Meditative Brainstorming

Emanuel Swedenborg--visionary, mystic, and my personal role model--didn't just stumble onto his visions of heaven and hell. Those experiences are extraordinary accomplishments, and if anyone wants to achieve them, they need to spend a long time preparing for it. Swedenborg did this, though he wasn't aware he was doing it: from childhood, he would go into a meditative state to efficiently work on intellectual problems. Wilson Van Dusen describes this process in his book The Presence of Higher Worlds:

"Since childhood, Swedenborg had a personal practice that happens to be one of the ancient Hindu Yoga and Buddhist ways to enlightenment. He didn't know he was following an Eastern religious practice because the literature on this had not yet been translated, yet his method is not surprising in one who so much enjoyed intellectual analysis. He would relax, close his eyes, and focus in with total concentration on a problem. At the same time, his breathing would nearly stop. Awareness of the outer world and even bodily sensation would diminish and perhaps disappear. His whole existence would focus on the one issue he wanted to understand"

When I read this passage about a year ago, I thought it was amazing. I wanted to use this process myself, but I was hesitant because my past experiences with conscious "brainstorming" had always been lackluster. If I have any interesting ideas (and I like to think I do) they happen spontaneously and without warning; deliberately pursuing insights almost never worked. However, I eventually realized that my conscious daydreaming was inefficient because I was trying to think the way I thought people were supposed to think. I believed that intellectual thought could only happen in words, since that's what you read in novels or see in films. But the ideas I had spontaneously never came to me as words; instead, they came as pictures.I couldn't see that Swedenborg's brainstorming didn't happen in strings of words or sentences. He actually says this in his pre-spiritual-awakening book Rational Psychology:

"[If] we remove particular ideas, that is, withdraw the mind from terms and ideas that are broken, limited, and material, and at the same time, from desires and loves that are purely natural, then the human intellect, being at rest from heterogeneous throngs, as it were, and remaining only in its own ideas and those proper to the pure intellect, causes our mind to undergo no other changes, or to draw forth no other reasons save those that are concordant with the ideas of the pure intellect."

In the meditative practice that inspired this passage, Swedenborg would withdraw his thought from particular, broken ideas and focus it on deeper, more perfect and universal ones. To put it in other words, he wouldn't think in terms of x issue with y particular mining operation (Swedenborg administered the mines in Sweden before his spiritual awakening), but would ponder the deep, general principle underlying that issue. You can't put this into words. Using language from his spiritual works, we can say that "a word is just a mental image given visible form" and conclude that he thought entirely in images or pictures while meditating.
So when I realized this, I decided to finally try Swedenborg's "meditative brainstorming" to plan an RPG campaign I've been working on. I filled up a bath and turned off all the lights except for a few candles. Then I closed my eyes and began to think. I immediately noticed that I didn't need to exert myself at all while doing this; letting symbolic pictures relate to other symbolic pictures--all without any words involved--moved the process along effortlessly. I also noticed that I didn't have to come up with an exact mental image: even just the suggestion of one would work.
I then realized that the images were completely arbitrary, though they worked perfectly. They were just a "body" that the purpose behind a thought could use to show itself to me, a "form" to its "substance," a mirror to reflect its light. All our thoughts are likewise "bodies" for mental purposes, but I don't think we realize that we can express our thoughts to ourselves (and maybe even to each other) without going through all the effort of formalizing ideas into words and sentences. We can use pictures--or even just suggestions of pictures--instead.
Finally, this experiment has influenced the way I pray. In prayer, I now don't use words as often as I used to. Instead, I think using the slightest suggestion of my meaning, which suffices. From my experience, God can then respond through an influx of impressions akin to the way I offered the prayer. And answers come more easily that way: if we're to believe Swedenborg, language becomes less and less verbal the higher in heaven you go, so it would make sense that prayer is more effective the more you think without words.
If you haven't tried anything like this before, I encourage you to experiment with thought that doesn't use words. It's amazing, it's fast, and it's very fulfilling.

The Book of Mormon's Inner Meanings: 1 Nephi 12

The next section of the Book of Mormon I'll examine is 1 Nephi 12, part of Nephi's vision.
Take a look at verse ten:

"And these twelve ministers whom thou beholdest shall judge thy seed. And, behold, they are righteous forever; for because of their faith in the Lamb of God their garments are made white in his blood."

What an interesting image! And it's one that appears over and over in Mormon scripture. To have "my garments made white in His blood" goes against common sense; blood is red, whereas it whitens. However, the paradox of white and red isn't a new image, by any means. Swedenborg wrote that the two main colors of the spiritual world are red and white: red for the principle of good/love and white for truth/wisdom. These images correspond to "heat" and "light" in his writings, respectively. Red is the color of life's intensity: flowing blood, rosy cheeks, a ruddy complexion, etc. But if red has intense vitality, white has cool reflection. White is the color of purity and cleanliness: worn by doctors in hospitals and by temple-goers.

Alchemy, the pre-scientific ancestor to chemistry, can help us here. In alchemy, two major parts of the opus are called the albedo or "whitening" and the rubedo or "reddening." Normally the albedo would precede the rubedo (instead of the other way around, as in the Book of Mormon passage). In his book Alchemical Psychology, the master psychologist James Hillman writes that the white albedo by itself is incomplete:

"Having absorbed and unified all hues into the one white, the mirror of silvered subjectivity expands to reflect all things at the expense of differentiation of itself. It takes something outside subjectivity to see into oneself."

If white is the cool peace of spiritual wellbeing--nothing wrong, things going smoothly--it's still only subjective. It reflects everything back into itself; since everything is peaceful, no fundamental distinction, division, and opposition exist between the things in the world. Multiplicity gives way to unity. However, red is what the passage calls the "something outside subjectivity." It is the "other," what interrupts the clean union of everything with myself. Moreover, white doesn't like red; referring to the white albedo stage, Hillman writes "This condition does not want more light, more heat." But somehow--whether as rosy desire or ruddy anger--the rubedo's passion interrupts white's peaceful unity with itself.

Ideally, says Hillman, the white albedo functions as the self's "ground," what the alchemists call the terra alba or "white earth." However, red as the rubedo should be the focus of that self: extraversion, the complex, multiple "outside," what's "out there." Knowing this, the way Christ encourages our garments to be "made white in his blood" begins to make sense. Christ--whose blood we symbolically drink in the Sacrament--is the stuff of life itself, an insight Swedenborg made repeatedly. However, while white is a color of purity, it's also the color of death: think of gleaming white skulls and the white moon which was a gathering place for the dead in cultures the world over.

If we combine these insights, Christ's red, sacramental blood gives life to our stark, white inner death. This has a few implications. For one, it suggests that we need to symbolically "die" before we can become pure and receive Christ's life, but that insight is hardly new. More fascinating is the idea that blood as a symbol of life can revive the dead. Greek mythology says just this: that shades in the Underworld can be temporarily revived through living blood. Moreover, Jung's Red Book gives a similar insight:

"We sacrificed innumerable victims to the dark depths, and yet it still demands more. What is this crazy desire craving satisfaction? Whose mad cries are these? Who among the dead suffers thus? Come here and drink blood, so that you can speak." 

The "innumerable victims" sacrificed to "the dark depths" is ostensibly the violence we commit in the name of egoism: though we like to play the "hero," any heroics we commit in the name of an ideal kills something. In its most innocent form this shows up as the repression necessary to build an ego and in its worst form it causes the wars and genocides we commit for the sake of an imagined virtue. From Jung's perspective, "the dead" are anything that's been thrust down and killed in this egoistic pursuit. So when we give life to the dead by "feeding them blood," we're really giving life to the repressed parts of our personal and collective unconsciouses.

The dead--corresponding to the cold, stark white of bone, winter, or a moonlit night--have the purification we seek. For when we feed the white dead with red life, we're bringing life and death together into a kind of marriage. We acknowledge ourselves as dead--empty, poor in spirit, meek--and receive life into ourselves that's nevertheless still distinct from us. We become white to receive the red, and red lets the white have life in its death, as if death were a vessel for life.

When we're made white through Christ's blood, we lose the sense of our life belonging to us and realize that it belongs to Christ as the "other." We become white--dead in itself, a white reflection of all other color--and Christ's redness acts as a way to enliven our white purity with the life and intensity present in the world. Christ--as life itself--gives us life when we turn to Him. We just have to die to ourselves first.

The Book of Mormon's Inner Meanings: 1 Nephi 1

Hey all! Last April I wrote a post where I promised to do a Swedenborgian interpretation of the Book of Mormon, something I didn't end up actually doing. However, since the Church's Gospel Doctrine lessons this year are focused on the Book of Mormon, I thought that now would be as good a time to start as ever. In fact, I now (hopefully) want to write a post each week to go with the lesson in that Gospel Doctrine manual. That way I get to live out my fantasy of being a Sunday School teacher.
However, I'm going to interpret the Book of Mormon by drawing on more resources than just Swedenborg. I want to use a whole bunch of mythic, religious, and artistic resources to draw out hidden meanings from this work of scripture. I justify this by saying that all images in the Book of Mormon--notwithstanding their historicity--reflect an internal "necessity" inherent to similar images. You'll see what I mean as I get further on in the post.
To start out with, we'll analyze some passages from the first chapter of 1 Nephi. Enjoy!

1 Nephi 1:5-6

To begin with, consider the image that begins the Book of Mormon's narrative:

5 Wherefore it came to pass that my father, Lehi, as he went forth prayed unto the Lord, yea, even with all his heart, in behalf of his people.
6 And it came to pass as he prayed unto the Lord, there came a pillar of fire and dwelt upon a rock before him; and he saw and heard much; and because of the things which he saw and heard he did quake and tremble exceedingly.

A pillar of fire pops up in a few places throughout scripture, notably in Exodus 13, where God appears as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and in Helaman 5, where a pillar of fire appears around Nephi and Lehi in a Lamanite prison. We can discern a similarity in each of these cases: the fire helps one see. Nephi wrote that his father saw and heard much, as if he wouldn't have been able to learn without the fire's light. In Exodus, the pillar guides; it shows the Israelites the way in what would otherwise remain unknown wilderness. And in Helaman, the pillar of fire gives the impetus that allows the prisoners there to develop a faith (compared with sight in Alma 5:15, among other places) that will later completely change the Nephite-Lamanites dynamic in the promised land.
A pillar of fire therefore always illuminates, in this case whatever Lehi didn't yet know. Emanuel Swedenborg actually writes this in his symbolic interpretation of the Exodus passage, where he says that a pillar of fire represents an "illustration of good." However, the fact that this fire takes the form of a pillar has other connotations. A pillar connects the above to the below: it extends all the way from the ceiling (a cognate of the French word ciel, which means heaven, itself a derivative of the Latin word caelum) to the ground. Likewise, we see pillars connecting earth and heaven in religious traditions the world over. For instance, the "Djed Pillar" of ancient Egypt functioned as a representation of both the Pharaoh and Osiris, and the Egyptians would raise it upright from a prone position to commemorate the climax and perceived rebirth of the new Pharaoh. Here the Pharaoh himself--as a "type" of the dying-and-reborn Osiris--points to the pillar's linking function. Like with Christ's role as mediator between God and humanity, the Pharaoh functioned as a god among men, the link that kept the world of the gods and the world of humans connected. Pharaoh--like Christ--is a pillar that keeps the earth and heaven conjoined.
One could also read the pillar of fire in terms of the spinal column in Kundalini Yoga. As a practitioner of Kundalini Yoga myself, the exercises make my spine--naturally pillar-like--feel like it's on fire. As with the other examples I've mentioned, Kundalini Yoga sees the spine as a link between heaven (microcosmically represented in the upper chakras) and earth (represented in the lower chakras). In fact, one could productively read the rock upon which the pillar of fire dwelt as a parallel to the Root Chakra: made of earth, it provides a base for a pillar that goes up indefinitely into the heavens.
We can therefore start to see a pillar of fire as a vertical connection between opposites. It connects the above to the below and the below to the above; it reveals heaven on earth, the "Spirit of God" burning "like a fire" upon the ordinariness of an everyday rock. Hence this image is perhaps the one that best describes the Mormon phenomenon: in this religion, where God is a man and miracles occurred alongside steam engines and the telegraph, we see the spiritual or the supernatural (a revelation of fire from heaven) as it dwells in/through/upon the everyday (a rock). The pillar of fire dwelling upon a rock suggests that spiritual fire naturally inheres in the ordinary, the plain, or the common. That, anyway, would seem to be what the Book of Mormon suggests when Nephi says that he "glories in plainness." The plain and simple truths are a manifestation fire's "unspeakable glory" upon a simple boulder. What was a representation of life's absurdity for Camus and Sisyphus becomes for us a window to the divine; the stone the builders rejected becomes the cornerstone.

1 Nephi 1:8-12

If we move on to a subsequent image in the text, consider the following passage from later in the chapter:

8 And being thus overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God.
9 And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the sun at noon-day.
10 And he also saw twelve others following him, and their brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament.
11 And they came down and went forth upon the face of the earth; and the first came and stood before my father, and gave unto him a book, and bade him that he should read.
12 And it came to pass that as he read, he was filled with the Spirit of the Lord

When the passage talks about God sitting upon His throne and an angel descending out of heaven whose "luster was above that of the sun at noonday," the image resembles other Mormon theophanies or visions of God, Joseph's Smith's first vision as a case in point. And the comparison of a revealed God with the sun is not a new image. Swedenborg explicitly says that God appears to the angels in the highest heaven as a sun, for instance, and there are sun deities in pantheons from all over the world. But perhaps the most penetrating insight on this image comes from the Chinese divination text called the I Ching, specifically by combining the trigrams of "fire" and "heaven" into the thirteenth hexagram, Fellowship with Men. The "image" for the hexagram illuminates this point:

Heaven together with fire:
The image of fellowship with men.
Thus the superior man organizes the clans
And makes distinctions between things

There are many fires; rage, lust, artistic passion, and determination all act as manifestations of mental flame. However, when fire appears together with a heavenly angel, its meaning gets restricted to a specific set of connotations. Specifically, fire combines with heaven to make a spiritual warmth. Instead of rage, we get fervor; instead of lust, we get tenderness; instead of ambition, we get faith. Whereas fire would have to burn through earth or boil water, fire goes together with the heavens. Fire is at home in the above, so this coherence of one image in the other suggests the meaning behind the I Ching's interpretation of that symbolic combination. We can see "heaven together with fire" in many kinds of "fellowship with men" [and women]: the tender family moments the LDS Church so often touts, a ward's camaraderie, or the heavenly love that both that Church and Swedenborg say can only exist between a husband and wife. There, sparks of passion don't flare up but instead glow warmly. The burning is in the bosom--the heart--and not restricted to the loins. I therefore suggest that Lehi's vision foreshadows later developments in Mormon doctrine: the fire is in the sky, letting upward drive of fire reach its goal, combining the warm intensity of love with the purity of spirit.
The hexagram also implies why the Church takes roles so seriously. Fire doesn't just give us pleasant warmth but also refinement and purification. Swedenborg once said that a substance becomes more perfect to the extent its parts are "distinguishably one," and fire brings about just this in whatever it burns: it lets "the above" rise as smoke and "the below" fall as ash. In other words, fire judges. When the angel suddenly has a train of twelve others following him, you can easily see correspondences to the twelve tribes of Israel or the twelve apostles, each an image of judgment into parts. Fire lets what has knotted itself to other things return to its own proper place; it makes it so "light cleaveth unto light." So no one should be surprised that the LDS Church emphasizes the distinct roles of men, women, and children even today: to elevate fire into the heavens is to let fire accomplish heaven's aim toward purity. In the Church, no one claim purity just by staying "as is;" fire must do the spirit's work. Purity becomes purification, no longer a state of being but instead an active verb. And so naturally one sees in the Church both a) an emphasis on works as opposed to grace and b) a doctrinal focus on eternal progression. Fire, like truth, will out; it will eventually die if you don't feed it more fuel for it to purify.
That's that for this post. Check back next week (hopefully) for another along the same lines!

Satan in Mormonism and the Works of Rudolf Steiner

I haven't kept it a secret that I'm a big fan of early-twentieth-century esotericist and mystic Rudolf Steiner. He's a bit "weird," yes: he talks about reincarnation, Atlantis, and previous "planets" that the human race lived on before earth. But seeing as I'm a Mormon, who am I to judge? That's not to say that I literally believe in everything he says; I take a lot of what he says as a symbolic truth more than a literal one. I may get to some specifics later on in this post.

I bring him up today because I just finished a book of Steiner's called Love, Sexuality, and Partnership. It contains all of Steiner's remarks on sexuality, gender, love, and the relationships between the sexes, but what I found most interesting in the book was only obliquely related to those topics. Namely, his discussion of "Lucifer" and "luciferian spirits" struck me as similar to how we Mormons conceive of Satan and the role of evil in the world.

The Mormon take on Satan

Mormons, Satan doesn't have an entirely negative role. He's the embodiment of evil, yes, but as Mormon scripture makes clear, evil is necessary for good's existence. For instance:

"And it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves; for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet" -D&C 29:39

And this:

"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." -2 Nephi 2:16

Satan is kind of a "guarantor" of free will. Without Satan's enticings toward evil, we wouldn't have the contrast necessary to freely choose good. In a way, Satan or Lucifer is therefore what gives us independent being, since if we could onlychoose good, we would only be automatons or "robots" following God without any choice in the matter. By giving us evil, you could say that Satan is what ensures we're individual beings.

Of course, Satan's original plan was to deprive us of free will, so it's ironic that his efforts are now being used against his original intent. However, this doesn't need to involve contradiction. Satan leads us toward evil, and since the root of all evil is selfishness, it makes sense that he's the one who originally gave us an independent, free-choice "self." Since both free will and the possibility for selfishness come from the existence of an independent self, Satan can reasonably be the author of both evil and human agency.

Rudolf Steiner on Lucifer

Rudolf Steiner, on the other hand, said many of these same things. In Steiner's writings, Lucifer is the spiritual being who enabled the human soul to "descend" into the lower spheres of earthly incarnation. This is where the name "Lucifer," meaning "light bringer," becomes relevant--he is effectively the principle that transmutes the astral or "soul" world of love in to the physical world of light (reference Swedenborg's idea that heavenly light is not light as such, but comes from love). In his own words:

"Love and light are the two elements, the two components, which permeate all earthly existence: love as the soul constituent of earthly being, light as the outer material constituent of earthly being. However, for these two elements, which otherwise would exist separately throughout the great course of world existence, to become interwoven, a mediating force is needed that will weave light into love. This is where the luciferic beings come into play....The luciferic beings are at work wherever and whenever our inner soul, which is woven out of love, enters into any kind of relationship with the element of light in any form; and we are, after all, confronted with light in all material existence. When light touches our being in any way whatsoever the luciferic beings appear and the luciferic quality weaves into the element of love.”

Lucifer and his cohort of spirits are the force that connects the physical world of light to the astral world of love. As in the New Age conception that all things are made out of vibrating "energy," everything we experience in the physical world comes from light either "compressed" into opaque matter or rarefied into light proper. The world of light therefore corresponds to Swedenborg's "sensory" level of reality, which is "lower" in the spiritual hierarchy than his heaven, also a world of love. Lucifer is "the great physicalizer;" by tempting Adam and Eve, he brings everything spiritual down a notch into the dense, opaque world of physical "stuff." This nicely corresponds to Mormon doctrine, as you can see above.

But Steiner also writes that Lucifer grants us a level of individuality that would be impossible without evil:

" Through Jehovah, human beings were predestined for a group-soul existence; love was to penetrate into them gradually through blood-relationship. It is through Lucifer that the human being lives as a personality. Originally, therefore, human beings were in a state of union, then of separateness as a consequence of the luciferic principle that promotes selfishness, independence. Together with selfishness, evil came into the world. It had to be so, because without the evil, human beings could not lay hold of the good. When human beings gain victory over themselves, the unfolding of love is possible. Christ brought the impulse for this victory to humans in the clutches of increasing egoism, and thereby the power to conquer evil. The acts of Christ bring together again the human beings who were separated through egoism and selfishness. The words of Christ concerning acts of love are true in the very deepest sense: ‘Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me.'"

In this conception, Jehovah gives a oneness without individuality and Lucifer gives individuality but alongside selfishness. A dialectic then starts to become clear: Jehovah's principle of absolute unity and Lucifer's principle of necessary, though selfishness-inducing, independence don't mix well. We need a third, reconciling principle, and that's what Christ's atonement accomplishes. In the Book of Mormon's language, Christ reconciles the demands of justice (the consequences for those who followed their Luciferic independence from others) to the claim of mercy (the reach of divine oneness or love).

Steiner also writes that the "Fall of Man" involved a descent from "world-consciousness" into "self-consciousness." This is what Jung and others call the "participation mystique," where animals and undeveloped people completely project their minds outside of themselves onto their surroundings; Satan extinguished this participation mystique by giving us both self-awareness and selfishness, both consequences of having a separate "self" in the first place. Swedenborg also says this in his Secrets of Heaven: human beings were originally "one" with everything surrounding them, and the fall inherent in leaving the "Garden of Eden" brought us to a spiritual place where a separate "ego" began to develop up and against the world. Separateness--and with it, death--entered our perception at this point, since only a being that perceives the world as separate can really die. Death, after all, is only a withdrawal of a person's innermost being from the outer world, and a person who sees no fundamental barrier between inside and outside or spirit and matter wouldn't really know death at all.

Steiner says quite a bit more about Lucifer when he writes:

“As you know, the luciferic spirits have remained stationary at other levels of evolution and bring something foreign into the normal evolutionary process. They are deeply interested in seizing hold of us and preventing us from gaining free will because they themselves have not achieved it. Free will can be gained only on earth, but the luciferic spirits want to have nothing to do with the earth; they want only Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon evolution and nothing beyond this."

"Luciferic spirits" are stuck in their spiritual evolution. They never descended to this physical world, which is a view that Mormons share. Steiner writes that they're stuck in the state of "Old Saturn," "Old Sun" and "Old Moon," which is a particularly weird notion of his. But he writes somewhere that these previous "planets" which human souls inhabited at earlier stages of their spiritual evolution correspond to different spiritual states. That is, "Old Saturn" and "Old Sun" are the human habitation in the "spirit world" before human beings incarnated here, while "Old Moon" is the prior human habitation in the "soul world." When he says that Luciferic spirits are stuck on the Old Moon, he's therefore just saying that they still live in the soul or astral world, which is a notion not at all far removed from Mormon doctrine.

To give a final quotation from Steiner's works, take this passage:

“Now Lucifer has the tendency to mix these two worlds [the soul world and the physical world, as above] with each other. In human love, whenever a person loves in the physical sense world for himself with a trace of egoism, it occurs because Lucifer wants to make physical love similar to spiritual love. He can then root it out of the physical sense world and lead it into his own special kingdom. This means that all love that can be called egoistic and is not there for the sake of the beloved but for the sake of the one who loves is exposed to Lucifer’s impulses.”

Since he is the guarantor of individuality, Lucifer wants us to become individuals as fully as possible--far more than we should. Instead of our using the physical world to encounter another in his or her own being, he wants us to only love them for our own selfish purposes. Selflessness is anathema to Lucifer; Jehovah's group-soul existence (mentioned above) rubs him entirely the wrong way. Lucifer wants us to see all things as mere means toward our self and our selfishness, and while Steiner says that a degree of self-concern is good for spiritual growth, "love ought to be directed to the self only in order to place it in the service of the world: the rose should adorn itself only to adorn the garden." Love is important; self-consciousness is important. However, love should only be directed at self-consciousness so that it can service the world. The self should be a means, never an end.

Conclusion

I take Steiner as a way that Mormons can fertilize their own faith with new perspective. As I said above, I don't take everything Steiner says at face value. Far from it, actually--he's far too confident in the literal reality of his intuitive experiences for his own good. But I love what I can discern from his intuition "beneath" his words, since I think that stuff is all gold.

A Deep Symbolic Reading of Helaman 5

I've known for a while that the Book of Mormon has more secrets buried in it than readers have discovered so far. When I read the Book, it's basically an endless treasure trove of insight, but not just in terms of what I can pull from the Book's teachings or literal story. There is also a lot of undiscovered value in the "nuances" of the Book of Mormon, what isn't directly said by the text but rather slips by almost undetected. The Hebrew poetic forms scholars have found in the Book of Mormon are an example of this insight "hidden in plain sight." I think I may have found another one, and if a Google search is anything to go by, I don't think anyone has had my idea yet.

The Book of Mormon as Image-Based

My new perspective on the Book of Mormon is this: it is written in a style distinctly attuned to images. Though the Book of Mormon's English text at times struggles to lucidly get across its meaning, beneath the awkward language there is a great deal of symbolic, imagistic language. And I don't mean just in the places where it's obvious that the Book is using metaphors. The seemingly plain descriptive prose the text uses also evokes images far beyond what it's literally describing. Think of how often the Book of Mormon uses the phrase "in the midst of," for instance--it's not exactly a metaphor, yet it "resonates" with many symbolic meanings. And in my experience, these subtly evocative images in the Book of Mormon come in three main categories: spatial images like "in the midst of" or "descending out of heaven;" bodily images like "stretch forth thy hand" or "gnashing their teeth upon them;" and material images like "filled with the Holy Ghost and with fire" and "humbling oneself to the dust." These categories also often combine, as when the multitudes in 3 Nephi 11 both lower themselves (spatial) and lower themselves to the dust (material). When considered in this scope, the possibilities for interpreting the Book of Mormon's text become endless. With an eye to these barely noticeable images in the Book, one can potentially read the Book of Mormon without focusing entirely on either its historical context or its internal narrative but on the metaphorical themes composing it, its imaginative composition. This would be a textual reading with an eye to the Book of Mormon's depth, looking deeply into the text to see what makes it up, what makes it so naturally powerful. If you read my post on the resurrection, you'll know what I mean when I say that this kind of a reading would reveal the "matter" in the Book's text, what "matters" in it as substantial and significant.

An Image-Based Reading of Helaman 5

I'm going to introduce this kind of textual reading by using it on one of the Book of Mormon's most evocative chapters: Helaman 5. It depicts two Nephite missionaries, Nephi and Lehi, converting fellow prisoners in a Lamanite jail through a kind of miraculous flame. The relevant part of the chapter begins when Lamanite guards go into the prison so that they might "slay" Nephi and Lehi:

And it came to pass that Nephi and Lehi were encircled about as if by fire, even insomuch that they [the Lamanite guards] durst not lay their hands upon them for fear lest they should be burned. Nevertheless, Nephi and Lehi were not burned; and they were as stuanding in the midst of fire and were not burned. And when they saw that they were encircled about with a pillar of fire, and that it burned them not, their hearts did take courage. For they saw that the Lamanites durst not lay their hands upon them; neither durst they come near unto them, but stood as if they were struck dumb with amazement. (Verses 23 through 25)

The first sentence in this paragraph combines the "spatial" and "material" images from the schema outlined above: Nephi and Lehi, the protagonists of the story and its main concern, are "encircled about as if by fire." While not dwelling on the phrase "as if" (which turns up quite a lot in the Book of Mormon and therefore requires a blog post to itself), the "encircling by fire" combines the spatial image of a circle with the material image of flame. One the one hand, circles evoke feelings of completeness, centeredness, and the incarnation of infinity in finitude (see my post "One Eternal Round" for more on this image), while on the other hand fire conjures associations of, among other things, a transformation of matter, a kind of "purification" that lets some parts of that matter ascend while letting others burn to a crisp. When you combine these two aspects of the image, the circle of flame around Nephi and Lehi becomes seen as a "forceful centering" of those in the prison. The fire uses its transformative power in service of the circle's centeredness on Lehi and Nephi: it turns the attention of everyone there on the two missionaries by making them the sudden objects of everyone's concern. And though this concern occurs at first as a fear of being burned, it's still doing what fire does best--transformation and transmutation, in this case of the prison's balance of power. Here, the guards reverse roles and become prisoners; the flame burned away the prison's old context and left a new one in its place.

Speaking of which, it's interesting that this scene should take place in a prison of all settings. Prisons are naturally enclosed places, often dark and away from where the sun can fully shine in. Moreover, a prison in pre-Columbian America would have been naturally earthy or associated with the images that come with dirt, mud, and dust. Fire would then feel out of place in such a setting, which makes the contrast in this chapter all the more striking. One almost gets the feeling that the fire is burning away the prison itself, as if the whole purpose of this chapter were to present an image of what is "inside" earth becoming freed from it. This is actually a reasonable reading of the text, since the classical imagination saw fire as a way to free the latent air or "spirit" within a matter like wood and get it to ascend as smoke. Wood is the spirit's prison, and so fire has always been the "jail-breaker" that it appears as in Helaman 5.

However, when the passage goes on to say that the fire encircling them is actually a pillar, a new spatial image adds itself to the mix: verticality. A pillar of fire is not only a circular flame; it's a circular flame that extends indefinitely upward. The pillar's verticality naturally raises the question: what does the pillar vertically extend to? Tall objects connect the "above" to the "below," as in the case of a ladder, a tower, or even a natural pillar. Interestingly enough, the image of a pillar itself evokes associations with "structural stability," something that contrasts with developments about to occur in the text. But for now, it should suffice to note that the pillar of fire resonates with the symbolism of fire I've extracted so far from the text: the pillar, as what connects the below to the above, actively relates the "height" of spirit to the earthy ground. This image evokes the idea of material transmutation even more: whereas earth is naturally "horizontal," the pillar's verticality--when combined with fire's ascensional nature--further brings out the way fire naturally transforms what it touches. Whereas before those in the prison were bound to a horizontal (a temporal?) point of view, a pillar of fire again forcefully changes their perspective, not just toward the center, but upward as well.

After Nephi and Lehi speak to the prisoners there, the narration continues:

And behold, when they had said these words, the earth shook exceedingly, and the walls of the prison did shake as if they were about to tumble to the earth; but behold, they did not fall. And behold, they that were in the prison were Lamanites and Nephites who were dissenters. And it came to pass that they were overshadowed with a cloud of darkness, and an awful solemn fear came upon them. And it came to pass that there came a voice as if it were above the cloud of darkness, saying "Repent ye, repent ye, and seek no more to destroy my servants whom I have sent unto you to declare good tidings. (Verses 27 through 29)

Here, the symbolic theme of fire vs. earth continues. Both the walls of the prison and the earth itself shake, giving the reader a sense that the solid stabilities of the prior reality are beginning to falter. Fire is burning away the rigidity of an "earthy" way of being where there is no translucency and no ascension. Earth as "only" earth is naturally dull, languid, and opaque--it is the opposite of spiritual life's goal for ascent and a transparent "seeing through" of idols. So in reality, it is the fire itself that causes the prison to quake; flame robs the building of its stability by letting that stability evaporate as spirit.

The way the fire forcefully refocused the prisoner's attention becomes more apparent here. Whereas before that change of focus was only implicit in the way the fire called attention to Nephi and Lehi, now everything outside the flame becomes dark. Could it be that this "cloud of darkness" just refers to the prison's natural light, now seen as dim only because of the fire's brighter light? It wouldn't be the first time a religious writer had used such an image: Emanuel Swedenborg describes how earthly light (as opposed to heavenly light) looks like thick darkness from the perspective of heaven, since the former is material and the latter is spiritual. Combined with the associations of a prison, I think a similar reading of this text could be fruitful: by the light of the fire, the prisoners see their imprisoned state more clearly than before. Prisons are naturally dark, yes; but they are all the more dark when a bright light like a flame illuminates it from within.

This awesome depiction of Helaman 5 was made by a fellow named Joshua Cotton. Kudos to him!

On that topic, when the chapter speaks of a voice coming as if from "above" the cloud of darkness, it gives more evidence for my reading of the text so far. The voice comes from above; that is, it transcends the "horizontal" limitations of a perspective attuned to imprisonment, earth, and earth's inherent opacity. Moreover, this image strongly corresponds to a similar image in the anonymously written medieval work The Cloud of Unknowing, which discusses another "dark cloud' (which the book is named for) surrounding the believer when deep in prayer. The cloud is actually God's manifest presence as it appears from an earthly perspective, and so the author encourages the reader to progress to the point where they see it as a kind of light. But until that point, the author actually says that God appears "above" the Cloud of Unknowing and invites the reader to pierce through it to Him with a fervent impulse of love" much like the prisoners in Helaman 5 will soon do to great success.

The next few paragraphs repeat the same images multiple times. Specifically, the voice calling them to repentance speaks three times, a number which is neither accidental nor insignificant. The voice also says at one point that "the kingdom of heaven is at hand," which also has important implications. While one might reasonably say that the voice refers to the imminent coming of Christ to the earth, I find it more likely that the "kingdom of heaven is at hand" for the prisoners there at that moment. That is, through the fire's transformation and its subsequent revelation of spirit, those there are coming closer to God. It is a refining fire, as others have noted not a few times.

The story continues by describing a particular prisoner's deeds:

Now there was one among them who was a Nephite by birth, who had once belonged to the church of God but had dissented from them. And it came to pass that he turned him about, and behold, he saw through the cloud of darkness the faces of Nephi and Lehi; they did shine exceedingly, even as the faces of angels. And he beheld that they did lift their eyes to heaven and were in the attitude as if talking or lifting their voices to some being whom they beheld. (Verses 35 through 36)

So far, we have read this chapter as concerning the purification of earthly or earthy limitation by fire. Earth is a naturally dark substance, and so when fire illuminates it from within, that darkness becomes apparent in the light of something "brighter." When the text says that the Nephite "saw through" the cloud of darkness to the faces of Nephi and Lehi, we can also read that "seeing through" as connected to the dichotomy between earth and fire. As Gaston Bachelard and James Hillman repeatedly point out in his works, the archetype of "earth" is one that naturally tends toward literalism and idolatry. 

Earth wants to block the divine light from coming through, and so it takes effort for one to "see through" earth's elemental opacity toward the inward reality it would conceal. Here, the Nephite imprisoned until now in earth makes that effort requisite to look past earth's opacity toward what lies within it. And the fire he finds there--which is both "round" and "vertical"--thus at once offers refinement, wholeness, and transcendence. Likening this procession of images to real life, we could read it as the way a person living their life suddenly sees it as a prison, only to see something bigger, brighter, and more complete beyond (and yet within) it. This "something" is what the Spirit brings: fire's purification, circularity's completeness, and verticality's connection to "the above."

As the story continues, the Nephite cries to the other prisoners so that they can also look to Nephi and Lehi in the midst of the flames. They ask why Nephi and Lehi appear to be talking to someone else, and the Nephite (now named Aminadab) says that "They do converse with the angels of God." Then comes the climax of the chapter:

And it came to pass that the Lamanites said unto him, "What shall we do, that this cloud of darkness may be removed from overshadowing us? 

And Aminadab said unto them, "You must repent, and cry unto the voice, even until ye shall have faith in Christ, who was taught unto you by Alma, and Amulek, and Zeezrom; and when ye shall do this, the cloud of darkness shall be removed from overshadowing you. 

And it came to pass that they all did begin to cry unto the voice of him who had shaken the earth; yea, they did cry even until the cloud of darkness was dispersed. And it came to pass that when they cast their eyes about, and saw that the cloud of darkness was dispersed from overshadowing them, behold, they saw that they were encircled about, yea, every soul, by a pillar of fire. And Nephi and Lehi were in the midst of them; yea, they were encircled about; yea, kthey were as if in the midst of a flaming fire, yet it did harm them not; neither did it take hold upon the walls of thre prison; and they were filled with that joy which is unspeakable and full of glory.

The cloud of darkness "overshadows" them: it acts as a "shadow over" them, veiling them from whatever dwells above. This cloud acts as a visible representation of the opacity proper to earth and its literalism; it's an obstacle to "seeing through" the world to heaven, its light, and its fire. So when Aminadab says that they must repent to disperse the fire, he's effectively saying that one must turn toward the fire in the midst of earth (or rather, the Spirit in the midst of matter and everyday life) in order to break free from imprisonment in earth's literalism and idolatry. More practically, this means that you have to turn toward the manifestations of God in your life (appearing in it like a pillar of fire) to stop feeling like that life is a prison.

And they do this to incredible results. They "cry unto the voice of him who had shaken the earth," or rather, they cry out to the God whose fiery reality made their earthy reality seem lesser by comparison. And when they do this, they "cast their eyes about" (i.e. in all directions or even "everywhere"), and all they can see is the pillar of fire. The prison--while still there--is no longer a prison per se. The prison's limitation and finitude instead have the fire's inward infinity inside it. Or in other words, the fire has burned away finitude's opposition to infinity--because the fire "opens up" to heaven with its verticality, the finitude of whatever "prison" one may be in (a job, a family, a relationship, or even a body) reveals itself as just a "container" for an inward limitlessness.

Moreover, since "every soul" is encircled about by a pillar of fire, we can assume that the aforementioned purification, centeredness/completeness, and verticality proper to that pillar have become applicable to everyone in that situation. Where before they were stained with dirt, now they are clean; where they had been de-centered and incomplete, now they are complete and whole in themselves; and where they had been before been exclusively "horizontal," now they are also "vertical." And while this revelation might strike some as frightening or even painful, the fire "did harm them not," meaning that their openness to the flame let its effects come upon them without the pain that comes from resisting it.

Finally, "the joy which is unspeakable and full of glory" suggests that they have entered a reality where words and speech no longer apply. This is nothing unfamiliar to mystical religion: Swedenborg talked about how much wisdom he learned in the higher heavens simply could not descend with him back to the world; Rudolf Steiner similarly speaks of the knowledge of higher worlds as incompatible with earthly memory; and Ludwig Wittgenstein writes in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that "Whereof one cannot speak [what he says lies "beyond the world"], thereof one must be silent." Aminadab, Nephi, and Lehi have reached a state that words (as least words of earthly speech) can't capture. The words themselves are prisons, ones that can't explain everything within them. Words may describe the fire (as they do in the chapter) but those words will always be inadequate; they're "bigger on the inside."

The chapter finishes with the following passage:

And behold, the Holy Spirit of God did come down from heaven, and did enter into their hearts, and they were filled as if with fire, and they could speak forth marvelous words. And it came to pass that there came a voice unto them, yea, a pleasant voice, as if it were a whisper, saying, "Peace, peace be unto you, because of your faith in my Well-Beloved, who was from the foundation of the world. 

And now, when they heard this they cast up their eyes as if to behold from whence the voice came; and behold, they saw the heavens open; and angels came down out of heaven and ministered unto them. And there were about three hundred souls who saw and heard these things; and they were bidden to go forth and marvel not, neither should they doubt.

In this last bit, many entities come "vertically" to the prison: the Holy Spirit, "marvelous words," "a pleasant voice," and angels from heaven. I think it's appropriate to read the pillar of fire--which has an intrinsically vertical component--as a kind of bridge between earth and heaven. The Spirit, angels, voice, and words all come across that bridge, able to go between heaven and the finitude of "earth" using it. Likewise, I think the fire in our hearts or the "burning in the bosom" is this same kind of bridge: it allows revelation, peace, and divine assistance to come down from heaven. Moreover, this can happen even if we are in the "prison" of our life's finitude, since the fire doesn't ever tear it down.

My Dream about Joseph Smith, Swedenborg, and Fallout 4

If you read the post on my dream about the Book of Mormon and a wedding from last September, you'll know that when I accidentally fall asleep on the couch in my family's living room, I'll often have very vivid dreams. So guess what? I fell asleep there again, and I had another vivid, enlightening dream, this time involving Joseph Smith, Emanuel Swedenborg, and the recently released video game Fallout 4.

It looks like these kinds of "dream posts" might become a regular feature on my blog. So let me clarify some things on how I'll go about them: first, don't expect any too intimate personal details about my life. If you can figure them out from the dream itself, good for you, but I won't put them into the interpretation. After all, James Hillman said that dreams are necessarily polyvalent or mean multiple things, so I'll only "extract" the parts having to do with the world at large. Second, know that I'm not really "interpreting" the dream, per se. It's more like I'm letting the dream interpret life, so that it teaches us what's important about life and lets us think of it in new ways. And finally, like the last post, I'll edit out the names of anyone you might know from real life whose image pops up in the dream. It might be embarrassing for them otherwise, after all.

So without further ado, here's the dream:

I'm in a dark, under-construction place like the theater when it was getting new seats. We're in groups of people putting on skits, each one supposed to demonstrate to the others what we've learned. Eventually it comes time for our group to perform next, but I realize that--even though we've made a vague outline--we're not ready. So we decide to go to Diamond City [the main settlement in Fallout 4], where we'll go on the radio station and broadcast our skit, which is now a song, to the whole Wasteland. When we get there, the host has already started playing our song, and he says that we're called "The Eagles," a name which he says is offensive, but he doesn't really care. But it's just dead air. When we get there, we tell him to stop so we can actually perform the song. He delays a bit, when I realize that the dead air was actually music to which we could improvise lyrics. So I pen them down quickly and tell everyone to harmonize with me. It works. Going away from the radio station and Diamond City, our group goes up a hill toward a mountain, hoping to go beyond the Wasteland entirely. But a woman stops us, saying that "you can't travel in time!" She lassoes the rest of the group, but I press onward nonetheless. She tries to catch up with me, but I startle her by observing that she's the late Billy Mays' daughter. She grudgingly follows me up the mountain, poking fun at the fact that I can't ascend as easily as I would like. But she lends her "Endurance" to me (another Fallout 4 reference), so that our scores combine together. Near the top, I almost can't make it and consider turning back. But then the woman tells me to take the Swedenborg book I'd been holding in my left hand and put it in my backpack, so I can use both hands for climbing. I do that, and before we know it, we're at the final stop before the last ascent. The place is green and nicely paved, with a clear blue sky very different fromt the Wasteland below. It's called "Swedenborg's Landing." There's a church on this landing which I go into, where I read a book on the altar which talks about a sculpture somewhere in Utah that depicts Joseph Smith reaching through a veil to Swedenborg. It says that Joseph Smith and Swedenborg were both efforts by the "heaven" side of the veil to reach the "femme fatale" that is the earth itself. The book also gives a map of North America about 10,000 years ago, when humans were just starting to flow in. There was a lot more water there, then, and I realize that those humans must have been Swedenborg's "Earliest Church."

This dream paints a picture of the human condition in the world: we are in the darkness of earthly matter, almost as if we were underground, away from the light of heaven. It's like the Wasteland of Fallout 4--the world has fallen away from what it once was, and all that's left is a dusty, dirty husk. We're all in a theater: a place where we as fallen beings try to re-enact higher principles that we learn here like actors. In that way we're enacting Swedenborg's "Doctrine of Correspondences:" since the universe is a "theater representative of the spiritual world," we need to act out the right roles. But we've messed up, missed the boat, squandered our time, as I think many of us have.This is sin: acting out the wrong roles or forgetting that this lower existence, this "wasteland" is a play at all, the definition of idolatry (not seeing the role in the actor but only seeing the actor).

The "Diamond City" we go to is what one Fallout 4 character calls "the great green jewel of the Commonwealth." It's a refuge of life and of growth in the middle of the earth's wasteland, vividly green despite the drab colors everywhere else, a lot like the enclaves of human love and spirit in a fallen world. And when we go to a radio station hoping that someone will hear our song, it's like prayer: going to a sacred place in my heart (green, according to the chakra color scheme, a color which some medieval thinkers associated with the Holy Spirit), where I can send a message directly above the commotion of this world to God. And while in that central, green broadcasting place, even though we don't know any songs, we astonishingly realize that we have music given to us already. This music is the subtle life behind everything (what some might call "energy" and is doctrinally "The Light of Christ"), and the improvised lyrics correspond to the way a person can adapt his or her actions, words, and thoughts to fit the spirit of the situation. Because this works well in the dream, maybe improvisation is the best way to follow the Spirit.

Afterwards, when we try to go up toward the highest place in the area, we're hoping that we can commune with what lies there: God, heaven, the light, or perhaps even that music. But there is a woman there who tries to stop us, who tells us that we'd be breaking the laws of time by going up there. She is a personification of the rigidity of earth-life itself--the earth as a woman (as the earth is often seen), but a strict, embittered one. When she lassoes us old-west style, she's acting out the archetypal "Devouring Mother," the variety of the mother/earth principle that wants to absorb all development back into herself. But, of course, I escape her snare. I tell her that she's Billy Mays' daughter, meaning that she's very practical, efficient, and cheap, like his products (that is, not concerned with higher things). She--as the earth--is now exclusively focused on solutions and efficiency: time, in other words. She resents timelessness, and she wants to stop all of us from getting to the timeless.

This isn't how she naturally is, though. She's fallen: she's the daughter of Zion, but she hasn't yet arisen from the dust (the dust of the Wasteland). She's still stuck in literalism, bound by "the collective gaze of our idolatry." So I lead her out, despite her resentment. She follows me up the mountain, both of us coming closer and closer to God. She can do the ascent if she wanted to; she's capable enough, but she just doesn't want to go there. In other words, the earth can ascend to its purified state, but it's stuck in its ways; we have to help lead her out. She goes with me because she wants to capture me, but she becomes fonder of me as we go. When she lends me some of her "endurance," the earth is giving me some of her "soul" and lets both of us ascend as one, each bringing the other up to God. And eventually (symbolized by putting the book in my backpack) we have to give up pursuing knowledge and instead bear that knowledge, using our hands to climb instead of researching how to climb.

Swedenborg's Landing" is the place where Swedenborg "landed," where he met with heaven, where heaven met with him, and where he meets anyone who wants to follow his visionary example. The statue I read about there depicts Joseph Smith reaching through the veil to Swedenborg, almost as if he wanted to bring the two sides of the veil together. Swedenborg was excellent at "seeing through" the spiritual world: he taught about the hidden meaning of the Bible, what was beyond its veil. But this isn't very practical, and the incredibly small numbers of Swedenborg's modern followers testify to Swedenborg's lack of practical appeal. When Joseph Smith said, in real life, that "Emanuel Swedenborg had a view of the world to come, but for daily food he perished," it strikes me as possible that he was talking about dense and esoteric Swedenborg is. So in this dream, Joseph is reaching to that hidden meaning across the veil while standing firmly in this world, bringing the hidden meaning down and incarnating it in terms that everyday people can understand. He's doing what Swedenborg could not do: reconciling the actual, concrete earth to the hidden meanings of things beyond the veil, as if through synthesis (like when I shared my "endurance" with the earth-woman). This manifests in the way he didn't distinguish between the symbolic (heavenly) and the literal (earthly), but treated the literal as symbolic and vice versa, infusing each with the other's value.

The bit about the earth being a "femme fatale" is a particularly clever move by the dream. It's talking about the woman whom I brought up and who brought me up, the feminine being who's focused on fatality and fatalism: the limits of time, space, and causation. I bring her out of that, and in that way I re-enact Swedenborg and Joseph Smith's purpose according to the dream. They're supposed to bring the earth out from hiding in its fatalistic imprisonment to the freedom of high places. This would redeem the Wasteland: it would renew the earth and bring the physical up to meet the spiritual.

The last bit of the dream talks about something else in that book: North America as it was first populated. This implicitly references the Book of Mormon, and I knew at the time that it was also talking about Swedenborg's "Earliest Church," whom he says are the paradisiacal first state of humans in history, whom I identify with pre-historic hunter-gatherers (like those who crossed the Bering Strait into North America). So what I gather from this dream is that, like Joseph Smith's synthesis, it brings together the symbolic meaning of the "Lehites" (Nephites and Lamanites) in the Book of Mormon with that of the Earliest Church: they are both what "comes out" from God, what descends from what would later be called Swedenborg's Landing to the promised land, which would become a Wasteland.

In sum, it's our job to redeem that Wasteland, to help the woman personifying it rise up toward God, to "arise from the dust" and meet her husband at Swedenborg's landing, where heaven meets earth and they become one. And this is already underway, if my dream means anything.

My Testimony in Light of the Church's Policy Change

Yesterday, the news came that--according to new Church policy--children of those in a same-sex relationship will no longer be considered eligible for a name and a blessing or to be baptized. Many are incensed. Still more are deeply saddened. I have seen people on social media and in my own family begin to question things they had always held to be true. It's devastating to me, personally: not because I'm losing my testimony but because I'm seeing so many people I know and love begin to lose theirs. So I feel like it's my duty to give my perspective if only to strengthen those trees of faith breaking under the stress of doubt's wind.

I'm not going to give a clever way that the Church leaders are right in all of this, despite everything that appears contrary to that. It might be the case that this is a huge misunderstanding and that, somehow, we've all gotten scared of nothing. But I personally doubt that will happen in any big way. No, in this post I'm acknowledging that, yes, the Church has done something morally wrong in the objective sense of the phrase. It's a tragedy that will alienate members from their families and tear families apart. But of course, this wouldn't be the first time that the leaders of the Church have done something immoral. Didn't Joseph Smith have many secret wives, with some of whom we now definitively know he had actual intercourse? Didn't the Church declare as doctrine for over a hundred years that black people were ineligible for the priesthood? And it wasn't just "culture" or "cultural practices"--it was doctrine in the same way that most teachings today are doctrine.

Church leaders and prophets are imperfect. This is an increasingly common refrain among members trying to reconcile their image of prophets with stark realities. But have you ever considered that a prophet or prophets could do something blatantly, morally wrong? This happens, as much as we don't like to think about it. But this doesn't mean that they're not inspired, and it doesn't mean that God isn't using them for His own purposes. Adam S. Miller eloquently says on this point that:

“While it is scary to think that God works through weak, partial, and limited mortals like us, the only thing scarier would be thinking that he doesn’t.”

God works with sinners--who else does he have? Murderers like Moses, persecutors of the church like Paul and Alma the Younger, thieves, and prostitutes are all tools in God's hands. The Church may be on the wrong moral foot here (and again, I may be proven wrong), but God knows this and is working more largely and deeply than we can see at the moment.

For God and His work isn't the Church. As far as I can tell (and drawing on thinkers like Terryl and Fiona Givens), He has delegated the leaders of the Church authority to do and teach what they think is best at the moment. This doesn't mean that Thomas S. Monson has a white phone in his office where Christ can ring him up and tell him this and that to teach. Instead, the leaders do what they think is best through the medium of their own limitations. And mistakes will be made in this process--as they have again and again in the past. Does this mean that God isn't at the head of His church, that God's and His servant's voice isn't one and the same? Not quite. Like a parent letting his child fall over as that child is learning to ride a bike, God effectively says: "whatever you decide, I'll honor." It isn't that God changes His mind--we do, and God goes with it based on His trust in the leaders of the Church.

And God has his eye on the far future here. I'm confident that--somehow--God will take this stumble and transmute it into goodness and love like He always does. An intuition I have is that it will purify the faith of those who really desire to have faith, getting them to the point where they no longer idolatrously worship leaders and instead worship God for God's sake. Or perhaps not, but I have hope (in the scriptural sense) that everything will work out toward the end of the gathering of Israel and the coming of Christ to the earth.

But the questions on many of your minds might be: "since the church's policies don't make sense, why should I desire to have a testimony and believe in its teachings? What's so special about the Church in the first place?" Let me tell you. In the Church, I have seen miracles. The trials of faith I've gone through--in which the Church's policies gave me repeated self-hatred and remorse--have been transmuted to my good; I wouldn't be the same person I am today without them, and without them I most likely wouldn't be nearly as happy as I am today. In taking the sacrament, I've experienced peace and comfort to transcend everything I felt during the week. I've experienced both myself and others suddenly start speaking things in church which they didn't plan or even think about beforehand, but which left everyone there full of the Spirit's fire. And in the temple, I have openly and profusely wept when getting confirmed for one of my ancestors, a feeling I didn't anticipate and which doesn't make sense from a secular perspective. Even now I feel tears coming to my eyes as I remember the goodness and love I've felt in the Church.

I bear you my solemn testimony that the Church is true--this doesn't mean that the leaders are perfect or that everything that comes out of their mouths is objectively right. Instead, it means that God is here with us, that his sacred fire and his life circulate through and between us like blood, that we are all connected together through an atonement and a gathering that are making themselves known now more than ever. It means that despite whatever disappointments and setbacks we experience in the Church, faith, hope, and love will always prevail and have the last word. And it means that even now, through the tears and the sorrows we're feeling, God is coming ever closer to the world and the gathering is getting that much closer to its realization.

I bear you my testimony that God lives and that He is here in the Church. I have felt Him again and again, and--though I'm not sure why--I know that these setbacks will only bring Him closer to the world. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.