Once again I bring the comments out onto a blog. You won't understand this one unless you start with a couple posts back ("Greetings!") and follow the conversation I'm having with my excellent friend, Graham. Who, by the way, is headed for BYU Law in the fall (congratulations, Graham), and as you can tell will do very well.
I wanted to clarify something I said earlier, so as not to leave the suggestion that I want in any way to denigrate the acquisition of skills, particularly in parenting or in any other interpersonal dimension. I have spent some time discovering, learning, and ... okay, I'll say "perfecting" ... skills that help me be a better parent. And during my brief career as a mediator and teacher of mediation techniques, I often heard people say that what they learned in mediation training had beneficial effects in their "daily life," especially in family relationships. The thing is, skills are morally neutral, which is why I suggested to Graham that we should try to discover why we are yelling at the kids. Am I a "naturally" irritable person with poor impulse control? Am I emotionally damaged from a lack of nurturing in my own childhood? Do I come from a culture where yelling is the norm in family life? And what do I think about this? Do I think yelling is a character flaw? Do I fail to see that I'm am "taking it out on the family" when something else is really the source of my anger? Are my children particularly annoying? Do I have more of them than a human being can possibly deal with?
I have known emotionally cold people who never yell at the their children but damage them nevertheless. I have known emotionally volatile people who yell all the time, and nobody seems the worse for wear. However, has anybody (maybe you, Mike, as I recall?) had an experience where a Church leader said something about certain tendencies or inculturated habits (such as emotional volatility or attitudes men might have towards women and children) being nevertheless inexcusable? Anyway, skills are skills and can be used for good or ill.
Say I develop awareness, learn all sorts of skills and techniques, practice impulse control. Learn to be kind, all that. That's good. Beneficial for me and my family. But such skills are also learned for unholy purposes. To advance oneself socially or politically. To build a strong downline (get gain). I know people who unabashedly teach that you should love your employees in order to increase productivity. We're not going to argue the result. But the motives seem to me cynical, manipulative, and therefore unholy. Even in the presence of a "good" result. An elementary school principal patiently explained to me when I complained that a tight system of rewards and punishments was depriving the children of the opportunity to understand and develop healthy internal motivations: "Well, Mrs. Thayer. Most of our patrons appreciate the improvement in behavior that our program has brought about." Yeah, well. I saw a goodly number of those kids after hours.
I Corinthians 13 doesn't say that almsgiving and prophesying don't have good results if the motives are improper. It just says that as far as the actor goes, there is no eternal benefit.
Anyway, these issues deserve attention, because they have to do with nothing less than this: Who is God? And how do we become as God is? Here's what I couldn't get quite right in all the years of my youthful striving: Be still, and know.
What do you DO, though, when you lift your head? You do as the Spirit directs. But you're not a robot, so being prepared, knowledgeable, skillful is good. Give the Spirit something to work with.
Are we getting closer, Graham?
About Me
- DDT
- DDT, my actual initials. Also a controversial pesticide that has saved millions from malaria, typhus, and bubonic plague. Kills mosquitoes and fleas, but possibly excites cockroaches and bedbugs.
You have wonderful thoughts. I will only share that (as far as I can see) progression occurs one decision at a time, as we choose God over mammon again and again. The missionary guide said that investigators progress only as fast as they make and keep commitments. This is a true principle and applies to each of us: we progress only as fast as we make and keep covenants. This all sounds an awful lot like "training" to me. Besides, training one's intuition is much more than creating mere muscle memory, or programmed responses: it is learning to see the world in a whole new way, it is changing the very way we view what happens around us. It seems to me that this is exactly what we're asked to do, only on a much larger scale. Elder Oaks said it this way:
ReplyDelete"The gospel of Jesus Christ is the plan by which we can become what children of God are supposed to become. This spotless and perfected state will result from a steady succession of covenants, ordinances, and actions, an accumulation of right choices, and from continuing repentance. 'This life is the time for men to prepare to meet God' (Alma 34:32)" (The Challenge to Become, Ensign, Nov. 2000, 32-34).
The fundamental process (as I see it) is the same, which is why I used it as an analogy. Prolonged practice with the right answers and the right process changes us.
Let me try and make my analogy concrete. One of my more difficult classes was real analysis, in which we created calculus from scratch. It is a class entirely composed of proofs. Proofs are usually hard, especially when you just begin doing them. However, the more you do, the more you realize that the process behind each one is really the same, just applied to different sets of information and different objectives. More importantly, as you do more and more proofs two things occur. First, your mind becomes accustomed to the process. The way you think about EVERYTHING changes. Second, you see patterns and learn tricks. These help with future proofs. A new proof comes along that looks like one or several you've done before. Chances are good that the techniques used to solve the previous problems will work here too.
Now, as you always said in class, no analogy is perfect. There are no "tricks" in the gospel. But I believe the fundamental process is the same. An "accumulation of right choices" has a similar effect as an accumulation of correctly worked problems.
The point of my original post was twofold. One, God cannot be caught off guard because He is an infinite God. He's seen and done it all. Even if He hasn't, anything new is so close to what He's already seen and experienced that it may as well be a repeat. Two, as we live in a world in which we are constrained by making one decision at a time, we temper our anger by "training" our soul, which I differentiate from training our response. Intuition is not a response, but the launch pad upon which responses take off. Okay, that was corny. I'm done.
Thanks once again, Graham, for an excellent and provocative post.
ReplyDeleteMy nutshell response is that to my mind eternal progression occurs as we learn to become one with the reality of the ultimately benign universe we inhabit. God has done this, and is therefore God. Not by experiencing a series of events but by understanding principle and process. (Okay, how does this happen except by generalizing from a series of events, so I take your point.)
What I learned from the love teachings (starting with 1 Corinthians 13 and trying to figure out why, in spite of all accomplishment, without charity we are "nothing") was that after all I can do I am saved (exhalted) by the grace and power of God, as I submit my will and become a new creature in Christ. (Gethsemane being emblematic here.) This means that Light is working in and through me. This is a change of "disposition" that can make use of a skill set, but without the change, the skills will not reliably mean "progression."
So the way I see it, God cannot be caught off guard, and this is because of his nature. He is whole, complete, perfect. Possessed of absolute integrity. He IS love. His anger is therefore righteous indignation, never a response to provocation.
So in my view we temper our anger by forsaking it, turning away from it, in a process of continual repentance (turning toward the still center, making course corrections when necessary) until there is no more disposition to the anger. We could call that training the soul, but I don't think we can reliably do that a quality at a time, or a characteristic at a time ... except as any genuine specific improvement will be general improvement. We might, for instance, find that our anger has magically vanished as we work on patience, or listening, or stress-relief. (Or even sleep and nutrition!)
Anyway, both our notions may well lead to the same place, and it seems to me that Elder Oaks's comments encompass both our views. (Maybe our difference is merely a difference in focus? Or in timeline? I was MUCH like you in my youth! And I often feel a need to be more like that again, so ... hm. Now you HAVE got me thinking!)
The point is that we overcome unrighteous behavior, and the question is how we do that. What effects change in behavior? Resonable minds may certainly differ on that one. (Maybe because people are different--different brain training, upbringing, experiences?) And then there is a definition of "intuition" to consider. Anyway, we're okay it seems to me as long as we don't start thinking that we can make progress through repeated confession and absolution (indulgence). Or by shouting out that we're saved and going about our business. Convenant-keeping is another subject we might explore.
One last thought: I like Joseph Smith's description of the doctrines of eternity as "delicious." How do we educate our tastes? Perhaps even more importantly, how do we help others educate theirs? How do we invite them to the banquet? Many of you have had much experience with this in the mission field, but how do we keep, say, the Youth of Zion interested in asparagus when there's so much pizza and pop around? Subject for next post? (My attempt to leave off the didactic and return to the Socratic.)
Wait! One more last thought. I probably mentioned this in every class I ever taught, but I'm thinking of that KUED interview with Elder Maxwell that one of his former students conducted after his first bout with chemotherapy. The student asked him what he had learned, and after he pondered a moment, he said, "I have learned to be more patient in traffic." An example of tempering of anger. I'll leave it to you to decide how it was done.
Thanks for this conversation, Graham. Anybody else want to weigh in? If this blog continues very long, I'm sure we'll come back to it.
An emphatic YES!
ReplyDeleteA thought. A single drop of rain expands a pond in every direction. Does the grace of Christ do this for us? Is this what President Packer was talking about when he said that the study of doctrine will do more to change behavior than the study of behavior will do to change behavior?
Yes, yes! Ah! We have reached accord without settling the details of the argument (about which we still may differ to good purpose). The process of proving contraries at work. Perfect!
ReplyDeleteAdditional thought/step.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't matter where the drop is added, the pond grows nonetheless...as long as the drop actually lands in the pond, of course. Does this hint to the fact that, say, focusing personal attention, prayer, and effort on learning about, acquiring, and exercising additional faith, or charity, or patience, etc., will help us to become whole because doing so correctly requires tapping into the grace of Christ. Thus, we may be thinking "linearly," focusing on a single attribute or principle, but the effects/improvement/growth are not constrained or limited to that single facet of our being.
Yes! The pond it seems to me is a good way to combine the linear and the organic, sort of a systematically growing ... circle! The drop goes in like an arrow to the target, but the target didn't exist until the drop dropped. The progression is ordered, systematic, predictable. Linear. Until the waves disappear and all is assimilated into the whole. Good.
ReplyDeleteThe metaphor forces me to more clearly define in my own mind what I mean by "linear." There's a whole discourse on this, especially among feminists, and much of it is less than useful. Nevertheless, the Greek/Hebrew distinction is useful if anybody's interested in looking into it.
Of course Greco-Roman type thinking will always conquer the Hebraic type thinking in a contest, and the world makes "progress" because of it. Some (most? all?) Native American traditions are non-linear, which rendered them helpless against linear progress. I'm not sentimental about this. This kind of progress is inevitable and useful. We're here (and the gospel was restored) because of it. But we're also in a mess right now because of it, and it always carries the seeds of its own destruction. Are we headed for the fates of Babylonia, Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome, and the British Empire? Why or why not? We can find benefit in examining the process. As most of you know, I'm not one who believes that the answer lies in concealed weapon permits. I'm a pretty conservative person, but I don't like the conservative take on the 2nd Amendment, if you know what I mean.
Meanwhile, back to responding to Graham's comment. To my mind, once you focus on the attribute or principle (as long as it's in the realm of virture) and submit to need for the grace of Christ to help you with it, you are doing the "organic" thing. Eye off the prize, off the self, heart in the right place. (Thinking shifting from head to heart.) Why do we want faith, patience, charity? To add them to our accomplishment list so that we can move up in the ranks of God's Favorite Kids? (Or have more worldly success.) Or for some other less self-focused reason ... because, say, we want to stop hurting others and can't seem to do it without change/help.
As children we of course want to please our parents, and their approbation motivates us. But eventually, we put away childish things for another way of thinking/being. I am perpetually amazed at the crash course in eternal truth presented in I Corinthians 13. Remember that "through a glass darkly" means "see in a cloudy mirror." As we move nearer to "seeing" Christ, we come nearer to seeing our reflection in Him, seeing ourselves as we really are. That is the end of all our righteous striving. To develop unfailing "charity." In other words, to become Love, and recognize ourselves in the perfect reflection of Perfect Love. Nephi, Mormon, Moroni (see Ether 12), and Joseph Smith all have much to say about this.
Two other places I find it in a nutshell: The Book of Enos describes the process to perfection in one night of prayer. Note that Enos is made "whole" (perfect) through faith, as he sought remission of his sins. After that his charity expands as his heart (thinking) leads him to pray for his friends and then for his enemies.
And then there is the finest piece of religious writing to come out of modern America: D&C 121. We should all read it every day.
Thanks again, so much, Graham, for getting this conversation going. I'm finding great benefit in it, and I know from e-mails I'm receiving that others are, too. Sorry this is quick and dense, but I've only got a few minutes this morning.
I feel like I’m barging in here, kind of like that saying, “This is a conversation between A and B so C your way out of it.” My wife’s at the gym and both kids are asleep so I have about thirty minutes to write. I’ve enjoyed following this blog. I’m a Sister Thayer disciple circa 1999 Freshmen English. I’ve lived in Asia for the last four years. As you may know, in Asia we don’t really do the whole challenging conventional wisdom or perceptions thing. So while I’ve developed foreign language skills my thinking skills in many ways have stagnated, along with my writing skills. I guess I wanted to weigh in on oneness; I did find the skills discussion stimulating but I don’t have anything brilliant to say specifically about that.
ReplyDeleteI lived in Korea for three years and am now back in Japan until August (I did a mission in Japan). While I was in Korea, I remember a few times American people (usually parents picking up a son from a mission) were asked to talk in church and remarked how comforting it was to know the gospel is the same wherever you go. Hmmm. I don’t want to bash or belittle that idea, but at the same time I’d like to share a parallel perspective. I promise this will at least come close to relating to oneness.
I felt like I had very different church experiences in America, Korea, and Japan. I feel like America has far more seasoned and well-trained—I feel “trained” is a loaded word now but I don’t have the time to think of an alternative expression—leaders and members. I felt like the blessings and counsel I got from bishops was very different. In Korea I felt like it was more pragmatic counsel than spiritual. My Dad remarked recently that when he was set apart to be a branch first counselor lately he was hoping the stake president, who he says is a loose canon, would give the blessing but instead the stake first counselor did. My Dad felt like he got a slightly inferior blessing since he believes the quality of a blessing depends on the spirituality of the one giving it. In Korea after the baptism people would clap and shout out congratulations. And I heard at least a couple talks in Korean church about one of the biggest blessings of being a member in this church or being a missionary is the chance to learn English. Basically, I felt like the bar was lower and there were fewer dedicated people than I was accustomed to seeing in an American ward. I also found it interesting how Korean church brothers at least a few times told my wife at church, “You look really pretty today.” It didn’t bother me at all and I felt like they were just giving her a nice complement and not being inappropriate. But I don’t think that would go over very well in the American church. In a recent lesson in Japan the teacher and formerly the bishop prefaced his message by saying how today’s topic was very embarrassing. I braced myself for a law of chastity or pornography lesson. It ended up just being a broad lesson on respecting women and our mothers. Obviously if that’s embarrassing to talk about, more embarrassing things aren’t going to be discussed!
In August I’ll start attending grad school in Hawaii. We’re very eager and curious to experience the church Polynesian style. And, I would love to attend a primarily African American ward or branch in the future. When I was at BYU I attended a Genesis meeting and really felt the spirit with they hymns they sang, that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will never sing.
My mom told me once that God values diversity in his creations. You learn that in the temple. Here’s where it gets tough, though, I think. The road to eternal life is narrow and the path to destruction is broad. So as church members we have to be careful that any diversity or unusualness we’re embracing doesn’t separate us from the strait and narrow. But I think this caution, which is good, can on occasion cause well-intentioned, righteous members to be overly critical of acceptable diversity. I like Paul’s statement that all members can’t be the head. You need every part of the body. I liked a few years ago when Bishop Edgely talked in conference about who his heroes were. Of course he could’ve said Jesus, Joseph Smith, or any other apostle. But he chose to list some unheralded, faithful members who have labored in obscurity throughout their membership in the church but consistently exhibited the attributes Jesus requires of true disciples. Of course you’re not going to go wrong patterning your life after most general authorities or their families, or any apostle. We all need to obey all the commandments and all read our scriptures everyday, pray sincerely at least twice a day, have weekly family home evening, and all the other things modern prophets have instructed us to. I guess the reality though is there’s going to be less members that do all these things than do.
So when everyone in the church doesn’t have the companionship of the spirit that’s fertile ground for dissension. And, there’s going to be members like both my grandmas who read scriptures every day, pray every day, and hold temple recommends but who are clearly very emotionally unhealthy. I don’t think we understand how much culture shapes people. In Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, Morrie said most people are basically by-products of their culture, be it country/society/home. Of course you can and should overcome that by putting off the natural man and partaking fully of the grace of Christ and becoming one with Christ, but if we’re honest with ourselves we stumble a lot in that process, and often what’s tripping us up is faulty beliefs, responses, coping mechanisms, or perceptions that we learned in our home. A counselor I really like said our beliefs underwrite our actions. Meaning you can trace someone’s actions back to their beliefs. Those beliefs are burned into us in the home.
We have to learn to be Christlike to people who aren’t prepared to be one. But I think our surprising lack of patience and tendency to judge people clearly not ready to participate in oneness, will alert us how much progressing in our personal journey we still have. My heart goes out to the outliers in the church. I feel like I’m one of them. You have to be really humble and have a broken heart and contrite spirit or else it’s easy to get offended or turned off by the mainstream. It’s the whole thing it’s hard to understand other people’s pain unless you’ve tasted similar flavors or amounts. So that barrier in understanding/empathy can create difficulties in oneness. Of course you’ll feel closer to someone who can empathize from the heart with you. That’s why all of us need different people in the church. We just resonate with certain Saints. After reading the Five People You Meet in Heaven it made me think about all the not-coincidental encounters I’ve had with people over the years, including church members.
To summarize, in order to have a spirit ready to participate in oneness of course we need to be worthy to have the Holy Ghost with us. That’s a given. But that’s not enough. Like Sister Thayer has been focusing on, God is Love and Charity is the greatest of all. I feel like one reason God loves us perfectly is because he understands us perfectly. And even though he can’t tolerate sin, I feel like you won ’t find anyone close to God in empathy. I feel like the judgment will take into consideration degree of difficulty. My Dad said once that a big reason we shouldn’t judge is because we don’t have all the facts about someone, not even close. And I don’t think we understand how deeply childhood experiences shape people. We shouldn’t use that as an excuse not to change ourselves, but we should remember that in order to be merciful towards others. In all thy getting get understanding. I can’t think of a more valuable type of understanding than a Christlike understanding for the pain and hang-ups, along with the background that led to them, of those around us.
Well, my wife’s home. And I’m very ashamed of the writing. Hopefully the ideas are at least decent.
I feel like I’m barging in here, kind of like that saying, “This is a conversation between A and B so C your way out of it.” My wife’s at the gym and both kids are asleep so I have about thirty minutes to write. I’ve enjoyed following this blog. I’m a Sister Thayer disciple circa 1999 Freshmen English. I’ve lived in Asia for the last four years. As you may know, in Asia we don’t really do the whole challenging conventional wisdom or perceptions thing. So while I’ve developed foreign language skills my thinking skills in many ways have stagnated, along with my writing skills. I guess I wanted to weigh in on oneness; I did find the skills discussion stimulating but I don’t have anything brilliant to say specifically about that.
ReplyDeleteI lived in Korea for three years and am now back in Japan until August (I did a mission in Japan). While I was in Korea, I remember a few times American people (usually parents picking up a son from a mission) were asked to talk in church and remarked how comforting it was to know the gospel is the same wherever you go. Hmmm. I don’t want to bash or belittle that idea, but at the same time I’d like to share a parallel perspective. I promise this will at least come close to relating to oneness.
I felt like I had very different church experiences in America, Korea, and Japan. I feel like America has far more seasoned and well-trained—I feel “trained” is a loaded word now but I don’t have the time to think of an alternative expression—leaders and members. I felt like the blessings and counsel I got from bishops was very different. In Korea I felt like it was more pragmatic counsel than spiritual. My Dad remarked recently that when he was set apart to be a branch first counselor lately he was hoping the stake president, who he says is a loose canon, would give the blessing but instead the stake first counselor did. My Dad felt like he got a slightly inferior blessing since he believes the quality of a blessing depends on the spirituality of the one giving it. In Korea after the baptism people would clap and shout out congratulations. And I heard at least a couple talks in Korean church about one of the biggest blessings of being a member in this church or being a missionary is the chance to learn English. Basically, I felt like the bar was lower and there were fewer dedicated people than I was accustomed to seeing in an American ward. I also found it interesting how Korean church brothers at least a few times told my wife at church, “You look really pretty today.” It didn’t bother me at all and I felt like they were just giving her a nice complement and not being inappropriate. But I don’t think that would go over very well in the American church. In a recent lesson in Japan the teacher and formerly the bishop prefaced his message by saying how today’s topic was very embarrassing. I braced myself for a law of chastity or pornography lesson. It ended up just being a broad lesson on respecting women and our mothers. Obviously if that’s embarrassing to talk about, more embarrassing things aren’t going to be discussed!
In August I’ll start attending grad school in Hawaii. We’re very eager and curious to experience the church Polynesian style. And, I would love to attend a primarily African American ward or branch in the future. When I was at BYU I attended a Genesis meeting and really felt the spirit with they hymns they sang, that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will never sing.
My mom told me once that God values diversity in his creations. You learn that in the temple. Here’s where it gets tough, though, I think. The road to eternal life is narrow and the path to destruction is broad. So as church members we have to be careful that any diversity or unusualness we’re embracing doesn’t separate us from the strait and narrow. But I think this caution, which is good, can on occasion cause well-intentioned, righteous members to be overly critical of acceptable diversity. I like Paul’s statement that all members can’t be the head. You need every part of the body. I liked a few years ago when Bishop Edgely talked in conference about who his heroes were. Of course he could’ve said Jesus, Joseph Smith, or any other apostle. But he chose to list some unheralded, faithful members who have labored in obscurity throughout their membership in the church but consistently exhibited the attributes Jesus requires of true disciples. Of course you’re not going to go wrong patterning your life after most general authorities or their families, or any apostle. We all need to obey all the commandments and all read our scriptures everyday, pray sincerely at least twice a day, have weekly family home evening, and all the other things modern prophets have instructed us to. I guess the reality though is there’s going to be less members that do all these things than do.
So when everyone in the church doesn’t have the companionship of the spirit that’s fertile ground for dissension. And, there’s going to be members like both my grandmas who read scriptures every day, pray every day, and hold temple recommends but who are clearly very emotionally unhealthy. I don’t think we understand how much culture shapes people. In Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, Morrie said most people are basically by-products of their culture, be it country/society/home. Of course you can and should overcome that by putting off the natural man and partaking fully of the grace of Christ and becoming one with Christ, but if we’re honest with ourselves we stumble a lot in that process, and often what’s tripping us up is faulty beliefs, responses, coping mechanisms, or perceptions that we learned in our home. A counselor I really like said our beliefs underwrite our actions. Meaning you can trace someone’s actions back to their beliefs. Those beliefs are burned into us in the home.
We have to learn to be Christlike to people who aren’t prepared to be one. But I think our surprising lack of patience and tendency to judge people clearly not ready to participate in oneness, will alert us how much progressing in our personal journey we still have. My heart goes out to the outliers in the church. I feel like I’m one of them. You have to be really humble and have a broken heart and contrite spirit or else it’s easy to get offended or turned off by the mainstream. It’s the whole thing it’s hard to understand other people’s pain unless you’ve tasted similar flavors or amounts. So that barrier in understanding/empathy can create difficulties in oneness. Of course you’ll feel closer to someone who can empathize from the heart with you. That’s why all of us need different people in the church. We just resonate with certain Saints. After reading the Five People You Meet in Heaven it made me think about all the not-coincidental encounters I’ve had with people over the years, including church members.
To summarize, in order to have a spirit ready to participate in oneness of course we need to be worthy to have the Holy Ghost with us. That’s a given. But that’s not enough. Like Sister Thayer has been focusing on, God is Love and Charity is the greatest of all. I feel like one reason God loves us perfectly is because he understands us perfectly. And even though he can’t tolerate sin, I feel like you won ’t find anyone close to God in empathy. I feel like the judgment will take into consideration degree of difficulty. My Dad said once that a big reason we shouldn’t judge is because we don’t have all the facts about someone, not even close. And I don’t think we understand how deeply childhood experiences shape people. We shouldn’t use that as an excuse not to change ourselves, but we should remember that in order to be merciful towards others. In all thy getting get understanding. I can’t think of a more valuable type of understanding than a Christlike understanding for the pain and hang-ups, along with the background that led to them, of those around us.
Well, my wife’s home. And I’m very ashamed of the writing. Hopefully the ideas are at least decent.
Thank you, panacea, aka Clark. Welcome to the blog! This is an important comment, insightful and helpful. It's always so good to hear from you!
ReplyDelete