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.

Communitas et Vanitas Vanitarum

For one who is by nature a sullen and solitary soul, who frets and fusses about every social engagement however so trivial, I have strangely been preoccupied with the concept of community in the past few months. Difficult thought I find socializing and human interaction (see my prior essay, "On Human Insufferability"), I have come to believe it is essential to health, happiness, and even to salvation.

I have come to believe that there was more than chance behind the founders of Christianity selecting the word "ekklesia" for their community. Ekklesia means "an assembly," or a type of exclusive community. Paul refers again and again to the ekklesia of Smyrna or of Rome or any one of the various early communities. He is referring to real communities of believers who were one in heart and mind and, for a time in the Acts, in substance. Church, I might add, comes also from Greek from the word Kyrios, meaning Lord. It referred to the building belonging to the Lord (in Greek: kyricos) and eventually became the Germanic Kirche and the English Church (and Kirk in Scotland).

Returning to my theme. I believe now that community is what church is to be; not a mere gathering of individual and separate souls, but a real communion of souls. That is the ideal to which we so rarely arrive. We are all striving together toward a common goal: perfection. We will not obtain in this lifetime, but the Atonement of Christ and His mercy and grace afforded thereby, bring us over the chasm that separates us from God and gives us the chance to become as He is.

This belief in the necessity of community, for what else is Zion if not a community, has some very real effects on our attitudes and behaviors. Joseph Smith once said that he was not perfect, but that as he was merciful to others in their infirmities, he expected the Saints to be merciful to him in his weaknesses, thus lifting up the whole community together. My experiences with roommates have taught me that forgiveness and tolerance and the related virtues of mercy and love, are essential for a community to live together in peace. The lo and behold! We find these are some of the very virtues most stressed by the scriptures.

Related to mercy and forgiveness is confession. Confession, being an aspect of repentance, is therefore essential for salvation, but I submit that it is essential, too, for health and for community. It is interesting that so many of the commandments require social interaction. One cannot love thy neighbor without socializing with your neighbor. You cannot forgive as we are commanded without a neighbor. You cannot help the needy, visit the sick and the fatherless, pray for struggling souls, or forgive the sinner, without socializing. In fact, I am hard pressed to find any commandment that applies to a solitary person isolated from society. Even the commandments to pray and read the scriptures include injunctions to pray and read together and we have already seen that to fulfill the basic commandments of the Article 4 of the Articles of Faith, all require other people.

This brings me back to confession. Most people have a slightly negative view of confession and, indeed, of repentance generally, viewing it as something you do when you mess up. This makes it seem a type of punishment rather than a mercy. Confession, I believe now, applies not just to sins, but to all the secret burdens and even temptations that have not yet led to sin. How much better would the world be if people did not hide their weaknesses and mistakes, but shared them openly with friends and family and could thus be helped in overcoming these very problems. Two scriptures in the Doctrine and Covenants make this clear. One is in D&C 121 which states that the Spirit withdraws when a man seeks to cover up his sins. The second one - and I forget off hand the reference - states that you know a man has repented when he confesses. In my life, I find that when I have truly dealt with a problem, I find the burden of talking about with loved ones far easier. It is the duty of all 0f us to bear with our friends' and loved ones' infirmities and weaknesses, to strengthen them where they are weak, to restrain judgment knowing that we, too, have a beam in our eye, and to forgive and love them always.

How many despairing souls weighed down not only with sin, but also with illness, financial worries, loneliness, and so many other burdens for which they have no fault, could be comforted and helped to thrive. Depression may not be a sin in and of itself, but it prevents us from partaking fully of the blessings of the spirit and of the community and is therefore damning in every sense of the word. We need each other. We need mercy, tolerance, forgiveness, forbearance, understanding, faith, compassion, and, most importantly, love.