Of Darkness and Light

As far as I am aware, man is the only animal with a conscience. This is not that animals do not feel bad from time to time. Anyone who has every been around a dog knows that they can evince something that resembles shame when you get mad at them. However, like Robert Burns said of that ill-fated mouse whose cozy winter home the Poet's plow so rudely overturned:

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

Man is doomed by his intellect to suffer for the pains of the past and fear for the future. That is why, perhaps, so many of the world's mystical traditions encourage their initiates to put the future in God's hand, the past in His mercy and become immersed in the present. So taught the Taoists, the Stoics, the Sufis, the Christian Mystics, and even Jesus Christ Himself. Consider these words:

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself ~Matthew 6:34

A few years ago, a heard what was a paradigm shifting sermon for me by Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. It was October of 2000 in the Saturday Afternoon session of General Conference. Elder Oaks spoke on Becoming. He said:

[T]he Final Judgment is not just an evaluation of a sum total of good and evil acts--what we have done. It is an acknowledgment of the final effect of our acts and thoughts--what we have become.

Not long before this I had encountered as a missionary for the Mormon Church an angry minister of another faith who accused me of believing that each good deed somehow got me a certain number of "points" with God and that I need only achieve a particular threshold in order to enter heaven. Having only said, "Hello," to him, I was startled by this brazen declaration and no manner of refutation on my part could dissuade him of his error. However, I though a lot about his words and about the perceptions our words and actions can give to others. I have addressed this topic many times before in this site.

Elder Oaks' talk, however, gave me great clarity. Many more scriptural passages became clearer like Jesus' parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16), which Elder Oaks cites. It is not the things we do that matter, but the effect of the things we do on our soul. This is at once comforting and frightening.

On the one hand, it means that where we labor, whether it be as Prophet, Relief Society President, or the guy who vacuums the Church on Saturdays, does not matter at all because the ultimate goal is the effect of our work on our soul. Elder Oaks notes as an example that, "the pure love of Christ" (Moro. 7:47), is not an act but a condition or state of being. Charity is attained through a succession of acts that result in a conversion. Charity is something one becomes. Thus, as Moroni declared, "except men shall have charity they cannot inherit" the place prepared for them in the mansions of the Father (Ether 12:34; emphasis added)." Doing charitable things does not matter nor does the size of the charitable deed; it is that we become charitable beings. Thus repentance makes more sense. We can never truly ameliorate or mitigate the bad effects of our poor choices and sins. Indeed, we may be forced, as Paul with his thorn in the flesh, to suffer for our bad choices all the days of our probationary mortality. However, we can become better in our souls and through the mercy, grace, and charity of God and Our Savior, we can return and be sanctified though this ultimate end may not come for many years even after our mortal deaths.

On the other hand, we learn here that only true repentance that wrenches the very roots of our souls will ever suffice to obtain God's grace and mercy. The Prophet Joseph Smith said that we would all be tried as Abraham and our very heartstrings would be wrenched. The purpose in all this is not to torture us, but to purify our desires. Hence there are scriptures that say we will be judged by the very desires of our hearts.

The one raised to happiness according to his desires of happiness, or good according to his desires of good; and the other to evil according to his desires of evil; for as he has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall he have his reward of evil when the night cometh. (Alma 5:41)

And yet, throughout all the days of our erring mortality, we are all full of darkness and light warring within us. Each of us has different strength and we fall to different temptations according to our desires.

It is overwhelming sometimes. I often feel beset with my failures and weaknesses. In quiet moments when I should feel peace, I hear only the voice of self recrimination. I am convinced that cynics and idealists are really the same class of being, but we cynics, though we hope for perfection and beauty, see too often the failure. We over emphasize the bad perhaps to justify our own failings.

Light and Dark are continually at war within us. The more I ponder this, the less I am inclined to judge any man for his sins. I cannot do it. He is tied to me in the same ultimate endeavor. At stake is the very integrity of an immortal soul. How can I dare to cast one of those aside? C. S. Lewis remarked that when he looked upon suffering souls, he saw gods. The Bible tells us that we are gods (see Psalms 82:1-6). But fallen so far we little resemble what once we were when we walked with Angels for a time. We are as much now like God as a pebble resembles a mountain.

Lately I feel that I have been trying to compensate for what Hemingway called, "the burden of a happy childhood." Through this, I have come to understand the wisdom of what Jesus told the Pharisees who endlessly debated the measuring of tithes and the "deep doctrines" of God's presence in the Burning Bush as if such could possibly affect their souls while they omitted the true "deep things of God" as Paul termed them. Jesus said:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. (Matthew 23:23)

Mercy, faith, judgment, hope, charity, peace. These are the doctrines upon which it is our duty to meditate. Oh be sure to pay your tithes, as Jesus said. He never advocated neglecting these temporal duties, but rather He cautioned us to look at what underlies the Law. In doing so, the very powers of heaven distill themselves upon our souls.

Hope, Life, and Love

Words, a central theme in my life, are sadly insufficient. Like paint on a canvas, they cannot ever fully capture the world they seek to represent. They are symbols that point our mind on to the Truth that stands behind them. Because of this, words are messy and sloppy. Meanings spill over from one word to another tainting this idea or that thing. They are loaded with emotions that obscure the object, but they remain, however feeble, our main source of communication.

But not the only. There are subtle contextual clues, a wink, a hesitation, a nod. Then there is soul communication; when spirit connects with spirit and pure knowledge and truth and emotion are exchanged. I have had that experience in my life; not nearly so often as I would like.

This brings me to my themes: faith, hope, love, charity, life. I do not believe I can truly discriminate among these to the extent that I can say where one ends and where another beings. How does faith differ from hope. In my mind's eye I see a non-Euclidean plane of hypergeometric, interlocking Venn diagrams. Words, in a instance such as this, can obfuscate the truth. How distinct, really, are faith, hope, and charity. In my experience they are so intertwined that I can scarcely disentangle my thoughts.

Hope is the first and the last of the virtues. It is the foundation for faith and its most powerful result. Hope and faith do not begin with doubt, but with a question. There is a subtle difference. The sincere seeker is ready to believe, but is not a naive dupe ready to believe anything. He does not doubt, but rather hopes and believes. Once faith is acquired, the seeker finds peace, love, charity, hope, and mercy are abundant in him. The abundant life the New Testament speaks of. The Book of Mormon often contrasts prosperity and being cut off from God. It is interesting that it is not prosperity and recession! It is prosperity, which comes from the Latin Spero, meaning "to hope", that is the reward of faithfulness. Faithfulness, in turn, combines hope, necessary to endure, faith, the knowledge about ones outcome, and diligence, which comes from the Latin for "to love."

Somewhere in all this concatenation of words is some truth. I find myself, sometimes, throwing all the words I can at an idea until a few stick. Hope brings us to faith and secures us with an anchor of love to persevere the trials of this life. The reward of our diligence is the hope to know that there is a place for us on the right hand of God.

Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God.

Ether 12:4 ~The Book of Mormon