Radio Beloved

This week I’d like to share a little bit of my recent impressions on repentance, forgiveness, and application of the Atonement.

Sin is the introduction of a division between us and God. We are all in this state, having long ago acted waywardly, and we are all in need of the Atonement. Jesus Christ reminded us in several places of our mutual need to repent and forgive, as in the parable of the unworthy servant, which ends thus:

Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: ∙Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? ∙And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him.
–Matthew 18:32-34, KJV

This parable clearly illuminates the divine expectation that in expecting grace, we must extend it. By withholding forgiveness from my sister or my brother, I signal not that I have, but that I would deny them the Atonement if I could. It signals that my desire for “justice” outweighs any claim that they may make for mercy.

Therefore, if ye shall come unto me, or shall desire to come unto me, or if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, ∙leave thou thy gift before the altar, and go thy way unto thy brother, and first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.
–Matthew 5:23-24, IV

There is a proscription apparent on tacit repentance, or that we might try to repent only before the Lord when our brother or sister is also offended. By openly acknowledging our error and our repentance, we invite both their forgiveness and their repentance for withholding it. We invite them to be more Christlike, as well as progressing towards that ideal ourselves.

Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou art in the way with him; lest at any time thine adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison. ∙Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, until thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.
–Matthew 5:25-26, IV

We invite grace, or to have the uttermost farthing paid in our stead, by participating in the means of repentance, the Atonement.

Jeffrey R. Holland, in his concluding discourse as Commissioner of Church Education, stated:

Unless we indeed understand the message of the baptismal covenants in this kingdom, and bear one another’s burdens; and the way you can bear mine…it’s an ironic thing, the atonement is ironic…is to take the sin back that I gave you. You shoulder the fact that I despitefully used you. Forgive me of it. Take it on your shoulders. …
I see this as the one way we consciously, conspicuously, dramatically present ourselves as members of the body of Christ; that we actively participate in the atonement. That is the sacrifice for sin, to bear the burden of somebody else’s problems because whosoever else’s they are, they were not His. Those were not His problems for which that flesh was torn and that blood ran.
–Jeffrey R. Holland, “What is the Heart of the Atonement?”

Perhaps this offers a better way for us to understand the apparent dichotomy between faith and works. Works become a way of making our peace with the Lord, as it were, not for his sake so much as for ours. Any work that we could perform, of course, is limited in its utility: “If ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants (Mosiah 2:21).” As Robert L. Millet once said, “Show me faith without works.” (On a side note, having true faith is itself a work consistent with the will of the Lord.)

It is thus incumbent upon us to promote the application of the Atonement, in my life and in that of others, by inviting forgiveness and repentance through humble, sincere forgiveness and repentance.  I know I’ve a long way to go to reach this level of authenticity in my interpersonal relationships, but I hope that Elder Holland’s reminder that “those were not His problems for which that flesh was torn and that blood ran” will help me to remember the Savior more during the week and beyond.

I’ve introduced a new section on the left, with the pages, which features certain primary documents and other texts of note in my LDS studies.  These are hardly only available here, but I’ve reformatted them and find having them available very useful.  I hope you enjoy browsing through them.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an essay on life and death in light of the Atonement. It ended thus:

We are now a hard kernel of wheat, dead but with infinite potential. Face to face with the breadth of charity, charity greater than love, we pause in trepidation. Yet there need be no fear in the consecration of ourselves to God, nor in the metamorphosis from a selfish creature to a child of God. Far less of our ego than we suspect is truly who we are, and far more of our potential.

Identity has been rolling around in my head for a long time now. What is identity? Who am I, or, at least, who will I be? Those are deeper questions, perhaps, than we can expect answers to in this life, but I’d still like to explore it, especially as embodied in the last phrase I wrote above. “Far less of our ego than we suspect is truly who we are, and far more of our potential.”

“Far less of our ego…” What did I mean? I’m still trying to catch that elusive thought, hanging like gossamer in my mind. Certainly my selfish interests and habits will be burned away as chaff; I have to wondered how literally consciousness of myself will die, and to what resurrection. I don’t believe that we will become the nameless, faceless, identityless ‘brothers and sisters in Christ’ of which I’ve heard some evangelical Christians speak, not for an instant. God didn’t create human identity in his children only to destroy it mere decades later, as in that conception. Furthermore, we do know that there was self-identification before this life, as evidenced by the agency exhibited in the war in heaven. Joseph Smith preached,

I have another subject to dwell upon…, associated with the subject of the resurrection of the dead,—namely, the soul—the mind of man—the immortal spirit. Where did it come from? All learned men and doctors of divinity say that God created it in the beginning; but it is not so: the very idea lessens man in my estimation… .

The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is [co-eternal] with God himself.

–Joseph Smith (King Follett Discourse)

This is a marvelously deep and important doctrine in Mormonism, and we’ve hardly scratched the surface of its implications in the nearly two centuries since its revelation. We are self-existent beings, beings of cohesive identity, beings which are self-determining as uncreated.

Mere reflection cannot give us too much insight into our identity, although it can be useful. Ultimately, we can never strike too close to the quick of existence, because we are a sort of recursive observer-observing-him or her-self, condemned to perceive ourselves only as phenomena, as Kant pointed out in The Critique of Pure Reason.

Neal A. Maxwell wrote, in what is the kernel of this post, that, “What we now defensively regard as constituting individuality is likely to be significantly refined” (The Inexhaustible Gospel, 200). Furthermore, George MacDonald reminded us, “This love of our neighbour is the only door out of the dungeon of self” (Love Thy Neighbor). And so we must leave that dungeon of self, and venture forth into the wild and windy universe.

“…and far more of our potential.” Venturing forth, we now enter upon the reasons for this life, the motivation for a crucible. As children of God, destined to inherit his glory and enter into the mysteries of Godliness, it is our potential that defines our future identity. The genius of linear thought, as we are forced to have, is that every single thought determines which direction we are headed, which of the two ways we follow. There is no neutrality in divine war.

“For none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.”

–Romans 14:7

As our own ego dies, our own potential lives. We become more effective in the inherently social world into which the Lord placed us, more effective at reflecting or transmitting the light of Christ within us, more effective at filling the same potential.

I spoke of linear thought, the chain of combinatorial logic in which we are enmeshed irrevocably. Hugh Nibley refers to this linearity extensively in his famous essay, Zeal Without Knowledge:

But why this crippling limitation on our thoughts if we are God’s children? It is precisely this limitation which is the essence of our mortal existence. If every choice I make expresses a preference; if the world I build up is the world I really love and want, then with every choice I am judging myself, proclaiming all the day long to God, angels and my fellowmen where my real values lie, where my treasure is, the things to which I give supreme importance. Hence, in this life every moment provides a perfect and foolproof test of your real character, making this life a time of testing and probation. …

Sin is waste. It is doing one thing when you should be doing other and better things for which you have the capacity.

Or, in my immediate terms, sin is the waste of our potential on our ego. It’s back to the question of how we deal with our cognitive surplus.

On another note, we are reminded by C. S. Lewis that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions. How do we reconcile this? By performing every action authentically, in Sartre’s term, or ethically, in Kant’s, or infinitely, in Kierkegaard’s. It is not a question so much of “intention”, as we may easily deceive ourselves in self-justification of our meddling. It’s a question of conviction–is what we are doing the deep action that we can will all others to perform, is it according to the Golden Rule, is it consistent with the deepest feelings and inspirations of our heart? That is the feather of Ma’at against which our heart will be weighed, and thus the canon we must bear in mind as we seek to become.

Refining away the chaff–I say this so cavalierly, but I know no way to say it that could give the terror of existence its full due–refining away the chaff, we have only gold left. And yet, not only gold left, but emphatically gold, to be poured into the divine mold. To recoin my phrase, far less of our chaff than we suspect is who we truly are, and far more of our gold.