Church Talk: Jesus and Paul

I gave this talk May 21, 2017. It is my (positive) rebuttal to religious arguments that focus on legalities and rules, obedience and dogma.

As described in the talk, I read through the Gospel of Mark first, focusing on what Jesus did; then again, focusing on what he said (I used the King James translation, red letter edition, online--the web is an amazing thing!). I approached the project with a surprising number of uneasy expectations (you'd think a person who taught seminary would remember the New Testament better) and finished with most of those expectations gratifyingly overturned.

The three consistent messages from Jesus in Mark (and for that matter, across the four gospels) are "I am the Son of God," "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand" (many debates on what exactly this means since Jesus seemed to perceive it not as a future event but as something that was being created with his ministry and later with his Resurrection), and "Try to be good and kind in a way that goes beyond mere lip-service" ("goodness" is both a more generous and--let's be real--ballsy thing than the word sometimes implies).

There's very little about rules for the sake of rules. What's even cooler is how much the Jesus described in Mark--the most action-based of the gospels--practices what He preaches. My own written list of Things Jesus Did is far longer than the items I selected for the talk.

In reference to the talk's context, I've always had a soft-spot for Paul, mostly for being such a complicated guy--besides which, David Suchet would like to play him :)

2nd Corinthians 3:3: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

2nd Corinthians is a letter or group of letters written by the Apostle Paul to members of the church in Corinth, Greece. He previously wrote a letter of rebuke to the Corinthians for infighting: they were engaging in “debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings, whisperings, swellings, tumults” (2 Corinthians 12:20). So things were pretty bad! Paul had also visited Corinth recently, and some members had challenged his authority; in Second Corinthians, he is stating that he doesn’t need letters of recommendation to uphold his authority or to prove himself. The Saints, the members, are his recommendations.

A letter of recommendation is used when someone applies for a position. The person writing the letter will praise the prospective employee’s character, virtues, and abilities. In Second Corinthians, Paul is saying that he doesn’t need outsiders to defend his character. He’ll know that he succeeded in teaching the gospel when he sees members practicing Christ-like behavior. When the Spirit of God is written on their hearts, they become letters of Christ. A modernized version of this would be that when the Spirit of God is written on their hearts, they become websites of Christ: that is, what they have in their hearts will show up where people can see it.

Ultimately, Paul wants the members to have a loving attitude towards each other, an attitude that comes from the inside—he wants them to naturally wish the best for each other. In essence, he wants them to behave as described in First Corinthians 13.

I will read First Corinthians 13 in the original King James version, which is very beautiful, and then in the King James modernized version:

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth:

Love is patient, kind, not jealous, does not brag, is not arrogant, does not behave rudely, does not demand its own way, is not easily angered, keeps no grudges, does not rejoice in wrong but in truth and right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

Another great vocabulary word for what Paul is describing is magnanimity. Magnanimity is sometimes defined as “generosity of spirit” or “bigness of heart.” It is all encompassing.

In this last General Conference, Elder Robert D. Hales discusses this idea of being Christ-like or magnanimous:

The attributes of the Savior, as we perceive them, are not a script to be followed or list to be checked off. They are interwoven characteristics, added one to another, which develop in us in interactive ways. In other words, we cannot obtain one Christlike characteristic without also obtaining and influencing others. As one characteristic becomes strong, so do many more.

Goodness then is about internal integrity—not a checklist of outward behavior. Goodness is a way of being.

This can be difficult, not to say overwhelming! I know I am not always as good and kind as I would like to be. I struggle with how much better I should be. How do we become completely good/kind people in our hearts as well as in our actions?

It comes down to a grammar or logic issue—an if-then statement. If one thing is true, then another thing must also be true.

The scriptures are full of if-then statements. If you love God . . . then . . .

Sometimes we get caught up on the “then”—we try to force things to happen. But actually, we need to back up to the “if.”

In Mosiah 4, for example, King Benjamin states, “If ye have known of [God’s] goodness and have tasted of his love and [felt the joy of God’s forgiveness] . . . then . . .” the following happens:

Ye shall grow in knowledge,
Ye shall not wish to hurt others,
Ye shall be kind to your children and teach them to love,
Ye shall be generous and forgiving.

All these behaviors and attitudes result from loving God. Jesus affirms this truth in Mark 12. When questioned, “Which commandment is the most important?” he answers that the most important, the place to start, is to “love the Lord thy God with all [our] hearts and souls and minds.”

To return to the Corinthians, Paul wanted the Corinthian congregation to adopt a more generous way of thinking and being. And he wanted them to do this by emulating Christ. Jesus and also King Benjamin tell us that the first step to emulating Christ is to love Heavenly Father.

How do we do that? How do we love Heavenly Father so completely that He and Christ will be inscribed on our hearts? I have three suggestions:

1. Accept God’s love. It seems an obvious thing to do. But we sometimes don’t do it because we “get in our own way” or sabotage ourselves.

A writer of religion, Philip Yancey, discusses the greatness of Apostle Peter by comparing him to Judas Iscariot. Both Judas and Peter betrayed Jesus—Judas did it deliberately for money; Peter did it impetuously out of fear. However, on the cross, Jesus forgave all those who betrayed him. The difference between the men is that Peter did not reject that forgiveness and love. He turned back to Christ.

2. Show gratitude. Like me, you may find comparing yourself to Peter, an Apostle and Head of the Church, a little daunting. A more everyday example of someone that I can relate to is the 10th leper.

Jesus cured 10 lepers. Luke 17 tells us, “And when [Jesus] saw them, he said unto them, ‘Go shew yourselves unto the priests.’ And it came to pass that as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God. And fell down on his face at [Jesus’s] feet, giving him thanks . . . And Jesus said unto him, ‘Arise, go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole’” (14-16).

Jesus didn’t remove the cure from the other 9—the scriptures make it clear that “they were cleansed.” They all received his love. The 10th turned back and accepted that love by thanking God. His gratitude, his faith and love, made him whole—more than in the physical sense.

Gratitude is a powerful attribute. In Sunbeams, the class for the 3 to 4-year-olds, we—the students and the teachers—learn to thank God for water, fish, prayer, our bodies, families, and of course, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Gratitude is a way to accept God’s love and to “know of his goodness.”

3. As well as acceptance and gratitude, we can love God by learning about Him—the best way to learn about God is to learn about His Son, Jesus Christ.

I recently had a wonderful experience where I went through the Gospel of Mark twice. First, I looked at only Jesus’s behavior—then I went back and read what Jesus said.

I discovered, first, that Jesus did AMAZING things during his ministry:

• He was happy for other people’s happiness—he enjoyed their enjoyment, such as when he attended the Wedding at Cana.
• He willingly spent time with and was interested in everyone from fishermen to intellectuals, children, the poor, the wealthy, the middle class, outsiders, military leaders, even tax collectors!
• I find it personally encouraging that he inspired women. Dorothy Sayers wrote:

“It is no wonder that women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. [Jesus was] a prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, who never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious.”

• As Sayers mentions, Jesus was entirely self-aware and self-confident. Early in his ministry, he gave up being a “celebrity” when he resisted Satan’s temptations. He wasn’t concerned with how he looked or what others thought of him.
• He was practical as when he fed people who had come to hear him speak.
• He was introverted and extroverted. Sometimes, he spent time alone; sometimes, he took his apostles away on “retreats.” He taught people one-on-one and adjusted his teaching to their circumstances. He also enjoyed social activities and was capable of handling large crowds.
• And he performed miracles in many different ways—sometimes at a distance; sometimes up close; sometimes with words; sometimes with actions and words.

We are not perfect like Jesus, so we may not be able to deal with people and situations as variously as he did. I think he approached people and events in so many ways as an example to the different kinds of people that we are. If I need an example of how to be kind or how to deal with others that fits my personality, I can find it in the gospels.

The foundation of all Jesus’s behavior is love. This last General Conference, Elder S. Mark Palmer gave a talk about the rich, young man who asks Jesus what he needs to do to obtain eternal life. Jesus instructs him to follow the commandments. The young man says he has kept them all.

I confess—at this point in the conversation, I would roll my eyes. Really? You’ve kept ALL the commandments?

Jesus didn’t roll his eyes. As Elder Palmer reminds us, “Then Jesus beholding him loved him.” (Elder Palmer: "To my astonishment, I instead heard six words before that part of the verse [about following Jesus] that I seemed never to have heard or read before.")

Jesus’s love is also echoed in the things that he said, specifically in the Sermon on the Mount.

The Sermon on the Mount seems radical. Am I truly supposed to not complain when someone “shall smite [me] on the right cheek”? I have to admit, I would complain!

It helps to realize that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is deliberately pushing the commandments, such as forgiving one’s neighbor, to the furthest degree—NOT in order to make the commandments more legalistic but to make the point that kindness and goodness should match what is in our hearts. We should actually wish to get along with our neighbors, not simply hope they stay off our lawns. We should actually try to forgive our enemies, not make token statements about how nice it is to love everybody.

The scriptures assert that we can come to love God through accepting His love, showing gratitude, and learning more about His Son, Jesus Christ. We then become better people because we wish to be better people. In the book The Road Less Traveled, Scott Peck writes, “When we love something, it is of value to us, and when something is of value to us, we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it. Observe a [gardener] with a beloved rose garden, and the time spent pruning and mulching and fertilizing and studying it.”

I get a kick out of Peck’s analogy. I am not a gardener myself, but my parents are.  A year ago, they moved off Peaks Island to a new, smaller home. Already their new home has a big garden. As the weather warms, they spend more and more time outside, digging up stumps, expanding the flower beds, and watering the shrubs. Their yard is flourishing and looks quite unlike everyone else’s in their cul-de-sac. It is obvious who the real gardeners in the neighborhood are. An if/then statement for my parents would be: If you really love gardening, you shall have beautiful and healthy plants to look at all day long.

When we spend time loving God and Jesus Christ, who witnesses to us of God’s love, we begin to fulfill Paul’s instruction to write Christ into our hearts. We also begin to fulfill the first part of the if/then statement from Mosiah: If we know of God’s love...we shall improve...

A wonderful example of a big-hearted person who became better out of love is Zacchaeus. He heard about Jesus and was quite excited to see him. Unfortunately, there was a large crowd and Zacchaeus wasn’t very tall—I can relate!—so he climbed up into a tree. When Jesus “came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, ‘Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for today I must abide at thy house.’ And [Zacchaeus] made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully.” After they ate, Zacchaeus stood up without prompting and announced, “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold” (Luke 19:5-6, 8).

This is one of the passages where Jesus refers to finding those who are lost. So an outcome of loving God is not only becoming a better person but being found (I am here).

In Second Corinthians, Paul adds another outcome of loving God: we shall have “such trust . . . through Christ to God-ward” that we will be “troubled yet not distressed” (2 Corinthians 3:4, 4:8). I love the practicality of that last line! Paul doesn’t say, “Your life will be perfect.” He says, “You will be troubled yet not distressed.”

Paul wanted the Saints in Corinth to not be distressed. He wanted them to get along. He wanted them to stop arguing about status and to stop challenging each other. He wanted them to behave like Christ, not only for the sake of each other but for their individual sakes—so they could each feel more peace. That peace starts with loving God.

Remember the 10th leper. The moment he was healed, he thought not of all the places he could go or even of all the people he could hang out with. I’m sure he thought of those positive things later! But immediately, right away, he thought of glorifying God and thanking Jesus Christ.

NOT INCLUDED IN THE TALK DUE TO TIME (AND BECAUSE IT IS KIND OF A TALK IN ITS OWN RIGHT): Loving God doesn’t mean defending God--He frankly doesn’t need us to defend Him--or forcing people to believe in Him. It means being open to His perspective. Interestingly, in Alcoholics Anonymous, Step 2 is "to believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity." For the non-denominational participants, the Power can be anything from God to a mountain to space. Believing in a Power is about getting a fresh look at our little selves. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love” (12-13).

In April’s General Conference, President Uchtdorf restated these ideas in his own energetic way:

So, how does God motivate His children to follow Him in our day?

He sent His Son!

God sent His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to show us the right way.

God motivates through persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, and love unfeigned. God is on our side. He loves us, and when we stumble, He wants us to rise up, try again, and become stronger.

He is our mentor.

He is our great and cherished hope.

He desires to stimulate us with faith.

He trusts us to learn from our missteps and make correct choices.

As we fill our hearts with the love of Christ, we will awaken with a renewed spiritual freshness and we will walk joyfully, confidently, awake, and alive in the light and glory of our beloved Savior, Jesus Christ.

When I thank God for my blessings and remember the bigger picture of behaving with magnanimity, I become a more balanced person. I become more like the 10th leper who slowed down and looked around and remembered God’s love. I sometimes even have the patience of Christ although that happens less than it should. I have to keep reminding myself, and I falter a lot but reminding myself always pays off in the long run.

As Paul says, God, who made the light shine out of darkness, “shines in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 3:6).

Church Talk: Joseph Smith and the Importance of a Physical Body

I gave this talk Fall 2015. It and the talk I will post next represent two foundations of my belief system: one, the positive nature of the physical existence; two, the non-legalistic nature of Christ's teachings. 

When I was growing up, the Young Women’s motto was a scripture: “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” from the Book of Moses, Moses 1:39.

Joseph Smith received the Book of Moses as revelation during his translation of the Bible. This translation was never completed though parts of it were published in 1851. The Book of Moses can now be found in the Pearl of Great Price, which includes the Book of Abraham, the Articles of Faith, and Joseph Smith History. The Book of Moses covers Genesis 1-6 (technically, Genesis 1:1-6:13).

Joseph Smith began the translation of the Bible, which led to the Book of Moses, in 1830. He was very busy in the 1830s. The translation of The Book of Mormon was completed in 1829 and published in 1830. The Church was established April 6, 1830. Joseph Smith received numerous revelations at this time, many of which can be found in the Doctrine & Covenants.

These revelations, the translation of The Book of Mormon, and the Book of Moses restore important doctrines—specifically, doctrines related to the physical resurrection.

Members of the LDS church believe that all people will be resurrected after death. They will have a physical, perfected form. I personally believe that when I am resurrected, I will have real red hair (it will involve tweaking only a few genes!).

We desire to have these physical, perfected bodies because Heavenly Father has a perfected body, made of matter. We cannot fully understand His body. After His resurrection, Jesus Christ deliberately kept marks of his crucifixion as a witness to His identity and acts. The exact nature of the perfected body is unknown other than it is composed of flesh and bone. D&C 130:22.

Why is the doctrine of the physical resurrection such a challenge?

After Jesus Christ’s ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection, the gospel was taught by the apostles led by Peter. Paul, the great missionary, also spread these beliefs throughout the Mediterranean World. As the apostles were killed one by one, including Peter and Paul, original doctrines were lost or changed. LDS doctrine maintains that well-meaning people attempted to put pieces back together without the priesthood, i.e. without prophetic revelation. They were puzzled by many things—such as the physical resurrection.

The physical resurrection was challenged in large part by what became known as Gnosticism, which finds its roots in Greek philosophy. The Gnostics were troubled by the physical body, including the idea that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, would choose to be born to a mortal woman and choose to take on physical form. Dallin H. Oakes explains, “The tangible, personal God described in the Old and New Testaments was replaced by an abstract [being].” The Gnostics saw the spirit as incorruptible and the body as corruptible. They saw the physical experience as a mistake. [Note: This body versus spirit dichotomy continues to this day; it is still largely fueled by abstract intellectualism.]

Joseph Smith challenged these distressing ideas when he tackled the purpose of mortality. The Book of Moses opens with a discussion between Jehovah and Moses. Moses wishes to understand the purpose of mortality: Moses 1:30. In answer, Jehovah reveals God’s plan. How the earth was created is less important than why: Moses 1:39. The physical resurrection is tied to the creation (whatever form it took) and to Adam and Eve. Plus, the physical world is good—Moses 3:2.

When Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, they gained mortal bodies. In Moses 5, they both reflect on this experience and rejoice in it. As a result of leaving the Garden, their eyes are opened, and they are able to have children. They also come to fully understand God’s plan. Eve declares in verse 11, “We . . . know . . . the joy of redemption.” Adam states in verse 10, “In this life I shall have joy and again in the flesh I shall see God.”

LDS doctrine states that when Adam & Eve left the Garden of Eden, two things occurred. They gained mortal bodies, meaning they would die—like all of us. And they and their children gained the ability to willfully sin. To willfully sin is to sin knowing the difference between good and evil. Wrongdoing committed in a state of innocence is not sin—consequently, Mormons do not baptize children under the age of 8 since they are not yet accountable. Moses 6:54 states that “children are whole from the foundation of the world.”

But we adults are liable for our behavior as we know from Article of Faith 2. We are “agents unto ourselves.”

So in mortality, we die and we make mistakes. How can we hope to overcome physical and spiritual death? How can we hope, like Adam, to “see God in the flesh”?

We can hope through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. The Atonement conquers the death of the physical body; it also conquers sin. The physical resurrection is necessary to BOTH parts of this process.

Alma 40:23 reads, “The soul shall be restored to the body, and the body to the soul.” 2 Nephi 9:13 tells us that together spirit and body form a “living soul.” And revelation to Joseph Smith in D&C 93:33-34 states clearly that when body and spirit are separated, “man cannot receive a fullness of joy.”

Without a resurrected body, we cannot be judged. Therefore, without a physical resurrection, repentance and spiritual progress cannot be assessed. The physical resurrection is VITAL to what is referred to as the Plan of Redemption, Plan of Salvation, and, my father’s favorite, the Plan of Happiness 😄.

Sidenote: I am currently troubled by how few Mormons these days seem to know the Plan of Salvation. There is a greater emphasis on getting immediately into heaven than there was in my youth. Knowing what one's church professes to believe is an important aspect of belief. In any case, here is the LDS Plan of Salvation, short-hand version.

• Human were intelligences who were found by God and given a pre-mortal existence.
• Humans agreed to undergo a mortal existence in which (1) they would forget their pre-mortal life; (2) they would exercise their already existing agency to grow and learn, so they could be like God.
• Humans die and make mistakes (sin).
• When they die, their spirits go to the Spirit World, which is comprised of Paradise and "Prison"--missionary work continues in the Spirit World. This is due to the condescension of Christ. 
• Eventually we are all resurrected. This is also due to Christ.
• Some people have already been resurrected. Some people will be resurrected at the Second Coming of Christ. 
• A thousand years of peace--the Millennium--will follow His Coming. 
• There will be a Final Judgment. This is God's judgement, not anyone else's.
• Resurrected humans will go to the Celestial, Terrestrial, or Telestial Kingdoms. These are all fairly swell places. There is also Outer Darkness. Nobody knows who ends up there. 

People will often try to confuse this relatively simple outline--which like any human endeavor is a limited grasp of much larger ideas, some of them indefinable--by claiming that they know exactly who will do the judging and how judgment will go forward and who will end up where.

They don't.

The doctrine of the physical resurrection is extraordinary! How privileged we are to believe—because of Joseph Smith's questioning—that the mortal experience is NOT an accident and having a mortal body is NOT shameful.

To gain a mortal body—to go through the mortal experience—is NOT to be corrupted, as the Gnostics maintained. It is a necessary and constructive part of our journey. Both the spirit and body bring positive attributes to our existence as a “living soul”—the spirit because it can receive inspiration from God and be influenced by the Holy Spirit; the body because it is a humbling influence on our minds and spirits. Our spirits are prone to pride, the worst of all the sins, and have been since pre-mortality. But pride has a hard time contending with the realization, “I’m getting older. You know, I think I need new glasses.” Practical reality is a steadying influence on the spirit!

The body also enables us to enjoy life.

I have been teaching in Primary for the last six months or so. I teach Sunbeams and CTRs. The lessons in these manuals remind me of the marvelous world we live in. We have lessons about choosing the right and Joseph Smith and prayer. We also have lessons about how God loves all people everywhere. And we have gratitude lessons about the wonderful world we live it, lessons titled, “I am Thankful for Water.” “I am Thankful for Animals.” “I am Thankful for My Hands.”

One of my favorite Primary songs is “My Heavenly Father Loves Me.”

Whenever I hear the song of a bird
Or look at the blue, blue sky,
Whenever I feel the rain on my face
Or the wind as it rushes by,
Whenever I touch a velvet rose
Or walk by our lilac tree,
I'm glad that I live in this beautiful world
Heav'nly Father created for me.

He gave me my eyes that I might see
The color of butterfly wings.
He gave me my ears that I might hear
The magical sound of things.
He gave me my life, my mind, my heart:
I thank him rev'rently
For all his creations, of which I'm a part.
Yes, I know Heav'nly Father loves me.

What amazing reminders these are of the glorious world in which we live!

We are meant to be here. And we understand why in large part because of Joseph Smith. “The mind of Joseph Smith,” said President Hinckley, “tutored by the God of Heaven, encompassed all humankind of all generations.”

I am thankful to Joseph Smith for providing the Book of Moses, so I could have Moses 1:39 to sustain me through my life. “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of [all].”

Church Talk: Repentance

I gave this talk in church on January 15, 2012. To be honest, this topic doesn't entirely thrill me. Repentance reminds me a little too forcefully of being obedient, not upsetting the apple-cart, and being mad at myself. Since I was one of those kids born into the world with a guilty conscience, I don't feel like it's a part of me that should be encouraged. In this talk, I attempted to focus on the improving, positive aspects of becoming better. One of my favorite church videos--and one of the most artistic--encapsulates this idea.

As one of the first four principles of the gospel, repentance can seem overwhelming. Elder Neal A. Maxwell states, “Repentance is a rescuing, not a dour doctrine.” That is, it is a positive, not a negative principle.

Repentance can often seem like a negative principle because it means casting off sins caused by ignorance, weakness, and willful disobedience. Ignorance, weakness, and willful disobedience can be rather discouraging!

There is a process to help us deal with repentance: first, recognize the sin; next, feel sorrow for the sin (not merely the negative consequences of the sin but sorrow for the sin itself); then, forsake the sin, confessing it to Heavenly Father, another person (if necessary) and priesthood authority (if necessary); make restitution; forgive oneself and others; finally, continue to keep the commandments.

This is a good process. What is the purpose of this process? What are the different stages of the process attempting to achieve?

To illustrate the purpose of the process, I am going to compare events in the lives of two men: Joseph Smith and Alma the Younger.

Following the First Vision, during a three-year period, Joseph Smith states that he fell into “foolish errors and the weakness . . . and foibles of human nature” (JS-History 1:28). I’m sure we can all relate to that! Worried, he prayed that he might know of the state of his relationship with God.

Alma the Younger was persecuting the church when an angel appeared to him and commanded him to stop. The angel came to Alma the Younger in answer to the prayers of Alma’s father and members of the church.

These are two very different men. Joseph Smith was undergoing ordinary human failings. Alma the Younger, on the other hand, had actively turned his back on God.

However, both men underwent similar experiences. When Joseph Smith prayed, the angel Moroni appeared to him, and Joseph Smith was given a new mission: to locate and eventually translate the Book of Mormon.

After the angel appeared to Alma the Younger, he was unable to move or speak for two days. During that time, he had a vision. He explains what happened to him in that vision in Mosiah 27: 24-26.

24 For, said he, I have repented of my sins, and have been redeemed of the Lord; behold I am born of the Spirit.

25 And the Lord said unto me: Marvel not that all mankind, yea, men and women, all nations, kindreds, tongues and people, must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state, to a state of righteousness, being redeemed of God, becoming his sons and daughters;

26 And thus they become new creatures; and unless they do this, they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God.

Both Joseph Smith and Alma the Younger experienced a restart of their spiritual progression. Joseph Smith just needed to be revved out of stall while Alma the Younger actually needed to turn the car around—still, both of them underwent a renewal, a regeneration of their relationship with God.

This renewal or regeneration is referred to often in the scriptures. It is frequently compared to being reborn or receiving a new heart. Jeremiah 24:7 states that the Lord “will give us a heart to know him.” Ezekiel 18:31 states that we should “cast away transgressions . . . make [us] a new heart and spirit” while Ezekiel 36:26 includes a promise from the Lord: “[A] new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and will give you an heart of flesh.” An “heart of flesh” is a heart that is whole and responsive and can appreciate the love of God.

More examples! In Alma 5:26, Alma the Younger gives a sermon in which he wonders if his listeners have “experienced a change of heart and . . . felt to sing the song of redeeming love.”

And, of course, there is the famous passage in the New Testament when Nicodemus comes to see Jesus, and Jesus tells him that to enter into the kingdom of God, he must be “born again . . . of water and of the Spirit” (John 3:3,5).

Rebirth/a change of heart/softening heart: all these images have to do with renewal, regeneration, transformation. The purpose of repentance is not to just follow a list of instructions but to undergo a process that involves progression. Through repentance, we can lose our cynicism; we can gain optimism and feel renewed.

Another story about repentance takes a middle road in comparison to the earlier stories. Joseph Smith in the earlier story was suffering from ordinary human failings while Alma the Younger had actually turned away from God.

We often make mistakes that fall between these two points. One example comes again from Joseph Smith’s life. About the time he finished translating the first 116 pages of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith became friends with an older man, Martin Harris. Martin Harris was not only older but wealthier and better educated. He convinced Joseph Smith to give him the 116 pages to show to others. Joseph Smith agreed DESPITE several warnings through the Spirit that it was not a good idea.

The pages were stolen. Joseph Smith was devastated. He took the responsibility for the theft on himself, saying, “I . . . tempted the wrath of God. I should have been satisfied with the first answer which I received from the Lord; for he told me that it was not safe to let the writing go out of my possession” (Doctrine and Covenants Student Manual, "Section 3"). Doctrine & Covenants 3 tells us that Joseph Smith ignored the promptings of the Spirit because he feared man more than God. This is understandable; we all often do things that we know aren’t wise out of fear of disappointing a boss or friends or people who seem wiser in the ways of the world.

For a time, Joseph Smith lost his ability to translate, and he experienced a heavy heart. However, he repented and Doctrine & Covenants 10 tells us that he was forgiven. He regained his ability to translate and was commanded to continue in the work, to not run faster or labor more than he had strength, to be faithful and diligent, and to pray always.

Repentance brought Joseph Smith a renewal of his relationship with God; he was encouraged to keep going in the same direction.

Likewise, when we repent, we should accept and applaud the change of heart that comes with the process. In a March 1993 Ensign article, Joseph Walker writes:

Of course, this change of heart isn’t a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Nor is it intended only for those who are guilty of major violations of God’s law. It can come every day of our lives as we prayerfully consider our commitment to the Lord and the sacred covenants we have made with him. In doing so, sometimes we’ll feel the need to repent and improve. Other times we’ll feel the confident peace of purity, which in this life only comes through repentance. Those are the times when we will feel most inclined to “sing the song of redeeming love."(“Singing the Song of Redeeming Love”)

The purpose of repentance is to encourage renewal, so we feel like singing. The joy that accompanies the repentance process is one of its gifts.

I think we often have difficulty accepting the gifts of the repentance process. We go through the process, then immediately think, “Time for a break!” or “Got to start over, work on getting rid of another sin!”

I think we feel this way for several reasons--we are afraid of change; we feel we aren’t good enough to accept God’s gifts; we know we aren’t perfect (and we aren’t!). Finally and I think more profoundly, it can be difficult for humans to accept how truly forgiving and generous God is.

The story of Jonah from the Old Testament is a good example of this. We’ve all heard of Jonah and the whale, but AFTER Jonah got out of the whale, he did what he was supposed to do in the first place: he went to the city of Ninevah to tell the inhabitants there that they would be destroyed for their sins.

Surprise! The inhabitants repented. Instead of being pleased, Jonah was upset. He left the city and sulked instead of rejoicing with those he helped. He actually sat outside of the city, hoping it would be destroyed. While he did this, God sent a vine to shade him from the sun, and Jonah was content to sit in the shade. But then God destroyed the vine, and Jonah started sulking again. At which point, God rebuked Jonah for being happier about the shade than about the city being saved. In other words, Jonah was rebuked for not taking pleasure in the process of repentance.

We need to be willing to participate in the gifts of repentance, to be optimistic and positive, because those gifts make future repentance easier. Just like it is easier to exercise when we feel upbeat, it is easier to repent when we have a positive attitude.

In contrast to Jonah, the Book of Mormon tells us of Ammon, one of the sons of Mosiah. He repented of his sins at the same time as Alma the Younger, and he and his brothers went on missions to the Lamanites. After their missions, they met up again, and Ammon spoke to his brothers about what they had been through:

Now have we not reason to rejoice? Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great reason to rejoice as we, since the world began; yea, and my joy is carried away, even unto boasting in my God; for he has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding; he comprehendeth all things, and he is a merciful Being, even unto salvation, to those who will repent and believe on his name. (Alma 26:35, Kate’s emphasis)

What about that for a positive attitude?! Can’t you just feel his excitement?!

Now, we don’t always feel excited about repentance; many times, we have to do what Joseph Smith did and push ourselves out of stall. But if we keep the example of people like Ammon in mind, the process will be easier. If we remember that repenting means enjoying the gifts of repentance, we can use those gifts to help us through the process.

Repentance is happiness.

THESIS: Introduction

Here it is! At this point, I need to thank my college advisor and thesis reader: Professor Conforti and Professor Ryden. First of all, I need to thank them for reading this stuff over and over and over and over . . . Second, for telling me that the particular battle I am trying to fight is still there to be fought. (I was deathly afraid the entire time I was working on my thesis that some professor somewhere would publish a new tome making my thesis utterly obsolete.) Third, at the risk of sounding snide, I need to thank them for supplying me with opportunities to hone my opinions. Many of the arguments presented in this thesis came about during lectures where I either vocalized my dissatisfaction with a professor or student's opinion or sat stewing in philosophical fury. I may be the last humanities student alive who actually takes academic arguments seriously, but hey, it's gotta be someone!

I need to thank Professor Conforti, especially, for being such a goal-oriented advisor. For employment reasons, I had to get the thesis done within six months or less. Professor Conforti's "let's get it over with already" attitude was a huge asset in the achievement of that goal!

Concerning my purpose in writing the thesis (other than wanting to graduate), the Introduction, which follows, is more or less self-explanatory. Suffice it to say, This is my attempt to bring into the academic study of literature, the kind of in-depth and enthusiastic discourse that fans carry on everyday.

Please feel free to comment, only not, I beg you, on textual errors. At this point, as the thesis is being bound and stuck somewhere in the USM library, I really don't want to know. To reach me, e-mail: woodburykate@yahoo.com

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Inside Knowledge: Votary Theory at Work

People who are fond of books know the feeling of
irritation which sweeps over them [when disturbed].
The temptation to be unreasonable and
snappish is one not easy to manage.
The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The first time I forgot myself while reading was in second grade. I barely remember the book now, except that it was an easy reader and about a cat. I do remember that I became so absorbed, I was late for school lunch. It was the beginning of many years of inattentiveness. Ten years later, I would get moved to the front of eleventh grade math for reading Jean Auel's Clan of the Cave Bears during class. Upon entering the work force as a secretary, I learned never to bring interesting books to my desk. I was liable to bark, "What do you want?" to interrupting supervisors.

My enthrallment with books started before I learned to read myself. I was read to as a child, mostly by my mother, who also told me fairytales, including her own (about a troll named Milo). I developed a predisposition then for audio performances. I would also act out the stories I heard. I would experiment mentally, and physically, with crafting fictions: if you change all the female characters in Cinderella to male and the male characters to female, does it alter the story? Suppose a certain event, crucial to the original text, does not occur? Suppose we add a character--what happens then? Story was a real as well as a made thing.

Despite growing up without a television, I was surrounded by performances: ballet (my sister Ann's interest), plays in the park--Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde--opera, symphonies, Peter, Paul & Mary, black & white oldies (shown at the old-style, downtown theater), Star Wars, The Cat from Outer Space. Once I bought a television at the age of twenty-six, I became equally enamoured with commercials, sitcoms and television dramas (Criminal Minds, Buffy, Star Trek). The remarkable aspect of my youth, however, was not the plethora of art to which I was exposed but the fact that so little of it was accompanied by any valuation.

Sincere Marxists and semiologists will insist that I did unwittingly receive the valuations of a dominant culture. A Caucasian female living in upstate New York, I was inculcated through the shows I attended, the radio I listened to, and the movies I watched with images, icons and concepts that supported and furthered the agendas, opinions, values of my white, middle class culture. The equation is complicated somewhat by the fact that I am a Mormon and was raised as one, but nevertheless, I am, in fact, Anglo and middle class.

Suffice it to say that defending my Anglo, middle class upbringing was not a factor of my childhood. I never needed to defend anything I read to anyone. We went to see Shakespeare because my parents like Shakespeare not because he was valuable or important or canonized. We also went to see the aforementioned Star Wars and scads of Little League baseball games. Every event was approached with the same interest, humor and post-show analysis. The idea of placing books or playwrights or films into hierarchies was never addressed, nor were the books, plays and films linked to political or social agendas. I am still flummoxed when I run across readers who equate their particular likes and dislikes with membership in a specific political party.(Footnote 1) Most importantly, my reactions--despite the post-show analysis--were never formalized or made relevant. No one asked me if I'd caught the symbolism in C.S. Lewis' Narnia series (my comprehension of the symbolism was taken for granted); no one asked me what Shakespeare meant to me. (A lot.) And certainly, no one ever asked me if I intended the novels of Orson Scott Card to form a life-long interdisciplinary reading pattern between religion and science-fiction, although that kind of happened anyway.

Subsequently, upon entering college, I experienced a minor shock. In retrospect, the Humanities program at Brigham Young University in 1989 was, if anything, geared towards formalism, even New Criticism; formalism, I don't mind; what I wasn't prepared for was the high-mindedness attached to literature and the subsequent politics that accompanied that high-mindedness. Reading literature did not just mean that one learned a great deal about the Romantics, Beowulf and Maya Angelou. It gave one clout of sorts. If one read Henry V, one could make comments about the Gulf War. Or women's rights. Or anything.

It occurred to me that the humanities was fighting a desperate, and rearguard, action against the hard and soft scientists who did use their disciplines to comment on such things as women's rights or, in the case of the hard scientists, to address the provable workings of the universe (all while we humanities scholars were nitpicking nuances in The Tale of Genji). Justification for one's discipline appeared to be tied to one's ability to slather the outcomes of that discipline onto the rest of the world. Hence the desire by humanities students, and professors, to use their Insights Into Human Nature to Say Profound Things. Which seemed, to my twenty-year-old mind, unbelievably dumb. I gravitated towards professors who emphasized authorial intent and historical context and who were, as well, overwhelming engaged by their particular specialties (I am happy to say that they were there to find). In the meantime, I developed, as twenty-year-olds are wont to do, a Theory in which I condemned every artistic work that meant something. Author makes statement equals bad literature, I decided.

That lasted right up until I realized that I'd condemned C.S. Lewis and Dostoevsky amongst others. I tried to fit exceptions into my theory and then gave it up. But my dissatisfaction with the search for Meaning or Purpose in literature remained, a dissatisfaction that has been exacerbated by current trends in critical theory. The compulsion by humanities students to Talk About Life appears to have intensified in the last ten years. In issuing pronouncements on race, class and gender, the humanities discipline appears more and more like an extension of the Sociology Department, its language a blend of labels and jargon and a rather excessive use of the word "ideology."

Power lies at the core of this abandonment of aesthetics for "relevance." As in the game of hot potato, humanities students breathlessly follow the exchange of power from discipline to discipline, group to group. Now, women have it (who will get it next? where did it go?). Now, it's back to the white males. Oops, it crossed over to the resistant ideology. Nope, the dominant ideology snatched it back. A discipline intended for the study and enjoyment of literature has turned works of art into sociological springboards--what can we do with Jane Austen? Do we love her because she is a feminist? Do we loathe her because she isn’t feminist enough?--a type of blatant self-promotion fraught with irony, considering the anti-capitalistic tendencies of humanities departments. Straightforward commodification would bother me less, but I refuse to hand Pamela over to scholars who will claim great insight while deploying Pamela in their gender wars. (Although to be fair, I doubt Richardson would have minded.)

Where, I wonder, are the scholars who love literature just because it is literature? Who don't need to dismantle it or politicize it or defend it in terms of "real-life applications?" Who experience, as Roland Barthes called it, jouissance, the fun of the thing. I know these scholars exist. I have myself been in thrall to artistic works, in love with words, images, dialogue, faces. Moreover, I have encountered amongst my friends and relations (and through them, other lovers of artistic works) a fondness for entering fictional worlds. My friends and family and I will discuss film and novel characters as real people, not bothering to preface our remarks with "according to the author" or "as seen through our eyes." I have also witnessed a flexible and objective independence by which fans will reject an event within the "canon" story because it doesn't ring true while remaining faithful to the author/director's overall characterizations and design.(Footnote 2)

Too often, this type of creative involvement is perceived by humanities scholars as a nice, but useless, side-effect, not the principal response to the arts under discussion.(Footnote 3) Again and again, they return to the value of a work as a source of historical, sociological, even personal change. In her book on the Oprah Book Club, Kathleen Rooney echoes an idea common amongst many scholars (and readers) when she writes, "[I]n many cases the very impulse to read [amongst high brow and low brow readers] may very well be delineated in terms of . . . . self-improvement." It is foolish, Rooney argues, to attack Oprah for doing the very thing promoted by academe. She continues, "One of the things--but certainly not the only thing--genuinely good books can do for us as readers is inspire us to higher levels of morality, in the sense that they put us through the paces of moral awareness and affiliation, and disaffiliation." Rooney, I should state, makes a valiant effort to not reduce the literary search for self-improvement to mere platitudes or lessons. Nevertheless, her attitude that literature should mean or do something--should feed us in a practical rather than creative way--is at the root of not only Oprah's Book Club but contemporary academic approaches to the arts.(Footnote 4)

The search for a usable purpose in the arts is hardly new to Western Civilization. It extends back as far as Plato. Many groups and cultures consider that the arts are only palatable if they contain a moral lesson. However, the issue I wish to address is not, Do people believe that art should educate? but, What is the job of the humanities scholar in regards to the arts? Is it our job to fight over artistic works, pushing and molding them until they say the "right" kinds of things, the things we personally approve of and hold important, insightful and necessary to society? Should every production of Taming of the Shrew be preceded by a lecture on the evils of chauvinism, or, contrariwise, on the resistant aspects of feminist ideology? Are humanities scholars condemned forever to hold the position of cultural judges: this is acceptable because it addresses race, class and gender; this isn't acceptable because it promotes capitalism and other nefarious ideologies?

I hope not. I believe the job of the humanities scholar is to understand an artistic work on a creative level. Political commentary, gender commentary, social commentary may be entertaining, but they are not our primary responsibility. Rather, the artistic works of any age--be they popular, middlebrow, classical or indeterminate--are themselves the scholar's responsibility: a wide and deep area, hence the need for specialties. Our responsibility is not one of judgment, although judgment is not always out of place. Rather, our responsibility is to acknowledge, comprehend and just plain care about artistic works--literature, plays, poems, films: the outpouring of creativity throughout the ages.(Footnote 5) We should learn their contexts, learn how they have been used, how analyzed. We should understand their audiences. Most importantly, we should look for the creative desire, manifested throughout these works, in both the artist and in the reader/spectator.

Once again, hopefully with more success that when I was twenty, I have developed a theory. In this case, the theory is meant as a tool, a way of approaching artistic works that will address them at the creative level. I call this tool votary theory.(Footnote 6) Votary theory, while not ignoring historical or social realities (the influence of context), focuses on the creativity within artistic works rather than on their power-related or usable applications (social, political, personal). More precisely, votary theory postulates that power is not, in fact, the overwhelming determinant that so many critical theorists suppose. People do not watch plays, read books, listen to music, go to movies for the sake of reinforcing political (and therefore power-ful or power-less) positions. Finally, votary theory presents a set of tools with which to address individual works. Hopefully, through votary theory, the worst excesses of critical theory can be avoided. Artistic works should never be subsumed by signifiers, ideologies or political labels, languages that do almost anything except understand the things they describe.

1. A secretary (and political science major) I once worked with informed me that Republicans don't like Harry Potter. Since I know a number of Republicans and since most of them have read and liked Rowlings' books, I was at a loss as how to answer. "Uh…."

2. Many Buffy fans were upset by a last minute cancelled wedding that occurred in the second to last season. As a result, some fans, like myself, re-imagined the script to accommodate the unexpected ending while others simply ignored the event as "non-canon"; however, no fan abandoned the story line for that season as a whole. Like it or not, the characters didn't get married.

3. Reader response theorists being the notable exception. The current trend in reader response, however, is largely sociological, i.e., Elizabeth Long's Book Clubs: Women and the Uses of Reading in Everyday Life (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003) and Janice Radway's Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 1984, reprinted 1991).

4. Kathleen Rooney, Reading With Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America (Fayetteville: The University of Arkansas Press, 2005), 76. "[T]ruly great novels," Rooney writes in the same chapter, "result not only from an author's intellectual, political, social and cultural seriousness"--yikes!--"but also from an author's ability to evoke a kind of enigmatic, philosophical and almost spiritual quality," 98-99.

5. There is a beautiful passage in Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1980) in which the narrator imagines books conversing through time: "Now I realized that not infrequently books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves . . the library seemed all the more disturbing to me. It was then the place of a long, centuries-old murmuring, an imperceptible dialog between one parchment and another, a living thing, a receptacle of powers not to be ruled by a human mind, a treasure of secrets emanated by many minds, surviving the death of those who had produced them or had been their conveyors," 342-343.

6. My use of the term "votary" comes from a 1946 review of The Duchess of Malfi by Brooks Atkinson in which he refers to playgoers as "votaries of horror." I prefer "votary" to "fan," not because my conceptualization of a votary is very different from that of a fan but because "fan" carries a somewhat single-minded/popular culture connotation. I needed a broader term.