The Aaronic priesthood is described as "preparatory." I used to assume this implied the duties performed by deacons, teachers, and priests were meant to prepare them for greater responsibilities when they were ordained as elders. This may be part of the meaning of "preparatory," but I have come to see another meaning. The ordinances performed by deacons, teachers, and priests are preparatory for the greater ordinances of the Melchizedek priesthood. Baptism, the sacrament, and ordaining other priests, teachers, and deacons are all ordinances performed by the authority of the Aaronic priesthood, and they are all preparation for something greater. Baptism represents birth, among other things; it is the gate through which we enter the path to God, not the end of the line. The sacrament is an ordinance for those who are on the path, and its language is tentative. We only witness that we are willing to do certain things; we do not actually promise anything yet. Of course, to ordain someone to any office below that of Elder is to give them less authority than they will ultimately have if they continue faithful on the path.
John the Baptist was also sent to "prepare the way of the Lord." "John answered, saying unto them all, I
indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the
latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire..." (Luke 3:16).
Aaronic duties are also physical. Collecting fast offerings, setting up the sacrament and administering it, running errands for the bishop, and seeing to the physical needs of members via home teaching as representatives of the bishop, are all physically oriented tasks. They are visible, outward things.
Melchizedek priesthood ordinances are geared toward the spiritual, inward, invisible aspects of the gospel. A priest may baptize, but only an elder can confirm new members and bestow the gift of the Holy Ghost. Temple ordinances are all performed by elders, and they are not made public, but are hidden from the world to keep them sacred. You can watch someone immersed physically in water, but can you tell whether they have the broken heart and contrite spirit necessary to receive baptism of fire and of the Holy Ghost? Can we tell if they have the Spirit or not? This is the province of the Melchizedek priesthood.
In our backward telestial world, truth is mutable, expendable, and frequently tortured and mutilated for the purpose of salesmanship and deception. Three dimensional objects and social status outweigh truth in most circles here on earth. In heaven, however, the truth is in charge, and physical things are ancillary. The world could not be created until Jesus said, "Here am I, send me." His honest agreement to fulfill the role of Savior, was necessary in order for creation of the physical worlds to begin. Can you weigh words? How much mass does abstract information have? Can you drink a gallon of truth? Eternity and galaxies and trillions of inhabitants on millions of worlds hung on the word of one Being.
Just as this ranking of truth above physical concerns is the proper order for the universe, so it is the proper order for our internal worlds, our hearts, minds, spirits, and bodies. When the intelligence in us rules, when our spirits take the reigns, and our bodies are taking orders from them, all is well. When the body gives orders to the spirit, all is lost. It is not unlike a horse trying to ride a human. The human suffers, and neither of them get anywhere. As my mission president observed, the body is a wonderful servant, but a horrible master.
The world reflects the gross order of appetite before truth, and the Savior was confronted by the classical temptations of the world when He was in the wilderness. Bread represented the lusts of the flesh; leaping from a pinnacle of the Temple represented popularity; the vision of all the kingdoms and money of the world represented the twin temptations of wealth and power (can you have one without the other?) He faced down all of these, and triumphantly declared, "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." Why should I be of good cheer if I'm still in the muck of this world, while He has slogged through and escaped? Because we rely on His merits. We do not merit (earn) anything, because we fall short; He merits everything, because He succeeded. He wants to share it with us, and has set the example for us to follow, as well as constructing the pathway to walk, making it possible to follow Him.
It seems to me that in the Old Temple, we get an image of worldly work from the Table of Shewbread. Bread is the byproduct of civilization. It requires work, knowledge of calendars and seasons, tilling, sowing, irrigation, harvesting, threshing, grinding in the mill, baking in ovens, in order to be enjoyed. By the sweat of our brow, and the cunning of our ingenuity, we eat bread. Meanwhile, we dodge the missiles of Satan. Money can procure bread; dishonesty, a blatant disrespect for truth, is the quickest path to money. Money is nothing but a paper promise of value, a promissory IOU. Liars can manufacture these in unlimited quantities. It is all very telestial, survival of the fittest, dog-eat-dog, predatory stuff.
But as you cross from your right to the left side of the Old Temple, in contrast to the Table of Shewbread, you find a golden, glowing representation of the Tree of Life, the Menorah. Lehi and his family "fell down" to partake of the fruit of this tree; there was no planting, plowing, reaping, etc. They merely came up to it and plucked the fruit. Many people in the Book of Mormon had spent their lives toiling in sin or in righteousness, but the moments when they crossed that line do not record effort on their part, other than to cry unto the Lord with all their hearts (see Mosiah 4:2-3, Alma 36:18-21, 22:15-18). The obstacles to the Tree in Lehi's dream were emotional, social, and only physical insofar as temptations are physical. There were mists, mockers, distractions, but no walls, barriers, or mountains in the way. Social constraints are not physical; they exist inside of us as inhibitions, a deep concern for others' opinions. Even the physical temptations, the mists of darkness, were options rather than compulsion; you could hold the rod to defeat them. The iron rod was a representation of the word of God, and His word is truth (John 17:17).
I have implied that truth is an abstract, weightless, zero-dimensional concept, an untouchable wisp or figment of consciousness. But Jesus claims it as a name for Himself: "...I am the...truth..." (John 14:6). He does not say "I am honest," or "I am truthful;" He says he IS the truth. The order of heaven is backwards from the order of this world in many ways, and the contrast between the disregard for truth and honesty here on earth are starkly contrasted against the strict obedience to truth, regardless of the inconvenience, pain, burdens, or suffering it may incur. Jesus embodies truth in that way; He was perfectly humble, always deferring to truth in spite of any consequences.
John was the living embodiment of the Aaronic priesthood, and Jesus was the living embodiment of the Melchizedek priesthood. John said, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). We emphasize the fact that God is a resurrected man, with a perfect body, but He also has a spirit. "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." (John 4:24). There is a verse, D&C 93:19, that baffles me: "I give unto you these sayings that you may understand and know how to worship, and know what you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness." The word "truth" appears eighteen times in that section of the D&C. I guess I am asking out loud rather than stating for sure, but is that related to the what mentioned here? I will leave this one hanging for now.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Problems: Causes, Confusions, Solutions
I have written elsewhere that the cure for addiction to pornography is spiritual rebirth. While I believe what I wrote is true, it has been brought forcefully to my attention that taking away a poison does not necessarily mean that all is well in an individual. I want to clear up confusion about the difference between being healed of addiction (or a grudge, or obsessions, or jealousy, or any other malady of the heart that rebirth can heal), and having the consequences of choices reversed.
Let me offer a medical analogy. I believe that health problems can be chalked up to one of five causes:
1. Poisons-something is in the system that does not belong.
2. Deficiency-something important is low or absent from the system.
3. Excess-toxic amounts of something that is necessary for survival.
4. Deformity-all the necessary ingredients are there, but the organs are arranged counterproductively.
5. Some combination of 1-4.
Deficiency: Lost Opportunities
Removing a poison like mercury from a body will help it to function properly, but it will not spontaneously cure iron deficiency. Likewise, removing the desire for pornography through spiritual rebirth will relieve the ills that come with it, but it will bring back lost opportunities for development. The desire for pornography may be gone, but the opportunities to develop social skills through dating that were missed do not re-present themselves. The thousands of hours lost in solitude could have been filled with many positive learning experiences, and that time is permanently gone.
Here is a huge section of a talk by President Eyring, from the October 1999 Conference. The talk is called Do Not Delay, and he makes clear what I am trying to get at:
"I knew a man once...When he was 12 he was ordained a deacon. Some of his friends tempted him to begin to smoke. He began to feel uncomfortable in church. He left his little town, not finishing high school, to begin a life following construction jobs across the United States. He was a heavy-equipment operator. He married. They had children. The marriage ended in a bitter divorce. He lost his children. He lost an eye in an accident. He lived alone in boardinghouses. He lost everything he owned except what he could carry in a trunk.
"One night, as he prepared to move yet again, he decided to lighten the load of that trunk. Beneath the junk of years, he found a book. He never knew how it got there. It was the Book of Mormon. He read it through, and the Spirit told him it was true. He knew then that all those years ago he had walked away from the true Church of Jesus Christ and from the happiness which could have been his.
"Later, he was my more-than-70-year-old district missionary companion. I asked the people we were teaching, as I testified of the power of the Savior’s Atonement, to look at him. He had been washed clean and given a new heart, and I knew they would see that in his face. I told the people that what they saw was evidence that the Atonement of Jesus Christ could wash away all the corrosive effects of sin.
"That was the only time he ever rebuked me. He told me in the darkness outside the trailer where we had been teaching that I should have told the people that while God was able to give him a new heart, He had not been able to give him back his wife and his children and what he might have done for them. But he had not looked back in sorrow and regret for what might have been. He moved forward, lifted by faith, to what yet might be.
"One day he told me that in a dream the night before, the sight in his blind eye was restored. He realized that the dream was a glimpse of a future day, walking among loving people in the light of a glorious resurrection. Tears of joy ran down the deeply lined face of that towering, raw-boned man. He spoke to me quietly, with a radiant smile. I don’t remember what he said he saw, but I remember that his face shone with happy anticipation as he described the view. With the Lord’s help and the miracle of that book in the bottom of a trunk, it had not for him been too late nor the way too hard."
I have been told that to master a great skill, such as piano or painting, requires ten thousand hours of concentrated effort. I do not know where my good friends got that statistic, but we will just assume that it is true for a minute. If you spend eight hours a day, EVERY day, practicing at some skill, you will come away with ten thousand hours after 3.42 years. If you practice forty hours a week, skipping weekends, you will reach ten thousand hours in about 5.2 years. If you spend four hours a day, skipping weekends, you will get to the magical ten thousand hour mark in 9.6 years. I can hardly think of anything that I have been that committed to for that much time, except perhaps things like driving, brushing teeth, and studying the scriptures. Mastery is illusive because devotion is rare. We witness the fruits of it in concert halls, art galleries, and athletic competitions. It takes nascent talent, yes, but that talent must be cultivated.
Assumptions
Assumptions can become blind spots for us. It is very easy to assume that other people think the way we do, that they have the same skills, motivations, feelings, beliefs. Only when they act or open their mouths do we see the internal differences between us and those around us. It is easy to assume that someone is able to do things easily because we can do them easily. But why are such abilities part of our skill set? They became a part of our repertoire because we took the time and chances to develop them.
The men in the Church have been counseled to date more. Dating requires a level of social competence that is becoming more rare, thanks to video games, pornography, and other consuming activities that dominate early lives of boys. If a boy spends ten thousand hours looking at pornography and playing games online, in isolation, will he be able to interact well with the opposite sex, develop healthy relationships, and get married? His growth in these areas will be stunted. The general assumption is that social interaction is as easy and natural as breathing, "it's just what we humans do." But extreme cases of feral children, boys and girls raised without human contact, indicate that without extensive social experience a person will view other people as aliens from another world, and lack sensitivity to the nuances of protocol, etiquette, body language, deportment, and on and on. In my opinion, pornography, video games, movies, and other obsessive, isolating, massively time consuming activities produce a diluted version of this feral child effect by robbing the developing mind of the thousands of hours of social interaction needed to train the brain. Impaired ability to interact socially, especially to date, court, and marry, are the results.
Solutions
There must be a way to overcome this deficiency for those who have been so robbed of precious opportunities, but I can only think of one or two possible solutions. One is to learn to swim by jumping in the water. If your social skills are at a 6th grade level, now is the best time to improve them. Jane Austin's fictional heroine, Elizabeth Bennett, recommended practicing social skills, and that means using women around us as our clinical material. Awkward outcomes notwithstanding, this is among the reasonable solutions I can see. The grace of God is another thing that comes to mind—assistance beyond personal ability.
I remember trying to starting a fire in the fire place with my father looking on. He said I was doing it wrong, expecting flames from newspaper to light an enormous log. He showed me how to use paper to light twigs, and use the burning twigs to light chopped pieces of kindling, and larger and larger pieces, until there were big enough flames to ignite full-sized logs. I have often thought of this as my only parental training in the realm of dating and courtship. Start small, as acquaintances, then friends, then dating, then exclusive dating, then courtship, then engagement, then marriage.
Elder Ballard recommended young men to consult with their fathers about how to succeed in dating and courship: "Courting seems to be a lost art. Rediscover it. It really works! Ask your fathers—they know!" (Fathers and Sons: A Remarkable Relationship, Oct. 2009 Gen. Conf.). I believe that while there is an epidemic deficiency of learning and social skills among the men and boys of the current generation, I still believe what Nephi taught is true—when the Lord gives a commandment, he also prepares a way to keep it.
Let me offer a medical analogy. I believe that health problems can be chalked up to one of five causes:
1. Poisons-something is in the system that does not belong.
2. Deficiency-something important is low or absent from the system.
3. Excess-toxic amounts of something that is necessary for survival.
4. Deformity-all the necessary ingredients are there, but the organs are arranged counterproductively.
5. Some combination of 1-4.
Deficiency: Lost Opportunities
Removing a poison like mercury from a body will help it to function properly, but it will not spontaneously cure iron deficiency. Likewise, removing the desire for pornography through spiritual rebirth will relieve the ills that come with it, but it will bring back lost opportunities for development. The desire for pornography may be gone, but the opportunities to develop social skills through dating that were missed do not re-present themselves. The thousands of hours lost in solitude could have been filled with many positive learning experiences, and that time is permanently gone.
Here is a huge section of a talk by President Eyring, from the October 1999 Conference. The talk is called Do Not Delay, and he makes clear what I am trying to get at:
"I knew a man once...When he was 12 he was ordained a deacon. Some of his friends tempted him to begin to smoke. He began to feel uncomfortable in church. He left his little town, not finishing high school, to begin a life following construction jobs across the United States. He was a heavy-equipment operator. He married. They had children. The marriage ended in a bitter divorce. He lost his children. He lost an eye in an accident. He lived alone in boardinghouses. He lost everything he owned except what he could carry in a trunk.
"One night, as he prepared to move yet again, he decided to lighten the load of that trunk. Beneath the junk of years, he found a book. He never knew how it got there. It was the Book of Mormon. He read it through, and the Spirit told him it was true. He knew then that all those years ago he had walked away from the true Church of Jesus Christ and from the happiness which could have been his.
"Later, he was my more-than-70-year-old district missionary companion. I asked the people we were teaching, as I testified of the power of the Savior’s Atonement, to look at him. He had been washed clean and given a new heart, and I knew they would see that in his face. I told the people that what they saw was evidence that the Atonement of Jesus Christ could wash away all the corrosive effects of sin.
"That was the only time he ever rebuked me. He told me in the darkness outside the trailer where we had been teaching that I should have told the people that while God was able to give him a new heart, He had not been able to give him back his wife and his children and what he might have done for them. But he had not looked back in sorrow and regret for what might have been. He moved forward, lifted by faith, to what yet might be.
"One day he told me that in a dream the night before, the sight in his blind eye was restored. He realized that the dream was a glimpse of a future day, walking among loving people in the light of a glorious resurrection. Tears of joy ran down the deeply lined face of that towering, raw-boned man. He spoke to me quietly, with a radiant smile. I don’t remember what he said he saw, but I remember that his face shone with happy anticipation as he described the view. With the Lord’s help and the miracle of that book in the bottom of a trunk, it had not for him been too late nor the way too hard."
I have been told that to master a great skill, such as piano or painting, requires ten thousand hours of concentrated effort. I do not know where my good friends got that statistic, but we will just assume that it is true for a minute. If you spend eight hours a day, EVERY day, practicing at some skill, you will come away with ten thousand hours after 3.42 years. If you practice forty hours a week, skipping weekends, you will reach ten thousand hours in about 5.2 years. If you spend four hours a day, skipping weekends, you will get to the magical ten thousand hour mark in 9.6 years. I can hardly think of anything that I have been that committed to for that much time, except perhaps things like driving, brushing teeth, and studying the scriptures. Mastery is illusive because devotion is rare. We witness the fruits of it in concert halls, art galleries, and athletic competitions. It takes nascent talent, yes, but that talent must be cultivated.
Assumptions
Assumptions can become blind spots for us. It is very easy to assume that other people think the way we do, that they have the same skills, motivations, feelings, beliefs. Only when they act or open their mouths do we see the internal differences between us and those around us. It is easy to assume that someone is able to do things easily because we can do them easily. But why are such abilities part of our skill set? They became a part of our repertoire because we took the time and chances to develop them.
The men in the Church have been counseled to date more. Dating requires a level of social competence that is becoming more rare, thanks to video games, pornography, and other consuming activities that dominate early lives of boys. If a boy spends ten thousand hours looking at pornography and playing games online, in isolation, will he be able to interact well with the opposite sex, develop healthy relationships, and get married? His growth in these areas will be stunted. The general assumption is that social interaction is as easy and natural as breathing, "it's just what we humans do." But extreme cases of feral children, boys and girls raised without human contact, indicate that without extensive social experience a person will view other people as aliens from another world, and lack sensitivity to the nuances of protocol, etiquette, body language, deportment, and on and on. In my opinion, pornography, video games, movies, and other obsessive, isolating, massively time consuming activities produce a diluted version of this feral child effect by robbing the developing mind of the thousands of hours of social interaction needed to train the brain. Impaired ability to interact socially, especially to date, court, and marry, are the results.
Solutions
There must be a way to overcome this deficiency for those who have been so robbed of precious opportunities, but I can only think of one or two possible solutions. One is to learn to swim by jumping in the water. If your social skills are at a 6th grade level, now is the best time to improve them. Jane Austin's fictional heroine, Elizabeth Bennett, recommended practicing social skills, and that means using women around us as our clinical material. Awkward outcomes notwithstanding, this is among the reasonable solutions I can see. The grace of God is another thing that comes to mind—assistance beyond personal ability.
I remember trying to starting a fire in the fire place with my father looking on. He said I was doing it wrong, expecting flames from newspaper to light an enormous log. He showed me how to use paper to light twigs, and use the burning twigs to light chopped pieces of kindling, and larger and larger pieces, until there were big enough flames to ignite full-sized logs. I have often thought of this as my only parental training in the realm of dating and courtship. Start small, as acquaintances, then friends, then dating, then exclusive dating, then courtship, then engagement, then marriage.
Elder Ballard recommended young men to consult with their fathers about how to succeed in dating and courship: "Courting seems to be a lost art. Rediscover it. It really works! Ask your fathers—they know!" (Fathers and Sons: A Remarkable Relationship, Oct. 2009 Gen. Conf.). I believe that while there is an epidemic deficiency of learning and social skills among the men and boys of the current generation, I still believe what Nephi taught is true—when the Lord gives a commandment, he also prepares a way to keep it.
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