John Leon Sorenson

cursor · November 12, 2015

My dad, at 91 years old, is winding down ... but not gone yet not. He's sharp, but he's tired. Admittedly it takes substantially more energy than it used to just to write a thoughtful email. But very thoughtful are they all. I love the man, and feel absolutely blessed to have him as my father.

We currently have this group family email thing going on. Recently my youngest brother asked about Dad's early travel adventures. Did he have a car? Did he ride a horse? How did he get around?

The facts are that in 1953 (probably in March), I and Gareth Lowe, a fellow BYU student, were led by Pedro Armillas, a noted Spanish archaeologist [and a (wounded) veteran on the losing, non-Fascist, side in the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s], on an archaeological reconnaissance from Huimanguillo, Tabasco, Mexico, up into the mountains of nearby Chiapas state, looking for unreported sites. We had worked at several sites of modest significance in the lowlands during this first season of work by the New World Archaeological Foundation (funded by private Mormon money—mainly from the Marriotts). The NWAF had hired Armillas as field director. We didn’t expect to find anything archaeologically important on our trip and in fact did not. But we saw a number of small rural villages and an awful lot of trees! I have nothing good to say about the horseback riding except that it eventually got over with.

Failure to find promising results in the lowland state of Tabasco led to my making a last minute trip up into the Central Depression (basin) of Chiapas, until then unexplored by archaeologists, with Calif. lawyer Tom Ferguson, the dynamo of the Foundation, where we found over a hundred sites, some extremely important, within a ten day period. The Foundation worked for the next 50 years excavating many of those, eventually under the leadership of my buddy, Gareth, who became one of the the most respected archeologists in Mexico (without a Ph.D.). Armillas ended up an anthro. professor at U. of Illinois at Urbana. Two other “student archaeologists” on that first year’s expedition, Bill Sanders (of Harvard) and Roman Piña Chan, a native Mayan student in Mexico, both became famous archaeologists in that country.

Dad

Just thought some might be interested.

From time to time I'll post more personal interface.

[ c ]

This, by the way, is from a personal email received just yesterday.

Edited November 12, 2015 by cursor

cursor · November 12, 2015

Just today,

Curt:

Over many years you have documented my writings and other aspects of my "biography" in computer file form I deeply appreciate that. You have told me from time to time how those files can be accessed. The fact is, however, that I do not recall/know those how-tos nor even how to locate your past instructions about it. I suppose I am pretty much done adding to them.

Attached are some further pieces that I would like you to add to my "Reminiscences" file, and with that consider it closed. (My memory is now so unreliable that what more I might say is probably unreliable anyhow.)

I will have one further publication to list. In the January 2016 issue of The Ensign, the Church's magazine, a piece will appear that is a shortened version of my piece written a few years ago entitled "Mormon's Sources." I am sure this item in January will be my last publication. Besides it marks 65 years since my first publication, a nice round number to quit on. I will enter that item, when it appears, in my Resume/Publication list and send the final version to you to conclude that file.

Meanwhile some of my Christianson children and grandchildren have enquired how they can access the files you have prepared on me. (I don't mean the Sorenson Forum.) Would you please prepare a message of instruction in that regard and send it to me to forward to them?

Love, Dad

cursor · November 12, 2015

When Dad did his excursion to Mexico/Guatemala in 1953 he was a mere 29 year old freakin' kid. I can say that because on Saturday I will be a freakin' 63 years old man. What dramatic wealth to be shared? What a humble position assumed. What a man.

Edited November 12, 2015 by cursor

cursor · November 12, 2015

Just this morning Dad sent me this piece:

“Understanding” the “Real World”

John L. Sorenson

People who question the conventional and dwell on issues that involve deep thought are often criticized as being out of touch with “the real world.” Their critics believe that reality is located in soil, rain, and gravity. If that were so, no creature would be more in touch with reality than, say, a cow sinking in mud while sleet pelted the beast’s epidermis. I do not consider this to be a productive view of reality.

Many scientists operate on the assumption of these critics; they concentrate on the immediate physicality of the phenomena they investigate. Real botany (“botanizing”) would then be done in a forest, on a prairie, or perhaps in a museum with a supply of specimens from such environments. On the same logic astronomy would consist of the eyeballing of the planets or the Milky Way; one would be acting as an astronomer only while sitting at a telescope. Neither is that view helpful in getting at “the real world.”

I learned early in my own scientific training that this viewpoint makes no sense. As a student at Cal Tech trying to become a weather forecaster, I spent a bit of preliminary time examining the clouds in the sky and wetting a finger to hold up to the wind, but that was only one step above being a cow in the rain. Nor did instrumentation change the problem fundamentally. We could record more consistent raw information by putting a mechanical “finger” up to the wind to check direction and intensity. But it turned out that our preparatory education really demanded that we remove ourselves from sheer sense experiences by packaging the observations into “concepts.” For example, “fog” was a folk concept we students had all encountered as children, but what, precisely, were we now to take it to mean? How should we define it operationally in order to distinguish it from “cloud,” “dew,” “drizzle,” or “rain?” To make progress in our task we had to turn direct sense experience into abstract categories, that is, to remove ourselves and our thought from “the real world.”

More and more abstractions had to follow. Consider a concept like “cold front.” No one can eyeball a “cold front.” Such a phenomenon can be detected only by sets of indicators, like a consistent shift in wind direction along an advancing line that crosses a whole region. Similarly one does not detect “electricity” in a copper wire or “a virus” in the human body; one only organizes selected indicators, that is, “understands” relevant observations, in terms of defined concepts that the human senses cannot apprehend directly. For us would-be weather-men the essence of our training was sorting observations into categories progressively further removed from the “real world” seen simple-mindedly. Decisions, judgments, and mental compromises intervened to make “hard science” seem awfully squishy! After we had crammed the raw natural phenomena, or rather instrumented observations of the same, into defined mental containers, we would spend innumerable hours plotting the results on maps, then “analyzing” them. That consisted of asking our brains to turn the mapped, static indicators of the weather--clouds, pressures, fog, sunshine-- represented on our maps into dynamic systems of moving air masses and their boundaries.

What this “analysis” demanded was theory. As trainers pushed us toward the ability to forecast the weather, each step required theory. A theory is a statement of relationships among concepts. Theory is an even more rarified abstraction than a concept, that is, it is farther removed from sense experiences. The relationships involved in a theory can be explored and dissected only in abstract (i.e., heavily defined and limited) language. Ultimately mathematics, the most abstract language, is the language of science, but most people find it very hard to become fluent in this medium of communication.1

Naturally, what I learned in my personal experience was but a faint reflection of the problems faced in far greater detail by the corps of serious scientists of preceding generations. Nowhere is the dilemma more clearly visible than in the scientific understanding of “matter.” To lay people, matter seems to be more or less hard, heavy and at worst quite impenetrable. We are surprised and rather incredulous when we find out for the first time that matter is composed of “atoms” which in turn of consist of “electrons,” “ions,” and other particles, which are disposed in space somewhat like planets in a solar system. What the scientists are telling us is that “matter” is overwhelmingly “space” and that the “particles” are vague sorts of “forces” or “charges” which our everyday experiences do not equip us to get a good handle on, even by analogy. We just do not “know” what these things “are.”

All we are left with are some experiences or consequences of dealing with “matter” directly (a stubbed toe, a cut finger) and a shaky faith in what we are told, through a set of parables, as it were, by mysterious guys called scientists. (Science has been compared to a church, although a very powerful one, and its

practitioners are rather like priests whose rituals are enigmatic, if not fear-inspiring, to common people who approach the oracles.)

What I learned in school about how tenuous is the link between “reality,” “the weather,” and scientists’ ability to “understand” was supported by my earlier studies in physics and electrical engineering and was reinforced anew

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l. The Autumn-Winter 1973 issue of Dialogue. on science and religion, pointed with appropriate irony to the powers and limitations of our mathematics in its back cover graphic:

“and God said:

‘mv2/r = Ze2/r2; mvr = nh/2 ; (etc.; etc.)’

--and there was Light.”

when I turned to the field of archaeology and ultimately anthropology. While a neophyte archaeologist, I discovered that most of those who bore that title engaged in random conceptualizing and theorizing with little or no systematic understanding of what they were doing. Disturbingly often their potsherds became “types” which miraculously turned into “cultures” and, implicitly, “peoples” without systematic examination of the mental processing those labels had involved. (I once gave a paper at a national meeting on “The Uses of Theory in Archaeology” which drew blank stares from all but a few people.)

After a switch in my field of study, and years more of being mentored as a social anthropologist, I passed my ultimate academic rite of passage by “doing anthropology” “in the field;” ah, once more, “the real world!” Fifteen months spent in two Utah communities produced extensive files of observations of the behavior of my subject people that were reminiscent of the observing and conceptualizing I had earlier done in the meteorology lab. In addition I had a record of the actual language elicited from community participants, in which they expressed views about their own and the community’s activities and feelings. There’d been no parallel to that in meteorology!

Yet like the instrumented readings of temperature, precipitation and wind that I had dealt with in meteorology, my data on human behavior in American Fork and Santaquin were conceptually abstracted and then progressively analyzed down to some thousands of words of prose and tables called “a report” (in anthropologese, “an ethnography”). My end product was no more authentic to the original, the lives of actual people, than applesauce is to original apples, let alone to apple trees. (Or is what the anthropologist preserves the equivalent of seeds, cores and skins rather than the fruit of apples? I cannot tell.) What I had demonstrated to my professors was that I could competently perform the task of canning anthropological applesauce. When I had done that, I was accepted as a junior peer, admitted to the circle of those currently using one mode of “packing fruit” and using one set of “canning equipment” (concepts and theories), that is, a particular dialect of the language of social science abstraction. There were, and are now, other dialects beyond the scope of my experience and beyond my taste.

We must realize that a truly powerful language or “mathematics” for fully recording and analyzing human behavior, belief, and meaning is not yet even conceivable. No anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist or historian has developed an algebra or a calculus sophisticated enough to do more than grossly sketch some aspects of the complexity of human lives. What we have so far is really a kind of child’s jargon. In treating the intimately, ultimately human core

concerns, we are left with expression not notably superior to intuition, or we resort to a kind of art or poetry, as modes of apprehending and expressing the

relationships at the heart of being human. (Incidentally, I had concluded earlier that it was impossible--for me, at least-- successfully to “understand” and forecast the weather.)

Subsequent experience has continued to impress me that it is a counsel of folly to suppose that “the real world” is what we “feel,” “taste,” “hear,” etc. What does it mean to exercise senses in such a routine manner? We know that a normal infant can hear, in a sheer physical sense, as sensitively as an adult. That is, the movement of molecules through the air impinges on the eardrum of the infant precisely as on the eardrum of a grownup. But does the infant then “hear” Mozart in the same way as an adult devotee of the composer’s music? It is absurd to suppose so. Does our cow in the mud and rain “hear” Mozart if the volume is turned up on a car radio nearby?

“Culture,” that is “training” or “experience,” must intervene if a human is to share significant meanings of Mozart, or Zen, or the Gospel, with one’s fellow humans. One must become equipped with appropriate concepts and theory to order and direct one’s experience with either music or ideas in a socially useful way. This is as true of a system of musical expression as of mathematical communication. The latter must be mastered in order to permit a person to engage in effective interchange with, say, physicist Stephen Hawking about his view of the form and nature of the universe. Many of us humans can never bring ourselves to a state of mastery of the requisite language to allow us to participate fully in such discourse. It does no good for us to say, egocentrically, childishly, “Well, they are just talking nonsense. I don’t understand it.” Neither is it possible for the musically unpracticed to “interact” successfully with Mozart.

A language through which intelligent, fruitful communication can be carried on has to be built on a theory about the universe and the active elements in it. We all know people who can parrot elements of a certain language without having grasped the overarching theory (manifested as “fluency”) that sets up or informs the language system. One of the most striking dramatizations of this point comes from the biography of Helen Keller, who lacked hearing, speech and sight (especially as shown with great impact in the film, “The Miracle Worker”). She tells of the mental dynamite that went off in her consciousness in one transforming moment. She had been taught over and over, by incident after incident, components of a “language” which her teacher conveyed by hand motions which had specific referents (words, concepts) in the transmitter’s mind. But only in one overwhelming moment of insight did Keller come to realize that there was a theory behind the hand “language” that her teacher had imposed upon her (the theory said, at the least, “Things are represented by names, and these, in turn, are represented by the teacher’s sets of hand movements.”) In the same way, what a psychiatrist hopes for through the process called therapy is to substitute a new theory of behavior in the patient in place of the faulty, non-functional theory under which she or he had been operating.

Religious conversion follows the same path. It too is based on substitution of one theory by different one. Ideally a convert comprehends and adopts the new theory or religious system sufficiently to revolutionize his/her lifeway. The conversions of Alma and Saul/Paul equipped them with a totally transforming theory of life or behavior. What an LDS missionary tries to do is to communicate to contacts the rudiments of the new language2 and theory corresponding to “the restored gospel.”

Each religion begins by some sort of “prophet” proclaiming a new theory (the “religion” need not be concerned with the supernatural so long as it

promises some type of “salvation”; Hitler and Marx were such “prophets”). Of course, no two devotees end up with quite the same version of the theory (hence Thomas Jefferson’s statement, “I am a sect myself.”)

Key to any “theory” is, as we have seen, a language. Discourse is chiefly a social act. It would be useless to have a uniquely personal language, even if it were possible to conceive one. (Indeed some “insane” people may suffer from precisely that disorder.) Communication is primarily between people, not within oneself. Thus concepts and labels must be both sharable and in fact shared, if we are to escape the black hole of our own subjective state. But the content, not just the medium, of communication must be of generalized social value. What if, for instance, Nephi had begun the Book of Mormon record as in a mere diary: “Got up at sunrise, rinsed my mouth. Had some bread for first meal, then packed up the tent.” Such component acts are supremely uninteresting and insignificant, although nearly anyone could “understand” a bit about them by analogy to one’s own experiences. Certain aspects of such immediate experience would, however, be so environmentally and culturally specific that they could not be shared widely (for example, by Eskimos or Polynesians). The problem in developing a useful communicative symbolism is

to elude the dilemmas of trivialized individuality and cultural localism. The

optimal symbol set needed for the broadest human “understanding” is a

conceptual shorthand that all can have access to with relatively slight guidance.

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2. We commonly fail to understand how much of conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints demands mastery of a new language. I once wrote, ”The first discussion in the … standard missionary lesson sequence contains at least 20 terms with meanings which non-members will not have known before.” (“The Language of the Mormons: A Sociocultural Perspective,” in Conference on the Language of the Mormons 1973, BYU Language Research Center, Provo, 1973, page 3)

The language we need must be virtually childlike. Christ was obviously the

most masterful of teachers in phrasing for us parables, types, similitudes, allegories, images, metaphors, likenesses, comparisons, analogies, etc., so

universally applicable yet readily accessible that they have powerfully affected millions of persons in thousands of cultures. Other great religious prophets have some of the same merit. They have the capacity to make some things plain (at certain levels) while retaining treasures of meaning yet to be plumbed. (The language of mathematics more or less does the same thing.)

The essence of my argument so far is that the most interesting, most profound, and most powerful understanding that humans attain comes not from experiencing nature directly but from making aspects of human experience with nature (including the entire cosmos, natural as well as “supernatural”) clear to other seekers who desire to “understand.” A language is required that permits the sharing of crucial statements about relevant “facts” and “concepts.” A systematic explanation of key relationships constitutes a theory.

It may sound somewhat subversive to some Latter-day Saints to speak positively of theory. We fret in our own special way over the ”the theories of men.” (Much of our concern probably stems from inheriting in Deseret much of Yankee American culture, which is generally mistrustful of thought as against action; note the proverbial solution to a problem: “Don’t just stand there, do something.”) Contrarily, God positively commands the Latter-day Saints to “do theory,” so to speak. After all, it is as inherently human a thing to do as eating, sleeping or sex; but like those, to please God it has to be done within limits he appreciates, that is, in accordance with truth. However, my understanding of the scriptures is that God himself does not use theory; rather, “all things are before” him, that is, he operates through truth, comprehensively and exclusively, not by means of the mortal or shorthand or abstracted versions/models of truth (our theories) to which the limited human psyche condemns us.

We humans have no choice but to employ theories, just as we must employ digestion; we have no choice but to theorize, because the human mind as constituted in mortality is unable to receive knowledge with the comprehensiveness that is inherent in God’s perfected nature. And the only theories available to us are unavoidably “the theories of men.” Knowing this, God instructs us to get on with it: “Teach ye [one another] diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory . . . in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:78). We are able only to receive

knowledge “in part,” that is, contained or packaged in knowledge chunks of limited scope. Those pieces are the processed observations or “facts” which we embody as concepts--pieces which we go on to organize in our minds into larger chunks at a higher level of abstraction (compare Abraham 3:8, 16: “Where . . .two facts exist, there shall be another fact above them”). But there are limits--of scope, of association and memory capacity--on how far we can go (compare Moses 1:4-11 “behold, this one thing I show unto thee, Moses, my son, for thou art in the world”; cf. verse 35: “innumerable are they [heavenly bodies] unto man, but all things are numbered unto me”). Surely this inability of ours to grasp more than a fraction of truth is one of the reasons he calls us “little children” (D. & C. 50:40 and 78:17).3

Notice that to “understand” follows, and I suppose results from, the commanded pursuit of perfected theory. Elsewhere the saints are urged to

exercise themselves in “instruction . . . that they may be perfected in the understanding of their ministry, in theory, in principle . . . “ (D. & C. 97:13-14).

Another perspective on this inescapable limitation within which we humans are forced to operate sees its potential, rather than simply the preliminary constraints involved. D. & C. 93:35 and 33 tell us, “The elements are the tabernacle of God” and of all other spirit creations. That is, God’s purpose calls for matter to be formed into appropriate containers (“tabernacles”) in order to host spirit, because only “spirit and element, inseparably connected, [can] receive a fulness of joy.” (Compare Abraham 3:24.) I have previously referred to this process of fitting physical and spiritual forms together as “tabernacling”:

Tabernacles are concrete forms through which feelings, thoughts, meanings, intentions, and so on are manifest. The material body

is a tabernacle for an individual spirit. The nervous system is a tabernacle for perceptions, if you will. Language is a tabernacle for conceptions.

Texts and monuments are tabernacles for history. Social institutions are tabernacles for experiencing cooperative action or conflict. Tabernacles are essential. There is no life, there is no graspable meaning, no manageable substance without dealing with tabernacles. Tabernacles are like

containers for fluids. Fluids have to be confined in vessels in order to be useful. The tabernacles for [expressing] the gospel are symbols--verbal, ritual, or esthetic. I cannot understand how the gospel could be expressed

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3. Two of my favorite quotations relate to this condition facing us. Albert Einstein said, “Study, in general the pursuit of truth and beauty, is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted [not condemned!] to remain children all our lives.” And Leo Tolstoy added the caution: “It is terrible to watch a man who has the incomprehensible in his grasp, does not know what to do with it, and sits playing with a toy called God.”

except through symbols, and these symbols are . . . culturally set by different peoples [according to their differing cultural traditions].4

We now come to a refined statement of my beginning point. Molecules and gravity are part of reality, insofar as they provide a tabernacling context for

spirit--that is, for what is not usually sense-able to mortals. But apprehending the tabernacle or context through our senses is not the same as understanding the theory beyond it. Without grasping an informing theory we really do not know what is going on in “nature” or “culture” or “history,” nor can we even move helpfully toward learning their purposes.

A permanent human dilemma across the whole spectrum of our lives is how to find tabernacling language adequate to contain/convey what we feel, think or “know.” Science too, we have seen, is faced with that same dilemma. How, indeed, is a meteorologist clearly to represent the thousands of data points drawn from a variety of conceptual frameworks or sub-theories (“air pressure,” ”frontal systems,” ”jet stream,” etc.) which have arisen historically separate from each other? Experience tells us that each has practical or heuristic value. More to the point, how is a weather student to connect those frameworks or concepts together into a comprehensive, rational set of relationships? The truth of the matter is that nobody has yet perfected an overarching theory of weather capable of ordering and containing all that the smaller, historically unique containers/sub-theories express about earth’s atmosphere and its dynamics.

The same thing is true of human knowledge, say, about government. We have a hodgepodge of theories--verbal/conceptual tabernacles expressing how power is or should be controlled and employed within and by society. Socialism in many variations, capitalism, anarchy, dictatorship, democracy, etc., are among the labeled elements begging to be related. Literature and art are equally

fragmented; a vast variety of tabernacles (genres, styles, forms, media) leave the artist and observer doing catch-as-catch-can in trying to relate them.

Given this disarray in “the theories of men” it is no wonder that we are wisely cautioned by our thought-leaders against putting too much stock in any particular theory or set of concepts. Still, we are faced with God’s command to “perfect ourselves” in theory, which suggests that he is not going to do it for us. We must go on with the conceptualizing/theorizing process even while we had

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4. From “Comments,” in F. L. Tullis, editor, Mormonism, A Faith for All Peoples, Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1978, 30.

better be tentative about whatever results we obtain.5 The same holds for weather forecasting; despite the obvious inadequacies of current models,

meteorologists are obliged to do the best they can with their messy conceptual situation, for society insists that weather forecasts are required.

The dilemma of inadequate theory faces us even in relation to revelation from God. The problem is nowhere phrased more poignantly than in the Lord’s own question: “Unto what shall I liken these kingdoms, that ye may understand?” (D. & C. 88:46). “Liken” indeed, for it is only by likenings that we understand, or think we understand. We are instructed that “All things may have their likeness” (D. & C. 128:13), hence the constant reference in gospel discourse to similitudes, parables, images, tokens, emblems, representations--in short, to symbols. (I believe psychology and linguistics show the same thing, that it is by comparisons and analogues that we approach meaning, without ever arriving at finality.)

The revelatory experiences (some strong and dense, some more loosely intuitive) recorded as scripture constitute another set of “facts” organized into concepts and informed by theory. Of course revelations cannot be written down in more than skeletal form, any more than a weather report would include all the temperature and air pressure data in the hands of a meteorologist. We have brief summaries of revelatory experiences by Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Nephi, John, Joseph Smith and so on. At best we have a mere résumé of what transpired. For example, Joseph Smith’s earliest visits from Moroni consumed most of one night, yet we can read all that is recorded about them in about 30 seconds. Meanwhile Mormon tells us that not even a hundredth part of the things that Jesus taught the Nephites could be written in the record we have available.

Indeed some sacred matters literally cannot be uttered in human language, let alone written down (see 3 Nephi 26:14 and 3 Nephi 19:32-34). Moreover, any language of earthly experience is always more or less unable to delineate the full context or the content of spiritual messages and experiences (3 Nephi 5:18--“were not able to write”). We are left, then, with a comparatively few snippets of information in our short corpus of documentation of God’s dealings with humans, and it conveys light dimly on many matters which we wish were clearer to our minds. (I suppose we “haven’t thought about them enough” yet.)

The scriptures we have are a part of a larger record which one day we will

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^5. Compare Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley’s response to journalist Mike Wallace on the April 1996 television program, “60 Minutes.” Wallace said that he’d thought about what his guest had told him, but he couldn’t accept it. Hinckley’s answer was, “You just haven’t thought about it enough.”

obtain when we are readied for it. The reason for having the particular interim set of scriptures that we do have is social. Out of the vast variety of spiritual communications that humans have received from him, God sees that it is desirable to unite the saints by their agreeing on a particular set of records (“standard works”) to be socially shared. These scriptures provide a common basis for discourse and curriculum within the multilingual Church. They also serve as a basis for discourse both with people from other religious traditions and those who consider themselves irreligious but thoughtful or curious.

Put in terms used above, the scriptures are a body of materials which saints need to control as a language tabernacle for our sacred communications. Scripture study equips us with a common language through which members may pursue together the process of perfecting themselves and each other “in theory, in principle, and in doctrine.” It is not surprising that Church leaders may be sensitive to what they perceive as communicatively harmful, tangential readings of the scriptures. They feel an obligation to try to limit the variant usages of the medium of scriptural language and meaning that “go too far” from the common core. The fact is, however, that just as with any language (as the French Academy and various English teacher viewers-with-alarm ought to learn), the medium can be channeled or limited but little. The volume of the stream of communication is too great and its course too sinuous to be kept within arbitrary banks. Yet the danger of too free innovation is real, for historical experience says that dialects may form which actually inhibit communication, so concern for a certain degree of unity is not misplaced. (Note that the RLDS/Community of Christ church developed a language quite different from LDS speech; they can no longer conduct full religious discourse with us--and barely with each other--on religious matters out of our shared heritage.)

Obviously God speaks to human beings utilizing many media, tongues and cultural forms. “Know ye not that there are more nations than one? . . . And I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth? I command all men [peoples], both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall [“]write[“] the words which I speak unto them [through designated spokesmen/leaders]” (2 Nephi 29:7-11). The potential for heard/written inspirational word is thus vast. It must include the Koran, “primitive” myths, Science and Health and the Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and much more. Yet all divine communications are obviously not of equal value, at least to a particular person. I would personally be happy to trade all of the book of Leviticus for a few more words from the Savior’s Sermon on the Mount, for instance. Also, D. & C. 91 teaches us that while the writings which constitute

the Apocrypha are inspired, that is true only in part. Surely the Bible itself is not equally inspired throughout, nor the Book of Mormon, nor all general conference talks. They shade off, portion by portion, section by section, line by line, some being much more valuable (clear and powerful) than others. It is up to us to try to find the inspirational elements in a given sacred book rather than simply to say that there are none there because our own experience has failed to detect it easily.6

As the restored church spreads throughout the world, it is all the more important to be concerned that we do not break up into national, geographical, class or educational communities of discourse separated from each other. On this point I once wrote:

In the days of the major systematizers of Mormon theology [such as it is some sort of system] --Talmage, Roberts, Ballard, Widtsoe, and the young Joseph Fielding Smith--most Mormons shared a common conceptual background [from living in Deseret] and usually a single language, English. Today Saints from far-flung nations and every corner of the United States have differing educational and class backgrounds and may share little in terms of experience, ideas, and learned symbols. A growing need for unity in the world Church has been met by concentrating on basic doctrines rather than continuing to elaborate theology. In fact, Church leaders have resisted theological discussion as potentially divisive and have pressed members to phrase gospel discourse in scriptural terms.

It is important to point out that ritual increasingly serves the Church as a mode of communication that transcends the limitations of national verbal tongues:

The more universal language of the sacramental ordinance, rebirth and entry into the Church by baptism, family rituals, laying on hands, and the

temple ceremonies have been encouraged. These apply in Japan or Samoa or Switzerland as appropriately as they apply in Manti. Structured ritual is more easily shared than the specific wordy explanations of Talmage or Roberts.

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^6. Robert Lowie climaxed years of respectful, trust-building conversation between him and a Crow Indian medicine man when the latter asked the anthropologist if he wished to see “the most wonderful thing in the world.” Of course he did! Thereupon the man opened his leather medicine pouch and with evident awe displayed several polished pebbles and a few feathers, his keys to the world of spirit.

Furthermore,

Members are left to their own exegesis of these comprehensive ‘texts.’ The very universality of ritual thus ironically forces the individual into a

supremely intimate relationship with God and life’s meanings.⁷

I believe that two tendencies in Mormon life inhibit our recognition and appreciation of the role of symbols as approaches to reality. The first is the failure by most members to understand and accept the commandment that they should develop “more perfectly in theory.” The second is that even those who do appreciate that need rather often choose to press publicly their highly incomplete findings-in-process without appropriate humility about how little they know. As a consequence, our leaders have been (overly?) fearful of mis-steps by members as they learn. Yes, there have been and will be errors. But in the best of worlds, I prefer the view of Elder Hugh B. Brown:

One of the most important things in the world is freedom of the mind; from this all other freedoms spring. Such freedom is necessarily dangerous, for one cannot think right without running the risk of thinking wrong, but generally more thinking is the antidote for the evils that spring from wrong thinking.8

Yet our society may indeed need to guard against errors that would mislead those ill-prepared by lack of gospel depth to do the idealized sort of free thinking. We could do worse than to assume that in matters having to do with God and heaven the best of us is 95% ignorant, not 95% informed, as some Latter-day Saints suppose. Joseph Smith certainly got it right when he said:

It is the constitutional disposition of mankind to set up stakes and set bounds to the works and ways of the Almighty . . . . Why be so certain that you comprehend the things of God, when all things with you are so uncertain? 9

In other words, as long as we are “little children” in the things of God, we do well to avoid telling God what he should do or what he means.

_______________

⁷ “Ritual as Theology,” Sunstone 6/3 (1981): 14.

⁸ Quoted in Robert A. Rees, “A Continuing Dialogue,” Dialogue 6/1 (1971):4-7

⁹ Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith

Our love for those weak in faith who might be hurt by too hasty or over-confident speaking out of our ignorance perhaps should lead us to err on the side of caution. In time it will be possible to say things now better left unsaid because they can now only be said unclearly. A little delay in offering our possibly premature emendations or interpretations of the standard works to the body of the Church won’t hurt any of us and may help some.

I feel greatly privileged to work at understanding through those symbols by which truth is phrased among us. This life of the mind or the spirit is blessed work; it is part of serving God with all one’s “heart, might, mind and strength,” and I commend it to all. Simultaneously I commend charity for the views of others, even though this may require stressful discipline from us.

But there is a lesson that I think should inform all discussions and uses of symbols. I always had a warning for students entering my field, anthropology. To encounter that field (or perhaps any disciplined field of study) is a liberating experience for the human mind, an opener to clarifying views, an aid to improvement in theory. Only one must not believe that what is said in any field of secular thought or through the significations of its symbol is “TRUE”; none of it can ever be more than “true,” for it is only a human product and of a limited purview. A parallel is seen in what physicist James B. Conant once said,

Science, as we now have it, does not represent a stage in the unveiling of the one and only correct pattern of nature, a mirror of reality. On the contrary, the fabric of science [, as with theology,] is man-made and carries all through it marks characteristic of the weavers.

Such caution about the inadequacies of science and other theorizing do not mean that there is somehow no reality “out there” (or “in here”). There is, I am convinced, as the conceptual coomplexity of the universe witnesses. The problem is the limited mental capacities we human beings bring to the process of apperception and cognition broadly. Ralph Waldo Emerson was right, I am sure:

Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches.

But God’s instruction to the saints concerned spiritual matters; he told us to perfect ourselves in theory about all his doings, not merely about nature.

What? Can our knowledge of spiritual matter be no more perfect than our knowledge of science? Yes, that is correct. The common factor uniting both is the limitation inherent in the capacities of humans. There is a nature and there is a God. Both are “real world.” But, as Brigham Young tells us, our limited ability to understand those things is built into us as long as we are enduring this period we call mortality:

I do not believe that there is a single revelation, among the many God has given to the Church, that is perfect in its fulness. The revelations of God contain correct doctrine and principle, so far as they go; but it is impossible for the poor, weak, low, grovelling, sinful inhabitants of the earth to receive a revelation from the Almighty in all its perfections. He has to speak to us in a manner to meet the extent of our capacities . . .¹⁰

Thus we have great reason for humility in all our mental formulations--our conceptualizations, our theories, our statements--whether “scientific” or “revelational.” B. H. Roberts’ counsel, invitation and warning fits our situation well. I have used it as a closer before and do so again because it is so apt to the human condition:

Nor need we be surprised if now and then we find our predecessors, many of whom bear honored names [in science, philosophy or religion] and deserve respect and gratitude for what they achieved in making clear the truth, as they conceived it to be -- we need not be surprised if we sometimes find them mistaken in their conceptions and deductions; just as the generations who succeed us in unfolding in a larger way some of the yet unlearned truths of the Gospel, will find that we have had some misconceptions and made some wrong deductions in our day and time.¹¹

__________________

¹⁰ Discourses of Brigham Young, selected and arranged by John A. Widtsoe (Deseret Book: Salt Lake City, 1954), p. 40; from Journal of Discourses 2:314.

¹¹ New Witnesses for God, II, The Book of Mormon, Volume III ( Deseret News: Salt Lake City, 1951 [1909], pp. 503-4.

[This piece was written in July 1995 for members of my family. The present version is dated April 2015.]

Edited November 13, 2015 by cursor

strappinglad · November 12, 2015

Thanks for this. A great mind in a great man.

cursor · November 13, 2015

Yes, a very great man.

More to come ... as it will, or as it might flow.

rodheadlee · November 13, 2015

Thanks to you and your father. I appreciate his work and your effort to show us more of him.

piccione · November 13, 2015

I have appreciated the recent encouragement of your father, even though he has gotten older he is still pretty sharp. I included him in the acknowledgements of my new book just finalized today, Translation of the "Caractors" Document, which is now available in final electronic form for free at www.bookofmormoncaractorstranslation.com . One of the key discoveries in the book is the new explanation of the issue of the directions in the Book of Mormon, which is really the only basis remaining that others are proposing geographic models other than your fathers. Actually, with the new understanding, only your fathers model actually works. Along with what I determined in the Geology of the Book of Mormon, your fathers long work over these many years is definitely vindicated in my mind. Jerry Grover

cursor · November 13, 2015

Jerry ... I have downloaded your recent text. Thank you so much.

Edited November 14, 2015 by cursor

mfbukowski · November 14, 2015

Your dad is a great man, no question.

But guess what? You are clearly a world-class son as well.

mfbukowski · November 14, 2015

Just this morning Dad sent me this piece:
“Understanding” the “Real World”
John L. Sorenson

     People who question the conventional and dwell on issues that involve deep thought are often criticized as being out of touch with “the real world.” Their critics believe that reality is located in soil, rain, and gravity. If that were so, no creature would be more in touch with reality than, say, a cow sinking in mud while sleet pelted the beast’s epidermis. I do not consider this to be a productive view of reality.
     Many scientists operate on the assumption of these critics; they concentrate on the immediate physicality of the phenomena they investigate. Real botany (“botanizing”) would then be done in a forest, on a prairie, or perhaps in a museum with a supply of specimens from such environments. On the same logic astronomy would consist of the eyeballing of the planets or the Milky Way; one would be acting as an astronomer only while sitting at a telescope. Neither is that view helpful in getting at “the real world.”
     I learned early in my own scientific training that this viewpoint makes no sense. As a student at Cal Tech trying to become a weather forecaster, I spent a bit of preliminary time examining the clouds in the sky and wetting a finger to hold up to the wind, but that was only one step above being a cow in the rain. Nor did instrumentation change the problem fundamentally. We could record more consistent raw information by putting a mechanical “finger” up to the wind to check direction and intensity. But it turned out that our preparatory education really demanded that we remove ourselves from sheer sense experiences by packaging the observations into “concepts.” For example, “fog” was a folk concept we students had all encountered as children, but what, precisely, were we now to take it to mean? How should we define it operationally in order to distinguish it from “cloud,” “dew,” “drizzle,” or “rain?” To make progress in our task we had to turn direct sense experience into abstract categories, that is, to remove ourselves and our thought from “the real world.”
      More and more abstractions had to follow. Consider a concept like “cold front.” No one can eyeball a “cold front.” Such a phenomenon can be detected only by sets of indicators, like a consistent shift in wind direction along an advancing line that crosses a whole region. Similarly one does not detect “electricity” in a copper wire or “a virus” in the human body; one only organizes selected indicators, that is, “understands” relevant observations, in terms of defined concepts that the human senses cannot apprehend directly. For us would-be weather-men the essence of our training was sorting observations into categories progressively further removed from the “real world” seen simple-mindedly. Decisions, judgments, and mental compromises intervened to make “hard science” seem awfully squishy! After we had crammed the raw natural phenomena, or rather instrumented observations of the same, into defined mental containers, we would spend innumerable hours plotting the results on maps, then “analyzing” them. That consisted of asking our brains to turn the mapped, static indicators of the weather--clouds, pressures, fog, sunshine-- represented on our maps into dynamic systems of moving air masses and their boundaries.
     What this “analysis” demanded was theory. As trainers pushed us toward the ability to forecast the weather, each step required theory. A theory is a statement of relationships among concepts. Theory is an even more rarified abstraction than a concept, that is, it is farther removed from sense experiences. The relationships involved in a theory can be explored and dissected only in abstract (i.e., heavily defined and limited) language. Ultimately mathematics, the most abstract language, is the language of science, but most people find it very hard to become fluent in this medium of communication.1
     Naturally, what I learned in my personal experience was but a faint reflection of the problems faced in far greater detail by the corps of serious scientists of preceding generations. Nowhere is the dilemma more clearly visible than in the scientific understanding of “matter.” To lay people, matter seems to be more or less hard, heavy and at worst quite impenetrable. We are surprised and rather incredulous when we find out for the first time that matter is composed of “atoms” which in turn of consist of “electrons,” “ions,” and other particles, which are disposed in space somewhat like planets in a solar system. What the scientists are telling us is that “matter” is overwhelmingly “space” and that the “particles” are vague sorts of “forces” or “charges” which our everyday experiences do not equip us to get a good handle on, even by analogy. We just do not “know” what these things “are.”
All we are left with are some experiences or consequences of dealing with “matter” directly (a stubbed toe, a cut finger) and a shaky faith in what we are told, through a set of parables, as it were, by mysterious guys called scientists. (Science has been compared to a church, although a very powerful one, and its
practitioners are rather like priests whose rituals are enigmatic, if not fear-inspiring, to common people who approach the oracles.)
           What I learned in school about how tenuous is the link between “reality,” “the weather,” and scientists’ ability to “understand” was supported by my earlier studies in physics and electrical engineering and was reinforced anew
___________________
l. The Autumn-Winter 1973 issue of Dialogue. on science and religion, pointed with appropriate irony to the powers and limitations of our mathematics in its back cover graphic:
                                 “and God said:
                                 ‘mv2/r = Ze2/r2; mvr = nh/2 ; (etc.; etc.)’
                                 --and there was Light.”

when I turned to the field of archaeology and ultimately anthropology. While a neophyte archaeologist, I discovered that most of those who bore that title engaged in random conceptualizing and theorizing with little or no systematic understanding of what they were doing. Disturbingly often their potsherds became “types” which miraculously turned into “cultures” and, implicitly, “peoples” without systematic examination of the mental processing those labels had involved. (I once gave a paper at a national meeting on “The Uses of Theory in Archaeology” which drew blank stares from all but a few people.)
After a switch in my field of study, and years more of being mentored as a social anthropologist, I passed my ultimate academic rite of passage by “doing anthropology” “in the field;” ah, once more, “the real world!” Fifteen months spent in two Utah communities produced extensive files of observations of the behavior of my subject people that were reminiscent of the observing and conceptualizing I had earlier done in the meteorology lab. In addition I had a record of the actual language elicited from community participants, in which they expressed views about their own and the community’s activities and feelings. There’d been no parallel to that in meteorology!

Yet like the instrumented readings of temperature, precipitation and wind that I had dealt with in meteorology, my data on human behavior in American Fork and Santaquin were conceptually abstracted and then progressively analyzed down to some thousands of words of prose and tables called “a report” (in anthropologese, “an ethnography”). My end product was no more authentic to the original, the lives of actual people, than applesauce is to original apples, let alone to apple trees. (Or is what the anthropologist preserves the equivalent of seeds, cores and skins rather than the fruit of apples? I cannot tell.)   What I had demonstrated to my professors was that I could competently perform the task of canning anthropological applesauce. When I had done that, I was accepted as a junior peer, admitted to the circle of those currently using one mode of “packing fruit” and using one set of “canning equipment” (concepts and theories), that is, a particular dialect of the language of social science abstraction.   There were, and are now, other dialects beyond the scope of my experience and beyond my taste.
           We must realize that a truly powerful language or “mathematics” for fully recording and analyzing human behavior, belief, and meaning is not yet even conceivable. No anthropologist, sociologist, psychologist or historian has developed an algebra or a calculus sophisticated enough to do more than grossly sketch some aspects of the complexity of human lives. What we have so far is really a kind of child’s jargon. In treating the intimately, ultimately human core
concerns, we are left with expression not notably superior to intuition, or we resort to a kind of art or poetry, as modes of apprehending and expressing the
relationships at the heart of being human. (Incidentally, I had concluded earlier that it was impossible--for me, at least-- successfully to “understand” and forecast the weather.)
           Subsequent experience has continued to impress me that it is a counsel of folly to suppose that “the real world” is what we “feel,” “taste,” “hear,” etc. What does it mean to exercise senses in such a routine manner? We know that a normal infant can hear, in a sheer physical sense, as sensitively as an adult. That is, the movement of molecules through the air impinges on the eardrum of the infant precisely as on the eardrum of a grownup. But does the infant then “hear” Mozart in the same way as an adult devotee of the composer’s music? It is absurd to suppose so. Does our cow in the mud and rain “hear” Mozart if the volume is turned up on a car radio nearby?
           “Culture,” that is “training” or “experience,” must intervene if a human is to share significant meanings of Mozart, or Zen, or the Gospel, with one’s fellow humans. One must become equipped with appropriate concepts and theory to order and direct one’s experience with either music or ideas in a socially useful way. This is as true of a system of musical expression as of mathematical communication. The latter must be mastered in order to permit a person to engage in effective interchange with, say, physicist Stephen Hawking about his view of the form and nature of the universe. Many of us humans can never bring ourselves to a state of mastery of the requisite language to allow us to participate fully in such discourse. It does no good for us to say, egocentrically, childishly, “Well, they are just talking nonsense. I don’t understand it.” Neither is it possible for the musically unpracticed to “interact” successfully with Mozart.
           A language through which intelligent, fruitful communication can be carried on has to be built on a theory about the universe and the active elements in it. We all know people who can parrot elements of a certain language without having grasped the overarching theory (manifested as “fluency”) that sets up or informs the language system. One of the most striking dramatizations of this point comes from the biography of Helen Keller, who lacked hearing, speech and sight (especially as shown with great impact in the film, “The Miracle Worker”). She tells of the mental dynamite that went off in her consciousness in one transforming moment. She had been taught over and over, by incident after incident, components of a “language” which her teacher conveyed by hand motions which had specific referents (words, concepts) in the transmitter’s mind. But only in one overwhelming moment of insight did Keller come to realize that there was a theory behind the hand “language” that her teacher had imposed upon her (the theory said, at the least, “Things are represented by names, and these, in turn, are represented by the teacher’s sets of hand movements.”) In the same way, what a psychiatrist hopes for through the process called therapy is to substitute a new theory of behavior in the patient in place of the faulty, non-functional theory under which she or he had been operating.
           Religious conversion follows the same path. It too is based on substitution of one theory by different one. Ideally a convert comprehends and adopts the new theory or religious system sufficiently to revolutionize his/her lifeway. The conversions of Alma and Saul/Paul equipped them with a totally transforming theory of life or behavior. What an LDS missionary tries to do is to communicate to contacts the rudiments of the new language2 and theory corresponding to “the restored gospel.”
           Each religion begins by some sort of “prophet” proclaiming a new theory (the “religion” need not be concerned with the supernatural so long as it
promises some type of “salvation”; Hitler and Marx were such “prophets”). Of course, no two devotees end up with quite the same version of the theory (hence Thomas Jefferson’s statement, “I am a sect myself.”)
           Key to any “theory” is, as we have seen, a language. Discourse is chiefly a social act. It would be useless to have a uniquely personal language, even if it were possible to conceive one. (Indeed some “insane” people may suffer from precisely that disorder.) Communication is primarily between people, not within oneself. Thus concepts and labels must be both sharable and in fact shared, if we are to escape the black hole of our own subjective state. But the content, not just the medium, of communication must be of generalized social value. What if, for instance, Nephi had begun the Book of Mormon record as in a mere diary: “Got up at sunrise, rinsed my mouth. Had some bread for first meal, then packed up the tent.” Such component acts are supremely uninteresting and insignificant, although nearly anyone could “understand” a bit about them by analogy to one’s own experiences. Certain aspects of such immediate experience would, however, be so environmentally and culturally specific that they could not be shared widely (for example, by Eskimos or Polynesians). The problem in developing a useful communicative symbolism is
to elude the dilemmas of trivialized individuality and cultural localism. The
optimal symbol set needed for the broadest human “understanding” is a
conceptual shorthand that all can have access to with relatively slight guidance.
__________________________
2. We commonly fail to understand how much of conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints demands mastery of a new language. I once wrote, ”The first discussion in the … standard missionary lesson sequence contains at least 20 terms with meanings which non-members will not have known before.” (“The Language of the Mormons: A Sociocultural Perspective,” in Conference on the Language of the Mormons 1973, BYU Language Research Center, Provo, 1973, page 3)

The language we need must be virtually childlike. Christ was obviously the
most masterful of teachers in phrasing for us parables, types, similitudes, allegories, images, metaphors, likenesses, comparisons, analogies, etc., so
universally applicable yet readily accessible that they have powerfully affected millions of persons in thousands of cultures. Other great religious prophets have some of the same merit. They have the capacity to make some things plain (at certain levels) while retaining treasures of meaning yet to be plumbed. (The language of mathematics more or less does the same thing.)
           The essence of my argument so far is that the most interesting, most profound, and most powerful understanding that humans attain comes not from experiencing nature directly but from making aspects of human experience with nature (including the entire cosmos, natural as well as “supernatural”) clear to other seekers who desire to “understand.” A language is required that permits the sharing of crucial statements about relevant “facts” and “concepts.” A systematic explanation of key relationships constitutes a theory.
           It may sound somewhat subversive to some Latter-day Saints to speak positively of theory. We fret in our own special way over the ”the theories of men.” (Much of our concern probably stems from inheriting in Deseret much of Yankee American culture, which is generally mistrustful of thought as against action; note the proverbial solution to a problem: “Don’t just stand there, do something.”) Contrarily, God positively commands the Latter-day Saints to “do theory,” so to speak. After all, it is as inherently human a thing to do as eating, sleeping or sex; but like those, to please God it has to be done within limits he appreciates, that is, in accordance with truth. However, my understanding of the scriptures is that God himself does not use theory; rather, “all things are before” him, that is, he operates through truth, comprehensively and exclusively, not by means of the mortal or shorthand or abstracted versions/models of truth (our theories) to which the limited human psyche condemns us.
           We humans have no choice but to employ theories, just as we must employ digestion; we have no choice but to theorize, because the human mind as constituted in mortality is unable to receive knowledge with the comprehensiveness that is inherent in God’s perfected nature. And the only theories available to us are unavoidably “the theories of men.” Knowing this, God instructs us to get on with it: “Teach ye [one another] diligently and my grace shall attend you, that you may be instructed more perfectly in theory . . . in all things that pertain unto the kingdom of God, that are expedient for you to understand” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:78). We are able only to receive
knowledge “in part,” that is, contained or packaged in knowledge chunks of limited scope. Those pieces are the processed observations or “facts” which we embody as concepts--pieces which we go on to organize in our minds into larger chunks at a higher level of abstraction (compare Abraham 3:8, 16: “Where . . .two facts exist, there shall be another fact above them”). But there are limits--of scope, of association and memory capacity--on how far we can go (compare Moses 1:4-11 “behold, this one thing I show unto thee, Moses, my son, for thou art in the world”; cf. verse 35: “innumerable are they [heavenly bodies] unto man, but all things are numbered unto me”). Surely this inability of ours to grasp more than a fraction of truth is one of the reasons he calls us “little children” (D. & C. 50:40 and 78:17).3
Notice that to “understand” follows, and I suppose results from, the commanded pursuit of perfected theory. Elsewhere the saints are urged to
exercise themselves in “instruction . . . that they may be perfected in the understanding of their ministry, in theory, in principle . . . “ (D. & C. 97:13-14).
           Another perspective on this inescapable limitation within which we humans are forced to operate sees its potential, rather than simply the preliminary constraints involved. D. & C. 93:35 and 33 tell us, “The elements are the tabernacle of God” and of all other spirit creations. That is, God’s purpose calls for matter to be formed into appropriate containers (“tabernacles”) in order to host spirit, because only “spirit and element, inseparably connected, [can] receive a fulness of joy.” (Compare Abraham 3:24.) I have previously referred to this process of fitting physical and spiritual forms together as “tabernacling”:

            Tabernacles are concrete forms through which feelings, thoughts, meanings, intentions, and so on are manifest. The material body
is a tabernacle for an individual spirit. The nervous system is a tabernacle for perceptions, if you will. Language is a tabernacle for conceptions.
Texts and monuments are tabernacles for history. Social institutions are tabernacles for experiencing cooperative action or conflict. Tabernacles are essential. There is no life, there is no graspable meaning, no manageable substance without dealing with tabernacles. Tabernacles are like
containers for fluids. Fluids have to be confined in vessels in order to be useful. The tabernacles for [expressing] the gospel are symbols--verbal, ritual, or esthetic. I cannot understand how the gospel could be expressed

___________________
3. Two of my favorite quotations relate to this condition facing us. Albert Einstein said, “Study, in general the pursuit of truth and beauty, is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted [not condemned!] to remain children all our lives.” And Leo Tolstoy added the caution: “It is terrible to watch a man who has the incomprehensible in his grasp, does not know what to do with it, and sits playing with a toy called God.”
except through symbols, and these symbols are . . . culturally set by different peoples [according to their differing cultural traditions].4

           We now come to a refined statement of my beginning point. Molecules and gravity are part of reality, insofar as they provide a tabernacling context for
spirit--that is, for what is not usually sense-able to mortals. But apprehending the tabernacle or context through our senses is not the same as understanding the theory beyond it. Without grasping an informing theory we really do not know what is going on in “nature” or “culture” or “history,” nor can we even move helpfully toward learning their purposes.
           A permanent human dilemma across the whole spectrum of our lives is how to find tabernacling language adequate to contain/convey what we feel, think or “know.” Science too, we have seen, is faced with that same dilemma. How, indeed, is a meteorologist clearly to represent the thousands of data points drawn from a variety of conceptual frameworks or sub-theories (“air pressure,” ”frontal systems,” ”jet stream,” etc.) which have arisen historically separate from each other? Experience tells us that each has practical or heuristic value. More to the point, how is a weather student to connect those frameworks or concepts together into a comprehensive, rational set of relationships? The truth of the matter is that nobody has yet perfected an overarching theory of weather capable of ordering and containing all that the smaller, historically unique containers/sub-theories express about earth’s atmosphere and its dynamics.
           The same thing is true of human knowledge, say, about government. We have a hodgepodge of theories--verbal/conceptual tabernacles expressing how power is or should be controlled and employed within and by society. Socialism in many variations, capitalism, anarchy, dictatorship, democracy, etc., are among the labeled elements begging to be related. Literature and art are equally
fragmented; a vast variety of tabernacles (genres, styles, forms, media) leave the artist and observer doing catch-as-catch-can in trying to relate them.
           Given this disarray in “the theories of men” it is no wonder that we are wisely cautioned by our thought-leaders against putting too much stock in any particular theory or set of concepts. Still, we are faced with God’s command to “perfect ourselves” in theory, which suggests that he is not going to do it for us. We must go on with the conceptualizing/theorizing process even while we had
____________________
4. From “Comments,” in F. L. Tullis, editor, Mormonism, A Faith for All Peoples, Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1978, 30.

better be tentative about whatever results we obtain.5 The same holds for weather forecasting; despite the obvious inadequacies of current models,
meteorologists are obliged to do the best they can with their messy conceptual situation, for society insists that weather forecasts are required.
           The dilemma of inadequate theory faces us even in relation to revelation from God. The problem is nowhere phrased more poignantly than in the Lord’s own question: “Unto what shall I liken these kingdoms, that ye may understand?” (D. & C. 88:46). “Liken” indeed, for it is only by likenings that we understand, or think we understand. We are instructed that “All things may have their likeness” (D. & C. 128:13), hence the constant reference in gospel discourse to similitudes, parables, images, tokens, emblems, representations--in short, to symbols. (I believe psychology and linguistics show the same thing, that it is by comparisons and analogues that we approach meaning, without ever arriving at finality.)
      The revelatory experiences (some strong and dense, some more loosely intuitive) recorded as scripture constitute another set of “facts” organized into concepts and informed by theory. Of course revelations cannot be written down in more than skeletal form, any more than a weather report would include all the temperature and air pressure data in the hands of a meteorologist. We have brief summaries of revelatory experiences by Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Nephi, John, Joseph Smith and so on. At best we have a mere résumé of what transpired. For example, Joseph Smith’s earliest visits from Moroni consumed most of one night, yet we can read all that is recorded about them in about 30 seconds. Meanwhile Mormon tells us that not even a hundredth part of the things that Jesus taught the Nephites could be written in the record we have available.
Indeed some sacred matters literally cannot be uttered in human language, let alone written down (see 3 Nephi 26:14 and 3 Nephi 19:32-34). Moreover, any language of earthly experience is always more or less unable to delineate the full context or the content of spiritual messages and experiences (3 Nephi 5:18--“were not able to write”). We are left, then, with a comparatively few snippets of information in our short corpus of documentation of God’s dealings with humans, and it conveys light dimly on many matters which we wish were clearer to our minds. (I suppose we “haven’t thought about them enough” yet.)
           The scriptures we have are a part of a larger record which one day we will
____________________
^5. Compare Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley’s response to journalist Mike Wallace on the April 1996 television program, “60 Minutes.” Wallace said that he’d thought about what his guest had told him, but he couldn’t accept it. Hinckley’s answer was, “You just haven’t thought about it enough.”

obtain when we are readied for it. The reason for having the particular interim set of scriptures that we do have is social. Out of the vast variety of spiritual communications that humans have received from him, God sees that it is desirable to unite the saints by their agreeing on a particular set of records (“standard works”) to be socially shared. These scriptures provide a common basis for discourse and curriculum within the multilingual Church. They also serve as a basis for discourse both with people from other religious traditions and those who consider themselves irreligious but thoughtful or curious.
           Put in terms used above, the scriptures are a body of materials which saints need to control as a language tabernacle for our sacred communications. Scripture study equips us with a common language through which members may pursue together the process of perfecting themselves and each other “in theory, in principle, and in doctrine.” It is not surprising that Church leaders may be sensitive to what they perceive as communicatively harmful, tangential readings of the scriptures. They feel an obligation to try to limit the variant usages of the medium of scriptural language and meaning that “go too far” from the common core. The fact is, however, that just as with any language (as the French Academy and various English teacher viewers-with-alarm ought to learn), the medium can be channeled or limited but little. The volume of the stream of communication is too great and its course too sinuous to be kept within arbitrary banks. Yet the danger of too free innovation is real, for historical experience says that dialects may form which actually inhibit communication, so concern for a certain degree of unity is not misplaced. (Note that the RLDS/Community of Christ church developed a language quite different from LDS speech; they can no longer conduct full religious discourse with us--and barely with each other--on religious matters out of our shared heritage.)
           Obviously God speaks to human beings utilizing many media, tongues and cultural forms. “Know ye not that there are more nations than one? . . . And I bring forth my word unto the children of men, yea, even upon all the nations of the earth? I command all men [peoples], both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall [“]write[“] the words which I speak unto them [through designated spokesmen/leaders]” (2 Nephi 29:7-11).   The potential for heard/written inspirational word is thus vast. It must include the Koran, “primitive” myths, Science and Health and the Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and much more. Yet all divine communications are obviously not of equal value, at least to a particular person. I would personally be happy to trade all of the book of Leviticus for a few more words from the Savior’s Sermon on the Mount, for instance. Also, D. & C. 91 teaches us that while the writings which constitute
the Apocrypha are inspired, that is true only in part. Surely the Bible itself is not equally inspired throughout, nor the Book of Mormon, nor all general conference talks. They shade off, portion by portion, section by section, line by line, some being much more valuable (clear and powerful) than others. It is up to us to try to find the inspirational elements in a given sacred book rather than simply to say that there are none there because our own experience has failed to detect it easily.6
           As the restored church spreads throughout the world, it is all the more important to be concerned that we do not break up into national, geographical, class or educational communities of discourse separated from each other. On this point I once wrote:

In the days of the major systematizers of Mormon theology [such as it is some sort of system] --Talmage, Roberts, Ballard, Widtsoe, and the young Joseph Fielding Smith--most Mormons shared a common conceptual background [from living in Deseret] and usually a single language, English. Today Saints from far-flung nations and every corner of the United States have differing educational and class backgrounds and may share little in terms of experience, ideas, and learned symbols. A growing need for unity in the world Church has been met by concentrating on basic doctrines rather than continuing to elaborate theology. In fact, Church leaders have resisted theological discussion as potentially divisive and have pressed members to phrase gospel discourse in scriptural terms.

It is important to point out that ritual increasingly serves the Church as a mode of communication that transcends the limitations of national verbal tongues:

The more universal language of the sacramental ordinance, rebirth and entry into the Church by baptism, family rituals, laying on hands, and the
temple ceremonies have been encouraged. These apply in Japan or Samoa or Switzerland as appropriately as they apply in Manti. Structured ritual is more easily shared than the specific wordy explanations of Talmage or Roberts.
___________________
^6. Robert Lowie climaxed years of respectful, trust-building conversation between him and a Crow Indian medicine man when the latter asked the anthropologist if he wished to see “the most wonderful thing in the world.” Of course he did! Thereupon the man opened his leather medicine pouch and with evident awe displayed several polished pebbles and a few feathers, his keys to the world of spirit.

Furthermore,

Members are left to their own exegesis of these comprehensive ‘texts.’      The very universality of ritual thus ironically forces the individual into a
supremely intimate relationship with God and life’s meanings.⁷

           I believe that two tendencies in Mormon life inhibit our recognition and appreciation of the role of symbols as approaches to reality. The first is the failure by most members to understand and accept the commandment that they should develop “more perfectly in theory.” The second is that even those who do appreciate that need rather often choose to press publicly their highly incomplete findings-in-process without appropriate humility about how little they know. As a consequence, our leaders have been (overly?) fearful of mis-steps by members as they learn. Yes, there have been and will be errors. But in the best of worlds, I prefer the view of Elder Hugh B. Brown:

One of the most important things in the world is freedom of the mind; from this all other freedoms spring. Such freedom is necessarily dangerous, for one cannot think right without running the risk of thinking wrong, but generally more thinking is the antidote for the evils that spring from wrong thinking.8

Yet our society may indeed need to guard against errors that would mislead those ill-prepared by lack of gospel depth to do the idealized sort of free thinking. We could do worse than to assume that in matters having to do with God and heaven the best of us is 95% ignorant, not 95% informed, as some Latter-day Saints suppose. Joseph Smith certainly got it right when he said:

           It is the constitutional disposition of mankind to set up stakes and set bounds to the works and ways of the Almighty . . . . Why be so certain           that you comprehend the things of God, when all things with you are so uncertain? 9

In other words, as long as we are “little children” in the things of God, we do well to avoid telling God what he should do or what he means.
_______________

⁷ “Ritual as Theology,” Sunstone 6/3 (1981): 14.
⁸ Quoted in Robert A. Rees, “A Continuing Dialogue,” Dialogue 6/1 (1971):4-7
⁹ Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith

Our love for those weak in faith who might be hurt by too hasty or over-confident speaking out of our ignorance perhaps should lead us to err on the side of caution. In time it will be possible to say things now better left unsaid because they can now only be said unclearly. A little delay in offering our possibly premature emendations or interpretations of the standard works to the body of the Church won’t hurt any of us and may help some.
           I feel greatly privileged to work at understanding through those symbols by which truth is phrased among us. This life of the mind or the spirit is blessed work; it is part of serving God with all one’s “heart, might, mind and strength,” and I commend it to all. Simultaneously I commend charity for the views of others, even though this may require stressful discipline from us.
           But there is a lesson that I think should inform all discussions and uses of symbols. I always had a warning for students entering my field, anthropology. To encounter that field (or perhaps any disciplined field of study) is a liberating experience for the human mind, an opener to clarifying views, an aid to improvement in theory. Only one must not believe that what is said in any field of secular thought or through the significations of its symbol is “TRUE”; none of it can ever be more than “true,” for it is only a human product and of a   limited purview. A parallel is seen in what physicist James B. Conant once said,

Science, as we now have it, does not represent a stage in the unveiling of the one and only correct pattern of nature, a mirror of reality. On the contrary, the fabric of science [, as with theology,] is man-made and carries all through it marks characteristic of the weavers.

Such caution about the inadequacies of science and other theorizing do not mean that there is somehow no reality “out there” (or “in here”). There is, I am convinced, as the conceptual coomplexity of the universe witnesses. The problem is the limited mental capacities we human beings bring to the process of apperception and cognition broadly. Ralph Waldo Emerson was right, I am sure:

           Here is the world, sound as a nut, perfect, not the smallest piece of chaos left, never a stitch nor an end, not a mark of haste, or botching, or second thought; but the theory of the world is a thing of shreds and patches.

           But God’s instruction to the saints concerned spiritual matters; he told us to perfect ourselves in theory about all his doings, not merely about nature.
What? Can our knowledge of spiritual matter be no more perfect than our knowledge of science? Yes, that is correct. The common factor uniting both is the limitation inherent in the capacities of humans. There is a nature and there is a God. Both are “real world.” But, as Brigham Young tells us, our limited ability to understand those things is built into us as long as we are enduring this period we call mortality:

           I do not believe that there is a single revelation, among the many God has given to the Church, that is perfect in its fulness. The revelations of God contain correct doctrine and principle, so far as they go; but it is impossible for the poor, weak, low, grovelling, sinful inhabitants of the     earth to receive a revelation from the Almighty in all its perfections. He has to speak to us in a manner to meet the extent of our capacities . . .¹⁰

Thus we have great reason for humility in all our mental formulations--our conceptualizations, our theories, our statements--whether “scientific” or “revelational.” B. H. Roberts’ counsel, invitation and warning fits our situation well. I have used it as a closer before and do so again because it is so apt to the human condition:

Nor need we be surprised if now and then we find our predecessors, many of whom bear honored names [in science, philosophy or religion] and deserve respect and gratitude for what they achieved in making clear the truth, as they conceived it to be -- we need not be surprised if we sometimes find them mistaken in their conceptions and deductions; just as the generations who succeed us in unfolding in a larger way some of the yet unlearned truths of the Gospel, will find that we have had some misconceptions and made some wrong deductions in our day and time.¹¹
__________________
¹⁰ Discourses of Brigham Young, selected and arranged by John A. Widtsoe (Deseret Book: Salt Lake City, 1954), p. 40; from Journal of Discourses 2:314.
¹¹ New Witnesses for God, II, The Book of Mormon, Volume III ( Deseret News: Salt Lake City, 1951 [1909], pp. 503-4.

[This piece was written in July 1995 for members of my family. The present version is dated April 2015.]

What an incredible piece!!

Thanks so much for sharing that!!!

cursor · November 17, 2015

From JLS:

Some Archaeology of the Lost Civilization of My Youth

The Whale

When I was between 8 and 10, I’d guess, I made a rare trip to Logan to see a spectacle. There were not many spectacles around Cache Valley in those days, but this promised to be a real one. I can’t recall who I rode with (of course my folks never owned a car) but somehow I went. The spectacle consisted of a whale, once alive and somehow preserved on an enclosed railroad flatcar. (There was no smell of an old fish anyway.) Admission couldn’t have cost more than 20 cents because I never had more than that. As we filed through the car with it is huge corpse, a guy offered a few observations about whales in general but never said where his one came from (let alone how it got, preserved, onto this railroad car!) And that was it. But worth every penny of the admission. (Yes, we were hard up for spectacles in those days.)

A Rodeo

About the same time I found myself one night at a rodeo in Logan at the County Fair.

Again I have no idea how I got there, that is, with what friend’s family. That once was enough for the rest of my life. One after another of those wranglers climbed onto a restrained horse who then proceeded to buck wildly until the guy fell off. Nobody ever stayed on until the horse gave up. Wild enthusiasm ensued from the spectators. The whole business struck me as pretty useless. It couldn’t compare for interest with reading a good book from the Carnegie Library in town.

Softball in Smithfield

Around 1936 a cooperative community effort (funded in part, I think, by money from the federal government, that is, through the welcome New Deal of President Roosevelt) provided a new, and newly-lit, softball field for night games in the center of town. A league was constituted of make-do teams with no particular degree of skill but lots of goodwill. I and many other youths flocked there to watch the action. It was “something to do,” at a time before television was available (although people would hurry home after the game to listen to “Amos and Andy: on the radio.) And no doubt the men (but no women) benefited from the sport. Several hundred folks would show up for these games, with consequent enhancement of community spirit.

Salesmanship

As a junior in high school I had a lot of friends among all types of students and as a result was elected business manager of the yearbook, one of the student body offices (I have no recollection how that came about). I was apprenticed as an assistant the first year, but as a senior I was on my own. . The main task was to sell “advertisements” for the yearbook to merchants throughout the area. These were just courtesy ads on which we wasted little time designing and displaying. For me the horror was having to go to see the businessmen and beg them for $20 or $30 bucks for our ad fund to help pay for printing the yearbook. And I had no transportation and had four or five towns to hit up. That experience was enough to convince me that I could never be any sort of a salesman. And, fortunately, I never had to be one.

Jim Thorpe

My encyclopedia refers to this man as “the greatest American athlete of the 20^th century.” Born on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma in 1888 he played football at the Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Penn., under “Pop” Warner, who went on to be one of the leading college coaches in the U.S. Thorpe also excelled in baseball, basketball, boxing, lacrosse and swimming. In 1912 he won Olympic gold in the decathlon and pentathlon by wide margins but was denied the medals when it was discovered that he had played semi-pro baseball for a short time. He went on to become a professional football star and was the first president of the NFL. In retirement he struggled with poverty and alcoholism. In 1940 he was going around to high schools on what was known as the “lyceum circuit” putting on shows/appearances for a bit of money. He came to North Cache High that year. Our football coach, Jesse (?) Whiting knew Thorpe’s history and proposed to the (jocks”) Boosters Club (to which I belonged, inexplicably) to turn the event into an honor for him. Several tableaus were worked up where local athletes had mercury smeared on the bodies to represent Thorpe’s feats in various sports, with accompanying commentary. It all worked out well, and Thorpe was very gratified not to have to put on his usual spiel.

Movies on Campus in Logan

The summer (1941) that graduated from high school, at age 17, my brother Randall graduated from Utah State (Agricultural College in Logan, later Utah State University) in radio engineering. Because he had an in with the department, he learned of a summer job on campus that I could fill and to which he steered me as a last helpful brotherly act before he went off to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to a new job with the Navy. (His girl friend, Brenda Van Orden, followed him a couple of months later, and they were married in Hawaii, being there in November when the Japanese attacked.) I got the summer job at the college even though I was not yet a student. (I did enroll in September in the same educational track Randall had followed, radio engineering, because I didn’t know anything better to do.) The task involved was to show educational movies where requested in classrooms. I would haul a projector and film across campus to a designated classroom, set it up, run it when the teacher said to, then clean up. Unfortunately the klunky equipment was not very well developed and fairly frequently broke down. More often the fragile films would break off. I would then have hastily to rethread the broken end through the machine and start again at the point. Fortunately I had nothing to do with the ultimate repairs, which somebody else had to deal with. I am glad this was not a winter job!

Other NYA-funded jobs I did included janitoring offices in the Old Main building after hours and serving as a stockroom clerk for a U.S. Navy electronic technician training program (after the War started) who were going eventually to work on the newly invented radar equipment (which they were not allowed to even refer to). I also taught a Morse Code (for radio transmission) practice class, having attained a rather precocious knowledge of the material after only a short exposure.

These various jobs required my managing to get from my home in Smithfield to Logan, seven miles away and back again. I usually rode the interurban electric railway (Utah-Idaho Central) but hitch-hiked home in the evening. (This was at the close of the Great Depression when nearly anybody driving a car would out of consideration for those “down on their luck” give a ride when anyone “thumbed” in the approved manner and place.)

cursor · November 17, 2015

More Thought about the Gospel, According to John

(written to one of my children, but applicable to all)

I find that words alone are inadequate medium for expressing what most of us would like to communicate. Rather than to depend on words alone, I have to ask that you look at my entire life as a kind of meta-language that I at least intend to “say” some of the things about which you would like to hear as part of a “conversation” that I am unable to have. Unable, because my words do not flow readily in the style of “conversation.” I find little substantive value for me in that genre. Conversation is part of a social process that makes us think we are communicating significant ideas and information. Ideally that would always be so, but I fail to do it well in a casual context. For example, I now feel dissatisfaction with conducting business or exchanging ideas on the telephone. At my age I find it impossible to remember precisely, or even generally but accurately, what is said on such occasions.

I guess I subscribe more-or-less to the view of a character I remember from some forgotten work of fiction: an old lady said, “How can I know what I think till I see what I say?” For me, “what I say” needs to be the result of a thoughtful process, not spur-of-the-moment spiel. For example, the wording of Mormon’s Codex was the result of six to ten separate rewrites/edits by me plus up to four separate edits by others who questioned at points what I thought I was saying. And still the phrasing is at many spots a compromise that I am not particularly pleased with. I guess this inability to be utterly clear in my statements should be seen as a weakness in me, maybe “inherited” from my relations with my father and mother, with whom I never, literally never, had a genuine, substantive conversation. But in that case then it is at least my weakness, and I take full ownership of it.

It should not surprise you that I have many different perceptions than you (or any of your siblings) in what I/you recollect and infer. Rather than to try you with a “full” expression of how I have seen my life (much of which is now beyond my accurate recollection anyway), I will simply try here to present a few perspectives that I believe have escaped you, in the hope that you may be informed more beneficially.

I say both “recollect and infer” with good reason, because it appears to me that you have filled in gaps in your knowledge with inferences, as no doubt I have also. An example is your inferring that I must have had to swallow or hide certain of my ideas or to hunker down at contrary points (political or whatever) in order to “get along” at BYU. Such a picture is entirely foreign to my actual experience. I mostly enjoyed myself at the school. At no time in my 25 years at BYU did I ever feel oppressed or pressured to adhere to any majority opinion with which I disagreed, and there were a number. If my views were contradictory to some other people’s, I simply proceeded along without paying detailed attention to what anyone else opined. I considered my thinking and information as good as (and often better than) those of others. I never felt constrained by anybody else’s opinions. I felt the same at General Research, where varied opinions were a daily fact of life. I was not hired at BYU or GRC to kowtow to other people’s opinions but rather to hold and share my own informed views, and in fact to have those welcomed to the varied mix. When I was interviewed in 1969 by Joseph Fielding Smith, (because he had learned that I was teaching “anthropology),” all he really said was, “Do you know how I feel about evolution?” I said, “Yes, I do,” whereupon he said, “Do you have a testimony?” I assured him that I did. Then, “I do not presume to judge you on academic matters. That is the BYU’s business.” And that was essentially that.) I felt quite a bit of elbow room.

At the school I naturally picked as friends and colleagues where possible those with rather similar ideas and opinions, and there were plenty of those people, or at least ones with tolerant feelings toward diversity of opinions. I no doubt brushed up against others of lesser tolerance who came to resent some of my ideas, but I never allowed myself to feel any pressure. In that sense BYU was as ideal a university as any other such institution; in all universities there is more or less social pressure to be “politically correct,” however that may be defined locally, if one allows those views to be determinative of one’s own thoughts.( That reminds me of Arturo de Hoyos, a Ph.D. sociologist originally from the “wrong” side of the Texas border, in my old department at the Y; once asked if he had ever been discriminated against at the school because he was a Latino, he once replied, “No. Some people have tried to, but I wouldn’t let them.”)

One principle that I have always taken quite seriously, and that impinges on this matter, is the “Mormon Creed” that was often referred to in the late 19^th century. It said, “Let everyone mind his own business.” My interpretation of that is two fold: (1) Don’t try to “mind” a matter that is someone else’s business, that is, that is beyond your purview and responsibility; and (2) by implication, if you are actively minding what is legitimately your business, you will have little time or inclination to mind another person’s. Thus I do not waste thought in “telling” President Obama what he should be doing about some public policy; and neither do I waste time mentally advising the governor on what to do about Medicaid expansion, or Senator Lee on any number of points, because any attempted intervention by me would almost certainly not have significant effect, even if I knew more than any of them about the facts of the matter at hand. So, whom the Jazz pick as a coach, or what is happening in the Ukraine, consumes but little of my attention because I can do nothing about either. At BYU I tried to think little (but didn’t always succeed) about what my dean or the school president should do in reference to this or that issue. Occasionally, when I thought I might have some effect on matters, I spoke up with a letter to the administration, to no good end I am sure. But by normally following the general principle of the Creed I save myself a good deal of grief and frustration.

So too in regard to family. I may have had opinions and feelings about so-and-so and what he/she “ought to do” in some particular regard, but generally I have not considered it “my business” to try to intervene in this or another matter (unless specifically asked to do so). On a broader scale, the prophet Joseph Smith observed a similar principle at play: “It is the constitutional disposition of mankind to set up stakes and set bounds to the works and ways of the Almighty . . . . Why be so certain that you comprehend the things of God, when all things with you are so uncertain?“

The results may sometimes have seemed as if I did not care about others--family, friends or colleagues. That was not so. I have done what I have done, or not done what I have not done, broadly speaking having tried to do the best I could under the circumstances as I saw them. I am sorry I did not do better.

A topic on which you leave me wondering about the facts behind your inferences is in your interpreting my role as a father. It appears that you see me as more or less an unchanging being in this regard. Nowhere do you seem to credit me with some degree of learning or change; it appears that I just was what I was from the beginning. Period. Actually I began near zero in my knowledge or modeling of how to be a father. My own Dad was pretty much a model of what NOT to be or do. (But I have never felt that he was responsible for how I turned out; my life has been my own project. My choices have all been my own actions, not to be credited to or blamed on others.) I had to learn on the job, so to speak, by observing others, while wondering how I should, and even possibly could, act. Nor was there even a single useful how-to book or similar source available at that time to serve as a guide to “parenting” (a term only recently coined; a recent article in the Christian Science Monitor was entitled “Can parenting be taught?” It detailed a number of projects/efforts, all with mixed results, that have left that question without a clear answer.) If I failed to some degree, and surely I did, I have joined a large company of other imperfect fathers. (To inform my children of some of my obstacles and struggles to learn has been part of why I’ve written a series of “reminiscences.” Please read them carefully in this regard.)

I believe that an important issue it would be well for you to clarify in your own thinking is the relation of “church” to “gospel.” I feel like sketching for you my own feelings in that regard, although it will require a considerable historical excursis.

I am sure that the universe operates according to principles of truth—“the way things (really) are.” There is no other way it could operate. Our problem as less-than-perfect instruments for learning truth is to align ourselves with truth in the conduct of our lives as far as possible. A merciful God, who lives by truth alone, is concerned with facilitating our attempts at such alignment. Left largely to ourselves in thinking about such important matters, every man fumbles around a good deal. An initial key to get on a straight track in that process is to start at the beginning, that is, with God’s relationship with us as individuals. The bottom rung on the ladder of truth is the gospel. The gospel is “the good news” that Christ announced to the Jews in person: that of ourselves we cannot even find the ladder. But by following His instructions we may reach the first rung. It begins with purging ourselves of error by trusting Him as He guides us step by step. We begin by trusting His instructions that start with believing that Christ, the Son of God, the Father’s executive Head, is our effective connection to understanding the universe and that He is prepared to aid us in articulating with the cosmos. Inevitably our egos have built up idiosyncratic images of the universe (“every man walketh in his own way, and after the image of his own god, whose image is in the likeness of the world,” D & C 1:16), and we must abandon those errors before we can start over in a corrective learning process. Each and every human can be freed from error by giving up his/her mistakes and misperceptions and having their past errors in regard to light and truth set at zero. This is done through submitting to baptism, an arbitrary symbol signifying that we are starting over in life as though newborn children. By doing so we can be purified from our errors/untruths by selective course correction (“repentance”). The Light of Truth can then come from God’s Truth realm to lead us to a more accurate enlightened state. This “good news” is the big message that Christ expects his representatives to deliver to the people of the world.

This may seem like an absurdly simple-minded view of a complex situation, but I assure you that simple does not mean simple-minded. It is just the way life in the universe actually is.

Beyond becoming cleansed, error-free individuals, however, there must be a social structure on earth -- the Church of Jesus Christ – that constitutes the organizational instrument through which those who have found the gospel ladder of truth are enabled to combine their efforts in the task of supporting and “perfecting the believers,” while coordinating and administering the affairs of the earth-wide organization. The dual title of the present-day Church points to its unavoidably dual nature. On the one hand it is the Church of Jesus Christ, a perfect being, a God, whose ideal church would be perfectly in tune with truth. On the other hand it is an organization of still imperfect human beings – the Latter-day Saints – who are attempting to improve and expand the organizational structure by accessing Light and Truth from the heavenly realm as they are able to, striving to approach the ideal represented by its founder, although far from that in practice.

That dichotomy – the divine ideal simultaneous with inadequacies of the human instruments involved – means that at different times and places, the church as it is manifested in human history must take varied forms according to the cultures and environmental situations of the host peoples or nations. In ancient Israel the believers were organized at first as an extended family, then, as population grew, a tribal structure was possible as a social context for the believers. That didn’t work very well, but the evolutionary state of human society and culture offered no better alternative at that time. At the time of Jesus Christ’s appearing in the flesh among the Jews, under Roman political dominance, he organized a non-political “church” or cult as a voluntary association. But when Paul carried that same gospel to Greek-speaking peoples in the eastern Mediterranean of course he had to change somewhat the emphasis of his presentations to fit their differing thinking modes. And as “the primitive church” spread geographically and over time, the church of that day lacked the linguistic/rhetorical and technological capacity and administrative skills to carry out necessary communication and directing power among its branches, so it eventually proved non-viable.

God also allowed the Nephites of the Book of Mormon to maintain a version of his Son’s church, which operated according to different local parameters, rising, spreading and falling according to unique historical factors. And He may also have caused other groups to be organized on earth in specific locations, but neither did any of those flourish in the long run.

All these happenings were known to God beforehand (“all things are before him”) and were prophesied among men from time to time by inspired prophets. But in his economy God planned that when, at a certain time (in “the latter days”), the world’s social, economic, political and technological development would make it possible, he would cause a new/restored church to appear on earth, modeled on some of the ancient forms, that would be able to overcome the limits that had prevented previous versions of believer-associations/churches from continuing and expanding. This final church came forth at the unique spot where historical, cultural and geographical conditions would combine to enable it to endure and eventually to flourish until it would, as planned, come to “fill the whole earth.”

That was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but of course the story does not end with its founding under the leadership of Joseph Smith. Somehow, through unique socio-cultural forces, it had to become transformed into an organization that could and would carry its gospel message to all peoples. The unique position it has occupied in United States history has allowed it to ride the (now waning) wave of American expansionism as a force in the world. But it now exists on its own terms in at least 140 lands. To get to this condition Mormonism has had to follow its own unique path. The painful process of adaptation began as it attempted to find a path to viability within the United States itself. Its early career hardly boded well for its continuance, let alone its flourishing. Under Joseph Smith, in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois, his promotion of the movement’s most exotic, marginalizing features of its social structure and belief system threatened its continued existence amidst a hostile American population that would not tolerate the faith’s “oddities.” As a result Brigham Young moved the core population to the Great Basin, at that moment (1847) outside the United States (but the Mexican American War resulted in U.S. annexation of the refugees’ settlement area only two years after their arrival there). The church could not long escape the forces of “Manifest Destiny.” The Deseret Mormons were forced to accommodate bit by bit to their new political situation during the next 40 years, their pioneering period. (My Dutch colleague Walter van Beek, an Africanist anthropologist, and former stake president in the Netherlands, has written a brilliant paper on how much pioneer Utah resembled an African chiefdom, a shared though temporary structural form.)

By1890 further geographical flight was out of the question. The only course open was painful abandonment of the parochial agrarian pattern of life that had come to characterize the intermountain west in the late 19^th century, but soon would evolve away in any case. The arable land was essentially filled to capacity; it could not accommodate more immigrant farmers by that time (my own father, born in 1875, was one of that generation who could neither find place on Deseret’s crowded farmland nor obtain productive work in the still non-industrialized hinterland). The “Gathering” had come to an end. Under immense pressure from “Gentile” political and economic structure of the U.S.A., LDS Church leaders realized that no choice was open to them but to reach an accommodation with the American Establishment. Many of their leaders were “on the underground” (fugitives from prosecution), the people were severely disenfranchised, and the Church’s property was virtually all taken away by legal enactments. Under such duress the leadership was forced to implicitly strike a deal with the superior power structure. They would generally conform to the American social, political and economic formulation; in return they were granted statehood and allowed to operate as a church in the American sense of that term. The “pioneer” experiment was over.

During the next 60 years the Church slowly turned itself around, for survival’s sake giving up or muting social and doctrinal features that had been most objectionable to the greater society, and by accepting (they had no choice) “Gentile” businesses in their midst Mormons became “good American citizens” -- a minor regional ethnic group in the USA located in the area formerly called “Deseret.” By actively participating in two world wars Mormons managed to allay latent suspicions held by Americans about the genuineness of their accommodation to the “capitalist”/”free world” system. By the 1950s as a people they were in a position to be considered a harmless “ethnic” minority in the U.S.A.

One solution to local over-population and unemployment was the growth of Utah’s own industrial sector, limited though it was (Kathryn’s father, a veteran of World War I, worked at Kennecott Copper in the Salt Lake Valley all his life beginning in the 1920s). Growing commercial and transportation services around focal Salt Lake City also increased non-farm employment. A burgeoning number of second- and third-generation Mormons had already been forced to disperse to other urban areas seeking employment, especially to California and eastern cities. starting in the ‘20s and ‘30s. The same pressure to find occupations beyond agriculture also led many to embrace higher education, in accordance with one aspect of Mormon ideals. This educational alternative was pursued of necessity by my siblings; and I was the last, entering the university at Logan in 1941.

This dominant reorientation of Latter-day Saint life from farm to town and city obviously entailed many modifications to the structure of domestic life and the pattern of worship in the new context. (Just as one example, the substitution of tithing being paid in cash versus formerly in kind.) My doctoral dissertation (completed at UCLA in 1961 in social anthropology, “Industrialization and Social Change”) analyzed some of those consequences in the light of the building of the Geneva Steel plant in Utah Valley in the 1940s that transformed the quintessential rural “Mormon villages” of earlier days. The new way of life saw a highly literate population learning to cope with white-collar employment and the anonymity of urban life.

From the ‘50s forward the Church has proceeded steadily toward fulfilling its prophetic mission to carry the gospel to all the world, which would inevitably mean adapting its practices to fit into multiple cultures as a hosts. In order to do that several internal and external situations or arrangements needed to change. Two major obstacles to the rise of the Church as a global phenomenon had to be modified. The first was to adopt a new perspective: the Church had to stop trying to iterate in detail the Wasatch Front pattern of organization everywhere else that it might spread. Starting with Pres. David O. McKay, and with renewed emphasis under Presidents Spencer W. Kimball and Gordon B. Hinckley, the perspective changed to cautiously decentralize the leadership. Priesthood holders of the office of Seventy were restructured from being merely an ineffectual body scattered wherever the saints lived (I was a Seventy for 28 years, and we never knew clearly what we were to do) to a limited number of quorums of senior leaders available to assist full time the Quorum of the Twelve anyplace in the world. Many of the new Seventy were constituted as area presidencies (serving three to five year terms in a given area), organized so that every part of the world is covered. Those presidencies are tasked not only to supervise all church units in their areas but also to carry the gospel to all the non-members in their area as opportunities arise. A brilliant Chinese-American man, a former student and friend of mine (Ph.D., Oxford), is now Area President in Beijing, bearing responsibility not only for up to 25,000 members scattered in “house congregations” in mainland China but also tasked ultimately to spread the word as possible to the one-fifth or more of the world population in that area. The area president based in New Delhi (where our friend Gary Ricks from Santa Barbara was recently mission president) has not only LDS congregations under him but also another fifth of the world’s population, in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh for him and his fellows to figure out how to reach.

The second decisive change was the modification 30 years ago of the 19^th-century policy excluding Negroes/Blacks from the priesthood (no one has ever been sure where that came from or why). Only with this change, along with the structure of adaptation to local societies, could the way be opened for Mormonism to become a truly world church.

The point I make is that the Church has learned by experience, punctuated by occasional explicit revelation, to exist structurally in varied milieus, to serve its resident members, and to spread the gospel as possible to those not members in every one of at least 140 nations and territories, and beyond—Iceland as well as Singapore, Malta as much as Rarotonga, Bolivia in addition to Armenia, Mongolia (12,000 members, 10% of them returned missionaries!) and also Zimbabwe, Ghana and Kenya. Each setting has required adaptation to local political structures and strictures as well as national or local cultures. (In Israel, for instance, the sabbath day for Latter-day Saints is Saturday, the Jewish Shabat). In late-nineteenth-century Utah the central Church population had to work out compatibility with the U.S. capitalist power structure of that day, as well as subsequently with the more modern version. But nowhere is the Church “capitalist” per se or “socialist,” or “communist,” or whatever; as Jesus told Pilate, his kingdom was neither Roman nor anti-Roman nor anything else in terms of how the world structures power. As an organization today it is adaptable to any host society that allows a measure of (religious) choice to any portion of its population. This LDS adaptation has a long though checkered history beginning with the original “six” members (the number specified by New York law for a new organization). In addition to the continuous process of accommodation to U.S. society an especially noteworthy case was in East Germany, where (supposedly “capitalist”) Church authorities from Salt Lake City cultivated contacts in the communist state, even obtaining approval for constructing a temple before German unification took place. Our grandchildren as missionaries are now (or recently were) living with varied current church adaptation patterns in Argentina, Austria, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Italy, Mozambique, and Taiwan. (For example, in none of those countries is there a “Church Welfare system.”)

In every land, however, the same gospel is taught. Priesthood and Relief Society instruction manuals in recent years have featured the compiled teachings of the various presidents of the Church, beginning with Joseph Smith and continuing through Gordon B. Hinckley. Each of those compilations demonstrates an essential unity and continuity of the leaders’ teachings for over 180 years, despite the local adaptations in operational procedures such I have been discussing. Those adaptations will continue, for conditions on the ground will continue to vary from place to place and time to time.

Finally to reiterate, if after 90 years I have not articulated carefully phrased statements of what I wish to communicate to my children and others, then my best statement of those principles will have to be my life. So for me legacy time approaches. What have I learned and done that is worth the world’s remembering? A colleague wrote to me recently: “your diligent and careful work over the years [has] led to this important milestone [codex].” That is an external view. More important to me are more private life-statements, my less public satisfactions. Notably, I have married, loved and respected two fine women and in cooperation with them have helped rear many healthy, talented, respectable children and their families. I have occupied a position in society that has been contributory to civic virtue and moral values. I have helped do the world’s work in a responsible way, and yet I have left (I hope) no significant social problems in my wake. I have finished much of the work I began, and this fact gives me satisfaction. I have no major regrets but plenty of lesser ones. I have been faithful to the responsibilities I chose to take on myself, to family(ies), to my descendants and ancestors, to community, to the wider world, and to God. I am not much different in regard to issues of faith toward the end of my life than I was as a 15-year-old. Then I knew God existed and loved me. I expected, and still expect, that by adhering to crucial truths I can expect a happy outcome, “eternal life,” at the end of my mortal existence, which cannot be far away.

Dear son, may you be as blessed as I am at the end of your life.

Love, Dad

__________

[edited to correct formatting errors]

Edited November 17, 2015 by cursor

cursor · November 17, 2015

Testimony of John L. Sorenson, January 2010

A testimony is a statement of what a person knows to be true and is willing to testify before anyone in the world that he or she knows certain things to be true. There are several ways or mechanisms through which one can gain this level of knowledge, yet how one obtains that knowledge about which he or she testifies cannot be adequately explained to another person. The important thing is that the testifier is sure and convinced as he can be about a thing so that his testimony is a valid, ultimate statement. What follows is a statement of the most significant things I have learned in life. They are things I know to be true and are the foundation of the life I have lived. In my 90^th year, surely near the end of my life, I state the following with as absolute a certainty as I can be of anything--of these points. No list can, of course, include every point a person knows; these are only the major truths about which I can and do testify. Every other thing I know is less significant than these:

(1) God is a being not bound by limits of time and space, who has, through his

Experience, learned in the process of creating “worlds without number” and peopling them with his creatures. These crucial laws of the universe have allowed him to create our present world for the purpose of bringing to pass the “eternal life” of his children. That is, us.

(2) Every human being is a combination of a spirit--a unique personality that

existed before we lived on this earth—and a physical body. Together these two components combine at birth into a unified “soul.”

(3) Our spirits are offspring of God, our Father, who loves us as his children and

aims and desires to provide for our maximum joy (but the process or nature of our being born as his children we do not, and perhaps could not, understand). Thus all humans are in one sense brothers and sisters to each other.

(4) We are sent to earth by our Father according to a plan where we are to be

schooled and tested to see how well we learn, by experience to distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, truth and error.

(5) We are each born on earth under conditions calculated to carry out the individual learning we need, each a part of a stream of ancestors to whom we will always be indebted for many of our capabilities and possibilities. Families are the most immediate and influential sets of our brothers and sisters with whom we share this life an are shaped within it.

(6) Regardless of the variations in individual heritage, environment, and events

we encounter in life, there are always better-worse moral choices facing us that we must make. The stream of free-will decisions we choose to make are the primary means by which we learn, and are tested, in this school of life.

(7) Upon death the spirits of all men leave the physical body behind and enter an

intermediate “spirit world,” a condition under either relatively pleasant or unpleasant circumstances, depending on the quality of the life lived on earth.

( After a time spent in that intermediate status, all humans will be allotted a permanent (eternal) condition depending on how all they have done, said, and felt up until that time coincides with the truths of the universe.

(9) Those who merit the greatest happiness, that is those who have made choices

most consistent with Truth, will obtain eternal life, the most glorious condition attainable, by virtue of which we will have access to all God’s power and substance. Those of lesser attainment will receive (generally) pleasing conditions on a graduated scale that matches the best they had qualified themselves to receive.

(10) The essentials of God’s “plan of [our] happiness” have been revealed by

God (the only way they could be known on earth) to certain individuals (prophets) at various times in human history according to his wisdom. Most recently they were revealed again (“Restored”) to Joseph Smith between 1819 and 1844, and today are exclusively taught and administered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the successor prophets who have led that organization.

(11) A crucial element of the Restoration has been the translation of the ancient record kept by Mormon and other worthy record-keepers now known as the Book of Mormon. It was translated by Joseph Smith “by the gift and power of God” to be published to the world in English (and now in 119 other languages. My detailed study of that book over a nearly 60 year span has revealed nothing to me to call into question the spiritual assurance I have had since childhood that the book is exactly what it says of itself.

I know these things because their truthfulness has been manifested to my soul many times by the Holy Spirit, the power by which God most often manifests Himself to mortals. I invite and urge all human beings to seek to learn/know these same things for themselves by exercising faith in Jesus Christ, the Savior and Creator of the earth, repenting of their sins, being baptized, and receiving the Holy Ghost for themselves. Because of the great mercy of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, this privilege is available to all people. I stand as a witness of this fact.

Edited November 17, 2015 by cursor

cursor · November 17, 2015

“Great and Important” Changes

(Talk, 30 November 2014, Edgemont Seventh Ward)

John L. Sorenson

Some orientation is in order. My name is John Sorenson. I have lived in the Edgemont 7th ward for about 35 years. My wife, Helen Christianson, and I, having lost our first companions to death, were married going on 22 years ago, each bringing nine children to our marriage. We live on Canyon Rd across from the Senior Center. I retired from BYU as an anthropologist nearly 29 years ago.

In my years in the Church, study and personal experience assure me that the Ninth Article of Faith is profoundly true when it says: “We believe that (God) will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.” In my talk today I want to document the fact that the Church has always been subject to revelation and inspiration leading to “great and important” changes and will yet do so in the future.

The statement in the Article of Faith was made by the Prophet Joseph Smith nearly 175 years ago. Even before that great things had been revealed to change the way we think and then carry on the work in the Kingdom of God, that is, the Church. Changes began almost immediately after the initial organization. For example, Joseph Smith was initially called merely the “First Elder” of the Church. A First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles were soon established. The Church was not begun as an experiment but as the beginning of “a great and marvelous work” to be unfolded according to a plan fully known to God.

In broad terms what the Church has been becoming over its history, and must further become in the future, is:

A much larger Church, in both population and geography (D&C 65:5: it will eventually “fill the whole earth”).
A unified, manageable Church, not a mere bunch of fragmented congregations contending over authority, doctrine and a name, as happened with the New Testament church.
A Church that is more receptive and obedient to divine guidance.
A more helpful, sensitive, loving Church.
An independent and resource-rich Church (DC 78:14; “to stand independent of all other” institutions).
A Church of hard-working, participating members.

All these require frequent changes. So how does the Church change?

The same way individuals do:

By instruction, or

By experience, or by a

Combination of the two.

Examples of both modes are apparent from the beginning of Church history:

Direct instruction by revelation in detail, as in D&C 20

Experience: the Prophet Joseph Smith said in D&C 121:39, “we have learned (naively) by sad experience” how “almost all men” tend to misuse priesthood authority when it is first given to them. Of course he had had earlier been taught the same thing by the same method when he entrusted Martin Harris with the pages containing the translation of the early part of the Book of Mormon only to have Harris “lose” them. The Lord’s chastisement that resulted (D&C 3:4- and Joseph’s loss of sacred privileges profoundly shaped his subsequent relationship with the Lord.

Regarding timing: The Lord sees all and knows how fast or slowly members and leaders can make necessary, desired changes; the process is necessarily long.

A number of examples of changes the Church has chosen or had to make are instructive. They each have yielded several kinds of improvements previously mentioned.

Pioneer tithing was paid “in kind” (e, g., every tenth load of a farmer’s hay was delivered to the bishop who had to find some practical use for it). That changed to cash payments over a hundred years ago, Many other changes would have been impossible had this matter not been changed first. Now funds flow through the Church in about 150 currencies worldwide through the modern commercial banking system. (For example, on average every business day some $10 million to pay personal missionary expenses—from parents/donors, not from Church funds as such--are transmitted from Salt Lake City to some 405 mission accounts at local banks in up to 100 countries.
Planning and funding Church buildings has gone through many changes. For a long time local congregations were alone responsible for financing and designing their own facilities. About a hundred years ago the central Church chose to pay some of the cost for buildings out of tithing funds. More recently total tithing has increased, so all costs are now paid, and site and design decisions are made by a large Church building department. (On average a new Church building is authorized every day and another is completed, demanding corresponding inspiration as to the purchase of sites, drawing of plans, choice of contractors, obtaining permits, etc.) As a result greater equity, as well as general uniformity of design, prevails worldwide.
Nearly 40 years ago the Seventies were changed from being a confused body of priesthood holders in every stake to a small number of full-time general authorities who aid the First Presidency and Apostles in specific ways. (I was a Seventy for 28 years, including being one of the presidents of a stake quorum; but we were never clear on what we were to do let alone how.) Inspired reexamining of D&C 107 about the office of Seventy led to a clarification and redefinition of that calling. But that actual change could come about only when tithing payments became large enough to support up to a hundred full-time Seventies (as now). The service of the Seventies as Area authorities covering the entire world could not come about until this fundng re-configuration had taken place.
A uniform system of membership records is now used that is unique among churches. Transfers of membership records are routinely made so that members are not so likely to “fall between the cracks” upon changing residences. Of course this could not have taken place on the present scale without the use of computers.
There was no realization of the need and possibility for genealogical research and centralized temple records until 1894, when Pres. Wilford Woodruff instructed the Church by revelation that individual members were responsible for identifying persons in their own ancestral lines for vicarious temple work. Since then a stream of procedural changes in that activity has resulted in the greatest genealogical inventory (Family Search) in the world.

Now quickly, a few more:
The Aaronic Priesthood has been given to youthful males only since around 1900.
The priesthood was extended to Black members about 30 years ago. Today Africa is one of the fastest growing areas for the Church. (Last year six new stakes were organized on a single Sunday in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.) That growth would have been impossible without this change.
Seminaries and institutes date only since the ‘20s and ‘30s.
The Humanitarian Assistance fund (and resulting cooperation with other churches and agencies) is only approximately 20 years old. The missionary program expansion. (In 1946 when I received my mission
The missionary program expansion. (In 1946 when I received my mission call, after military service in World War II, there were fewer than 1500 missionaries in less than 25 missions, and neither MTCs nor any missionary teaching plan existed. Now about 1,000 missionaries are called every week to more than 400 missions.)
The “Welfare program” was first organized in 1936.
Emphasis on families.is only 20 years old. (In 1940 when I was a priest, my stake president asked me to baptize his oldest son; the idea that fathers should officiate in ordinances for their own children had not yet dawned on anybody in the Church.)
What had been in the 19^th century the Perpetual Emigration Fund had long been given up when Pres. Hinckley adapted the idea to become the Perpetual Education Fund,

... and many more . . . .

Some changes the Church has not proved ready for:

A couple of examples:

The “United Order” or principle of Consecration and Stewardship.
Around 1937 the Church bought a short wave radio station in New York heralded as “how the gospel would be preached to all the world.” It was sold about 15 years later without fanfare; the notion proved unworkable.

Some changes have occurred because precious measures proved no longer feasible.

Examples:

The ”Gathering of Israel” as a pattern of immigration to the USA.
An All-Church MIA June Conference held in Salt Lake City.
The Relief Society Magazine.
And of course plural marriage, terminated in the 1890s.
Two crucial factors underlying much change have been the increase in wealth (thus in tithing) of members and the use of more modern technology:

Examples:

From handwriting to typewriters to computers for record-keeping.
Air travel. (I spent over two months of my mission traveling to and from New Zealand on ships; there was no air travel for missionaries then). (Can you imagine a modern plan for “the city of Zion” without an airport!?

The Church today is still making “great and important” changes. It could not function and grow without change triggered by both revelation and inspiration based on experience.

Examples: Think of the revelation required to accomplish these & much more—

To identify and call 140 mission presidents every year.

To call two stake presidents and about 20 bishops each week.

To call thousands of amateur financial clerks, with virtually zero losses.

Are changes yet to come? Yes, of course. We need to stay ready!

Some things are, however, permanent: In one sense every new Church building constructed, and even more every new temple (whether in Kyiv, Brazzaviille, Córdoba, or Cebú), states to both saints and the world that the Church is there to stay.

My testimony is that great and important things are being revealed at an increasing pace and will continue to do so.

__________

[edited to improve formatting]

Edited November 17, 2015 by cursor

cursor · November 17, 2015

John L. Sorenson wrote:

I will have one further publication to [offer]. In the January 2016 issue of The Ensign, the Church's magazine, a piece will appear that is a shortened version of my piece written a few years ago entitled "Mormon's Sources." I am sure this item in January will be my last publication. Besides it marks 65 years since my first publication, a nice round number to quit on. I will enter that item, when it appears, in my Resume/Publication list and send the final version to you to conclude that file.

mfbukowski · November 17, 2015

I don't know if you realize it but that piece on experience and reality you posted earlier is as clear a statement on Mormon social constructivism as I have ever seen. I had no clue your dad is a philosopher as well as an a historian.

cursor · November 17, 2015

He is everything, mfbukowski — philosopher, historian, anthropologist, political scientist ... even meteorologist (and 'yes', he owns a degree).

mfbukowski · November 17, 2015

He is everything, mfbukowski — philosopher, historian, anthropologist, political scientist ... even meteorologist (and 'yes', he owns a degree).

But honestly- if you really understand what he wrote there, he is endorsing very sophisticated philosophical notions like the deflationary theory of truth. I think most LDS have no clue of the implications of that.

That view is the only view that makes personal revelation as "logical" as science and is what I have been trying to get across on this board for years.

Post 4 above:

I feel greatly privileged to work at understanding through those symbols by which truth is phrased among us. This life of the mind or the spirit is blessed work; it is part of serving God with all one’s “heart, might, mind and strength,” and I commend it to all. Simultaneously I commend charity for the views of others, even though this may require stressful discipline from us.
But there is a lesson that I think should inform all discussions and uses of symbols. I always had a warning for students entering my field, anthropology. To encounter that field (or perhaps any disciplined field of study) is a liberating experience for the human mind, an opener to clarifying views, an aid to improvement in theory. Only one must not believe that what is said in any field of secular thought or through the significations of its symbol is “TRUE”; none of it can ever be more than “true,” for it is only a human product and of a limited purview.

It isn't clear in that piece if those are his words or if he is quoting someone else?

The formatting is unfortunate- I know it is difficult to do that on this board.

That is a perfect statement of the "Deflationary Theory of Truth" which is incredibily difficult to explain to people not well aquainted with its basic concepts already.

cdowis · November 26, 2015

"reality"

He reminded me of how Freeman Dyson explained the reality of religion in his description of quantum mechanics-->>

"The important thing about quantum mechanics is the equations, the mathematics. If you want to understand quantum mechanics, just do the math. All the words that are spun around it don’t mean very much. It’s like playing the violin. If violinists were judged on how they spoke, it wouldn’t make much sense." --wiki

Edited November 26, 2015 by cdowis

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