Something Worth Hefting: A [Somewhat] Reformed Natural Man's Pursuit Of The Divine (Devin)

 Is it possible to be both gullible and faithless?  If you have the misfortune of being gullible, shouldn’t that attribute protect you from 'being of little faith?'  Or, on the flip side, shouldn’t one’s native cynicism be a shield against naïve, foolish gullibility?    Well, being a person who somehow possesses both attributes from time to time, I can say with great certainty that neither attribute grants immunity from the other.  Yes, I can be (and often have been) both gullible and faithless.  And no, I don’t consider either to be a strength.  Rather, they both are the sorts of ‘thorns in the flesh’ with which I have struggled my whole life.  Happily enough, I seem to be gaining a minor bit of momentum in both struggles over the past few years, but I suspect that neither challenge will completely disappear until I lay down this tabernacle of clay for the last time (an event which is hopefully quite far off, yet!).

When you have eliminated all which is impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth (Arthur Conan Doyle).

 I love this quote.  As a normal person in whom the ‘natural man’ often resides, doubt and disbelief come to me more readily than does faith or belief.  Yet this quote, taken from somebody who had little use for ‘Mormons’ or ‘Mormonism’ himself, points to one eminently rational way to find truth: through the elimination of what clearly is not!  Once you’ve done this, whatever remains is, in fact, what is.

 Let’s apply that statement to the below quote by Emma Smith, the wife of Joseph Smith: 

Joseph Smith could neither write nor dictate a coherent and well-worded letter, let alone dictate a book like the Book of Mormon.  I am satisfied that no man could have dictated the writing of the manuscripts unless he was inspired; for, when acting as his scribe, he would dictate to me hour after hour; and when returning after meals, or after interruptions, he could at once begin where he had left off.  This was a usual thing for him to do.  It would have been improbable that a learned man could do this; and, for one so ignorant and unlearned as he was, it was simply impossible (Emma Smith).

 Some have said that Emma exaggerated Joseph’s ignorance to make her argument more compelling.  Given Emma’s membership in the human race, this is entirely possible.  But, at the end of the day, no matter how biased or unbiased Emma was, we have an actual physical book.  It's something that our eyes can see.  It's something we can study and read.  To borrow a verb, it is something we definitely can heft!  So, how do we explain it? 

 Thanks to the diligent work of many historians, we now have a great deal of information at our disposal concerning the actual method[s] used in bringing the Book of Mormon into existence.  For example, we now know that for much of the time Joseph was sitting in the same room as the plates, gazing intently at a seer stone that was in the bottom of a hat.  Sometimes the plates were visible upon a tabletop.  Sometimes they were covered with a cloth.   There were no notes or any other kind of an outline before him—only a hat with a seer stone in it.   And the creative work was performed as a first draft—with only a few minor grammatical changes having taken place since. 

 I would challenge you to identify a single author anywhere on planet Earth who works this way, with his face pressed into a hat that holds a stone in it.  Similarly, I would challenge you to find any author whose first draft is also the finished book.  The bottom line is that you won’t.  Why not?  Because, given normal human limitations, it is impossible to do it this way.

 As long as I can remember I have loved stories and reading.  In my pursuit of these interests I’ve been to book signings, lectures by authors I enjoy, and other similar activities.  Thus it was that in early 1996 I decided that I was going to make my attempt to live the dream myself, to try to become an author.  I wrote lots of short stories.  I started my own online magazine of science fiction and fantasy.  I received and vetted submissions from other would-be authors for publication.  And, of course, I made the highest (to me) literary effort:  the novel. 

 I won’t lie:  the sky was more blue, the air more fresh, the future more bright when I was working on that book.  I was patient in my effort.  I read books written by famous authors about how to craft and tell a story.  I bought a character-naming sourcebook so I could give my characters names that said something about them.  I wrote, and rewrote, and then rewrote again the novel, page by page, chapter by chapter. 

 The work was incredibly hard—much harder than most work-related tasks I normally do on any given day now.  Coming up with a compelling storyline and interesting characters who were their own persons was anything but easy.  Creating believable dialogue between characters was particularly difficult (yes, their dialogue tended to sound more like philosophical speeches!).  Many days, despite hours of effort, I’d end up without anything new at all on the hard drive.  No, I couldn’t just ‘will it’ to happen!  And nothing—and I mean exactly none of it (!)—was ever remotely finished after the first, or second, or even third draft.  Everything was written multiple times: written and discarded much of the time, or written and then rewritten hundreds of times overall. 

 It took me about a year and a half to get it done, working on it almost every day.  And, in the end, all I really had was the intangible satisfaction of having done it.  After all, how many people liked the fruit of my abundant labors?  Put most succinctly:  exactly two.  Who were these generous souls?  First, of course, was me, myself and I!  And second:  my brother Brandon.  Yes, Brandon read it, and, miracle of miracles, he liked it!  But ultimately, I think he liked it because yes, he first liked me.  And if this, condition A, were not in place, consequence B (“liking the novel”) would not likely have happened either.

 I spared no effort to get the novel published.  I sent the manuscript to scores of agents and publishers.  A few responded with a standard rejection form; the vast majority didn’t bother with even that.  In the end, all I accomplished in any commercial sense was to create more fodder for far too many publishers’ reject piles.  After many months of this I chose to go in a more pragmatic career direction.

 So why do I mention this fun chapter of life?  To wallow in my own failure? In the hopes of being mocked?  Nope!  I’ve already had plenty of that in this life!  Rather, when I compare this effort to the way the Book  of Mormon came to pass (!), I’m struck by the dissimilarities.  First, when I wrote my book, I had received almost 20 years of formal instruction, with a university major that required a lot of writing.  In contrast, Joseph Smith had about two years of formal instruction at the early grade-school level.  Second, as a single male with few financial obligations, I had almost limitless time to envision, think, organize, write, and rewrite.  In contrast, Joseph was a married man with plenty of real-world responsibilities which he had to regularly meet.  Additionally, he had only ~65 working days to get the whole shebang done.  And, finally, what to me is most incredible:  he did it all in a single draft.  That is clearly impossible—for anyone—no matter how ‘gifted’ or ‘imaginative’ they are.  If you added up all my edits, my unspectacular opus would have easily grossed hundreds of rewrites.  To come up with a more weighty book—one with advanced Christian thought, numerous philosophically dense speeches, with a highly complex plot involving many unique, plausible characters covering a thousand years of history over a large yet consistent geography—it is clearly impossible.

 Can  you look up, having the image of God engraven upon your countenances (Alma 5:19)?

I went to a fellow class-of ’87 classmate’s 50^th birthday celebration at Peteetneet a few years ago.  He invited lots of people from our class to this event.  Though most at the party were born about the same time, I was blown away by the broad array of appearances of my former classmates.  My conclusion?  The body—particularly one with plenty of decades of life on it—cannot lie!   It tells the truth of the life that is lived within it.  It was obvious to even the most unobservant person there (probably me!) which of my former classmates observed the Word of Wisdom and which did not. It was clear who lived with a sense of fun and life and humor and who did not.  And, admittedly less tangibly, there was a light in some eyes that was not in others.  Our bodies—in particular our countenances—tell the tale of the life that is lived in them, and the longer the life, the more telling the differences become. 

 Not so very long ago I was watching Elder Dallin H. Oaks give a talk.  As always, it was an intellectual exercise to do so.  Typical of him, the discourse was a masterpiece of organization and logic.  Quite frankly, I will also admit that I found the talk to be a bit dry!  Just prior to this particular speech Elder Oaks  had come under attack for some unpopular views that he had on marriage and gender.  Many people had said very unfavorable things about him.  As I watched him that day, I had a sudden burst of mental clarity coupled with a very intense feeling.  Atypically for me, tears came to my eyes.  His style of speech was dignified and elegant.  He obviously believed very strongly that Jesus Christ was the Son of God.  He believed in a personal atonement for every sin.  He spoke of hope, and of earnest striving to become more holy.  There was a brightness in his eye, an intellectual vigor to his words, and a clean, honest, and patient steadfastness in him that were readily apparent.  His aged yet well-maintained body bespoke the healthy, consecrated life he had lived.  I realized then with a clarity that often eludes me that he was a man on the watchtower, and whatever he was doing—whatever life he was choosing to live—I needed to choose the same.

 Let me finally (!) finish now with two favorite scriptures:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1  Cor. 13:12).

 But behold, verily I say unto you, that there are many who have been ordained among you, whom I have called but few of them are chosen.  They who are not chosen have sinned a very grievous sin, in that they are walking in darkness at noon-day (D&C 95:5-6).

 Tell me this:  do you feel a great tension between these two passages?  On the one hand, we have Paul talking of how we often muddle through this life, never seeing the whole picture, being vulnerable to deception, limited by our easily beguiled bodily senses and notably finite cranial capacity (with some of us being significantly more limited in this regard than others!).   Then, on the other hand, we have the Lord Himself practically commanding us to see the sun in the sky, to live and walk in the light, to banish darkness and unnecessary error from ourselves and choose to be chosen. 

 This, I submit, is prime among the primary challenges of this life:  to walk along a razor’s edge of sorts, with both light and darkness before and around us, with occasional flashes of inspiration, intelligence, and glory on the one hand, together with confusion, doubt, and error on the other.  Here and there our paths are clear and bright.  Once in a while—very occasionally, really—we even get a glimpse of glory, of the grandness of eternity.  But the pendulum endlessly swings:  for every such glimpse there is a concomitant waning, an ebbing: we wallow, we backtrack, we (perhaps needlessly?) founder in the dark.  But, at the end of it all, what ultimately and finally predominates in us?  The darkness, or the light?  I strongly believe that this is exactly what agency is about:  this ultimately we and we alone choose.

 I have seen and continue to see miracles.  I have seen faith, hope, and light in many people’s countenances.  I have personally experienced forgiveness, renewal, and, by the grace of God, even occasional growth (!).  Finally, I have seen consecration in action and its resulting holiness in the lives of others, and I want these same elements to be in my life and in the lives of those close to me. 

 That the grand purposes of God may prevail in my life and in the lives of those dear to me is my great prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen!