The Essential Ingredient: If You Can

Christ and the Young Child
Carl Bloch, 1873
Carl Bloch - The Master's Hand 
BYU Museum of Art - December 2010

A talk that will almost certainly go down as a General Conference Classic is Elder Jeffrey Holland's talk 'Lord I Believe'. The foundation of his talk begins with the account of the desperate father of a disabled boy* in Mark 9:14-29. The boy was subject to fits, which were deemed to be caused by an unclean spirit.  The boy was unable to be healed by the Lord's disciples.


Elder Holland describes this exhausted father's desperation and hope that the Savior may be able to help them. Jesus, used the moment to teach that he could help, and that all things are possible to those that believe. 


In reading this account, I found a fascinating detail that drops out of the story by comparing the ESV to the KJV translations of this story (BLB here).

Both translations teach the quintessential truth that all things are possible to him that believes.  Yet in the ESV, it additionally teaches that it is not the Lord's abilities that are being tested here. It is our abilities. 

So often we go to the Lord and ask if he can do something for us.  I suspect that in many cases his reply is: "I can if you can". 
This is not to suggest that we can over-ride the will of God with the desires of our heart, nor is it to suggest that we are at fault when our prayers aren't answered the way we want.  It's pretty evident that this is simply not the case. But to the extent that a given blessing requires faith to be realized, it is not the Lord's faith that is the essential ingredient in this recipe.

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* Whether this was in fact demonic possession, or epilepsy (more likely in my estimation), it was clear it was a refractory case that nobody had any solutions for.

Moroni's Message to Non-Believers

"Step Into the Dark"
Interesting picture . . . I can't tell which direction he is walking.

I've recently been studying Moroni's teachings which are scattered through the last two chapters of Mormon and the Books of Ether and Moroni (chapters 1-7 & 10).  Moroni knew the effects of unbelief well, having described how it destroyed both the Jaredite and Nephite civilizations.  As the last Nephite, and having seen our day in a vision, Moroni's message was intended for us.  It is sobering to wonder how similar we are to the Jaredites and the Nephites of his day.

Much of Moroni’s perspective was colored by the reality that he was among a very small group of people that continued to believe in Christ.  The ever-shrinking minority of believers and the growing unbelief of everyone else brought about the destruction of his entire nation. Much of the 8^th and 9^th chapters of Mormon are dedicated to showing that God has not ceased to be God and that he continues to be a God of miracles.  Unfortunately, the ability to recognize God and his miracles first required people to set aside their unbelief.  Accordingly, the contrasting states of belief and unbelief are heavily themed throughout Moroni’s writings; Mormon 9 and Ether 4 in particular can be viewed as Moroni's message to non-believers.

In the eyes of most people in Moroni's day, God had ceased to do miracles. Moroni taught that this was because they "dwindle[d] in unbelief" (Mormon 9:20).  To dwindle is to diminish gradually in size, amount or strength. His usage implies that what was dwindling was really belief.  As belief degrades, the the path of least resistance leads to a state of disbelief where unbelievers are prone to place trust in things that have no ability to save. 

In contrast, those that simply believe, have the assurance that they will one day come to know great things (Ether 4:11; see also Mormon 9:21-27; Ether 3:26) that are otherwise hidden by unbelief and the state of spiritual blindness that it causes (Ether 4:13-15). 

It seems that history doomed to repeat itself. Today we find ourselves living in a society that is reminiscent of Moroni's day. People are determined to deny the miracles of God and rationalize him out of existence. Believing without proof is now considered foolhardy.  Sadly for those unwilling to take the first step, signs only follow those that believe (Mormon 9:24; see also Ether 4:18; D&C 63:9). 

Solzhenitsyn & Mormon: Parallel Perspectives

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
Taken while a prisoner in a Kazakhstan Gulag

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970 (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago).   A former Red Army captain, he was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp in 1945 for making derogatory comments about Joseph Stalin in a private letter to a friend. After being interrogated and tortured at Lubyanka prison in Moscow, he was sent to a Gulag in Kazakhstan to work and suffer. 

After the death of Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev assumed power. He ordered the release and exoneration of Solzhenitsyn in 1953, whereupon Solzhenitsyn secretly began documenting the horrors of the Stalinist regime and Gulag system. After the publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962, Khrushchev used this popular book to exploit public sympathy in his attempts to purge the stains of Stalinism from the USSR.

Solzhenitsyn became instantly famous. His ordeals had taken him through a broad spectrum of the stations of life: impoverished peasant, university student, Red Army captain, political prisoner, secretive dissident and national celebrity.  Though he lived life both as victimizer and as victim, in the end, he found himself embracing the principles of liberty and Christianity.  It is another great story affirming the ability of men to rise above the wreckage by finding peace through Christ.

In reading Solzhenitsyn's story, I found a fascinating quote that harmonized with my current reading in the Book of Mormon:

Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." *

Examples of people forgetting God and suffering the consequences of godlessness and unrestrained evil are so numerous that you can’t begin to list them all. But Solzhenitsyn's comment reminds me of Mormon’s powerful eye-witness account of a great people that met a similar fate.

And my soul was rent with anguish, because of the slain of my people, and I cried:  O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord! O ye fair ones, how could have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you! Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But behold, ye are fallen, and I mourn your loss. (Mormon 6:16-18)

Mormon's account of the final struggles and destruction of the Nephite people is almost overpowering in its sadness (see Mormon 2:11-15).  In some ways it surpassed the suffering seen in Solzhenitsyn's day, since it resulted in the disappearance of the Nephite civilization. In both cases, what makes the stories so sad is that the destruction was so needless. To turn from God is to trust in men; left to their own devices, men can do great evil.

In an ironic footnote, the need for men to root out their inner evil was emphasized by an unlikely messenger that played a pivotal role in Solzhenitsyn's life: Nikita Khrushchev. In a speech defending One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to the Politburo, Khrushchev (of all people) warned of the potential we all have to harbor great evil within us:

"There's a Stalinist in each of you; there's even a Stalinist in me. We must root out this evil." **

Unlike Solzhenitsyn,*** Khrushchev never came to know that it is impossible to fully root out our inner evil without the atonement of Jesus Christ. Today it seems that history is doomed to repeat itself as men rush to forget God. As they turn away from the light of his gospel, they turn to darkness. Unfortunately, this darkness is the perfect environment for the Stalinist within us to awaken and flourish.

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* Edward E. Ericson, Jr., "Solzhenitsyn – Voice from the Gulag," Eternity, October 1985, pp. 23–4

** Peter Benno, "The Political Aspect", in Max Hayward and Edward L. Crowley, eds., Soviet Literature in the 1960s (London, 1965), p. 191
*** When asked if Russia had simply replaced the evils of socialism with the evils of capitalism, Solzhenitsyn said: "In different places over the years I have had to prove that socialism, which to many western thinkers is a sort of kingdom of justice, was in fact full of coercion, of bureaucratic greed and corruption and avarice, and consistent within itself that socialism cannot be implemented without the aid of coercion. Communist propaganda would sometimes include statements such as "we include almost all the commandments of the Gospel in our ideology". The difference is that the Gospel asks all this to be achieved through love, through self-limitation, but socialism only uses coercion. This is one point. Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive." (Joseph Pearce. "An Interview with Alexander Solzhenitsyn." St. Austin Review 2 no. 2 [February, 2003])

Getting Chosen

Scene from the 1993 classic: The Sandlot

Anyone from my era has recollections of the anxiety provoked by the Physical Education teacher telling us to "line up and pick teams".  I'm not sure if they still do this given how traumatic it can be for the kid picked last. I vividly recall the anticipated horror of being unchosen, and forced upon the team with the last pick. Kids generally were not that nice about those kinds of things. It was a cold reminder of social stature on the playground and left the unchosen one feeling unwanted, rejected and less valuable than everyone else (see a related diatribe here). Thankfully, if it happened to me, I've managed to repress the memory.  Still, there was always one unfortunate kid at every game. For those unchosen, it was a big deal--not always something you could just walk off. In contrast, the prospects of always being chosen and highly valued didn't just impact playground hierarchy, it also influenced one's self-esteem.  

These playground memories came back to me as I was reading about what it means to be chosen from the perspective of scripture.  In the scriptures, the theme of being chosen first by God is remarkably pervasive.  It is beautifully summarized in Deuteronomy:  

For thou are an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. Deuteronomy 7:6 (see also Deuteronomy 14:2)

The scriptures have some pretty high-profile passages that refer to the elite status of the chosen: "many are called but few are chosen" (D&C 121:34, 40; see also Matthew 20:16; Matthew 22:14; Abraham 3:23) is often our mantra in the church. We are also promised that, because of this chosen status, we will be highly favored, blessed and sanctified by God (D&C 19:9; D&C 95:8; D&C 105:35-36). If being chosen first on the playground boosts our sense of worth and confidence, then being chosen first by God should be of enormous advantage in life. 

Yet, like the children of Israel, we are extremely vulnerable to a certain elitism that comes from being one of the chosen.  We must ever remember that the line between self-worth and pride is razor thin. To cross it is to lose any advantage we had from being picked first. As I think about the "many are called but few are chosen" mantra, I realize that things could just as easily have been stated thus: 

Though many are called, most remain unchosen.*

It should be enough to bring back the awful sense of foreboding you felt as a kid in PE. "What if I don't get picked!" 

The unchosen in PE would have done almost anything to be chosen. Yet there was only so much a kid could do: it all boiled down to a complex mix of popularity and athletic ability. But the same is not true of those that would be picked first by the Lord.  In fact, it has nothing to do with popularity, ability or lineage.  Rather, it is all about believing in Christ:

Father, I thank thee that thou hast given the Holy Ghost unto these whom I have chosen; and it is because of their belief in me that I have chosen them out of the world. 3 Nephi 19:20 (emphasis mine; see also 3 Nephi 19:28)

It remains within our own control whether we are chosen or unchosen.  Independent of our assets or popularity, we can be on the team. And, once there, it is within our ability perform at a level that vastly exceeds our talents.

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. 1 Corinthians 1:27

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