Category: Mormon Christian

“The Worker is Never Wrong”

If people have the facts they will act responsibly… when people get the facts, and they trust the facts, and they understand the facts, they do the right thing.

Before I post about anything on my blog, I will have spent a fair amount of time and energy before arriving at some conclusion. There is always the chance that I could be wrong about my conclusions. But it is not without having spent sometimes considerable effort in researching the subject. On this ongoing debate over the COVID-19 crisis, I don’t remember when I have ever struggled so hard at trying to reason my way through something only to arrive, in the end, baffled.

Centuries from now when some alien race is sorting through the remains of our fallen civilization and they run across my journal entry from this day in the year 2020, they can be amused at my confusion over the COVID pandemic that seemed to mark the beginning of the end of the race known as humanly. Until then I write this for my own future reflection as I continue to hold out relentless hope for our species. 😊

First, to be clear, here is what I am NOT saying:

  • I am not saying that there is no viral threat.
  • I’m not saying that the threat of a pandemic should not be taken seriously or that we should not act decisively when such a threat presents itself.
  • I am not suggesting we ignore or downplay what should be learned from history.
    If our present circumstances inspire you to do nothing else, go watch or read up on the flu pandemic of 1918 to grasp how serious a thing a pandemic can be. This is not the kind of thing that should be taken lightly.

The horns of the dilemma I am wrestling with lie in trying to determine greatest threat between the current COVID-19 pandemic on the one hand, and the threat of loss to constitutional rights on the other.

Now, while you have your history book open, turn to 27 Feb 1933 in Germany. This is the date the Reichstag building was set afire. This was a critical point in German (and world) history where we see the beginning of a deterioration of important liberties for the German people.

I’m no historian, but having read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I am familiar with some of the dangers that one man in power can inflict upon humanity. A brief perusal of Nazi Germany on Wikipedia reveals some key points of history that we would be wise not to forget. As it relates to loss of liberties, see if you can identify any similarities from the following excerpt and what we may see in our current day:

“Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch communist, was found guilty of starting the blaze [of the Reichstag building that was set afire]. Hitler proclaimed that the arson marked the start of a communist uprising. The Reichstag Fire Decree, imposed on 28 February 1933, rescinded most civil liberties, including rights of assembly and freedom of the press. The decree also allowed the police to detain people indefinitely without charges. The legislation was accompanied by a propaganda campaign that led to public support for the measure…

In March 1933, the Enabling Act, an amendment to the Weimar Constitution, passed in the Reichstag by a vote of 444 to 94. This amendment allowed Hitler and his cabinet to pass laws—even laws that violated the constitution—without the consent of the president or the Reichstag…

On 10 May, the government seized the assets of the Social Democrats, and they were banned on 22 June. On 21 June, the SA raided the offices of the German National People’s Party – their former coalition partners – and they disbanded on 29 June. The remaining major political parties followed suit. On 14 July 1933 Germany became a one-party state with the passage of a law decreeing the NSDAP [Nazi Party] to be the sole legal party in Germany. The founding of new parties was also made illegal, and all remaining political parties which had not already been dissolved were banned. The Enabling Act would subsequently serve as the legal foundation for the dictatorship the NSDAP established.”

Nazi Germany, Wikipedia (emphasis mine)

The article goes on. I leave it to the reader to read into it further. It will not be time wasted. Some key takeaways in the above example are how one public crisis, in this case, the arson of the Reichstag building, was used as a impetus to immediately rescind most civil liberties, including rights of assembly and freedom of the press etc. A few weeks later their constitution was amended to allow Hitler and his cabinet to pass laws to further violate the constitution. History shows that things continued to go downhill from there.

There are those in the more progressive or liberal camp, who fear what they see in the person of Donald Trump. A quick Google search brings up numerous articles comparing Trump to Hitler. It’s not hard to find similarities. It’s not just the similarities between the two as persons that have given rise to concern, but the similarities in their rise to power. To this, you could add this recent statement:

“’When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,’ Trump said, referring to matters of public health and police powers inside the states. The assertion was dogpiled by legal analysts as a gross and wild misreading of the constitution.”

Trump claims ‘total authority’ and attacks media in chaotic coronavirus briefing, The Guardian

Though what he really meant by this statement has been a point of debate, the implication should concern us, no matter what side of the political arena you find yourself. A loss to any of our constitutional rights is a threat to all of them. What threatens freedom of speech also stands to threaten freedom of religion, freedom to peaceably assemble, and so on. Am I suggesting that Donald Trump poses a “Hitler-like” threat to the US? A better question would be, have we created any openings in the framework of our constitution that could allow anyone with ambition and an opportunity to pose a threat to the US?

If you turn back the pages of your already opened history book to the US Constitution and Bill of Rights you will find that having experienced the abuses of tyranny, the founding fathers included checks and balances to guard against it. How cautious should we be about situations that could threaten these checks and balances? How much can a little knowledge of history help protect us from such threats?

The question that arises for me, for those who are concerned about the threat Trump may pose to our liberties, is, why is there little outcry against loss of rights, but rather only voicing support of submitting to yielding to the imposition of lock-downs? The answer, I assume, has to do with the legitimacy of a greater threat that a pandemic poses to the safety of the people. On the other hand, for those in the traditionalist or conservative camp, the greater concern appears to be that once certain rights are given up, the precedent has been set that such measures can now be imposed upon the people even when the full gravity of a threat like this (or a future) pandemic is unknown or ill-defined.

In my last article, Why I Will be Joining the Protest Tomorrow, I made a point of how “extraordinarily speculative” the threat of this “ill-defined, unproven, unknown viral threat” is. I’m aware that these are bold statements. Though I may have used different words, they reflect no more and no less than what I have heard being said by those responsible for the lock-down measures that have been imposed.

These statements by Dr. Anthony Fauci confirm that the lock-down measures were not based on models:

0:10 Reporter: I’d like to start with the question of these models which are now getting a lot of push-back in terms of their reliability when the numbers have swung 33% in just a couple of days. What do you say to Andy McCarthy in that piece?

0:26 Fauci: Well there’s a certain validity to it. I have been, and still am, and will always be somewhat reserved and skeptical about models. Because models are only as good as the assumptions that you put into the model. And those assumptions that start off when you don’t have very much data at all, or the data that you have is uncertain, that you put these assumptions in and you get these wide ranges of calculations of what might happen. You know, 100,000 to 240,000 deaths. But then as you start to accumulate data, data that’s real data, likely being influenced heavily by the mitigation programs that you put in separations, that when real data comes in, then data, in my mind, always trumps any model. And you have to modify the model and the assumptions as you get data in. So I have no problem with people who are critical of modeling, because modeling is inherently, an imperfect science. So I don’t have any quibbling with that. And you just got to make, as you collect real data, you rely more on the data than you do on the model.

1:38 Reporter: Sure. All of that makes a lot of sense. But I think one of the problems is that those models were what were used to shut down the United States economy. The fear that those numbers, when we looked at 100,000 to 240,000 people, and then that was, I should point out, including mitigation and social distancing. That was with that factored in. So that number has dropped by 33%. So I guess, you know, what kind of model is so far off that it leads us to policy making decisions, that now are having such dire consequences.

2:13 Fauci: Yea, well first I think it’s important to point out that it isn’t the model or the result of the model, that really led to the decision to have such strong mitigation programs such as physical separation. You don’t even have to look at any model. Just take a look at what happened in China. Take a look at what happened in Northern Italy, how the hospitals were completely overrun, and the draconian methods that had to be taken in China to turn down their outbreak. So I mean if I never saw a result of a model, that alone would clearly indicate that something rather significant needed to be done to prevent the spread. So again, getting back to models. And I wouldn’t argue with anybody that has a problem with a model. I inherently have problems with models.

12:44 Fauci: … we don’t know a certain fact, that we’re not sure of, is what percentage of people who are infected are those who are completely asymptomatic. I mean are there people who’ve been infected, cleared the virus, never knew they were infected, never knew they were sick. Is that 10%, 20%, 50%, we don’t know that yet. When we get anybody testing that we can do serial surveillances, of representative sections of the population, then we’ll have a better feel for that. But until then, we don’t know.

Dr. Fauci on criticism of coronavirus modeling, Apr 10, 2020

Rather than speculative models, Fauci tells us the decisions of shutting down the United States economy were based on what was observed to be happening in China. So I ask, was it “ill-defined” to base these decisions by looking at what happened in China ?

2:23 Fauci: Early on, we did not get correct information. And the incorrect information was propagated right from the beginning because you know when the first cases came out that were identified, I think on Dec 31st, in China, we became aware of this, they said that this was just animal to human, period. Now we know retrospectively that there was ongoing transmission from human to human in China, probably at least a few weeks before then. And then when we finally did get the virus here, it became clear that when we started looking at what was going on, that that was misinformation right from the beginning. So whosever fault that was, you know we’re gong to go back and take a look at that when this is all over, but clearly it was not the right information that was given to us.

Fauci discusses how China’s disinformation increased coronavirus spread, Apr 11, 2020

I’m open to accept I could be incorrect in my conclusion that the decisions about the lock-down measures have been the result of “ill-defined speculation.” It is because of these “ill-defined contours” that I believe we are seeing a wide polarizing disparity of inconsistency and contention on both sides of the “Stay in Place” vs “Open Back Up” debate.

Can the people be trusted?

Once asked how it was that he was able to govern so many people in Nauvoo with such perfect order, Joseph Smith responded, “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” (“The Organization of the Church,” Millennial Star, Nov. 15, 1851,339)

Last week I watched the April 26th press conference with New York Governor Cuomo. His trust in the people of New York to act responsibly when presented with the facts, reminded me of the this pearl of wisdom by Joseph Smith quoted above.

“If people have the facts they will act responsibly. But, they have to have the facts. They have to buy into the plan. And it really is an individual decision. Who’s taking care of your health? You are. We’re mutually dependent in that what I do can affect your health. But it really comes down to giving everybody information so people can make their own decision, and the great achievement in this period has been that when people get the facts, and they trust the facts, and they understand the facts, they do the right thing. And that is a lesson that I hope people remember when this is all over. But, we still have to remember the facts.”

New York Governor Cuomo Coronavirus News Conference, Apr 26, 2020, starting at 2:25min

This echos what Provo Mayor Michelle Kaufusi said on Sunday:

“My perspective over the last few weeks has been this: Our citizens and institutions have shown incredible trustworthiness… For now, I have been content to exercise the only power I’ve felt powerfully good about exercising in these circumstances: the power of persuasion.”

Michelle Kaufusi, Provo Mayor, Apr 26, 2020, Mayors of Utah Valley: Why no stay-at-home order, Mayor?

My opinion is that the reason we see so many hot-headed people acting erratically (on either side of whatever camp you may find yourself) are the the very reasons Cuomo explained. They either don’t have the facts, they don’t trust the facts, or they don’t understand the facts.

The truth of Cuomo’s comments can be validated by research done by Asher Israeli and Bradley Fisher titled “The Worker Is Never Wrong” (Oct 1989, Quality Progress). This research was quoted in training that I took a few years ago from the Institute of Process Excellence where they discussed how root causes for nonconforming products, rework, and so on, are often blamed on “workers” who lack discipline or do not care. The research in the article, however, notes that workers carry out their jobs well when given accurate and clear work instructions. The cause for nonconformances resides with the managers responsible for the process, not the workers. I believe there is a direct correlation to how we see workers respond to correct information and facts, and how we can expect citizens will respond to correct information.

“We arrived at this conclusion after exhaustively investigating causes of nonconformances — when workers are given accurate, clear, fully detailed work instructions, they carry out their jobs well.

Workers are responsible for the decisions they make within the framework of the work instructions. Thus worker performance is not evaluated — their decisions are.

Work instructions must be promptly updated because not following a work instruction is considered to be an improper decision.

Work instructions must be clearly written, leaving no room for misinterpretation. All elementary operating and inspection decisions are included. Criteria for acceptability are clearly stated.

This process was implemented at Israel Military Industries where 900,000 worker decisions were audited over a 27-month period. Only 205 were found to be wrong. Nonconformances dropped drastically and waiting time for process and inspection time was eliminated. For all practical purposes, roving and acceptance inspection has been eliminated.

Condensed from a 4-page article in Quality Progress

I believe Governor Cuomo was right. When people have the right facts, and they understand and trust those facts, they will act responsibly.

As I was wrapping up this post, someone shared with me an article that beautifully illustrates much of what I’ve been spending this last week trying to put into words. The article is from IntellectualTakeout.org published May 1, 2020 by Jon Miltimore titled WHO Declares Sweden’s COVID Response a Model for the World. Well worth the read. Here are a few excerpts:

Ryan said the biggest difference between Sweden and most nations is that the Swedes are encouraging voluntary participation with its citizens while focusing government resources on at risk populations…

As my colleague Dan Sanchez pointed out last week, this approach once was part of the fiber of the American system.

“Measures based on individual responsibility used to be part of the American model, too, as codified in the Bill of Rights. Yet we have developed a culture of reflexively giving up that responsibility and those rights whenever we get scared: of terrorists, of economic hardship, of a virus.”

Many seem to believe that voluntary actions are somehow less effective than government dictates, but this is simply not true. Human cooperation and voluntary action are essential ingredients to a vibrant, prosperous culture…

Whatever the future holds, the world owes Sweden thanks. The Swedes have shown us a better way. They’ve reminded us that the proper role of the state is to inform individuals and work with them, to seek voluntary action and cooperation instead of resorting to blunt force and edicts.

My hope is that the US can learn from history. There are things we should not forget. Like lessons learned from the Spanish flu in 1918, and Nazi Germany of 1933-1945. And thanks to Sweden, it looks like there are other things in this world that are worth repeating. Like giving people correct information and trusting them to voluntarily act in cooperation with each other and the state. My prayer, adopting the spirit of the famous Serenity Prayer, would be:

God grant that we may preserve the things that should not change,
Correct the things that need improved,
The courage to avoid repeating the errors of history that can destroy us,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Why I Will be Joining the Protest Tomorrow

More alarming to me than the threat of COVID-19, is the threat to our constitutional freedoms.

Last week I was invited by a friend to participate in a Freedom Walk this Saturday. This has forced me to consider if I’m truly willing to stand up for what I profess. I agree with the need to stand up for our rights, but trying to publicly justify why I’m doing it to has taken me the full week of my free time to compose my thoughts. This post is about 1680 words long, so if you want to skip all my reasoning below, I’ll give you the bottom line right here up front:

“question

More alarming to me than the threat of COVID-19, is the threat to our constitutional freedoms.

If you’re interested in my line of reasoning, read on.

First, how do I make sense of the numbers?

There are a number of mathematical models designed to predict the trajectory and seriousness of COVID-19. In researching these, I admit that some of them can be confusing for my simple mind to understand. So, let me try to narrow the problem down to the simplest terms. Lets start by saying that if I know that ten people have had this condition, and I know that one person has died (and these are the only numbers that I have), then I can use the equation that one out of every ten have died (or 10%) as the measure to base my predictions of what I might expect could happen going forward. Obviously this would be very bad.

But so far, we’ve got unknown numbers. To me it seems reasonable to assume that there is only a very small portion of the population that fall in the category of either being alarmed enough by their physical symptoms to go in and have a test done, or have taken up the offer of public testing. This leaves the denominator in the above equation as essentially unknown. We’re trying to come up with a statistical number for how great a threat this thing is, but we simply don’t know how many have had it. And it’s further complicated by the fact that many people could have had it, but they weren’t symptomatic. They didn’t get tested. They experienced it; it was mild enough that they dismissed it; they never went in and got tested; they haven’t been diagnosed; and there’s no way, therefore, to know that we ought to be including them in the denominator equation. What we do see is that as this thing has been further tested, the denominator has grown. So, where at first the prediction was that the death rate could be 4%, that number has been dropping as the denominator has grown. If you test a bunch of others and you find out that a hundred people have had it and only one person has died, then you know that the death rate that has occurred is 1%. But what if the number of people who’ve had it but dismissed it (and that number is significantly greater than anyone anticipated) turns the denominator into a thousand, and only one person has died? Well, then the death rate drops all the way down to .01%, and it’s no worse than typical seasonal flu.

It seems there is an abundance of ignorance about what the denominator ought to be. Furthermore, we have no assurance that whatever the denominator turns out to be that the history of what has happened is reliable as a predictor for what will happen. The amount of alarm over the personal threat this thing is to people is extraordinarily speculative.

But that just sets the stage. That’s the current cause of hysteria, but it’s the response to the hysteria that is particularly both unprecedented and very troubling.

Where is the greatest risk?

The way in which state and national government has responded in the United States (and national governments have responded in other countries) is more alarming to me than the condition that they’re responding to. To deny people the freedom of movement, to interfere with the ability to assemble, to compromise on rights that are spelled out in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights is particularly alarming as a coercive step by government. We’re reacting to what has been called a “pandemic” as if it were a sufficient cause for suspending civil rights and constitutional rights.

Our country divides largely into two political camps, both of them are highly charged. We have the progressive or liberal or Democratic side (which is a hodgepodge of different sorts of people), on the one hand, and the conservative or the Republican or the traditionalist group of people, on the other hand (although, again, that’s a really difficult generalization to refer to). I claim no identity with either end of this spectrum as, depending on the specific issue in question, my opinion may vary and can change as my knowledge about things changes.

Here I would like to point to the group that aligns itself with a traditionalist view, those who are satisfied that President Trump is one of them, that he’s for small government and in protecting their constitutional rights. My question is, where was the outcry from this group when we all sat and watched as Trump set in motion the measures that have been undertaken that we now see threatening the very rights that we assume he was supposed to be protecting? My guess is that they were probably sitting in stunned silence (as was I) without even being aware of what was happening to these liberties right before our very eyes.

It is interesting to observe, in retrospect, that the greatest encroachments to our freedoms in recent history have happened under Republican presidents. The USA Patriot Act, that has practically suspended our 4th Amendment, happened under George W. Bush. For those who might remember, the Patriot Act got pushed through, in an unprecedented three days, through both House and Senate (introduced in the House 23rd Oct 2001, passed in the Senate on 24th Oct, signed by George Bush on Oct 26th 2001). Watch carefully as this pandemic will also be used as justification to rush through legislation that could further threaten our liberties. For example, Utah’s bill H.B. 3009 that was recently introduced (16 Apr, 2020) and has fortunately been stalled for the moment. In essence what H.B. 3009 has proposed is to canonize, or make official, the very things that have been imposed on the public these last several weeks. In other words, this implies that the measures that have been undertaken these last several weeks were done unconstitutionally (in both the state and the nation).

I don’t point out that these encroachments to our liberties have take place under Republican presidents to accuse the conservative party as responsible for loss of our rights, but rather to show how the circumstances, with Trump as president, have played out as opposed to what we might expect if it were under someone else. Consider, for example, if the lock-down had been attempted by Obama. Would the conservative traditionalists submitted so quickly? Or would we have seen push-back and outcry at the outset? Because it was Trump, in whom there is so much trust by conservatives, his actions have been more easily tolerated.

Who to blame is not the point…

In the present circumstances, it should not matter to anyone that you trust a President. It shouldn’t matter if people consider the activities are being done by someone they regard as benign. Everything that’s happening at the moment is setting a precedent for what we can expect to see happen again in similar circumstances.

It’s our reaction to this ill-defined, unproven, unknown viral threat that has interfered with commerce, shut down businesses, confined people to homes, resulted in police going about telling groups of people that they have to break up. The idea of social distancing and crowd control isolates people and puts everyone in an extraordinary, vulnerable, and disadvantageous position because of the inability to assemble freely and the inability to move and exercise your liberties that are guaranteed by the Constitution.

Whatever it is that we think we are submitting to for necessary circumstances right now, if this proves to be no more threatening than the common flu in any given flu season, we’re establishing the precedent that public health and welfare can be guarded by the abrogation of constitutional and civil rights, in order to protect people against what may be a relatively small threat in the end. We simply don’t know what that end will be, but we’re acting as if the presence of the mere threat (with its ill-defined contours) is enough to justify all of the extraordinary measures that are currently being taken.

Because the submission to the authority of the state is “popular” — that is, the approval of President Trump’s handling of this is greater than 50% — what that means is the majority of the American people, at present, are willing to allow totalitarian steps to be taken in order to guard against an ill-defined and currently unknown natural threat that exists. That ought to alarm us more than anything else that’s currently going on. Democracy and freedom is a very delicate flower. It can be destroyed by conspiring men that we have been warned about in revelation (that addresses, specifically, the government of the United States). It may be that, in all of this, President Trump has the best of intentions. It may be that he can be trusted. However, trusting one man with the ability to do it (simply because his political views align with your political views) sets a precedent which a later President (that you do not trust and whose political views are greatly at variance with your own) can rely upon and point back to and pose the question, “Why, if it’s wrong, did you submit before? Why, if you didn’t expect this to be the role for the government to occupy in circumstances that require dramatic steps to be taken in order to guard public health, why did you not raise a protest?”
(Many ideas expressed in this article were taken from the podcast “Whipsawed“)

The Delicate Nature of Our Unsettled Existence

Imagine the earth, balanced precariously in space as it wobbles like a top on its axis, being held in place by whatever incredible combination of miraculous conditions that hold everything together.

I remember as a teenager on a family vacation in Oregon, joining my dad and uncle in a small boat where we ventured out into the ocean to try our luck at some deep sea fishing. All we caught were a few crabs before the waves started swelling higher and higher. It was quite frightening, plummeting down 30 foot high waves of water in the small fishing boat as we made our way back to shore.

I’m sure that anyone who has experienced even a remote semblance of a storm while in a boat on the ocean can appreciate what an utter helpless feeling it is to be at the mercy of the elements. How incredibly delicate and unstable are our lives in the broader perspective of things.

Imagine the earth, balanced precariously in space as it wobbles like a top on its axis, being held in place by whatever incredible combination of miraculous conditions that hold everything together. And ponder the incredibly tiny sliver of space we call our atmosphere within which we rely for our existence.

“The most striking thing about our atmosphere is that there isn’t very much of it. It extends upwards for about 190 kilometers, which might seem reasonably generous when viewed from ground level, but if you shrank the Earth to the size of standard desktop globe, it would only be about the thickness of a couple of coats of varnish.”

Bill Bryson, A Really Short History of Nearly Everything, pg 97

I’m almost finished with my reading of the Book of Enoch. Yesterday morning’s reading of chapter 101 compared our uncertain and fragile lives with man’s propensity for arrogance against God:

Examine the heaven, you sons of heaven, and all the works of the Most High; and be afraid to do evil in his presence. 2. If he closes the windows of heaven and hinders the rain and the dew from descending upon the earth because of you, what will you do? 3. Or, if he sends his anger against you (and) your deeds, is it not you who would entreat him? Because you utter bold and hard (words) against his righteousness, you shall have no peace. 4. Do you not see the sailors of the ships, how their ships are tossed up and down by the billows and are shaken by the winds, and they become anxious? 5. On this account (it is evident that) they are seized by fear, for they will discharge all their valuable property – the goods that are with them – into the sea, they think in their hearts that the sea will swallow them up and they will perish in it. 6. Is not the entire sea and all her waters and all her movements the very work of the Most High? Has he not ordered her courses of action and her waters – (indeed) her totality – with sand? 7. At his rebuke they become frightened, and she dries up then her fish die and all that is in her. But you, sinners, who are upon the earth, fear him not! 8. Did he not make the heaven and the earth and all that is in them? Who gave the knowledge of wisdom to all those who move upon the earth and in the sea? 9. Do not the sailors of the ships fear the sea? Yet the sinners do not fear the Most High.

1 En 101, Old Testamant Pseudepigrapha, James H. Charlesworth

Consider King Benjamin’s description that we are supported and preserved by God’s power moment to moment, how He lends us breath and sustains us that we may live and move and do according to our own will (Mosiah 2:21. See also Acts 17:28). Not only does God put up with our brass overconfidence in ourselves, he sustains us in the very act of our disdain for His role in supporting us day by day.

In 2 Enoch, God put it this way:

“There is no counselor and no successor, only myself, eternal, not made by hands. My unchanging thought is (my) counselor, and my word is (my) deed. And my eyes behold all things. If I turn my face away, then all falls into destruction; but if I look at it, then all is stable.”

2 Enoch (A) 33:4, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:157, emphasis mine.

All it involves for God’s spirit to “no longer strive with man” (Gen 6:3) is for Him to withdraw His gaze.

In the last few weeks a great alarm has been raised about a viral pandemic. It illustrates something about all nations and institutions: Although they may seem durable, they are all vulnerable and easily destroyed by very simple means. Like locusts destroying crops of Egypt in the story of Exodus (Ex 10:12-20), great societies are shaken through the smallest of means.

The good news is that although all this has given us a glimpse of how unstable our lives and society can be, it is also evident that God has not yet withdrawn His gaze. There is still much work yet to be done in the Lord’s vineyard (see Jacob 5:47-51). Will we be among those branches who respond favorably to the unsettling pruning, digging, cutting, moving and grafting that is currently underway?

Standing Against Authorities of the Church?

When the standard curriculum of church meetings and conferences does not go deeper than basic milk, and my craving for deeper life sustaining meat is filled by a personal study, how do I avoid the natural tendency to become prideful because I think I now know more than others?

Preparing for last week’s Sunday School lesson (yes, I’ve actually been preparing and giving a lesson during this time of quarantine), I ran across this quote by President Kimball, explaining how dangerous pride can be.

“To satisfy his own egotism, to feed his pride, to justify vain ambition, a man took a stand against the authorities of the Church. He followed the usual pattern – no apostasy at first, only superiority of knowledge with mild criticism of the brethren. He loved the brethren, he said, but they had failed to see things he saw. He was sure his interpretation was correct. He would still love the Church, he maintained, but his criticism grew and developed into ever-widening areas. He could not yield in good conscience; he had his pride. He spoke of it among his associates; he talked of it at home. His children did not accept his philosophy wholly, but their confidence was shaken in the brethren and the Church. They were frustrated and became inactive. They married out of the Church and he lost them. He later realized the folly of his position and returned to humbleness and activity, but he had lost his children.”

(Kimball, Spencer W. Faith Precedes the Miracle. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1972, p. 306.)

This caught my attention because I have questioned authorities of the church myself on this blog. These remarks by President Kimball raised a couple of questions of my own. He stated that this man’s children’s “confidence was shaken in the brethren and the Church”. The first question to cross my mind was, why is the focus on the “brethren and the Church”? Why not Christ? And where it appears I am guilty of what could be seen as questioning authority myself, my second question is, what is the difference between “taking a stand against the authorities of the Church”, and raising concerns, asking questions, or pointing out what appears to be inconsistencies between teachings in conference and scripture? What if, instead of being seen as antagonistic to authorities, my questions are sincere concerns, rooted in a desire to truly understand what it means to come unto Christ?

In a recent Address to CES Religious Educators, Elder M. Russell Ballard counseled teachers to prepare and teach in ways that will “build unwavering faith in the lives of our precious youth… Gone are the days,” he said, “when a student raised a sincere concern and a teacher bore his or her testimony as a response intended to avoid the issue. Gone are the days when students were protected from people who attacked the Church.” (An Evening with Elder M. Russell Ballard, Salt Lake Tabernacle, February 26, 2016)

Perusing back through my previous blog posts, I took note of some sincere questions that have risen from things general authorities have taught.

The question isn’t do I think I know something Elder Basset or Elder Corbridge does not. The question is, did Joseph Smith know something they do not? When what the authority of the church teaches differs from what Joseph taught or what scripture teaches, or what Christ taught, how do I reconcile that? President Joseph Fielding Smith put it this way:

“It makes no difference what is written or what anyone has said, if what has been said is in conflict with what the Lord has revealed, we can set it aside. My words, and the teachings of any other member of the Church, high or low, if they do not square with the revelations, we need not accept them. Let us have this matter clear. We have accepted the four standard works as the measuring yardsticks, or balances, by which we measure every man’s doctrine… If Joseph Fielding Smith writes something which is out of harmony with the revelations, then every member of the Church is duty bound to reject it.”

(Doctrines of Salvation, 3 vols., edited by Bruce R. McConkie [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1954-1956], 3: 203.)

Lest I be misunderstood, I agree with President Kimball in the opening quote. He is cautioning us against pride. The antidote to which, as President Benson reminded us, is humility.

When the standard curriculum of church meetings and conferences does not go deeper than basic milk, and my craving for deeper life sustaining meat is filled by a personal study, how do I avoid the natural tendency to become prideful because I think I now know more than others? Joseph Smith eluded to this very dilemma in his letter to the church from Liberty Jail (words that belong somewhere between verse 25 and 26 of our Doctrine and Covenants section 121):

“How vain and trifling have been our spirits, our conferences, our councils, our meetings, our private as well as public conversations — too low, too mean, too vulgar, too condescending for the dignified characters of the called and chosen of God, according to the purposes of His will, from before the foundation of the world! We are called to hold the keys of the mysteries of those things that have been kept hid from the foundation of the world until now. Some have tasted a little of these things, many of which are to be poured down from heaven upon the heads of babes; yea, upon the weak, obscure and despised ones of the earth. Therefore we beseech of you, brethren, that you bear with those who do not feel themselves more worthy than yourselves, while we exhort one another to a reformation with one and all both old and young, teachers and taught, both high and low, rich and poor, bond and free, male and female; let honesty and sobriety, and candor, and solemnity, and virtue, and pureness, and meekness, and simplicity crown our heads in every place and in fine, become as little children, without malice, guile or hypocrisy.”

(TPJS, p 137, emphasis mine)

In the end, when it comes to receiving light and truth from God, I don’t believe education is of any real advantage. Humility is the only real, great advantage that any soul ever possesses. On this point, I have to admit, I don’t feel in possession of any great advantage.

Author Unknown?

Must I limit my study only to what is considered canonical to find God in it?

This morning I read from the the book of John the story of Christ healing a man who was born blind. The man’s conversation with the Pharisees about his anonymous healer is enlightening. If you are not familiar with the story, the man who had been born blind was healed by the Savior on the
Sabbath. This was an act that was considered by the ruling class of the Jews as not only unlawful, but for which they had already had a confrontation with Jesus earlier (John 5) and were seeking to kill him for it. This healing on the Sabbath only added fuel to the fire. The problem was that the healed man could not identify his benefactor. After questioning the man and even the man’s parents, and after asking him again how his eyes had been opened, the man must have been exasperated, for he retorted that he had already answered them, then asked:

“’Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?’
Then they hurled insults at him and said, ‘You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.’
The man answered, ‘Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes…”

(John 9:27-30)

I paused at the reaction of the Pharisees. It made me wonder at how we often cling to our own traditional views and how unwilling we are to consider things outside our own boxes.

How does the example of the Pharisees’ response compare with words of God found in places that we may not recognize as scripture simply because we do not know the author? Can God’s word be found in books we classify as “pseudepigraphal” and reject because we do not know where it comes from?

Pseudepigrapha are falsely-attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. Many works classified as pseudipigraphal were considered by some early Christians as scripture, but were eventually rejected from the canon during christological debates in the early church. I have often wondered about what gems of enlightened wisdom are to be found in some of these writings. For example, words of past prophetic writing is rejected in pseudipigraphal works because the real author attributes the words to some important figure in the past. Yet we don’t see Moses criticized for authoring words of Jacob’s blessing to his sons in Genesis chapter 49.

Must I limit my study only to what is considered canonical to find God in it? Can my eyes be opened from sources where the mortal author is unknown? If I adopt an attitude of accepting truth from wherever it may be found, why limit myself to only one canon of scripture?

“[O]ne should accept the truth from whatever source it proceeds.”
Moses Maimonides, Jewish rabbi, physician, and philosopher, The Eight Chapters Of Maimonides On Ethics, translated by Joseph I. Gorfinkle, pg 35-36

“… Mormonism is truth, in other words the doctrine of the Latter-day Saints, is truth. … The first and fundamental principle of our holy religion is, that we believe that we have a right to embrace all, and every item of truth, without limitation or without being circumscribed or prohibited by the creeds or superstitious notions of men, or by the dominations of one another, when that truth is clearly demonstrated to our minds, and we have the highest degree of evidence of the same.”
Letter from Joseph Smith to Isaac Galland, Mar. 22, 1839, Liberty Jail, Liberty, Missouri, published in Times and Seasons, Feb. 1840, pp. 53–54; spelling and grammar modernized.

“If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.”
Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916), pg 130

In November of last year, a question arose as I was reading through the Dead Sea Scrolls. The unknown author(s) of many of these ancient documents from Qumran seems to take some amazing liberties with regard to authoritatively giving his own interpretation (often titled “pesher”) or spin on the scripture of his day. In other places the author simply declares the word of the Lord. Take this remarkable passage from cave 4, translated from fragment 4Q371-3:

“I shall praise the Lo[rd that] my meditation [might] be pleasing to Him […] [and] heart, to teach understanding […] judgment, for my word is [swee]ter than honey, [my] ton[gue] more pleasing than wine. [Every word that I speak] is truth, every utterance of my mouth, righ[teousness]. None of these testimonies shall fail, none of these fine promises perish, for all of them […] The Lord has opened my mouth, the words that I speak come from Him. His word is in me, so as to declare [… To us belong] His mercies; He shall not grant His laws to another nation; neither shall He adorn any stranger with them. Surely […] [A]braham, for He made a covenant with Jacob to be with him for all etern[ity…”
Portion 4, lines 4-9, as quoted from Dead Sea Scrolls, A New Translation, by Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr., & Edward Cook p. 334

Compare the audacious words of this author with this passage we read from Isaiah in the Bible:

I clothe the heavens with darkness
and make sackcloth its covering.
The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue,
to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.
The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears;
I have not been rebellious,
I have not turned away.
…
Because the Sovereign Lord helps me,
I will not be disgraced.
Therefore have I set my face like flint,
and I know I will not be put to shame.
He who vindicates me is near.
Who then will bring charges against me?
Let us face each other!
Who is my accuser?
Let him confront me!
It is the Sovereign Lord who helps me.
Who will condemn me?
They will all wear out like a garment;
the moths will eat them up.
Isa 50:3-9, NIV

Here Isaiah begins with words that are a direct quote from God. If you were completely unfamiliar with Isaiah and were reading this for the first time, these statement could seem quite bold (or course, it is bold even when you are familiar with Isaiah). These words not only apply to Isaiah himself, but are prophetic words that apply to Christ.

How are the words from the unknown author in the Dead Sea Scrolls different from the bold testimony we see written by Isaiah? Was this person from Qumran inspired like Isaiah (or Jeremiah, or David, or Paul)? Why couldn’t I accept these words as scripture? For me, I am inspired by these words. I feel like exclaiming, “Now that is remarkable! We don’t know where he comes from, yet he opens my eyes.”