Binding the Lord - D&C 82:10

 

"I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise."

Our God is sovereign: omniscient and omnipotent. But He is not arbitrary. He is the Lawgiver, and obedience pleases Him, but His proscriptions and prescriptions are never to indulge a whim. Instead they each teach principles of living like He lives. Even the most mundane physical rule has a spiritual underpinning, as Joseph Smith taught in Section 29, because learning to exercise control over temporal or physical matters teaches us to prioritize the spiritual purposes, the things of eternal importance, the meaningful over the self-gratifying.

In this section, where the previous establishment of the United Firm to put professional and resource-rich men in a committed corporation to profitably run Church companies in competition and cooperation with other vendors and service-providers in the world was confirmed, more commandments concerning its operation were received. And what was the nature of this commandment? For the parties involved to take the management of the company on as a covenant, not merely as a contract. None of them know ahead of time that their investment in a press, metal type, paper, and a suitable building will be wasted within days of its first run of the "Book of Commandments" because a mob will burn it all to the ground. None of them know ahead of time that missteps here and there will eventually make the firm's affairs unmanageable, and it will become bankrupt. None of them know ahead of time that their personal investments--some more substantial than others in terms of absolute dollars--will be lost and that they will each barely escape poverty despite being in the service of the Lord. But God does, and He also knows how the exercise will bring them each to greater ability to minister and to greater oneness with Him, with each other, and with tests that will teach them to strip themselves of pride. They each will learn something they could have learned through no other way than by failing at a task they were given in the same way Roger Federer speaks of growing the character it requires to be a champion by refusing to let self-doubt enter in after failing nearly half of the points he tries.

Each commandment--be it a concise formulation of a general moral truth like the 10 commandments, or a specific prompting to minister to a specific person in the scope of your calling--comes from a God of cause and effect, from a God of relationships, not just power. He teaches through His guiderails, and as we heed His warnings, our behavior moves from mindless compliance, to comprehension of His purposes to eventual similitude. We grow through obedience to become more like Him.

It's hard for me to overstate this point: He has a certain character, and while its higher than our comprehension can attain, it IS comprehensible enough. He has enabled our capacity for reason sufficiently to be able to follow Him, not just in blind obedience, but logically "following" how, and sometimes even why one choice leads to its outcome. He doesn't want puppets, or even really followers--He wants children who choose to inherit all He has--His power and His joy, which glory comes from the work of Salvation. We can know, as we can know that one plus one equals two, that obedience to His commandments bring blessings. There is a mathematical certainty to complying with the orders of a Being of perfect love and justice: He always keeps His word. Every act of obedience therefore obtains its natural consequences, two of which are always a growth in liberty and a closeness of the Spirit. And every act of disobedience similarly brings its natural consequences, including a restriction of freedom and a distance from the Spirit.

But please keep in mind that this God is not an ethereal essence orchestrating compliance for its own sake. This is a Father in Heaven who is teaching us to be like Him, and therefore obedience--the first law of heaven--is never truly as transactional as its own inevitable cause-and-effect nature suggests on the surface. No, this Father of ours cares about our relationship with Him and with His Son. He is bound by His word, and by the principles of righteousness that He embodies to maintain accordance with His own principles, even if He has the theoretical power to choose something counter to them. He does not cease to be God. So this cause-and-effect which is as infallibly operative as the Being who ordered it so, is also only ever subordinate to a greater and deeper "law" of mercy and love. He binds Himself to us in covenants, not just in transactional exchanges of this reward for that action. He wants us to learn, through our obedience, how to be ONE with Him, with each other, with His Son, who succors us when we are weak, and who lifts our hands which hang down and strengthens our feeble knees. He wants us to obey, and then, when we fail, he wants us to RETURN to obtaining that promise through repentance--through repair of the damage in the relationship. We may have no promise after we break His commandments and sin, but on His side, He may still act in mercy, and in fact commands us to repent and accept His covenantal blood to cover our guilt.

There's a reason this Section speaks of binding. It's the language of slavery, of scientific laws, and of voluntary commitments to each be all-in, becoming a new unit where once there were two separate entities. Binding is the language of marriage, and marriage is the most frequent symbol Christ uses to characterize His relationship to His covenant people. He will never leave us behind, and is always ours. Up to us whether we will choose His offer, repent, and keep our covenant with Him. Let's keep our promise.

Lifting Up Hanging Hands - D&C 81:5

 

"Wherefore, be faithful; stand in the office which I have appointed unto you; succor the weak, lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees."

In his inimitable poetic style, Isaiah delivered the word of the Lord to his courtly audience in ancient Jerusalem. He spoke in the present of the need for repentance, not merely because disobedience always has consequences, but also because growing world power Assyria had recently served as the instrument of the Lord's chastening hand upon the 10 tribes of the Northern kingdom, and if the Southern kingdom, where Isaiah prophesied, did not repent, they ran the risk of suffering the same fate as "Israel".

Assyrians introduced an innovation into empire-building in the early 700's BC. Rather than be satisfied with mere military victory, the Assyrians strategized measures to prevent local uprisings, future rebellions, and ensure that tributes got paid. Rather than minority rule by occupation, trusting in superior force or fear of reprisal from a more powerful center, and rather than taking a local ruler captive and/or consolidating power through forcible marriage into the local ruling family, the Assyrians broke their conquered kingdoms' national spirit by exiling vast numbers of ordinary citizens. They could use the populations elsewhere in their empire, and they could disperse them in ways that favored intermixing of the younger generations. Eventually, they thought, there would be no "home" the grandchildren would remember or want to go back to, having lost connection with their traditions, songs, stories, and most of all, worship.

Exile was a fear on the minds of the court of king Ahaz, whose lack of repentance nearly resulted in Assyrian victory, and on the mind of his more pious son, Hezekiah, who listened and who lived to see a miraculous deliverance. But Isaiah's poetic prophecies, as usual, described not only the present day, but a future in which Hebrew exile would be a more universal vehicle of chastening for the covenant people, and in which Gentiles bound to the Savior's covenant would have to be organized into a gathering force for exiled Jews to be gathered back in to Zion.

It is in this context of current threat of exile, and future prophecy of exile that the word of the Lord comes to Isaiah with the poetic command to those gathering the exiles in: "Strengthen ye the weak hands and confirm the feeble knees" (Isa 35:3). The message to those experiencing exile is that they have a God with them who loves them and is gathering them to a place of peace, of power, and of holiness. It's a message of encouragement and faith, of keeping one's meaning and purpose through distressing loss, or disconnection. The strength that the servants of the Lord are supplying is His strength--is a connection to His promises of eternal blessing no matter the current earthly challenge. Weak hands and feeble knees can still travel His path and can still perform His work when they believe in the worth of its end.

Paul picks this image up later in a different context in a message to other Hebrews at Jerusalem and wherever else they felt pressure from their Jewish communities to abandon their newfound Christianity. To this cohort of Christians having entered into a new covenant with the Messiah, and having been made victims of persecution for it, Paul's message is more about meaning-making than avoidance of exile through repentance. Paul's reason for harkening back to Isaiah was a reframing more strongly centered on the theme of chastening. To be fair, Isaiah was not wrong that God has the power of deliverance from suffering, but Hebrews also makes it clear that sometimes our suffering is His will, either as a test of faith or as a loving correction of the kind a devoted father must give his children who, in his wisdom, he knows stand in need of it. Under this new frame, "Lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees," (Heb 12:12) is an encouragement to minister to those physically struggling, and metaphorically to those laboring under a social, mental, or spiritual weight working against their faith. The epistle itself--an extended theological argument speaking directly to sufferers familiar with Jewish doctrine and practice to bolster faith in Christ as the fulfillment of their faith, not as a betrayal of it--functions in precisely the way it encourages: firming up the weak in spirit.

I take comfort from this series of prophets, culminating with Joseph Smith, who teach that one of the highest privileges of every minister is to seek out those in doubt, in suffering, and in need, and then supporting them. As we support each other, we fill gaps, find complementary relationships, and allow our strengths to enmesh together, immunizing the community against hardship where possible, and against despair where hardship is unavoidable. The fundamental thrust of both Isaiah and Paul's references to hands hanging down and feeble knees is outreach, is top-down use of power, authority, and gifts of the Spirit for bottom-up benefit. And that tracks with Smith's allusion as well.

But there's another more ancient prophet whose example provides another valid direction for reading this Section: Moses. Moses did serve the people, and God supported them through Moses in a symbolic way during the battle against the Amalekites, but the Israelites noticed that the fight against their enemies went their way or their enemies' way in proportion to Moses's ability to keep his tired arms aloft with the staff of God in the air. So, to follow this image through, the lesson Aaron and his teammate Hur drew was that sometimes the direction of support needed to flow to the leader--they physically held Moses's arms up, and the Israelites prevailed.

This Section's context is that of the first organization of the First Presidency--which is the Church's first formal calling of a "counsel" if I'm not mistaken. A President who holds Priesthood keys to make decisions for the exercise of God's power according to his sphere of influence, is the ultimate node of both authority and responsibility for the stewardship under his care, but he is not an autocrat, or even a holder of controlling shares, really. Church presidencies are populated by a keyholder and faithful counselors--usually two, but sometimes more--who provide candid advice on shared decisions, and then carry them out and inspire others to carry them out. And this "system" is fundamentally different from the way presidents and chairmen work in the world. Meetings, which come with firm agendas and a focus on efficiency in decision-making, have their place, and can be appropriate to tasks at hand--which is why nearly every corporate organization adopts their mode of governance ad "Roberts Rules" for their mode of operation. But Councils in the Church focus on people, on finding God's will in decisions to benefit individuals, and they are therefore inherently more consensus-driven, and more cooperative in direction. A good Bishop or Stake President is almost always a good man to begin with, but their reputation as such only grows in the measure that they have the support of good counsellors, a good Relief Society presidency, and a full set of good auxiliary leaders whose partnership lifts the leaders above as it attends to the needs below. It tends toward such a flattening of hierarchy in its operation that the terms "above" and "below" don't really even make sense to describe it anymore.

And it's this group of fellow-laborers, knit in one heart for the scope of their ministry, which are also what this passage means--we must lift up the weary arms of the leadership by performing our duties with honor and exactness, by magnifying our calling, by serving with care, by focusing on individuals entrusted to our care, by prayer and by work: in short, by faith. Counselors aren't subordinates, they are sustainers. Prophets aren't worthy of pedestals, but they are worthy of being upheld. When we make a sustaining vote, we aren't merely consenting to service, we are pledging our own efforts and faith.

Let us indeed succor the weak, alleviate suffering, confirm the faith, and align our will with God's for the unity of purity of heart He has with His Father--our perfect model of Zion, and of Councils.

Sacred and Secular Space - D&C 78:6

 

"if ye are not equal in earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things"

It's become a little on the rare side that I connect lessons across Sections rather than dive deeply into a single passage, but I left myself a little unsatisfied with the last post discussing the Revelations Q&A session from Section 77, so I'm finding a way to take a mulligan and move together with the next.

I went back and took a cursory glance at the framing and contents of all revelations to Joseph Smith chronologically prior to Section 77 to see if I could quickly identify some key features of the "genre" of these revelations, and noticed a few elements. First, they almost always begin with "behold" or "hearken", which seems to be a convention for not only grabbing attention, but signaling a liminal space--everything before was just Joseph, everything after is the Lord speaking (except the rare occasions where there is another voice being activated, like Moroni citing Malachi in Section 2, or an angel or an Elias of some kind voiced in Section 65). Next, they almost always open immediately after the attention-setting with a reminder of who is speaking--most frequently specifying that what follows is the word of the Lord, but sometimes elaborating on various names, functions, and descriptors of Deity. These seem to serve as extra poignant calls to take the commandments, counsel, prophecies and explanations which follow seriously. It should also be noted that the vast majority of the revelations previous to March 1832 were directed at individuals, and so the convention includes options for addressing persons directly or indirectly. There are a few Sections which seem to diverge from these generic features, address the world, the Church, or Elders of the Church in general, and many of these contain instructional language, like you might find in a handbook establishing prescriptions for practices or parameters for offices like a narrative form of what one might see in today's modern org charts.

Section 77 really does stand out, however, as unique in the pattern of more and more established convention. It doesn't begin with the attention-grabber, doesn't specify the voice of the Master answering the questions, doesn't address anyone, and doesn't convey commandment, instruction, or prophecy to be carried out or believed. Instead, it's dialogic, it assumes familiarity with John's vision and responds with specifics to deepen what's already familiar, and it seems to be the only revelation in which Joseph Smith voices two sides of a conversation simultaneously. There's more to explore in the generic expectations and implications of these differences, but mostly I'm just noting here that readers have to approach it differently and that it sets itself up as collaborative--we can each imagine ourselves in Joseph's shoes, learning.

In fact, I have to imagine Section 77 as if I were at the Temple in Jerusalem witnessing a 12-year-old Jesus hold forth with learned men as they asked Him questions about his understanding of Scripture and were astonished at His responses. He was their Author, after all, but as He grew line upon line, through a closer companionship with the Spirit of Truth than any of us can imagine, in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man, this Lord of ours had to come back into an understanding that the Creator He was had already known. And as Smith posed specific question after specific question, we are left outside of the genre of "behold and hearken", outside of the expectation to put directly into practice some commandment, or carry out a prescribed mission in a prescribed manner, or to connect commandments to explanations. Instead, we have only images and their keys; someone else's vision, and tools to help interpret it; questions from a serious student, and answers from the Master Communicator, able to mercifully gatekeep the deeper meaning so those who would be condemned by it might have an excuse, and to grant the mysteries unto those whose efforts match the gift, and whose knowledge can flower to action in good works, in preparation for His Second Coming.

And thinking of it like that episode in His youth, puts us in a frame of mind to consider what the temple was doing--consider its function as a sacred space. Only in the temple could humans connect directly with Deity. Prayer can directly connect us anywhere, it's true, but that connection is limited to mediation--it's a channel for communication through language, feelings, thoughts, and perhaps opens to other forms of communication like visions, but it's not direct contact. The temple's location was chosen by God, its dimensions were likewise not chosen by man, and the practices prescribed for its hallowed walls were dictated by the Jehovah as well. At the time of Jesus's visit, the Jewish leadership were so careful about keeping the space sacred, that they proscribed even the occupying Roman forces from entry--down to the coins they used. When Jesus overturned the tables of the moneychangers 18 years or so after his pilgrimage as a youth, they were there because Gentile-originating coin was considered sullying, and was to be exchanged for a special "temple" currency before entry inside the walls for purchasing the sacrificial animals prescribed by the Law of Moses. Special knowledge is revealed in the temple. Special services are held in the temple. Individuals and families worship in special ways in the temple. The Lord renews covenants, both personally and collectively in the temple. The symbolism of the temple all points to a great and last Sacrifice, and prepares the mind to point higher, receive justice balanced with mercy, and stay faithful despite being surrounded by the world once one leaves. It is a liminal space, where the mundane is left outside, so the eternities can be contemplated within.

There is a sense in which the spiritual is never purely abstracted out from the temporal, however. Special spaces of holiness like the temple are still made of material, after all, as are our own bodies which house a spirit and which can commune with the Holy Spirit. And so many of the prescriptions of the law of Moses which prepared the Hebrews for their Messiah's sacrifice dealt with what might look like purely material affairs on the surface.

In a similar way, Section 78 addresses a surface structure aimed at material needs. Since arriving in Kirtland and receiving the "law of the Church" back in Section 42, the members were commanded to arranged their temporal affairs in a new order that set a bishop in charge of a "storehouse" to benefit the poor--or in other words, which imbued an ecclesiastical officer with a spiritual charge to administer the material transactions necessary for the equal spiritual and temporal footing of the community. The leader was chosen to exercise spiritual discernment, but judge material matters. Each member was to labor responsibly like a good steward over what the bishop deeded over to him or her so that a surplus would be generated that could supply the lack for those who couldn't achieve such profits on their own.

The key difference in Section 78 seems to be not only that the storehouse should supply some of the operating costs of the Church (it had previously covered some expenses and living arrangements for a tight handful of leaders, but now was set to expand to cover the expenses of buying, setting up, and running a printing press for Church publications), but that its administration would be professionalized to a greater degree. The "firm" established still required the men involved to be called to their positions, but there were the perfect kinds of people among the now 2000 members of the church--a printer, a mercantilist, a theologian, and a member or two with literary talents--such that the people called could also form a reasonably professional board of folks who knew how to run a printing business and general store, and make money at it. The priorities were always the spiritual needs (Books of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, pedagogical materials, etc.) not profits, and proceeds were always destined to return to the storehouse, not benefit the "board". But the design was to help all contribute to the whole according to their strengths, to ensure all individuals had their needs supplied either through their own efforts or through the profits others could garner.

Keeping in mind that the term "equal" most likely meant "even-handed" or "fair" in the above passage, the idea of a United Firm, or a United Order, or the Law of Consecration is not equal outcomes, but instead the equal initiative we pledge to the service of growing whatever the Lord has allotted us. Because being all-in is what He requires for our spiritual growth, no matter what our material circumstances, and because being willing to pledge all our material is what shows our capacity for receiving those heavenly things that heaven's windows open upon us as we obey the Lord and love Him and our fellow humans.

Just like the temple is an earthly space for dialog with heaven, our individual consecrations can make of our earthly stuff the stuff of heaven.

Postmodernism, Ancient Imagery, and Forms of Revelation - D&C 77

 

"They are figurative expressions"

The Bible is a composite text with a single Author whose words passed through dozens of voices, filtration through scribes and translators, and conformity of form to various writing or speech conventions at the time of writing/sharing. We know from our own inability to reproduce messages word for word that the same idea understood by different people, can be restated in highly individualized ways. But I think we think a lot less about the impact of genre on the interpretive task. What impact does it have and what does it say about the Author for us to receive prescriptive legalese in a block of instructional text describing parameters of tabernacles or behaviors like Leviticus? Is the impact or is our interpretive approach necessarily different when the text is poetry like the Psalms, or Isaiah? Or when it's a long-form narrative, like the bulk of Exodus or a series of short-form stories like Genesis? How about testimonies like the Gospels, or corrective epistles like Paul's letters? What do the constraints of each of these very different text types do, or spell out as interpretive expectation horizons for us? Debates have raged for centuries about how literally to take the Bible. What does that debate even look like when part of the Bible is expressly written in poetry, for example, where the genre demands that we expect a high level of evocative and figurative elements to the meaning-making enterprise?

Within the Bible itself, we have several examples of passages that change meaning depending on what genre you expect that they are, but which are interpreted for us so we can see how the process works. I'll bring up just one episode: Nathan's parable of the lambs. A guilty king David was sitting in judgment when his respected spiritual advisor used court time to lay out a story that David originally mistook for the genre of testimony--a wealthy rancher had stolen the only lamb of a poor farmer. Because David expected that this was a literal narrative, given to tell immediate truth on its surface, he didn't think to look any deeper, and was immediately angry at the rich man, vowing vengeance upon him in his just wrath. Only after Nathan revealed that the genre was not testimony, but rather parable, did David look deeper into the meaning, find the symbolic key, and discover, to his own shame, that he was the guilty rich man himself.

The Book of Revelation, perhaps more than any other, reveals that there are some limits that the genre of a passage imposes on how understanding can pass from writer to reader. It's dense with symbolic imagery that our current culture has lost most of the interpretive keys to. It sounds like gobbledygook in places, and reads like an intense message that only insiders actually "get." It seems to suggest that we can't possibly take it completely literally, but it defies our modern conception of communication to locate any but the most hesitant of glosses. There are too many fantastical beasts combined with specific numbers, precious stones, prostitutes, prophets, and wars over the souls of humankind to make sense of--and often those who attempt it write even more confusing explications requiring quadruple the length of the original.

But there is a set of interpretive keys, and we have to assume that the messages were plain to the original intended recipients--that John the Revelator and the early churches he was writing to shared the same code for all the references we no longer get. So we can't make the facile assumption the postmodernists do: that the message is lost in signifiers all the way down.

Backing up a step, Swiss father of Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, rearticulated and modified a key insight about symbolism and interpretation that may have hearkened back to Plato: the idea that behind each word we use, there is a projection we are trying to connect to it--a concept, a thing, a reference. If I isolate the English word "tree" for example, it's because I want you to imagine a tall, living, wooden structure with a trunk, branches, and leaves or needles, usually green in general color, and often useful for climbing or chopping down for construction materials or fires. This is not ground-shaking as an insight--we intuitively get the point that words mean things--but now connect it to a pair of twin implications: a. that there's nothing natural connecting the monosyllabic sound string "tree" to the object it invokes (because if there were, every other language would use some recognizable local pronunciation of the same sound string, rather than an entirely different string); and b. that the presence of the word necessitates the absence of its referent (we can refer to present objects with the nouns that signify them without simply pointing, but even then the words point to an ideal we imagine, rather than the actual physical object right in front of us, which is merely an exemplar of the idea). These two things give us some deeper theoretical tools to play around with. If a sign is composed of a signifier and a signified, and the signified is always merely a concept, never an actual object, and if the connection between signifier and signified is always arbitrary, then maybe the signified itself is merely a signifier for some deeper idea. And even further, if we do enough work to shift the social meaning convention, we can even enforce a new signified to attach to a previously stable signifier through shifting the social meaning conventions.

These theoretical insights are the ball the postmodernists ran with when they spoke of simulacra, deconstruction, and the death of absolute truths. Their linguistic turn noticed how nearly all of the meaning-making processes we use to make sense of the world--on a grander scale than an individual word--rely on this same arbitrary connection between signifier and signified, and its concomitant socially constructed nature. Morality, religion, politics, nationality, gender, class, many of these "grand narratives" are structured like stories we tell ourselves, whose base units are described by this fundamental signifier-signified relationship. And if that follows, then postmodernists can note how, as symbols proliferate, society evolves to ignore more and more of their bottom--the signified gets lost--until we have memes of memes, but don't know the characters from the movies they were freeze-framed from. Worse, we don't care. The original characters, plot, backstories, relationships--in brief, their context--no longer contribute to the meme's current meaning, and we are therefore free to make meaning without the constraints of context. Everyone gets their own truth. Perspectives have no claim to privilege--all are equally relevant and valuable. There is is no anchor point tethering reality to subjective interpretation, because it's all either irredeemably subjective or hopelessly arbitrary all the way down--there's no there there. What's important isn't reality, because reality is impossible to touch--instead what matters is the stories we tell ourselves. 

Here's one concrete example: The Rock sitting in the driver's seat of his taxi, looking back at a blonde teenager saying something surprising is a malleable enough image to support any surprising message. It has become a meme that comes up frequently with fresh new connections to some current thing in politics or pop culture, and people laugh about how apt it is to describe the current glaring hypocrisy of a politician, or the current shock normal people feel about a surprising news story. It doesn't matter what the current issue is, the image demonstrates its shocking nature. People have shared various versions of it on social media for hundreds of different issues. But no one remembers that the original surprise wasn't the content of anything she said--everything she said was completely normal and appropriate for the context--it was her presence. She and her brother were already known to the audience as alien beings who merely looked human, but possessed superhuman powers. The Rock's confusion was not coming from any clues his character could put his fingers on, but was memorable for the audience who knew that he should be suspicious. If the image had stayed true to context, it would have to be limited to a smaller range of surprise types than the ones the meme has ended up covering. It has taken on a life of its own, and people make meaning from it without care to attach it to only surprises where the audience is already in on the gag (although some still use it for that).

In a similar way, between the tendency for people to allow oft-repeated references like scriptures to take on a life of their own independent of their original context and the tendency for genres to define culture-specific conventions for the parameters of meaning-making, the symbolism in the Book of Revelation poses a huge danger of eisegesis. What a blessing then that we have section 77 in which Joseph Smith asks the Lord direct, pointed questions about some interpretive keys, and in which we get succinct, direct answers that restore some of them.

I won't detail each of the questions and answers because the text is plain on its own, and because I'd be tempted to do a thorough walkthrough of each symbol specifically--too long for this post. But please note one thing as you do your own re-reading of Revelation with the D&C 77 interpretive keys back in place--please note the Christ-centered story of triumph and encouragement it represents, granting Christians a hope that has endured nearly two millennia already knowing how the war plays out, and which is the winning side--take a step back and notice the genre of what you're reading. There are bold declarations, personal directives, heart-warming examples of personal touches, fire and brimstone speeches, careful and succinct explanations of doctrine and untwisting of false doctrine, encouragements and expressions of trust, and instructional passages outlining practices and parameters of rituals and offices within the 76 Sections we've previously read. There is no other example of a study guide quite like this. The others impart knowledge, inspire awe, and connect theory to practice, this one is ancient symbology test-prep. The others we have to read to prepare to understand and obey, this one we have to read to re-read, or maybe read to check ourselves to ensure we are interpreting correctly. It's an invitation to identify with a prophet--a truth seeker conversing with the Lord--and a manual about how to come to Him prepared with specific questions, and expect clear and unexpected responses. It's a genre that seems to quickly settle matters others have spun wild opinions upon, and to remind us that there is a bottom, there is a key, there is a context, original authorial intent matters, and never just write off what seems hopelessly hermetic, because the Lord wants you to understand and will help you get what He means.

The Lord gave us a vision of things to come through His servant John, and the elements of the story are instructive, and available. There is a decipherable meaning to all prophecy, which is for our profit and learning, but not our private interpretations. The postmodernists aren't wrong that meaning is made through symbols and conventional connections, and that perception of stimuli is filtered through narrative, but the conclusion that there is no truth at bottom is fundamentally either lazy or cynical--do the work, follow the directions, believe the bottom's depths can come into focus as we approach the Source of Truth with honesty, and line upon line it will be added unto you. We are learning His language, He isn't beholden to ours.

Your Vision of Heaven is Too Small - D&C 76

 

"'And shall come forth; they who have done good, in the resurrection of the just; and they who have done evil, in the resurrection of the unjust.' Now this caused us to marvel, for it was given unto us of the Spirit. And while we meditated upon these things, the Lord touched the eyes of our understandings and they were opened, and the glory of the Lord shone round about. And we beheld the glory of the Son, on the right hand of the Father, and received of his fulness;"

John's record of Christ's teachings during His mortal ministry included explanations and prophecies jarring to some prevailing notions of the day, particularly held by influential Sadducees, about the nature of the afterlife, which was not monolithic among observant Jews at that time. As often as Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven and His goal to align earth with it to the extent possible, it's not actually very strongly spelled out in the Bible what that unearthly target actually looks like, or what the criteria are for a felicitous judgment. We are largely left to our imaginations to apprehend what seems beyond our imagining, and while we can trust in the reason and justice of our omnipotent and omniscient Lord who is full of truth and mercy, and while we have all we need if we know that accepting His grace is the key to salvation, the basis on which He makes His decisions is left in scant binary terms in the Bible. There is an arbitrary division between just and unjust, between righteous and unrighteous, or, as the King James Version puts it, between "life" and "damnation". And while that's sufficient and clear to produce in every human spirit the motivation to do good, and to accept the Lord's grace, He leaves us with so much reason and light on so many other principles of how He wishes us to behave, why not this one?

There are a few common principles all of Christendom agrees on: 1. some kind of life after death, 2. some kind of judgment and assignment to an eternal fate, 3. the existence of opposed states of eternal dwelling--a heaven of blessedness, and a hell of punishment. But there are chasms of disagreement over what the Bible teaches in the details of each of the three.

Is there a literal resurrection of spirit to body? The Sadducees and some current Christians believe no, despite John's testimony (see 5:29, specifically), preferring to believe in a spiritual existence free from the physicality of our banal bodies, rendering the concept of "resurrection" metaphorical.

For those who believe in a literal resurrection, does the "life" of the spirit after death consist of active existence prior to resurrection as Calvin and the Catholics insist on, or, as Luther and the anabaptists believed, a kind of "soul sleep" where passive inactivity allows spirits to reunite with bodies on resurrection day with no perception of time lost?

Is there an immediacy of final judgment at death's instant or do spirits await in a state of some kind of prejudgment? Catholics have elaborated, at least since the 13th century, a doctrine of purgatory in which some whose deeds weren't sufficient to merit an instant felicity can continue to act in hope toward an eventual salvation while "purging" their debt of sin by suffering its punishments temporarily. Most Protestant denominations, however, find the concept extrabiblical, and prefer a clearer cut single judgment with only binary outcomes available.

Those with a testimony of the Restored Gospel, thankfully, have two additional sources from which to resolve some of these questions through scriptural means.

The first is the Book of Mormon, in which there are several sermons, father's blessings, and excerpts of paternal counsel touching on the idea that spirits after death move to a waiting space and retain memory of earthly actions, and are therefore conscious of an impending final judgment they can no longer fully affect while away from their physical means to carry out acts of repentance and covenant-making. We now refer to a "spirit world" divided between a heaven-like "paradise" and a hell-like "spirit prison", and we take proxy action in this life on behalf of those who have minds that can change and become converted, but who cannot carry out rituals like baptism while out of the body--all out of earnest belief that the Savior is the Redeemer of both living and dead, and that accepting His atonement is still possible in spirit prison. While the clarity on this concept is plain from Book of Mormon scripture, it's important to note that the concept itself is entirely Biblical. Three days after Jesus promised the repentant thief that he would be with Him that same day "in paradise", that same Christ returned glorified and resurrected, admonishing Mary Magdalene not to touch Him because He had not yet ascended to His Father. By these Biblical facts alone, we can deduce that the common use of "heaven" and "paradise" as completely interchangeable terms is erroneous, and that the Father does not Himself dwell in "paradise", but in another more celestial domain. 

The second source for details on the afterlife to which Christians may turn, is to the prophets, seers, and revelators to whom visions of the details have been entrusted for publication. The above passage refers to a rendering of John 5:29 which speaks in very binary terms of the single main distinction between types of resurrected humans, and then to the beginning of a series of visions that Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon experienced, in the presence of others who heard evidence of a shared spiritual experience between the two that they did not themselves see, which detailed several other major post-judgment categorial distinctions.

1. There is an Outer Darkness prepared for a relative few Sons of Perdition who chose, in full light of knowledge, to reject all good, and seek entirely after evil. A place with no glory, and only punishment. A lifeless "life" that the Book of Mormon calls the "second death", a "spiritual death" which is a removal from the source of all righteousness that is permanent (or at least eternal in quality if not quantity). This is a place whose glory is metaphorically compared to no light at all.

2. There is a Telestial Kingdom of glory prepared for those who rejected Christ until compelled to bow the knee at the judgment seat, for those who were punished in spirit prison for their sins, and didn't accept the Redeemer's atonement, for those who chose evil deeds but not in full light of understanding, and therefore not completely out of rebellion. They are those covered by a measure of grace despite not receiving it before it was too late. This is a place whose glory is metaphorically compared to starlight.

3. There is a Terrestrial Kingdom of glory prepared for those whose actions were mostly good, on balance, but which accepted Christ only after death. They were honorable, but so blinded by the craftiness of worldly influences that it took removal from this world for them to realize their sins needed to be overcome by the Lord. It should be noted that acceptance of Christ in the spirit world is characteristic of the inheritors of this kingdom, but that many in the spirit world who had no chance to accept Christ during their mortal period advance to the next kingdom. This is a place whose glory is metaphorically compared to moonlight.

4. Finally, there is a Celestial Kingdom of glory where God the Father dwells, along with all His Heirs. It is reserved for makers and keepers of covenants with His Son for His grace to fully cleanse them of sin because of their acceptance of His Gospel, and their hearts becoming purified through His atonement--it is reserved for His Church. The people are characterized as Zion's inhabitants--one with God and with one another, as well as pure in heart--and as heirs through their Christian faith of all the Father has. This is a place whose glory is metaphorically compared to sunlight.

The framework here resolves the ethical dilemma inherent in limiting God's justice to a binary. It explodes the categories of those "saved" or "glorified" in a way that fits punishments to crimes, and glories to well-doing--by defining degrees. The nonsense of assigning an unbaptized infant to the same hell as a mass murderer is thereby done away, and the Biblical allusion Paul makes in his second letter to the Corinthians (don't be confused, 1 Corinthians was his second letter, the first one was lost) to visions of bodies celestial and terrestrial as they compare to three, not two sources of light fleshes itself out. Paul wasn't merely contrasting heavenly with earthly in that 15th chapter, but was relaying metaphors about the same degrees of post-resurrection glory that Smith was.

But it also inverts another common misconception among Christians--that of a radically different nature of God between the Old and New Testaments, in which a harsh, judgment-focused punisher of evil gives way to a lenient granter of unearned grace to all for mere belief on His name. Instead, this vision of degrees of glory correctly keeps the two logically combined in purpose and character, mercy never robbing justice, and yet grace abounding to those who qualify according to standards. It accomplishes this through insisting that judgment day isn't and never was about the negative punishment of every wrong deed done in mortality, but rather is instead more positively about rewarding every possible good deed, and more abundantly to those who took up their opportunities, in mortality or in the spirit world, to qualify for Christ's conditions of grace: faith in Him, repentance for sin, baptism by His authority, reception of the Holy Ghost (which includes continual striving to maintain worthiness as its vessel), and endurance to the end in permitting Him to change our natures to become like Him in as many ways as possible.

When you think of a God who rewards all the good, rather than punishes all the bad, you still have to repent for the bad, but you can move forward through your own imperfections with confidence in His love, and seeking His help. You can advance in trust that He covers your mistakes, and supplies your power. You aren't afraid to try, and you aren't afraid to fail, because you know He's got the part you can't do for you. You aren't off the hook for your part, but you are on the line to be reeled in by Him as long as you don't utterly rebel. He's got your burdens, all you have to do is keep taking steps. There is no death-bed repentance, and there is no working your way to salvation--just the perfect balance of a just God requiring obedience, but extending grace for inevitable failure. Correctly understood, this conception of God's nature and of the role of the Redeemer motivates rather than disheartens, and insists on exactness in orienting behavior toward His Son's model and character.

This powerful explanation of the categories and criteria of judgment enable faith in Christ, and promote fidelity to covenants with Him. And they significantly expand the Christian view of Heaven's size and scope. We all have to aim for the highest degree of glory and will all suffer for every part of our infinite potential our own choices disqualify us from partnering with the Savior to achieve--all but the highest degree are ultimately, at the lengths of eternity, dams to progression--but Christ's power to grant glory is not limited by our traditional interpretations of scripture. Our vision of heaven needs to be more inclusive for us to see it like He does. He loves us, and His completed work will guarantee us all the glory we can handle--all the glory our characters will have developed the capacity for through our degree of faith in Him. More will be in heaven than we currently imagine, but it is up to each of us individually to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling before the Lord.

Christians rejoice, for His promises of our degree of glory are sure!

Public Shaming is to Public Shame as Contention is to Self Defense - D&C 71:4-7

 

"Labor ye in my vineyard. Call upon the inhabitants of the earth, and bear record, and prepare the way for the commandments and revelations which are to come. Now, behold this is wisdom; whoso readeth, let him understand and receive also; For unto him that receiveth it shall be given more abundantly, even power. Wherefore, confound your enemies; call upon them to meet you both in public and in private; and inasmuch as ye are faithful their shame shall be made manifest."

Section 71 is directed individually at Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith whose proselyting efforts were not as yet full time because of other projects of importance--the new translation of the Bible, notably--and it calls on them to proselyte in the local area for a time. But the revelation stands as generalizable in many ways as well.

First, a structural ambiguity: the phrase "this is wisdom" may be referring to its antecedent (bearing record, preparing the way for the reception of commandments and revelations from God by laboring in the mission field) or it could be introducing the wisdom contained in the next few clauses (reading, understanding, receiving). Both lead to valuable readings: 1. laboring to introduce the Lord's messages to the world, or laboring in the field of your calling, whatever it is, even simply sharing your testimony with people is wise work because it allows both you and those among your audience who receive the ministry you perform to receive more abundantly from Him, and gives you power to remain unshaken when "enemies" attempt to belittle or persuade you, and they leave confounded when you are allow the Lord's strength to hold you in His truth; 2. we can't just read the scriptures, but we have to receive them by applying them to our behaviors such that it's not the theoretical knowledge that permits growth unto the confounding of "enemies" but the persistent doing of the Lord's will that ends up confounding those who contend with reason or persecution. The latter suggests that confounding the "enemies" is not accomplished by verbal defense, but rather that by meeting with them in public and/or in private (the latter first, if they'll allow it!) it can be your walk, your demeanor, your actions which leave naysayers demonstrably undone. Your faithful results are what eventually manifest their shame at falsely accusing you.

Whichever reading seems most apt to you, this particular duo was addressing specific, recent, high profile criticisms from a recently disciplined elder disenchanted with the Church, to a point of influence not yet previously encountered, who was trying to poison the relationship both between the church members and their leaders, and also between the community and its neighbors on a large public scale.

Ezra Booth brought a high education for the times, and a deep expertise with Biblical prophecy to his first encounters with missionaries. He was a Methodist Episcopalian minister at the time he felt the Spirit confirm the truth of Joseph Smith's claims to a Restoration of the Church as the latter laid hands and pronounced a blessing of healing upon a mutual acquaintance--Elsa Johnson with whom Smith later shared a home, and who had previously been converted to Methodism by Booth's preaching--which restored motion to a previously paralyzed arm.

It seems his expectations that the immediately miraculous must attend the Restored Church's worship, actions, and projects led him to quickly forget his original impetus for joining--that healing experience combined with later deep doctrinal discussions with Elsa's husband about the Book of Mormon's contents--and allow his mind to dwell on failure after failure of the humans in the Church to meet said expectations. After he brought up criticisms in one too many wrong ways and/or venues, and took to preaching under his own authority things that ran contrary to the revealed truth, Smith and other elders made a formal intervention and stripped him of preaching privileges. Three days later he began condensing his criticisms into a series of nine letters, ostensibly addressed to a private party he knew in his former profession as a fellow clergyman, but designed and destined for wide publication in an area periodical: the Ohio Star.

One can hardly blame the public for the paper's rising sales during the Oct-Dec. 1831 publication dates--their area was host to a new group of religious believers who were growing fairly rapidly, had some extravagantly distinct beliefs, claimed to be a new version of the Christianity they were ostensibly familiar with many varieties of, and lived out a Shaker-like, but not quite economic system. As their neighbors were growing, how sensational it must have seemed to read an "insider's" account articulated with eloquence of "romantic" (read: wild, fanciful) tales of charlatans among them. How informed they must have felt, and how felicitously inoculated against sneaky cultists they must have felt after reading, just in case any of that crazy and dangerous bunch came to their doors as missionaries. They must have needed neither suspicion nor curiosity any longer, for they already knew all they needed to know. At least this effect seems to have been Booth's clear intention upon publication.

Smith and Rigdon, one a prophet, the other an equally educated scriptorian able to refute the "proof texts" Booth could attempt to level, had clear and present spiritual dangers to confront on their home turf with these letters now in circulation. Counteracting the misconceptions the letters fomented was hard work, and required public commentary to match the forum Booth chose. 

In my eternal quest for context, I went through all nine letters. I found a few striking things. 

First, it's not like he got all the facts wrong--there are a few glaring lies, and a lot of personal grudges evident, but as one reads between the lines of a known biased picture of the people and practices within the Church of the day, it's not a systematic takedown so much as a window.

Next, while none of his conclusions have legs, some of the arguments are self-contradictory in surprising ways. For example, he derides Smith personally at length for tight and arbitrary control of a revelatory power and the documents it produces, and yet he's aware that these revelation documents are being prepared, even as he writes, for publication as widely as possible. He also describes with contempt some of the more mantic, or charismatic worship practices wherein ordinary members who would claim to receive random revelations or have random gifts of tongues that the leaders were allowing to speak, and yet he claims that cult-like levels of initiation carefully controlled and bound the will of these disparately directed agents to a central authority. The truth is that Smith wasn't trying to hide or control, but did, from time to time, have to exercise due discipline on the contents of the revelations.

Third, while he does throw a barb or two at Smith and Rigdon personally for what he perceives as indolence in ordering homes to be made for them and moneys to be granted them for conveniences that their underlings didn't enjoy without need for them to labor with their own hands for their own support, Booth spends next to zero ink on the mind-blowing economic system that the United Order implemented at the time. Shakers who were loosely part of the ecumenical neighborhood lived a communal lifestyle with enough points of similarity in the experience of readers that maybe this just didn't seem scandalous enough for him to try to make hay out of. But it also may be true that living with "all things in common" as the early church tried to was simply Biblical enough for him that he didn't see fit to attack it systematically.

Fourth, he recycles fairly frequently his "distaste" for being "compelled" by the "truth" to write such negative things about a people he was once a part of, but he never tells the full story. You have to learn of his own conversion elsewhere. It's like in his zeal to act on fresh disciplinary measures, he can't bring himself to recall with any positivity whatsoever any of the things he felt were true at the time. Alma's warning to Ammonihah Nehorians about God's system of pride-filtration and faith-building comes to mind about God taking away even what they have if people choose to fail to act in faith on the portion of the Word they are given.

Finally, Booth definitely spent hours deftly bending his pen to the purpose of character assassination--most notably of Smith, Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery, who he charged as weak-minded cowards--and of characterizing what details of revelations he did faithfully cite as unfulfilled and as evidence of false claims to prophecy. But nowhere in the nine letters does he explain a single doctrinal disagreement or cite any Biblical scripture to back his claims that the revelations he was privy to (the Book of Mormon, and whatever unpublished, but transcribed copies of the various sections of the Doctrine and Covenants as were extant prior to publication). He outlines grievances and disappointments with the leaders, the credulity of the ordinary members, and the failures of revelations or manifestations of the Spirit to rise to his expectations, but he proceeds as if it's entirely Biblical to suspect that a Restored church, with prophets (and soon to be Apostles), and a revealed set of ancient scripture as companion to the Bible, could exist, and that it comports completely with Methodism to expect immediate miracles and signs. He hints in his first letter that the "Mormonites" as he calls them don't consult their Bibles very often, and aren't exactly "sola scriptura" types. But his reasoning for disliking this isn't because of the simple fact that a Book of Mormon exists--which most Evangelicals would immediately balk at with no other argument necessary--but rather because they believe so strongly in a modern-day Prophet that they would rather just consult him rather than try to work out what the Bible has to say on the matter for themselves. He's not kindly disposed to the Book of Mormon, by the end of his letters, but he doesn't systematically attempt any internal or external discrediting other than noting how they contain prophecies he doesn't see fulfilled yet.

All this is to say that Booth's perspective can be engaged with honestly, without fear that he might undermine the testimony of anyone who has one, but that this honest engagement must include fair contextual suspicion of his conclusions if not his facts. And it's no surprise that Rigdon and Smith seemed to be able to reason with neighbors sufficiently for the growth of the church to continue. To be sure, there was also continued resistance, even to the point of mob violence, but missionaries had a less cold reception after their efforts to restore the balance of truth to the one-sided "conversation" Booth was supplying. Booth was not telling the truth. He was just jilted.

In case anyone is interested in the "rest" of the story, I don't know much more than what Wikipedia asserts, but it appears that Booth lived a long life, and bounced from credulity to disillusionment at a number of fringe Christian communities--including Millerism, and Shakerism--before giving up on Christianity entirely and dying an agnostic.

To my mind, Booth's obvious pride is the cautionary tale here. We can't expect the Lord to conform to our opinions of Him, but rather we should expect to conform to His truths and prescriptions for us. It's notoriously hard to diagnose our own pride, but when we see the signs of disappointment with expectations of leaders arise, maybe it's time to ask ourselves whether it's our expectations that are the issue. And in any case, the antidote to pride is loving service--go out and do what the Lord asks, and let Him increase your patience with your fellows just as He has patience for you.

And, as a last commentary, this post's title deserves a sentence or two. Staying humble when you know you're right is just as tricky as staying humble under the illusion that you're right. Probably because it's the illusion of being right that's impossible to undo without an open mind and heart already in action. But for those, like me, who have studied the explanations that bring light to the mind, and who have felt the occasional feelings the Spirit bears as its fruit, and yet whose testimony depends neither on mere feelings nor mere logic, but on a manifestation that the Spirit gave, which no argument or emotional manipulation can take away, we can know we're right and "confound our enemies" without shaming, without contention. We simply share. We simply keep focus on substance--on what's right, rather than who's right--and on its positive expression. We are apologists, by which I mean we defend, never attack, but we only defend when actually attacked and don't easily take offense when misrepresentations arise, even maliciously and publicly. Shame will come to all who attack the truth, but not because its defenders seek emotional vengeance, but rather because all will internally be convicted of their own guilt when the Way, the Truth, and the Life condemns all lies at either the last day or any day before then, in His time, not ours. Sometimes the only way to avoid contention is to be prepared to defend what enemies are invested in attacking--there can be no peace when one side persists in an abusive lie--but in our free societies, the best persuasions rarely come in debate form, but rather by way of demonstrations, over lengthy periods, of the fruits of true beliefs.

If you were ever accused of being a true Christian, would there be sufficient evidence to convict you?

The Stewardship Principle - D&C 70:7-9

 

"Inasmuch as they receive more than is needful for their necessities and their wants, it shall be given into my storehouse; And the benefits shall be consecrated unto the inhabitants of Zion, and unto their generations, inasmuch as they become heirs according to the laws of the kingdom. Behold, this is what the Lord requires of every man in his stewardship."

The Church of Jesus Christ has very few paid positions. For those with full-time callings which prevent them from carrying out their worldly occupation, there is a stipend paid from the tithing funds of the church for their ministry. It's enough to live decently, but not opulently. At the local level, on the other hand, ministries are voluntary. The time, energy, travel, and other means is donated over and above what adults earn by labor for the support of their own families in their various professions. This follows the biblical pattern of Peter who would not exchange money for the Priesthood, and yet who was supported by saints through voluntary hospitality in his ministry after the Lord's ascension, rather than through any salary.

And yet, the church does have business affairs. Printing, real estate and its maintenance, travel agents, corporate holdings as is wise to administer the tithes (which are channeled centrally, then used locally by allotment) and offerings (which are used locally, and with only excesses being routed centrally), and historical and genealogical monuments and tools for public use, even educational institutions--all of it to fulfill the missions of the Church. In all cases, there are appointees hired for services, chosen for expertise or interest, not always specifically called by the Lord, and they operate under a principle of stewardship.

Stewardship is an awkward concept for modern folks, especially in the West. We like to think of ourselves as egalitarians with rights to private property and responsibility only to ourselves to pursue happiness as we see fit under such guarantees of life, liberty, and equal opportunity as our democratic institutions can provide us. What I earn, I earn; what I spend, I spend, what I risk becomes my return and my just desserts. Individualism and free enterprise can procure prosperity as long as I supply the work--the action on resources. But the profit motive is terrestrial at best. It doesn't conform to celestial law. In the heavens, the economy of God is utopian, but not because it agrees with Marx on the fundamental goodness of the proletariat seizing the means of production. Instead, it balances individual freedom to freely act on resources with an Accountability Node of perfect wisdom, or a duly authorized representative holding Priesthood keys to that calling. In other words, as we consecrate our all to God, we recognize that it's all His, and we covenant to grow closer to Him by acting on His resources with more care than we would even for our own property--not thinking of it as ours to abuse and destroy as we see fit, which all ownership ultimately means--out of gratitude, out of love, out of care to use it for the best application to others that we can.

Stewardship leaves us free, but adds accountability to a covenant judge to what would otherwise be naked capitalism. It keeps us tethered to the collective benefit each individual effort adds by profiting from their own activity, but through voluntary structures rather than taxes, compliance officers, or politburos. We act for ourselves, for our own growth, on our own hook if we fail, so that we see to our own needs and that of our families under real conditions of incentive to do our best. And if there is surplus, we are free to donate according to our own management decisions rather than according to arbitrary quotas from people who might mean well, but don't live in our homes or skin. It's not the capitalist caricature of "catch as catch can" profiteering, but it's not the incentive-free utopianism of the socialists, either. There is private property that voluntarily contributes to the collective, not a collective administered centrally. There is an incentive to work, and there is a duty to return and report on what the work accomplished. Yet the benefits of the work aren't all in the profit itself, but rather in the growth in character along the way--the closeness to Christ one receives when blessed for doing as He would.

The above passage is taken from a specific charge to a specific group of trusted Church leaders being tasked to form the first publication "firm" to fill a need to get printed copies of the Revelations given to Joseph Smith into the hands of as many members as possible--along with other publication projects, like pedagogical materials for children. The appointees in question were familiar with the business, familiar with literary production, and familiar with the Prophet, and were either men of means themselves, or men with experience managing means. The Lord had brought them together and given them a charge, and they nearly all impoverished themselves in the risk it took to get the publishing enterprise off the ground. The press they purchased and the copies of its first printing of its core mission text--the Doctrine and Covenants--were nearly all destroyed by arson at the hands of a mob angry at the arrival of strange beliefs and people in their frontier territory. Their consecration came at the cost of great sacrifice.

But the passage applies generally, not merely specifically. When we are entrusted with anything by the Lord, if we conform to the pattern of seeing to our "wants" (careful! this 1828 term does NOT mean whatever your heart desires, but rather your lacks) and needs through acting on the trust with the goal of serving the Lord, He magnifies our efforts, produces surplus that we can consecrate to Him and to His children, our fellows.

And the pattern is as merely temporal as are all of God's laws--which is to say that it's not at all. Whether we are blessed with dollars or experiences, whether we have offerings of time or of testimony, being accountable to our bishop to bring surplus to the Lord's storehouse which keys to administer he holds, he can supply someone else's wants and needs--the giver and the receiver both being blessed by the consecrated act, both sides drawing closer to the Lord because that's what covenant relationships do.

Stewards love their Lord. They report to Him without formal command or procedure. They don't merely hold, but act to improve. And they care about His approval more than his material, because the framework for growth is not a competition, it's a cooperative expression of faith. He is able to do His own work, but He entrusts to each a portion of His gifts so that we--through each other--may all feel His love and redeeming power expanding our potential. His Church is like family, not business. His stewardships are training for our celestial inheritance. The time to prepare is now in mortality.

And now, a few quick post-script notes on 70:12-14 which reads as follows:

"He who is appointed to administer spiritual things, the same is worthy of his hire, even as those who are appointed to a stewardship to administer in temporal things; Yea, even more abundantly, which abundance is multiplied unto them through the manifestations of the Spirit. Nevertheless, in your temporal things you shall be equal, and this not grudgingly, otherwise the abundance of the manifestations of the Spirit shall be withheld."

The referents in this passage aren't super clear because we don't have all the context that was clear to those on the ground at the time. It's possible that those "appointed to administer spiritual things" is a reference to Smith and his current scribe Sidney Rigdon, who were called to complete the Bible translation Smith was working on, which would remove them from the capacity to earn their own livings for a time. Smith was, indeed, living off the hospitality of the Johnsons at this time, with a room in their home donated to him, his wife, and their adopted twins. They weren't drawing a salary as far as I can ascertain, and weren't lazy or indulgent in their participation in help for their upkeep or requirements for food and shelter. But this reference may also apply to others who were not called like bishops to execute economic decisions, but were, instead, focused on spiritual ministry--like missionaries.

But while it certainly may, by the laws of antecedent scope, I don't think the dative pronoun in the next clause is intended as exclusive to those who administer in spiritual things--the "abundance" multiplied "more abundantly" can be for both those who administer in spiritual and in temporal things. The Spirit manifests through gifts that sometimes touch on the temporal anyway--gifts of discernment, gifts of tongues, gifts of being healed, gifts of administration, for example--so that it is hard to imply that those who have clearly spiritual callings get the better manifestations. Maybe so. I'm just pointing out that the language deployed here doesn't fully foreclose either interpretation: "unto them" might mean unto anyone with any calling.

On the other hand, the withholding principle is clearly exclusive--if people aren't being "equal" in temporal things, the spiritual things will wane as well. But even here, let's not assume "equal" means equality of result. Being "equal" in 1828 could, and likely does in this context, refer to being even-handed, or principle-based in applying rules to all without respect of persons, rather than to some modern woke version of equity in all matters of property. The rich man doesn't lose the Spirit because he's rich, but because he loves his riches more than his fellow humans or his God. Equality of opportunity predicts inequality of spiritual and economic result, but if we attempt by force to flatten the collective inequality of result, we'd surely lose the freedom and the Spirit that is required to produce any growth whatsoever. Because God's plan is one of moral agency, not compulsion. Instead, this part of the passage seems pretty clearly to target administrators for even-handed administration so as not to lose the Spirit either through fewer manifestations, or people in whom the manifestations occur, because they are driven away by the unfairness of the leaders. In either case, the account will have to be made.

And in any case, having an abundance of spiritual manifestations seems to be contingent upon principles of temporal fairness.

Stakes, Families, and the Age of Accountability - D&C 68:25

 

"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 the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents."

The theory of moral agency predicts that all of God's children who have advanced to their mortal test will choose the wrong, that this mortal space will therefore be full of sin and its consequences, itself being part of the test conditions, and that there will be a range of the acceptance of the saving doctrines, even among those who have the advantage of learning them from birth in a home filled with the Spirit and excellent models of Christ-like living. Loving families which take seriously the responsibility to teach moral principles, and instill faith in the Redeemer early give their children the best chance of retaining that faith, but since we are all agents unto ourselves, the most pious, most effective, and most thorough teachings within the family are never sufficient to induce individual testimony. Those have to be earned personally. The best parents, therefore, have an uphill climb to indoctrinate their children while young enough. They can do everything right, and still have children whose free will is simply to reject the Savior and His Church, or simply fail to take up their responsibility to find out for themselves what is true and right and eternally worthwhile.

But indoctrination is what's required. It is a full immersion in the demonstration of being all-in for the Lord that is necessary. Faith is built on work, and while the youngest can't comprehend the full meaning of the commitment the Lord asks, they can and must be taught to build the habits of faith that insure the best chance at internalizing the truth.

Someone I knew whose relationship with the church was itself tenuous felt that it was unfair to bring children to church every Sunday, get them involved in church-centered peer group activities, and hold family devotional time, or even lead daily family prayers. They are young. That's manipulative, isn't it? Why not wait until they're old enough to understand intellectually what's going on, and what their choices are. Then they can make a free choice in full light of their moral and intellectual faculties.

I get where he's coming from, but it's wrong-headed and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what faith is. Faith is hard. It takes effort to build. By delaying the introduction of the principles, and the building up of the muscles of faith until the child has the intellectual capacity to judge the consequences for themselves, you've ensured that they are too weak to see faith as anything but the hard and inconvenient choice. You've brought the child to the starting line of a marathon before their first 3k. You've plunked the child down at a test on integral calculus without their first lessons in geometry or arithmetic. You've crippled their capacity for understanding delayed gratification and for orienting their aims toward higher goals than themselves when you tell them they don't have to choose until they are "old enough to know", because knowing the benefits of being 100% committed to something in order to compare apples to apples requires that they have some experience being 100% committed to something--even when they don't feel like it, even when they don't "want to", even when peers or temptations, or mistakes make it hard. In order for the choice to actually be fair, they have to have been insiders long enough to have a sense of the long-term benefits on the inside.

And actually, indoctrination is happening whether you do it or not. The question isn't if, it's who. If you're not indoctrinating your kids, you're leaving it to someone else--someone more worldly. Someone less inclined to show your child that putting down a temporary pleasure now to work on something worthwhile is a noble sacrifice, one that prepares you for service, for growth, and for taking on the burdens of life when life gets hard.

So take your window and use it to the max. Christ has absorbed the consequences for all mistakes before age eight. Why that age? Not because 8-year-olds are fully cognizant of all the pros and cons of covenanting with Christ. But maybe because that is roughly the age they begin to develop their own moral skills--where they BEGIN to become accountable, and therefore where a wrong choice MAY be imputed to their guilt. Does this mean the parents are fully off the hook at baptism time? Nope. Children still need moral training, probably even long into what we consider adulthood. There's no scriptural date that defines an age or other sign of when the process of becoming accountable completes, only when it begins. In fact, there's a case to be made that even the most intelligent, most morally upright, and most in tune adults still have no fair warning about the nature of the eternal consequences of any of their decisions--we simply have no clue what eternal guilt or blessing feel like. It devolves to poetry to even attempt some explanation of the rewards or punishments of God. We can know with a surety that our choices are good when they are, because of their direction, not out of a rational comprehension of what it takes to obtain X eternal outcome. This life has a veil. We must make our choices in faith, without full knowledge.

So what are the key basics we need to build personal testimony on and instill personal faith-enhancing habits around? Long before the 13 Articles of Faith were published, this passage lists them: personal faith in Christ (subordinating all acts to the belief that He saves), repentance (allowing Him to change our penitent hearts for the better), baptism (submission to an authorized ritual symbolizing the start of covenantal belonging with Christ), and the Gift of the Holy Ghost (acceptance of His direction as ordained through His authorized representatives). Don't stop reading, though. Other key principles beyond this verse include: prayer; walking in His ways, or obedience to His commandments and observance of His prescribed rituals, Sabbath observance in particular; and continual expenditure of energy for the benefit of others.

Notice that the Sabbath observance and the labor on the other days are messages not just for pre-baptismal children, but for all the inhabitants of Zion. Notice that Zion is a society composed of covenant makers and keepers, of individuals of strength and conviction who spend their energy for the benefit of all--family first, but then beyond as efforts yield profits. Notice that this passage contains the first references to "stakes" of Zion--a line-crossing new distinction in the Church which will more and more come to remove false hope for a single centralized territory as Zion's main definition, and will instead anchor in the minds of the Saints that wherever the Church is firmly established, Zion societies can result. Stakes--or local iterations of Zion--are not yet a concept the Lord has fully revealed and described at this point, and yet the allusion to them is part and parcel of the surrounding thinking on missionary work, parental roles, and the administration of temporal affairs by Bishops. As parents teach their children to walk in God's ways, their families resemble and strengthen Zion. As missionaries serve and teach those past the "starting" age of accountability to take on Christ's covenants, new individuals and families join and add their strength to Zion. As high priests act in the office of bishop, exercising their keys of the spiritual judgment and temporal welfare of Zion, its material and spiritual strength expands. Its stakes strengthen. Its tent is metaphorically stretching to cover its inhabitants more firmly, more protectively, more fully with Christ as the center pole supporting the entire structure.

Families, stakes of Zion, covenants are all pulling those of every age toward their eventual accountability before Christ whose coverage on judgment day will enable only those who have accepted Him to escape the Father's justice. I pray that He will say to you and I: well done, thou good and faithful servant.