D&C 1: My "hopeview"

Setting aside verse 30—which makes every liberal Mormon squirm and prompts even a good number of progressively orthodox Mormons to do a little interpretive tapdancing to reduce the offense to other Christians—D&C 1 pretty much encapsulates my worldview. Or perhaps I should say more accurately (especially in light of last night's angry, gloomy post about the Israeli ground offensive), it encapsulates my "hopeview."

We're told in this section that the human race has broken God's covenant (v. 15). We are not living in relationship with God and one another in the way God intends. Instead of seeking to "establish [the Lord's] righteousness"—I'm thinking, love of God and neighbor, justice, mercy, Zion—people seek their own interests and material aggrandizement (v. 16). The result is that we are bringing upon ourselves "calamity" (v. 17)—I'm thinking, war, global poverty, economic collapse, environmental degradation. God, knowing this and desiring to prevent it, raises up prophets (vv. 17-18)—an entire community of disciples, actually, who are commissioned and empowered to raise "a voice of warning" to all people (vv. 4-5). Part of that message of warning is that in the day of judgment, we will recieve whatever we have seen fit to mete out to others: "the Lord shall . . . measure to every man according to the measure which he has measured to his fellow man" (v. 10).

Let's linger over vv. 17-18 again. We read that God called on Joseph Smith and gave him commandments—and also to others. It's possible that Smith intends that simply as a reference to the revelations he gave to his followers. But the words are capable of other readings, and I read them as indicating that God has raised up prophetic voices besides Smith in the effort to avert calamity, the large-scale suffering humans inflict on themselves and one another. I'm thinking, say, Oscar Romero. Gustavo Gutierrez. Desmond Tutu. Rachel Carson. Al Gore, annoying though he may be.

In vv. 19-28, we're given a list of objectives, as it were, for the divine work we call the Restoration, this raising up in our time of new prophetic voices and an empowered community of disciples:

• That the weak things of the world will break down the mighty and strong.
• That everyone might speak in the name of God—that everyone might be an inspired, prophetic mouthpiece.
• That faith—hope, confidence for a better future—will increase on earth.
• That God's covenant will be reestablished—that human beings will live in loving relationship with God and one another in the way we were meant to.
• That the weak and simple will proclaim God's message of judgment and a better way through all the world and particularly to those who govern.
• That by receiving revelation "from time to time," God's servants can grow out of error into greater wisdom, humility, and a more perfect understanding of God's will.

That's a set of objectives to which I can shout a hearty "Amen! May it be!" That's the work I want to be a part of.

Israeli ground offensive in Gaza

Israel has launched its threatened ground offensive into Gaza. This is going to be very bad—but, of course, Israel's just doing things the American way.

I'm certainly not inclined to take a stand with Hamas. On the other hand, Israel is unquestionably the more powerful force here and had already inflicted the greater number of casualties even before the ground assault began. As I understand the Hebrew Bible—which is one of my sacred texts, too—if we're going to talk about God standing on anyone's side in this conflict, he's not going to be siding with the most powerful.

************

God of the nations—

I feel like I should pray, but I really don't know what to pray for.
Peace. That sounds so f------ hollow.
A pox on both their houses, is more what I'm feeling right now.

I pray for civilians on both sides, but especially for the Palestinians, who are the most vulnerable.
I don't know what the hell it means to pray for that under the circumstances.
I guess I'm saying that I hope deaths and maiming and hunger and damage to houses and hospitals and schools and water mains and other vital infrastructre will be "minimal." Whatever that's supposed to mean.

All right, here's what I want:
I want this conflict to be over right now.
I want Israel to back the f--- off and stop reacting disproportionately to the Palestinian threat in ways that just exacerbate the problem.
I want Palestinians to stop supporting f------ terrorist regimes.
I want militant Arabs and Muslims to accept Israel's right to exist so we can move beyond that already.
I want my country's government to stop funding Israel's military until that country's government shows a real political will for peace and the creation of a Palestinian state.

I'm angry, and swearing, because I find the situation so hopeless.
And I'm feeling so invested in this conflict, as opposed to others, because I know that my country shares responsibility for this mess.

I don't know what good this does, but you're the one who asks us to pray, so here you have it.

In Christ's name, amen.

Holy Innocents

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which commemorates the children whom king Herod had massacred when he was trying to kill the newborn Messiah, as recounted in Matthew 2. A year ago, today, I was in Haiti accompanying a small group from the Advocate who was going down to visit an Episcopal church called (in French) Saints Innocents. The visit was timed to coincide with the church's observance of their namesake feast day.

Yesterday I prepared a slide show of photos from the trip for my mother. Here's a few of them, plus an accompanying spiritual reflection. I feel uncomfortable about posting online photos of individuals who aren't in a position to speak up about how their image gets used publicly, so I'm going to be a bit vague about where we were, and I've avoided close-ups of anyone but myself. Thanks to Grace Camblos for the pictures.

Waiting to board a ferry that will take us to the island where Saints Innocents is located. (My luggage got lost, so I lived in the same clothes for five days. This was not the worst thing to go wrong on this trip. The worst was a group member starting to pass a kidney stone and spending three days in pain because the painkillers he needed were nowhere to be had.)

Squeezing into a truck for a two-hour ride up into the hills to reach Saints Innocents.

Saints Innocents church, viewed from an adjacent building that serves as a school. One purpose of the visit was to bring funds and supplies for the school.

Taking a walk in the cool of the evening.

Getting set up for bed in the school adjacent to the church. (I'm not quite as fat as I look. I'm wearing a pouch under my shirt containing valuables for safekeeping.)

Discussing the cistern behind the church. The cistern catches rainwater. Water is in short supply on the island.

The interior of Saints Innocents church, decorated for the feast day.

A nicer view of the church exterior. We helped paint the church during our visit.

Looking out across the bay toward the mainland of Haiti.

During the drive back to Port-au-Prince to catch our flight home, feeling somewhat worn out but also moody about the fact that we were leaving, I got to thinking about everyone I knew from my LDS mission in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. I was struck by the fact that all those people were actually here on Hispaniola with me, somewhere on the other side of those mountains, starting their day, going to work. This trip to Haiti was the closest I'd been to any of those people in years. Thinking about it, I started to cry. "The mission was a gift," I thought.

Then I thought, "If it’s a gift, then isn’t it a stewardship? Am I magnifying that stewardship?" And as I mulled that over, I thought: This trip to Haiti was a way of magnifying the gift of my LDS mission. During the trip, I had used the cross-cultural experience and language skills I gained during my mission to do a job here, in Haiti, in the present, not just storing my mission experiences as memories of the past to be cherished, like the servant in the parable who buries his talent. Instead I reinvested the gift I was given, applying the experience to serving a new set of people. I hadn’t done much. But I hoped I’d done some good.

Armed standoff

Evidently, an armed standoff is occurring in an apartment on the floor underneath ours. When I took the dog out for her early walk, we came down the stairs, and I saw a cop with his gun drawn (but not aimed) standing nearby. He didn't motion for me to get away or anything, so I walked the dog. I couldn't see the source of the excitement; I guessed it was happening on the other side of the building somewhere. Then as I was going back up the same stairs I'd come down, I saw that the door of the apartment near the foot of the stairs was open, and I could hear a cop inside saying, "I won't shoot you if you do what you're told and come out right now."

Welcome, welcome, Sabbath morning.

There's now six cops standing in the parking lot underneath my window. They seem relaxed, they're even smiling. Yes. They're leaving now. It doesn't look like an arrest has been made. I probably won't know what happened until tomorrow, when they print a little blurb in the police bulletin online and in the newspaper.

Thank God that ended well.

Christmas card

A Christmas card from the MESJ website.

Mingling with Gods

Today being Joseph Smith's birthday, the hymn "Praise to the Man" came to mind. I have lots of reasons to dislike that hymn: I'm not a fan of venerating Joseph Smith, and I wish Latter-day Saints would finally grow out of the "persecuted people" mentality this hymn reflects and perpetuates.

But I have to admit that I love the audacity of certain lines in this hymn: "Praise to the man who communed with Jehovah." "Mingling with Gods, he can plan for his brethren."

Mormons don't write hymns like that anymore. For one thing, a religious culture that prizes conformity in the name of obedience, unity, and correlation tends to stifle the creativity required to produce lines like those. And no Mormon today could write those lines because nowadays everyone's so uptight about showing the public that we don't worship Joseph Smith, that we're not polytheists, etc.

"Mingling with Gods." This is one of the things I love about Mormonism—this notion that we can grow to a point where we could "mingle" with divine beings in council, participating as equals as they (we!) plan how to bring to pass God's work and glory.

Some Mormons today—BYU professors like Stephen Robinson and Robert Millet; people who write and read publications of FAIR—seem uncomfortable with that vision. Evangelical apologists and countercultists accuse Mormons of hubris; and some Mormons have apparently absorbed evangelical sensibilities about the absolute, unique sovereignty of God (they're Calvinist sensibilities, more precisely) to the point where they agree with the Calvinists that it's a terrible thing to want to be God's equal. And so these embarrassed Mormons rush to assure the evangelicals that while it's true Mormons believe people can become "gods"—which is a safe word to use because C. S. Lewis used it—we don't believe that we'll ever actually be equal to God.

Now, the King Follett discourse suggests that there's a sense in which Joseph Smith would agree with that statement: at least in that sermon, he seems to envision a kind of ascending hierarchy, where as we move up to where God was, he moves up higher, etc. Of course, Calvinists would have problems with that vision, too, since they can't cope with the idea of a God who progresses.

In any case, though, I imagine that Joseph would roll in his grave (assuming he hasn't already been resurrected) to learn that some of his followers are letting Calvinists of all people dictate their sense of what constitutes an appropriate thing to believe.

So even if this makes it harder for Bob Millet to convince evangelicals that we're not as weird or heretical as they think, I'm going to lift a glass of alcohol-free eggnog to the vision of Joseph Smith mingling with Gods. That's an unembarrassed capital-G "Gods," in the plural! And I understand the verb "mingling" to mean that he's rubbing shoulders with God as an equal—with the same audacious familiarity that's open to all of us.

Advent 4

The photo above shows a view of the village in the Dominican Republic where I served as an education volunteer for a few months in 1997. (Click on the photo to enlarge it.) The view is from the top of a very steep hill overlooking the village.

When I was living there, I was told that the population was about 2000. That's also, according to one estimate I've seen, about the size of the village of Nazareth during Jesus' day.

I don't know how Bethlehem compared in population in the time of Jesus, but let's assume for the sake of argument that it was at least the size of this village, if not larger.

Now imagine that you're a shepherd abiding in the fields keeping watch over your flocks by night. An angel appears and tells you the Savior's been born in Bethlehem; but in lieu of giving you even general directions for finding the newborn Messiah, he (she?) tells you simply to go look for a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.

Luke tells us that the shepherds "came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger."

There has to be a whole lot of searching implicit in that little word "found."

Look at the photo of the village again. (Remember, click to enlarge.) Notice the maze-like layout of the main roads. Then peer more closely to see the little side streets. Finally, notice the little courtyards behind houses, which you can see clearly from the air but which would be hidden from view at street level. I assume that ancient Bethlehem was at least as complicatedly arranged. How long would it take you, wandering around at night, to find the stable that contains a baby lying in a manger? Do you wake people up and ask them if they can help you? Should you start your search in the main part of town or on the margins? If the stable's actually a grotto outside town, as I've heard proposed, how much does that widen the area you have to search?

The point I'm getting to is that the experience of the shepherds is very different from the experience of the Magi as narrated in Matthew. The Magi get a star that leads them along and stops over the house where the child is. The shepherds just get the name of the town and a brief description of what the kid's sleeping in. They then have to go looking on their own. The Magi follow; the shepherds search.

I've heard Christmas sermons in which people compare the star that led the Magi to the scriptures, or the teachings of Church leaders, or some other source of ostensibly divine guidance leading us to Christ and salvation. It's a simple, reassuring vision: you follow the scriptures, Church leaders, etc., and you'll be led to where you need to go. Just look to the scriptures, Church leaders, etc., and you don't have to worry about going astray.

My experience, though, feels more like that of the shepherds: wandering through a maze of streets in the dark, listening, poking around, exploring, backtracking. I've been given a charge, a promise, a declaration of good news, a general description of where I should be heading and what I'm looking for; but then I've been left largely on my own to find the way, and to recognize the One I've been told about when I find him.

It's not as simple as following a star. But it's the task on which I seem to have been sent, and I can live with it.