Here are the key points the restored gospel makes possible:

1. We lived with God before this life
Our spirits weren’t created out of nothing. We existed before, and we came to earth with purpose. That one truth changes everything about why we are here.

2. The Fall was part of God’s plan
Adam and Eve didn’t ruin God’s plan. They started it. The Fall opened the way for real agency, growth, and experience.

3. God is fair to every one of His children
Every person will have the same chance to accept Jesus Christ, whether in this life or the next. Salvation isn’t limited by time, place, or culture.

4. The Atonement reaches everyone
Through the temple and the work for the dead, Christ’s atonement applies to every soul. No one is shut out because of where they were born.

5. Agency only works with real knowledge
God doesn’t judge people for things they never understood. Judgment is based on light and opportunity, not accident or circumstance.

These answers only exist because of the restoration of the gospel through Joseph Smith. Without those restored doctrines, the basic questions of why we are here, why evil exists, and how God can be just simply cannot be answered.

Why, for instance, are grace and works commonly treated as mutually exclusive approaches to our salvation and justification? And similarly, why is grace (i.e., giving what good is needed, even when that good is not deserved) often treated as an exception to what divine law requires or even as something forbidden by the demands of justice? Why is grace often assumed to be “unlawful?” What unspoken assumptions frame this way of talking? What unspoken assumptions about the nature and purpose of divine justice shape both how we ask and how we answer these questions? And might Christians in general, and Latter-day Saints in particular, have good reason to question these inherited assumptions?

My recent book, Original Grace: An Experiment in Restoration Thinking, is wholly focused on exactly these questions about God’s grace. The book is equal parts popular theology and personal narrative, particularly grounded in my own late father’s personal writings and history. In the article that follows here, I want to briefly introduce these same questions about grace and justice from a slightly different angle. The experiment is essentially the same—both the book and this article converge toward the same solution; however, the raw materials and process are slightly different.

I ask: what if some of the basic assumptions about divine justice that have long framed Christianity’s familiar “grace vs. works” debates are, ultimately, incompatible with the deepest truths our scriptures have revealed about God? And, if so, how might this change our thinking about the necessity of grace, the importance of works, and the reality of divine justice?

What if grace, rather than being barred by justice, is demanded by justice?

What if grace, rather than being a backup plan, is God’s original plan?

The Classic Debate

To start, then, I want to pull on the following thread: are we saved by grace or works?

This question—grace or works?—has long been used as a blunt wedge for separating Protestants from Catholics. This same wedge has been used to, even more emphatically, differentiate Protestants from Latter-day Saints, with Protestants positioned as defenders of grace and Latter-day Saints as defenders of works.

Now, a lot of careful and interesting work has already been done—by Protestants, Catholics, and Latter-day Saints alike—to question this popular but too-rough heuristic. I’m quite sympathetic to this work and welcome it. However, as useful as this theological work has been, I want to take a different approach to this question.

Traditionally, the “grace vs. works” debate is a debate about how, in light of our sinfulness, two apparently competing needs can be reconciled: (1) the need for sinners to be forgiven and redeemed and (2) the need for the demands of justice to be respected and fulfilled. Christ and His atoning grace are then positioned in some way as essential to the reconciliation of these competing needs.

For my purposes, the crucial thing to recognize about this debate is how the nature of Christ’s atoning work—and, thus, the whole debate about grace—turns on a set of assumptions about what justice is and what justice demands. In other words, the whole debate is framed by our assumptions about the nature and logic of God’s law.

It is fair to say, I think, that the central dramatic conflict of Jesus’s own ministry also turns on this same question: what is the nature and logic of God’s law? Or, more simply, what does justice demand?

For example, in the opening verses of Mark chapter three, we get a representative story about Jesus healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. As a group of Pharisees look on, Jesus asks the following question: “Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?” The Pharisees, though, don’t answer. Instead, “they held their peace.”

I want to take this question as a key to understanding what may be questionable about our usual approach to the “grace vs. works” debate. Jesus bluntly and directly asks the Pharisees a decisive question: “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath?” And when it comes to thinking about the nature of justice, I believe this is, quite precisely, the essential question: Is it lawful to do good?

For Jesus, the answer appears to be unequivocal and unconditional: it is always lawful (or just) to do good. In short, the law commands what is good. Justice demands what is good. And this exclusively.

Sometimes, justice requires that we do what is good. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, justice requires us to passively withhold what is good—or, even, sometimes, justice may require us to actively do what is evil.

How does this work? What underlying logic determines when justice requires what is good or, instead, evil? Far from being arbitrary, the conditional logic that informs our shared, common assumptions about the nature of justice is both rigorous and familiar. The assumed logic of justice is this: good for good and evil for evil.

If you’ve done good, then the law judges you to be deserving of what’s good. But if you’ve done evil, then the law judges you to be deserving of evil. This is only fair. This is the law. This is justice. It is only lawful to do good when what’s good is deserved. Otherwise, if good is not deserved, it is not lawful to do good. And, in fact, if evil has been done, justice itself will require that evil be done to those who are evil. Based on this understanding, moral law is essentially a mechanism for apportioning deserved rewards or punishments.

We might underline the character of this conditional logic just by repeating Jesus’s original question, but with a twist: Is it lawful to do evil? And as before, the answer we seem to take for granted is: sometimes—because we assume that justice does sometimes require that evil be returned to those who deserve evil. And it seems to me that this logic, quite explicitly, is the unquestioned frame within which all our “grace vs. works” debates have traditionally taken place.

Atonement as a Workaround

How so? Recall that the “grace vs. works” debate is itself an argument about how two competing needs can be reconciled: (1) the need for evil sinners to be redeemed, and (2) the need for the demands of justice to be respected and fulfilled. Here, the debate itself is structured by the assumption that these two needs are, in some fundamental sense, at odds and incompatible. And, then, in light of this frame, the role of Christ’s atoning grace is to accomplish—often through a kind of vast, vicarious cosmic work-around—a way of reconciling them.

From this it follows that our ideas about grace will themselves be defined in relation to this common notion of justice. If justice only sanctions giving what’s good as a deserved reward for being good, then “grace” becomes a name for still doing what is good even when that good is not deserved, even when the law, instead, would justly require that we be given the evil we deserve.

Structurally, this logic positions grace as an exception to the law. Grace is defined as an extra-judicial loophole. Christ’s death and suffering then create this exception and authorize, with some conditions, the opening of this legal loophole and, in turn, the possible salvation of sinners who, otherwise, would justly deserve evil.

As best I can tell, both sides of our traditional “grace vs. works” debates buy this basic setup without comment or disagreement. Both sides buy both this notion of justice and this notion of grace. Then, the debate itself unfolds only as a debate about the precise conditions for accessing this loophole.

The only real question at stake in the traditional debate is this: how big is this loophole? How hard is it to qualify for this gracious exception?

Taking this question as our guide, it’s not hard to plot the different positions assigned in the debate. Traditionally, Protestants are seen as arguing that access to this exception is readily available via faith alone. Latter-day Saints, on the other hand, are traditionally seen as arguing that access to this exception is narrowly restricted to those who not only have faith but also participate in the required rituals and demonstrate the requisite works.

If these positions—accurate or not—represent something like poles on opposite ends of the “grace-as-special-exception-to-the-law” spectrum, then we could also plot any number of intermediate positions between them on a sliding scale that adjusts the appropriate balance of faith and works, increasing or decreasing the accessibility of the loophole that is grace.

This, at least, is my reading of the debate’s basic structure.

An Alternative Approach

How might this reading of the debate be helpful? It may help clarify our theological options in relation to how the debate plays out.

The first option is familiar: we get disagreement and hostility within the debate’s received frame. Each side of the debate simply accepts this framing of justice and grace, together with the positions assigned to them within this frame. Then it’s just a matter of arguing, through some mix of reason and scripture, who is right and who is wrong.

The second option aims, instead, to work for reconciliation within the frame. Here, rather than disagreeing, one or more of the participants may try to show how the perceived differences between their assigned positions are really only very slight (or even non-existent). They might do this by relocating one or both of the traditions on the sliding scale of faith/works or perhaps by defining more subtly and carefully exactly what is meant in any given instance by deeply interdependent terms like “faith” and “works.”

But the possibility of a third option, really, is what interests me: neither disagreement within the framework nor agreement within the framework, but rejection of the framework itself. In the first two options, the frame itself is never called into question. Our received notion of justice as a lawful mechanism for sometimes requiring good rewards and sometimes requiring evil punishments is never called into question. Also, the corresponding definition of grace as an exception to what a just law would otherwise demand is never called into question.

My argument, though, is that this whole framework is morally suspect and that both this definition of justice and the corresponding definition of grace should be called into question.

Is it lawful to do good?

What if, instead of hesitating like Pharisees, we just immediately and unconditionally answered: yes, Lord, it is always and only lawful to do good?

A Sabbath Day Case Study

It may be possible to offer a reading of Mark 3:4 that sees Jesus’ question—“Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath?”—as only aiming to clear some local space for a compassionate exception to what the law of the Sabbath would otherwise demand. In this reading, even if the law would justly restrict what good may be done in these circumstances, what we’re given is an example of how Jesus has come to challenge that law and make some much-needed room for extrajudicial compassion. And this reading would fit neatly, then, with our assumed ideas about justice—ideas that position grace and compassion as special exceptions to what the law otherwise commands.

But on the story’s own terms, that reading of Mark 3:4 doesn’t seem obvious to me. Jesus doesn’t ask if we should find a way to do what is good even when the law would otherwise forbid it. Rather, He’s asking whether goodness is lawful. He’s asking us to rethink the underlying logic of the law in relation to what’s good.

The verses feeding into the opening of Mark 3 are occupied with this same question. When Jesus and his disciples walk “through the corn fields” on the Sabbath and “pluck the ears of corn” to eat as they pass by, they’re questioned along these same lines: “And the Pharisees said unto [Jesus], Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?” In response, Jesus declares Himself “Lord of the Sabbath” and justifies His claim with this striking statement of moral principle: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.”

Here, again, Jesus isn’t asking for a compassionate exception to the demands of justice. He is not saying that, because of their hunger, His disciples should be excused from obedience to the law. Rather, Jesus’s tack is radical and He means to uproot fundamental assumptions about the logic of the law: the law, Jesus says, was made always and only for the good of the people, not people for the sake of fulfilling the law.

Jesus isn’t carving out an exception to the law. He’s revealing the true logic that animates the law and that, thus, defines justice itself.

Love as Law

Does Jesus ever directly address what, in His view, the underlying logic of the law should look like? At the very least, it seems to me that, as Jesus gives it, the logic of the law must square with the fact that love is commanded.

As Paul puts it: “If there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” [emphasis added]. Or, as Jesus puts it: “On these two commandments”—love of God and love of neighbor—“hang all the law and the prophets” [emphasis added]. Here, again, love and compassion are not being positioned as special exceptions to what a just law would otherwise require. Rather, they’re being positioned as the substance of what justice does require.

This is the law: love even your enemies.

The law not only commands what is good for those who have done good. The law commands what is good for those who have done evil. And this isn’t just a special rule for fallible mortals. This is how God Himself operates, Jesus says, “For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” 

If love means anything like “willing the good of another,” as Thomas Aquinas suggests, then I don’t see how the logic that underwrites our common sense account of justice can be compatible with the logic of justice as Jesus lays it out. It seems to me that Jesus quite explicitly rejects the idea that the logic of justice is good for good and evil for evil. Rather, in one telling gesture, he explicitly names this bad assumption, rejects it, and replaces it. On Jesus’s account, the logic of justice is good for good and good for evil. This is what justice itself looks like. This means that love cannot be justly treated as a special and conditional reward. Rather, love must be treated as an unconditional law. 

Or: the law can never be justly treated as a mechanism for judging what good or evil is deserved. Rather, justice always and only judges what good is needed.

Is it lawful, then, to do good? I think the answer is: always. The law always and only commands us to do good. And could it be lawful, ever, to do evil—even in response to evil, even if you were God? I think the answer, as Jesus gives it, is never.

The moral contrast between these two divergent approaches to justice is stark. The conditional logic of “good for good and evil for evil” is, I think, a form of moral relativism that relativizes moral obligations to judgments about what someone deserves—sometimes good, sometimes evil. Whereas the unconditional logic of “good for good and good for evil” allows for no exceptions to the rule that what’s good is always just and always commanded.

Paul on Grace and the Law

Say we reframed the “grace vs. works” debate in light of this alternate account of justice. What would happen to our “grace vs. works” debate? Rather than being won or solved, it may, I think, simply be dissolved.

If grace is a name for still doing what’s good even when that good is not deserved, then this grace is not barred by the demands of justice. And, too, if this is true, then grace cannot be positioned as an exception to the demands of justice—an exception that is variously big or small or variously accessible via faith or works.

Rather, if grace is a name for still giving what good is needed even when that good is not deserved, then grace is what justice demands. If grace is loving your enemy, then grace is the substance of what the law itself commands.

With respect to justice, grace is not an exception. Grace is the paradigm case.

In this spirit, it’s not hard to imagine a reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans that starts from this premise and takes Matthew’s command to “love your enemy” as its interpretive frame.

Paul’s own general formula for describing the relation between grace and law in Romans 3 does, I think, closely mirror Jesus’s own in Matthew 5. Before telling us to love our enemies, Jesus says: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” And in Romans, Paul says essentially the same thing: “Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”

What if these formulas simply mean the very same thing: that whatever we might predictably (and wrongly) think about justice, returning good for evil (i.e., grace) does not destroy or void the law but rather is the only way to fulfill and establish it?

This reading fits, I think, with Paul’s baseline definition of “unrighteousness” in Romans 1, a definition that explicitly describes sinners as those who “suppress the truth” about God “because what can be known about God is plain to them” (Romans 1:18-19, cf. 1:18-24, NET). For Paul, in some fundamental sense, sin is this suppression of the truth about the nature of God and his righteousness or justice. (Where “righteousness,” here, is always just dikaiosyne: that is, the Greek word for “justice”).

In parallel fashion, in Romans 3, Paul’s baseline description of Christ’s soteriological work is as the work of revealing—once and for all, incontrovertibly—the truth about God’s justice, a truth that sin has actively suppressed. In Christ, Paul says, “The righteousness [or justice] of God has been disclosed and is attested by the Law and the Prophets” (Romans 3:21, NRSV). God put Christ “forward as a sacrifice of atonement,” and “he did this to demonstrate his righteousness [or justice]” (Romans 3:25-26, NRSV).

Here, the soteriological logic is one of revelation. Christ’s sacrifice saves by revealing (i.e., by “disclosing” or “demonstrating”) the truth about God’s justice, a truth that sin, by definition, suppresses. And what is the truth about God’s justice? As Paul says in Romans 5, the truth is exactly what Jesus told us in Matthew 5: the truth is that God’s own justice commands love even for one’s enemies. And this is exactly what God has done via Christ’s sacrifice: He has fulfilled his own law by loving those who live as his enemies. Paul says, “God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us . . . For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely . . . will we be saved by his life” (Romans 5:8, 10, NRSV). In this respect, the gospel itself is just God’s open invitation to join him in obeying this law of faith and grace. The invitation is to join Him in believing the truth He has revealed about His justice in Christ.

Crucially, Paul is also quite clear that what distinguishes this “law of faith”—which is, precisely, a law and not an exception to the law—from what he calls the “law of works” is the underlying logic. “Then what becomes of boasting?” Paul asks. “It is excluded. Through what kind of law? That of works? No, rather through the law of faith” (Romans 3:27, emphasis added, NRSV). The difference between the law of works and the law of faith is marked in turns of whether these laws support “boasting.” That is, the difference is marked in terms of whether the underlying logic of that law is a logic of deserts. If I can use the law to deserve rewards, then I can boast about them. But if the law itself never assigns deserved rewards and punishments—i.e., if the logic of the law is not the conditional logic of good for good and evil for evil—then boasting is always excluded. Boasting, though, isn’t excluded in this case because I’m personally not good enough to boast, as if the problem were just practical in character. No, boasting is excluded because love—as an unconditional law—cannot be deserved, ever, by anyone.

Love cannot be deserved (or not) because love is always a law and never a reward.

Only the logic of this kind of law—a law of faith, a law that commands good even in response to evil—can unconditionally exclude boasting.

Here, then, my salvation doesn’t turn on God finding a way to make a legal loophole for me, such that He can still give me a good I don’t deserve. It turns instead on God convincing me—through the truth revealed in Christ’s loving sacrifice for me as His enemy, by His willingness to join me in bearing my death and suffering—to trust Him enough to put down my active suppression of this fundamental truth and, instead, finally join Him in the work of unconditionally obeying love as a law.

“Do we then overthrow the law through this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law” (Romans 3:31, NRSV).

Conclusion

The takeaway of this experiment—and the takeaway, really, of my whole book Original Grace—is that grace, far from overthrowing God’s law, is the only way to uphold it.

This, though, is not just another Protestant-like defense of a robust doctrine of grace. Instead, it’s actually a Restoration-inspired defense of God’s uncompromising commitment to justice. My claim is that divine grace and divine justice may both be better understood when grace is not treated as an exception to God’s law and, in turn, when the law’s commandment to love is not treated as conditional and relative. Rather, divine grace and divine justice are both better understood when God’s commandment to love—even, perhaps especially, one’s enemies—is treated as unconditional and, thus, when the commandment to join God’s work of extending grace is understood to be absolute. If moral relativism is excluded by our willingness to always and only do what is good, never returning evil for evil, then we can happily agree with Jesus that it is always lawful to do good. And if it is always lawful to do good, then grace, no longer positioned as an exception to divine law, is revealed as the only possible path to justice.

The post Is It Lawful to Do Good? A Restored Approach to Grace appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Last fall, I gave a presentation at FAIR about worldviews. For those who don’t know, FAIR is an organization dedicated to developing resources for those who wish to strengthen their convictions in the Restored Gospel. Rather than retread the same ground, I would like to expand on some of the arguments I made there. 

Worldviews are passed down through stories. For example, children are not taught that “boogeymen are evil and ought to be feared.” Rather, they are told a story: “One night, little Bobby defied his parent’s wishes and went out into the woods without their supervision. While there, a boogeyman devoured him alive.” The moral universe of the story is inferred, even when not directly stated. “We are storied creatures,” Anderson and his colleagues argue, “responding more readily to narrative than to doctrine.”

Baked into the grammar of our stories are presumptions about the nature of human flourishing and the good life. What does victory look like for the characters? What would give the story a happy ending? What would give the story a tragic ending? In this way, the stories told within a worldview inform not just our beliefs but also the way we feel. Like boogeyman stories in our childhood, our worldview stories shape our emotional reactions to the world on the level of our intuitions — what we love, what we hate, what we fear, and what we trust.

Expressive individualism

Let’s talk first about expressive individualism. Expressive individualism is a worldview that gives self-expression a privileged place among human goods. It sees self-expression as a paramount virtue that undergirds all other virtues. Let’s walk through this worldview story, step by step:

Our highest aspirations. The core assumption of expressive individualism is that nobody can decide what the good life looks like for you except for you. You are the sole arbiter of what is important in life (for yourself), which means that you should prioritize self-discovery and ignore most external prescriptions. The highest aspiration of the expressive individualist is to live authentically, that is, to be able to live out your self-selected priorities and desires.

The conflict. Community and family norms do not always prioritize or privilege individual self-expression. Religion, tradition, culture, family, and peers can all stifle our attempts at self-definition and self-expression, imposing upon us standards and expectations that we did not choose for ourselves.

The villains/antagonists. From this view, community norms or religious precepts that lead people to evaluate our choices hinder personal development. The expressive individualist often sees community norms as an obstacle to human flourishing. And for these reasons, anyone who seeks to strengthen or reinforce such norms is seen as the de facto villain of the expressive individualist worldview.

The story resolution. The expected, hoped-for resolution to this conflict is that we step into and assert our true selves. This may involve conflict and confrontation with those in our lives that seek to impose templates and expectations upon us. The hope, of course, is that our family and community will relinquish their expectations of us and honor our choices.

Human flourishing. From the standpoint of expressive individualism, human flourishing is defined as living in a community that celebrates all of our uniquenesses and differences—a community that doesn’t evaluate our choices or have an agenda for our lives. 

We can see examples of this story template throughout our modern media. The stories often follow this three-act form:

1. The protagonist finds herself in a community of oppressive norms and expectations. These norms conflict with his or her natural inclinations, inner desires, and personal aspirations.

2. Next, the protagonist breaks free of the constraints of his or her family, community, or faith. He or she embraces authenticity and self-expression.

3. Finally, the protagonist strives to remake the community’s norms to be more accommodating. The story always ends with an attempt to bring the community around.

We have all seen movies or read books that follow this template. For just one example, we have How to Train Your Dragon, in which Hiccup is unique. He violates the norms and expectations of his community by befriending a dragon. In so doing, he disappoints the community. But in the third act, the community rallies around Hiccup. Soon they are all training dragons. This is the expressive individualist story—and before anyone accuses me of disparaging the movie, it’s among my favorite films. Other examples include Mulan, Frozen, October Sky, and Footloose. I have here just a few examples of hundreds where the central message of the movie is to “be true to yourself.”

The Gospel of Jesus Christ

So let’s do a contrast. What is the worldview story that is handed to us by the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ?

Our highest aspirations. In the worldview story of the Gospel, the chief aspiration of the protagonist of the story is to return to God and to become as He is. Put in other words, our goal is salvation (becoming reconciled with God) and exaltation (becoming like God). 

The conflict. However, the more we aspire to the presence of God, the more we come to recognize that we have been alienated from God through sin and transgression. Our weaknesses and rebellions separate us from God and make us unlike Him. 

The villains/antagonists. The “villains” of this worldview include sin and vice. In addition to sin and vice, the adversary (e.g., Satan or Lucifer) continually entices us to do evil and to draw us away from the truths of God through deceptions.

The story resolution. We seek reconciliation with God through the merits and grace of Christ. Covenants and ordinances arm us with spiritual power against the adversary and his deceptions. Through these, we qualify to enjoy the presence of God in this life and to return and dwell with Him in the next.

Human flourishing. In the Gospel worldview, the “good life” involves enjoying the promise of the Holy Spirit and living in a covenant community where God’s laws and teachings are normative (Zion). This includes a life centered on temple worship. In this temple-centered covenant community, we hope to enjoy both the gifts and fruits of the Spirit.

The worldview story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ can also be mapped as a three-act story:

1. The protagonist is alienated from God. Our sinful rebellions separate us from God’s presence and keep us from becoming like Him.

2. The protagonist seeks redemption through Christ. We seek redemption through Christ and become like God by making and keeping covenants and participating in sacred ordinances.

3. The protagonist lays hold upon the fruits and gifts of the Spirit. The gifts of the Spirit (gift of tongues, gift of discernment, and so on) help us to minister to others and build the Kingdom of God. The fruits of the Spirit (love, patience, humility, etc.) change our natures so that we can become more like Christ, whose name we now bear.

It’s harder to find popular media examples that resemble this story template. The closest I’ve ever seen from the Disney side of things is The Emperor’s New Groove and the movie Cars, both of which offer us a secularized version of this redemption arc.

Worldviews present the world differently

Worldviews present or unveil the world to us. Think of it like driving a car or walking. Driving a car presents the grocery store as “10 minutes away,” whereas walking presents the grocery store as “forty-five minutes away.” A path that is a shortcut when you are on foot is presented as impassible when you are driving. The world simply shows up differently depending on whether you are driving or walking. 

Diverging views on truth

Let’s start with truth. I use the word “truth” in this context to refer generally to what we consider to be right and good. In our search for what is right and good, expressive individualism directs us inwards rather than outwards. The assumption is that we are the ultimate arbiters of what is right, good, and true for us. In its extremes, expressive individualism tends to dismiss the importance of external guides or transcendence truths entirely in favor of personal, subjective values and preferences. For a poignant example of this, a Latter-day Saint therapist (who I will keep anonymous) shared this interesting statement: 

We live in a culture where we are taught to rely on external authority for direction … Instead of looking outward, I want you to look inside of yourself to find how you feel and what you want. When you are true to yourself, you honor your personal authority. … You are the ultimate authority in your own life.

From a clinical perspective, it might make a lot of sense to help struggling clients feel more empowered in their lives. But without that clinical context, this is expressive individualism distilled into its purest form: You are the ultimate authority in your life. Turn away from and perhaps even reject external guides. Consult your feelings and your wants—therein lies what is true and good for you. From this view, because the ultimate goal is being true to yourself, living by values or standards that don’t arise from your own self-chosen preferences is a stifling distraction from our journey of self-discovery and self-expression.

In contrast, in the Gospel worldview, there are transcendent truths, and they are found in divine revelation. This can include scripture, teachings of modern prophets, and the influence of the Holy Spirit. It is true that we sometimes talk about consulting our feelings within the Church, but it is usually in the context of seeking truth from a higher source than ourselves—it is about consulting God and seeking revelation from Him. We need guides beyond ourselves. President Uchtdorf, two conferences ago, shared this fascinating story:

There is an oft-repeated theory that people who are lost walk in circles. Not long ago, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics tested that theory. … The scientists concluded, “People really [do] walk in circles when they do not have reliable cues to their walking direction.” When questioned afterwards, some participants self-confidently claimed that they had not deviated in the slightest. Despite their high confidence, GPS data showed that they walked in loops as tight as 20 meters in diameter. Whatever the cause, it is human nature: without reliable landmarks, we drift off course.

In other words, we need external landmarks—something beyond ourselves—to see truthfully. When it comes to determining what is right, good, just, or true, expressive individualism draws our attention away from external benchmarks and towards inner feelings and personal desires— that is, to look inwards. The Gospel invites us to instead look outwards and upwards when searching for ultimate truth and what is right and good, like sailors using a sextant to consult the stars to chart their bearing.

Diverging views on identity

Next, let’s look at identity. Who are you? What makes you you? The worldview of expressive individualism sees identity—like truth—as stemming forth from personal feelings, something that we discover by looking “inwards.” In this view, our identities are defined by the contents of our minds—by our thoughts, desires, inclinations, etc. To discover yourself in this worldview, you must look inside of yourself and figure out what you want and what you feel.

You might even go so far as to say that our desires and passions do not necessarily come from inside of us at all but are often things we absorb and are enculturated into by the communities we most closely affiliate with. The social psychologists Bavel and Packer conducted research that showed that the more people identified as a Southerner, the more they expressed preferences for Southern food. “As we’d predicted,” they explained, “people’s degree of identification with the South was clearly associated with a preference for Southern cuisine. It wasn’t enough to come from the South—it was identification with the South that mattered when it came to food preferences.” And salience matters—by reminding people that they are from the South, they could increase the likelihood that they’ll express preferences for Southern food. 

In short, preferences and values that individuals might see as coming from within might be heavily influenced by the communities we identify with. What some describe as a journey of pure self-discovery and self-expression may often—in reality—simply be disaffiliation and disaffection with one community and a new affiliation with a different one, a subsequent shift in the identities those communities constitute for us. In other words, in their efforts to “be themselves” and to throw off the expectations of their family and community, many youth find themselves enculturated into different communities of norms. They may absorb and conform to the shared values of the new community—all the while believing they are enacting desires and preferences that flowed from their own inner self. 

I would argue the Gospel worldview, in contrast with expressive individualism, mirrors the social psychological view: we are defined not by inner desires but by our relationships, responsibilities, and covenants. The most important parts of our identity are those parts that point us towards enduring responsibilities and values. In Lion King, When Mufasa urged Simba to “Remember who you are,” he was pointing Simba toward an identity that Simba didn’t choose for himself and didn’t (at the moment) particularly want, but which implied tremendous responsibility towards everyone around him.

I believe this is also partly why many church leaders have urged us to prioritize our identity as children of God and covenant members of the Church. President Nelson recently shared on social media:

“Labels can be fun and indicate your support for any number of positive things.  But if any label replaces your most important identifiers, the results can be spiritually suffocating.  I believe that if the Lord were speaking to you directly, the first thing He would make sure you understand is your true identity.  My dear friends, you are literally spirit children of God.

No identifier should displace, replace, or take priority over these three enduring designations:

• Child of God
• Child of the covenant
• Disciple of Jesus Christ

Any identifier that is not compatible with those three basic designations will ultimately let you down.  Make no mistake about it: Your potential is divine.  With your diligent seeking, God will give you glimpses of who you may become.”

Diverging views on self

Next, let’s talk about the self. A common maxim among expressive individualists is that we are perfect just the way we are. Another seemingly contradictory maxim is that individuals are fluid and should be honored in their various and changing self-constructions. Together, it looks like this: your preferences are yours, and they are allowed to evolve, but however they evolve, you are perfect and complete just as you are. From a psychological point of view, coming to accept changing and fluid preferences is probably a good thing. However, because expressive individualism wraps our identity around those changing preferences, this means our journey of self-discovery is never complete. 

This fluidity of self is one reason why some argue that we should relax norms against divorce—people change, some argue, and we cannot expect them to maintain commitments long after their preferences and tastes have evolved beyond those commitments. A friend of mine, in the midst of a divorce (initiated by his wife), was told by his wife, “Do you want to stand between me and the truest version of myself?” She was not the same person, she believed, and so should not be bound by the promises a different version of her had made.

I would argue that the gospel message is also about change, but of a different sort: through making and keeping covenants, we can become transformed as people. We can become new people in Christ. This involves anchoring ourselves into commitments that transcend our fickle preferences and tastes and using those commitments as a launching pad for becoming better, holier people.

This truth lies at the core of the Christian message. The Savior taught, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it” (Luke 9:23-24). As Alma the Younger put it immediately after his conversion:

Marvel not that all mankind, yea, men and women, all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, must be born again; yea, born of God, changed from their carnal and fallen state to a state of righteousness, being redeemed of God, becoming his sons and daughters; And thus they become new creatures (Mosiah 27:25-26).

In short, genuine, lasting conversion involves changing our values and priorities so that they more closely resemble God’s values and priorities. It involves not self-creation but allowing God to recreate us in His image. I sometimes tell my students that if we could, right now, peer into the celestial world and see the life that God lives, it might not look so idyllic to us. In fact, we might recoil and say, “That looks really hard. It doesn’t quite jive with what I want.” God’s response, of course, would be that He intends to make us the kind of people who do want that, who, in fact, willingly choose that over everything else. Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught:

So many of us are kept from eventual consecration because we mistakenly think that, somehow, by letting our will be swallowed up in the will of God, we lose our individuality (see Mosiah 15:7). What we are really worried about, of course, is not giving up self, but selfish things—like our roles, our time, our preeminence, and our possessions. No wonder we are instructed by the Savior to lose ourselves (see Luke 9:24). He is only asking us to lose the old self in order to find the new self. It is not a question of one’s losing identity but of finding his true identity! Ironically, so many people already lose themselves anyway in their consuming hobbies and preoccupations but with far, far lesser things.

In contrast with expressive individualism, the worldview story of the Gospel offers something far more valuable than mere liberation from norms, templates, and “oughts.” It involves liberation from sin, pride, self-concern, and enmity. Self-expression and “liberation” from norms lose their luster when we realize that, in the end, we are merely complying with the norms and expectations of a different community or perhaps the whims of popular culture. In contrast, the worldview story of the Gospel promises transformation and redemption. 

God loves us as we are but does not intend to let us stay that way, as prophets have reiterated. The restored Gospel promises us reconciliation with God, a new name (the name of Christ), a new identity (covenant disciples of Christ), and a new person (remade in the image of Christ). This is what the journey symbolized in the Holy Temple is all about: becoming new people with a new name, identity, characteristics, and purpose. And the temple centers our attention on our eternal identities, bound up in relationships, duties, and responsibilities that precede this life and which will extend beyond this life. These eternal identities are far more elevating and enduring than the ephemeral features of the “psychological self” promoted by expressive individualism.

Diverging views on belonging

Next, let’s address belonging. Expressive individualists often assume that we don’t fully belong to a community until we can violate all of its norms without feeling any self-consciousness for doing so—and in fact, have our norm-violating choices honored and celebrated by the community. This means that for expressive individualists, strong community norms often show up as threats to belonging. Those who love tattoos might feel threatened by community norms within the Church that discourage tattoos. Those who drink coffee might feel like they belong less in a Church where drinking coffee is discouraged. Those who have no desire to bear or raise children might feel excluded in a community that celebrates families.

In other words, from an expressive individualist point of view, we often get a sense of belonging to whatever degree the community wraps its norms around our self-expressive activities and our other social identities. I regularly see others assert that we cannot belong to a community until the distinctive norms of the community have been dismantled and replaced with less restrictive norms. There is a tendency to assume that high-demand faiths cannot facilitate belonging without demanding less. 

However, strong communities have a shared vision, a set of shared values, and a set of shared norms that distinguish them from the broader civic community. Without those, or with only weak versions of those, we barely have a community at all. Zion is a community that is inclusive—it is a place where people of all races, nationalities, backgrounds, experiences, or sexual orientations, can find a place to belong. ​​Zion is also a place where God’s laws and teachings have been elevated to shared values and community norms. Unless you embrace expressive individualism, there is no contradiction here. This is because genuine belonging is found in part through embracing a common cause that extends beyond ourselves.

Within the Church, that common cause is the gathering of Israel and the building of Zion. This involves promoting norms of righteous living. The Lord taught, “Zion cannot be built up unless it is by the principles of the law of the celestial kingdom; otherwise, I cannot receive her unto myself.” It also means supporting norms of love, compassion, and inclusion. As Paul expressed it: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” I love the way that our own Ben Pacini has put it:

We will get nowhere in our efforts to build belonging if those efforts are not built in conformity with eternal law. Just as happiness and love most often arise naturally from other pursuits rather than a direct conquest, belonging is most often not the product of striving for belonging—but rather flows naturally from discipleship, repentance, and dedication in building Zion.

To any who are looking to improve the community and belongingness of any group—I say that we will only make progress insofar as our solutions come in conformity to the eternal laws that govern healthy, thriving, heart-knit communities.

Put differently, belonging comes not by making our communities orbit our self-centered pursuits but by being converted to a vision that is grander than ourselves. That is, by internalizing the shared mission and values of the community and seeking—together—to implement that shared vision. Observe the way the classic primary song describes belonging and how we achieve belonging in the Church:

I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
I know who I am. I know God’s plan. I’ll follow him in faith.

I believe in the Savior, Jesus Christ. I’ll honor his name.
I’ll do what is right; I’ll follow his light. His truth I will proclaim.

Notice how this “belonging” carries with it transcendent truths, values, and commitments. It is His truths we are to proclaim, not our “own” truths. As a matter of natural consequence, those who aren’t “all-in” on those commitments, so to speak, might struggle to feel the same degree of belonging in a community that elevates those ideals, but we cannot facilitate a sense of belonging in church and at our university by weakening or dismantling our distinctive norms. The less there is a common cause that unites us, the less anyone will feel that genuine, deep sense of belonging. We can best facilitate that sense of belonging by encouraging and facilitating discipleship and involving others in the common project of gathering Israel, building Zion, and covenant living.

Diverging views on love

Finally, let’s talk about love. From the viewpoint of expressive individualism, love is often seen as warm affirmations and an absence of judgment. In this view, love means celebrating uniquenesses and differences, encouraging others to live out their differences, and facilitating that in whatever ways we can. For those steeped in expressive individualism, when parents, friends, teachers, or Church leaders evaluate someone’s choices in light of the Restored Gospel and the covenants they have made, they are not providing “unconditional love.”

The Celestial kingdom is your goal, and what you have decided will make you happy. You are deciding you have the authority to say that … you know what will make your neighbor happier than your neighbor knows, is Satan’s plan. … If you’re not respecting other’s personal authority for their life … and trusting that their truth about them is as valid and correct as your truth about you, you’re not actually loving anyone. 

Notice the expressive individualist assumptions that saturate this comment: nobody but you gets to decide what’s right or good for you. Anyone else who claims to know what you should do is judging and therefore not loving—because love and moral discernment are seen as thoroughly incompatible. Love and a quasi-moral-relativism become wrapped up and viewed as one and the same. 

From the perspective of the Gospel worldview, love is a genuine concern for the spiritual and temporal welfare of others and can feature a wealth of moral discernment. Joseph Smith taught, “Our heavenly Father is more liberal in His views, and boundless in His mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive; and at the same time … more ready to detect in every false way, than we are apt to suppose Him to be.”(p. 257)

In short, many seem to believe that loving like Christ means learning to overlook sin. However, Christ did not and does not overlook sin, nor does He ask us to either. But this does not necessarily lead to self-righteous judgmentalism. Self-righteous judgmentalism is a form of pride, and instead of puffing us up with pride, truly becoming “ready to detect in every false way” makes us humble. This is because we recognize just as well our own fallenness and complete dependence on the merits of Christ. In other words, we become most like Christ not by blinding ourselves to sin but by seeing it more clearly. And that means I stop making excuses for the various ways I alienate myself from God.

As Joseph Smith further taught: “The nearer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls; we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs.”(p. 241) We must teach in word and deed that God loves everyone, no matter how far we have wandered. It is precisely because God loves us that He wants to draw us back onto the straight and narrow path that leads us to Eternal Life. As Elder Holland has astutely noted:

Christlike love is the greatest need we have on this planet in part because righteousness was always supposed to accompany it. So if love is to be our watchword, as it must be, then by the word of Him who is love personified, we must forsake transgression and any hint of advocacy for it in others. Jesus clearly understood what many in our modern culture seem to forget: that there is a crucial difference between the commandment to forgive sin (which He had an infinite capacity to do) and the warning against condoning it (which He never ever did even once).

Striking this balance, I believe, involves rejecting the many counterfeits of divine love, including those handed to us by expressive individualism. There are errors in two directions here—we can err towards condoning the sin or towards condemning the person. Christlike love is neither. Instead, it is discerning. It involves being clear-eyed about both the perils of sin and the divine potential of every individual.

Detecting the invisible worldview traps

Why should we examine our worldviews? If the answer to this is not obvious already, it is because worldviews are influencing even our most rudimentary judgments, decisions, and experiences. In short, worldviews influence how we experience the demands of our faith. If our experiences with faith are being heavily influenced by worldviews we have absorbed from our surrounding culture, basic concepts like truth, identity, self, belonging, and love might show up differently to us than it does to our peers in the Church or even its leaders. We can fall prey, in essence, to traps in our thinking that are set and sprung only within the context of certain worldviews. BYU professor James Faulconer explains it this way:

The tightest cords of bondage are those we are un­aware of. … We are most in danger of this particular bondage when what we think or do seems “perfectly natural” or “perfectly reasonable.” The things that we think are beyond question are the very things that can most easily deceive us to the point of bondage.

For those who seek to maintain faith and conviction in the Restored Gospel—but who are unwittingly under the influence of worldviews that are at odds with it—those worldviews can serve as a sort of “bondage” that keeps us from seeing their way out of challenges to our faith. Anderson and his colleagues put it this way: “When one wears a distorted set of worldview glasses, nothing looks right, and life cannot be lived rightly.” In other words, when we are wearing smudged worldview lenses, or perhaps the wrong lenses entirely, the Restored Gospel will always look odd or in tension with one’s real (but perhaps unacknowledged) convictions. Sanford and Wilkens explain that our deepest questions can often be informed by “hidden worldviews” that sneak into our thinking and shape those convictions:

It is not the worldviews that begin as theories or intellectual systems that mold the lives and beliefs of most people. Instead, the most powerful influences come from worldviews that emerge from culture. They are all around us, but are so deeply embedded in culture that we don’t see them. In other words, these worldviews are hidden in plain sight. … Because of their stealthy nature, these worldviews find their way behind the church doors, mixed in with Christian ideas and sometimes identified as Christian positions.

In other words, like the “mists of darkness” Lehi saw in his dream, undetected worldview influences can cloud our understanding of central church teachings. And this makes it imperative that Latter-day Saints who are navigating the murky waters of the latter days become aware of the competing worldview stories that are vying for primacy in our lives. 

I want to share my witness of the Restored Gospel ​​and the powerful story it tells about who we are and where we are going. In this story, our highest aspiration is to return to and become like God. Each and every one of us has been alienated from God through sin. Through Christ, we can find redemption and reconciliation. And the end, the goal, the telos of all of this — at least in the here and now — is to enjoy the fruits and gifts of the Spirit in our day-to-day lives and salvation and exaltation in the life to come. I want to share my witness of the Savior and His role in this story. We like to think of ourselves as the protagonists of the Gospel story, but the hero of this story is and always will be Him.

The post Expressive Individualism and the Restored Gospel appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

It goes something like this:  Once upon a time, there was this gnarly problem causing all sorts of confusion for everybody until an objective scientist—from a place of calm neutrality—began to bravely examine the available evidence using the rigorous tools of detached, rational inquiry. Thanks to years of specialized training and dedication, this scientist ensured outside bias did not interfere and therefore let the data speak for itself. In this way, the full truth independent of any prejudice was ultimately revealed. Hurrah! 

Facetiousness aside, this characterization is not far off from the popular perception of science commonly heard in the public square today—and also not far off from many portrayals of science heard and shared in the academy (where people really should know better). Such a framing encourages Americans to direct their gaze toward scientists and the scientific method as the most reliable source of truth because of its promise of an unvarnished glimpse into reality itself.

You’ve heard it:  “What does the science say? Have you heard about the latest scientific study? If we are ever to solve the problem of fill-in-the-blank, we must follow the science and keep politics and religion out of it!”

In this view, science speaks as a kind of oracle—communicating in a monolithic, impersonal voice the true reality of things. Our primary responsibility is simply to listen carefully to this trustworthy voice and then do all we can to follow where it leads.

There are at least three things we would love for people to see and understand more clearly about science today:

1. Pure neutrality is a myth. Aspiring to fairness in our evaluations of people and the world— what Jesus called “righteous judgment”—is a challenging, yet noble pursuit. However, scientists and other professionals (doctors, therapists, historians) sometimes pretend to something even more special:  being able to make observations from an objective and “value-free” stance in conclusions they offer patients, clients, and the public as a whole. The philosopher Thomas Nagel famously called this perspective the “view from nowhere” because the neutrality it presumes is only achievable through emotional, political, historical, moral, and cultural detachment. But this ultimately—and in principle—requires us to cease to be who we are and where we are.  It is indeed an impossible self-dissolution.

It is little wonder though, that scientists and other professionals would favor such a view. It is, after all, a very powerful and persuasive stance to take, in reaching the many who are grappling to understand the truth about their own lives, and the world around them. “Why don’t we listen to someone able to approach this from an objective, neutral place? That way we don’t have to worry about any hidden moral or political or religious agenda muddying up the waters. And that way we can just get the straight truth that is fair and impartial to everyone and about everything.” 

Isn’t that why we sometimes love all those scientific studies circulating around us? At last, a source we can trust! Readers of a certain age will recollect here the famous one-liner of Sergeant Joe Friday on the old Dragnet radio and TV series:  “Just the facts ma’am,” as if it were possible to ever access just the facts untouched by context, perspective, and the constraints of the lived world itself.

From this vantage point, as long as a study is “scientific,” strong socio-political agendas at secular universities and enormous pharmaceutical revenues alike can be said to have little bearing on the studies conducted under their respective purviews. So long as the researcher is careful and employs the scientific method properly, then whatever data is produced is bound to be free of the taint of subjective bias or moral values, right? 

Increasingly, it’s only certain kinds of perspectives (especially religious ones) that are suspected of corroding the scientific process. For instance, academic Michael Austin offered a critique of BYU’s recently renewed commitment to the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, arguing that such a commitment was “exactly the opposite of the norms of academic inquiry that most universities operate under.” After referencing the idea that “research be conducted without bias, and the results published, regardless of whether they confirm any particular hypothesis or doctrine,” Austin went on to argue that professors at Brigham Young were being pressured to embrace a very different approach—namely, that “academic research should begin with the desired conclusion in mind and either reach that conclusion or be dismissed.”

According to this view, scholars with religious perspectives are assumed to bear a unique challenge of potentially infecting their scholarship with unwarranted bias—distinct from other scholars operating from a secular perspective, who somehow avoid coloring their questions, methods, or interpretation of data with bias. 

As long as we somehow separate religious perspectives from our scientific and scholarly endeavors, it is argued, a clear and unifying path to knowledge becomes available, one that avoids partisanship, divisiveness, and cultural or moral prejudice. All this sounds nice to secular ears—serving up as it does quite a pithy indictment of the work of faithful scholars and aims of religious universities anywhere.  

The central problem with such a view of the nature of scientific inquiry is that it’s simply not true.  Values, as well as cultural, political, and historical biases, are simply inescapable and are not the sorts of things that we can just put on a shelf, even temporarily, while we observe the world and report on it. They influence everything we do in science and scholarship, providing both the context and the reasons for doing what we do. 

This understanding of the inescapability of values and biases in science is reflective of the consensus of most philosophers of science—and it’s no secret to scientists either. Anyone who has conducted an “RCT” (Randomized-controlled Trial), for instance—as we have—knows well the many hundreds of value-laden decisions going into the creation of the methodology behind a study. 

From antidepressant research to LGBT+ issues, it’s remarkable the extent to which details of study design—how to organize control groups, what to measure (and not to measure), and which findings to emphasize (or not—have a substantial impact on the resulting story that gets told. Instead of a linear, mechanical process of accumulating evidence, then, research needs to be appreciated as a fundamentally human endeavor involving human interpretation, evaluation, and judgment (constantly and at every level). And operating from within a secular framework— the privileged position in the modern academy—is every bit as biased, value-laden, and rooted in pre-investigatory philosophical assumptions as would be the case if one were operating from a religious framework. To believe otherwise about the nature of science is to indulge an unsustainable secular mythology.

2. Data don’t speak for themselves. When data are reported, that’s when we love to say things like, “let’s see what the actual data show,” or “Tell us what we do and don’t know for sure based on the data.”

Once again, unfortunately, the primary responsibility of the public seems to be to just listen carefully to what the data means based on the authoritative and dispassionate explanation provided by a suitably trained expert.  Rather than interpreting data, the role of the scientist is popularly understood as conveying to others what it is the data says “in and of itself.” Data derived from the scientific method is, as the story goes, just what it is. It is just objective fact, and, thus, is not derivative in any way from any act of interpretation, either in the collection or explanatory phase of research. At most, thoughtful scientists can provide a translation of the data into the less precise terms of everyday understanding in order to educate those who are not themselves scientists or otherwise insufficiently initiated into the technical language of scientific research.

Unfortunately, though widely believed, this story too is not true. No evidence ever spoke for itself—unaided by a human interpreter. Data is quite simply incapable of speaking for itself. Indeed, what is sought out as data, what is considered to count as data, the form that data takes, and how it is construed as being evidence for anything whatsoever is fundamentally a matter of human interpretation. That is to say, not only are the findings (i.e., the data) of scientific research interpretive in nature, but so too are the questions that guide, hypotheses that frame, and methods that produce such findings. The entire process of “science” is shot through with interpretation from beginning to end, and inescapably so.

Compared to the image of a scholar carefully trying to “listen to the data,” this suggests more of a dialogue with the data. As paleontologist writer Brian Switek put it once to Doug Fabrizio on RadioWest, “Science isn’t ‘we found a fact, and we’re going to put it on the shelf, and now we know this, and now we’ll move on’—it’s this dance between fact and theory constantly going on. And the expectations you have going into something will influence the data you collect, how you interpret that data, how you think about that.”

None of this, however, is an argument for relativism, or meant to imply that everything is “subjective.” No, truth is real and the advancement of knowledge is possible, though it is not nearly as simple or straightforward a matter as the science-fantasy story we’ve come to love would suggest.

3. Science is a conversation. Rather than a simple revealer of truth, science is more accurately understood to be an ongoing argument, a conversation, a deliberation—a complex dialogue between thoughtful and good-hearted people all seeking truth, but reading the data differently, defining terms differently, emphasizing different indicators for determining what is true and trustworthy.

In this light, then, the idea that engaging in research from a religious perspective, one that takes the Restored Gospel seriously, is somehow intrinsically a corruption of good scholarship is wholly unfair. The idea that discussion of a religious perspective should be relegated to religion studies or theology departments, or to a weekly devotional, or to some off-campus Sunday School class so that scholarly work can avoid being tainted by such a perspective is naive, uninformed, and deeply misleading. Indeed, the claim that intellectual inquiry can be dispassionate and value-free, and that perspectives informed by one’s faith intrinsically corrupt basic scholarly ideals of objectivity, is an intellectual dinosaur whose extinction from our public conception of science is long overdue. It is kept alive at all only in those quarters of the academic and scientific world where the philosophy of science of the last century and a half has not penetrated.  Contrary to the popular fantasy story so often told about science and scholarly inquiry, our current scientific conversation could only be deepened and made more vibrant if we not only permitted religious perspectives to guide our scholarly endeavors but also admitted that there are no good reasons to try and exclude them. 

So, what does any of this mean on a practical level? 

Well, for one, we propose this more complete understanding of science is actually far less divisive than its popular competitor—which has been leveraged as another way to slice up the American populace and sort it into tidy little boxes (e.g., rational human being versus “science denier”). For instance, author Roxane Gay suggested in the New York Times last year that “The country is starkly dividing between those who believe in science and those who don’t.”

Are you among the part of our country that believes in Science—and trusts it to guide our paths forward?  Or are you one of those people who “ignore” or “reject” its edicts?

Many people take these kinds of black-and-white, dangerous bifurcations as an obvious reality.  Let’s think twice about that.  

Rather than waiting for Science to declare the truth of a matter—maybe we need to educate ourselves about what science is and what it is not—what it can do and what it cannot.

Of course, none of this implies that scientific investigation cannot continue to expand insight and facilitate “revelation” of things as they really are.  Natural science is unsurpassed at improving human material well-being, and unlocking the workings of nature. This is what it was created to do. Our contention is that it is both unwise and unreasonable to claim, much less expect, that that same science will be equally adept or successful in matters of ethics, metaphysics, ontology, or praxis—that is, in matters of human being-in-the-world.

Given all this, rather than so often pretending our convictions are the only “scientific” ones—and pointing to someone in a lab coat with letters after their name to justify that, maybe it’s time to do something else: Recognize what we’re hearing as arguments—including those referring to data.  Listening to them all as best we can, and then doing the hard work of deliberating together—openly, and without bitter accusation—to discern what is true and right—within the context of the lived world.  

In the end, we believe our own discernment in consultation with those we find trustworthy is the underlying method we all must rely on to learn more and expand our horizons. That applies to all of us, yes, including those many scientists who can inform our conversations in many helpful ways.  

Bottom line:  We’ve all got to decide where we land on these important questions we’re facing.  

And no one’s going to decide that for us. 

Not even Science.  Yes, science can supply some information, and even solve some problems for us but it cannot necessarily comprehensively address the question of “truth,” nor can it make decisions for us—especially in matters that reflect and affect our deepest humanity.

The post The Fantasy Story Americans Love to Tell about Science appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Posts on NothingWavering.org that link to this one:

• The Millennial Star: Stories We Tell about Side-Effects

“But Copernicus’s new doctrine [that the earth was not the center of the universe] inspired fear as well as ridicule and confusion, because it led almost at once to questions that transcended science. If the Earth was only one planet among many, were those other worlds inhabited, too? By what sort of creatures? Had Christ died for their sins? Did they have their own Adam and Eve, and what did that say about evil and original sin? ‘Worst of all,’ in the words of the historian of science Thomas Kuhn, ‘if the universe is infinite, as many of the later Copernicans thought, where can God’s Throne be located? In an infinite universe, how is man to find God or God man?’” (p.99; Dolnick, E. (2011). The clockwork universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the birth of the modern world. New York, NY: HarperCollins).

The gospel of Christ as restored to Joseph Smith answers all those questions without difficulty.

• Yes, the other worlds are inhabited. “And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose….But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them.” (Moses 1:33,35).
• Other worlds are also inhabited by sons and daughters of God.
• Yes, Christ died for the sins of those on other worlds (probably): “Since Jesus is the creator of other worlds whose inhabitants are also ‘begotten sons and daughters unto God’ (D&C 76:24), it may be that the benefits of the Atonement will extend to all of the spirit children of our Father in Heaven, wherever situated. [“Not My Will, But Thine” (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1988), p. 51].” (as cited by Robert Webb). Also, Joseph Smith wrote in verse: “Whose inhabitants, too, from the first to the last,\ Are sav’d by the very same Saviour of ours;\ And, of course, are begotten God’s daughters and sons\ By the very same truths and the very same powers.” (as cited in Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed. [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966], p. 66)
• Yes, they had their own Adams and Eves: “And the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many.” (Moses 1:34).
• Original sin does not exist or apply as many others understand it. Read here (short) and here (long).
• Where is God’s throne? Near to a celestial body called Kolob: “And thus there shall be the reckoning of the time of one planet above another, until thou come nigh unto Kolob, which Kolob is after the reckoning of the Lord’s time; which Kolob is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those planets which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.” (Abraham 3:9).
• How is man to find God or God man? Man finds God through the Holy Ghost and the teachings of His prophets. God doesn’t have to find man: “For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them.” (Moses 1:35).

True science and true religion support each other.

Visit my blog: By Study and Faith

President Joseph Fielding Smith gave this admonition:

“Today we are troubled by evil-designing persons who [endeavor] … to destroy the testimonies of members of the Church, and many … are in danger because of lack of understanding and because they have not sought the guidance of the Spirit. … It is a commandment from the Lord that members … be diligent … and study … the fundamental truths of the gospel. … Every baptized person [can] have an abiding testimony. … but [it] … will grow dim and eventually disappear [without] … study, obedience, and diligent seeking to know and understand the truth” (in Conference Report, Oct. 1963, p. 22).

• "The Spirit of Revelation" - Elder David A. Bednar
• "That We May Always Have His Spirit to Be with Us" - - Elder David A. Bednar
• "Teaching After the Manner of the Spirit" - Matthew O. Richardson
• "Teaching with the Power and Authority of God" - David M. McConkie
• "Drawing Closer to God" - Elder Terence M. Vinson (I like the miracle of the rain told here)

As a quorum member, as a home teacher, and as a missionary, you cannot help people repair spiritual damage unless your own faith is vibrant. That means far more than reading the scriptures regularly and praying over them. The prayer in the moment and quick glances in the scriptures are not preparation enough. The reassurance of what you will need comes with this counsel from the 84th section of the Doctrine and Covenants: “Neither take ye thought beforehand what ye shall say; but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be given you in the very hour that portion that shall be meted unto every man.”

That promise can be claimed only if we “treasure up” the words of life and do it continually.

Upon you my fellow servants, in the name of Messiah I confer the Priesthood of Aaron, which holds the keys of the ministering of angels, and of the gospel of repentance, and of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; and this shall never be taken again from the earth, until the sons of Levi do offer again an offering unto the Lord in righteousness.

We should be in a hurry to receive our rest … but having that desire in our hearts to live causes us to cling to the world that we may finish the work the Lord gives us to do.

Traveling abroad to preach the gospel is one of the pleasantest and easiest of all the labors of the kingdom.

The gospel of Jesus Christ, the principles of salvation, and the science of an eternal life is a matter so great, so wide, and so comprehensive that it is difficult to know where to commence and where to leave off, difficult to find the beginning the middle or the end. It is something like the Melchizedek priesthood, without beginning of days or ends of years. It reaches back into eternity and forward into eternity.

The fifth act of the play and the crucial role of the modern-day restored Church is a post from: The Millennial Star

Brother Martins is the author of the book Setting the Record Straight – Blacks and the Mormon Priesthood, which can be purchased at the FAIR Bookstore.

The full text of this address can be found at FAIR LDS.

40 There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.

41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory.

42 So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:

Consider the following commentary by Origen:

Our understanding of the passage indeed is, that the Apostle, wishing to describe the great difference among those who rise again in glory, i.e., of the saints, borrowed a comparison from the heavenly bodies, saying, "One is the glory of the sun, another the glory of the moon, another the glory of the stars. [Origen, De Principiis 2:10:2, in ANF 4:294.]

Consider also the following by John Chrysostom:

And having said this, he ascends again to the heaven, saying, "There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon." For as in the earthly bodies there is a difference, so also in the heavenly; and that difference no ordinary one, but reaching even to the uttermost: there being not only a difference between sun and moon, and stars, but also between stars and stars. For what though they be all in the heaven? yet some have a larger, others a less share of glory. What do we learn from hence? That although they be all in God's kingdom, all shall not enjoy the same reward; and though all sinners be in hell, all shall not endure the same punishment. [John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians 41:4, in NPNF Series 1, 12:251.]

I can give you many other early Christian references to degrees of glory, but 2 Corinthians 12 ought to be sufficient.

You are right that, on its face, the passage seems to be just talking about heavenly vs. earthly bodies. However, the passage also has this little enigmatic reference to "one glory of the sun, one glory of the moon, and one glory of the stars," and one star differs from another in glory. What does that mean? Most people would just skip right over it, but the early Christians seem to have placed great significance on it, taking it to mean that there are degrees of reward and punishment in heaven and hell. Whether he was actually restoring lost text, or not, Joseph Smith restored the basic meaning that early Christians attached to the passage!

8. Then there fell upon me a sleep, and I beheld a high mountain, and I was upon it.
9. And behold the heavens were opened and an angel of God said to me, Levi enter.
10. And I entered from the first heaven, and I saw there a great sea hanging.
11. And further I saw a second heaven far brighter and more brilliant, for there was a boundless light also therein.
12. And I said to the angel, Why Is this so? And the angel said to me, Marvel not at this, for thou shalt see another heaven more brilliant and incomparable.
13. And when thou hast ascended thither, Thou shalt stand near the Lord, And shalt be His minister, And shalt declare His mysteries to men, And shall proclaim concerning Him that shall redeem Israel.
14. And by thee and Judah shall the Lord appear among men saving every race of men.
15. And from the Lord's portion shall be thy life, And He shall be thy field and vineyard, And fruits, gold, and silver.
16. Hear, therefore, regarding the heavens which have been shown to thee.
17. The lowest is for this cause gloomy unto thee, in that it beholds all the unrighteous deeds of men.
18. And it has fire, snow, and ice made ready for the day of judgement, in the righteous judgement of God; for in it are all the spirits of the retributions for vengeance on men.
19. And in the second are the hosts of the armies which are ordained for the day of judgement, to work vengeance on the spirits of deceit and of Beliar.
20. And above them are the holy ones.
21. And in the highest of all dwelleth the Great Glory, far above all holiness.
22. In [the heaven next to] it are the archangels, who minister and make propitiation to the Lord for all the sins of ignorance of the righteous;
23. Offering to the Lord a sweet-smelling savour, a reasonable and a bloodless offering.
24. And [in the heaven below this] are the angels who bear answers to the angels of the presence of the Lord.
25. And in the heaven next to this are thrones and dominions, in which always they offer praise to God.
Source: Levi 1:20-25, The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, The Forgotten Books of Eden (Alpha House, Inc.: Newfoundland, 1927), p. 227.)