Mid-Week Meanderings/Maunderings (but not from truth!)

I’m gonna preach to the choir! One can never fully enjoy such preaching under the awareness of one’s own inadequacies, and the constant yearning that the choir were much, much larger (at least encompassing the entire congregation and pulling in others from the streets...as in Matthew 22:2-10)! “Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38). There is an interestingly wry remark in the Tractate Avot, 2.20 of the Mishnah: “The day is short; the task is great; the workmen are lazy; the reward is abundant; and the Master is pressing.”

Needless to say—a rather curious phrase to say—I find it far easier to let my excessive thoughts spill over into a new entry, rather than bulking up the comment section.

Susan, is this the same instructor who said he was prepared to lecture on the unrevealed features of the Abrahamic facsimiles? What happened to that guy? I don’t mean to allude to your age in any way, but is it even possible for your instructor to have taught his warped notion before The Family: A Proclamation to the World boldly reminded everyone that “gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose”? Not that I think he had any right to be confused, anyhow. Frequently people create their private doctrines on assumptions that please them or reveal their hearts (i.e., Moroni 8:14-16), which really makes me worry about him. That is also not to say that doctrine never defies the natural understanding, even to those at least somewhat spiritually tutored. Some time ago an elders quorum instructor challenged his group to name one gospel principle that didn’t make sense. Out of respect, to him and the actual message he was teaching, I didn’t mention that Elder Lund addresses that rather well in Hearing the Voice of the Lord, pp. 12-14.

Yet the eternity of gender is one of those facts so patently obvious that we may not think of commenting upon it, or noting when we come across it in Church literature. But, naturally, it has always been taught. Elder Oaks covered it thoroughly in October 1993 General Conference (portions of which I will excerpt in addition to the theme at hand, since they’re so excellent, but I shall try to remain on but one or two conversation pieces this evening):

All of the myriads of mortals who have been born on this earth chose the Father’s plan and fought for it. Many of us also made covenants with the Father concerning what we would do in mortality. In ways that have not been revealed, our actions in the spirit world influence us in mortality. . . .

Satan seeks to discredit the Savior and divine authority, to nullify the effects of the Atonement, to counterfeit revelation, to lead people away from the truth, to contradict individual accountability, to confuse gender, to undermine marriage, and to discourage childbearing (especially by parents who will raise children in righteousness).

Maleness and femaleness, marriage, and the bearing and nurturing of children are all essential to the great plan of happiness. Modern revelation makes clear that what we call gender was part of our existence prior to our birth. God declares that he created “male and female” (D&C 20:18; Moses 2:27; Gen. 1:27). Elder James E. Talmage explained: “The distinction between male and female is no condition peculiar to the relatively brief period of mortal life; it was an essential characteristic of our pre-existent condition” (Millennial Star, 24 Aug. 1922, p. 539). . . .

We live in a day when there are many political, legal, and social pressures for changes that confuse gender and homogenize the differences between men and women. Our eternal perspective sets us against changes that alter those separate duties and privileges of men and women that are essential to accomplish the great plan of happiness. We do not oppose all changes in the treatment of men and women, since some changes in laws or customs simply correct old wrongs that were never grounded in eternal principles. . . .

Our concept of marriage is motivated by revealed truth, not by worldly sociology. The Apostle Paul taught “neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:11). President Spencer W. Kimball explained, “Without proper and successful marriage, one will never be exalted” (Marriage and Divorce, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976, p. 24).

According to custom, men are expected to take the initiative in seeking marriage. That is why President Joseph F. Smith directed his prophetic pressure at men. He said, “No man who is marriageable is fully living his religion who remains unmarried” (Gospel Doctrine, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1939, p. 275). We hear of some worthy LDS men in their thirties who are busy accumulating property and enjoying freedom from family responsibilities without any sense of urgency about marriage. Beware, brethren. You are deficient in a sacred duty. . . .

We know that many worthy and wonderful Latter-day Saints currently lack the ideal opportunities and essential requirements for their progress. Singleness, childlessness, death, and divorce frustrate ideals and postpone the fulfillment of promised blessings. . . . The Lord has promised that in the eternities no blessing will be denied his sons and daughters who keep the commandments, are true to their covenants, and desire what is right. . . .

We who know God’s plan for his children, we who have covenanted to participate, have a clear responsibility. We must desire to do what is right, and we must do all that we can in our own circumstances in mortality.

In all of this, we should remember King Benjamin’s caution to “see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength” (Mosiah 4:27). I think of that inspired teaching whenever I feel inadequate, frustrated, or depressed.

Regarding the Elder Talmage reference, it’s at times like this that I wish I owned the Millennial Star. In coming years I’ll either get it myself or hint subtly via wish lists until I acquire the volumes. :o) And gospel library software packages just don’t cut it, which is why I hope we’re not seeing the complete demise of printed matter. I recently related to my sister how a high council speaker in our ward said to the preceding young single adult speaker, “You must have used the same search engine I did.” That would have had me suppressing hopping mad feelings, for it seems like an insult! What missionary goes forth under the power of google or some commercial software, rather than adequate preparation in the word and spirit of God? One general authority gives us insight: “Someone asked him when he found time to prepare so many addresses. His reply was: ‘You should study all your life and read with the thought of developing material for the future’” (Conway B. Sonne, A Man Named Alma: The World of Alma Sonne [Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers, 1988], 196).

I once edited some manuscripts at length that could scarcely conceal a simplistic plug-in-the-search-term usage of gospel passages all strung together. As in...you could find the same term in each one, and sometimes that's all they seemed to have in common, when far more relevant quotes would come immediately to the mind of almost any seasoned CES instructor (showing that the authors weren't even making a serious effort)! It tried my patience to breaking point. I don’t think our society realizes what it’s doing to its knowledge base, such that learned commentators must refer in passing to “an age when the memory was commonly keener and more retentive than in our own” (Victor Watts, introduction to Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, rev. ed. [New York, New York: Penguin Books, 1999], xxii). Nibley, whom I feel could occasionally be erratic in his gospel interpretations, nonetheless made a valuable, revolutionary observation:

Joseph Justus Scaliger, who died in 1608, was the last man ever to make a serious attempt to read what the written human record said. It covers thousands of years. The human race has documented its doings for a long time, and no one pays any attention to the record. Nobody in the world does that anymore. Oh, it’s a librarian’s paradise: we classify, we photograph, we reproduce, we store and preserve, and we transfer. We can do all the tricks electronics can do today, but nobody reads the records. Nobody knows what is actually in these books. I mean this literally. A few specialists may consider documents in one area or in another, but who knows what the record as a whole has to tell us? It’s a most interesting thing the way these records have been shamefully pushed aside. . . .

Giorgio de Santillana . . . . shows that the Egyptians knew more than we have ever given them credit for. Levi-Strauss, an anthropologist, has written an astonishing book on that quite recently—how much more our “primitives” have really known all along than we’ve been giving them credit for. We had the idea that since people lived long ago and before our science, their ideas must be superstitious. . . .

Now comes an interesting question: If you were to read these written records, would they give you the same picture of the world that the scientific transcripts give us? . . . No they don’t. They give a totally different picture of what was going on in the past, the so-called scientific view. This is very good news, because until now we have been told there is only one possible valid picture of the world—the picture science gives us at the moment. Many scientists are getting over that now—men like Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. People like that are giving us a very different picture, showing us that it’s always changing—which we should have known all along anyway. We shouldn’t be stuck with just one picture at one image, even if we are laymen and can’t understand the scientists. They say, “Well, you have to take it, this is it; this is it.” That’s the voice of authority speaking: “I’m sorry we’ll just have to settle for that.” But it hasn’t been particularly good news, because in recent years the picture’s become a rather dismal one, and many scientists have been talking about that. Quite a number say the picture’s not only dismal but false in many respects. There’s something radically wrong with it. It doesn’t match the real world we live in, certainly not in all points. Then why do we accept it? Because, as I say, we’ve been told there’s no alternative. Many scientists have said that about evolution. It’s a very defective tool, but they must use it because it’s the only one they have. So we’ve been left with but one picture of the world, and all the time there’s the other one from the books. I don’t say it will give you a true picture of things or anything like that; I will say there might be something very wonderful if you went and looked. Yet nobody goes and looks. It’s just too much trouble. (Hugh Nibley, Old Testament and Related Studies, ed. John W. Welch, Gary P. Gillum, Don E. Norton [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1986], 116-120)

Anyway, my review of Millennial Star materials is not altogether disappointed, since I was reminded of this: “He believes so intensely in the principles which he preaches that we fear his attitude is sometimes misunderstood” (Bryant S. Hinckley, about Joseph Fielding Smith, MS, 94:405).

My available notes from that text don’t contain the passage quoted by Elder Oaks, but it does appear contemporaneously in another Church publication, the Liahona: The Elders Journal, 23:73, and I share a fuller passage with you for its value:

We affirm as reasonable, scriptural, and true, the eternity of sex among the children of God. The distinction between male and female is no condition peculiar to the relatively brief period of mortal life; it was an essential characteristic of our preexistent condition, even as it shall continue after death, in both the disembodied and resurrected states. . . .

There is no accident or chance, due to purely physical conditions, by which the sex of the unborn is determined. The body takes form as male or female, according to the sex of the spirit whose appointment it is to tenant that body as a tabernacle formed of the elements of earth, through which means alone the individual may enter upon the indispensable course of human experience, probation, and training. . . .

Scriptures attest a state of existence preceding mortality, in which the spirit children of God lived, doubtless with distinguishing personal characteristics including the distinction of sex, for "male and female created he them," spiritually, "before they were [created] naturally upon the face of the earth." It is plain that this spiritual creation of mankind embraced the entire human family and not alone the pair ordained to be the first mortal parents of mankind; for it is expressly stated that "the Lord God had created all the children of men" before a man had been placed upon the earth "to till the ground," even before the earth was tillable or capable of supporting the vegetation necessary for human food. . . .

[Alma 40:23]

With such definite word as to the actuality of a bodily resurrection, which shall come to all, righteous and sinners, is it conceivable that the essential differences of sex shall be eliminated? Children of God have comprised male and female from the beginning. Man is man, and woman is woman, fundamentally, unchangeably, eternally. Each is indispensable to the other and to the accomplishment of the purposes of God, the crowning glory of which is "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." (Pearl of Great Price, p. 7.)

There’s no way I can forego quoting a prophet on the “gender gap”:

We had full equality as his spirit children. We have equality as recipients of God’s perfected love for each of us. . . . Within those great assurances, however, our roles and assignments differ. These are eternal differences—with women being given many tremendous responsibilities of motherhood and sisterhood and men being given the tremendous responsibilities of fatherhood and the priesthood—but the man is not without the woman nor the woman without the man in the Lord (see 1 Corinthians 11:11). Both a righteous man and a righteous woman are a blessing to all those their lives touch.

Remember, in the world before we came here, faithful women were given certain assignments while faithful men were foreordained to certain priesthood tasks. While we do not now remember the particulars, this does not alter the glorious reality of what we once agreed to. (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, 315-316)

Sir Mister Landlord President Tall Man Sir,
I know enough about you to guess that not only did you mean no harm by teaching mythology, but probably did no harm, and I’m willing to bet there’s a good story to that. So I won’t launch into a wholly unnecessary, and offensive, discourse against melding philosophy with gospel teaching.

I was about to excuse the practice (in jocularity) altogether, stating that Greek philosophy was worse than the mythology, which was more of a cultural expression. How, though, could we really weigh the relative damage done in modern society by campuses versus Hollywood? (Sometimes they seem to be absolutely on the same team.)

I really only inveigh against philosophy more, I suspect, because my life so far has brought me more in contact with Worldly-Wise Men than icons of popular culture.

Even so, there is strong warrant in gospel teaching for drawing upon the acknowledged cultural norms of the people (somewhat in accord with Alma 12:9-11 (w/18:26-36 and 22:7-12), 2 Nephi 31:3, and D&C 50:12). I find one such example enlightening. S. Michael Wilcox, The Writings of John [Orem, Utah: Randall Book Company, 1987], 64-65:

Christ immediately tells the Greeks, "The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified." He explains the method of that glorification with an analogy that would have significant meaning to Greeks. The analogy he uses is the planting and harvesting of corn or wheat. Considering that one of the most important Greek myths revolved around Demeter the Goddess of Corn and her daughter Persephone's annual return to the underworld, this analogy would in all probability be understood by one coming from a Greek background. Christ's analogy is given as follows:

[John 12:24-25.]

Paul definitely utilized the prevailing culture and even its literature, but there are limits!

There’s a reason Tennyson wrote (The Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson [Roslyn, New York: Black's Readers Service, 1932], 144):

Hold thou the good, define it well;
For fear divine Philosophy
Should push beyond her mark, and be
Procuress to the Lords of Hell.

The last thing I’ll stay up to post demonstrates how Christianity traveled such a great distance from its origins. One of my greatest concerns in life is PROVENANCE. I want everything my mind ponders to have its ultimate origin with God, and to be highly proximate thereto.

Philo died in 50 A.D. while most, if not all the original Apostles yet lived. Yet none of their statements confirm his views. If Philo's teachings about God were inspired, why don't they appear in any Apostolic writings? Why was it that more than a hundred years passed before Philo's views on God were adopted by Christian writers? There is but one valid explanation. They were heretical when Philo taught them, and they were a sign of apostasy when the early Church later adopted them.

With the idea of a transcendent God, the concept of incorporeality was first applied to the God of the Bible, not in the early Church, but in Hellenized Judaism by Philo of Alexandria. Some time before 50 A.D., he wrote the following about God's nature: "He is 'without body, parts or passions;' without feet, for whither should He walk who fills all things: without hands, for from whom should He receive anything who possesses all things: without eyes, for how should He need eyes who made the light."

This language has great poetic beauty, but there is no biblical nor logical foundation to the ideas expressed. Why should God's creation of light imply that He has no eyes to see it with? The whole idea is illogical. Philo quotes no passage of scripture in support of his notions, for there are none. His ideas are borrowed entirely from Greek philosophy, the source later used by the Apologists to arrive at the same false conclusions. There was no inspired basis for adopting any of his notions. (Richard R. Hopkins, How Greek Philosophy Corrupted the Christian Concept of God [Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers & Distributors, Inc., 1998], 266-267)

Oh, yes. One final quotation, in partial explanation of why I mentally linked ancient Greek mythology with modern cultural expression (or, to put it more plainly, cultural lack of restraint):

Although the influence of the Bible has guided Western civilization for two thousand years, there are still those who seek to revive the gods of paganism, only now the gods have modern names: not Kronos but Progress; not Aphrodite but Sex; not Apollo but Culture; not Athena but Science. (Dennis Rasmussen, The Lord's Question: Thoughts on the Life of Response [Provo, Utah: Keter Foundation, 1985], 48)

By the way, thank you for your comments. My thought processes tonight were not intended as anything but favorable, albeit impersonal, interaction.