Alma 36-39

Miscellaneous reflections from this week's reading:

36:4-5, 26; 38:6  Alma's testimony is based not on "the temporal" or "carnal mind" but on "the spiritual," i.e., on his experience of God's transforming power in his life. Alma is openly perspectival: He would not know these things if not for his experiences, and others will see the way he sees only if they have had the same kind of spiritual experience he has. This principle is a big part of why I take a dim view of apologetics. Trying to create rational or empirical grounds for believing in LDS faith claims (or any other religious claims) appeals to the carnal mind. Such appeals may persuade people of the plausibility of LDS faith claims, and might even make some naive people feel that the truth of their faith has been rationally or empirically demonstrated. But these appeals don't (can't) bring people the experiential knowledge that is the basis of religious conviction. The only way to get that kind of knowledge is—as Alma explained last week—to experiment on the word and then discern the voice and influence of the Spirit in your life.

36:23-24  For some reason, when I read these verses this week, it really jumped out at me that the metaphor of "being born of God" makes God a mother. I've known that at a cerebral level for I don't know how long. But I really felt it this week for some reason. In baptism, we enter and then emerge from God's womb; and then like a newborn taking in the breath of life, we are commanded to receive the Holy Spirit—which in the biblical languages is literally the same as saying the Holy Breath.

37:8  Alma says that the scriptures enlarge the memory of the people. That phrase strikes me. Scripture—and I would add, ritual—serve to enlarge our memories. Through them, we tap into the collective memory of a people, of multiple peoples even, who thus become our spiritual forebears, our ancestors, if only by adoption. Their stories become our stories. God's promises to them become God's promises to us. Their commitments become our commitments. It occurs to me, in fact, that the collective memory I access through LDS scripture and ritual is more relevant to me than the collective memory of my literal ancestors, largely because I don't come from a close-knit extended family, or a family with a strong ethnic identity, and so I don't really have a sense of my family heritage.

As I write this, my parents are off in Scotland, doing genealogy and visiting the places our ancestors came from. A couple weeks ago, they sent me a postcard of a beach in what my father described as the "ancestral home" of one our lines. I looked at it, and I thought—"Hunh." No emotional connection. These are my people, but not in any really meaningful sense, at least not for me. But the ancient peoples whose scriptures I hear read in church every Sunday, and the much younger faith community my parents joined as teenagers, whose functionaries recently decided they don't want me on their membership rolls anymore—those are my people, my forebears. Those are the people whose collective memory enlarges my own.

37:36-37  Alma urges Helaman to let all his doings be to the Lord—wherever you go, let it be in the Lord, let all your thoughts be directed to the Lord, let the affections of your heart be placed on the Lord. It occurred to me that what Alma's talking about here is consecration. A life of consecration involves laying our actions, our needs, our movements, our thoughts, our desires before God through prayer. A life of consecration is therefore a life of prayer, and vice-versa. And the key word for me here was "affections." A consecrated life is lived out of affection for God. Our relationship with God is an affectionate one—which implies that God feels affection for us, too. Somehow, talking about "affection" rather than "love" seems more concrete and less slippery. A person can claim to "love" you even when they're hurting you ("I'm doing it for your own good, because I love you"), but that claim rings hollow a lot more readily if someone hurts you while claiming to be "affectionate" toward you.

39:15; cf. 37:9  Alma tells Corianton that Christ comes to declare "glad tidings." Earlier, he had told Helaman that to be brought to repentance is synonymous with being brought "to rejoice in Jesus Christ." At one level, these are clichés, but I was struck by how these expressions, if we really take them seriously, provide a counterweight, maybe even an antidote, to Alma's own sectarian tendency to preach by fear and guilt. Christ's message is a glad message. To repent means to rejoice. There's something to be said for prophetic teaching that warns and rebukes, that invites self-criticism and penitence, that delivers a well-aimed kick to the seat. But an ostensibly Christian life that is not a life of joy and gladness is not the real article.