TG Dreams 28 - I Nephi 2

Here we are not given the dream content, so we do not know which type of dream we are dealing with.  We do know that Lehi felt confident that the dream was a message from the Lord to take his family and flee Jerusalem into "the wilderness" (v.2).  The entire Book of Mormon, all of Nephite and Lamanite history pivot on a dream message.

"And it came to pass that he was obedient unto the word of the Lord, wherefore he did as the Lord commanded him" (v.3).  The phrasing my imply a Type 1 dream in which the Lord appears in his own character and delivers a clear and understandable message or command.

TG Mortality 26 - Alma 11:45

Alma's talk to Zeezrom focuses on the outcome of our mortal condition.

His starting point is the atonement - the Messiah, explicitly identified as the "Son of God," and "the beginning and the end, the first and the last" (v. 39), will "come into the world to redeem his people" and "to take upon him the transgressions of those who believe on his name" opening the door for them to salvation and eternal life (v. 40).  They are not saved "in their sins" (v. 34-36), for the cleansing power of the atonement enables them to become clean and ready to live in the presence of  Him with whom "no unclean thing" can dwell (v. 37). 

Those who reject the atonement remain wicked.  The wicked share in the atonement's conquest of physical death, receiving a resurrected body, but even though their bodies are reunited with the spirit "in its perfect form" and "restored to its perfect frame" they stand in it before God with " a bright recollection" of all of their guilt (v. 43, 45). 

TG Dreams 27 - 1 Nephi 1

Lehi is a "visionary man" (1 Nephi 5:2,4).  He (like his contemporaries, Daniel and Nephi) move in world where symbols in dream and trance are full of meaning, message and direction.  Nephi notes that his father's personal record focuses on "many things which he saw in visions and in dreams" (v. 16) as well as on his prophecies and teachings passed on to his children.  The Book of Mormon really starts with Lehi's revelatory experiences - first his concentrated engagement with hearing prophets prophesy (v. 4, 5), then a vision which begins with a pillar of fire in which he "saw and heard much" (v. 6), then a vision seen while lying on his bed in a state of exhaustion (v. 7, 8) whose details we are given. 

TG Dreams - New Testament

From here the topical guide moves on to the Book of Mormon.  What can we make of the fact that other than the experiences of Joseph, the New Testament does not have a wealth of dream material?  Can it be that some people have a gift for receiving messages via dreams and some do not?  That dreams are one channel that the Lord may use to communicate, but that it is not a universal channel? 

TG Mortality 26 - Mosiah 18:13

The Topical Guide next directs us to the phrase "until you are dead as to the mortal body" in verse 13 of Mosiah 18.  The chapter as a whole, in fact, is a picture of Christian life here in mortality, framed as it is by a covenant to "serve [God] until you are dead" with an eye towards "eternal life, through the redemption of Christ."

The chapter begins with Alma the Elder secretly circulating the teachings of Abinidi about "the redemption of the people, which was to be brought to pass through the power, and sufferings, and death of Christ" (v. 2).  Those who "believed on his words" (v. 7) gathered to hear him preach at the Waters of Mormon.  "And he did teach them, and did preach unto them repentance, and redemption, and faith on the Lord" (v.7).  A marvelous spirit had taken hold among those who believed and Alma recognized that they were "desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and [were] willing to bear one another's burdens, that they may be light....willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places, even until death" (v. 8-9). 

Alma invited the people to be baptized in the name of the Lord, "as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you" (v. 10).  This indeed was the "desire of their hearts."

The wording of Alma's baptismal ordinance made the covenant explicit to each person- "I baptize thee...as a testimony that ye have entered into a covenant to serve [God] until ye are dead as to the mortal body; and may the Spirit of the Lord be poured out upon you; and may he grant you eternal life, through the redemption of Christ, whom he has prepared from the foundation of the world" (v.13).

The effects of living a covenant life were remarkable.  Immediately, they "came forth out of the water rejoicing, being filled with the Spirit" (v. 14) and were "filled with the grace of God" (v. 16).  Long term, they took part in the "church of God" or "church of Christ" (v.17) where teachers were provided to "teach them the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God" (v.18) explicitly focused on "repentance and faith on the Lord, who had redeemed his people" (v. 20).

Alma took his group of about "four hundred and fifty souls" (v.35) and taught them that "there should be no contention one with another, but that they should look forward with one eye, having one faith and one baptism, having their hearts knit together in unity and love one towards another" (v.21).  Doctrinally, they united around that "which had been spoken by the mouth of the holy prophets" (v.19).  They set aside one day in the week "to gather themselves together to teach the people, and to worship the Lord their God" (v. 25).  As the bonds of unity began to grow it was natural that they would get together with each other as often they could (v.25). 

Economically, all of them (including the priests/teachers) labored "with their own hands for their own support" (24).  However, they were also taught to "impart of their substance, every one according to that which he had; if he had more abundantly he should impart more abundantly; and of him that had but little, but little should be required; and to him that had not should be given.  And thus they should impart of their substance of their own free will and desires towards God...to every needy, naked soul" (v. 27-8).

The record records that "they did walk uprightly before God, imparting to one another both temporally and spiritually according to their needs and their wants" (v.29).  "And thus they became the children of God" (v. 22).

That's it.  That's how it's done.  Here in a single chapter is described the normal Christian life (lived, interestingly enough, at what is essentially a ward level), the foundation on which that life is based, and the way that the power of the atonement will express itself if an entire congregation takes seriously enough the covenant to serve God "until you are dead as to the mortal body."

TG Dreams 21 - Matthew 27:19

We do not know the content of this dream, but Pontius Pilate's wife is given a powerful warning.  The dream left her with no doubt that the prisoner in question was a "just man" and that her husband should have nothing to do with the travesty of justice that was being attempted. 

The tragedy of Pilate's situation is that the next verse starts with the word "but"....

TG Mortality 25 - 2 Nephi 2 (X)

I want to make it clear that it’s certainly not true that disobedience is better than a blind, mechanical, obedience to the law.  Even without the rebirth the atonement brings, an outward, legalistic conformity to the letter of the law of chastity can prevent the heartache of sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancies out of wedlock, separation from the blessings of church fellowship, deep feelings of guilt, the loss of the spirit and (if you are being unfaithful to a spouse) the betrayal of trust and possibly the destruction of family ties.  It’s just that this kind of obedience is not enough if what you aim for is Lehi’s goal of “liberty and eternal life.” 

It’s also not true that the atonement releases us from obedience.  Again we can look to Elder Uchtdorf’s talk for clarification—

“Sisters, it is very important that we attend our Sunday meetings, but…”

“Yes, visiting teachers need to be faithful in making their monthly visits, all without missing…”

The wording parallels that of the Savior himself—

“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).

But in obeying, focusing on the law brings about far different results than focusing on the atonement and the development of that mentoring relationship with the Savior that is discipleship.  A focus on the law can bring about pride, self-righteousness and a harsh judgment of others as shown in Jesus’s parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:9-14).  The mechanical, legalistic attitude it brings often blinds us to the “weightier matters of the law” and we find ourselves all bound up in tithes of mint and cummin.  We can find ourselves complying with the letter (sitting in a pew at church, 100 percent visiting teaching) and still completely miss the vision of the spirit of the law.  We go through the outward motions but our hearts our unchanged.  We wear what Elder Morrison of the Seventy once called a “mask of carnal compliance” instead of “receiving His image in our countenance.”  We miss out on the fruit of the tree of life, the love of God.  And ultimately, without the gift of charity, our obedience can’t save us.  The weight of our own unaided efforts can lead to feeling burdened and even to a despair of ever being able to fundamentally change or fully measure up (as in the experience of Colin Douglas).  As Elder Uchtdorf warned, in our carnal state we can even find ourselves questioning inspired standards and counsel.  “Do we really need to obey all of God’s commandments?”

We come back again at last to Lehi’s warnings in Second Nephi 2, but perhaps we finally understand them now – “by the law men are cut off…they perish from that which is good and become miserable...”

A passage from the Tao Te Ching comes to mind, which speaks of

“…propriety and blind obedience,

          which is only the husk

               of commitment and faithfulness

                     and is, in fact, the beginning of confusion.

          For even when propriety’s opinions

               have blossomed from the Way

                    they are held in ignorance.

Thus the wise man

     chooses the kernel

          and not the husk,

     chooses the fruit

          and not the flower.

                                                            (Tao Te Ching, 38)

Lehi would say that the wise man chooses “liberty and eternal life through the great Mediator of all men.”  He chooses the atonement.  He looks to the great Mediator, and hearkens unto his great commandments; and is faithful unto his words, and chooses eternal life according to the will of the Holy Spirit.

TG Dreams 20 - Matthew 2:22

Joseph's last recorded revelation is again a dream.  The specifics are not given, just "warned of God in a dream."  The effect of obeying his guidance is twofold.  First (as with the other dreams in Matthew's infancy narrative), the Messiah and his family are safeguarded.  The dream is after all a "warning."  Second, the Savior arrives in the place he was meant to grow up in, Nazareth of Galilee - a fact that Matthew believes fulfills a centuries old prophecy.

TG Mortality 25 - 2 Nephi 2 (IX)

President Uchtdorf illustrates the “two ways” of approaching obedience with a couple of concrete examples.  The first is hypothetical:

“….those who see attendance at Church meetings as a personal way to increase their love of God, find peace, uplift others, seek the Spirit, and renew their commitment to follow Jesus Christ will find a far richer experience than those who simply put in their time sitting in a pew. Sisters, it is very important that we attend our Sunday meetings, but I’m fairly certain our Heavenly Father is even more concerned about our faith and repentance than about attendance statistics.”

The second one is an actual account of two sisters doing their visiting teaching:

 

“A single mother of two small children recently came down with chicken pox. Of course, it wasn’t long before her children got sick as well. The task of caring for herself and her little ones alone was almost too much for the young mother. And, as a result, the normally spotless house became cluttered and messy. Dirty dishes piled up in the sink, and laundry piled up everywhere else.”

“While she was struggling with crying children—and wanting to cry herself—a knock came at the door. It was her visiting teachers. They could see the young mother’s distress. They could see her house, her kitchen. They could hear the cries of the children.”

“Now, if these sisters had been concerned only with completing their assigned monthly visits, they might have handed the mother a plate of cookies, mentioned that they had missed her at Relief Society last week, and said something like, “Let us know if there is anything we can do!” Then they would have cheerfully been on their way, thankful that they had 100 percent for another month.”

“Fortunately, these sisters were true disciples of Christ. They noticed their sister’s needs and put their many talents and their experience to work. They cleared up the chaos, brought light and clarity into the home, and called a friend to bring over some much-needed groceries. When they at last finished their work and said their good-byes, they left that young mother in tears—tears of gratitude and love.”

“From that moment on, the young mother’s opinion of visiting teaching changed. “I know,” she said, “that I am not just a check mark on someone else’s to-do list.””

“Yes, visiting teachers need to be faithful in making their monthly visits, all without missing the most important why behind this commandment: to love God and fellowmen.”

“When we treat God’s commandments and our part in building His kingdom like something to check off on a to-do list, we miss the heart of discipleship. We miss the growth that comes from joyfully living the commandments of our Father in Heaven.”

In both of these examples President Uchtdorf presents what we might characterize as
“two ways” of approaching obedience.  The first way is dry, impersonal and legalistic, focused on outward observances—“put in their time sitting in pews;” “attendance statistics;” “only concerned with completing their assigned monthly visits;” “100 percent for another month;” “something to check off on a to-do list.”  When Lehi speaks of “the law” which cannot save us, might he be referring to this very attitude?

In contrast, the words President Uchtdorf uses to describe the second way are saturated with the language of the atonement, the first four principles of the gospel by which we come unto Christ—“Our Heavenly father is even more concerned about our faith and repentence;” “commitment to follow Jesus Christ;” “true disciples of Jesus Christ;” and “seek the spirit.”  His words are also words of relationships, both with each other, as we reach out in love and compassion, and with God, as we strive to keep alive that connection to the vine that the atonement has created—“ to increase their love of God, find peace, uplift others, seek the Spirit, and renew their commitment to follow Jesus Christ.”

TG Dreams 19 - Matthew 2:13-14 and 19-20

Joseph, who seem to have a gift of dreams, again has two type 1 dreams.  In both of them the angel of the Lord appears in his own person, and in his own voice speaks clearly and unequivocally the message that the young Messiah's guardian needs to receive. 

I find it striking that Joseph is  in all three instances so far reported as obeying as soon as "he arose."  He simply woke up and obeyed.

TG Mortality 25 - 2 Nephi 2 (VIII)

So I got a little theoretical last email.  Let’s get back to experience.  Lehi’s contrast between “the law” and “the atonement” is not one we commonly highlight in 21^st century Mormonism.  We tend to read Lehi’s (and Paul’s) negative references to the law simply as commentary on the Law of Moses.  I’m not certain they can be so easily dismissed.

 

However, it is true that one of the ways Mormonism can be distinguished from the Protestant denominations that surround us is our emphasis on keeping commandments.  The Mormon conception of life is inextricably bound up with the concepts of obedience, commandments, law and discipline.  We frequently quote D&C 130:20-21 to each other.  President Uchtdorf begins the core of his talk at the last Women’s Conference with some phrases from D&C 132—

 

““Except ye abide my law ye cannot attain to this glory.

“For strait is the gate, and narrow the way that leadeth unto the exaltation. …“

… Receive ye, therefore, my law.”

 

          Given these facts, is there any way in which Lehi’s distinction between the law and the atonement makes itself felt in our spiritual life today?  Does a normal faithful Mormon experience anything that Lehi’s words about the law (in verse 5 and verse 10) might illuminate?  Let’s begin by taking a closer look at President Uchtdorf’s talk.

 

          It is true that to attain Celestial Glory we must learn to “abide” God’s law.  But President Uchtdorf makes a careful distinction between two very different approaches to keeping commandments — two different ways of seeing them, if you will.

 

          The first approach is characterized by an attitude of alienation from God:

“…we imagine that God has all of His blessings locked in a huge cloud up in heaven, refusing to give them to us unless we comply with some strict, paternalistic requirements He has set up.”

            Obedience is not easy or pleasant in such a condition:

“….for some of us, obedience to God’s commandments doesn’t always feel very joyful. Let’s face it: there may be some that seem harder or less appealing—commandments that we approach with the enthusiasm of a child sitting before a plate of healthy but hated vegetables. We grit our teeth and force ourselves to comply so that we can move on to more desirable activities.”

          Our attitude towards the law is very impersonal.  They are “good ideas,” “life hacks,” “motivational quotes.”  We may even find ourselves questioning–“Do we really need to obey all of God’s commandments?”

            Obedience in such a condition of alienation often feels like just going through the motions, “we treat God’s commandments and our part in building His kingdom like something to check off on a to-do list.”

            The second approach to obedience is described as “living the gospel joyfully, with all our heart, might, mind and soul.”  In this second condition we “embrace” and “cherish” the commandments, because our attitude towards God is not one of alienation.  We see that he is “constantly raining blessings upon us.”  And that it is only “our fear, doubt, and sin that, like an umbrella, block these blessings from reaching us.  His commandments are the loving instructions and the divine help for us to close the umbrella so we can receive the shower of heavenly blessings.”

So how do we move from the first condition to the second? 

“The Creator of the seas, sands, and endless stars is reaching out to you this very day! He is offering the grand recipe for happiness, peace, and eternal life!”

“To qualify for these glorious blessings, you must humble yourself, exercise faith, take upon you the name of Christ, seek Him in word and deed, and resolutely ‘stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places.’”

By choosing to trust God, to “truly believe,” to “believe in your hearts” in God’s wisdom and love, by choosing to “walk the path of discipleship” you move from the realm of abstract keeping of laws and principles into a personal relationship with the Son of God based upon the atonement.  And this relationship, this personal discipleship changes everything—

“Walking in the path of discipleship does not need to be a bitter experience. It “is sweet above all that is sweet.” It is not a burden that weighs us down. Discipleship lifts our spirits and lightens our hearts. It inspires us with faith, hope, and charity. It fills our spirits with light in times of darkness, and serenity during times of sorrow.”

“It gives us divine power and lasting joy.”

TG Dreams 18 - Matthew 2:12

We do not know the contents of the dream here, nor to whom it came.  We do know that the Wise Men followed its guidance, sparing themselves some trouble and helping to protect the child Jesus.  I wonder if (once again) the dream came to Joseph.

TG Mortality 25 - 2 Nephi 2 (VII)

Isn't it interesting that just before he begins his thought experiment about the necessity of opposition, Lehi describes the opposition that ACTUALLY exists for us.  It is indeed his first use of the word opposition-

"Wherefore the ends of the law which the Holy One hath given, unto the inflicting of the punishment which is affixed, which punishment that is affixed is in opposition to that of the happiness which is affixed, to answer the ends of the atonement" (v. 10).

Happiness is not presented here as the result of ever more intensive efforts to perfect ourselves by keeping the law.  The law can only deliver punishment and misery and perishing from good, those are its "ends."  Lehi takes great pains to make sure that his son understands that happiness and goodness only answer the "ends of the atonement."

And how do we get the ends of the atonement?  How is choosing "the good part" (v.30) different than just trying with all of our own might to answer the ends of the law?  Lehi actually gives a complete and detailed answer, but we may find it hard to recognize at first, because when we talk about the elements of his answer we tend to focus on externals, while Lehi is much more concerned with their content.  Lehi tells us that we take advantage of the atonement through Faith, Repentance, Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Ghost.

No.  Really.  It's all there.

Those who are saved are those who believe in the Holy Messiah (v. 9).  We choose eternal life by looking to the great Mediator (v. 28).  In other places the Book of Mormon urges us to put our faith in Christ, to trust Him and to rely upon Him, but believing and looking to Him are clear enough to indicate what needs to be done. 

Lehi also tells us that in the days of our probation the Lord has sent out a commandment to all of the children of men that they must repent (v. 21), for they (and we) are lost.  That repentance is not an attempt to modify a few behaviors and set better goals for self improvement.  Those activities could never answer the ends of the law (v. 5-7).  Repentance is a whole hearted turning towards Christ with a "broken heart and a contrite spirit" (v. 7).  In several places the Book of Mormon speaks of it as repenting of all of our sins.  We aren't so much preoccupied with one specific thing that needs to be fixed, we have (like the people of King Benjamin) viewed ourselves in our own carnal state and are conscious of our separation from God.  We offer up the sacrifice of a broken heart and contrite spirit to Christ in the hope that he will have mercy and apply his atoning blood  that the appalling separation might be ended (3 Nephi 9:20, Mosiah 4:2).

We might have especial trouble seeing baptism because we are so preoccupied with the physical ordinance.  Lehi, like all other Book of Mormon writers, is much more concerned with the content of the covenants that we make.  Those who make this covenant promise to hearken to Christ's commandments and to be faithful to His words (v. 28).  They commit to spend their days in the service of their God (v. 3).  Notice that this is not a promise to deliver some of kind of perfection we could never follow through on.  What it IS is a decision to surrender to God.  We are no longer proudly holding the reigns in the driver's seat of our life.  We have relinquished the "will of the flesh" with its inevitable proneness to Satanic manipulation (v. 29).  We are going to order our lives now according to the will of the Holy Spirit (v. 28) who brings us the words of our new Master, Jesus Christ (2 Nephi 32:3).  In King Benjamin's words we are going to "yield" to the spirit's enticings.  That is going to involve us learning to become as a child, submissive, meek and humble, willing to submit to the Lords will.  Elder Maxwell would have called this decision embarking upon the path of discipleship.  President Benson would have called it being "captained by Christ" or "putting God first."  A decision he warned us that if we made it seriously would cause everything else in our lives to either drop out or take its proper place.

And the result?  Our decision to come unto Christ, to look, hearken to and obey the Great Mediator brings the Baptism of Fire and of the Holy Ghost.  Lehi describes it as finding liberty and eternal life according to the will of the Holy Spirit (v. 27-8).  he also describes it as being redeemed, justified and saved (v. 3, 5, 9).  He reminds us that those who receive the Holy Ghost  KNOW the greatness and the glory of God (v. 2, 4).  That is because their sins have been forgiven and their hearts changed (see Mosiah 4:11).  The "words of Christ" the Holy Ghost brings enables them to enjoy the same intimacy with the Savior as those who walked as his disciples down the dusty roads of Palestine, because the "spirit is the same, yesterday, today and forever" (v. 4).

Lehi does not imply that this is done in a single event.  It fills all of the "days of our probation."  The decision involves a lifetime of letting the will of the Holy Spirit work in us to enable us to grow stronger in our ability and desire to hearken and be faithful to our Master.  It is only at the end that one could speak confidently of having "chosen the good part" (v. 30).  Though Jacob has come to Christ and beheld His glory in his youth, he is still in need of being exhorted to "look to the great Mediator, and hearken unto his great commandments; and be faithful unto his words, and choose eternal life, according to the will of his Holy Spirit."  It is a theme sounded frequently by Book of Mormon prophets.  Alma makes it clear that it is NOT enough to have once experienced a change of heart and felt to sing the song of redeeming love.   We must ask ourselves if we can feel so now?  As Nephi said, we must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, enduring to the end  with unshaken faith in Him, relying wholy upon the merits of Him who is mighty to save.

TG Dreams 18 - Matthew 1:20-21

Joseph's dream is classic Type I.  The Lord appears in person, speaks in his own voice, and delivers a clear and comprehensible message.  And what a message - The identity of the Messiah in Mary's womb, the announcement of the coming of the atonement, and the direction that Joseph should not fear to take Mary to wife.

TG Mortality 25 - 2 Nephi 2 (VI)

Now we come to what is perhaps the oddest twist of all. The law is real; The law is indispensable; but the law is not the point; Not really.

 

"And the law is given unto men. And by the law no flesh is justified; or by the law men are cut off. Yea, by the temporal law they were cut off; and also, by the spiritual law they perish from that which is good, and become miserable forever" (v. 5).

 

For all the trouble we have taken to set up the law with its rewards and consequences, the choice placed before us is not really whether or not we will keep the law. We can't. Nobody (except for a God) could. We can try, but we will fall short. We are "flesh" (v. 5). We have a fallen nature, a "will of the flesh" (v. 29) in which there are evil tendencies that "giveth the devil power to captivate." Despite the best efforts of the best of us, we are, all of us, "lost" (v. 21), "cut off" (v. 5) or separated from God. Left to the law alone, we would "perish from that which is good, and become miserable for ever" (v. 5). Even being given the elements of will (the ability to act), the law, and opposition is not sufficient to give us true freedom. One more thing was necessary if God was going to create not just a temporary arena for choice, but a freedom with the potential to END with us having joy and doing good.

 

"And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because they are redeemed from the fall, they have become free forever...." (v. 26).

 

Our choice is not so much whether we will live the law, but how we will handle our failure. The law can't save, whether it be the Law of Moses (a "temporal" law of outward observances) or even a higher "spiritual" law (v. 5). If keeping the temporal law was impossible, the spiritual law is even further out of reach of our unaided choice.

 

"Wherefore, redemption cometh in and through the Holy Messiah; for he is full of grace and truth. Behold, he offereth himself a sacrifice for sin, to answer the ends of the law, unto all those who have a broken heart and a contrite spirit; and unto none else can the ends of the law be answered" (v. 6-7).

 

It bears repeating. Our choice is not so much whether we will live the law, but how we will handle our failure. The tension of our freedom becomes not JUST between good and evil, but ALSO between self and God, between stubborn independence and willful submission. The only way we can lay hold of the good we can see and desire is by means of a Mediator, whose "merits, mercy and grace" (v. 8) enable him to "make intercession" (v. 9) and bring about our redemption (v. 6, 26).

 

And that redemption is NOT laid hold upon by trying to be as good as we can. The laws that govern it are a little different. We access it when we "believe" (v. 9) in the Messiah, by "looking" (v. 28) to him (keep in mind the book of Mormon uses the terms "rely upon" and "trust in" interchangeably with "believing in" Christ). We access it when we repent (v. 21), coming before God with a "broken heart and a contrite spirit" (v. 7). All of a sudden it isn't about our relationship to an inanimate, unresponsive standard of right and wrong. Instead it is about our relationship to a person--a perfect person who embodies the law ("holiness and truth" v. 10), but because he is alive and loving, i.e. a person, also embodies the possibility of mercy and grace. We don't choose liberty and eternal life by choosing to obey the law. Instead we have to choose a very specific kind of relationship with the "great Mediator of all men."

 

The difference is shown in the pronouns. It's not just THE law we striving to obey any more, but HIS commandments we are hearkening too, HIS words we are faithful to. It's Him we look to, Him we believe in, Him to whom we offer a broken heart and a contrite spirit. The effort isn't any less, perhaps, but it's in the context of a relationship now, a relationship with someone who is full of mercy and grace and that makes all the difference. Lehi isn't just encouraging his sons to be good. He is encouraging them to come unto Christ.

 

Again, I want to avoid theorizing overly much about HOW all of this works. I'm much more interested in this particular series of meditations with the experiential than the theoretical. So I'm going to close this letter with an experience I've always found suggestive. It's from an article by Mormon Poet Colin B. Douglas in an article of his from the April 1989 Ensign with the marvelous title of "What I’ve Learned About Grace Since Coming Down from the Sycamore Tree."

 

            "About ten years ago, I realized that I needed to learn something. My spiritual life wasn’t very satisfying; I wasn’t very happy; and I didn’t know why."

"I knew a great deal about the “laws of happiness,” and I was trying - earnestly -to apply them. After all, wasn’t that the way to happiness and, ultimately, exaltation? Obey the law, get the blessing. Simple, straightforward justice."

"Of course, I knew that I hadn’t obeyed the law perfectly. But I had somehow got the understanding that if I set goals for myself, continually strove for perfection, and maintained a positive attitude, I could finally purify myself. I had mistakenly believed what I had heard somewhere - that what the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. After I had achieved this self-perfection, the atonement of Christ would then compensate for all my past shortcomings - or so I thought."

"But I began to feel that this “obey the law, get the blessing” approach was rather crass; that it was almost on the level of “put in the coin, get the purchase”; that there must be more to a spiritual life than that. Furthermore, I began to realize that this method was demanding more coins than I had in my spiritual pockets. I could usually (though not always) find the attend-your-meetings coin and the Word of Wisdom and tithing coins. But I was frequently unable to find all the denominations of love-thy-neighbor-as-thyself coins. I became anxious and discouraged about never having enough coins."

 

 "I also realized there was something cold about my spiritual life. I knew Latter-day Saints, some of them fellow ward members, in whom love and peace seemed to flow like a spring of water. I heard others speak of the Lord as if he were an intimate, cherished friend. But I was not one of them. What was I missing?"

"I came to find out. I am sorry to say that I did not at first find it in the scriptures, because, as I came to understand, I was not reading the scriptures - particularly the Book of Mormon - as they had been written, but was imposing on them certain incorrect preconceptions. (Of course, after I had learned what to look for, I found it there in abundance.)"

"One of my first and most important clues came from a non-Latter-day Saint, C. S. Lewis: “If I am a field that contains nothing but grass seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be ploughed up and resown.” (Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1971, p. 168.) I saw that I needed plowing and re-sowing, and it was quite clear to me who was the Ploughman and the Sower."

TG Dreams 17 - Zechariah 10:2

Again an Old Testament Prophet inveighs against false revelation.  Here some of the very techniques used to seek an answer are improper.  Methods of divination here include the use of idolatrous images (תְּרָפִים teraphim), and fortune tellers (קֹּוסְמִים kosmim).  The Kosmim are never presented in a positive light in the bible.  Here they have visions and dreams, but they "have seen a lie" and "told false dreams."  The use of teraphim to cast a fortune has only "spoken vanity" (אָוֶן aven, nothingness, falsehood - a word often used as a synonym for idols themselves).

As in the other Old Testament prophetic passages decrying false dreams, the underlying cause is a desire to receive a pre-determined outcome.  They seek to comfort, not to understand truth.  They have an axe to grind, not a desire to truly know what God wants to say.  The implication is that these are professionals, divining for cash, and they KNOW what their customers want to hear.  That comfort is הֶבֶל hevel, a vanity, something as insubstantial and fleeting as a puff of air.

In our own search for divine answers, we have to be wary of the answer we want to receive.

TG Mortality 25 - 2 Nephi 2 (V)

Lehi’s digression, In addition to its other purposes, tells us a little more about the moral universe we find ourselves in.  That moral world is intelligible by only by means of contrasts or opposites.  For man to be free he must be “as God, knowing good and evil” (v. 18).  A very large part of God’s “eternal purposes in the end of man” is the intent that we have joy and do good (v. 23).  This would simply be impossible if we were to “know no misery” and to “know no sin.”  To bring about the purposes of God in relation to human freedom “it must needs be that there was an opposition” (v.15).

Lehi points out that God built such an opposition into mortality from the very beginning.  He did so both by providing a “forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life” (v. 15) and by allowing a devil to have access to us (v. 17) – a being whose intent and influence is diametrically opposed to the divine purposes for human existence.  Where God wants us to do good, the adversary seeks “that which is evil before God” (v. 17).  Where God’s purpose is that we “might have joy” (v. 25), Satan “had become miserable forever” and “sought also the misery of all mankind” (v. 17).

As Lehi succinctly puts it:  “Wherefore the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself.  Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other” (v. 16). 

Our freedom to choose was no election ballot from a totalitarian state where there is only one option offered and an opportunity to just say “yea” or “nay.”  For God’s type of freedom to exist there had to be viable options (at least for the short term) and persuasive advocates for those options.  God structured mortality such that “men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil” (v. 5).  Such instruction includes tasting the bitter and the sweet, experiencing both the joy and the blessings of obedience as well as the misery and punishments of sin.  Of course we experience neither in their fullness, for both the full happiness of the saints and the full “punishment of the law” are reserved until the “great and last day” that we might in be more “free to act, and not be acted upon” (v. 26).  In this way, our existence becomes a “state of probation” (v. 21) where the conditions allow us the necessary range of choice to “prove” ourselves (the root meaning of probation).

In such a universe Freedom and Consciousness are very concrete realities.  So are Good and Evil and their consequences.  We experience Good and Evil in relation to a standard that Lehi calls the law—“And men are instructed sufficiently that they may know good from evil.  And the law is given unto men.”

In keeping with my stated determination to stay away from building Rube Goldberg machines, I’m not going to speculate about the nature of the moral law we find within ourselves.  I’m just going to look at from the perspective of mortality.  How do we experience the law?

I am going to use the example of Vaclav Havel, imprisoned in communist Czechoslovakia, asking himself if his principled stand for freedom had any meaning.  I quote Havel here because his description of his relationship with an “ultimate” or “higher horizon” against which all of his actions are measured and judged uses vocabulary that echoes Lehi’s—

“What in fact is man responsible to?  What does he relate to?  What is the final horizon of his actions, the absolute vanishing point of everything he does, the undeceivable ‘memory of being,’ the conscience of the world and the final ‘court of appeal”?  What is the decisive standard of measurement, the background or the field of each of his existential experiences?  And likewise, what is the most important witness or the secret sharer in his daily conversations with himself, the thing that—regardless of what situation he is thrown into—he incessantly inquires after, depends upon and toward which his actions are directed, the thing that in its omniscience and its incorruptibility, both haunts him and saves him, the only thing he can trust in and strive for?”

“Ever since childhood, I have felt that I would not be myself—a human being—if I did not live in a permanent and manifold tension with this “horizon” of mine, the source of meaning and hope—and ever since my youth, I’ve never been certain whether this is an ‘experience of God’ or not.  Whatever it is, I’m certainly not a proper Christian and Catholic….

“Something…that is typical of my god: he is a master of waiting, in doing so he frequently unnerves me.  It is as though he set up various possibilities around me and then waited silently to see what I would do.  If I fail, he punishes me, and of course he uses me as the agent of that punishment (pangs of conscience, for example); if I don’t fail, he rewards me (through my own relief and joy)—and frequently, he leaves me in uncertainty.  (By the way, when my conscience bothers me, why does it bother me?  And when I rejoice, why do I rejoice?  Is it not again because of him?)”

TG Dreams 17 - Joel 2:28

Joel prophesies about a future day when the children of Zion will undergo a restoration of blessings.  The ultimate fulfillment of the prophecy is around the time of the Second Coming, the end of days, the great and terrible day of the Lord (v. 31).  But like most prophecies, this one is archetypal, and can be appropriately used to describe a variety of situations, including the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17) and the flood of spiritual manifestations that marked the first generation of the Restoration (JS-H 1:41).

The gist of the prophecy is this, that the Spirit of God will be poured out in a broad based and universal way - sons and daughters, young men as well as old.  The Spirit will not discriminate by gender or by age.  The manifestations of the spirit will include visions, dreams and prophecy.

TG Mortality 25 - 2 Nephi 2 (IV)

Lehi’s digression has been quite fruitful. We have been reminded that a necessary prerequisite for freedom is the ability to distinguish between possible choices.  For minds like ours, nothing is perceivable unless we can contrast it with something else.  We can see no figure without a ground.  For us to know good it is necessary for us to know evil.  For us to understand righteousness we must come in contact with wickedness.  For us to grasp the results of righteousness (which Lehi describes as “holiness” and “happiness”) we have got to see the results of wickedness (“punishment” and “misery”).  

To some degree Lehi offers us a tight, little workable answer to one form of the problem of evil (Why would God create a universe that contained death/pain/suffering/wickedness?).  That answer is simple, try to imagine a universe without them.  For example, Lehi has us try to imagine a world where Adam and Eve never fell into mortality, but remained forever in the Garden of Eden, “in a state of innocence.”  At first glance it sounds perfect, right?  Think of all of the songs and stories that mourn the loss of the innocence of our childhood, that look back with longing and nostalgia for it.  Lehi quickly punctures the balloon, pointing out that in such a hypothetical state Adam and Eve would be “having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin” (v.23).

The fourth book I have been reading is Bill McKibben’s The Age of Missing Information, a critique of our age of saturation by electronic media – the age of information we like to call it (though McKibben tries to call our attention to the types of information that the very nature of the medium suppresses).  Anyway, at one point, McKibben makes some observations that help illustrate Lehi’s point here—

“…if you walk out of the bitter cold into a 70-degree room, it will feel marvelous, toasty, cheerful, a haven, a nest.  But if you spend all your time in a room where the temperature is 70 degrees it will simply feel neutral.  I can remember my father talking about taking a long hiking trip around Mount Rainier.  At the end of the trek, after days of water and the kind of food you carry with you on a trail, he emerged, went to a restaurant, and ordered a milk shake.  And I think he can taste that milk shake still—whereas, of course, if you have a milk shake every day you hardly notice it.  This is the most obvious thing on earth, and yet it is the easiest to forget.  When you are sitting inside on a cold and windy night it is nearly impossible to make yourself get up and walk the dog, even though when you do, the fresh air feels bracing, and the home you return to is a magic place.”

            Mormonism recognizes a God who is not above the contradictions of the visible universe but lives with us within them.  Lehi’s digression here suggests that even the God in whose image we are created has a “fullness of joy” (D&C 93:33) not DESPITE the existence of evil but, at least in part, BECAUSE he lives in a universe that includes both demons and gods, both the triumph of good and the bafflement of his desires by the choices of the free agents he has created and to whom he has given the irrevocable gift of choice.  Divine existence for the resurrected Jesus included BOTH being troubled by the wickedness of the House of Israel (3 Ne. 17:14) and the experience of a joy that was full (3 Ne. 17:20) over the righteousness of one branch of it.  God the father has given us a glimpse of the satisfactions of his existence (D&C 88:40-41)—

40 For intelligence cleaveth unto intelligence; wisdom receiveth wisdom; truth embraceth truth; virtue loveth virtue; light cleaveth unto light; mercy hath compassion on mercy and claimeth her own; justice continueth its course and claimeth its own; judgment goeth before the face of him who sitteth upon the throne and governeth and executeth all things.

41 He comprehendeth all things, and all things are before him, and all things are round about him; and he is above all things, and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things; and all things are by him, and of him, even God, forever and ever.

But he has also given us glimpses of a Father who weeps upon his throne over the loss of a gifted, promising Son of the Morning who betrayed trust and led a third of his children to a condition so extreme we can see no end to it (D&C 76:25-27) and for the misery of a world full of children who have reached another (but thankfully less hopeless) point of no return (Moses 7:28-40).  I believe Lehi’s teachings imply that the joy and the sorrow are not unconnected.

One of Satan’s desires is to lessen our joy.  One of the ways he can do that is by deadening the contrasts.  McKibben makes an interesting point that hinges on the fact that in our mortal condition we face various kinds of addictions.  One very dangerous type is the addiction of pleasure.  Some drugs (Cocaine for example), sexual addictions, pornography, and gluttony fall into this category.  Other addictions, however, are just relaxers.  Alcohol, watching TV, surfing the internet and many computer games (my own problems with solitaire for example) often fit into this category.  McKibben cites a study by Kubey and Cziksentmihalyi that indicates TV works much like a tranquilizer, allowing us to “even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness…This tranquilization has its advantages—anyone who has ever checked into a hotel room knows that TV masks the loneliness….That’s why TV makes us feel so guilty sometimes.  It’s a time-out from life.  Which is okay if you are really winded—TV as white noise therapy has its occasional value.  But the time-outs soon lasts longer than the game, which at some level you realize is passing you by.  TV makes it so easy to postpone living for another half hour.”

            I’ll close my thoughts here with a direct quote from Kubey and Cziksentmihalyi—

“That television viewing helps us feel more relaxed than usual but generally does not help us feel substantially happier says something about human nature and what makes for happiness.  Happiness is a more complex state than relaxation.  It requires a more elusive set of conditions, and is therefore more difficult to obtain.  Others can successfully attract and hold our attention and help us relax, but perhaps only we can provide for ourselves the psychological rewards and meaning that make for happiness.”

TG Dreams 16 - Daniel 7

The Old Testament here does what I Nephi does and makes little distinction between dream and vision - "Daniel had a dream and visions of his head" (v.1);  "I saw my vision by night" (v. 2); "I saw in the night vision" (v. 13); "the visions of my head troubled me" (v. 15);  Compare Lehi: "Behold, I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision" (I Nephi 8:2).

The dreams and visions of Lehi and Nephi have much more in common in content, style and feel with those of Daniel than with any of the other dreams we have encountered from earlier in the Old Testament.  And after Lehi and Nephi, the Book of Mormon leaves the Daniel-like dreamscape behind.  Daniel, like Nephi, takes care to record the vision/dream himself - "and then he wrote the dream" (v. 1).  Nephi, Lehi, and Daniel all record their emotional reactions: "I Daniel was grieved in my spirit in the midst of my body, and the visions of my head troubled me" (v. 15); "my cogitations much troubled me, and my countenance changed in me; but I kept the matter in my heart" (v. 28); "because of the things which he saw and heard he did quake exceedingly" (I Nephi 1:6); "his soul did rejoice and his whole heart was filled, because of the things which he had seen, yea, which the Lord had shown unto him" (I Nephi 1:15); "because of the things which I have seen, I have reason to rejoice...but behold...I fear exceedingly..." (I Nephi 8:3-4); "he said unto us, because of these things which he saw, he exceedingly feared" (I Nephi 8:36); "I Nephi was grieved...because of the things which I had seen....and...I was overcome because of my afflictions (I Nephi 15:4-5).  Finally, the personage in Nephi's vision has a parallel with the "one of them that stood by" (v. 16) in Daniel's dream. Both of them receive questions and give interpretations.  The "interpretation of things" (v. 16) or "the interpretation thereof" (I Nephi 11:11) are concerns that Nephi and Daniel both voice during the course of their visions.

TG Mortality 25 - 2 Nephi 2 (III)

I think it’s important to note that I’m not asserting that Lehi ISN’T revealing some deep metaphysical/ontological structures here on which the very existence of God depend (though I find it hard to even conceive what mortal tools I might use to prove that he is), but I AM saying a close reading of his words as a “gedanken” or “thought experiment” about the intellectual consequences to those individuals or societies who choose to try to live without the law seems to fit the text equally as well AND to provide us with some useful application of his words to our mortal condition.  Is such a train of thought a total anachronism for Lehi’s time?  I would suggest we could fruitfully draw comparisons with the roughly contemporaneous Ionion “physikoi” among the Greeks, with Lucretius in the 1^st century B.C., and with evidence from the book of Psalms (which most scholars concede contains much pre-exilic material) of the existence of strains of Hebrew thought that seek to exclude the existence of God and the reality of the moral law (off the top of my head here, at least Psalms 14).  A closer study of what has been preserved of Near-Eastern wisdom literature might reveal more parallels in Lehi’s more immediate environment (memory suggests the Egyptian “dispute between a man and his Ba” and the Babylonian “dialogue of pessimism” as examples of deep existential probing).  The Book of Proverbs (again with at least some pre-exilic content) might be especially useful.

            Looked at in this way, Second Nephi chapter two contains a powerful critique of the implications of a materialistic world view for any conception of “free will.”  Using Aristotle’s distinction, the “physikoi” who sought to explain the origin and nature of things only from matter (as opposed to the “theologoi” who sought them in the supernatural), have a very hard time avoiding the collapse of moral (and other important) distinctions.  Watching Margulis and Sagan attempt to rescue some of those distinctions is especially instructive.  They earnestly try to provide some scientific (evolutionary) underpinnings to such concepts as truth, beauty, love and biophilia.  It takes little thought to realize that an evolutionary structure for the production of mental pleasure in some patterns we call “true” or “beautiful” or in reacting with concern to some human beings or even life as a whole (biophilia) gives them no significant moral or ontological standing at all.  It certainly doesn’t privilege them in any way over biological urges such as aggression, violence, competition or dominance that from an evolutionary stand point must have equal status as products of the evolutionary processes.  Even Margulis and Sagan are forced to conclude that “belief in the life’s importance may not be a reflection of reality, then, but an evolutionarily reinforced fantasy that prejudices believers to do what is necessary, bear whatever burdens, to survive.”  Such an outlook is certainly difficult to reconcile with God’s “eternal purposes in the end of man” (v. 15). 

            The concerns Lehi had about the implications of a world view that deny the reality of a creator and an objective moral law are quite relevant in our day.  They underpin the concerns expressed by Elder Packer in his thoughtful treatment of the implications of the doctrine of evolution within a Mormon context.  He was careful to make it quite clear he was not teaching doctrine nor speaking for the church, simply articulating some deep concerns he personally had about the implications of the concept.  I know that the article ("The Law and the Light") has been caricatured as anti-scientific and intellectually shallow, even (heaven forbid) “anti-evolution.”  A careful rereading of the article strikes me differently.  He is wrestling, as all intelligent Mormons must, with how to apply the truths of the gospel to the world we live in today, including the state of scientific discovery and scientific thought as it exists in our time.  You may not agree with every personal conclusion that he reaches (I’m certainly a little more agnostic on several points than he is), but it is still evidence of a thoughtful and perceptive grasp of the issues.  Several of his objections to the idea of a theistically directed creation of man’s body via evolutionary channels should give any believing Mormon some food for deeper thought.  Elder Packer is a bit of a “bete noire” among Mormon intellectuals for a variety of reasons, but I personally think it often leads to an underestimation of a man with significant intellectual gifts.  Aside from the revelation that has flowed through him as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, I cannot read anything he writes (even some things I disagree with) without finding myself respecting him as a thoughtful, intelligent man.  Anyway, I find the core of his concerns in the article parallel my concerns as I’ve read significant texts on evolution—the fundamental assault on theism and the moral law. 

            As my oldest son likes to point out, there is evolution with a small “e” and Evolution with a large “E.”  I’m really not aiming at a discussion of evolution and Mormonism.  A fine review of the current situation is found here:

            http://www.sciencemeetsreligion.org/lds/lds-history-evolution.php

            What I AM concerned with as I think about Free Will, is the cultural impact of Evolution with a large “E.”  Lehi makes it clear that the concept of agency, as we understand it within the gospel, is meaningless outside of a world view that includes a creator and an objectively real moral law.

TG Dreams 15 - Daniel 2

King Nebuchadnezzar's dream is a solid type 3 - heavily symbolic and requiring inspired interpretation to unravel.

It is interesting how the dream presents itself - "his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him" (v.1).  Some dreams we just know are significant.  "I have dreamed a dream, and my spirit was troubled to know the dream" (v. 3).  He could not even remember the dream, but it arrived with such an impact that he knew that he need to know "the dream and the interpretation thereof" (v. 7).

The Chaldean Wise Men were baffled.  The task set for them - to recover the forgotten dream and to interpret it - was something requiring divine aid: "none other can shew it before the king but the gods, whose dwelling is not with flesh" (v. 11).  This is exactly the realm Daniel had access to.  With the help of the prayers of his three companions (v. 17-8) Daniel is given a "night vision" (v.19). 

The subtext of the entire experience is the power of the God of Israel as a Revelator, specifically, in this case, by means of dreams and their interpretations.

"...he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:
He revealeth the deep and secret things:" (v. 21-22).

"But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known..." (v. 28).

"He that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass..." (v. 29).

"...your God is a God of gods and a Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets..." (v. 47).

Another interesting fact is that the dream and interpretation are given to Daniel as a result of group prayer.  He and his companions "desire mercy of the God of heaven concerning this secret" (v. 18).  When the answer comes Daniel is grateful that God "made known unto me now what we desired of thee" (v. 23).  Unlike many of the revelations we have met in our study of dream, the initiative here was on the mortal side (at least for Daniel and company, though not for Nebuchadnezzar).