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).