Gifts of the Spirit

Here are some key principles that stood out to me from the readings for Lesson 15 of the D&C/Church history Sunday School curriculum.

1. Inspiration from the living Spirit takes precedence over the authority of the written word. When he introduced the new missionary discussions, Gordon B. Hinckley quoted D&C 46:2 to drive home the point that "notwithstanding those things which are written," missionaries were free "to conduct all meetings as they are directed and guided by the Holy Spirit." The guidance of the Spirit trumps correlation, trumps handbooks of instruction, trumps "proper procedure," trumps official policy. If that sounds like a recipe for anarchy—well, who was it who said that the Spirit blows where it listeth [pleases, wishes]? Allowing written policies to be set aside at a flash of inspiration is, I admit, an utterly impractical and inefficient way to run an institution—but then, a God who says that he's going to call on the "weak and simple" to do his work doesn't sound like a God who's all that invested in efficiently run institutions.

2. The Spirit works in diverse ways. D&C 46 and Moroni 10 both underscore the idea that the Spirit works in different ways for different people: there are "differences of administration . . . according as the Lord will" (D&C 46:15), "diversities of operations . . . that the manifestations of the Spirit may be given to every [person] to profit withal" (D&C 46:16); the Spirit's gifts "come unto every [one] severally, according as [Christ] will" (Moro. 10:17). These passages caution us against a narrowly circumscribed understanding of how and where God is at work. "Deny not the gifts of God, for they are many" (Moro. 10:8); "I would exhort you . . . that you remember that every good gift cometh of Christ" (Moro. 10:18). God doesn't work only in the ways that I'm familiar with from my own experience. Among other things, I think these passages call us to recognize God at work in the sprawling, messy diversity of religious traditions, with their "differences of administration" and "diversities of operations."

3. The Spirit works in non-rational ways. Read with a strong eye for historical context, D&C 46 and Moroni 10 are plugs for a pre-modern belief in the immediacy of the supernatural over against Enlightenment rationality. There are such things as miracles, Mr. Hume—visions and faith healings and speaking in tongues, all religious phenomena that 18th- and 19th-century Enlightenment intellectuals stigmatized as "enthusiasm" or "fanatacism." Now granted, I'm modern enough in my sensibilities that I'm going straight to a doctor when I'm sick, and I don't want to attend a church where people stand up in meetings to speak in tongues. (Church leaders have become modern enough since the 19th century that they don't want that either.) But postmodernism has prepared me to recognize an inspired message in these passages' critique of Enlightenment. Modern rationality does not have a corner on truth. Bona fide revelation comes through non-rational means—means that seem foolish and incredible to intellectuals trained in Enlightenment traditions of criticism. The Book of Mormon, for example.

4. The workings of the Spirit must be critically discerned. There's a huge catch to everything I've said so far. Yes, it's true that inspiration trumps institutional procedure and policy, that the Spirit works in diverse and non-rational ways. But it's also true that it's very easy to mistake human foolishness for divine inspiration. Which means that there's something to be said, after all, for submitting claims of inspiration to the curbs of reason and policy and procedure. That's the truth I recognize—grudgingly, I would add—in D&C 46:27, about how the bishop and the elders "are to have it given unto them to discern all those gifts lest there shall be any among you professing and yet be not of God." I'm suspicious of how that verse opens up a way for church leadership and bureaucracy to shut down the diversity that is celebrated elsewhere in these passages. The spirit of discernment commended in verse 27 needs to include the humility to recognize that God works in ways we don't expect, ways that don't jibe well with what we already know and are accustomed to, that don't fit institutional imperatives. But I have to admit that, yes, there's truth in verse 27, as in verse 7, with its warning against being "seduced . . . by doctrines of devils, or the commandments of men." However, it is also true that . . .

5. The diversity of the Spirit's gifts challenges us to be tolerant and charitable. This idea is most emphatically expounded in 1 Corinthians 12-13. Paul's famous metaphor about the church as one body composed of many members comes in the context of teaching about the diversity of spiritual gifts and manifestations. And it's in that same context that he delivers his famous sermon on charity. The point of the body metaphor, at least as it's laid out in 1 Corinthians 12, is to challenge the church to honor diversity as an expression of charity. The foot shouldn't think that because it isn't the hand, it's not part of the body. The head can't say to the feet, I have no need of you. "Those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary" (1 Cor. 12:22).

I don't see how this teaching can be reconciled easily with practices of heresy-hunting and excommunication (even though Paul himself didn't seem to see the contradiction). If there are differences in spiritual manifestations—and if, as Paul says, we're all seeing through a glass darkly (1 Cor. 13:12)—then why would we expect that all members trying in good faith to discern the truth through the Spirit are going to arrive at the same conclusions about, say, Book of Mormon historicity, or same-sex marriage, or evolution, or the war in Iraq? And how can those who arrive at one conclusion justify saying to members who arrive at a different conclusion—and yet who remain committed to serving in the Church (I don't fit that category, by the way; I'm talking here about others, not myself)—"You are not of the body; we have no need of you"? How do aggressive apologetics, and injunctions to stop publishing, and excommunications, exemplify charity, which is kind, is not easily provoked, believes all things, and hopes all things, recognizing that now we know only in part, even those things given by prophecy, but that someday all will become clear?

6. The workings of the Spirit are to benefit people. With this I'll finish. D&C 46:12 tells us that different gifts are given so "that all may be profited thereby." Verse 26 says that "all these gifts come from God, for the benefit of the children of God." Moroni 10:8 says that gifts and manifestations of the Spirit are given "unto [people], to profit them." That, it seems to me, is part of the test for discerning genuine spiritual manifestations: Do they help people? Are they a benefit, whether to the individual receiving the manifestation or to a larger community around that individual? Is it, as Moro. 10:18 says, a "good gift"? Of course, that decision itself requires discernment through the Spirit, so in a way we're right back to the relative instability with which we started. There are no clean-cut, clearly written, once-and-for-all answers. Just the Spirit, speaking in its still small voice, in different ways to different people, blowing where it pleases. If you want something simpler and less uncertain, you need to seek out a different God.