see, was a Tory, a man loyal to King George the Third.

When Sewall invited Adams for a walk in 1774, just before he was to leave for the First Continental Congress, Adams had to make a choice between his dearest friend and his country. On that walk, Sewall

"said 'that Great Britain was determined on her system; her power was irresistible and would certainly be destructive to me and to all those who should be severe in opposition to her designs.' I answered 'that I knew Great Britain was determined on her system, and that very determination determined me on mine' . . . The conversation . . . terminated in my saying to him, 'I see we must part, and with a bleeding heart I say, I fear forever; but you may depend upon it, this adieu is the sharpest thorn on which I ever sat my foot.'"

Bradstreet and Adams invoked the friendship of Jonathan and David because that relationship was such a powerful symbol of trust and friendship, but they were far from the first to do so. Ancient Jewish and Christian commentators have invoked the story of David and Jonathan for centuries--and even they were only following in a tradition begun by the Israelite prophet Amos. Writing just 300 years after David and Jonathan, Amos is famous in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for three verses.

Two of those describe a period of apostasy that Latter-day Saints associate with the years between the death of the apostles and Christ's appearance to Joseph Smith in 1820: "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of he Lord, and shall not find it" (8:11-12). The other verse emphasizes the importance of prophets--"Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets" (3:7)--and serves as a commentary on the relationship between Jonathan and David.

Amos 3:7 clearly paraphrases the language of 1 Samuel, where David flees from the wrath of Saul and Jonathan promises to act as an advocate for David. David asks Jonathan, "what is my sin before thy father, that he seeketh my life?" and Jonathan replies, "thou shalt not die: behold my father will do nothing either great or small, but that he will shew it me" (1 Sam. 20:1-2). The similar English language in these two verses is a product of similar Hebrew; both texts revolve around the same three Hebrew words: 'asah (will do) dabar (nothing) galah (but he will show/reveal). What can we learn by recognizing the connection between these two texts?

We can learn that Amos read 1 Samuel, that 1 Samuel was written before Amos. This point may seem obvious, but it's worth making, given the questions scholars have and ask about biblical chronology.
We can learn something about the relationship between prophets and those that they preach to. By paraphrasing 1 Samuel 20:2, Amos suggests that prophets relate to those over whom they have stewardship in the same way that Jonathan related to David. In the Book of Mormon prophets are repeatedly accused of teaching the people "according to your own desires" in order to "keep them down even as it were in bondage, that ye may glut yourselves with the labor of their hands" (Alma 30:27). Amos frames the relationship between prophet and people as a corollary of the relationship between Jonathan and David so that the people will know (paraphrasing 1 Samuel 18:1) "that the soul of a prophet is knit with the souls of the people, and a prophet loves them as his own soul."
We can learn something about the relationship between God and his prophets. Despite his love for David, Jonathan always remained true to Saul. He identified first and foremost as a son, remaining true to and present with Saul throughout his life. Jonathan loved David, but his first obligation was to Saul. The Father-Son relationship which Amos describes between God and his prophets reminds me of the progression made by Joseph Smith, who was first described by God as a "servant" (Doctrine & Covenants 5:1), then as a "friend" (D&C 84:63), and finally as a "son" (D&C 130:15).
We can learn something about the relationship between God and his people--especially as that relationship existed in Amos' time. The exchange between Jonathan and David reprized by Amos is one that takes place as Saul prepares to murder David; the exchange between Amos and Israel takes place as God prepares to scatter and 'destroy' Israel. Jonathan buys David time and space through his advocacy with Saul and timely warnings to David; Amos offers Israel the same chance, but if they refuse to hearken to his voice, they will be destroyed as surely as David would have been destroyed.

Great are the Words of Isaiah: Chapter 45

2011-05-15T22:36:00.000-04:00

In chapter forty-five, Isaiah develops and extends the temple imagery he introduced in chapter forty-four; the chapter division is a modern imposition on a seamless section of text. After rebuking Israel for corrupting the temple ordinances the Lord promises that Cyrus, a future king of Babylon, will help Israel to rebuild the temple (44:28), introducing this unborn leader as a type of all temple worshippers: “Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden [. . .] I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places [. . . for] I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee [. . . and] I girded thee” (45:1-5) Cyrus has been anointed and clothed, as Aaron and his sons were anointed and clothed preparatory to entering the temple, and he has received a new name signifying his entrance into covenants with the Lord, as Abraham and Sarah received new names (Genesis 17:5-7, 15).

After describing Cyrus’s entry into the temple’s holy place and holy of holies (its “secret places,” where he is to receive “hidden riches”), Isaiah launches into a description of the creation from God’s perspective: “I form the light, and create darkness . . . . Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring forth together; I the Lord have created it” (Isaiah 45:7-8).This first-person narrative of creation gives way to a series of seemingly unrelated questions. Isaiah, speaking for the Lord, seems to anticipate criticism in verses 9-10: “Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, What makest thou? Or thy work, He hath no hands? Woe unto him that saith unto his father, What begettest thou? Or to the woman, What hast thou brought forth?” (Isaiah 45:9-10). The English language of these questions appears wholly unrelated to the theme of creation introduced after Cyrus’s initiation into the “secret places,” but the Hebrew suggests that these verses extend Isaiah’s interest in the creation.

The Hebrew word translated into English as “Maker” is the same used to describe Adam’s creation from the dust of the earth: “And the Lord God FORMED man of the dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7). When Isaiah warns Israel not to “strive” with the “Maker,” he’s referring to the Creator of Genesis. Later in that same verse, the Hebrew verb translated as “makest” is a word almost omnipresent in the Genesis creation narrative (Genesis 1:7, 11, 12, 16, 25, 26, 31; 2:2, 3, 4, 18). So Isaiah’s admonition not to ask “What makest thou?” could be read as an injunction not to question the Lord’s purposes in creating the world. Why would we interrogate the Lord concerning the creation? Because, as Isaiah reminds us in verse 10, that creation resulted in Adam and Eve’s Fall, bringing pain and suffering into our lives. The Hebrew verb translated “begettest” is the same used by God to proclaim Eve’s curse: “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt BRING FORTH children” (Genesis 3:16). And “brought forth” at the end of verse 10 carries with it a sense pain, suffering, and affliction in the Hebrew. These verses, in other words, seem to question the purpose of the creation and the necessity of a Fall which brought pain and suffering into the world.

After introducing Cyrus as a representative temple worshipper and giving a first person narrative of the creation, Isaiah warns Israel not to question God’s motivations in creating a world where the Fall could take place. He warns Israel not to judge rashly, but he also, in verses 11-19 explains that God would be more than happy to answer their questions concerning the Fall and its necessity. Isaiah frames this invitation to learn about the creation and Fall in the form of a chiastic poem:

A) Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me (11)

B) I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded (12)

C) I have raised him [Cyrus] up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts. (13)

D) Thus saith the Lord, The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in chains they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, saying, Surely God is in thee; and there is none else, there is no God. (14)

E) Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour. (15)

D) They shall be ashamed, and also confounded, all of them: they shall go to confusion together that are makers of idols. (16)

C) But Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation: ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded world without end. (17)

B) For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else (18)

A) I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain (19)

Most of these chiastic parallels are clear; the D) sections are the most difficult, but both verses describe idol worshippers in Egypt, Ethiopia, and elsewhere who will, Isaiah explains, eventually recognize the impotence of their idols. The poem begins and ends by inviting Israel to acquire knowledge, and specifically knowledge of the creation; those invitations belie the accusation by idolatrous peoples situated at the center of this chiasmus. The idolatrous complain that God “hidest thyself”; by bracketing this complaint with God’s open invitations to learn of Him, Isaiah demonstrates that God is anything but reclusive and unwilling to answer our questions. Isaiah ironically highlights the wrongheadedness of these complaints by situating them at the center of his poem, the one place that would have been least ‘hidden’ in the entire poem.

God wants Israel to gain the “hidden riches” of knowledge available in the temple; he wants to explain the purposes of creation and the need for a Fall. Isaiah’s chiastic poem shows Israel just how open and inviting He is: He’s initiated a foreigner, Cyrus, into the temple’s “secret places,” as a sign that all are welcome to learn the mysteries of God.

Notes on the KJV: Of Blessings and Birthrights

2011-05-09T22:48:00.000-04:00

At Ohio State University’s recent conference on “The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife,” David Richter gave a fantastic paper on “Misleading Moments in the KJV” that helped to clarify several potentially confounding passages in Genesis.

Jacob’s deception of Isaac (with Rebekah’s help!), when he steals Esau’s blessing, has always troubled me, but before Richter’s talk I had never noticed before that, according to the King James Version, Esau really doesn’t have cause to be upset. You’ll remember that when, after Jacob has tricked Isaac into thinking that he’s Esau by covering his arms in goat’s hair and cooking him some goat meat, Esau returns to the house he begs Isaac for another blessing: “Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father” (Genesis 27:38). Isaac does bless him, and Esau’s blessing is, at least in the KJV, substantially the same as Jacob’s. In Jacob’s blessing, Isaac pronounces, “God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth” (27:28). He blesses Esau in essentially the same language: “Behold, thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above” (27:39). So if Isaac pronounces essentially the same blessing on both brothers—if Esau’s going to enjoy prosperity as a farmer—why does Isaac’s blessing continue with the words, “and by thy sword shalt thou live, and shalt serve thy brother” (27:40)? Why does Esau want to “slay my brother Jacob” (27:41)?

The problem here, Richter explained, is that Hebrew prepositions have multiple meanings; the same word that means of can also mean from. Esau’s blessing, then should read something like “Behold thy dwelling shall be far from the fatness of the earth, and far from the dew of heaven above.” No wonder he was so upset!

(Part two of Richter’s commentary on Jacob and Esau coming soon!)

Why Obedience is the First Law of Heaven

2011-05-03T09:27:00.000-04:00

During Saul's tenure as the king of Israel, he received a command to commit genocide against the Amalekites. For the most part, Saul fulfilled this commandment, killing "man and woman, infant and suckling" (I Sam. 15:3). However, he failed to kill "ox and sheep, camel and ass," sparing the "best" Amalekite livestock for a burnt offering to God (I Sam. 15:3, 15). Not interested in the sacrifice of animals he'd commanded Saul to slaughter, the Lord sent Samuel to relieve Saul of the kingship for his disobedience with this memorable phrase: "Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams" (I Sam. 15:29).

This verse, one of just twenty-five Old Testament verses that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encourages its juvenile Sunday School students to memorize, sends a very clear message: obedience is the first law of heaven. If you're not obedient, then it doesn't matter what other good qualities you might have, what other goods deeds you might do; to paraphrase Paul, "though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, , so that I could remove mountains, and [act not obediently], I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body too be burned, and [act not obediently], it profiteth me nothing" (I Cor. 13:2-3). In chastising Saul, Samuel makes it very clear that God values obedience above all else. What he doesn't explain is why obedience matters so very much. From my own mortal perspective Saul's sacrificial intent sometimes seems like a good--or at least a thoughtful--idea. So why, exactly, is strict obedience the first law of heaven?

Samuel doesn't do a great job of explaining the logic behind the Lord's decision to depose Saul, but a later prophet's words shed some light on the matter. Hosea complains that Israel, "like men, have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me" (Hosea 6:7). In response, God expresses his displeasure by repeating and paraphrasing the explanation Samuel gave to Saul: "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6). Hosea's words echo Samuel's but with one key difference: he replaces obedience with mercy (or charity). Hosea's substitution might seem to substantially alter the original sense of Samuel's injunction to obey, but during his mortal ministry Jesus Christ--speaking here to Hosea as Jehovah, so he would know--explained the connection between obedience and mercy or charity, between Samuel's words and Hosea's.

On a Sabbath walk through a field of grain Jesus' disciples "were an hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat" (Matt. 12:1). The Pharisees complained to Jesus that his followers had broken the Sabbath, and Jesus replied that "if ye had known what [Hosea] meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless" (Matt. 12:7). The Pharisees take Samuel's position--'Obedience above all else!'--and Jesus responds by suggesting that the Pharisees have missed the point of Samuel's emphasis on obedience, that they have failed to understand Hosea, who explains why obedience is the first law of heaven. Christ demonstrates Hosea's meaning by healing a blind man on that very same Sabbath and asking, "What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?" (Matt. 12:11). We reflexively interpret this scripture as a justification for hauling our own sheep out of the mire on Sunday--but that's not Christ's point at all. The point is that he--the creator of the Sabbath day--has used it for its original purpose, to bless the lives of his sheep. As he explains in a parallel account of the same incident, "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath" (Mark 2:27). The Joseph Smith Translation of these verses adds that "the Sabbath was given unto man for a day of rest; and also that man should glorify God, and not that man should not eat" (JST Mark 2:26).

From God's perspective the purpose of our obedience--the why behind Samuel's stern words to Saul--is a desire to bless us, to act with mercy towards us. If the Pharisees had recognized the merciful intent of his command to honor the Sabbath and to rest on that day, Jesus suggests, they would not have construed it as an injunction to refrain from eating "food . . . prepared with singleness of heart" (Doctrine & Covenants 59:13). Obedience is the first law of heaven because obedience is the only way we can qualify ourselves for the mercies Jesus Christ desires to bestow on us, because "[t]here is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundation of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated--and when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated" (D&C 130:20-21). The Lord desires mercy and not sacrifice, obedience and not self-appointed suffering, because only our obedience will allow him to (justly) dispense the blessings he desires us to have.

If Saul had only understood the rationale behind Samuel's explanation, he probably wouldn't have needed to hear it.

Heavenly Mother

2011-04-19T23:34:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, while I was promoting the study of our Founding Mothers by showcasing one of Abigail Adams' divinely inspired letters, I goofed. In stating that General Authorities had had little to say on the subject of our Founding Mothers, I made a bad comparison, arguing that "Church leaders have never taught us from the pulpit in General Conference about inspired Founding Mothers any more than they've taught us about our Heavenly Mother." Turns out, that's not actually true. Church leaders really haven't had much to say about our Founding Mothers, but a new paper forthcoming from the journal BYU Studies (50.1) demonstrates that they've had a WHOLE BUNCH to say about Heavenly Mother.

In their article "'A Mother There': A Survey of Historical Teaching about Mother in Heaven," David Paulsen and Martin Pulido review more than 600--count 'em--Church sanctioned references to our Heavenly Mother, dramatically debunking the myth "that Heavenly Mother deserves, or requires, a 'sacred' censorship" (75). In summarizing these references they write, "While some have claimed that Heavenly Mother's role has been marginalized or trivialized, we feel that the historical data provides a highly elevated view of Heavenly Mother. The Heavenly Mother portrayed in the teachings we have examined is a procreator and parent, a divine person, a co-creator, a coframer of the plan of salvation, and is involved in this life and the next. Certainly, consideration of these points reinforces several unquestionably important LDS doctrines: divine embodiment, eternal families, divine relationality, the deification of women, the eternal nature and value of gender, and the shared lineage of Gods and humans. Far from degrading either the Heavenly Feminine or the earthly feminine, we feel that these teachings exalt both" (85).

The issue of BYU Studies in which their research will be published hasn't even cleared the presses, so you can't acquire a copy of the article yet--but you will eventually be able to access it by subscribing or, after two years, searching here for free. Of course, if you know the double-secret knock, I might be able to get you a copy sooner. It's well worth the read!

88 Percent of Atheists . . .

2011-04-07T09:21:00.000-04:00

. . . prefer hot weather over cold (as opposed to just 54 percent of the general population), according to the March 19th entry on correlated.org. And who says God won't answer an atheist's prayer?

Until Seventy Times Seven

2011-03-28T23:37:00.003-04:00

When Peter asked the Christ, "Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times?" Jesus responded, "I say not unto thee, until seven times: but, until seventy times seven" (Matthew 18:21-22). Peter, likely familiar with the rabbinical teaching that you must forgive an offender three times, undoubtedly thought himself generous in exceeding the prescribed conditions of forgiveness, but the Lord taught him that our forgiveness should be unlimited. The number 490 represents a limitless and unconditional forgiveness because, as we read in the Doctrine and Covenants: "I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men" (64:10). The message of Christ's reply to Peter--that we must forgive as frequently as we take offense--is clear, but the numerical terms in which he expressed that message are also symbolic and significant.

Some weeks ago my brother, the esteemed Defender of Doctrine, forwarded the following thought in a family letter: "Growing up I often wondered what the significance of the Savior's injunction that we are to 'forgive 70 x 7' was. Does it mean that we keep a tally and when we get to 491 we're done? Not practical. If it means we are to forgive always--why those specific numbers? Here's an answer to that question that resonates with me. After the flood the descendants of Noah divided the earth into 70 parts--check out Genesis 10 if you want the 70 names. Thereafter 'THE WORLD' was thought of as comprising those 70 areas or divisions (gives new perspective on why the Quorum of the 70 is not the Quorum of the 80 too . . . ). Our reckoning of time is a cycle of 7 repeating days. Hence, by teaching us we are to forgive 70x7 the Savior was really saying 'All the world, all the time.'"

The DoD's interpretation is compelling, and a little research suggests that it's based in fact. Now, to be sure, if you open up to the tenth chapter of Genesis, you won't find any statement indicating that the world was divided into 70 segments; instead you'll find a a genealogy of Noah's three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth. The Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament explains the connection between this genealogy and the a 70-part world: "According to the Jewish Midrash, there are seventy tribes, with as many different languages; but this number can only be arrived at by reckoning Nimrod among the Hamites, and not only placing Peleg among the Shemites, but taking his ancestors Salah and Eber to be names of separate tribes. By this we obtain for Japhet 14, for Ham 31, and for Shem 25, - in all 70 names. The Rabbins, on the other hand, reckon 14 Japhetic, 30 Hamitic, and 26 Semitic nations; whilst the fathers make 72 in all. But as these calculations are perfectly arbitrary, and the number 70 is nowhere given or hinted at, we can neither regard it as intended, nor discover in it 'the number of the divinely appointed varieties of the human race,' or 'of the cosmical development,' even if the seventy disciples (Luke 10:1) were meant to answer to the seventy nations whom the Jews supposed to exist upon the earth." To sum up: first-century rabbis contemporary with Christ certainly believed the world could be divided into 70 segments, whether or not we agree with the fuzzy math they employed in arriving at that conclusion--so the DoD's interpretation has the backing of the Midrash.

I love the DoD's "Forgive all the world, all the time" analysis, but as I was enjoying a seder feast last night, in anticipation of Passover, and while reviewing the stories of Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, it occurred to me that there was another, equally significant way to understand the Savior's "seventy times seven" injunction. It seems important to me that the Savior gives his "seventy times seven" response in answer to Peter's question about how often he ought to forgive his brother--and not, for instance, a neighbor, stranger, or Samaritan. Those three clues--seventy, seven, and brother--suggest to me that the Savior was teaching Peter a lesson about the blessings of forgiveness and not just the conditions in which we are to extend it.

The greatest story of forgiveness in the Old Testament--all of scripture, as far as Peter was concerned--is that of Joseph in Egypt, whose brothers sold him into slavery for twenty pieces of silver. As Joseph labored for Potiphar, as he sweltered in an Egyptian prison, he must have struggled with ill feelings toward his brothers. And when--at the beginning of a seven year famine--his brothers turned up, wholly in his power, and begged for mercy, it must have been difficult to restrain the urge to recriminate. Indeed, it would appear that Joseph didn't wholly restrain his punitive instinct; he threw the ten brothers responsible for his ordeal into prison for three days (Genesis 42:17), and Simeon stayed there for months (Genesis 42:24). But, in the end, Joseph forgave his brothers and made them leaders in Egypt; when his father learned that Joseph was still alive, he moved to Egypt with Joseph's eleven brothers and their families, and "all the souls of the house of Jacob, which came into Egypt, were threescore and ten" (Genesis 46:27). For those of you not familiar with old English standards of measurement, a score is twenty; threescore and ten is the another way of saying seventy.

Because he forgave his brothers Joseph saved seventy of his family members from seven years' suffering, and probably from physical death; in other words, his forgiveness was worth an aggregate 490 years of life. This math, in and of itself, represents a significant reminder of the blessings that come from forgiveness. But Joseph's family were not just ordinary individuals; they eventually became the twelve tribes of Israel, the Lord's covenant people, and Joseph's act of forgiveness is a type and shadow of the spiritual salvation which Jesus Christ offers to all those born or adopted into the tribes of Israel through the forgiving and healing power of His Atonement.

When Jesus Christ instructed Peter to forgive his brother "until seventy times seven" he did instruct him to "forgive all the world, all the time"--but he also reminded him of the blessings that come from such an attitude of forgiveness. Every Israelite, including Peter, was a physical product of Joseph's exemplary act of forgiveness, and Christ "seventy times seven" may have been Christ's way of gently reminding Peter that he owed his very life to Joseph's willingness to forgive more than was required. You and I may or may not be physically indebted to Joseph, but we are all spiritually indebted to the Savior, whose ultimate act of forgiveness Joseph's clemency foreshadowed. The words "until seventy times seven" are an invitation to remember that fact and to act accordingly, with an eye to the blessings of forgiveness, which will persist and multiply--like the twelve tribes of Israel--long after we are dead.

Coffee, Carcinogens, and Collaboration

2011-03-23T23:56:00.001-04:00

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints don't drink coffee. We don't drink it because modern prophets have interpreted the scriptural prohibition on "hot drinks" in Doctrine and Covenants 89:9 as a ban on coffee and black tea; we don't need any other reasons. But if you're NOT a member of the Church, here are two good reasons to delete your daily stop at Starbucks from the itinerary:

1) Coffee causes cancer. Okay, I'm exaggerating here. But while consumer safety advocates have warned for years that pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables could contain carcinogens, it turns out that "we ingest more carcinogens from a cup of coffee than from a year's worth of conventional produce." In fact of the 22 chemicals in a cup of coffee that have been subjected to animal cancer trials, 17 caused cancer, meaning that you ingest 10 milligrams of known carcinogens in every cup of coffee. "Uh, make mine a leukemia grande. I mean latte! Latte grande!"

2) Caffeine seems to make men dumber: a team of university researchers recently found that caffeine negatively affected male memory and problem solving in collaborative, stressful situations. Oddly enough, caffeine seemed to enhance women's performance in the same tasks, an outcome the researchers attributed to the typical woman's mutually supportive response to stress (tend and befriend) as compared to the typical male's response (fight or flight). I'm not sure that this study has a large enough sample size to be completely trustworthy, but if you're a man about to take the GRE, the LSAT, or make an important presentation--would you risk it?

The bottom line hasn't changed: we shouldn't drink coffee. But it's interesting--and, hopefully, faith-promoting--to think about the ways in which obedience to the Lord's law of health allows us to circumvent potential physical and mental difficulties.

Inspired Founding Mothers

2011-03-16T23:35:00.000-04:00

You know that I love Eve, but the title of this post doesn't refer to her.

I've been thinking, recently, about the reverence in which members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hold the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. During his tenure as prophet, Ezra Taft Benson declared that "Our Father in Heaven planned the coming forth of the Founding Fathers and their form of government as the necessary great prologue leading to the restoration of the gospel." Those founding fathers included "delegates [to the Constitutional Convention, who] were the recipients of heavenly inspiration." The Founding Fathers were inspired during their lifetimes, and they have, in turn, inspired Church leaders from the grave.

As the president of the St. George Temple, immediately prior to assuming the prophetic mantle, Wilford Woodruff received a vision in which he saw many of the Founding Fathers, who demanded that he perform saving and exalting ordinances on their behalf: "Before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, 'You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God" (Discourses, 160). As the prophet, President Woodruff later explained that "those men who laid the foundation of this American government were the best spirits the God of heaven could find on the face of the earth. They were choice spirits . . . inspired of the Lord" (Conference Report, Apr. 1898, p. 89).

Because Church leaders have repeatedly identified the words of our Founding Fathers as "inspired," we frequently hear their words invoked in General Conference and other settings. The words of John Adams, for instance, have been quoted in conference addresses quite a few times. And yet, for all of the emphasis that we place on the words of men like Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others, we rarely anything at all about the women who stood by their sides, the mothers and wives, sisters and daughters, who stood with the Founding Fathers as equal partners (spiritually and intellectually, if not socially). Church leaders have never taught us from the pulpit in General Conference about inspired Founding Mothers any more than they've taught us about our Heavenly Mother, but we know much more about them and there is no reason we shouldn't benefit from their example and counsel.

To be fair, this apparent bias reflects the fact that we have far fewer published records documenting the lives and words of Revolutionary-era women than we do Revolutionary-era men. But I also suspect that the patriarchal culture of the Church has inadvertently overshadowed the contributions of women like Abigail Adams by shining the light of inspiration so brightly on her husband and his companions. Elder G. Homer Durham did once reference a letter written by Abigail Adams that calls for inspired mothers and wives, but he also framed that letter in terms of Abigail's relationship to John: "In 1775 John Adams, designing a new nation in Philadelphia, wrote his wife Abigail of his concern for the nation's future leadership. She replied, 'If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers, . . . we should have learned women."

Our ecclesiastical emphasis on Founding Fathers obscures the fact that our unsung Founding Mothers were, by and large, more obedient to the commandments of God (Franklin was an open adulterer, and Jefferson's sexual exploits with his slave, Sally Hemmings, have been a matter of public record for more than a century) and more diligent in their worship. I would suggest that their behavior qualified them to receive visitations of the Holy Ghost far more frequently than it would have been possible for the Founding Fathers to recognize and receive divine inspiration.

As just one example of the way in which Founding Mothers sometimes received inspiration of a more eternally significant nature than their spouses, let me share an excerpt from a letter written by Abigail Adams to her niece, Lucy Cranch Greenleaf, on August 27, 1785:

"Why may we not suppose, that, the higher our attainments in knowledge and virtue are here on earth, the more nearly we assimilate ourselves to that order of beings who now rank above us in the world of spirits? We are told in scripture, that there are different kinds of glory, and that one star differeth from another. Why should not those who have distinguished themselves by superior excellence over their fellow-mortals continue to preserve their rank when admitted to the kingdom of the just? Though the estimation of worth may be very different in the view of the righteous Judge of the world from that which vain man esteems such on earth, yet we may rest assured that justice will be strictly administered to us.

"But whither has my imagination wandered? Very distant from my thoughts when I first took my pen."

In this passage, Abigail Adams anticipatorily summarizes the doctrines that Joseph Smith would publicly reveal in the Doctrine and Covenants more than fifty years later: "Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection. And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come" (D&C 130:18-19). Adams also seems to intuitively understand that the heavens include a number of kingdoms, referencing the same Bible verse (1 Corinthians 15:41) that missionaries around the world use today in explaining the three degrees of heavenly glory to investigators.

It also seems significant to me that Abigail Adams recognizes the words she has just written have come from outside herself--that she recognized an influence (even if she did attribute it to her "imagination") which prompted her to write about something other than she originally intended. I would suggest that in this letter we have evidence that she was as or more inspired than her husband.

Our Founding Mothers, like our Founding Fathers, were inspired! Having recognized that fact, we ought to treat their surviving words in the same way that prophets have directed us to treat the words of their husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers--with the careful scrutiny due the lives and letters of those valiant spirits our Heavenly Father entrusted with preparing the way for a restoration of the gospel.

Washed, Anointed, and Clothed

2011-03-09T23:33:00.000-05:00

Some months ago, I suggested that Jesus Christ's resurrection was a priesthood ordinance, and one that he received at the hands of the Father. What I did not say then is that all priesthood ordinances point back to the Atonement:

Because the Atonement is the means by which we are brought back into God’s presence, it “is no coincidence that all of the essential ordinances of the Church symbolize the Atonement” (Nelson, "The Atonement," 4). When we are baptized we are lowered beneath the water’s surface in imitation of Christ’s death, and we rise from the depths as he rose from the grave. When we receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, we are blessed with the constant companionship of a member of the Godhead—that gift is made possible only because Jesus Christ voluntarily hung on the cross at Calvary in utter solitude, bereft of His Father’s supporting spirit when he needed it most. “[B]ecause Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so” (Holland, "None Were With Him," 88); we always have access to the Holy Ghost’s comforting reminders. When we partake of the sacrament, we eat the bread and drink the water as symbolic reminders of His body and blood, which He sacrificed for us. If you glance quickly at the sacrament trays lying under the white cloth that covers them, you might even be reminded of Christ’s death as he lay in the garden tomb wrapped in white grave-clothes. When we are given priesthood blessings or anointed in the temple, a drop of consecrated olive oil is placed on the crown of our heads so that we might remember our Savior’s experience in the olive press of Gethsemane; that olive oil is a reminder of the blood that was driven from his pores as he was crushed by the sins of the world. As we receive our endowment and sealing ordinances in the temple, we are reminded of other aspects of the Atonement. We remember the nails that pierced His hands. We remember his agony as He hung on the cross with his arms outstretched toward heaven. We remember his suffering in Gethsemane as he prayed three times, “O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.” We imagine, as we enter the Celestial Room that symbolically represents heaven, what it would be like to be at one with God again, to be “encircled about eternally in the arms of his love.” There are no aspects of the saving and exalting ordinances that do not remind us of Christ’s Atonement, because without the Atonement there would be no such ordinances. The Atonement is the Alpha and Omega of salvation, the beginning and the end of our journey back to God’s presence.

To that long list of priesthood ordinances which point back to the Atonement, I'd like to add three more, which the Old Testament groups together: washing, anointing, and clothing in the "holy garments [of] the priest" (Exodus 31:10). We learn that before Aaron and his sons--representative priesthood holders in Israel--could enter the tabernacle and, likewise, before subsequent generations of priests could enter the temple, they needed to be washed, clothed in special apparel, and anointed: "And thou shalt bring Aaron and his sons unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and wash them with water. And thou shalt put upon Aaron the holy garments, and anoint him, and sanctify him" (Exodus 40:12-13). These priesthood ordinances, like all others, anticipate and foreshadow the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

When the Savior had finished his work on the earth and overcome the power of the destroyer, Satan, "he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost" (John 19:30). Two disciples, Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus, then retrieved His body from the cross to prepare it for burial. They "brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes . . . then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury" (John 19:39-40). John clearly tells us that the Savior, like Aaron and his sons, was anointed with myrrh, one of the principal components in the "holy anointing oil" (Exodus 30:23-25), and clothed in what Mark terms "fine linen" (15:46) reminiscent of the "coats of fine linen" which, with "a mitre of fine linen, and goodly bonnets of fine linen, and linen breeches of fine twined linen, and a girdle of fine twined linen," constituted the priestly dress of Aaron and his sons (Exodus 39:27-29).

Neither John nor any of the other evangelists say anything about the Savior being washed by those who prepared his body for burial, but common sense dictates that Joseph and Nicodemus would not have bought such expensive embalming salves only to smear them on over the grime that had accumulated on Christ's body throughout the various stages of the Atonement--as, for example, he "fell on his face" in the dirt of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:39). More to the point, Jesus prophesied that his disciples would wash and anoint his body in preparation for burial.

All four of the evangelists record the story of a woman (sometimes identified as Mary, sometimes as a prostitute) who anoints Christ's feet with the contents of "an alabaster box of very precious ointment" (Matthew 26:7). When his disciples (or, sometimes, the Pharisees) object, Christ replies that "she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying" (Mark 14:8). The Joseph Smith Translation of John's version of events clarifies, explaining that "she hath preserved this ointment until now, that she might anoint me in token of my burial" (John 13:7). The woman's actions anticipate that which would be done at the actual burial of Christ--and Luke informs us that those actions included a preparatory washing that took place before the anointing; Christ explains to the onlookers that "thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head" (Luke 7:44).

In preparation for his return to the physical presence of his Father in that heavenly temple seen in vision by Isaiah (6:1), Ezekiel (40-44), and others, Jesus Christ was washed, anointed, and clothed by his disciples. They prepared his body for a glorious resurrection and ascent to the heavens in the same way that Aaron and his sons received priesthood ordinances preparatory to their entering into the house of the Lord and his physical presence (the "glory of the Lord," which regularly "filled the Lord's house" [2 Chronicles 7:2]).

All priesthood ordinances point us back to the Atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ, because His great and holy sacrifice is the operative power which makes those ordinances efficacious. Aaron might not have recognized that he was acting as a type of Christ when he prepared to enter the tabernacle, but we can--and we should.

"It Is Easier for a Camel . . .

2011-02-20T00:15:00.000-05:00

. . . to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24). This is not, I suspect, the most popular of Jesus Christ's teachings, but recent studies from the Harvard Business School have provided empirical evidence suggesting that the Lord knew what he was talking about.

Harvard professors Roy Y. J. Chua and Xi Zou conducted a study in which 87 undergraduates were shown pictures of shoes and watches before being asked to make hypothetical business decisions. Half of the students were shown simple, functional items; the other half viewed high end luxury goods. Those who viewed luxury goods--items which almost invariably surround the wealthy---were significantly more likely to make immoral business decisions in pursuit of personal profit and at the expense of others: "They were more inclined to OK the production of a car that would pollute the environment, the release of bug-riddled software, and the marketing of a videogame that would prompt kids to bash each other," explains David Bereby. Chua and Zou concluded that "exposure to luxury led people to think more about themselves than others," which is a problem for anyone seeking after the kingdom of God, since the Lord told his disciples quite plainly to "take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. . . . But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Luke 12:22, 31).

The kingdom of God is reserved, rather paradoxically, for those who imitate Christ by ignoring their own interests and seeking to promote the welfare of others--and it turns out that wealth (or even the signs and tokens of wealth!) inverts/perverts this ideal by nudging us to act selfishly and ignore the welfare of others. If we are truly committed to seeking the kingdom of God, we ought to recognize that wealth and luxury are burdens hindering our progress toward that destination, as Christ taught in the Gospel of Thomas:

In that pseudepigraphal gospel, Jesus proclaims "If you have money, do not lend it at interest. Rather, give it to someone from whom you will not get it back" (verse 95). The function of money, Christ teaches, is not to create wealth but to uplift a neighbor. This point is driven home only two verses later by a brief "The kingdom is like..." parable:

"Jesus said, 'The Father's kingdom is like a woman who was carrying a jar full of meal. While she was walking along a distant road, the handle of the jar broke and the meal spilled behind her along the road. She did not know it; she had not noticed a problem. When she reached her house, she put the jar down and discovered that it was empty" (97).

The point of this parable is simple. The kingdom of heaven is compared to a journey; you and I are on a journey back to the kingdom of God. The jar of meal is our earthly possessions and--remembering that Christ's condemnation immediately precedes this parable--our money. The meal is largely immaterial, as far as this journey is concerned; carrying it won't help the woman (or us) get home, and getting rid of it is not a "problem." Indeed, this claim that disbursing the meal isn't a problem seems rather ironic since the woman undoubtedly walked faster without a load of meal burdening her. The real problem would be if the woman was so concerned with preserving and increasing the quantity of meal that she settled down and planted a field instead of hurrying home.

Quite obviously, money is a necessary aspect of our earthly existence in this dispensation. But just as obviously, it has little or nothing to do with the ultimate purpose of our lives: to return to the kingdom of God. So donate your Prada before you confuse distracting dollar-signs with your ultimate destination; better to imitate John the Baptist and clothe yourself in camel hair than wind up trying to squeeze a bloated, camel-sized bank account through the eye of a needle and into the kingdom of God.

An "After-Valentines" Valentine

2011-02-15T10:47:00.000-05:00

From my good friend Orson Scott Card:

Well Paired Team

You don't arrive at marriage, lonely hearts.
The wedding's where the lifelong journey starts,
Forced to travel with a clumsy fool
Or trot along behind a receding dream
(You had to stop and help me when I tripped,
While you would never stick to my passionate script),
Using one another like an ill-made tool,
Like ox and antelope yoked in a single team.
And yet . . . somehow, together, we managed to pull
An empty cart straight uphill;
And look--the creaking, rickety thing is full
Of crockery, old rags, a child or two.

At the start, knowing nothing, we said, 'I will,'
And now look at all the things I made with you,
All our baggage, all our breakage, art
By unskilled artisans, yet beautiful,
Yours and mine, no matter how peculiar;
New and strange, no matter how familiar.
Some passages were merely dutiful.
Who could know, on our ignorant starting day
That, pulling such a long and weary way,
The man, the woman, strangers side by side,
Would end the trek inside each other's heart,
Trading forgiveness and repentances,
Finishing each other's sentences,
Only to be stranded,
The team--for now at least--disbanded.
Now we see how all the road maps lied:
Our destination was the yoke we shared,
Badly at first, but by the end well paired.
And only when you died did I leave my home
And pointlessly, empty-carted roam.
You don't arrive at marriage, lonely hearts.
The wedding's where the lifelong journey starts.

Great Are the Words of Isaiah: Chapter 19

2011-02-07T23:33:00.000-05:00

Quick: How many democratic nations can you name in the Middle East?

You should be able to identify at least two: Israel and Iraq. The massive protests in Egypt suggest that there will soon be a third. What, you ask, does this have to do with Isaiah? It might help to remember that Iraq is the political entity currently located in the land that Isaiah refers to as Assyria: "In that day [Isaiah-speak for the last days] shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land: whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance" (19:24-25). In other words, Isaiah prophesied that in the last days these three countries (Egypt, Israel, and Iraq) would share something in common that would identify them as "a blessing in the midst of the land"--democracy, perhaps?

This prophecy concerning Egypt, Iraq, and Israel as a trio will only be fulfilled after the Lord has "set the Egyptians against the Egyptians: and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one against his neighbour; city against city, and kingdom against kingdom" (19:2). After this civil war, when "the Lord shall smite Egypt," he will then proceed to "heal it: and they shall return even to the Lord, and he shall be intreated of them, and shall heal them" (19:22). This last verse clearly suggests that Egypt--or at least a portion of Egypt's population--will embrace the gospel in the last days, something that might be possible in a democratic society but that probably won't happen until democracy paves the way for freedom of religion.

The most exciting part of Isaiah's prophecy for Egypt, however, is yet to come; in verse nineteen he prophecies that a temple will be built in Egypt: "In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord" (19:19). To be sure, some biblical scholars have suggested that this prophecy was fulfilled when Jewish communities in Egypt built small temples at Leontopolis and Elephantine in the fifth century BCE; but Isaiah is quite consistent in his usage of "that day"--it invariably refers to events immediately preceding the Second Coming. Given the history of Ukraine--another country relatively new to democracy that received a temple just 20 years after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially established its presence there--we could see the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy in our lifetimes. Book me for a trip to the Cairo temple dedication in 2032.

Remember what the Lord told the Nephites about Isaiah: "all things that he spake have been and shall be" (3 Ne. 23:3). Who needs CNN? I've got Isaiah.

A New Study Suggests . . .

2011-01-28T00:04:00.000-05:00

. . . that "it's good to lead a monk's existence." While I am thrilled that statistical evidence has finally been found to validate my lifestyle, I'm more than a little concerned at the data underlying this conclusion. In the relevant study, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa found that 45% of college students are essentially wasting their own time and their parents' money. A study of 2,300 students at all levels of higher education found no improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, or writing for 45% of undergraduates after two years in college. This can't all be blamed on students, however; over half of those surveyed didn't take a SINGLE course that required 20 or more pages of writing per semester or a SINGLE course that required more than 40 pages of reading a week: professors have lowered their standards.

The good news is that students who enrolled in more demanding classes--and were, essentially, forced by their demanding professors to live like monks--did show significant improvement in these areas. The finding of Arum and Roksa, recently published in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, is the latest study to document the decline of American higher education, but it's hardly the first; just last year Craig Brandon warned that a university education had become a Five Year Party. Fight back, students! Demand value for your education dollar from administrators! Demand higher reading and writing loads from your professors! Rise up and be monks!

(Or, if you'd prefer to skip all that hassle and become an honorary monk, I'd be happy to provide a certificate; simply send a $5,000 check or money order to The Mormon Monk, c/o Monastery U.)

Are You a Frivvle or a Jibber? And Who Cares?

2011-01-25T00:14:00.003-05:00

Have you ever been told that we need to make English the official language of the United States? That bilingual nations are inherently problematic? Gather round, and listen to a story:

Once upon a time there were two monolingual populations, the Frivvles and the Jibbers, living within a single nation. These groups mostly ignored each other; the only real problem arose when a member of one monolingual culture (the Frivvles) wanted to interact with members of another monolingual culture (the Jibbers) but couldn't. In such a scenario, the solution seems very clear: any Frivvle that wants to interact with a Jibber will learn Jibberish, and any Jibber that wants to interact with a Frivvle will learn Frivvlesh. They should coexist peacefully, right?

Ah, I can hear you objecting--what if one culture is more powerful than the other? What if a vast majority of this society speak Frivvlesh, leaving speakers of Jibberish to cluster together and either A) interact only with other Jibbers or B) learn Frivvlesh? I'm not sure why either of those two alternatives would be a problem for a Frivvle, except that they might miss out on meeting a Jibber they would have loved because the Jibbers have ghettoized themselves and the Frivvle refuses to enter that space. I can see how such circumstances would be difficult for a Jibber, but I don't understand why it would be a significant problem. Jibbers in this scenario can choose to speak Jibberish, and live inside what would be, presumably, a much smaller social sphere, or they can choose to speak Frivvlesh and experience an expansion of opportunity.

But what, you say, if lots of Jibbers move into the geographical boundaries of what had been a Frivvlesh-dominant society? Well, let's look at that scenario. Certainly Jibbers wouldn't consider the expansion of their social sphere a problem. But what about Frivvles? Wouldn't Frivvles consider that a problem? Well . . . perhaps. But it seems to me that the Frivvles in this scenario face the same set of choices as Jibbers in the above paragraph: they can either ghettoize themselves or they can learn Jibberish and experience an expansion of economic and social possibilities. Since the Frivvles haven't chosen this new set of circumstances, they might resent the changing set of circumstances and/or the Jibbers that caused it on a personal level, but I fail to see how the change is a problem for society--the larger body of Jibbers and Frivvles.

Let's turn the tables. Say that Jibbers are the majority population and that Frivvles begin entering the country of Jibber. Frivvles who enter largely choose to continue speaking Frivvlesh. But because the country of Jibber is so much "greater" and "richer" than the land of Frivvle (And why else would Frivvles emigrate?), these Frivvles soon come to realize that speaking Jibberish would allow them to interact with "rich" and "great" Jibbers more consistently, and that this interaction would enrich them--economically, if not socially. Even if the Frivvles who entered Jibber never learn to speak Jibberish, they will be sure to teach their children Jibberish, right? So let's assume that this second generation--"Fribbles"--speak both Frivvlesh and Jibberish, to the everlasting delight of their parents the Frivvles, who are happy that Frivvlesh culture has been preserved and ecstatic that their darling little Fribbles will have access to the economic opportunities of Jibberish. End of Generation 1: the first generation Frivvles die, and the Fribbles are left. What about them? Well, these Fribbles enjoy their Frivvlesh heritage and celebrate it; they even like to hang out with new Frivvles who have just recently entered the country of Jibber. But they also want to their children to have the economic opportunities they had, so they cultivate ties to Jibberish culture. And, because their economic success (derived in no small part from speaking Jibberish) allows them to live a lifestyle that most Frivvles can't, they buy houses that are further and further from the Frivvle neighborhoods, which means that their children attend school with Jibber-majority populations. Their children eventually become . . . Jivvers. Sure, they remember the old Frivvle ways and preserve a few traditions, but their new primary language is Jibberish, most of their friends are Jibbers, and their children will probably be . . . Jibbers. Long live the great country of Jibber.

Let's say that this doesn't happen. That Frivvles are so stubborn and so numerous and so successful that they overwhelm the Jibbers. So what? Unless there is something inherently wrong with Frivvles and Frivvlesh language/culture, who cares? Individual Jibbers will go on being Jibbers, and their children will probably be Jivvers, but this is not a curse--it's just a slow shift in cultural norms, the sort of thing that happens within Jibber culture, within Frivvle culture, all the time anyways. Take Frivvles--are they really the "same" people today that they were in 1950? Has Frivvlesh culture been preserved unchanged for 50 years? Probably not. Has Jibberish culture remained the same for 50 years? Probably not. But unless there's something inherently wrong with the nature of that change, who cares? Unless there's something inherently wrong with eating Jibberish foods, who cares if a few Jibberish restaurants pop up in Frivvlesh neighborhoods? Unless there's something inherently wrong with Frivvlesh music, who cares if a car playing Frivvlesh music rolls through a Jibber neighborhood? Let's say that a vast overseas people, the Riddicules, are supposed to become super powerful and wealthy over the next century. Wouldn't you want your child to learn Riddiculesh so that s/he would be able to interact with these powerful, wealthy people and become powerful and wealthy him/herself? Of course--unless there's something inherently wrong with Riddicules.

Culture and language just isn't that important. Sure, you're attached to your language and culture, and I'm attached to my language and culture, but there isn't a right or wrong answer here; my culture isn't better just because I'm attached to it, and your language isn't better just because you speak it. The only thing that matters is the gospel. If the Frivvlesh language and culture somehow prevented me from living the gospel, I'd be dead set against its introduction into Jibber. If, on the other hand, a (peaceful) flood of Jibberish immigrants seemed likely to undermine my Frivvle daughter's socioeconomic prospects, I might oppose that invasion out of selfish grounds, but not because Jibberish language or culture is bad. So if I'm opposed to Jibberish in my Frivvle nation, or Frivvlesh in my Jibber nation, it's because I'm either selfish or, gulp, racist: someone who thinks that another linguistic or cultural group is inherently wrong/inferior.

Why does this matter? The need to preserve American language and culture is the number one argument used to opposed comprehensive immigration reform, and in November the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a tremendously important statement indicating that it supports the principles of the Utah Compact on comprehensive immigration reform. The press release suggests that the Church supports some sort of a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants (UPDATE) with children who are United States citizens: "We oppose policies that unnecessarily separate families." The Church-supported Compact also states that "Immigrants are integrated into communities across Utah. We must adopt a humane approach to this reality, reflecting our unique culture, history and spirit of inclusion. The way we treat immigrants will say more about us as a free society and less about our immigrant neighbors. Utah should always be a place that welcomes people of goodwill."

Immigration policy, church leaders suggest, should be made in the context of Christ's parable of the Good Samaritan: "The Savior taught that the meaning of 'neighbor' includes all of God's children, in all places, at all times." In other words, we ought to see immigration reform and legislation as an opportunity to reach out to and bless those of our neighbors who are suffering, and Church members should be able to respond articulately when others raise objections to comprehensive immigration reform; it's part of being a good neighbor.

Come unto Me, All Ye that Labor and Are Heavy Laden . . .

2011-01-15T12:38:00.002-05:00

. . . and I will give you rest. This is the promise of Matthew 11:28, but what does that promise mean? In the very next verse Jesus invites us to "[t]ake my yoke upon you," which hardly sounds like an activity or a posture we would typically associate with "rest."

In this particular case, Christ is using the word rest in the same sense that Alma uses that word when describing the post-mortal life to his son, Corianton: "And then it shall come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow" (Alma 40:12). In both of these scriptural examples rest is used to signify a state of emotional and spiritual release, freedom from sin as opposed to freedom from work.

We know, in fact, that the postmortal life will involve a great deal of work for those who have taken Jesus Christ's "yoke upon" themselves; while describing his vision of the postmortal world the prophet Joseph F. Smith taught that "the faithful elders of this dispensation, when they depart from mortal life, continue their labors in the preaching of the gospel of repentance and redemption, through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of God, among those who are in darkness and under the bondage of sin in the great world of the spirits of the dead" (D&C 138:57). Clearly, the rest that Alma envisioned and that the Savior promised does not preclude labor.

But the Savior's invitation in Matthew, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (11:28) signifies something else as well. The book of Matthew was, most scholars agree, first written in Hebrew. Matthew was written primarily for Jewish readers and depicts Christ as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies; we presume that it was translated into Greek so that it would be more widely available to the early Christian church who, thanks to the missionary efforts of Paul, were an increasingly cosmopolitan group that spoke more Greek than Hebrew.

In this particular case, translation has obscured Matthew's original meaning. I'm sure that "I will give you rest" is a valid rendering of the original Hebrew, but I also suspect that there are other nuances which have been lost in translation. In the Authorized Version of the Old Testament the English word rest is used to to represent more than 10 different Hebrew nouns and verbs: nuwach, shaqat, manowach, damam, shalowm, nachath, demiy, margowa, puwgah, shabbathown, shabath, etc. The original Hebrew word that has now been rendered rest from the Greek might have been any of these--but I suspect that it was one of the last two--shabath or shabbathown.

As Eric Huntsman explained in the December Ensign, Matthew has an interest in portraying Jesus as a second Moses--that is, at least in part, why he tells the story of the Herod slaughtering the babes of Bethlehem (a parallel to Pharoah killing all the Israelite boys) and sets Christ's delivery of the new law in a "sermon on the mount" (reminiscent of Moses delivering the original law on Mount Sinai) while Luke claims that those same teachings were delivered on a plain. Well, when Moses comes to Pharoah, he demands that Pharoah release the Israelites from bondage, and Pharoah replies: "Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works? get you unto your burdens. And Pharoah said, Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens" (Ex. 5:4-5). Moses demands that Pharoah release the people from their burdens and give them rest (shabath); it makes sense to me that Matthew would have used the same language to describe Christ's invitation to lay down burdens.

Why does it matter whether Matthew's original used the word nuwach or dayim or shabath? It matters because shabath is also the Hebrew word that we translate as Sabbath, the Lord's day designated day of rest. What I am suggesting, then, is that when Jesus Christ invites us, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," he's also saying, "Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you the Sabbath" (Matt. 11:28). His promise to give us rest--one of the most frequently quoted in scripture--depends at least in part on us honoring the Sabbath; he's already done his part by designating the day and appointing blessings for honoring that day, but it is still a conditional promise. Want rest and release from your burdens? Honor the Sabbath.

As a side note, I should also point out that our current chapter divisions in the Bible are frequently misleading. Verses 28-30 of Matthew 11 really belong with verses 1-13 of chapter 12, where Jesus demonstrates that the sabbath is a day of physical and spiritual restoration by disregarding Mosaic law while harvesting corn for food and healing the man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.

Here's a challenge: go read Matthew 11:28-12:13 in preparation for your Sabbath. Take the easy yoke of the Sabbath upon you, and see if you don't "find rest unto your souls" (11:29).

Great Are the Words of Isaiah: Chapter 52

2011-01-02T23:51:00.000-05:00

When the wicked priests of King Noah wanted to stump/embarrass Abinadi, they asked him a question about Isaiah: "What meaneth the words which are written, and which have been taught by our fathers, saying: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings?" (Mosiah 12:20-21). Of course, as Abinadi makes abundantly clear, he is NOT someone you want to play "Stump the Prophet" with. He launches into one of the finest discourses in all of the Book of Mormon and quotes (what we now think of as) the entire fifty-third chapter of Isaiah before concluding that "the prophets, every one that has opened his mouth to prophesy [. . .] are they who have published peace, [. . .] and O how beautiful upon the mountains were their feet! [. . .] And behold, I say unto you, this is not all. For O how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that is the founder of peace, yea, even the Lord" (Mosiah 15:14-18).

Abinadi identifies the Lord and his prophets as the individuals whose feet Isaiah refers to in 52:7; having learned my lesson from Noah's wicked priests I'm hardly interested in contradicting him, but I can't help feeling that by emphasizing the role of prophets over the Lord himself, Abinadi has missed or at least failed to clarify some of what Isaiah is trying to tell us. For starters, Isaiah makes it perfectly clear that his comments about "the feet of him that bringeth good tidings" (52:7) refer to events that will take place "in that day," (52:6), which is scripture speak for the Second Coming. What's more, Isaiah follows his description of feet on mountains with a prophecy that the Lord will "gather many nations" (JST 52:15), which is DEFINITELY a reference to the last days.

If we understand that Isaiah is describing the last days and the Second Coming in this chapter, his reference to feet on mountains makes a lot more sense (at least if you have access to the prophecies of Zechariah, which Abinadi probably did not). Zechariah explains that in the days immediately preceding the Second Coming Jerusalem will be surrounded by the armies of "all nations" (Zech. 14:2). At that point, he continues, "shall the Lord go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof" (Zech. 14:3-4), and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will escape from the siege through the valley that will miraculously appear where the mount of Olives once stood. In other words, by descending from heaven and setting foot on the mount of Olives, the Lord "publisheth peace" (52:7) by preventing war and "shall bring again Zion" (52:8) when he returns to rule personally over the earth. This seems, to me, like the more immediate message that Isaiah was trying to convey, although I think that Isaiah's point is a good one; inasmuch as all prophets are, to some extent, types of the Savior, these words also apply to them as well.

One more point regarding Isaiah's depiction of the Second Coming in these verses--he describes this event in language clearly meant, I think, to remind us of temple ordinances. When the Lord comes, "my people shall know my name" (52:6), and "they shall see eye to eye [face to face in Numbers 14:14]" with the Lord (52:8), and the Lord will make "bare his holy arm [. . .] and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God" (52:10). Why does Isaiah describe the Second Coming in these temple-centric terms? Two reasons, I think. First, Isaiah is literally seeing the universal opportunity to receive temple ordinances in the last days. Remember, because Israel collectively rejected the opportunity to receive their endowments in the wilderness, telling Moses, "let not God speak with us, lest we die" (Ex. 20:19), that virtually no one in ancient Israel received the fullness of temple ordinances as we know them today. In Isaiah's time only prophets and priests had that privilege; today "all the ends of the earth [have an opportunity to] see the salvation of our God" (52:10). Second, I think that Isaiah is reminding us that temple ordinances are literally a rehearsal for that day of judgment, that the temple is a time and opportunity to prepare to meet God precisely because we all will meet him in the day of judgment at the Second Coming. Those who have prepared themselves in the temple will have nothing to fear when the Lord appears; they will already have seen him "bare his holy arm"; they will already have seen "eye to eye" with him; they will already "know my name."

For those of "my people" who have prepared themselves in the temple, the Lord's arrival at the mount of Olives really will be "good tidings." For everyone else . . . well, let's just say that you don't want to be in that camp.

Your Wine or Your (Second) Wife

2010-12-31T11:58:00.002-05:00

History says that you've got to have one or the other, so either the 89th section of the Doctrine and Covenants (the LDS prohibition against alcohol) or Wilford Woodruff's Manifesto (the LDS prohibition against polygamy) will have to go. According to a new paper from the American Association of Wine Economists (an organization I would definitely make fun of if I wasn't an academic myself), the discontinuation of polygyny (multiple wives) is closely linked to the rise of viticulture--the drinking of alcohol and, especially, the phenomenon of intoxication (getting drunk).

In "Women or Wine?" the authors "find evidence of a positive correlation between alcohol use and monogamy both over time and across cultures," meaning that as social groups transition from polygamy to monogamy they begin to consume alcohol. This historical trend, obviously, is one that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have bucked; the church officially disavowed polygamy in the aforementioned 1890 Manifesto from President Woodruff. If the relationship between monogamy and alcohol were causal, then we would have expected members of the church to take up drinking alcohol at some point over the past 120 years; instead, if anything, church emphasis on the Word of Wisdom and abstinence from alcohol has been strengthened over that period.

I'm not sure what there is about the prospect of spending the rest of your life--"till death do you part"--with just one person that has driven men and women to drink, but perhaps eternal marriage provides a substitute form of intoxication; the beautiful Mrs. Monk certainly makes my head spin (which I hear is a common side effect of alcohol).

ps--as a side note, the research for this paper was prompted by the existence of fundamentalist LDS sects that continue to practice plural marriage AND obey the Word of Wisdom's prohibition against alcohol.

Great are the Words of Isaiah: Chapter 44

2010-12-26T13:54:00.000-05:00

As previously noted, the land of Israel was dotted with temples during the prophetic ministry of Isaiah; in addition to the main (and famous) temple complex built by Solomon in Jerusalem, Israelites worshipped in at least fifteen other, smaller temples built to Jehovah. Unfortunately, Israelite patrons converted many of these temples to the worship of Canaanite gods, especially Baal and Ashtorath. Isaiah condemns this corruption of temple worship repeatedly in his messages to Israel but especially in chapter 44.

Through Isaiah the Lord reminds his people that they salvation can only be found in and through Him: "I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God" (44:6). But this reminder, as Isaiah knows very well, has come too late; the Israelites have already begun to worship other gods, abandoning their covenants and perverting temple rituals. Isaiah complains that "The carpenter stretcheth out his rule [a plumb line used to measure and square]; he marketh it out with a line; he fitteth it with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man" (44:13). This carpenter--in his perverse usage of divinely appointed creative powers and methods--mocks a God described in the scriptures using those same tools to create the earth and to build the New Jerusalem ("When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth," [Prov. 8:27]; "He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end," [Job 26:10]; in building a "city . . . holy unto the Lord" "the measuring line shall yet go forth over against it upon the hill Gareb, and shall compass about to Goath," [Jer. 31:38-40]).

This idolatrous carpenter imitates Yahweh by creating a figure in the form of a man, but unlike Yahweh, he has no power to animate it, to fill it with "the breath of life" (Gen. 2:7). This idol, Isaiah charges, is no more alive than the scrap wood that the idolatrous carpenter burns to bake his bread; without the breath of life, the idol is no more alive or powerful than the dust that Adam was formed from, and Isaiah warns that an individual who worships such idols "feedeth on ashes" (44:20). Because of his false worship the idolater "cannot deliver his soul, nor say, 'Is there not a lie in my right hand?'" (44:20). In abandoning the appointed forms of worship, Israel has forsaken their claim on "the saving strength of [God's] right hand" (Ps. 20:6); they have left "the path of life . . . at [God's] right hand" (Ps. 16:11) for "the hand of strange children; whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood" (Ps. 144:7-8).

Notwithstanding these transgressions, the Lord reminds Israel of his love for them and invites them to return: "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins; return unto me; for I have redeemed thee" (44:22). Then, as if to compare the idolatrous carpenter's powers and his own, Jehovah reminds Israel of his own creations: "I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself" (44:24). Whereas the carpenter "stretcheth out his rule" the true Carpenter "stretcheth forth the heavens." By reminding Israel of the difference in the creative capacities of these two carpenters, Isaiah "frustrateth the tokens of the liars" (44:25) and--implicitly--calls on Israel to remember the tokens of their covenant with the Lord, tokens carved into their own flesh as well as their God's: "And he shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you" (Gen. 17:11); "Behold I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands" (Isa. 49:16).

Isaiah isn't simply condemning idolatry in chapter 44; he's reminding Israel of their temple covenants, of the Lord's incomparable creative powers, and of the physical, fleshly tokens of their covenant relationship with Jehovah. He does condemn idolatry, but he also reminds Israel of the appropriate temple worship in which they have covenanted to participate exclusively.

The Surprising History of "Small" Temples

2010-12-19T23:42:00.000-05:00

Quick--without looking at Google or lds.org, how many temples are currently in operation around the world?

Answer: There are currently 134 temples in operation around the world, with another 23 either under construction or announced. Those 134 temples are more than 6 times the number of operating temples in existence 30 years ago, and when the St. Louis, MO temple was dedicated in 1997, it was the 50th--so in the last thirteen years, more than 100 temples (twice the number previously extant) have been built or are now being built. This explosion in temple construction has been made possible by the proliferation of "small temples," buildings much smaller than the Salt Lake or Washington D.C. temples, but that nonetheless "accommodate baptisms for the dead, the endowment service, sealings, and all other ordinances to be had in the Lord’s house for both the living and the dead."

When the late President Gordon B. Hinckley announced the advent of smaller temples, he explained that this innovation would make ordinances available to members who lived at a remove from the major metropolitan areas that traditionally attracted a sufficient concentration of members. I remember his announcement at the October 1997 priesthood session of General Conference; I was floored. While smaller temples seem very commonplace today (especially for someone who lived in Raleigh and made bi-monthly visits for four years), it seemed like a revolutionary concept at the time. Come to find out, there's a long history of "small temples" among the Lord's covenant people.

Let's try a new version of the quiz that opened this post: how many temples were in operation in Old Testament times (during the prophetic ministry of Isaiah, if you want to pin down a specific date)?

One you say? Solomon's? Think again.

You can probably think of plenty of "temple experiences" in the Old Testament--Abraham on Mount Moriah, Jacob at beth-El, Moses on Mount Sinai, the tabernacle in the wilderness, etc., but I'd be willing to bet that your knowledge of actual stone-and-mortar temples in the Old Testament is limited to the one built by Solomon. Hey, I would have said the same thing until yesterday. Yet it turns out that ancient Israel--like the latter-day version--made temple worship available to those who lived outside of the capital in Jerusalem.

In Solomon's Temple William Hamblin and David Seely explain:

"Although Solomon's temple remained the great central national shrine of Judah, from its construction (c. 950 BC) until the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah in the 7th century BC Israelites also worshipped the Lord at other holy places, such as Ramah, where Samuel led the people in sacrifice. The Bible describes at least eleven [ELEVEN!] buildings that can be identified as shrines dedicated to the worship of Yahweh, including Shiloh, Dan, Bethel, Gilgal, Mizpah, Hebron, Bethlehem [interesting, no?], Nob, Ephraim, Ophrah, and Gibeah. The most prominent of these was Shiloh, where the Ark was kept, and where Eli the priest is depicted sitting beside 'the doorpost of the temple of the Lord' (hekhal Yahweh) (1 Sam. 1:9). Shrines at Dan and Bethel also existed from very early times; there was apparently a statue of Yahweh in a temple at Dan (Judg. 18:28-31). Later, these sites were appropriated by King Jeroboam who set up golden calves there. A platform and small altar have been excavated at ancient Dan. Archaeologists have also uncovered evidence of at least four Israelite temples not mentioned in the Bible that flourished during this period [bringing our total up to FIFTEEN temples other than Solomon's]: Megiddo, Arad, Lachish, and Beersheba" (33).

One of the reasons that we so casually gloss over the existence of these additional temples is the fact that Josiah (who reigned from 640-609 BC) consolidated temple worship in Jerusalem in order to prevent idolaters from using these "small" Israelite temples to worship Baal and Ashtoreth. Presumably Josiah believed that he was acting to enforce the decree of Deuteronomy, where the Lord explains that Israel should establish a temple "in the [singular] place which the Lord shall choose in one of thy tribes" and that those who live "too far" from that lone temple should "kill of thy herd [...] and thou shalt eat in thy gates whatsoever thy soul lusteth after" (12:15, 21). After Josiah Israel never again deviated from the model of centralized worship that he created (although there were temples of Yahweh in Egypt during the second century BCE) and so readers of the Bible--who spend a disproportionate amount of time studying the New Testament--assume that the status quo in Christ's time (one temple) also applied during the earlier eras of Israelite history.

The bottom line is that President Hinckley's paradigm-shifting move to "small temples" was anything but revolutionary; when his people have been unable to travel to temples, the Lord has always--in the time of ancient Israel as today, in latter-day Israel--brought temples to his people. So the next time that you find yourself worshipping in one of the "small temples" built under the guidance of President Hinckely, pause a moment to reflect on the ancient Israelites who lived on the outskirts of Shiloh and worshipped in the local temple because they couldn't afford the trip to Jerusalem. The Lord loved them in the same way that he loves you, and the proof lies in the proximity--and the oridnances--of his House(s).

Maybe I Should Have Stayed in the Monastery . . .

2010-12-15T23:47:00.001-05:00

So I've just finished my first semester of full-time university teaching. The good news is, my students seem to like me and claim to have learned life lessons and academic skills in my classes. The bad news is, my somewhat narcissistic belief that I've somehow made a difference in their lives is probably misguided.

Lars Lefgren and David Sims, two economics professors at my own school, have just published research which suggests that a teacher's impact on his students' lives, whether that impact is positive or negative, is a fleeting phenomenon. "The researchers report that most of the gains from a highly rated teacher vanish quickly. In reading [English!], 87 percent of the benefit fades after one year." Now, to be fair--the findings of Lefgren and Sims were drawn from middle school data, so their research might not reflect the ability of college students to learn and retain skills/knowledge . . . but it's a sobering reminder that education is not a silver bullet for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. For a reminder on what factors HAVE been shown to permanently impact childrens' education, brush up on your Freakonomics; a child's parents and home life are clearly the most important factors--but perhaps not in the way that you might expect.

So maybe, if I wanted to change lives, I should stay at home with my wife, in the monastery.

Margaret Fuller on Thanksgiving

2010-11-25T18:13:00.000-05:00

Back in the 1840s, before Thanksgiving was a national holiday, Margaret Fuller--one of the first female journalists (for the New York Tribune), and the first to serve as a foreign correspondent (during Italy's battle for unification)--celebrated the spirit of Thanksgiving and called for its establishment. This is, in part, what she had to say:

"Thanksgiving is peculiarly the festival day of New-England. Elsewhere, other celebrations rival its attractions, but in that region where the Puritans first returned thanks that some among them had been sustained by a great hope and earnest resolve amid the perils of the ocean, wild beasts and famine, the old spirit which hallowed the day still lingers, and forbids that it should be entirely devoted to play and plum-pudding. [. . .] And, in other regions, where the occasion is observed, it is still more as one for a meeting of families and friends to the enjoyment of a good dinner, than for any other purpose. [. . .]The instinct of family love, intended by Heaven to make those of one blood the various and harmonious organs of one mind, is never wholly without good influence. Family love, I say, for family pride is never without bad influence, and it too often takes the place of its mild and health sister.

"Yet how much nobler, more exhilirating and purer would be the atmosphere of that circle if the design of its pious founders were remembered by those who partake [in] this festival! If they dared not attend the public jubilee till private retrospect of the past year had been taken in the spirit of the old rhyme, which we all bear in mind if not in heart--

What has thou done that's worth the doing,
And what pursued that's worth pursuing?
What sought thou knew'st that thou shouldst shun,
What done thou shouldst have left undone?

If parents followed up the indulgences heaped upon their children at Thanksgiving dinners with similar messages, there would not be danger that children should think enjoyment of sensual pleasures the only occasion that demands Thanksgiving."

December 12, 1844

Great Are the Words of Isaiah: Chapter 50

2010-11-21T22:49:00.000-05:00

In the first verse of this chapter the Lord answers the implied accusations of Israel. In response to their claim that the Lord has divorced them and sold them like slaves into bondage, God asks, "Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you?" Of course, the Lord has NOT divorced or sold Israel; rather, Israel has sold itself into bondage: "Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away" (50:1). But Israel's voluntary slavery is "for nought" (52:3) as Isaiah makes clear some verses later. And why is their slavery "for nought"? Because the Lord has already given himself into slavery to pay our debts.

In Deuteronomy the Lord explains the process by which an Israelite may voluntarily give himself into slavery: "And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. [. . .] And if it shall be, if he say unto thee, I will not go away from thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee; Then thou shalt take an aul, and thrust it through his ear unto the door, and he shall be thy servant for ever" (15:12, 16-17). In other words, those who voluntarily gave themselves into slavery had their ears pierced as a token of their love for and service to those whom they serve.

With these verses in mind, Isaiah 50:5-6 takes on new meaning: "The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting." These verses describe the Christ and the way in which he will be (mis)treated as a slave; we know that he is a slave because of the first phrase: "The Lord God hath opened mine ear." The verb "open" here might better be translated "engrave" (as it has been translated in Exodus 28:36, I Kings 7:36, and Zechariah 3:9) or, in our modern idiom, "pierce." Christ has willingly given himself as a slave in our place so that our backs would not have to receive the lashes of the smiter, so that our cheeks would not have to receive the spittle of antagonists. But if we, like Israel, refuse to acknowledge his sacrifice, we will ourselves become the slaves of sin.

In the Doctrine and Covenants Christ warns that "behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; but if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men. Wherefore, I command you again to repent, lest I humble you with my almighty power; and that you confess your sins, lest you suffer these punishments of which I have spoken" (19:16-20).

He reminds us, in effect, that he has already sold himself into slavery and that we need not endure spiritual and physical bondage--but those who refuse to acknowledge his sacrifice on our behalf must, like ancient Israel drink "at the hand of the Lord the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling" (Isaiah 51:17).

Fornication Pants

2010-11-19T00:30:00.000-05:00

I'm wearing them right now.

I'd be willing to bet that you're wearing them too.

"Fornication pants" is the phrase that Brigham Young purportedly used to describe . . . blue jeans.

I just finished reading the book Jeans by James Sullivan, and it was quite fascinating. I now know that denim was around for the American revolution, that it comes from the region of Nimes in France ("de Nimes), and that at least 25% of all US paper currency is denim. No--seriously, that picture of Andrew Jackson in your wallet? It's made out of the same stuff that's covering your butt.

This book is a must-read for jeans enthusiasts . . . but I would be a little wary of Sullivan's claims. For instance, that bit about Brigham Young? Sullivan claims that Young denounced blue jeans as instruments of sexual deviancy in the 1830s, when blue jeans first incorporated button flies. While I wouldn't put it past old Brigham to have used those words, I highly doubt that we would have a record of him speaking on the subject from the 1830s, when he was a relatively low-level official in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Quorum of the Twelve didn't really come into power until the 1840s; until then, the local high councils were generally more influential and outspoken).

Sullivan does give a source for his quotation, however--the coffee table book Let There Be Clothes, by Lynn Schnurnburger (say that ten times fast). On page 266 Schnurnburger alleges that "The 1830s bring on an innovation that spells relief--that's when men's trousers button down the front for the first time (The silk band that runs down the sides of tuxedo pants recalls the old tradition of side buttoning.) One of the few opposed to the new style is Mormon leader Brigham Young. Appalled, he dubs them 'fornication pants.'" Unfortunately, Schnurnberger does NOT provide a reference for her quote--and her book doesn't exactly scream "meticulous research."

But even if we can't be sure that Brigham Young used those exact words, anecdotal evidence from pioneer Utah suggests that blue jeans did, in fact, incite lascivious (and otherwise immoral) behavior. In Great Basin Kingdom, Leonard Arrington describes the community of Orderville, Utah--a Mormon community that voluntarily adopted the United Order, a coordinated effort to live the law of consecration--and the lone pair of blue jeans that brought down the whole shebang.

The Orderville United Order was organized in 1875 and quickly became self-sufficient; they produced their own cotton, poultry, dairies, lumber, molasses, silk thread, furniture, etc. In the difficult financial times of the 1870s, this community was quite a success, and the settlement initially ballooned as settlers in surrounding communities accepted the Order and immigrated. "Church officials advised [Orderville leaders] not to 'overload the boat' by accepting too many new members," Arrington writes, "but the Order members were so charitable in this respect that population began to press upon their limited resources" (335). --Snarky side note: No such charitable problem with today's immigrants!-- But it wasn't the arrival of immigrants that brought down the Order; it was an overabundance of money and the "fine clothing" that Nephi prophesied would cause individuals to "rob the poor" in the last days (2 Nephi 28:13).

When Utah Southern Railroad brought the wealth of the silver mines at Silver Reef, Utah into proximity with Orderville, the formerly content citizens began to covet fashionable goods made outside the community, and one boy's vanity--his distaste for the Order's "floppy straw hats, gray jeans, valley tan shoes, and one-room shanties" (336)--brought the whole community to the brink of crisis:

"As he gained in stature, the pants he wore seemed to shrink, but as there were no holes in them, and no patches, his application for a new pair was denied. But where 'there is a will there is a way.' There was a big crop of lambs that spring. When the lambs' tails were docked, the young brother surreptitiously gathered them and sheared off the wool which he stored in sacks. When he was assigned to take a load of wool to Nephi, he secretly took the lambs' tail wool with his load and exchanged it for a pair of store pants. On his return he wore his new pants to the next dance. His entrance caused a sensation. The story is that one young lady rushed to him, embraced and kissed him."

Fornication pants indeed! (Although Brigham was undoubtedly dead by the time this occurred.)

The Order claimed the pants as their own--since the lambs belonged to the Order--but agreed to use the store-bought blue jeans as a pattern for their future homemade gray jeans. This, however, did not fix anything; the young man's vanity soon infected his peers:

"The tailoring department was soon swamped with orders. The elders of the Order protested. The boys went to work, as usual, but loafed on the job. It was noticed that the [normally] everlasting [gray] pants worn by the boys were getting thin in spots, and even some holes had developed. These boys were often on their knees when at prayers, or when weeding in the garden, but not much time was spend sitting down. Why was this unusual wear on the seat of the pants? When the elders saw the boys going in groups to the shed where the grindstone was housed, they became suspicious and investigated. Yes, the boys were wearing out their pants on the grindstone." (336)

The vanity of these young men forced the elders of the Order to buy denim instead of using their own homespun, and this "victory" spurred the youth to further rebellions against the Order. In 1885, the Order was dissolved. Who needs the law of consecration when you've got blue jeans? And what's covering your derriere?

Wickedness Never Was Happiness, Part 2

2010-10-31T21:50:00.002-04:00

In Wickedness Never Was Happiness Part 1, I noted that Arthur C. Brooks has made a persuasive empirical case that acts of righteousness--charitable giving, marriage, labor, service, etc--cause an individual to experience happiness. For Part 2, it's time to look more closely at the other side of the coin: unhappiness.

Prophets and apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have long warned that watching television can have a detrimental impact on our lives; in 1989, Elder M. Russell warned about the deleterious effects of watching inappropriate material on television, while also acknowledging that "Philo T. Farnsworth, back in 1927, must surely have been inspired of the Lord to develop this remarkable medium of communication" (Seriously--go check out the link; it's the most extensive General Conference talk ever given on the subject, and the picture is priceless.). So saying that "TV is bad for you" is less than revelatory.

But researchers at the University of Maryland have just released a new study that is a little more nuanced. According to the research of John Robinson and Steven Martin, watching television is an activity best compared to smoking cigarettes or other addictive behaviors. Television viewers almost always feel that the show they are currently watching--or that they just finished watching--provided significant pleasure, but when asked about their viewing habits at a chronological remove, they indicate that watching television is a waste of time and resources.

Robinson explains that "What viewers seem to be saying is that while TV in general is a waste of time and not particularly enjoyable, 'the shows I saw tonight were pretty good. . . . The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise." This fleeting burst of pleasure can be addictive. "Addictive activities produce momentary pleasure and long-term misery and regret," Martin says. "People most vulnerable to addiction tend to be socially or personally disadvantaged. For this kind of person, TV can become a kind of opiate in a way. It's habitual, and tuning in can be an easy way of tuning out."

Watching TV, Robinson and Martin argue, does not provide the same satisfaction and happiness that social interactions--or good books--do. Their research shows that happy people spend more time in these two activities (socializing and reading) while unhappy people tend to spend more time watching television. I guess there's a reason that we're commanded to "seek . . . out of the best books words of wisdom" (D&C 88:118) and that the commandment to "watch ye the best sitcoms" hasn't come yet.

Again, I acknowledge that many, many church leaders have expounded on the beneficial aspects of television--it can be used for educational purposes, enjoying the performing arts, and broadening our cultural horizons, among many other purposes. For these reasons, it seems something of a stretch to say that watching television is wicked. But after having been exposed to the research of Robinson and Martin, I feel perfectly comfortable making the assertiong that watching television never was happiness.

The Creative Power of Faith

2010-10-20T18:55:00.003-04:00

In his epistle to the Hebrews, Paul explains that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (11:1). Paul emphasizes the materiality of faith when he describes it as a “substance” with “actual [physical] existence” and an “evidence” or physical “proof” of that which is “hoped for” and “not seen,” but too often we treat this foundational description of faith as though it meant simply a mental belief in things hoped for and not seen. Alma reminds us that faith requires that we, as believers, take physical action and conduct an “experiment” (Alma 32:27) that will give substance to our beliefs and eventually lead to “a perfect knowledge” (32:26). Faith is, as Elder Richard G. Scott taught us in his most recent General Conference address, “a principle of action and power.”

During my years as an undergraduate at Brigham Young University, I spent many nights wooing the woman who would eventually become the beautiful Mrs. Monk, and I remember one night in which she taught me a powerful object lesson regarding the active character of faith. As we walked through an on-campus parking lot on our way to some event, the future Mrs. Monk and I found ourselves asking one another a series of hypothetical questions. She queried, “If I was falling, do you think you could catch me?”

Without much thought I replied in the affirmative—after all, she was a foot shorter than me, and couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds—before following up with a question of my own: “Do you believe I could catch you?” She likewise replied in the affirmative, but I must have heard some hesitation in her voice, because I immediately challenged her to demonstrate her belief. Pointing to a nearby pickup truck, I invited this girl whom I had known for all of a week to prove that she really believed I could catch her: “You climb up,” I said, “face forward, so that your back is to me, and fall backwards off the truck. I’ll catch you.”

I could tell from the look on her face that this was the not the anticipated or desired result of her question. But, to her credit, she gamely climbed up into the truck bed and perched herself precariously on the tailgate’s edge. Craning her neck, she inquired if I was ready. I confidently replied in the affirmative and invited her to look forward and fall back blindly. After several seconds which, she later confessed, were quite nerve-wracking, she allowed the substance of her body to fall backwards into space, hoping that someone she could not see would catch her and provide evidence that her trust had not been wholly misplaced. I did, in fact, safely catch her in my arms and found her face just inches from my own—which was exactly the result that I had anticipated and desired.

I set her down gently, and we quickly left the parking lot, but the powerful object lesson that she provided to me that night has never left my thoughts. It was easy for her to verbally express a mental belief in me and my ability to catch her. It was much more difficult for her to physically climb into the waiting truck, let her body fall backwards, and exercise her faith in me, but until she began to take action, she had no faith, and only through an exercise of faith could she come to a perfect knowledge of my ability to catch her. In order to exercise our faith we must physically act; for this reason James teaches that “faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works” because “by works [is] faith made [a] perfect” knowledge (James 2:17-18, 22).

As we appropriately exercise faith, our actions make a substantial difference in the physical world around us. When a man exercises faith in the commandment to “seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom” (D&C 88:118), he acts by finding the best books and reading from them. As a result of this physical act, new chemical pathways will develop in his brain to record the information he has learned; he will literally become a different person. When a woman exercises faith in the word of wisdom, she acts by eating “every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof” (D&C 89:11). As a result of this varied diet, she will acquire a fullness of the nutrients which our Father in Heaven has provided on this earth; the very cells of her body will change, and she will literally become a different person. When we act on our beliefs and exercise faith, we impose the internal order of our minds onto external matter.

Clement of Alexandria, the earliest of the post-apostolic Christian fathers, once observed that “The whole creation is to be understood as a synthesis: the imposing of inner order on outer material" (from Hugh Nibley, Temple and Cosmos, 273). Clement's claim is consistent with revealed truths about the creation; as we learn in Abraham, the Gods "counseled among themselves to form the heavens and the earth" before they actually "came down and formed these the generations of the heavens and of the earth" (Abraham 5:3-4). The act of creation is the act of translating mental images and understandings onto physical matter; it is an act of faith.

Paul testifies that “we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God [through faith]” (Heb. 11:1), and Elder Scott recently added his witness that “[f]aith is a foundation building block of creation. . . . The Master used it to create the most remote galaxies as well as to compose quarks, the smallest elements of matter we know of today.” As children of our Heavenly Father, we enjoy the opportunity to exercise our faith in mortality and to become, with Him, co-creators. The “exercise of faith in true principles builds character," and as we actively seek to “become what we want to be by consistently being what we want to become,”we participate in the creation of our future bodies and souls (Scott).

When we faithfully follow Alma’s counsel to Shiblon and “bridle all [our] passions,” we impose a mental or spiritual order on our physical flesh (Alma 38:12), and President Packer recently testified that “[t]hrough the righteous exercise of this power [to create life], as in nothing else, we may come close to our Father in Heaven and experience a fulness of joy.” When we exercise our faith in the law of the fast, we likewise discipline our physical bodies by refraining from food or drink for twenty-four hours so “that [our] fasting might be perfect, or, in other words, that [our] joy may be full” (D&C 59:9, 13). In the scriptures, being full of joy—or having a fullness of joy—is a phrase used to describe exaltation, when the body and soul are perfectly united. The Doctrine and Covenants explain that “man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy” (D&C 93: 33). We can only receive a fullness of joy when our spirit and our flesh are in perfect harmony with each other, when they are inseparably connected and united in purpose. Currently, the flesh or “natural man is an enemy to God” and our spirits (Mosiah 3:19); we are engaged in a struggle to “not choose eternal death, according to the will of the flesh and the evil which is therein, which giveth the spirit of the devil power to captivate” (2 Nephi 2:29). But when we bridle our passions, when we fast, when we exercise faith in Jesus Christ and subject the flesh to the spirit we win that battle and experience—if only briefly—the fullness of joy that will characterize our existence as exalted beings with a perfect, immortal body inseparably connected to our spirits.

The appropriate exercise of faith in Jesus Christ will literally change our very natures, as we experience his grace and “receive strength and assistance to do good works that [we] otherwise would not be able to maintain if left to [our] own means. This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts” (BD, “Grace”). When we act in faith and obey the commandments of Jesus Christ, we create ourselves—or at least our future selves—by organizing and ordering our own bodies. It is in this sense that I understand the late Elder Bruce R. McConkie's suggestion that "[i]n a real though figurative sense, the book of life is the record of the acts of men as such record is written in their own bodies. It is the record engraven on the very bones, sinews, and flesh of the mortal body. That is, every thought, word, and deed has an affect on the human body; all these leave their marks, marks which can be read by Him who is Eternal as easily as the words in a book can be read" (Mormon Doctrine 97).

If we believe Paul; if we believe Elder Scott; if we believe that the exercise of faith is an act of creation, then we are practicing all the time for a future as gods and goddesses who will advance in their capacity for action from internal, physiological creations to external, cosmological creations. Understanding this truth provides insight into just why it is that "if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come" (D&C 130:19). The advantage that comes to those who exercise their faith by studying the best books, by obeying the Word of Wisdom, by bridling their passions, by obeying the law of the fast is not a reward or prize, a place at the head of the heavenly bread line; it is a natural expansion of their abilities as creators that will allow them to use their faith in the same way that God uses his sooner than those who have not exercised their faith to the same extent during their time on earth.

When we understand that an active “[f]aith in the power of obedience to the commandments of God will forge strength of character,” that our “exercise of faith in true principles builds character," and that our character is the only product of mortality which we can take with us to the judgment bar, the true relationship between faith and salvation, between faith and exaltation, becomes clear (Scott). Peter taught that “the end of your faith [is] the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:9), and Elder Scott explains why: “In the next life your righteous character will be evaluated to assess how well you used the privilege of mortality.” When we exercise faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we qualify ourselves for the blessings of eternity; when our actions evince a lack of faith, we condemn ourselves to a lesser kingdom of glory.

During my time as a ward missionary in Raleigh, North Carolina, I met many individuals struggling to reconcile common Protestant interpretations of scripture with the revealed truths of the Book of Mormon. John Wycliffe and other Protestant reformers who objected to the corrupt Catholic practices of selling indulgences for sin taught their followers that they could be saved by faith alone, and pointed to Paul’s letters as proof: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). I remember one particular young man named Jacob whose belief in this Pauline doctrine of faith made it particularly difficult for him to accept the words of Nephi, who teaches that “we labor diligently to write, to persuade our children, and also our brethren, to believe in Christ, and to be reconciled to God, for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” (2 Nephi 25:23). What Jacob failed to comprehend—because he did not understand that “faith in the Savior is a principle of action and power”—is that Paul and Nephi teach the same doctrine. Salvation “through faith” is not, as Jacob supposed, salvation ‘through belief’; rather, salvation “through faith” comes as we “labor” to express our faith in Jesus Christ through meaningful service and produce the “works” that James teaches are the inevitable fruit of true faith.

As we do so, we build righteous character. We discipline the natural man and our physical bodies. We experience a brief foretaste of the fullness of joy that characterizes the existence of exalted beings. We begin to exercise the powers of creation that are ours by birthright, as sons and daughters of God. Through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the active engagement (D&C 58:27) that faith implies, these blessings and all other blessings of the gospel are available to us.

I have faith that this is so.

The Immersion of Alma

2010-10-13T08:47:00.001-04:00

After writing about Ammon's LACK of priesthood authority, as recorded in Mosiah, it only seems fitting that I address Alma's apparent SURFEIT of priesthood authority; after reading our last entry, the lovely Miss Jan asks, "Why was Alma able to baptize after fleeing from King Noah?" So glad you asked, Jan . . .

Mormon's description of Alma's baptism in the waters of Mormon has provoked a lot of thought in me throughout the years, and while I'm not sure that I have THE answer, I certainly have come up with a lot of answers to explain the (apparently) unorthodox events of this passage:

12. And now it came to pass that Alma took Helam, he being one of the first, and went and stood forth in the water, and cried, saying: O Lord, pour out thy Spirit upon thy servant, that he may do this work with holiness of heart.
13. And when he had said these words, the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and he said: Helam, I baptize thee, having authority from the Almighty God, as a testimony that ye have entered into a covenant to serve him until you are dead as to the mortal body: and may the Spirit of the Lord be poured out upon you; and may he grant unto you eternal life, through the redemption of Christ, whom he has prepared from the foundation of the world.
14. And after Alma had said these words, both Alma and Helam were buried in the water; and they arose and came forth out of the water rejoicing, being filled with the Spirit.

There seem to be at least two major questions that this account invites. 1) Where does Alma get his authority from? 2) Why is he submerged and "baptized" at the same time as Helam?

EXPLANATION #1:

The easiest way to answer these two questions is to suggest that Alma needed no prior priesthood authority to baptize and that it wasn't his choice or intent to baptize himself--that the "Spirit of the Lord" both authorized and acted upon him. This explanation relies almost entirely on the account of Adam's baptism given in the book of Moses. As the first man on earth, Adam could not 1) receive the priesthood by laying on of hands unless an exalted being (and since there were no "resurrected personages" [D&C 129:1], Heavenly Father is our only option here) ordained him, and therefore he could not 2) baptize his family or be baptized. The sixth chapter of Moses explains how the Lord circumvented both of these difficulties:

64. And it came to pass, when the Lord had spoken with Adam, our father, that Adam cried unto the Lord, and he was caught away by the Spirit of the Lord, and was carried down into the water, and was laid under the water, and was brought forth out of the water.
65. And thus he was baptized, and the Spirit of God descended upon him, and thus he was born of the Spirit, and became quickened in the inner man.
66. And he heard a voice out of heaven, saying: Thou art baptized with fire, and with the Holy Ghost. This is the record of the Father, and the Son, from henceforth and forever;
67. And thou art after the order of him who was without beginning of days or end of years, from all eternity to all eternity.

Adam is both baptized and ordained to priesthood authority by the same "Spirit of the Lord" that was present during Alma's immersion; after he "was laid under the water," he became a member of "the order of him who was without beginning of days or end of years"--someone who holds "the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God" (D&C 107:3). While Alma's circumstances are not nearly so constrained as those of Adam (Couldn't a translated Moses/Elijah have appeared to ordain him?), it seems at least possible that the precedent of Adam's baptism and ordination by the Spirit applies here. After all--when Mormon records that "Alma and Helam were buried in the water," he makes it sound very much as though they had no agency in the matter, as though some other force or agent did the burying (not wholly unlike 3 Nephi 19:11, where "Nephi went down into the water and was baptized" by a personage or force unknown--and then began to baptize others).

EXPLANATION #2

For those who are unhappy with the idea that Alma derived so much authority in such an unorthodox manner, there is another, relatively simple explanation. During this period in the Book of Mormon, as at other times, the Nephite king (Benjamin and then Mosiah) was also the highest priesthood authority in the land; he was the prophet. As the head of all civic and religious affairs, the king presumably authorized the original expedition of Zeniff; he certainly authorized the journey made by Ammon to find "the people who went up to dwell in the land of Lehi-Nephi" (Mosiah 7:1).

If we assume that the prophet/king Benjamin authorized Zeniff's expedition, then he surely would have made sure that there was adequate priesthood leadership along--and Zeniff, whose pleading on behalf of "that which was good among [the Lamanites]" prevented their massacre, would seem an ideal candidate as priesthood leader (Mosiah 9:1). He certainly seems to have acted as a priesthood leader, as he led his people to "cry mightily to the Lord that he would deliver us out of the hands of our enemies" (9:17) and to depend upon "the strength of the Lord to battle" (10:10). So if we assume that Zeniff held the priesthood (and he consecrated priests, whether he held the priesthood or not--11:5), then we can almost certainly assume that he conferred it on the son who he appointed to take his place as a prophet king: Noah. Noah, in turn, "consecrated new [priests]," one of whom was Alma.

Thus Alma--like Zacharias or John the Baptist in the New Testament--would have been legitimately ordained by one who held authority, even though the general administration of priesthood authority was corrupt. In this scenario, Alma already held the requisite authority to act--he simply needed to access the power of the priesthood by repenting and sanctifying himself. In this respect, President Packer suggested last April, the people of King Noah had something in common with us: "We [like King Noah] have done very well at distributing the authority of the priesthood. We have priesthood authority planted nearly everywhere. We have quorums of elders and high priests worldwide. But distributing the authority of the priesthood has raced, I think, ahead of distributing the power of the priesthood." So if Alma had the priesthood, then his self-immersion might simply be understood as a re-commitment to his earlier, baptismal covenants (and re-baptism was not all that uncommon a practice in the early restored church--plenty of analogous examples).

So--take your pick. I think in either explanation there is ample evidence that Alma acted with ample authority when was immersed with Helam and baptized in the waters of Mormon.

Limhi, Ammon, and Priesthood Keys

2010-10-07T09:54:00.000-04:00

I recently read the Book of Mormon account in which Ammon (the first one, not the arm-chopper) encounters the people of King Limhi and the descendants of Zeniff after an extensive bit of wandering in the wilderness. After all that Limhi and his people have been through, they are ready to forsake the sins introduced (or at least promoted) by King Noah and to enter the waters of baptism:

"And now since the coming of Ammon, king Limhi had also entered into a covenant with God, and also many of his people, to serve him and keep his commandments. And it came to pass that king Limhi and many of his people were desirous to be baptized; but there was none in the land that had authority from God. And Ammon declined doing this thing, considering himself an unworthy servant." (Mosiah 21:32-33)

These verses always troubled me. Ammon clearly has the priesthood--why doesn't he just baptize them? I've generally been content to assume that Ammon was not personally worthy and neither were any of the other men who came with him. But I've recently changed my opinion; I think Ammon both had the necessary priesthood power and was worthy to use it. So why didn't he? I believe that it is because Ammon, whose grasp of priesthood roles and functions was so great that his instruction that "a seer is a revelator and a prophet also; and a gift which is greater can no man have" (8:16) is still the definitive statement on the subject, understood the need for priesthood keys.

There's no doubt in my mind that Ammon possessed the priesthood necessary to baptize Limhi and his people--but it seems less likely that he had the authority (which the text itself indicates) to preside at such an event. The Church Handbook of Instructions directs that baptisms must be performed "[u]nder the direction of the presiding authority," and in a place where there was no established church, that authority probably reverted back to King Mosiah, who was the head of the church in Zarahemla and thus held the relevant priesthood keys.

And speaking of priesthood keys, I loved the clarity of these principles from Robert J. Matthews of BYU's Ancient Scripture department:

It is evident that a person who holds the keys can 'give' them to another without losing them himself.
There is a difference between holding the keys sufficiently to function and being the person designated to convey those keys to others. Both Moses and Elijah gave keys to Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration, yet it was still Moses and Elijah who brought them to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in 1836. No doubt Peter had sufficient of 'Elijah's keys' to operate the Church during the meridian dispensation, yet the Lord did not use Peter to convey those sealing keys to Joseph and Oliver. [A more mundane example might be an Elders' or Deacons' Quorum president, who holds keys--but has no power to pass those keys to someone else; that power is retained by the stake president or bishop.]
It is clearly stated in the Book of Mormon, more than once, that the Twelve in the Western Hemisphere were subject and would be subject to the Twelve in Jerusalem (see 1 Nephi 12:9; Mormon 3:18-19). This suggests, again, that a people may have sufficient keys of the priesthood to operate the Church without having the right to pass those keys to future dispensations.
Truly, all of the keys and powers of the priesthood have not yet been delivered to us in our day; much lies in futurity, including the keys of creation, translation, and resurrection.

(From Robert L. Millett, "Prophets and Priesthood in the Old Testament," Sperry Symposium Classics: The Old Testament, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005, p. 65.)

I'm sure that there's still more to the story of Ammon that I'm missing--but at least I don't have that nagging feeling when I read about his "unworthiness" any more.

A Reminder from President Packer

2010-10-03T12:47:00.003-04:00

This morning, as I listened to conference with the beautiful Mrs. Monk, she and President Boyd K. Packer provided a gentle reminder: it's time for another personal pornography interview with your loved ones. Don't delay--early intervention could make all the difference.

Prosperity Theology and the Book of Job

2010-09-05T22:56:00.005-04:00

The book of Job begins and ends like a fairytale, but the middle reads more like philosophy, with endless disquisitions on the moral and ethical principles which have guided Job in the past and should guide him in the future. Because the "story" of Job differs so drastically in style from the philosophical substance of Job, biblical scholars have long thought of the first and forty-second chapters of Job as a "frame tale"--a literary excuse for telling the story (or, in this case, having the philosophical discussion) that you wanted to tell. For example, the pilgrimage in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is a frame tale, whose main purpose is to enable to author to narrate the many unconnected stories that the pilgrims tell each other on their road to Canterbury. The notion of God conversing with Satan is so far-fetched, scholars have argued, that it obviously can't literally be true, or even theoretically "true" in the patronizing sense that the author of the book of Job believed what is obviously, to our modern, "enlightened" sensibilities, false.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have no stake in the question of whether or not God actually talked with Satan regarding Job, but latter-day scripture helps us to better understand the doctrinal purpose that this introduction fulfills. In the book of Moses, we learn, regarding the council in heaven, that Satan offered to "redeem all mankind" by eliminating individual agency, so "that one soul shall not be lost" (4:1). This understanding of Satanic intent is a key aid to interpreting the exchange between God and Satan in Job. Satan asks, "Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face" (1:9-11). In effect, Satan accuses God of removing Job's agency, his ability to freely choose whether to curse or bless God, by providing Job with temporal prosperity in return for his obedience. There is irony here, as Satan accuses God of doing that which he has already proposed to do--but this exchange also makes the story of Job into a theological defense of individual agency.

From this perspective, the point of Job's story is that God would permit almost any atrocity, including the personal buffetings of his most wayward child, Satan, rather than interfere with the agency of men. Job's agency--his ability and willingness to bless God despite his innumerable woes--is the entire point of the book. He cannot be coerced, either by God's blessings or Satan's buffetings. This explains--at least to me--the conversation between Satan and God. But what about the other half of this frame tale? The fairy-tale ending for Job, in which he receives twice his previous wealth as "the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning" (42:12) is more than a little hard to believe. And what's the point, doctrinally speaking? That the righteous will always prosper in temporal affairs? Surely not.

My favorite commentary on Job, and especially on this question, is actually a poem written by my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, Anne Bradstreet:

Verses Upon the Burning of Our House, July 10, 1666

In silent night when rest I took,
For sorrow neer I did not look,
I waken'd was with thundring nois
And Piteous shreiks of dreadfull voice.
That fearfull sound of fire and fire, 5
Let no man know is my Desire.
I, starting up, the light did spye,
And to my God my heart did cry
To strengthen me in my Distresse
And not to leave me succourlesse. 10
Then coming out beheld a space,
The flame consume my dwelling place.
And, when I could no longer look,
I blest his Name that gave and took,
That layd my goods now in the dust: 15
Yea so it was, and so 'twas just.
It was his own: it was not mine;
Far be it that I should repine.
He might of All justly bereft,
But yet sufficient for us left. 20
When by the Ruines oft I past,
My sorrowing eyes aside did cast,
And here and there the places spye
Where oft I sate, and long did lye.
Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest; 25
There lay that store I counted best:
My pleasant things in ashes lye,
And them behold no more shall I.
Under thy roof no guest shall sitt,
Nor at thy Table eat a bitt. 30
No pleasant tale shall 'ere be told,
Nor things recounted done of old.
No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee,
Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee.
In silence ever shalt thou lye; 35
Adieu, Adeiu; All's vanity.
Then streight I gin my heart to chide,
And didst thy wealth on earth abide?
Didst fix thy hope on mouldring dust,
The arm of flesh didst make thy trust? 40
Raise up thy thoughts above the skye
That dunghill mists away may flie.
Thou hast an house on high erect
Fram'd by that mighty Architect,
With glory richly furnished, 45
Stands permanent tho' this bee fled.
It's purchased, and paid for too
By him who hath enough to doe.
A Prise so vast as is unknown,
Yet, by his Gift, is made thine own. 50
Ther's wealth enough, I need no more;
Farewell my Pelf, farewell my Store.
The world no longer let me Love,
My hope and Treasure lyes Above.

Bradstreet invokes Job as a key to understanding her own loss in line 14, where she paraphrases Job's faithful statement that "the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (1:21). From that point forward, her poem loosely parallels Job's own story. First, she considers her loss--the loss of a trunk, a chest, and other worldly goods. This loss eventually causes her to question her faith. Line 34 mourns that no more weddings will be celebrated in the family home, but it also suggests that Bradstreet is wondering whether the Bridegroom will indeed come, or whether religion, like all of the other pursuits listed by Solomon in Ecclesiastes, is "all vanity." But Bradstreet, like Job, finds consolation in the resurrection; in answer to Job's declaration that "after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God" (19:26), Bradstreet declares that her "hope and Treasure" also "lyes above," not in "mouldring dust" and the "arm of flesh."

But my favorite aspect of Bradstreet's poem, by far, is the way in which she reflects on her own earthly losses with Job in mind. Despite her awareness that Job received a double portion following his temporal losses, Bradstreet does not look for similar blessings. She understands the faulty logic behind prosperity theology (previous comments regarding the Sabbath notwithstanding), understands that such a course would, in effect diminish individual agency. Instead, she looks for a mansion in heaven analogous to the one she lost on earth, making Job's inheritance spiritual, not temporal. Job may, in fact, have received double his temporal wealth--but Bradstreet knows that in this Job cannot be an example. We can't always receive temporal blessings for being righteous--or else there would be no difference between God's plan of salvation and Satan's plan of coercion.

Jarom's Secret for Temporal Success

2010-09-02T09:30:00.009-04:00

In each of the three classes that I'm teaching this semester, I've offered the same advice: Keep the Sabbath Day holy by, among other things not working (in this cause studying) on Sundays. As a carrot, I've held out the (previously mentioned) promise of the late President James E. Faust--that you can do more and higher quality work by laboring in six days than you can in seven. And then, a few days before class started, I discovered this remarkable passage in the little-read book of Jarom.

Jarom informs us that the Nephites of his day were wicked: "Behold, it is expedient that much should be done among this people, because of the hardness of their hearts, and the deafness of their ears, and the blindness of their minds, and the stiffness of their necks; nevertheless, God is exceedingly merciful unto them, and has not as yet swept them off from the face of the land" (3). These Nephites clearly are not righteous, and yet Jarom informs us that they "had waxed strong in the land" (5), which is to say that they had prospered temporally; they "became exceedingly rich in gold, and in silver, and in precious things, and in fine workmanship of wood, in buildings, and in machinery, and also in iron and copper, and brass and steel" (8).

Why did they prosper when they were so proud and hard-hearted? Because "[t]hey observed to keep the law of Moses and the sabbath day holy unto the Lord" (5), and the Lord has promised those who keep the Sabbath Day holy that he "will cause [them] to ride upon the high places of the earth" (Isaiah 58:14). Even though they were not broken hearted and, apparently, not truly invested in keeping the commandments, they were blessed for their obedience and prospered temporally.

So if you want to prosper temporally, keep the Sabbath Day holy. Hopefully that's not your only, or even primary reason for doing so--but it sure is a nice side benefit.

Provo as Paradise, or, A Sister City for Kirjath-Sepher

2010-08-04T22:51:00.004-04:00

Traveling to my new job in Provo has led me to reflect again on the geographical similarities between the Lord’s ancient land of promise in Palestine and the Rocky Mountain sanctuary prophetically foretold by Joseph Smith. These parallels have been well documented: both locales are surrounded by mountains (although the ones in Israel are much smaller than those in Utah); they contain inland bodies of super-salty water which are fed by rivers; and they are refuges for the Lord’s covenant people. In this discussion of geographical parallels, Salt Lake City is the new Jerusalem—the city from which prophets lead the work of salvation in this dispensation.

But Jerusalem was not the only city of significance located in ancient Palestine any more than Salt Lake is the only city of significance in Utah; Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jericho are all cities that played prominent roles in biblical history. Of course, in addition to all of these well-known cities, there are a number of other, less well-known hamlets, and one of these is the city of Kirjath-Sepher. Unless you’ve been reading in Joshua or Judges lately, chances are that you’d forgotten all about this place—but it’s one of the most interesting cities mentioned in the Bible. Kirjath-Sepher is Hebrew for “The City of Books” and it, like Jerusalem, has a sister city in Utah: Provo.

The Bible doesn’t say much about Kirjath-Sepher, but Jerome—the fourth-century church father who translated the Bible into Latin—preserves an early Christian tradition about the city. In a series of exhortations to monks, Jerome explains that Kirjath-Sepher hosted the school of the prophets instituted by Samuel and maintained by his prophetic successors; Jerome explains that every monastery is modeled after this ancient religious academy and teaches that monks should pattern their lives after the “sons of the prophets, whom we consider the monks of the Old Testament.” These spiritual role models “built for themselves huts by the waters of Jordan and, forsaking crowded cities, lived in these on pottage and wild herbs,” and Jerome exhorts monastic imitators to “make your cell your Paradise, gather there the varied fruits of Scripture.” The early Christians believed that their monasteries should imitate the school of the prophets at Kirjath-Sepher; thus, their monasteries would preserve the knowledge of paradise as Kirjath-Sepher trained prophets in the knowledge given to Adam, the first prophet.

Jerome intended monasteries to be paradisiacal refuges where the purity of paradise would be preserved and disseminated to the people, and this was a model that later representatives of the church would adopt when they began sponsoring universities. In the thirteenth century, Pope Gregory “wrote of [the church-sponsored University of] Paris as Kirjath-Sepher.” And Bernard of Clairvaux, a twelfth-century Cistercian abbot, recognized that the university of Paris had inherited the monastic tradition of Samuel:

"Just as the Queen of Sheba is said to have come with a large retinue, that by the sight of her own eyes she might have surer knowledge of those things whose fame she had eagerly absorbed from afar, so you too [he writes to Hergald, as student] came to Paris and found, sought out by many, compressed as in a replica—Jerusalem. … Here the wisdom of Solomon is open for the instruction of all who have converged upon the city. Here his treasure house is thrown open to eager students. … it truly deserves to be called Kirjath-Sepher."

These church leaders thought of the University of Paris as a new rendition of Kirjath-Sepher and a place where the knowledge of prophets and of paradise had been preserved; Gregory explains that the

"hand of the Almighty planted aforetime a Paradise of pleasures in Paris, a venerable gignasium of letters, whence arises the font of wisdom, which, channeled in the four faculties—namely theology, jurisprudence, medicine, and philosophy (rational, natural, and moral)—like unto the four rivers of Paradise is distributed throughout the four climes, drains and irrigates the whole world, and from which, further, how much and diverse spiritual and temporal progress Christianity has experienced!"

Gregory hoped that the University of Paris would train students in the ways of paradise and send them forth to water the earth with their knowledge until they eventually transformed the earth back into a paradisiacal state.

This belief in the power of a university to spiritually renew the populace that it serves and the world at large is one that persisted. When Cotton Mather sat down to write the first substantial history of Harvard in 1700, he describes Newtown (which eventually became Cambridge, MA) as “being the Kiriath Sepher appointed for the seat” of Harvard. Mather, like Pope Gregory before him, compares the university to a “river, the streams whereof have made glad this city of God … and a poor wilderness indeed it had been, if the cultivations of such a Colledge had not been bestowed upon it.” Here, as with the University of Paris and the monasteries of Jerome, the new Kiriath-Sepher is a place that will transform the world from desolation to garden, from wilderness to paradise.

Most modern universities—including Brigham Young University, in Provo—owe much of their structure to the University of Paris and its influential successors, such as Harvard. For that reason alone, almost any town that hosts a university could make a claim to being a modern rendition of Kirjath-Sepher. But the comparison between Provo and Kirjath-Sepher is especially apt, and not only because Provo is located in a geographical setting similar to that where the original “City of Books” was built. BYU is home to the largest library west of the Mississippi, and the Provo city library isn’t exactly small.

But more importantly, BYU should be thought of as modern Kirjath-Sepher and “school of the prophets” because of BYU’s special mission to train up a future church leaders. The BYU educational system is a means by which the knowledge of paradise is dispersed to the whole world, and the church leaders that it sends forth have played and will yet play a vital role in fulfilling the promise of the 10th article of faith, “that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory.

As I begin my work as a teacher at BYU, I do so fully conscious of the academic and theological tradition in which I—and every other professor in Provo—participate; there’s nowhere in the world I’d rather begin my teaching career than in this Latter-day Kirjath Sepher. I think Jerome would be happy to know that at least one of BYU's faculty member's recognizes the monastic tradition in which he is participating--and this Monk certainly does.

My Very Own Symonds Ryder Moment

2010-07-31T14:15:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, this Monk and newly minted PhD received a letter from the Brigham Young University English Department:

The letter invited me to join the only university led by living prophets and to teach early American literature there, but there was one problem: my (now former) address was horribly misspelled. Actually, it's a small miracle that the letter even reached me. I asked myself--how could divinely inspired leaders get my information so wrong? Shouldn't they KNOW? And then I remembered Symonds Ryder (also, infamously, Simonds Rider), who was once placed in something of a similar situation. I quickly decided that maybe spelling wasn't the most important thing, even for an English professor, and suffice to say that I'm now happily on my way to BYU.

Wahoo!

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your starving students yearning for knowledge . . .

Send these, the young, the media-addled to me,

I lift my books beneath the Y!

Befriending the Constitution

2010-07-11T22:06:00.002-04:00

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints affirm that “[w]e believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law” (AF 12) and that “[w]e believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments” (D&C 134:5). This guaranteed exercise of basic rights, including the right to “worship how, where or what [we] may” (AF 11), is a necessary precondition for our support of government because “[w]e believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life” (D&C 134:2). In other words, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that the primary function of government is the protection of individual moral agency, that opportunity which “the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself” (2 Ne. 2:16). Civil government thus plays an important part in fulfilling the primary purpose for which God created the earth; as Lehi taught, “if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say . . . there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon” (2 Ne. 2:13). Because this life is, first and foremost, “a probationary state; a time to prepare to meet God” (Alma 12:24) by exercising our moral agency, “[w]e believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man” (D&C 134:1) so that those precious freedoms for which we fought against Lucifer in the premortal existence can be enjoyed during our time here in mortality.

Whether they live in Kansas or Cambodia, Paris or Paraguay, church members across the globe subscribe to these statements of belief. But for those of us who live in the United States of America, these revelations from the Doctrine and Covenants also urge us to reverence the political documents that made their publication possible. When an inspired Joseph Smith used the language of “inalienable rights,” he paraphrased the Declaration of Independence, which asserts that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The 134th section of the Doctrine and Covenants confirms the content and paraphrases the language of the Declaration of Independence because, as Latter-day Saints, we believe that the words of this document, and of the Constitution which followed it, were inspired by God. Joseph’s successor, President Brigham Young, explained that “The General Constitution of our country is good . . . for it was dictated by the invisible operations of the Almighty; he moved upon Columbus to launch forth upon the trackless deep to discover the American Continent; he moved upon the signers of the Declaration of Independence; and he moved upon Washington to fight and conquer, in the same way as he moved upon ancient and modern Prophets” (Just and Holy 17). Like the writings of ancient and modern prophets, the foundational political documents produced by Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and others of the founders deserve careful study because they teach true principles. In an 1839 letter from Liberty Jail, the prophet Joseph compared these foundational documents to canonized revelation: “We say that God is true; that the Constitution of the United States is true; that the Bible is true; that the Book of Mormon is true; that the [Doctrine and] Covenants is true; that Christ is true” (Just and Holy 5). The Constitution, Joseph Smith taught, is an inspired document which deserves the same regard we show to revealed scripture. So, while church members throughout the world have been instructed to support their local governments, church members living in the United States have a special obligation to learn and uphold the principles taught in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States because they teach true precepts which complement scripture and preserve our freedom to exercise moral agency.

In the Doctrine and Covenants, Jesus Christ explains to the prophet Joseph that “I, the Lord God, make you free, therefore ye are free indeed; and the law also maketh you free.” “Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land” (D&C 97:8, 6). We, as Joseph’s brethren and sisters in the Lord’s church, are to “befriend” the Constitution, to act as advocates for its protection of moral agency and to support elected officials who will do likewise. President John Taylor, the third prophet of this dispensation, acknowledged the sad truth that the leaders and the policies of the United States may not always operate in accordance with the Constitution; describing the Mormon exodus to Utah, he asked, “When we left [Nauvoo] what did we leave for? . . . Was it because [the] institutions [of the United States] were not good? No. Was it because its constitution was not one of the best that was ever framed? No. Was it because the laws of the United States, or of the States where we sojourned, were not good? No. Why was it? It was because there was not sufficient virtue found in the Executive to sustain their own laws” (Just and Holy 27). This explanation for the failure of government makes our role as citizens and saints abundantly clear; having been commanded by revelation to “befriend” the Constitution, we are bound by covenant to elect representatives, magistrates, judges, and presidents who will sustain its principles and protect our ability to exercise moral agency.

For this reason the First Presidency regularly issues letters read from the pulpit at the beginning of sacrament meeting and before we each individually renew our covenants urging us to participate in the political process by voting for “leaders who will act with integrity and are wise, good, and honest” (First Presidency Letter 9/22/2008). These letters invariably include a disclaimer noting that the church does not endorse individual candidates or political parties, and Brigham Young explains—at least in part—why this is so. He warns that “[i]t has become quite a custom, and by custom it has the force of law, for one party to mob another” (Just and Holy 14). President Young teaches that this spirit of partisan mobbing is degenerative, noting that “[w]hen the Supreme Ruler of the Universe wishes to destroy a nation, he takes away their wisdom in the first place, and they become insensible to their own interests, and they are filled with wrath; they give way to their anger, and thus lay the foundation of their own destruction” (Just and Holy 15). As a remedy, he exhorts the saints to ignore “political demagogues” and thus “put an end to party names, to party jealousies, and to party conflicts for ever” (Just and Holy 16). President Young called for the saints to condemn contentious, partisan politics precisely because, as Jesus Christ taught, “the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention” (3 Ne. 11:29). The First Presidency reminded church members during the 2008 United States presidential election campaign that “[p]rinciples compatible with the gospel may be found in various political parties” (First Presidency Letter 9/22/2008), and given our collective commitment to “seek after” principles that are “of good report or praiseworthy” (AF 13), we have an obligation to consider the ideas of each candidate carefully and impartially without respect to party affiliation. We must follow the counsel of Brigham Young to “select the best man [or woman we] can find” for each political office because our obligation as saints is to support principles, not parties, to elect upright individuals, not outspoken ideologues (Just and Holy 16).

As we act faithfully in our duty to befriend the Constitution, we will further the work of the founding fathers, who drafted that document in order to form a “more perfect union.” We revere the Constitution but recognize that the it was no more perfect in 1789, when it sanctioned slavery, than it was in 2009 or today, as “conspiring men” (D&C 89:4) continually claim that the Constitution sanctions all manner of moral atrocities. President Young taught that “[t]he signers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution were inspired from on high to do that work. But was that which was given to them perfect, not admitting of any addition whatever? No; for if men know anything, they must know that the Almighty has never yet found a man in mortality that was capable, at the first intimation, at the first impulse, to receive anything in a state of entire perfection. They laid the foundation, and it was for after generations to rear the superstructure upon it. It is a progressive—a gradual work” (Just and Holy 17). Dear reader, you and I are those “after generations,” and, like the founding fathers, it is our work—our privilege—to actively promote the progressive perfection of the nation in which we live. If we are lucky enough to see the day in which that work is completed, we will rejoice in the blessings of a state free of political parties and all other social divisions. In that day there will be “no contention among all the people, in all the land”; there will be no artificial, man-made divisions of “rich and poor”; and there will not be “any manner of –ites” (4 Ne. 13, 3, 17).

We know that multiple iterations of this more perfect state have existed on the American continent in the past and that North America will again be the site of such a society in the future. We know that the garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve lived in perfect peace and harmony, was located on or about the North American continent because when Adam was cast out of the garden he settled in Adam-ondi-Ahman (D&C 116). We know that the people of Enoch, who “were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness” (Moses 7:18), resided on the American continent because the prophet Ether foretells their return to this hemisphere (Ether 13:3). We know that the Nephites and Lamanites who lived in the years immediately following Jesus Christ’s visitation dwelt in perfect righteousness and happiness. Why have so many heavenly societies, societies that utopian planners have only dreamed of, made this continent their home? Because this is “a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord” (Ether 13:2). And because we understand the nature of this “good spot of ground . . . which [is] choice unto [the Lord] above all other parts of the land of [His] vineyard” (Jacob 5:25, 43), we understand that what has been in the past will be yet again, that that this land will yet live up to the founders’ dreams of a “more perfect union.”

The tenth article of faith proclaims that “[w]e believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built upon the American continent; that Christ will reign personally upon the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory” (AF 10). The Lord sent the Holy Ghost to provide a vision of this paradisiacal future and thus inspire the exploratory journey of Columbus, the migration of religious groups such as the Pilgrims and Puritans, and the revolutionary pen of Jefferson, and it is my testimony that each one of us are privy to that same inspiration as we obey the commandment to befriend the Constitution and as we work to perfect the nation that safeguards our moral agency. When Columbus arrived in the Americas, he thought that he had located Eden, and he prophesied that a paradisiacal Millennium would be spurred on by his discovery. He declared that “Our Lord with provident hand unlocked my mind, sent me upon the seas, and gave me fire for the deed. Those who heard of my enterprise called it foolish, mocked me, and laughed. But who can doubt but that the Holy Ghost inspired me?” (Just and Holy xviii). Not the Latter-day Saints, who know that Columbus really had found Eden—or at least, as he supposed, that Eden had originally been located in the New World. When John Winthrop led the first group of Puritans across the ocean to form a colony at Massachusetts Bay, he urged them to imitate the charity of Adam and Eve and to make their new home a second Eden “like a watered garden” (“Modell of Christian Charitie”). Through the grace of God, he and those with him understood the paradisiacal potential of this new land. When George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol building, he described the workers who would build that edifice of national government as “bees bestowing their industrious labour on this second Paradise,” the United States (1793 newspaper article). Whenever men with pure hearts have been willing to listen, God has revealed to them his paradisiacal plans for this land, and He will likewise bless us with an understanding of “many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God” (AF 9) that are yet to come if we earnestly seek to keep the commandments which he has already given us and befriend the Constitution. In the words of our sacred hymns,

“Then we’ll surely be united,
And we’ll all see eye to eye.
Then we’ll mingle with the angels,
And the Lord will bless his own.
Then the earth will be as Eden,
And we’ll know as we are known.” (#48, verse 4)

All Just and Holy citations are from the anthology of the same name, in which Ralph Hancock has collected prophetic ruminations on the Constitution and American government.

Grading the 2010 AP English Language Exam: Sample Essays

2010-07-10T09:46:00.002-04:00

This is the fifth part of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

You’re probably sick of hearing about the AP exam—but before I go, I want to give you a look at the single worst essay I graded during my time in Louisville and a piece of the best writing on humor I’ve ever seen. First the (worst) essay:

“Many people try to be comedy, act funny, and even draw humorists things but personaly that is just a gift that you have to be born with.

“If Mr. De Botton wasn’t a natural this process was very hard for him probably due to the fact that he has to try to impress people and a lot of people get intimated by that. There are also risk of being talked about and laughed at and even dead silences. So Mr. de Botton probably went through a lot to be as well known as he is now.

“In conclusion success doesnot just happen over night it takes time endurance and patients to make it happen.”

Yikes—wretched writing that has little, if anything, to do with the given prompt. Suffice to say that it earned a score of "1".

Now, an excerpt from the man who is probably my favorite living writer of prose, a mere half paragraph that helped me understand the 1970s—and humor itself—better than any other piece of writing I’ve ever read:

“If we are conducting our lives in the usual fashion, each of us serves as a constant source of embarrassment to his or her future self, and by the same formula, all ‘eras’ can be made to look ridiculous in retrospect. But the seventies have always been prone to more ridicule than their twentieth century cousin-decades, without anyone giving sufficient notice to the fact that it was the seventies themselves that originated the teasing (Annie Hall, Nashville, the Me Decade, ‘You’re So Vain’). It required no retrospection for the occupants of the zone now understood as the seventies to acknowledge the goofiness in all their pieties and solipsisms, and it is a mark of our own naïveté (at least) to suppose straight-faced young tax attorney going out on a Saturday night in 1974 wearing platform boots, glitter mascara, and his hair combed up into a two-foot Isro, for example, did not realize that he looked pretty silly. It’s just that looking like a fool was correctly understood to be a likely if not an inevitable result of the taking of risks. [201] The sense of liberation that resulted from such risk-taking, however conventionalized or routine it became, was felt for a little while to be well worth the price in foolishness. We are crippled in so many ways today by the desire to avoid fashion mistakes, to elude ridicule—a desire that leads atone extreme to the smiling elision of political candidates and on the other hand to the awful tyranny of cool—that this willingness to be foolish is hard for us to sympathize with or understand. In this age of Gawker.com, we have forgotten the seventies spirit of mockery that smirks at the pretensions and fatuities of others in a way that originates with and encompasses ourselves.” (200-201)

If you, like me, are a post-seventies being, I bet you understand the seventies better now. Not that I'd expect a "9" essay to be this good--but you can bet that this particular passage from Michael Chabon's Manhood For Amateurs (a fantastic, if occasionally R-rated, read) would make the grade. Out of the approximately 2,000 essays I graded, I think I probably gave out 10-15 grades of "9" and another 50 or so of "8." So approximately 3% of the essays I read deserved a cumulative score of 5 on the AP exam, which means that the Monk's official nephew, who just got word that he scored a 5 on the Language exam, is officially top 3% material--not that I needed the AP to tell me that.

Hope you enjoyed the blunders of student essays as much as I did; this is the last post on AP exams, and we're back to my regular eclectic fare in the coming days and weeks.

Happy Fourth!

2010-07-04T20:22:00.000-04:00

Grading the 2010 AP English Language Exam: Eyesores

2010-06-30T17:51:00.002-04:00

This is the fourth of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 5 (coming soon).

During a week in Louisville, I spent 53 hours reading student essays that were recorded in illegible scrawls requiring intense eyestrain to decipher. During that time, I graded more than 2,000 exams, spending a little less than a minute on each essay. I quickly grew tired of reading about Jon Stewart, Wanda Sykes, Chris Rock, Larry the Cable Guy, Tina Fey, and a slew of humorists I had never heard of before my arrival in Louisville. The only thing that pulled me through this slog of essays was the occasional gem in the rough, an essay whose unintentional comedy would lead to laughter. Let me share with you the last of these gems which students thought would impress exam readers:

The following are excerpts from actual exams; each excerpt is in italics, with my commentary in normal typeface.

• I think that humorists are to entertain and nothing else. If they were trying to send a message, wouldn’t they get a reply?

• Because television hosts like Stewart and Colbert are seen by millions, they know what they’re talking about. Sure—and because the National Enquirer is read by millions, I believe that aliens have abducted Britney Spears.
• Glenn Beck is a giant jerk.
• If he hear me tell a joke like that, he slap me faster than two jiggles of a jackrabbit’s ass. HUH?
• My brother and I are demon hunters who drive around the country in our 1967 Impala fighting the forces of evil. You know, suddenly the National Enquirer is looking a lot more credible.
• There are those who don’t like comedians because they take offense and one should not be so touch-e. You know what? Touché.
• There’s songs out that reveal people are devil worshippers. What is it with the demons and devils? Were these students possessed?
• For example, “Mary! Mary! How does your garden grow, filled with trash and gum wads.” This portrays how her sidewalks are filled litter. Dude—quit forcing Captain Planet onto Mother Goose!
• In my lifetime I have lived in a family of foolish people. Which explains you.
• Once a stand up comic such as Adam Sandler expressed the fact of him never being able to make a woman orgasim this put many people to understand that ‘your not alone.’ (Shaking head)
• Like a political cartoon on Obama that had mooses and elephants to represent the Republican and Democrat Party. Donkeys—Elephants and donkeys. And the plural is moose.
• But my favorite: Comedians point out the ugly truth so that even the airhead bimbo who wrote a similar paper to the one your reading now can understand the subliminal message. Their ability to humorously attack the wishy-washy statements of government without getting pimpslapped by federal agents is what makes humor’s role in society extremely vital. Now you’re talking—students who are bimbos writing about comedians getting pimpslapped—that’s more like academic discourse!

For more, see Part 3: Assimilation, or Part 5: Sample Essays (coming soon)!

Grading the 2010 AP English Language Exam: Prepare to be Assimilated

2010-06-28T12:13:00.001-04:00

This is the third of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, and Part 5 (coming soon!).

While the grading standards set forth in the official grading rubric for each essay question might seem to be straightforward, you’ll find that most graders disagree strongly as to what makes for an “adequate” essay versus an “inadequate” essay—and that those disagreements are even more stringent when you’re discussing minor variations: What distinguishes an inadequate 3 from an inadequate 4? An adequate 6 from an adequate 7?

The sorts of natural disagreements that any two individuals might have over these sorts of questions are complicated by grader demographics. I would estimate that approximately 50% of the 2010 English Language exam graders were high school teachers; another 35% or so were teachers at the community college level, and the remaining 15% were either graduate students or faculty members at major universities. Think, for a moment, about the implications of that spread—a university professor almost certainly grades papers of a higher quality than a community college professor, and a community college professor almost certainly grades papers of a higher quality than most high school teachers. This means that graders come into the process with widely divergent expectations which must be reconciled so that scores will be standardized and no student’s scores will be skewed by a single grader’s prejudice against writers who regularly split their infinitives.

In this sense, the “Reading,” which is how ETS refers to the week-long grading process, is a lot like the Borg—if you’re not prepared to be assimilated into a greater collective, you’re in for a rude awakening. The “Chief Reader” presides over the grading process; for the 2010 English language exam, this was a BYU professor named Gary Hatch who, tragically, died just a month before the Readingwas to convene and was replaced by a University of professor named David Joliffe. Joliffe oversees the entire process of grading the three essays, but three “Question Leaders” are also designated to oversee the grading of each question. These question leaders oversee between 300 and 400 graders, who are grouped into tables of ten, and each table is presided over by a “Table Leader.” When more than 1,100 graders descended on the 2010 AP English Language exam on June 11, 2010, they were greeted by table leaders who had already been onsite for two days deriving a consensus as to the which essays merited a score of 3, which a score of 4, etc.

These table leaders, in conjunction with the question leader, had copied sample essays that reflected the entire range of scoring possibilities to help graders develop standardized scoring criteria—but graders had to fall in line with the standards that table leaders developed over two days in just four hours. Naturally, this would produce heated disagreements at each table as to why one sample essay deserved a 4 when a university professor saw it as a 2 and a high school teacher saw it as a 6. For four hours we haggled over sample essays while the question leader periodically polled the room to determine whether we were arriving at consensus. When I raised concerns over the last sample essay before graders would switch over to “live books” of ungraded exams, my (wonderful) table leader stared at me with exasperation: “Monk, we have no more time for disagreement. This is a 7. See it as a 7. Be assimilated.”

So I abandoned my individual will and became part of the Borg.

Of course, readers were still adjusting to the grading standards at this point, so table leaders periodically spot checked every reader at their table during the first two days, re-grading every fifth essay or so. When table leaders felt that their charges were straying too far from the established standards—a scoring difference of more than one point—they pulled that reader aside and explained why the essay he or she had given an 8 was really a 4. My weak, fleshy brain was repeatedly disciplined for not adopting the mechanical correctness of the Borg. I resolved to do better.

The following are excerpts from actual exams; each excerpt is in italics, with my commentary in normal typeface.

There were two problems in the grading the exam that were particularly problematic for me. The first problem arose when students made statements that were clever—or at least required thought—but I wasn’t sure whether or not the subtleties of their prose were intentional or not. For instance:

• Humorists are a big joke. How is one to interpret this?
• Humorists are like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. He may not be real or the truth but he brings smiles to all. In an essay defending claiming that humorists are important players in society, how much credence can I give to the ironic undertones here?
• Harassment charges would be brought down on sexually explicit comics like Thor’s hammer. Maybe—but more to the point, is it wrong to invoke the god of thunder in an academic essay?
• Humorists are why we aren’t a communist nation. They keep us divided. This might be true . . . but does the student actually understand this argument?
• Humorists don’t wear the condom of censorship while breeding out the beautiful baby known as the naked truth. Well, when you put it that way, I guess they don’t. But do I reward you for a sophisticated metaphor or punish you for using informal language?

The second problem was a student tendency to describe works that I considered “serious” as “humorous” because they did political work—and the students understood that de Botton wanted them to talk about the political function of humor.

• As a result, I got students who cited the following works as “humorous” literature: Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (nothing like slavery for a good laugh!), Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Hamlet, and King Lear; Machiavelli’s The Prince (ah, the humor of despotism!); Orwell’s 1984; Miller’s The Crucible (and repression!); Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series (and ineptitude! Okay—that was a bit harsh); Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (did he even think about the title?); Thoreau’s Walden; Sinclair’s The Jungle (nothing funnier than drowning in a vat of boiling fat); Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings series (I admit that hobbits are funny); Ellison’s Invisible Man; Golding's The Lord of the Flies (whose macabre depictions of adolescent cruelty are NOT funny); Melville’s Bartleby (nothing like depression and suicide for a good laugh!); Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead; and Dante’s Divine Comedy. At least this last one had “comedy” in the title, but every one of these books is far more dark than comic, more tragic than titillating.
• We also had students who suggested that films were funny, including The Dark Knight and The Godfather. Yup—a barrel of laughs, those two. "Why so serious?"
• Perhaps most inexplicable were the list of political figures that students described as “humorists.” These included Gandhi (!), Martin Luther King Jr., John Locke, and Thomas Hobbes. Nothing funnier than Leviathan, let me tell you.

As a grader I wanted to reward students for what were, occasionally, intelligent analyses of challenging texts—but I also had to consider the fact that these students failed to understand the basic point of de Botton’s argument that humor makes political statements possible in circumstances when serious works such as the ones above would have been repressed or censored. That was a tough balancing act. Similarly, should I reward students whose arguments were sound but whose facts were faulty?

• Kurt Vonnegut, in his novel Animal Farm, satirizes communism. Well, no. Orwell satirizes communism—so does the student get credit or not?
• Dickens satirizes the French government in Les Miserables. Well, no. Victor Hugo does—credit or not?
• Satirical writers have been around since we came to North America. In Praise of Folly is one of the greats. The writer shows that no changes are ever occurring and we are a corrupt nation. First of all, In Praise of Folly was written by a Dutchman while Columbus was still alive, so there was no “nation.” But the rest of the argument was sound . . .
• Like a woman trying to cover up her blemish, society attempts to cover up its mistakes using a little puff of powder. Back to the ways in which comedians are pimples . . .
• Mark Twain wants to have someone institute an emancipation policy on slavery in Huckleberry Finn. Well—no, he doesn’t, because Abraham Lincoln emancipated the slaves 20 years before Huck Finn was ever published! But he does criticize slavery as an historical institution . . .

It was hard to know which students deserved the benefit of the doubt, and that question often made a significant difference in score.

Coming soon--Part 4: Eyesore

Grading the 2010 AP English Language Exam: The Rubric

2010-06-21T18:45:00.003-04:00

This is the second of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 (coming soon).

After the prompt, the official grading rubric is the most important document for any grader in assessing the quality of a given exam. Each essay is scored on a scale from 1-9, but graders are encouraged to interpret that range as a series of decisions. The first question every grader is supposed to ask: “Is this an upper-half or lower-half paper?” Lower-half scores include 1-4; upper half papers include scores 5-9.

Once the grader has identified the essay as “upper-half” or “lower-half,” they break it into a further subset. Lower-half papers are further divided into two groups. Those that are “Inadequate” have evidence that is “inappropriate, insufficient, or less convincing” or the argument is “inadequately developed.” Inadequate papers receive a score of 4; inadequate papers that demonstrate “less success” in responding to de Botton receive a score of 3. The other major category for lower-half papers is “Little Success,” for papers that “misunderstand the prompt, or substitute a simpler task by responding to the prompt tangentially with unrelated, inaccurate, or inappropriate explanation.” Papers that demonstrate “little success” received a score of 2; papers that demonstrated “little success” but were “especially simplistic” received a score of 1.

On the upper-half of the equation were two similar divisions; papers receiving a score of 8 or 9 were those deemed “effective” and those receiving a score of 6 or 7 are “adequate.” But the hardest score, by far, was the upper-half number that hovered somewhere between an “inadequate” 4 and an “adequate” 6; essays designated with a score of 5 are supposed to “convey the writers ideas” but in an “uneven, inconsistent, or limited manner.” Telling the difference between an inadequate 4, an uneven, inconsistent, or limited 5 and an adequate 6 was the most difficult distinction for any reader to make.

Graders were expected to “take everything into account: content, organization, diction, sentence structure, spelling—everything.” Everything, that is, except handwriting, because if we were allowed to factor handwriting into the grading, there would be few if any upper-half scores. Over a week of grading, nothing required more effort to grade than a superior essay hidden behind indecipherable handwriting—except maybe a bad essay hidden behind bad handwriting. Nonetheless, I resolved not to penalize bad handwriting, lest the ghosts of my youth—when I routinely received failing grades for my handwriting—come back to haunt me.

I’m sure that many exam-takers worry about typos and grammatical errors submarining their scores, but those issues were largely ignored by graders who recognized that every single one of these essays was a first draft written under pressure. Only if a paper contained “many and distracting errors in grammar and mechanics” did the rubric instruct graders that it could note receive a score “higher than a 2.” I ignored the vast majority of grammatical and mechanical errors that I saw over the past week, but some are just too delicious not to share.

The following are excerpts from actual exams; each excerpt is in italics, with my commentary in normal typeface.

• Without appreciating the irony of his mistake, one student misspelled Ellen Degeneres’ name as Degenderous. Do you think, perhaps, that he appreciated her stand-up routines on a subliminal level?
• In what might have been the single most wretched sentence of the entire exam, one student stated that, For example, writer of the pervious centreryes (100 years) relayed on satire in play, opera, book, and poemty. Holy Hannah! I’d rather be struck blind than read book and poemty written by this student for an entire centrery.
• Then there was the rather defensive—and lazy—student who asserted, I know how to do an argument essay, to bored to do it. Also, this gym is cluster phoebis to the max, I can’t work in this compact of a place. Hey, if you’re to tired, far be it from me to beg for more.
• This one would have been pretty clever, if only it had been intentional: The role of humorists in society can be characterized by bringing in to light the fears and destresses of society. Nothing to relieve distress like a little de-stressing comedy.
• . . . as for a humorist, they just wanted a good massage to be pass down. Hey, me too—after a day spent unmoving in these chairs, I could use a good massage myself.
• These humorists say unspeakle things. Yup—and so do you.
• Then there’s the student who said exactly what I think about most of the vulgar comedians I read over and over about during the week: There are comedic writers in every orafice of the entertainment business. You got that right—if only they’d stay in those orifices, instead of popping out, like pimples on . . . You know what? I think we should end this analogy.
• Many cartoonists are key players in hiddening hidden messages. No comment.
• I frequently heard about people that no one in their right mind would consider a humorist—including radio alienators such as Rush Limbaugh. The student, apparently, remembered that Limbaugh made Obama out to be an illegal alien. Or, at least, I assume that’s what s/he was thinking.
• Other conservative figures invoked by students included the Christian comic Brian Regan: Comedy is a tool Brian uses to evangulate people. I can only assume that evangulate is a composite of evangelize and strangulate—which, in all fairness, is a combination that I think does justice to Regan’s routines.
• In another Christian-themed gaffe, one student wrote, Screaming “Jesus sucks in church” is very inappropriate. Yes—and so is screaming “Jesus sucks” in church, which is what I think she meant.
• Many students had spent too much time listening to Stephen Colbert’s “Word of the Day,” and apparently trusted overmuch in his “truthiness”: Comedians show the idiocracy in subjects that must be addressed.
• Of course, such baffling assertions were often followed up with a recognition of the students' uncertainty; as though an AP grader might pop out of their paper and respond, I frequently found the question, Does this make any sense?
• Sometimes student responses did make sense—especially when they stated their point more than once: Protaining to this topic not only do a person like my self agree with Botton’s claims . . . but I also support it. Ok; glad we confirmed that one.
• Perhaps the single funniest spelling error was made in an essay describing Jonathan Swift’s famous “Modest Proposal” in which he satirically suggests that the British government raise Irish babies as food to alleviate the suffering caused by the potato famine; describing this cannibalistic suggestion, one student called Swift’s essay an outrageous and digesting solution to the problem. And, I’m sure the student would be quick to point out, Swift’s solution was also disgusting.
• But my favorite typo—bar none—came at the end of an essay, as the student concluded his argument with a rhetorical flourish: How else could this point be better statted? Err . . . do you really want me to answer that?

Go back to Part 1: The Prompt or forward to Part 3: Grader Assimilation.

Grading the 2010 AP English Language Exam: The Prompt

2010-06-19T09:09:00.004-04:00

This is the first of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5 (coming soon!).

Educational Testing Services— ETS—administers two Advanced Placement (AP) English exams, one that assesses students’ ability to write (English Language) and one that assesses student knowledge of famous works of literature (English Literature). On the appointed day in May every year high school students across the country line up to take these exams, hoping that their score, on a 1-5 scale, will allow them to test out of freshman composition in their college of choice; for most students this means that they need to score at least a 3 on the exam. Once students have completed the exam, ETS assembles the exams and transports them to a single location, where graders from across the country will assemble to read the essay portion. This year, that assembly took place in Louisville, Kentucky, where between 1,100 and 1,200 educational professionals—ranging from high school teachers to adjunct faculty at community colleges to graduate students to tenured faculty at Research I universities—descended to grade more than 350,000 English Language exams.

The AP English Language exam includes a series of multiple choice questions and three essay questions. Each essay question asks students to do something slightly different: the first asks students to synthesize and summarize three different sources of information; the second asks students to analyze the language of a selected passage of prose, usually a speech or persuasive essay; and the third asks students to construct an argument. Students write all three essays by hand in an exam booklet, and their final score (1-5) is determined by the averaging the score assigned to each essay and the multiple choice questions.

While every student writes three essays, a different grader reads each essay (to make sure that no student’s score is overly dependent on a single perspective) and each grader is assigned to a specific question. When I arrived at the first day of grading and registered as a reader, on Friday, June 11, 2010, I was informed that I would be grading essay question three: argument. I had already read the prompt for each of the essay questions as part of my preparation, but before I arrived in the cavernous hall that would be my home for the next week I re-read the prompt:

“In his 2004 book, Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton argues that the chief aim of humorists is not merely to entertain but ‘to convey with impunity messages that might be dangerous or impossible to state directly.’ Because society allows humorists to say things that other people cannot or will not say, de Botton sees humorists as serving a vital function in society. Think about the implications of de Botton’s view of the role of humorists (cartoonists, stand-up comics, satirical writers, hosts of television programs, etc.). Then write an essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies de Botton’s claim about the vital role of humorists. Use specific, appropriate evidence to develop your position.”

Rereading the prompt, I was excited—this was, I thought, clearly the most interesting of the three questions, and I looked forward to reading essays about funny people, events, and art for the next week. What I didn’t consider was the fact that many of my students would not understand the prompt at a basic level. I would definitely be laughing as I read these essays over the next week, but most of laughter would be prompted by the unintentional comedy of students’ misunderstandings and misstatements.

The following are excerpts from actual exams; each excerpt is in italics, with my commentary in normal typeface.

The first problem that students seemed to have was coming to terms with the definition of the word “humorist”—despite the root word “humor” and the many examples provided in the prompt. For instance, I had students who wrote:

• Humorist hmm . . . what is your opinion about this people? Most likely your thinking that they are humans who work to make other people laugh. Yes. You’re right. I was thinking that they are humans.
• [Humorists’] feelings are usually pure, unadulterated and unedited, stripped away of stupid niceties and fluffy language, the voice of humorists become the voice of reason. Um . . . right. This is how I’ve always thought of Robin Williams—the pure and unadulterated voice of reason.
• Although many satirists and comedians receive a lump sum of money after a days work, the majority do so out of compassion, and love for the people. So now humorists are both the voice of reason AND Christ figures? Who also seem to have a lot in common with Judas? I’m confused.
• Humorist can basically be your second parents. Methinks this student watched Adam Sandler’s Big Daddy one too many times . . .
• For example, the founding fathers of the United States would be considered as humorists. You know, I always thought that Washington was a funny guy.
• Humorists are emotionless and do not care for other people’s feelings. Of course not—that’s why they spend their lives making other people laugh.
• Commercials are also most of the time humorist. Um . . . you mean humorous?
• Humorists play a vital role in society along with all the other organisms in today’s world. Yup, humorists and gut bacteria—vital organisms.
• Pearl in The Scarlet Letter is a humorist. Yes, I always thought that Nathaniel’s novel about adultery, sin, and the Puritan culture of shame was hilarious. This, however, was only my second favorite Scarlet Letter reference—I couldn’t stop myself from laughing out loud when I read about the humorous circumstances of “Heather” (instead of Hester) and “Ruby” (instead of Pearl). At least the student remembered that the daughter’s name was a precious stone of some sort.

The second problem that students had with the prompt revolved around their understanding of who Alain de Botton was and what they needed to say about him. I had students who wrote:

• Botton will make the audience to be active because of his humor. He will not bore them and will not make them fall asleep. The purpose of being like Botton is to aim what people wants to hear. Me too. I want to be funny like de Botton too.
• Maybe Alain also believes in a better tomorrow; one where presidents can be safe from flying shoes or where chickens can cross roads without being questioned about their motives. Anonymous student, this is a tomorrow that I want to live in.
• Mark Twain and Alain de Botton sound similar to me. Me too. But please, continue: As soon as I read that Botton is a humorist writter Twain instintly popped into my head and that is a excellent writter. Yes, Twain writtes almost as well as you do. Botton may have been close to Twain, they may have been best friends. Well maybe they would have been friends—if they had lived in the same century!
• If people like Botton don’t like it then boo-hoo build a bridge, get over it! The world doesn’t revolve around you. People like him are so stupid. I hate people like him. Yikes! I hope they never use my name in an AP prompt.

The last prevalent misunderstanding of the prompt involved a failure to comprehend the word “impunity.” I could have pulled any number of samples just like these:

• Alain de Botton is against humorists things because they impunity message. Okay . . . misunderstanding the word impunity clearly wasn’t the only problem here.
• Do some of the things we hear, see, or read give us impunitive messages that can be harmful or dangerous? This one was fun to think about—how would you define impunitive?

Go on to Part 2: The Rubric

Once in a Lifetime . . .

2010-06-03T20:37:00.003-04:00

. . . a book like this comes along. Okay--maybe five times. Whatever. The point is that when I brought this book with me on a visit to my sister's house in Massachusetts, my brother-in-law, The Dub, who is himself much more entertaining than must-see TV, went wild. The Dub, who will tell you that he's only read 5 books cover-to-cover in his entire life, was so excited at the prospect of this book that he snatched it from me (after asking politely, as is The Dub's wont) and took it with him on a road trip, willing to pay late fees if necessary and to mail it back to North Carolina so that I could return it to the library from whence I had borrowed it. What book, pray tell?

Physics For Future Presidents
by Richard A. Muller

I was introduced to the title by the wildly entertaining Steph/vens (Levitt and Dubner, who are worth a read themselves) and immediately picked it up; after The Dub eventually returned it, I've been thoroughly well-informed (not that I'm considering a run for POTUS) and also entertained. Some educational teasers:

How much more does a kilowatt hour of power from AAA batteries cost than a kilowatt hour of coal? Try $999.992. That's right; an hour of kilowatt power from AAA batteries is $1000 an hour and almost $1000 more expensive than your coal powered wall outlet, which runs you just .8 cents for one kilowatt hour. Yikes--no more battery powered toys for the Monk's kids! A laptop battery, just for comparison's sake, is way more efficient, and only costs $4 per kilowatt hour (but costs $100 to replace)
Did you know that "steak has almost four times the energy of TNT; chocolate chip cookies, eight times as much? No wonder we are addicted to food! If you find the high energy content implausible, watch a hummingbird. It uses enormous energy in the nectar must be more than enough to cover the work being done by those rapidly beating wings that hold the bird in front of the flower. It is. Food is almost as good as gasoline," which has four times the energy of steak. Mmmm . . . too much talk about steak. Time to fire up the grill!
Did you know that it's possible for humans to fly under their own power? Don't jump off a tall building flapping your arms just yet, but do check out this picture:

That man's been eating his chocolate chip cookies! The plane is called the Gossamer Condor, and it was designed by the late Paul McCready; holy cow! I don't know how it takes off, but it's incredible.

Finally, I have a friend, Sassparilla, who's been living up the antioxidant life recently (Wo, there girl! Seriously!). She's been wondering why it is that POM-Wonderful and dark chocolate have been touting the health benefits of antioxidants. I didn't know before I read the book--but Mr. Muller has informed me and, hopefully, our next president: Everyone "already [has] about a 20% chance of dying of cancer, even if exposed to no human-created radiation. Nobody knows why. The 20% doesn't come from any proven environmental effect. Environmental radioactivity isn't sufficient. We know of no pollutants whose effect should add up to 20%. Where does this come from? It is a scientific and medical mystery. Here is one possibility: as our cells grow older, some of their genes just fail from 'old age.' The eminent biochemist Bruce Ames has suggested that some of these cancers may arise from long-term exposure to oxygen, the same chemical that makes fats rancid. If all of the growth regulators fail, even if for just one cell in the body, that cell will then begin to divide out of control, and cancer results. It's not easy to give up oxygen [DUH!], but this theory has led some people to consume more antioxidants to minimize the damage." Pass the Hershey's Dark, Sassparilla.

OK--I didn't even touch the sections on Terrorism (Holy Shnikes!) and Global Warming (from the 1950s through the 1970s climate scientists thought we were entering another ice age! because the testing of nuclear bombs was cooling the earth! seriously!). If you have any aspirations to the job of POTUS--or even to voting for the next POTUS--this book is for you. It's a must read. I mean . . . if The Dub read it--Number 6 in his whole life!--shouldn't you?

Eight: The Age of Accountability

2010-05-30T20:48:00.002-04:00

Toward the end of last week’s Gospel Principles class on “The Restored Church,” our teacher read in the manual from a list describing distinctive features of the restored Church of Jesus Christ, including the statement that “Children do not need to be baptized until they are accountable (eight years old)” (GP 99).

A non-member attending for the first time who had not spoken all class raised his hand and asked, “Where does the number eight come from?” Anyone who has ever seen a non-member ask a doctrinal question in a room full of relatively knowledgeable and experienced church members knows that we all began to respond at once.

The immediate consensus was that the answer to his question could be found in Moroni 8, and we quickly flipped to that chapter, where we read: “Listen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord and your God. Behold, I came into the world not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; the whole need no physician, but they that are sick; wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin; wherefore the curse of Adam is taken from them in me, that it hath no power over them; and the law of circumcision is done away in me. [9] And after this manner did the Holy Ghost manifest the word of God unto me; whereas, my beloved son, I know that it is solemn mockery before God, that ye should baptize little children. [10] Behold I say unto you that this thing shall ye teach—repentance and baptism unto those who are accountable and capable of committing sin; yea, teach parents that they must repent and be baptized, and humble themselves as their little children, and they shall be saved with their children” (Moroni 8:8-10).

While this passage clearly condemns infant baptism, there is little or no specific guidance as to when children cease to be “little” and begin to be “capable of committing sin.” But that this transition happens, and that it occurs in childhood, is made equally clear by revelation. The Lord speaks to Adam in Moses (in a passage lost from Genesis) to explain how his children would make the transition from innocence to experience that Adam himself experienced in the Fall: “And the Lord spake unto Adam, saying: Inasmuch as thy children are conceived in sin, even so when they begin to grow up, sin conceiveth in their hearts, and they taste the bitter, that they may know to prize the good. [56] And it is given unto them to know good from evil; wherefore they are agents unto themselves, and I have given unto you another law and commandment. [57] Wherefore teach it unto your children, that all men, everywhere, must repent, or they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God, for no unclean thing can dwell there” (Moses 6:55-57). At some point when children “begin to grow up,” but before they become adults, children sin and, therefore, must be taught to repent.

So why eight years old? Because the Lord commanded in the Doctrine and Covenants that “inasmuch as parents have children in Zion or in any of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents. [26] For this shall be a law unto the inhabitants of Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized. [27] And their children shall be baptized for the remission of their sins when eight years old, and receive the laying on of the hands” (D&C 68:25-27). These verses clearly establish the ecclesiastical mandate for waiting until eight for baptism (and, interestingly, emphasizes that the baptism of eight year olds, like the baptism of adults, is for “the remission of sins”), but leaves the connection between age eight and sin implicit; they imply that “sin conceiveth in their hearts” by age eight but do not state this explicitly.

The answer to our nonmember class member’s question was in the Doctrine and Covenants, but what, he asked, was the rationale for this age; wasn’t it somewhat arbitrary? The 68th section of the D&C was received in 1831, and as far as I have been able to ascertain, there were no other religious communities that had identified the age eight as an age of accountability; several sects, most notably the Anabaptists and, later, the Baptists, had rejected paedobaptism and been popularly named for the practice, but these groups typically waited until somewhat later in life before administering baptism and had not, as far as I know, identified a minimum age for baptism by that time.

There does not seem to have been, in the nineteenth century, any compelling reason to identify age eight as the age of accountability, but contemporary scientific research has demonstrated the wisdom of marking that age as a point at which children begin to be accountable for their actions. As Dale Kunkel argues in the Handbook of Children and the Media, “most children younger than about age 7 or 8 do not typically recognize that the underlying goal of a commercial is to persuade the viewer” (381). This suggests, at least to me, that children under the age of eight often—consciously or unconsciously—act under the influence of outside sources, whether those sources are commercials (“PLEASE CAN I GO TO CHUCKY CHEESE?”) or friends (“But Bobby said that word . . . why is it wrong?”), and hence are not fully accountable for their actions.

A second way of making the same point is to note, as Brad Bushman and Rowell Huesmann did, that “the correlation between a boy’s exposure to TV violence at age 8 and his aggression at age 18 was .31, whereas the correlation from age 8 aggression to age 18 exposure to TV violence was about zero” (HCM 233). In other words, exposure to casual violence causes viewers younger than age eight to act violently (and not vice versa; violent behavior does not cause an increase in the viewing of violence). This is because “children younger than 8 years cannot discriminate between fantasy and reality, they are uniquely vulnerable to learning and adopting as reality the circumstances, attitudes, and behaviors portrayed by entertainment media” (American Academy of Pediatrics, Pediatrics 108.5, p. 1223).

Age seven or eight is the point at which many children begin to recognize their own ignorance—that “wishing does not make it so.” As Kathleen Berger notes, “Children under age 6 often think they know everything and are unaware of the mistakes they make or the failures of memory that are evident to adults. In other words, their metacognition is almost nonexistent. That makes it more difficult to teach them, except by discovery and example” (The Developing Person Through Childhood and Adolescence 346). Berger’s findings suggest that children are incapable of understanding the logic behind moral imperatives—such as divine commandments—unless they 1) experience the consequences of breaking those commandments for themselves or 2) see someone else experience them. After age eight, they can reason through the consequences of disobedience without experiencing them for themselves. Berger explains that “[t]his movement away from egocentrism toward a more flexible logic is illustrated by research on 5- to 9-year-olds who were asked about two hypothetical boys—David, who thought chocolate ice cream was yucky, and Daniel, who found chocolate ice cream yummy. Most 5-year-olds (63 percent) thought David was wrong, and many felt he was bad or stupid as well. By contrast, virtually all (94 percent) of the 9-year-olds thought both boys could be right, and only a few were critical of David” (DPTCA 340). Instead of relying solely on their own experience of ice cream, 9-year-olds are able to assess the moral consequences of disliking ice cream and recognize that there is nothing inherently immoral about David’s lack of good taste.

Perhaps most importantly, age eight is also the approximate age at which children “understand reversibility, the principle that after being changed, a thing may be returned to its original state” (DPTCA 339). Children must be accountable and able to evaluate the morality of potential action without experiencing it for themselves before they can be baptized, but they must also be able to exercise faith in the healing, restorative power of the Atonement. It is this ability which will make the baptism of an eight-year-old efficacious, as he or she recognizes the opportunity to repent even when their newly acquired agency and moral reason fail them.

All in all, I am astounded at the number of key cognitive developments that occur in adolescent brains at or around age eight; they are a further testament to me of the inspired guidance of the Restoration, which made the age of eight the age of accountability long before these scientific studies and experiments confirmed the appropriateness of that standard.

I Told You That . . .

2010-05-18T21:38:00.002-04:00

. . . returned Mormon missionaries are like Israeli youth compelled to serve in the army. Dan Senor and Saul Singer's book, Start-Up Nation, points out that Israel is the country with the highest ratio of technology entrepreneurs per capita in the world. Senor and Singer attribute this to the leadership and international experience that Israeli youth gain while serving in the army; I suggested that their descriptions of Israeli youth sounded remarkably like returned missionaries. Now, BYU Magazine has provided evidence that my comparison has an empirical basis: "For 14 years BYU [and its legions of returned missionaries] has been ranked first in the nation for start-up companies per million dollars of research" (Spring 2010, 61).

More Incentive to Choose a Good-Looking Spouse

2010-05-16T08:32:00.002-04:00

In response to my latest offering on the ways in which love enlarges your soul (and mental capacity), the Monk's oldest sister asks the intelligent question, "Do you think any of this shared connection contributes to similar features as we age? Son to father, and husband to wife?" So glad you asked, Jo Jo.

“In a landmark study on the appearance of married couples, Robert Zajonc, a psychologist at Stanford University, and his colleagues asked twelve married couples to send two sets of individual portraits of themselves, one set taken in their first year of marriage (newlywed photos) and the other after twenty-five years of marriage (old-timer photos). The researchers put the newly-wed photos together in one pool and the old-timer photos in another, and recruited nearly eighty participants to guess which men and women were married and looked alike. It turned out that matching the newlywed couples was impossible—the raters were no more accurate than they’d be by dumb chance (the couples were all the same race, ethnicity, economic class, and approximate age). But when matching the old-timer photos, raters were shockingly spot-on. That’s because couples look more like each other one their silver wedding anniversaries than they do as newlyweds.

“Zajonc and his colleagues drew on emotional difference theory to explain what happens: in short, people who empathize with each other mimic each other’s facial expressions. Mimicry is an unconscious and involuntary process. When you mimic another person’s facial expressions, you subjectively feel that emotion or mood. Over time, with use, facial muscles either grow or atrophy, just like your biceps or calves. When facial expressions are repeated and habitual, like a ready smile or a constant grimace, they permanently etch a ‘look’ into [292] the face. Furrowed brows, puckered lips, stress lines, laugh lines, crow’s-feet, and lines between the eyes or around the mouth happen over the decades, just as running water contours rock.

“The happier the marriage, the more spouses grow to resemble each other. Zajonc surveyed the twelve couples in the study, asking them questions about their satisfaction in the relationship and the incidence of very happy or tragic experiences they had together over the decades. He found that the more they shared attitudes, the greater their mutual resemblance. That’s because they’d been laughing and crying and worrying together for so many years.” (Pincott DGRPB 291-92)

I don't have an MRI machine lying around, so I can't tell you whether or not the neuron networks that develop and make you smarter and increasingly connected to your partner when you're in love are the same as the ones that prompt you to mimic the facial expressions of those around you (mimicry or "mirroring" is something I recall reading more about in Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, but baby Monk's asleep in my office, so I can't confirm that recollection) but it wouldn't surprise me. I certainly believe that this process by which we grow to resemble those we love is an inevitable part of perfection.

Men and women are different, and they look different when they are first married. This is by divine design; as Elder David A. Bednar writes, "The natures of male and female spirits complete and perfect each other, and therefore men and women are intended to progress together toward exaltation. [. . .] For divine purposes, male and female spirits are different, distinctive, and complementary. [. . .] The man completes and perfects the woman and the woman completes and perfects the man as they learn from and mutually strengthen and bless each other" (Ensign 6/06, 83-84). Part of the process of complementing and perfecting that occurs in marriage involves willingly forsaking some of these differences and becoming "one flesh" (Gen. 2:24), something that Zajonc suggests we should think of more literally.

Hopefully this merging of visual identities will leave me a better looking man without dragging Mrs. Monk down too much. Thanks, as always, for the question!

"Love Unfeigned . . . Shall Greatly Enlarge the Soul"

2010-05-13T08:30:00.002-04:00

This is what the Doctrine & Covenants teaches--that "No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul" (D&C 121:41-42). I've argued elsewhere that this expansion of the soul (which Alma links to "redeeming love" [Alma 5:9]) is connected to the bridling of one's passions, but today I just want to briefly explore some of the science behind the ways in which love literally makes your soul (or at least your brain) expand.

"According to cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, in his book I Am a Strange Loop, two people in love internalize each other and create a shared state of mind that overlaps and EXPANDS their individual personalities. In essence, you form a 'we'--a merger of your partner's attitudes, tastes, habits, experiences, knowledge, goals, and dreams with your own. You can think of this identity, the 'we,' as a pattern of neurons in your brain." (Jena Pincott DGRPB? 306)

Love stimulates a part of the brain known as the angular gyrus, which is "a bridge between your brain and the outside world" used in "internalizing the external" (Pincott 307). Women primed with subconscious reminders of their loved ones (names that flash too quickly to process consciously) experienced significantly higher activity in their angular gyrus and consequently performed much better in tests of mental comprehension; reminding these women of their loves stimulated a "love-related network" of neurons in the brain that significantly increased test scores--and "the more passionate a woman was about her partner, the higher she scored" (308).

When I talked earlier about bridling passions, I suggested that this process increased an individual's control over physical influences--your appetites--and thus represented a process of creation, as internal order is imposed on external matter. My point today is that love itself--not just the bridling of physical passions or sex and the physical act of procreation--is a form of creation, as two individuals form a "we" and their selves expand as each absorbs the "attitudes, tastes, habits, experiences, knowledge, goals, and dreams" of the other. As Pincott writes, "Think of love as self-expansion, an internalization of the external. By association, you and your partner, the 'we' you share and the world beyond, are all part of a network that grows with your love" (308).

This is the sense in which I now understand the statement of Elder James E. Talmage that "We believe in a God who is Himself progressive, whose majesty is intelligence; whose perfection consists in eternal advancement--a Being who has attained His exalted state by a path which now His children are permitted to follow, whose glory it is their heritage to share" (Articles of Faith 390). I used to wonder how a God who is omniscient and omnipotent could advance eternally. What is there to learn? What new capacity is there to achieve? Now I see that eternal advancement as an accumulation of vicarious experience and variegated personality as His love encompasses each of His children and they become "one: I [Christ] in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one" (John 17:22-23). Our great opportunity is to love--and to receive, as a natural consequence of that love, new perspectives and expanded understanding.

Love unfeigned truly does enlarge the soul.

The Ordinance of Jesus Christ's Resurrection

2010-05-04T22:16:00.004-04:00

The subject of Jesus Christ’s resurrection is one that has often caused me to wonder, especially at Easter time as I am reminded of his victory over the grave. It’s not that I wonder whether he was resurrected—I know he lives with a divine surety. Rather, I wonder about the process of that first resurrection.

My mind (as previously noted with regards to the issues of sanctification and justification) likes order, and the scriptures that describe Jesus Christ’s victory over the grave are not orderly; they seem to disagree with each other as to how the resurrection was accomplished. Take, for instance, the words of Paul: “And God hath both raised up the Lord, and will also raise up us by his own power” (1 Cor. 6:14). Elsewhere he writes, “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 15:57). The agency here is clear: Heavenly Father (God) resurrected Jesus Christ.

But the gospel of John presents an apparent contradiction; Christ teaches that “no man taketh [my life] from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again” (John 10:18). Here Jesus Christ is an autonomous agent who brings about his own resurrection.

And just to muddle things up, let’s look at Lehi’s statement regarding the Christ’s death and resurrection: “[the Holy Messiah] layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise” (2 Ne. 2:8). Agency here is not nearly so clear as in the first two examples, but seems to involve two different members of the Godhead: the Son (who acts) and the Holy Ghost (who makes that act efficacious).

So which is it? The Father, Son, or Holy Ghost? Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, in his excellent book, Christ and the New Covenant, attributes this miracle to the Son: “The message [of Christianity] is that a man who was dead did, by his own power, infuse life back into his own body, never again to experience the separation of his spirit from that body in time or eternity. In so doing, he magnificently and magnanimously provided, by that same power, a similar experience for every other man, woman, and child who would ever live in this world” (238). So too, Elder Russell M. Nelson, who said of the Christ that “He brought about his own resurrection” (“Life after Life,” Ensign 5/87).

So if modern apostles are so clear on this point—that Jesus Christ resurrected himself—what are we to make of the numerous scriptural verses (and not all in the Bible, either) that suggest otherwise? These are only a few of the problematic verses:

“And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of men” (Mosiah 15:8).

“This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses” (Acts 2:32).

“Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly” (Acts 10:40).

“...believe in Jesus Christ, that he is the Son of God, and that he was slain by the Jews, and by the power of the Father he hath risen again, whereby he hath gained the victory over the grave.” (Mormon 7:5)

“The God of our fathers raised up Jesus” (Acts 5:30).

These verses—scriptures that attest to the Father’s role in Jesus Christ’s resurrection—make sense and can be reconciled with scriptures that attribute Christ’s resurrection solely to his own power if we recognize the resurrection as an ordinance. The prophet Joseph Smith, describing the resurrection, said that,

“...the spirit is a substance; that it is material, but that it is more pure, elastic and refined matter than the body; that it existed before the body, can exist in the body; and will exist separate from the body, when the body will be mouldering in the dust; and will in the resurrection be again united with it.

“Without attempting to describe this mysterious connection, and the laws that govern the body and the spirit of man, their relationship to each other, and the design of God in relation to the human body and spirit, I would just remark that the spirits of men are eternal, that they are governed by the same Priesthood that Abraham, Melchizedek, and the Apostles were: that they are organized according to that Priesthood which is everlasting, ‘without beginning of days or end of years,’—that they all move in their respective spheres, and are governed by the law of God” (TPJS 163).

To summarize: the “mysterious connection” that binds matter and spirit together “in the resurrection” is “governed by the same Priesthood” that makes every other aspect of our salvation and exaltation possible. Brigham Young later confirmed what Joseph here intimates—that resurrection is a priesthood ordinance. He explains to the Saints that “[w]e have not, neither can we receive here [on earth], the ordinance and the keys of the resurrection” (JD 15:137).

And how does understanding that resurrection is an ordinance reconcile conflicting scriptures that alternately attribute Christ’s resurrection to his own agency, to that of the Father, to the power of the Spirit—or, as Brigham Young posits, to an angel? (BY: “Jesus Christ’s body was called from the tomb by the angel” [JD 8:260].) Recognizing that resurrection is an ordinance clarifies this conundrum because every ordinance presupposes the existence of a priesthood administrator and a patron who actively participates in the ordinance. In this case, Christ was the patron—or recipient—of the ordinance; he “received” resurrection in the same way that you or I “receive” baptism.

Brigham Young explained that the power to resurrect can only be held by those that themselves possess an immortal body of flesh and bone. Speaking of Joseph Smith, President Young said, “His spirit is waiting for the resurrection of the body, which will soon be. But has he the power to resurrect that body? He has not. Who has this power? Those that have already passed through the resurrection—who have been resurrected in their time and season by some person else, and have been appointed to that authority just as you Elders have with regard to your authority to baptize. You have not the power to baptize yourselves, neither have you power to resurrect yourselves; and you could not legally baptize a second person until some person first baptized you and ordained you to this authority. So with those that hold the keys of the resurrection” (JD 6.275). Thus “we cannot finish our work, while we live here” and resurrect ourselves, “no more than Jesus did while he was in the flesh” (JD 15.137). Even if Christ possessed the power to resurrect himself, he could not have held the keys as a spirit (remember that Moses and others had to be translated so that they could hold and pass keys on through the physical laying on of hands).

But if Jesus was the patron in the ordinance of resurrection—if he was resurrected by an immortal Father who then conferred the keys of resurrection on him—then how are we to understand the statements of Elders Holland and Nelson, of scriptures that attribute the resurrection to Christ’s own power and divine inheritance? Those scriptures make sense if we think of the resurrection as an ordinance analogous to the healing of the sick. President Spencer W. Kimball said that when priesthood holders anoint the sick with consecrated oil, “the major element is the faith of the individual when that person is conscious and accountable” (“Kimball Speaks Out,” New Era 10/81). In other words, the power of healing rests primarily with the individual being healed, with the patron and not the priesthood administrator. This is the same point made by Elder Dallin H. Oaks in his recent talk on priesthood blessings: blessings draw their power from the faith of the individual receiving the ordinance and are efficacious only when there is sufficient faith.

This, then, is the understanding of Christ’s resurrection that I now embrace (until I receive further light and knowledge): He received the ordinance of resurrection at the hands of the Father, as he received the ordinance of baptism at the hands of John the Baptist, in order to “fulfill all righteousness . . . humbleth himself before the Father . . . [and] set the example before [the children of men]” (2 Ne. 31:6-9). He received the ordinance as a patron and so could not be said to have resurrected himself—but his faith provided the power that made the ordinance efficacious. Perhaps, because of his divine nature and sinless life, he could have had the power to resurrect himself and conquer death without the Father’s intervention—but it seems consistent with gospel principles that the priesthood be used only to “bless others” (Eyring, “God Helps…” Ensign 11/07) and not to perfect his own salvation.

This is a hard thing for me to wrap my head around … insights welcome.

So that's why . . .

2010-04-23T08:30:00.006-04:00

. . . Mrs. Monk and I have such a happy marriage. For those not in the know, we're celebrating our sixth wedding anniversary today, and thanks to Jena Pincott's Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes? (a fascinating read on "the science behind sex, love, and attraction") I now understand the reason for our marital bliss. In "a study on marital happiness . . . psychologists at UCLA found that . . . [t]he best predictor of a good marriage . . . is when the wife is much hotter than her husband. Presumably, the husband works harder in the relationship and is less likely to cheat, and the wife feels more secure" (Pincott 236).

As you can see for yourself, this would explain why the beautiful Mrs. Monk . . .

is happily married to me:

My Crippled Lamb

2010-04-04T07:01:00.006-04:00

A poem in honor of my nephew, Benjamin McKay Orton, on the occasion of his eighth birthday:

Inside, a ewe cried out in pain;
Outside, the very sky was torn
By lightning and full sheets of rain
The night my crippled lamb was born.

The doctor had prepared a shot
And moved with haste to take the life
That nature had so dearly bought
With bloody, elemental strife.

I should not have, and yet I cried
Out, “Stop!” and volunteered to care
For that small life which else had died
Without my intercession there.

I spoke, and he, he looked aghast,
Till pity moved him to explain:
“You’ll save the lamb--but at what cost?
What of your freedom will remain?

“This crippled lamb will tether you,
Discourage you from leaving home;
In years to come you’ll grow to rue
This lamb you cannot leave alone.”

My soaring spirits fell back flat,
Depressed. But when push came to shove,
I held my ground, determined that
Mere reason would not conquer love.

Yet in the intervening years,
I learned that reason’s price is steep;
I bathed my crippled lamb in tears
As love oft gave me cause to weep.

This lamb for whom I’d promised care
Had constant need of food and drink,
And carrying it everywhere
Left me so weary I would sink

Down at the end of day and cry,
“Have mercy, Lord, on foolish me!
My heart has obligated my
Poor brain beyond capacity.”

No knight came riding in relief;
My lamb remained. And so, at length,
I put away my childish grief,
Returned to work with all my strength.

Then my bruised shoulders seemed somehow
Much broader than they had before.
My shoulders were still bruised, but now
They better fit the load I bore.

My crippled lamb is crippled still--
And will be until it is dead
And buried in that far off hill
Where all infirmities have fled.

The shepherd of that hill is he
To whom I am a crippled sheep,
A doctor who will set me free
From sin and death’s eternal sleep.

Then we shall gambol joyfully,
My Lord, my little lamb, and me,
And in that day His words shall be,
“Fear not, you did it unto me.”

Happy birthday, Benji!

The Doctor Is In

2010-04-01T20:56:00.002-04:00

From now on, you can call me Dr. Monk--at least if you're one of my students. As of Tuesday, I've completed all requirements for a PhD in early American literature, which leads me to wonder--now that I am a doctor and NOT a graduate student any more (hooray!)--are there things that I should do differently? Fortunately, there is a book to answer my question: Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think.

To be fair, Groopman's book is much more interesting than its title would suggest (which is saying something, since I found the title to be quite intriguing). It would be far more accurate to title his book, "How All People Think in Certain Situations, With Illustrative Examples from the Medical Profession." Groopman's basic point is simply this: because doctors are subject to lapses in judgment and the curious tricks that the human brain plays on us (more on this in a bit), patients need to be their own advocates (or have a relative/interested party present to be an advocate for them when they are too sick). The judgments of doctors, Groopman notes, are invariably colored by the same irrational influences that affect each one of us. Most notably, doctors are less likely to provide quality treatment to patients they dislike (for any number of reasons), who provoke "a visceral sense of disgust":

"That disgust pushes you away from him. Of course, as a doctor, it is your job to diagnose and treat him properly, but, consciously or subconsciously, you want to get the job over with and send such a man on his way. In particular, doctors consider people who seem not to be caring for themselves--alcoholics with cirrhosis, heavy smokers with end-stage emphysema, massively obese people with diabetes--as to some degree less deserving of their time and attention." (45)

This tendency to provide substandard care for people that doctors dislike shouldn't be surprising--no matter how much a doctor might try to eliminate that tendency. The most important and meaningful insight from Groopman's book (for me) was the part that heuristics play in medical diagnoses. If you watch a show like House

in which experienced doctors (read medical geniuses) teach interns how to recognize rare (impossible) diseases and medical conditions, you invariably see the older physician lead the students through a series of questions and answers: "What are the patient's symptoms?" "What conditions match those symptoms?" "What sort of tests would you run to confirm that the patient has these conditions?" Groopman confirms that this is exactly the way in which new physicians are trained--yet he also explains that research on the diagnostic process of doctors suggests that none of the experienced physicians who lead these catechetical exchanges actually uses such a logical process to diagnose their patients. Instead they use something called heuristics.

Heuristics--at least in this context--refers to the sort of immediate, intuitive understanding that Malcolm Gladwell discusses in Blink

(which is a good book, but it is really a book about race, not psychology, and since race doesn't exist, I've got issues with some of its implications). In other words, most doctors diagnose you without thinking through your symptoms and the vast store of knowledge imparted by medical school in any sort of a systematic way. Instead, what they do is recognize your illness. They've seen your type before; you have _______. In this sense, doctors are a lot like chess players. The most reliable indicator of a chess player's skill is the number of games s/he has played. Even computers can't think through all of the steps ahead in a logical fashion and guarantee a victory--there's just too much calculation involved. Instead, computers--and the best chess players--have a sort of pattern recognition system in their head. They beat you not because they can "see 10 moves ahead" but because they've played a similar game before and they recognize the way in which the pieces are arranged, the likely outcomes.

Doctors (and all of us) have the same sort of pattern recognition system, and it's a good thing they do. If doctors had to systematically think through symptoms and match them to diseases every time they examined a patient, the medical system would be even MORE inefficient than it already is. For the most part, this heuristic approach to diagnosis is a good thing--unless you're the patient that doesn't fit the pattern. Groopman's most striking example is that of a forest ranger, a wiry, fit man who has all the classic symptoms of a heart attack but who is released without treatment because he looks fit and is in his forties. the doctor didn't consider heart attack as a possibility because the patient didn't fit his experience of what a heart attack patient looks like.

So--the next time you're at the doctors and you think you might not fit the pattern, speak up. Ask questions. Be your own advocate. And if you come to Dr. Monk's class late and sleep through, be sure to let him know that you aren't hung over, that a family member just died, and you were at the hospital all night holding his/her hand. Because I think like a doctor now--just like the rest of you.

Adam's Transgression: A Necessary and Merciful Injustice

2010-03-19T12:00:00.006-04:00

When I taught lesson 6 on "The Fall of Adam and Eve" from the Gospel Principles manual a month ago, and again last week while I listened to someone else teach the same lesson in Elders Quorum, the same question was asked:

"Why did the Fall have to involve transgression?"

It is a question on which the Church has no official position. Elder Dallin H. Oaks, of the Quorum of the Twelve, taught in a 1993 General Conference Address titled, "The Great Plan of Happiness" (and it's a MUST READ), that "For reasons that have not been revealed, this transition, or ‘fall,’ could not happen without a transgression—an exercise of moral agency amounting to a wilfull breaking of a law.” No one revelation has specifically answered this question, but I think an answer is at least suggested in the revealed canon of scripture.

My understanding of the need for transgression in the Fall stems from scriptures dealing with the resurrection. In the heavenly councils that preceded earth life, the Lord decreed that “they who keep their first estate shall be added upon” (Abr. 3:26), a scripture that the Gospel Principles manual explains gave all those who supported the Savior in his role as Redeemer “the right to receive mortal bodies” (GP 16). Our mortal bodies are the blessings which have been ‘added upon’ us as a reward for keeping our first estate. But scripture seems equally clear in explaining that the reward for keeping our first estate is not a mortal body; it is an immortal body. All who kept the first estate will receive a mortal body, and Alma teaches that every one of those mortal bodies will eventually be resurrected and become a perfect, immortal body, regardless of whether or not they keep their second estate here on earth: “The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form” and “this restoration shall come to all” (Alma 11:43-44). If the reward for keeping the first estate is a mortal body and all mortal bodies will unconditionally be resurrected, then it seems that the Lord’s real reward for keeping the first estate is that “all men become incorruptible, and immortal” (2 Ne. 9:13). This only seems just since “if the flesh should rise no more our spirits must become subject to that angel who fell from before the presence of the Eternal God” (2 Ne. 9:8), and those who kept their first estate would, ultimately, become the servants of Satan and those who lost their first estate with him.

Our sojourn on earth allows the Lord to see “who [will] keep their second estate” (Abr. 3:26) by obedience to his commandments and necessarily involves “opposition in all things” (2 Ne. 2:11), so the Lord could not properly evaluate our willingness to keep this second estate if we enjoyed paradisiacal or immortal bodies in which “spirit and element, [are] inseparably connected” and perfectly harmonious (D&C 93:33). For this reason, we need to experience earth life in a fallen, mortal body in which we can learn how to make our own unruly, elemental “flesh becom[e] subject to the Spirit” (Mosiah 15:5) as a prelude to wielding divine powers of creation in the eternities after the manner of Jesus Christ, who created “all things . . . by the power of my Spirit” (D&C 29:30-31). We clearly need to experience mortality, but the Lord could not simply place Adam and Eve in fallen bodies because doing so would prevent him from fulfilling the unconditional promise that all those who kept their first estate would eventually receive immortal bodies. As Alma teaches, “the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back again evil for evil” (Alma 41:13), and if we had been created with fallen bodies, the Lord could not fairly reward “the just and unjust” (Acts 24:15) alike with perfect, immortal bodies; the wicked could not lay claim to an immortal body on the basis of their own merits or on the basis of their faith in Jesus Christ. But, because Adam and Eve were given immortal bodies in the creation, immortality is what Alma calls our “natural frame,” and “all things shall be restored to their proper order, every thing to its natural frame—mortality raised to immortality, corruption to incorruption”

Christian theologians have spilled gallons of ink in explaining the justice of our Fall in Adam and Eve because they acted as representative heads of humanity, but Alma’s words suggest the exact opposite, that our birth into mortal bodies is technically unjust—in the same way that Eve technically transgressed God’s law by eating the fruit—because our natural state is one of immortality and incorruption. Jacob explains that “as death hath passed upon all men, to fulfill the merciful plan of the great Creator, there must needs be a power of resurrection” (2 Ne. 9:6). The resurrection must come because our Fall in Adam and Eve is an unjust but necessary consequence for actions over which we had no control, and the Fall, or death by Adam’s transgression, is merciful because it makes possible the trial of our second estate while guaranteeing that we will all receive the immortal bodies promised to us as a reward for keeping our first estate. In other words, revealed scripture seems (to me) to suggest that Adam’s transgression was necessary because it made it possible for the wicked to receive an immortal body—their reward for keeping the first estate—while still allowing them to “prove them[selves] herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them” (Abr. 3:25) while in mortality.

Without Adam's transgression, none of us would be entitled to an upgrade on our mortal bodies; the Lord could equitably only resurrect and immortalize those who exercised faith on him. As Alma notes, our redemption is separate from our resurrection because our release from death was necessary (according to God's justice), while our redemption from sin is a freely given gift; that is why the wicked dead can be "as though there had been no redemption made" even though they have already been resurrected (Alma 12:18). Adam's transgression is unjust because it unfairly consigns people who did not participate in the Fall to a mortal existence. It is merciful because it allows us all to prove that we will keep our second estate without risking the mortal body we won by keeping our first estate (forgoing double jeopardy, as it were). It is a merciful injustice.

“I do not know the meaning of all things” (1 Ne. 11:17), but I know God loves me, and I want to know more about his great plan of happiness. With this understanding of the need for transgression in the Fall, it seems I know just a little bit more than I did before.

On Agency

2010-02-18T10:18:00.002-05:00

Due to a fluke of D.C. weather and a prophetic mandate, our stake conference was postponed this past weekend, which meant that our Elders Quorum and Relief Society enjoyed the Gospel Principles lesson that most Church units will be having this weekend on agency. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we tend to use the words agency and choice interchangeably, but the two words are not synonymous. Choice refers to a specific act of selection, while agency refers to the power of acting. It is, perhaps, worth noting the etymology of both words. Choice derives from the French choisir, “to perceive,” while agency is from the Latin ago, agere, “to act.” In other words, agency refers to the exercise of decision-making power, while choice is more closely related to the perception of different alternatives. To say that we have agency is to acknowledge that God has empowered us to choose between good and evil in all circumstances, whereas choice involves a more limited understanding of a singular and particular set of options. To wit: I have been empowered by my wife to choose the dinner menu every week; I have agency when it comes to meals and can eat what I wish (or at least what I am willing to pay for, which is somewhat more problematic). My children, on the other hand, have a rather limited choice when it comes to meals; they cannot eat candy and cereal (which is what they would select if they had been given agency with regards to the menu). Instead, they have to eat what is on their plate or sit on the stairs and go hungry (and if you’ve read our annual family Valentines update, you know that this is not always an easy choice).

But agency and choice are also different in another sense. Agency is linked to the word agent and suggests that the power to act is exercised on behalf of someone, either another individual or ourselves. At times my actions represent only myself (as when I give a grade to a student in one of my classes), but I can also, on occasion, act as a representative of someone else (as when I give a grade in my current capacity as a teaching assistant; the professor is ultimately responsible for that grade, but I am empowered to act on his behalf). Now, when you and I come to the earth, the Lord has made it clear that our actions represent only ourselves; in describing the children of Adam and Eve, He said that “it is given unto them to know good from evil; wherefore they are agents unto themselves” (Moses 6:56). The challenge of mortality is learning to transcend this starting point.

The worst thing that could happen is that we could become self-absorbed, using our agency only to benefit ourselves. This is the result described by Mormon, who describes it as “a cause of much sorrow among the Lamanites; for behold, they had many children who did grow up and began to wax strong in years, that they became for themselves, and were led away by some who were Zoramites, by their lyings and their flattering words, to join those Gadianton robbers” (3 Ne. 1:29). We begin as agents unto ourselves, but if all we do with that agency is become for ourselves—lose ourselves in a ceaseless and, inevitably, fruitless search for self-satisfaction—we have failed. But if we are not to become for ourselves, what is the alternative?

The goal of this life, as it pertains to agency, is best described in the Old Testament, where the Lord commands Moses to “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When a man shall make a singular vow, the persons shall be for the Lord by the estimation” (Lev. 27:2). Here singular is an adjective that describes separation, so a singular vow should be understood as a vow that sets the individual apart. The word persons might likewise be better understood if we read it as something like passions, appetites, will. Thus, the entire verse might be more clear if it was translated: “When a man makes a vow to separate himself (from the world), his passions, appetites, and will shall be—or become—for the Lord.” God was really telling Moses that covenants help us become for the Lord by aligning our will, appetites, and passions with his. That is the reason for which we have been given agency, so that we can become for the Lord.

Once we have made covenants and become for the Lord, we are His agents, no longer agents unto ourselves in the way that Adam and Eve’s children were but agents unto the Lord. This is the point of the Lord’s message to Newel K. Whitney and Sidney Gilbert in the Doctrine and Covenants: “Wherefore, as ye are agents, ye are on the Lord’s errand; and whatever ye do according to the will of the Lord is the Lord’s business” (D&C 64:29). Once we have made covenants, we have exercised our power as agents unto ourselves for the last time; from that point forward, we are agents unto the Lord. You occasionally will hear rebellious individuals who have a rudimentary understanding of agency say something like, “I don’t have to go to church if I don’t want to; I have my agency.” But these individuals have missed the point. As baptized members of the church we still have agency—power to act—but we have already agreed to use that power as agents of Jesus Christ. We’ve already made our choice. Our agency or power to act will, paradoxically, continue to increase in strength as we abandon the idea of choice and remember that we have already made the only choice that really matters: the choice to become an agent for the Lord.