“Faith of our [mothers], holy faith . . .”

I encountered a cute tribute this afternoon:

My mom, Helen, now passed away, was a friend to everybody. When someone told her, “Helen, you are so kind, you would have something nice to say about the devil,” my mother responded, “He sure is a hard worker.” (Orrin Hatch, in Frank Pignanelli & LaVarr Webb, “Politicians pay tribute to their moms,” Deseret News, Sunday, May 11, 2008, G1)

That reminds me of a joke—and I realize I’m quoting from this source for the second time on this blog—taken from a real occasion with a visiting general authority:

The young bishop, somewhat over eagerly, asked him if he wanted to make a few remarks to the congregation.
"No, I don’t think so, Bishop. I’m just here enjoying a vacation."
"Elder Sonne, the Devil doesn’t take a vacation from his work."
It was an embarrassing exchange, but Alma was equal to the occasion and quickly answered, "Bishop, we don’t try to follow the Devil’s example in our Church." (Conway B. Sonne, A Man Named Alma: The World of Alma Sonne [Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers, 1988], 200)

Now for an interactive assignment (perhaps more for my own enjoyment than anything). After great reflection, I’ve concluded that I can’t offer you prize or praise. Sorry! It’s my fault for making my blog turn upon religious matters that I can’t afford to cheapen. Assuming that anyone out there reads this, including the bashful sort, I invite you to identify a quote used previously in my blog entries that ties thematically into the two quotes immediately above.

What’s the best gift to offer our mothers on this special day? (Speaking of which, am I the only one who feels that the last National Day of Prayer—May 1—passed by with absolutely no publicity?) I think an old circular in the Southern States mission captures it: “Be the man your mother thinks you are” (Liahona: The Elders Journal, 19:111). I heard a similar sentiment expressed in the movie Stardust (which I could almost recommend were it not for delivery on the promised “risque humor,” along with a strongly implied bedroom scene, and another like unto it), something from mother to son like, “Be the man I know you to be.” And I sincerely hope that no one will take this counsel to heart if their mother feels they’re a scoundrel! This line seems borrowed from a couplet:

Don’t aim to be an earthly Saint, with eyes fixed on a star,
Just try to be the fellow that your Mother thinks you are. (Will S. Adkin, in James Gilchrist Lawson, The World’s Best-Loved Poems [New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1955], 26)

I sort of take issue with the first line; it tries to oversimplify the case a bit much. President Harold B. Lee freely encouraged hitching one’s wagon to the stars, by which I don’t suppose he meant stumbling over things here because we can’t focus on the task at hand. “Then wake up and do something more Than dream of your mansion above” (Hymn 223). What of President Hinckley’s referring to Christ (as recently as his “closing testimony” in the March Ensign) in context of emulation: “Like the Polar Star in the heavens, regardless of what the future holds, there stands the Redeemer of the world, the Son of God, certain and sure as the anchor of our immortal lives. He is the rock of our salvation, our strength, our comfort, the very focus of our faith. In sunshine and in shadow we look to Him, and He is there to assure and smile upon us.” I can make a concession for the other end of that argument:

Things of the Spirit need not—indeed, should not—require our uninterrupted time and attention. Ordinary work-a-day things occupy most of our attention. And that is as it should be. We are mortal beings living in this physical world.

Spiritual things are like leavening. By measure they may be very small, but by influence they affect all that we do. Continuing revelation is fundamental to the gospel of Jesus Christ. (Boyd K. Packer, Ensign, Nov. 1989, 14)

You cannot force spiritual things. . . . Do not be impatient to gain great spiritual knowledge. Let it grow, help it grow, but do not force it or you will open the way to be misled. We should go about our life in an ordinary, workaday way, following the routines and rules and regulations that govern life. (Boyd K. Packer, in Lucile C. Tate, Boyd K. Packer: A Watchman on the Tower [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1995], 281)

A few items of the usual housekeeping....

Along with the usual regrets, that I didn’t cross-reference Matthew 25:14-46 with the opening scriptural block in last entry, which connects on so many levels. And that I didn’t include this quip: “When I asked a visitor from London what he thought about American television, he tactfully replied, ‘Trivia and violence mercifully interrupted by delightfully clever commercials’” (Angie Papadakis, Reader’s Digest, Jul. 1997, 38).

All my bluster about similarly exalted views among members was with reference to the glorious views of the gospel (i.e., 2 Nephi 1:24; Mosiah 5:3), not to encourage highness in one’s own eyes: “And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day” (Isaiah 2:17). None of that discussion negated the absolute need for charity, among the primary “redeeming” virtues. We are not to “grind the faces of the poor” (Isaiah 3:15). Those who DO “confess . . . his hand in all things, and obey . . . his commandments” (D&C 59:21) readily acknowledge that their “cup runneth over” (Psalm 23:5)...and are plenty willing to share!

Also, I normally like to allow my entries to stand just as they were when first published. That seems fair and straightforward. However, I had to add an explanatory note to a gluten comment in my last entry, concerning something undertaken for my personal well-being and consistency, only informed tangentially by doctrine and not considered binding on anyone else (or myself for the usually cited reasons, naturally). It bothered me to realize how easily that could be taken out of context, and I hope I didn’t lose any potential readership over it.

So how did I spend Friday night this week? Enjoyably. I drove down to BYU and focused for several hours on a microfilm for a small village in southeastern France. Considering that I’ve never studied French for more than five minutes in my life, the rewards are amazing. Names fairly leapt off the pages. Here’s an example, an entry for my direct ancestor, mother to the noble (in character) Jean Roque:

27 December 1589
Jean(n)e Nogaredesse[/ette?] daughter of noble[man] Antoine Nogarede and Anne Blanche [Blanc] presented for baptism . . .

Well, to ramble on with my usual carte blanche, it now appears that this family rose to nobility and participated in the garrisoning—with troops of a decidedly Protestant character—of a tower in the region. I encountered multiple entries for a family member referred to as “lord of la Garde.”

It could just be me, but I’m amused that the daughter of a fortifying family, whose name is conjectured to mean “of the nobility” (I haven’t got the technical know-how to assess that one), should marry a man whose family name (Roque) suggests a fortified place. Then their granddaughter married a man whose name (LaPierre) means “the rock” itself. This reminds me of my German pedigree, where I joke that my forebear could bear to marry a woman with the surname of Angst because his mother had prepared him—her surname was Kuehn, directly from a long-ago mayor of Dehlingen. (That joke was so much more fun to tell in German.)

It was pleasantly nostalgic to be driven out of the BYU library once more (at closing time) by speaker music at an annoying pitch of cadence. I got a good chuckle out of one college-age fellow remarking into his cell phone that he’d just “wasted a Friday night.” How little he knows that I wouldn’t trade places with him for all the world!

On my late drive back home I had the curious experience of a police car tailgating me. I said aloud, as if to them, “Uh uh, buddy. The law’s the law. Either turn on your sirens to get me to pull aside, or wait like the rest of us.” In saying nobody’s above the law, I recall a statement with an interesting turnabout on the traditional wording, by Brigham Young:

Law is made for the lawless. Let the Saints live their religion, and there is not a law that can justly infringe upon them. They are subject to the powers that be, by living so pure that no law can touch them. . . . I live above the laws. They do not in the least infringe upon me. The City Council never passed an ordinance that infringed upon me or upon my rights. Our Legislature has never passed a law that infringed upon me, because I live above the law through honouring every particle of it. In this course the law is beneath my feet and is my servant, not my master. (JD, 8:140, 208)

I have seen the latter passage deliberately misconstrued, often by quoting it only in part. This to assault our reputation—and President Young’s—of being among the most law-abiding of all people on the face of the earth (see D&C 42:78-93 and 58:19-22, which links the LDS into the long tradition of Christian lawfulness—stretching the theory of such governance is beyond the scope of this entry and my own interests)! President Joseph F. Smith contributed to a proper understanding:

Honest and honorable men need no officers of the law, no policemen, no justices of the peace, no courts, no lawyers. They live above crime, beyond the reach of the law. The law is not made for them, except to protect them from the criminally disposed. If every man was taught to do right, and did right, there would be no use for courts and for laws such as we have today. It is only because people will not do right that these things are needful, and that we have expensive forms of government and expensive officers to administer and execute the law. Latter-day Saints ought not to be so. They ought to know how to do right, and then do it; and they ought not to have to be prompted or urged to do it, either by the chastisement of God or by the counsels of His servants. (CD, 3:403)

Ignoring for the present time some variations on the meaning of "law" in scripture (up to and including modern revelation, such as D&C 88:21-24, 34-39), I’m content to say that Paul and the other “primitive” Christians taught the exact same thing. I’ll utilize a friendly phrase of Joseph Smith’s in appealing to the Bible: “Search the scriptures; they testify of things that apostates would blaspheme. Paul, if Joseph Smith is a blasphemer, you are” (Kent P. Jackson, Joseph Smith’s Commentary on the Bible [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1994], 159).

This brings me to a slightly different discussion, which I first tackled on March 19, 1999, before I really had any idea how to cite sources:

Why must the spirit of the law and the letter of the law be set at odds? Just as justice will not be robbed or mercy go unsatisfied, neither the spirit nor letter of the law will allow infractions. Do your best to be in harmony with both. Never allow yourself to be caught up in the temptation to justify actions or ease your conscience by arguing that you were keeping one of the two.

The letter of the law is that system instituted under Moses, whereby strict obedience to outward ordinances was demanded. The spirit of the law is the higher, or celestial, scheme that Christ delivered during his mortal ministry. He asked, though many never realize it, that our heart be involved in our devotions. Note that fact.

Religions today often suffer from an imbalance. Some, believing that Christ was only asking for the heart, claim that man is saved by faith. Under such a rule, any sinner may surmount a lifetime of obstacles by merely exclaiming—in fullness of heart—his acceptance of Jesus. However, faith without works is dead (James 2:17).

Still others subscribe to somewhat more Mosaic tenets. Perform the expected acts of expiation and it does not matter where your heart is. However, works without faith are also dead, being only a form of hypocrisy.

Do as James advises, then, and combine letter with spirit, works with faith. Show your faith by your works (James 2:18).

It was with no small amount of agreement and hearty like for the authors that I encountered similar sentiments (and, again, I hope you don’t think I merely surf the world’s literature and the Internet seeking things that agree with me—I like these for how they peg the “feel” of the opposing viewpoint). I’ll share several excerpt quotations from those whom I’d be happy to consider peers:

#1a - Ivan Wolfe
I always found it interesting on my mission when disobedient Elders would call obedient Elders “Pharisees.”

I would usually respond that the Pharisees problem was not obedience, but selective, outward obedience with not real inner spiritual life. The disobedient Elders would often claim they were actually following the “spirit” of the law (by sleeping in til 10 and coming in early at 5 and playing cards until midnight - this actually happened to me and I ain’t exaggerating).

Like you said - there’s nothing wrong with obedience to the small matters (like white shirts or a full length fast) as long as the weighter matters get done. A missionary who was always up on time and had starched shirts - but never did any real missionary work would be a Pharisee. But those Elders who didn’t keep the mission rules often did little to no missionary work themselves.

#1b - Ivan Wolfe
Really, it seems to me some people try to make a lack of rules a virtue to be emualted, and they preach it.

I think “spirit of the law” is the most abused LDS phrase, as it is used to justify disobedience more than it is to discover the true principle behind a commandment.

#2 - Ben
I also don’t believe “the spirit of the law” exists. It’s not a scriptural phrase. Paul seems to teach that you can live the law as it is given, down to the smallest point. Or, you can live by the spirit, a principle-guided life. As Ivan pointed out, invoking the “spirit of the law” is really breaking the law, bcause law allows for no such thing. Either it’s kept, or it isn’t. Stephen Robinson expresses this well. . . .

# 3 - John Fowles
that is the only way that the concept of the “spirit of the law” become relevant: as an ad hoc justification for the failure to comply with the law in a particular circumstance. It explains the exceptions to the rule, or in other words, it explains why someone might not be culpable in a given circumstance for not complying with the law. But I don’t see how it provides someone with a justification to pick and choose which aspects of the law that individual needs to comply with. I don’t have the empirical evidence that you demand as a conversation stopper of this observation, but it seems to me that many who who go on and on about the spirit of the law are often people who want to justify not living according to the letter.

In order to at least terminate this thread (by which I never intended to take on grace and works at one time, in one evening, and I know I haven’t satisfactorily concluded), I’ll share one of my more recent writings:

This life-giving spirit places requirements upon us which (if our hearts are truly converted) are far more taxing than ever was an animal sacrifice, but are nonetheless exceedingly joyous to the soul. We cannot help that “spirit of the law” and “letter of the law” have become current in modern language. Taking them at face value under present definition—particularly as you have utilized it—wise was the observation that “if you kill the letter, you will not have the spirit of the letter.” James has stated just as persuasively that “as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” I will not cast aside the rules, regulations, and ordinances of the true Church of Jesus Christ because you claim that their difficulty does not allow everyone the same claim upon the blessings of heaven. All may achieve if all so choose. . . .

It is not the need for repentance, but the turning thereto for which there is joy [in heaven]. It is for this that the Atonement was wrought. Celebrate the new creature in Christ, not the old one! The Lord takes no pleasure in punishing the wicked; on the contrary, He calls upon all to escape death and hell of their own volition. With our choice comes His aid—not some paltry form in which you dabble, but actual raising to new planes of existence. He delights “to honor those who serve [Him] in righteousness and in truth unto the end. Great shall be their reward and eternal shall be their glory.” . . .

You must be careful not to join the ranks of “the wicked who have voluntarily come short of the grace of God” [ Desiderius Erasmus, from “On the Freedom of the Will,” 1524, in Stevie Davies, Renaissance Views of Man [New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1979], 107. Emphasis added. See Hebrews 4:1.], and then think He will rescue you from your own poor decisions.

The nature of grace is such that He might still save, but the day of repentance is not to be trifled with. It is not, I feel, a proposition I’d care to test.

I strive to the utmost to be an honest man, and in that honesty is complete and total recognition of this pure truth: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 John 1:10). (Anyone who ever reads into my words that I think I’m other than mortal gives me more "credit" than I’ve dreamed of assuming. It’s the basic premise that I’ve got my faults, and generally a waste of time to repeat it. “That goes without saying.”) Of intensely interesting application is the following statement from John in defining Christian belief and practice: “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. . . . He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked” (1 John 2:6). With Christ’s original admonition, also recorded by John, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15), clearly there is something strong to keeping the commandments. Where is the reconciliation between efforts at exactness, and frequent (and only-too-natural) failures? That is the very reconciliation that Christ wrought, mentioned in the intervening 1 John 2:1, JST: “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not, And if any man sin and repent, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.”

It’s not my intention to delve into the absolute necessity for obedience, or in the least to claim any special corner on the market. This is hardly even the tip of the iceberg, and I’ll happily sail on by it with my next entry, since I’m straining to be done with this and on to all the other happy things I’d wanted to write about this time.

I have over 200 pages of material assembled to show that the leading Brethren of the Church have always taught that the Savior was quite literal when He urged, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48, amplified by the JST). We only get our “out” when they explain that, among other things, (a) total perfection is a matter for the eternities, (b) perfection may only be had by and through Christ, (c) this is an issue to be handled a day at a time, and (d) there is such a thing as “relative” perfection, not taken as a redefinition of righteousness so much as “perfection within our sphere.” However, there is little that would advocate easing up on our efforts, except where it’s discerned that certain efforts are creating a counterproductive downward spiral. Yes, I continually operate under a consciousness of the volume of exhortation, and a consciousness of my own guilt. I could never take the time to demonstrate the cheerfulness and freedom of spirit that offset that attitude, at least not in this belabored entry. I think two Book of Mormon one-liners will summarize my present feelings nicely: “Wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10); “O be wise; what can I say more?” (Jacob 6:12). “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” (John 16:33).

Unless they’re genuinely redemptive in nature, guilt trips are not the way to book passage to heaven. By “heaven,” I mean the highest degree in the celestial kingdom, or exaltation. To make it there requires commitment something like working in the engine room of an old-time train. Sure, we could doze off in a luxury car, too, for all is presently permissible through agency—but then all we receive at the destination is that enormous free gift of resurrection (immortality), along with various other (undeserved) rewards according to our degree of faithfulness beyond outright reprobacy. It’s mighty hard to get thrown off the train altogether.

Okay, okay, I’ll surrender to an impulse. I obviously let this lead me wherever it will. From a single issue of the Ensign, two pertinent thoughts, with one bridging quotation:

Whenever we fall, whenever we do less than we ought, in a very real way we forget mother. . . .

Men turn from evil and yield to their better natures when mother is remembered. A famed officer from the Civil War period, Colonel Higginson, when asked to name the incident of the Civil War that he considered the most remarkable for bravery, said that there was in his regiment a man whom everybody liked, a man who was brave and noble, who was pure in his daily life, absolutely free from dissipations in which most of the other men indulged.

One night at a champagne supper, when many were becoming intoxicated, someone in jest called for a toast from this young man. Colonel Higginson said that he arose, pale but with perfect self-control, and declared: “Gentlemen, I will give you a toast which you may drink as you will, but which I will drink in water. The toast that I have to give is, ‘Our mothers.’”

Instantly a strange spell seemed to come over all the tipsy men. They drank the toast in silence. There was no more laughter, no more song, and one by one they left the room. The lamp of memory had begun to burn, and the name of Mother touched every man’s heart. . . .

May each of us treasure this truth: One cannot forget mother and remember God. One cannot remember mother and forget God. Why? Because these two sacred persons, God and mother, partners in creation, in love, in sacrifice, in service, are as one. (Thomas S. Monson, Ensign, Apr. 1998, 2, 4, 6)

Motherhood thus becomes a holy calling, a sacred dedication for carrying out the Lord’s plans . . . .

This divine service of motherhood can be rendered only by mothers. It may not be passed to others. Nurses cannot do it; public nurseries cannot do it; hired help cannot do it—only mother, aided as much as may be by the loving hands of father, brothers, and sisters, can give the full needed measure of watchful care.

The mother who entrusts her child to the care of others, that she may do non-motherly work, whether for gold, for fame, or for civic service, should remember that “a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.” (Prov. 29:15.) In our day the Lord has said that unless parents teach their children the doctrines of the Church “the sin be upon the heads of the parents.” (D&C 68:25.)

Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind. It places her who honors its holy calling and service next to the angels. To you mothers in Israel we say God bless and protect you, and give you the strength and courage, the faith and knowledge, the holy love and consecration to duty, that shall enable you to fill to the fullest measure the sacred calling which is yours. (Heber J. Grant, J. Reuben Clark, Jr., David O. McKay, in Messages of the First Presidency, 6:178)

And some final words of peace for a troubled world:

The least likely things in the world may happen, but “my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed [from thee].” After all, he has, he reminds us, “graven thee upon the palms of my hands” (1 Ne. 21:16). Considering the incomprehensible cost of the Crucifixion, Christ is not going to turn his back on us now.

The Lord has probably spoken enough such comforting words to supply the whole universe, it would seem, and yet we see all around us unhappy Latter-day Saints, worried Latter-day Saints, and gloomy Latter-day Saints into whose troubled hearts not one of these innumerable consoling words seems to be allowed to enter. In fact, I think some of us must have that remnant of Puritan heritage still with us that says it is somehow wrong to be comforted or helped, that we are supposed to be miserable about something.

Consider, for example, the Savior’s benediction upon his disciples even as he moved toward the pain and agony of Gethsemane and Calvary. On that very night, the night of the greatest suffering that has ever taken place in the world or that ever will take place, the Savior said, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. . . . Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid” (John 14:27).

I submit to you, that may be one of the Savior’s commandments that is, even in the hearts of otherwise faithful Latter-day Saints, almost universally disobeyed; and yet I wonder whether our resistance to this invitation could be any more grievous to the Lord’s merciful heart. (Jeffrey R. Holland, Ensign, Apr. 1998, 19)