Of What We Know and What We Are

Recently, while reading in Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, I thought back to when my two oldest daughters attended nursery during Sunday School hours at church.  We were then members of a congregation with many young families.  There were so many children that they divided the nursery into Senior Nursery and Junior Nursery.  The dividing line was between those who had turned two by the start of the year and those who had not yet reached that august age.  My older daughter—who is a real sweetheart and has since become the mother of daughters herself—was very proud that she was in Senior Nursery, while her sister was in Junior Nursery.

The mysterious relationship between my reading of the Romans and those events of not so long ago is that both emphasize how brief and transitory this life is.  Whether our mortal life is allocated more than 70 years or fewer than 7, the time all told is rather short, and I dare say mercifully so. 

This life is filled with the rich, the beautiful, as well as what is poor and ugly, and mostly what is very much temporary and does not matter.  The emperors of Rome came and went so quickly, few living to die of natural causes.  They scraped and fought and intrigued and connived to possess what they could not hold for long and which at the end left them nothing.  The royal purple for the emperors at last was little more important than whether my daughters were in Senior or Junior Nursery.  It all mattered about the same.

Some things do matter, greatly.  While they can involve tangible things, all that in this life of lasting value is intangible and survives the universal tomb.  Now I am watching my children cope with the mighty challenges that life concentrates into the years of transition from adolescence to adulthood.  Life’s calling, personal dedication, education, careers, marriage, family, truly life-changing decisions come at these young people inexorably in relentless and rapid succession.  They have tangible elements of mortality to employ as tools to aid and markers to help measure the evaluating and making of these important decisions.  They wade into deep problems when these material tools are mistaken for the real things.

As parents we watch, support, counsel, encourage, but the decisions are no longer ours.  With no small amount of concern, and with generous measures of satisfaction, we can witness these whom we love the most exercise their own free will to lay out the remaining course of their mortality.  For Mom and Dad, this period of life has been rich, sometimes painful, and frequently joyful.  It is for us a harvesting time, even while for our children it is mostly a time of planting.  

I am reminded that, with each graduation, one proceeds from the top of a staircase onto the bottom step of a new one.  When my daughter left Senior Nursery, she was at the bottom of the classes of Primary.  The seniors in high school become the freshmen in college.  The college graduate becomes the “newbie” at work.  In my employment I frequently am called upon to consider candidates for jobs.  Shall I tell you how little impressed I would be to learn that a particular applicant had been student council president or editor of the yearbook?

I believe that so it goes in the heavens.  We eternally progress from stage to stage, with Jesus Christ as our Guide, Leader, and Teacher, each stage well done qualifying us to begin the next, bringing us ever closer to become more like our Father in Heaven.  The value is in this very real becoming.  Our greatest worldly achievements of rank and fame bring with them into heaven as little weight as our grade school awards convey into adulthood.  With much concern God watches how we make our decisions, how we develop our character, with satisfaction and joy as we choose what is good and act well.  Like wise parents, God cannot and will not choose for us, our choices at planting being part of His joy in the harvest.

Again, as I recall my children in nursery, and my grandchildren there today, I reflect that there is so much that I would tell them but which they would not begin to understand.  There is a treasury of what I have learned in over 5 decades that I would share but that would be completely incomprehensible to a granddaughter or grandson in primary school. 

Then I reflect that compared to my Heavenly Father, my treasury is the knowledge of an infant, that I even today am such a little child in terms of what I know.  Indeed, were I to know all that there is available to know in this life, it would still be so very little compared with what our Father in the eternal worlds knows and has for us to learn when we once again live with Him.  A modern Apostle, Dallin H. Oaks (a former university president), once remarked that an omniscient God is not all that impressed with our Ph.Ds.  

But if I do well with what He has given and taught me, I have received the living hope from His Son that I may come step by step in the presence of the Father to know all that He would share, which is everything.  That is humbling and exhilarating.  I am glad that I have not really very long to wait, and that I can learn my first lessons even now.

Of Vanity and Christmas Gifts

The prophets, ancient and modern, are clear that this life is a very artificial thing.  The earth and this mortality did not just happen.  They were carefully planned in the sphere of the eternities, for very specific—and lasting—purposes.

Abraham reported this, from a vision wherein he saw God speaking of us, His spirit children, before He created the earth:

We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell; and we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them; and they who keep their first estate shall be added upon; . . . and they who keep their second estate shall have glory added upon their heads for ever and ever. (Abraham 3:24-26)

Some centuries later Moses had a related vision, in which the Lord told him,

For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. (Moses 1:39)

Our glory appears to be the Lord’s glory.  It is the Lord’s work and glory that we grow and progress forever.  The mortal mission and sacrifice of Jesus Christ were all part of His work for our immortality and eternal life.  I am not sure that the Lord cares anything at all about anything we do other than what we do that affects His work and His glory.  I do not find any evidence in the scriptures that anything else that we do matters to Him.  Of course, in an eternal context, nothing else we do really matters to us, either.   All of that other stuff is what the author of Ecclesiastes refers to as “vanity of vanities” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

That vanity, the key theme of the Book of Ecclesiastes, is what many people seem to think that this life is all about.  Many people live this life as if this life really mattered much, when in truth, all that matters about this life is how it affects the true reality, which resides in the eternal worlds, beyond this world and life.  Lasting value and meaning are found in what we take with us when we leave this world. 

That is a good filter, if we wish to discern what in this life is imperishable and real and what is temporary and vain.  If you take it with you past the grave, it matters.  If it does not, fuhgeddaboudit.  Or, at least, do not set your heart on it or waste much time with it.

That might be a good guide for Christmas gifts.  By that I mean, consider the purpose behind the giving of the gift.  Is its purpose to transfer possession of vanity, that has no reach beyond the grave?  Or is it instead intended to communicate and strengthen ties of love, friendship, to show kindness, to build relationships, to facilitate personal growth and progress, to memorialize pleasant shared experiences, to express and transmit value?  Consider how it may be tied to this list of eternal verities that stay with us?

Remember faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, brotherly kindness, godliness, charity, humility, diligence. (Doctrine and Covenants 4:6)

There is a lot of Christmas Spirit in that list.  Such solemnized gifts are not likely to break and never grow old.  They are very real.  To the extent they embrace such virtues, I think we remember them.

Of Christmas and Faith in Miracles

The events associated with the birth of the Savior occurred in a miraculous time during an age of miracles.  It was also an era of grinding poverty, breathtaking opulence, and many gradations of wealth in between.  People were ignorant, well educated, parochial in vision, and metropolitan in view.  Religious beliefs involved spurious superstitions, animistic traditions, polytheistic practices, monotheistic faith, and sophisticated atheism.

That is to say that those times and ours have more in common than we might have supposed, which is the point of my writing this evening.  Perhaps we create too much distance between us and the birth of the Savior.  Measured in human lives, 2000 years is a long time.  In the eternal measures of God and heaven, it must be acknowledged as being brief, a matter of yesterday and common memory.

That being true, it would be odd to assume that God, whose miracles were on prominent display in Judea of long ago, would work by miracles yesterday and not do so today.  The lack of belief in either one logically undermines faith in the other, because it assumes limits on either God’s ability or His willingness to work by miracles, a possibility hard for the mind to accept.  The disbelief in either ancient or modern miracles inclines the mind to reject God’s miraculous interventions entirely. 

For some it can be much easier to believe in miracles of the past than to recognize modern ones.  Others may be willing to see God’s hand in their own lives but consider the ancient scriptural accounts as morality stories, the details of which should not be taken too literally.  We find examples of both among our contemporaries and throughout history.    

Of course, among the sophisticated set have always been those who doubted miracles of both past and present.  With no recognition of personal involvement in miracles, they reject the word of those who actually witnessed them.  They are quick to dismiss others’ experiences, with nice attitudes of condescension for the “lovely legends” and “faith traditions,” that must be taken figuratively if accepted at all.  When those who know assert the reality of the wonders, the sophisticates can be known to turn to anger and scorn.

And yet reality can be stubborn and defy rejection.  Angels delivering messages from God to priests in the Temple and to shepherds in the fields, God speaking to common men by dreams, signs from God to men in distant places motivating them to “traverse afar” to witness God’s works of salvation, and many other examples of heaven’s direct involvement in human affairs can be easier to dismiss if they only happened in hazy history.  When presented with facts of past and present miracles skeptics are hard put to know how to deal with them, other than to dismiss them out of hand and cast ignorant aspersions on those claiming any direct and tangible involvement with Divinity.  Nevertheless, the facts remain.

It works the other way, too.  Denying modern miracles makes it easier to deny their existence long ago and to convert them into lovely stories instead of real world evidences of the power and love of God and of His involvement in our lives.  If there are no miracles now, then they were unlikely to exist in the past.  The miracles attendant to the Savior’s birth are transformed into fabulous fabrications rather than marvelous signs of the reality of the birth of the Son of God.  The reality of modern miracles, however, attests to the reality of the miracles recorded in ancient scripture.

Admittedly, with rare exceptions, miracles are not for the edification of the faithless anyway.  The Lord usually provides room for disbelief for those who choose to disbelieve and for their own sake spares the doubtful from divine confirmation of what they doubt.  The Lord did not send angels to invite the leaders of society to the stable in Bethlehem, but instead He called out to those who readily accepted His invitation to witness the baby laid to rest in the cattle’s manger.  He did send signs, and through the signs a summons, to the believing wise men of the East who had faith that this child was to be the King of Kings.

Similarly, in modern times, to prepare the way for the approach of the Savior’s second coming, the Lord has reached out through angels, heavenly messengers, and by His own voice to the humble faithful who are ready to believe His word, confirming their belief with many and miraculous signs and wonders.

It is a lot easier to believe in the wonders of the Savior’s birth when we witness and receive their like in our own day.  Our unchangeable God works by similar methods with all of His children.  And the saints of all ages rejoice.

Of Noel and Becoming Certained

Here is a challenge for you.  Find the origin of “Noel.”  There are a respectable breadth and shallow depth of information on where this word came from.  While today we use it commonly as a synonym for Christmas, agreement pretty well ends after that.  Uncertain roots and meanings do not seem to inhibit the use of the word “Noel” this time of year.

I expected general consensus that Noel was of French derivation.  A little research, however, turns up a competing claim that the word has a Gaelic or Celtic source.  That need not disprove the theory of a French origin, since many Celtic peoples lived in France (or Gaul) before the Romans came, and many who today live in the northwestern parts of France trace their genealogies to Celtic roots, especially in Brittany.

Another French origin theory links the word to Latin, but here again opinion diverges.  One school traces Noel from the Latin word natalis, suggesting a meaning derived from a reference to birth, particularly celebration of the birth of the Savior.

The other French-from-Latin line takes us to Nowell, and from there to Nouvelles, referring to the Latin word for “news”:  novella, as in the good news of Christ’s birth.  With no personal claim to expertise in the science of etymology, I will admit to a preference for this derivation.  Aware of the French way of smoothing out Latin words, Nowell sounds like a very understandably French form of Novella.  Moreover, we have Medieval and Renaissance carols using the words Nouvelles and Nowell in much the same way that Noel is used in more modern carols.  In each case, the word is sung as a way of proclaiming joyous news, which fits very well with today’s French greeting of the season, Joyeux Noel!  Good news also happens to be related to the meaning of “Gospel” (which, by the way, comes from old English).

Which brings me to the popular carol, “The First Noel” (perhaps translated from the French), which begins like this: 

The first Noel the angel did say

Was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay

[and so forth].

Children love to sing Christmas carols.  The carols, after all, have laid claim to some of the most memorable melodies.  The words of carols, however, can at times challenge the vocabulary of little children.  Through many years of singing “The First Noel” I was certain that the word “certain” in the second line was a verb, not an adjective.  In my young mind it described what and why the angel was speaking to the shepherds.  The angel appeared in order to certain the shepherds.

While I was not sure what it meant “to certain” the shepherds, today I am not so sure that I was wrong in hearing a verb.  Why the angel chose those shepherds and perhaps not some others who might have been nearby seems to me less important than his purpose.  The angel wanted those shepherds to know, to understand, to be certain of what they saw, and thereby to be witnesses.  The angel explained to the shepherds what was happening, what it meant, where it was happening, how to recognize the marvel, and then the shepherds quickly went to see for themselves, personally.  Immediately afterward they shared what they knew.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy . . . . For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. . . . And they came with haste, and found . . . the babe lying in a manger.  And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. (Luke 2:8-17)

The Lord wants us to believe His word, but He wants our belief to mature into certainty, into knowledge.  As the Savior Himself prayed to the Father in the presence of His disciples,

And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.  (John 17:3)

Following His resurrection, Jesus was careful to make His disciples certain of His resurrection so that they might witness to others of what they knew, enabling others at first to believe and then come to know for themselves by the testimony of the Holy Ghost.

Wherefore I give you to understand, . . . that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. (1 Corinthians 12:3)

Similarly, in our day, the Lord would that we had living faith grown to knowledge through the Holy Ghost.  As the ancient American prophet, Moroni, testified,

And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.  (Moroni 10:5)

I, too, have been certained.  I know for sure that God is real and that Jesus Christ was resurrected and is the Savior of the world.  I am not alone in that knowledge.  Many have believed and had belief confirmed by the assurance of the Holy Ghost.

This Christmas season—or any season—I invite you to become certained, as were those poor shepherds and millions of God’s children before and since.  For you, like them, that would be discovering the true Noel of Christmas.

Of Presidents and Derelicts

Barack Obama is no fan of the Constitution.  He has been known to criticize it for its focus on limiting government, for telling governments what they can and cannot do.  He prefers a Constitution that focuses more on telling governments what they should do, at least telling governments to do what he would like, including seeing to the “redistribution of wealth,” or what he calls elsewhere “redistributive change.”

Of course, that is a mischaracterization.  Not a mischaracterization of Obama’s views but of what the Constitution says.  It does limit government, but it also gives government specific responsibilities and the power to exercise those responsibilities.  Article I, Section 8 provides a very clear list of the federal government’s duties.  It is noteworthy that those enumerated responsibilities and powers are in the Article that establishes the Congress.  The list includes such things as providing for the common defense, borrowing and paying government debts, regulating foreign and interstate commerce, establishing standards for weights and measures, and so forth.

There are plenty of other provisions that limit the powers of the government and how it operates.  The Constitution is a balance of governmental duties within a structure intended carefully to limit the government.  As a limited government our Republic has prospered.  It has struggled either when its duties were neglected (as in the days of President Buchanan, who did nothing while he watched state after state rebel from the Union) or when the limitations have been eroded (as we have witnessed through much of the twentieth century and in the first 14 years of the twenty-first).

The President has specific powers and duties, too, nearly all of which are carefully linked with the role of the Congress.  For example, while the President does not make the laws—Article I, Section 1 gives “All legislative Powers” exclusively to the Congress—the President is authorized to make proposals to Congress and has the authority to veto legislation (but not change it) that Congress has approved.  Once an act of Congress becomes law, the President then has the explicit obligation to, “take Care that the Laws be fully executed” (Article II, Section 3).  

Note the words, “fully executed”.  The President takes an oath to fulfill those duties, and nowhere in oath or Constitution is the President authorized to execute the laws only as much as he likes or agrees with them.  Once something has become a law, the President may not set aside this or that part of the law or decide that he will only enforce the law so far.  His obligation is to take Care that the laws are fully executed.

Average Americans may not like this or that provision of law, but we are not at liberty to ignore any law that applies to us just because we do not like it.  The President is not exempt from that common responsibility of all citizens, either. As the chief government executive, who sought to hold his high office of public responsibility, he is even more obligated not only to obey the laws but to execute them, fully.  The President may not make the laws, he may not amend the laws, he may not change the laws, and he may not disregard the laws.  His duty is to execute the laws, and when he does not he is derelict in his duties. 

This is all in accordance with the important division of labor, the separation of powers that the Founders put into the very structure of the Constitution to combat the tendency of all humans to abuse power once it comes into their hands.  By dividing the power of government among three separate but coequal branches, dividing legislative power even further between House and Senate, and yet again separating government power between federal and state governments, the Founders went to clear and elaborate lengths to create checks and balances. 

Under the American system of government no branch, no person, no group of people in government, are to be able to do very much on their own without getting the other elements of government to go along.  Where they are not able to agree, where there is no consensus, for the safety of our freedoms government is prevented by constitutional law from moving forward unless substantial consensus among the different branches can be reached.  Those checks and balances again and again, throughout the more than two centuries of our Constitution, have forced the very human people in government to revisit their differences and come to terms with one another, however much they may disagree and be disagreeable.  There is safety for you and me in that.  And it helps keep our Union together, repeatedly forcing our leaders (and the parts of the nation that they represent and whose authority they exercise) to work with one another, like it or not.

Recently, President Obama has expressed impatience with the Constitution’s checks and balances.  After all, he personally, in and of himself, embodies an entire branch of government.  The other branches, Congress and the courts, have many different people with a messy variety of ideas.  President Obama complains that Congress cannot decide what it wants to do as quickly as he can.  In his view, why wait? 

By design, Congress of course has something of a multiple personality.  It is a gathering of elected representatives, reflecting the diversity of views among the people of the nation.  Appropriately, it takes time to build a consensus that accommodates those views, as it should.  But President Obama cannot wait.  He sees the need to accommodate no ideas other than his own.  He has decided that on this issue or that—today it is immigration laws—there is a limit, defined by himself, as to how much time Congress can take to consider things.  When time is up, he, the executive branch, will take the matter into his own hands, and pretend to the authority to do it.

His tool of choice today is to abjure his duty to execute the laws fully and instead to execute them partially, just to the extent and manner that suit his own desires, as he engages in another round of redistributive change.  That he is endeavoring to violate rather than execute our national, founding law, and his constitutional oath of office, apparently does not trouble him.  It is the Constitution itself that troubles him. 

But from where does he think he gets his authority to do anything.  When he breaks the Constitution, does he not break his very authority to act in the office that the Constitution created?

Of Majorities and Modesty

Perhaps with some weeks enough dust has settled to allow a few reactions to the recent American elections, with more perspective than can be gathered from listening to reporters interviewing reporters.  I will offer views that focus mostly on the results of the congressional elections, drawing upon experience from more than two decades of work in the Senate. 

I do not, however, wish to minimize the importance of the elections for governors and state legislatures.  In fact, I suspect that the next President of the United States will more than likely be a current or former governor than a Washington politico.  Most Presidents, historically, have come from the state governments, which I find encouraging for our federal system.  Moreover, judging from what we have seen, former Senators do not seem to make very good Presidents.  I cannot name one to whom we can look with admiration for what he accomplished in the White House.  There seems to be too much Washington blindness in them to govern effectively for our whole nation.

I am straying to an election yet to come, though.  Back to this year’s results, I will begin with the view that we should expect, with the media-scorned Republicans holding the majority in both House and Senate, that the finger of blame for all problems—real or imagined—will be pointed at “Congress.”  Disputes between legislative and executive branches will tend to be cast as exposing the nation to great danger as a result of congressional intransigence and/or “politics,” as if no real issues of policy—no questions of life, freedom, or wealth—are involved.

It is happening already.  In one bizarre report I heard this week on a major network “news” report, some Amtrak railroad drawbridge in the northeast is over a hundred years old and prone to getting stuck when it opens to let ships pass.  Amtrak wants a billion dollars or so to fix it, but, as the “news” story would have it, Republicans in the new Congress “are not looking for ways to spend money.”  That was the story.  Note the nothing new here.  The bridge has been around for a hundred years and did not suddenly become prone to malfunction this November.  But the election has now made it a story; a problem is arising, not because the President or the Democrats in Congress for several years did not seek to fix it, but because the new Republican majorities are not interested in spending money.  The bridge is not the problem in the story, the Republicans are.  Expect more of this kind of media “news.”

Second observation:  in recent decades Congress has increasingly surrendered more and more authority to the executive branch, including to the regulatory agencies.  The Senate, under the misleadership of Majority Leader Harry Read, has given up even more power and authority (perhaps in another post I will expound on lessons from the Senate of Rome, which by avoiding decisions paved the way for the Caesars—who were all too ready to make decisions).  The Democrats retain full control of the executive branch.  No small thing. In the remaining two years of the Obama Administration look for more aggressive activity from the White House and the regulators as they test just what they can try by regulation and regulatory fiat, without any detours to Capitol Hill.  To quote Jacob Marley’s ghost, “Much!”

When it comes to big Republican plans to make major changes, the quidnuncs will be fed explanations of the thinness of the Republican majorities, along with the “responsibility” of Republicans to share power with Democrats that the Democrats failed to win at the ballot box.  When it comes to work that needs to be done, the repeated common wisdom will be that the Republicans have the majority, so nothing should stop them from getting on with the job.  There will be little mention that the President can veto what Congress passes, and that Democrats  in the Senate will likely filibuster anything that the White House threatens to veto, saving the President the trouble—and political risk. 

Yet, there are things that the Republicans, even with working but not overwhelming majorities in Congress, will be able to do.  Most important, they get to set the agenda.  They get to decide what issues will be debated, what hearings will be held, what will be put to a vote, even when they may not have the votes to break Democrat opposition in the Senate.  It will be some relief that instead of the familiar series of proposals to curb liberties, raise taxes, or stifle economic growth and opportunity, the agenda will tend toward ideas of freedom and prosperity, though actual accomplishments will of necessity be modest against the strong opposition of the President and his media allies.  I will take modest improvements over the calamitous policy fails of the past several years.

Of Unbanked and “Underbanked”

Speaking of banks, as I did on this page a short time ago, there are those who are concerned that too many people in the United States are “unbanked” or “underbanked.”  By the former they seem to mean those who do not use any banking services, particularly who do not have any bank accounts.  By the latter, they mean those who obtain some banking services from businesses that are not banks.  The very existence of the terms, and the way that they are used by those who use them, implies that being “unbanked” or “underbanked” is a bad thing.

I will here disclose that I have worked for banks for nearly 10 years and for all I know may continue to do so for some time into the future.  Whatever bias or color to my views that this condition provides I will nevertheless try to comment from a fair and factual point of view.

My first point, therefore, is that I am not prepared to assert that absolutely everyone should have a bank account.  I can easily envision the value of a bank account for most if not all people, but I concede that they should be allowed to choose for themselves and that it would be terribly wrong to force people into banks.  I acknowledge that there are some alternative providers of financial services who seem to please their customers, and I do not deny that banks can benefit from good competition.  Banks have a long history of drawing upon the ideas and innovations of non-banks, just as non-banks have been eager to try their hand at successful new products and services that banks have pioneered.  Bank customers have benefited the most from that process, as the variety and value of financial products have expanded, and the United States has led the world in the discovery of new and useful financial services.

Having said that, the nation cannot do well without a strong, vibrant, and prosperous banking industry.  Our nation and people grow as we save financial resources and invest them in improvements for the future, whether new homes, new factories, or new ideas of how to do and make things better, faster, and cheaper.  That is a major part of what banks do and are all about. 

Moreover, there are a lot of things we do and a lot of places we go because we know that our ability to pay and get paid—to exchange things we value less for things that we value more (the reason we buy and sell things and use money to do it)—is secure, reliable, accurate, and relatively quick.  That is our payments system, and banks created it and are at the center of it.

Americans also like the idea of becoming wealthier and expect to do so.  If that seems a commonplace to you, recognize that it is not so in all parts of the world, where getting by from day to day is about the most to which people can aspire, for whom poverty is a way of life that they expect to bequeath to their children.  To the extent that this miserable condition is becoming less the case in much of the world, that more people are beginning to believe that they can build and improve their wellbeing for themselves and their posterity, this new-found hope for accumulating wealth is attributable to the dispersion of principles of freedom and prosperity that Americans take for granted but which are new to much of the world.  The global adoption of many American principles of prosperity has been a major contribution of the New World to the Old World and to all mankind.

Now get ready for the bold but true statement:  you cannot get there and stay there without banks and the services that banks provide.  Banks gather wealth, safeguard wealth, allow it to be used efficiently, and apply it to building the future.  That is why governments pay so much attention to banks, and also why it is so harmful when governments try to capture banks and channel their services to the personal gain of themselves and their cronies.  That is also why misguided bank regulations are harmful—even if in subtle but powerful ways—to the nation and its people.

Which brings us back to the agenda of the “unbanked” and the “underbanked.”  In the United States, chief causes for people remaining “unbanked” are regulations that make banking more difficult and services more expensive; cultural barriers for people who come from societies where personal banking is either unknown or where the experience has been one of banks used by local governments to harvest wealth from people to enrich the governing elites and their cronies (much of Latin America, for example); and people who for whatever reason just do not prefer to use banks.  The first cause regulators can solve but have largely been resistant to solving; the second can be overcome by time and experience and is showing signs of that; and the third cause is no more of a problem than people who prefer to rent rather than own their home, to eat eggs without grits, or who do not like the New York Yankees.  I do not have to understand the personal preference to acknowledge it.

The concept of “underbanked” (that government needs to help banks figure out how to serve people who may get some banking services outside of banks) I fear may be a political device to harness American banks to serve the cronies of the “underbanked” advocates.  We have already seen this game with the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations, adopted ostensibly to ensure that banks lend to their local communities (as if bankers, unlike other businessmen, need government regulation to notice business opportunities right under their own nose).  In practice, CRA has been used to coerce banks into providing loans and even grants to and through poverty advocacy agencies that tend to prosper more than the people whom they claim to be helping.  The folks who fret about the “underbanked” have marvelous formulas and plans for other people’s money to solve problems about which the people to be helped seem little concerned.  I have never heard of any truly “underbanked” people themselves calling for the firm hand of government to get them into the banking system; if they want banking services, they just go and get them. 

I have the haunting suspicion that the “underbanked” advocates would if they could use banks the same way found in the abandoned societies of the “unbanked,” where banking services came through the hands of people who knew better than others and always made sure to get their cut for their benevolence.  That is not really banking, and that is symptomatic of why people flee those lands.  The wealth creation of such captive banks seems to be for someone else.  If it happens in America, where will the people go?

Of Banks and Over Taxed Regulators

Banks, who needs them?  A quick question and a quick answer:  a thriving, prospering banking system is essential for a thriving, prospering modern economy.  Banks bring together the resources of savers and the needs of borrowers, particularly borrowers who seek funds to establish or expand businesses or families and individuals who use occasional borrowing to smooth out their income (good banking principles penalize people who would borrow in order to live beyond their means, but more on that at another time). 

Banks also created and maintain the payments system, the means by which money is transferred quickly and accurately throughout the nation and even internationally.  Bank services include as well a variety of wealth management tools by which individuals, families, businesses, and governments can store, grow, and make best use of their financial wealth. 

Without banks, almost none of these services would be available.  Many non-banks provide bank-like services, but they all come to find the need to rest their own services at some point on a bank.

Banking in the United States has grown with the nation, from very simple institutions in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to a wide variety of bank types, charters, and business models, as diverse as the financial demands of the customers of the largest and most diverse economy in the world.  I once presented at a meeting in Chicago a list of about two-dozen different types of banks in the United States.  We have national banks, state chartered banks, small community banks, larger regional banks, and very large banks with extensive national and international business products and services.  All of these operate and compete together, with a body of customers behind each one who think that their bank offers the best available choice of services that they want.  No other nation in the world has a banking industry like ours.

The recent recession and financial panic—and the inevitable politicizing of finance that came in its wake—have thrown much into confusion and imposed upon sound and prudent bank supervision harmful ideas born of reckless sloganeering and hubristic financial engineering.  The complexity of banking—no more complex than information technology, communications systems, or modern manufacturing—has been superseded by even more complex bank regulation. 

The rules governing banking are too much and too many to function reasonably.  They have become more than the very human people in the multitude of bank regulatory agencies can manage.  The disciplining role of markets and the valuable service of banker judgment have in large measure been replaced by bureaucratic procedures and the judgments of government officials.  These officials have had little if any practical experience making loans, taking deposits and putting them to work, building financial wealth, or otherwise providing products to customers.  Government officials cannot run businesses.  Now, their government jobs have become so demanding and complex, that they will not be able to do their own jobs, either.  Too much has been placed upon them.

Those most harmed by all of this are bank customers.  For the moment, bank profits are up, but that is because their losses are down as they recover from the recession, not because services to customers are expanding.  As a result of government interest rate policies, depositors earn almost nothing on the money that they place in banks.  The expanding oversight involvement of bank regulators makes it dangerous for banks to offer new services to customers; the risk of breaking any of thousands of pages of regulations has become too great.  It takes almost half an hour to open a new bank account, something that used to take minutes.  Fewer credit-worthy borrowers today qualify for mortgages than just a year ago, before new regulations went into effect.  The number of banks has been declining in recent years, dropping at the rate of nearly one for every business day, week in and week out.  Only one new bank has been opened since 2010.  We have fewer banks today than the nation had in 1893.  A stagnant industry is less able to evolve to meet changing customer needs and preferences.

For the good of all of us who rely upon banking services, and for the sanity of financial regulators, we need to return to the principles of good banking.  We need to restore a system of supervision that is measured, not by how much banker judgment it takes over, but by how it adds value to the ability of banks to serve customers.  Government agencies—and the laws that they administer—that are derived from a founding document that begins with the words, “We the People,” should do nothing less, and nothing more.

On another day I would like to share some thoughts about how banks are being goaded to become their own enemies.

Of Holidays and Recreation

The holidays are fast upon us. The store displays are relentless clues (even if they rush things a bit). While growing up I looked forward to Hallowe’en, in part for the costume and candy celebration itself, but in no small part as the gateway to a series of rich and usually joyful holidays. October ended with Hallowe’en, and then Thanksgiving was observed a few weeks later. Right after Thanksgiving we were into the Christmas holidays. Quickly after Christmas came New Year, followed in February by Valentine’s Day, and at varying intervals Easter arrived amidst the celebration of Spring and new life.

I have a generous treasury of enchanting memories from those holidays. I recall one magical Hallowe’en as a young boy in a neighborhood full of children. The early evening’s streets and sidewalks were filled with costumed colleagues, all busily canvassing the ready houses, milling about, comparing each other’s sweetened haul, each house ready to greet you with a smile or perhaps an expression of wonder while adding to the bulging bag of treats.

Thanksgiving, perhaps the warmest and kindest of holidays, is rich in tradition, from the family and friends who gather, foods that are prepared, the china and silverware that are used, to the preview of coming cold weather. For me and mine, Thanksgiving has been a busily gentle holiday, crowded with activity and effort, but calm and purposeful. Rambunctious noise seems foreign to the day, even with a morning pick-up football game among Church members included. Thanksgiving speaks a time of Christ-like peace in my memory. If there were exceptions, they are forgotten. A prayer, a toast, and a feast that symbolizes the riches bestowed on us by God. In later years, with my own family (my wife and our children), the evening has witnessed the first lighting of the outdoor Christmas lights. Thanksgiving has brought on the Christmas season at our home.

Christmas for us has always been a season, with many holidays. The Advent holidays lead us inexorably to Christmas Eve. In those weeks there are many celebrations, ours and others, traditional and new. We began a new tradition last year that we anticipate repeating this season. Christmas Day itself has been a time when all ordinary activity seems to stop, a Sabbath of Sabbaths. We take an emotional breather, we contact family members not spending the day with us. We enjoy time together and some time occupied alone. For us, we then let the Christmas festivities wind down of themselves to their conclusion at Epiphany, the day we quietly finish the celebration until we near the end of the new year just begun.

Speaking of which, New Years’ Eves in my life have varied widely in observance. Maybe most memorable are an evening spent with my best friend shooting a basketball at the new hoop above my garage door, and another evening as a missionary in the Canary Islands, reflecting on the arrival of 1980, musing on what the end of the twentieth century would mean two decades later. That evening, those decades appeared to be rushing at me.

Then there are Valentine’s Day and Easter arising in steady succession. Each has its own traditions, each creating its own imprint in life’s recollections.

These have stocked my treasury of marvelous memories. I am rich with them. Yet I have more observances to come. To these I look forward.

Here is what I believe about these riches. I can take them out of the treasury each year and seek to recreate them, to work to experience them all over again. If I do, I have but relived and re-experienced what I already have. I add little new to the treasury. Many people celebrate this way. It seems to me a squandered opportunity and probably dangerous. I doubt that the previous charm can be revived, that the wondrous experience of the past can be recaptured. I fear that the joyful and rich memory might even be harmed by the failed effort. Worse, much can be consumed, much exertion expended, and still frustration and misery—for myself and others—may result in the trying.

I believe that a better approach would be to create new magnificent memories. These can build upon the past and work from valuable traditions. The good of the past can be drawn upon to create something greater. The effort is to make a new experience, not vainly recall to life a treasured memory. Not every holiday experience will produce equal joy and beauty, but if allowed to live for its own sake each will add to the fullness of life and the value of our storehouse of life’s treasures. Each will have the chance to be the most marvelous experience yet.

I am not prepared to concede that the best of my life has been lived or that the finest that I can do is recreate only what has happened before. I fancy to live life on the rise. I see no loss in trying.

Bring on the holidays. I plan to observe them each as never before.

Of Wars and Rumors of Wars

The Lord Jesus Christ declared the hearing of wars and rumors of wars to be significant among the signs of the latter days preceding His personal return to the earth in glory, to rule and reign.  This from Matthew, in the New Testament:

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars . . . For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:  and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.  (Matthew 24:6, 7)

This from Mark:

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled . . . For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:  and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles . . .  (Mark 13:7, 8)

And this from the Lord through a modern prophet:

And in that day shall be heard of wars and rumors of wars, and the whole earth shall be in commotion . . .  (Doctrine and Covenants 45:26)

As well as I can recall, I have always thought—from my young childhood—that I was living in the latter days, shortly before the return of the Savior to the earth.  I cannot remember a time when I did not suspect that to be true.  Perhaps many in many ages have had similar thoughts. 

My study of the scriptures, ancient and modern, and the words of the prophets, dead and living, matched against what I have witnessed in my life have confirmed my belief that the day of the return of Jesus Christ, to live and dwell among men as the resurrected Lord, is near.  I do not predict precisely how near.  It may not happen in my lifetime.  The Lord said that the Father has not confided the precise day even to the angels of heaven (Matthew 24:36).  But if I do not live to see that day, I do not expect that the Savior’s return will occur long after I die, in which case I hope to come with Him together with many who lived and died faithful to the testimony of Christ.

Until recently I had considered these prophecies of wars and disasters to be a sign of something new.  Yet wars of men and convulsions of the earth are found throughout the annals of history.  Perhaps the prophecies refer to an increase in frequency and intensity.  Maybe that is so.  Looking back on the recent twentieth century it is hard to find a year without war raging one place or another, and I cannot identify another century in which so many tens of millions were destroyed at the hands of their brothers and sisters.  The Middle Ages and on into the Renaissance, if not many other ages, were also racked with constant conflict and mayhem.  Their numerous wars seemed interminable, including a Thirty Years War and even a Hundred Years War.

I have come to suspect that in reading these prophecies I misdirected my focus.  For something to be a sign, it must be new or different.  What was the Lord saying here that would be different, different enough so that we might notice?  Perhaps it was not the wars and physical upheavals themselves, as those have been with us since man and woman left Eden.  What is very much new and different about today is our ability to hear of the wars, rumors of wars, and the natural disasters. The evils of men and the destruction of nature may be increasing in frequency—and the case for intensity of human mayhem is not tough to make—but what really is new is our ability to hear of them. 

Nothing in the entire history of the world can compare with the very recent ability of mankind, anywhere and everywhere, to hear of what is happening anywhere at any time on the planet.  That is especially true of “rumors.”  Internet communications, and the many evolving formats of social media, make the spreading of rumor—always known to travel on wings—electrifyingly quick and amazingly ubiquitous.  Every day we do hear of wars and rumors of wars and the whole world in commotion.  It is hard to avoid.

As the dashed expectations held by many at the time of the Savior’s mortal ministry blinded them to the reality of the fulfillment of prophecy, holding too tightly to one’s opinion of how prophecy might be fulfilled is a risky business.  The Lord expects us, however, to think about it, else why would He make the prophecies and repeat them?  I offer these thoughts for pondering, even while we observe the mighty work of God unfold in our own lifetime, as He told the prophets it would.  

What have you heard today?

Of Naked Ladies and the House of Israel

Some call them Naked Ladies.  Others invoke the adjectives Resurrection, Surprise, or Magic.  A more formal name seems to be Amaryllis Belladonna.  They are lily-like flowers (but distantly related to lilies), with large, trumpet-like blossoms.  They certainly look like lilies to me, no offense intended to the botanists. 

I first noticed these mystery flowers when they appeared one summer in my backyard.  I do not know how they got there.  This summer there are several of them, each summer a few more.  They are beautiful.  But even more, I find them a wonder.  Unless you were careful to notice their abundant but brief and non-flowering leaves at the beginning of the growing season, you would have little expectation that in the hottest and driest time of the summer you were to be blessed by an eruption of beauty in your yard. 

These flowers bloom on tall stalks that break through the dry ground without any leaves or other trace of the plant at all.  It took me a season or two to discover their abundant leafy growth in early spring.  From that spring verdure the plants gather and store in their bulbs the strength that lies dormant for many weeks after the leaves have all died away. 

The tall, slender stems of late July and August, with their lovely pink blossoms but no foliage of any kind, I must suppose give the flowers their name, Naked Ladies.  The variety of other names testify that these flowering bulbs suggest many things to many people.  If you did not know that they were there, hiding in the ground, you would have a surprise when the stalks rocket up in a matter of days to bloom in abundance.  From a plant that seemed to have died off with the spring, the resurrection of blossoms arises at a time when the most intense heat of the summer dries out many other flora.  From barren ground, with no apparent preparation or support, the blossoms appear like magic.

I can embrace all of these images and their accompanying names, to which I would add another—at least another metaphor if not another name.  They remind me of the house of Israel. 

Long ago Israel thrived in the land called Canaan.  Twelve Tribes, descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob, named Israel by the Lord Jehovah, put down deep roots and flourished between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and into surrounding territories.  As they stayed faithful to God, kept His commandments and ordinances, Israel grew and prospered.  

As with the plant I have in mind, Israel’s time of flourishing was relatively brief.  Before the end of the eighth century, B.C., Ten of the Twelve Tribes had fallen away from the faith of God into the paganism of their neighbors.  Their lands were conquered and the people carried away captive and out of the further knowledge of history.  The tribes of Judah and Benjamin alone remained, the Jews of today.  In time they, too, were driven from their homeland and scattered all over the world.

For thousands of years the house of Israel has remained in captivity and Diaspora.  All but the Jews have remained unnoticed, and the Jews have been subjected to waves of persecution that has risen and ebbed but not wholly ceased. 

Yet Israel has lived, strength acquired long ago awaiting the season of sprouting and blossoming, as foretold by numerous prophets, ancient and modern.  Through Moses, the Lord declared to Israel,

That then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all nations, whither the Lord thy God has scattered thee. (Deuteronomy 30:3)

Through the prophet Ezekiel,

For in mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord God, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, serve me:  there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the firstfruits of your oblations, with all your holy things.  I will accept you with your sweet savour, when I bring you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you before the heathen.  (Ezekiel 20:40, 41)

When Jesus Christ visited His believers in America, shortly following His resurrection, teaching them about the house of Israel He promised, “I will gather them in from the four quarters of the earth; and then will I fulfill the covenant which the Father made unto all the people of the house of Israel.” (3 Nephi 16)

In our day, modern prophets of Jesus Christ have declared the approaching fulfillment of the covenant:

We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes . . . (Articles of Faith 10)

Those surprise flowers each year remind me of the Lord’s promises to the house of Israel, as today we are witnessing those slender stalks arise unexpectedly from barren lands, just beginning to bloom.  It is wondrous and beautiful.  A work of God.

Of the Meaning of Life and the Purpose of Love

Does life have meaning?  If so, what is that meaning?  The answer, to be valid, must discover meaning for lives lived 70 years and longer as well as those lived for 70 minutes or fewer.  That is to say, that it must reveal meaning for all members of the family of Adam and Eve.  I have to admit that I cannot fathom an answer that life offers meaning only for some people but not for others, that the others are just stage props for those fortunate humans for whom life really matters.

I would also posit that in order for life to have meaning for man, then man’s existence cannot end with the end of mortality, that life must have an eternal character for there to be meaning to it.  Temporary meaning is no meaning in the end.  If there is an end, then in the end what does it matter?

I will add that, if there is eternal existence, that whispers to me a strong intuition of the existence of God, the existence of a being who has it all figured out, who has used eternity well.  I do not offer this point as a proof at this moment, but rather as a likelihood.  There are other proofs that I know and could offer for the existence of God, for God has not hidden Himself from His children who want to know Him.  He sent us here to find out which of His children really want to know Him:  that is one of the purposes of this life, closely related to the central purpose of life.  The process of coming to know God is an individual work that necessitates the personal development of what is also God’s defining characteristic.  That development involves the process of living in this life on earth.

That is to say that one way of describing the central purpose and meaning of life is this:  for each individual to develop an ever greater capacity to love.  That may sound sentimental and trite, but it is nonetheless true.  Good fiction draws its vitality from important themes of reality.  J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series climaxes with the discovery that the most powerful “magic” in the world is love, belittled and scorned by the arch villain of the series even as he is destroyed by its strength. 

Love, particularly the love of God, is the central theme of scripture.  The scriptures taken altogether are an unfolding exposition of God’s love operating among His children and either embraced or rejected by them.  The scriptures describe the deepest and most complete form of love as charity, “the pure love of Christ” (Moroni 7:47), the greatest of all the gifts of God (see 1 Corinthians 13:13). 

Elsewhere the scriptures name “eternal life” as “the greatest of all the gifts of God” (Doctrine and Covenants 14:7).  This is not a contradiction, as eternal life and charity are coincidental.  To possess one is to possess the other.  Consider these passages of scripture together.  The first is how God describes His work, what He does, which must therefore be very closely related to His meaning, His purpose:

For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. (Moses 1:39)

The second is how the ancient Israelite prophet Lehi described man’s purpose to his family:

men are that they might have joy. (2 Nephi 2:25)

This means that immortality, eternal life, and joy are all connected.  Jesus taught that they are united in the personal development of the divine trait of love.  During the Savior’s preaching in Jerusalem in the last week of His mortality, the legalistic Pharisees sought to trip the Savior up with a question that to them must have been a real poser, undoubtedly a favorite debate topic:

Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

Conceptually this is just another way to introduce our topic about the meaning of life, for surely the commandments of God and the meaning of life are closely related, God’s commandments designed to lead His children through a life of meaning and fulfillment.  The answer of Christ, who before His birth had given the commandments to the prophets, silenced for a time His tempters; at least, no rejoinder is mentioned in the record, perhaps because Jesus was referencing what He had given in the laws He revealed to Moses (see Deuteronomy 6:4,5, and Leviticus 19:18).

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.  (Matthew 22:36-40)

All the rest of the gospel is elaboration of these two commandments.  That is the purpose of life, to develop charity, the pure love of Christ, the complete soul-filled love of God, which manifests itself in loving our neighbors as ourselves.  How do we do that?  As Jesus said, that is the purpose of the law and the prophets.  “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

As the ancient American prophet Mormon taught,

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified as he is pure.  Amen. (Moroni 7:48)

Mormon’s people nearly all rejected his counsel and descended into a hatred that devoured their civilization in pointless dissolution.

Life has meaning because it has choices with real consequences.  We feel and see and live them everyday.  Amidst the easy-to-see evils of the world, there are plenty who choose to do good, to love their fellows and increase in their love of God.  There are and have been those who live life to its fullest, growing in the greatest of all gifts and the mightiest of all powers by being true followers of Jesus Christ, increasing in the love by which they become like Him and by which they will know Him. 

Beloved, let us love one another:  for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.  He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.  (1 John 4:7,8)

Let us love, that when at last we see God, as we all will, we will recognize Him, because we will have become like Him in the most meaningful way.

Of Men and Women

I hope and have every confidence that at some future day my posterity and yours will look upon the popular efforts of our popular culture, working mightily to smooth out the differences between men and women, and conclude, “Huh?”  The differences are real, profound, and obvious. 

You have to work very hard to convince young children that men and women, boys and girls, are pretty much the same.  The differences are to them an unremarkable truth.  And so they remain, despite efforts to pretend they are otherwise.  And so, I believe, the differences between man and woman will persist, with unhappiness and poverty the rewards for efforts to obliterate them.

Not that it has not been tried before.  It has always come to grief.  One story comes from the French Revolution.  A leader of the National Assembly proclaimed that the new government had almost completely eliminated all differences between the sexes, when a voice from the back softly retorted, “Vive la différence!”

I, too, embrace the differences and am glad of them.  Having been married more than three decades I can testify from long experiment that the many differences between husband and wife, man and woman, have played a central role in our happiness.  Even as a youth I often mused upon how my life had been enriched by the influence of women.  That was not a new discovery for mankind even if it was for me.  Benjamin Disraeli said as much in the 1800s:  “There is no mortification however keen, no misery however desperate, which the spirit of woman cannot in some degree lighten or alleviate.” (Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby, p.311)  I am not aware of any exception to that maxim.

This variety is eternal, built into human nature from the very beginning:

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. (Genesis 1:27)

This was no accident of nature.  Together man and woman, male and female, are the image of God.

My children have always noticed the difference and profited from it.  When they phone, they rarely ask for “Dad.”  If Dad answers, they will sweetly and briefly chat and then ask, “Is Mom there?”  With Mom they will then talk for a long while, hours sometimes. 

On the other hand, while growing up, when they wanted permission to do this or that, more often than not, they went to Dad.  To guard against this clever maneuver, my wife and I early made a pact that we would not openly disagree regarding the denial or approval of a child’s request and would seek to consult to get a parental consensus if a matter of consequence were involved.  That worked well, but the children still knew where to go first to make their pitch.

The paradigm was similar when it came to bugs, vermin, and fixing broken things, unclogging drains, moving the rubbish—all jobs usually given to Dad and faced with trepidation when Dad was not available.  As the boys got older, these jobs increasingly found their way to them, too.  The flip side was that all illnesses and injuries were brought to the attention of Doctor Mom. They still are, no matter how far away the child may be.

These patterns have been successful for peace and harmony in the home.  Life would be harder if my wife and I struggled against the differences that gave us distinct skills, insights, and abilities, related to being a woman and being a man.  One of the greatest blessings of marriage has been to enlist an undying union with the owner of a wealthy supply of talents not easily possessed by the other.

My conversation with friends and colleagues have shown this pattern to be too common to be attributable merely to differences of personality.  The differences between man and woman are real and enriching.  I thank my God for making man and woman in His image, together.

Vive la différence!

Of Old Time Religion and What’s Good Enough for Me

Is there a revival or camp meeting song more popular than “Old Time Religion”?  Maybe, but few, and few serve so well to stir up so quickly good feelings about the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Try getting the song out of your head after singing or even listening to it for a while—not an easy task.  It is bouncing around in my head even as I write.

Like a good campfire song, it lends itself easily to new verses improvised on the spot by each singer in turn.  Because of that, I do not know that there is an official set of lyrics. 

All of the variations you might hear or sing begin with—

Now give me that old time religion.

Give me that old time religion.

Give me that old time religion.

It’s good enough for me.

That lead verse sets the pattern.  After it come verses like the following:

Makes me love everybody.

Makes me love everybody.

Makes me love everybody.

It’s good enough for me.

I particularly like that thought, because the religion of Jesus Christ is designed to change us so that we do love everybody.  The greatest gift of God is charity, the pure love of Christ.  If a religion is unable to bring about that change in people, then it is not the religion taught by the Savior.

Here is another verse that I like:

It was good for the Hebrew children.

It was good for the Hebrew children.

It was good for the Hebrew children.

It’s good enough for me.

Some modern religions seem to have forgotten the Hebrew children.  You cannot have the true “old time religion” without including them.  As Moses and the other Old Testament prophets taught, the religion of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was the religion of Jesus Christ.  It was Christ—referred to as the Messiah and as Jehovah in the Hebrew scriptures—who as the God of the Old Testament gave the Hebrews their religion, the religion of direct revelation from God that brought them out of Egypt, and it was good enough to bring them prosperity whenever they followed it.

Of course, the old time religion of God is even older than the Hebrew children, since it was the religion taught by God to Adam and his descendants, observed by Noah and his family on the Ark.  There were other old time religions, but they were not good for anybody, with no power to save in heaven or on earth.

And when the Hebrew children forsook the old time religion and instead embraced the pagan religions of their neighbors, the Lord could not protect them.  Many rediscovered God’s old time religion once they were in exile in Babylon.  That lies behind another stirring verse:

It was good for the prophet Daniel.

It was good for the prophet Daniel.

It was good for the prophet Daniel.

It’s good enough for me.

It was good for all of God’s prophets and taught by them.  That included the prophets of the Old Testament and the Apostles and prophets of the church Jesus established during His mortal ministry.  This verse captures that spirit:

It was good for Paul and Silas.

It was good for Paul and Silas.

It was good for Paul and Silas.

It’s good enough for me.

That old time religion, of Apostles and prophets who spoke directly with God, and through whom the Father continued to speak regularly to His children, had power to save.  As the song continues,

It will take us all to heaven.

It will take us all to heaven.

It will take us all to heaven.

It’s good enough for me.

I am very grateful that God’s old time religion of prophets and Apostles of Jesus Christ is on the earth once again, just as it was anciently.  I will add my own verse:

It will help us follow Jesus.

It will help us follow Jesus.

It will help us follow Jesus.

And that’s good enough for me.

Of Charity and Forever

The more I ponder, the more I am brought to the conviction that the pure love of Christ, what the scriptures call charity, is the purpose of life and its highest ideal.  So much of this life is designed to provide the opportunity and conditions for developing charity. 

Consider this description of charity, provided by the ancient American prophet, Mormon.

And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. (Moroni 7:45)

The Apostle Paul offered a very similar description in his first letter to the Corinthians, where he explained that faith, hope, and charity are closely intertwined (see 1 Corinthians 13). 

On this earth, in mortality, man does not come by charity naturally.  It seems that to develop charity its opposite must be possible, too.  As one connects us with heaven, the other ties us to the world of death.  We see abundant evidence that this is so. 

Where is the man or woman who naturally possesses all of the traits that are part of and unified in charity?  We are all drawn to traits the very opposite of charity, to suffer as briefly as we may, to be frequently unkind, often puffed up, normally seeking our own, and surely too easily provoked, thinking plenty of evil, bearing perhaps some things but far from all, with limited hope, and of weak endurance.  Gloriously, we all to some degree by our efforts and with the help of others rise above these evils and exhibit and make part of our natures some portion of the elements of charity.  Most people seem to mix the two opposites to varying degrees. 

God reaches out to lift each of us up and above our mortal nature.  Charity is a gift from God, one that He bestows upon those who qualify to receive it by demonstrating their willingness to receive it and live by it.  The more we desire it and live by it, the more that charity remains with us and becomes part of us and changes us.  When the Spirit of God comes upon us and enters into our hearts and fills our minds, we taste, we experience charity for a time, in all of its aspects, all unified together (the virtues of charity are of a kind and part harmoniously and mutually reinforcing).  For a time, the virtues of charity become our virtues. 

Thus Mormon counseled,

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God. . . (Moroni 7:48)

That is what it means to be a “son of God,” born of the Spirit.  By following Jesus Christ, living as He would, the gift of charity is bestowed upon us, enabling and teaching us in our hearts and minds how to live like Christ, to do the works that He would do, giving us the power to believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things.  As we experience personally the pure love of Christ our nature changes and we become progressively like Christ.

The world provides ample opportunities to exercise and develop those virtues that we know in spiritual vision but which we need to practice in fact to make ours, to make ourselves into their image, the image of Christ.  We are surrounded by evil, by hardship, by difficulty, by those who need our help.  Reaching to heaven, charity enlightens us to know how to conquer evil and gives us the power to cope with hardship, overcome difficulty, to bless, promote kindness, relieve suffering, and “endure all things.”

Yet we fall short from time to time, we lose the vision, we turn away.  Sin is any and all that would keep us from developing charity.  Repentance brings us back by allowing us to change, to seek and qualify for forgiveness of our sins through Christ’s redemption and again be ready for our hearts and minds to be filled with the gift of charity by the power of the Holy Ghost. 

Once more we exercise faith, we gain hope, “but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Corinthians 13:13).  We may keep charity forever, and as we experience charity in this world we personally learn what forever means.

Of Jesus Christ and Revolutionary Doctrines

There are several key doctrines of the gospel of Christ revolutionary to the general world.  I do not include the existence of God, since belief in God is as old as human thought.  The first man and woman believed in God, and that belief has continued—with much variation—among their children to our present day.  Belief in God is not exceptional.  It comes easily to the human mind.  Disbelief seems to be more artificial.

Without an attempt to list the revolutionary doctrines of Christ by order of importance, I nevertheless will begin with the fact that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and in His divinity He walked among mankind for some 34 years.  Through word and deed Jesus proclaimed His relationship to the Father.  That being true, and it is, all non-Christian religions are human inventions, however well-meaning they might be.  Christ being a God, what He said was true, what He taught was true, what He did had divine approval and purpose.  There is peril of the highest order in disregarding any of that.

Next I would turn to the revolutionary import of the resurrection, beginning with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The Savior’s resurrection was as sure as His death.  Jesus made significant effort to demonstrate the physical nature of the resurrection.  When He appeared to His disciples in their shut up room on the evening of that first new day He had them touch the wounds in His hands and feet and the wound in His side inflicted by the executioners to make certain of His death, assuring the disciples that, “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” (Luke 24:39)  When the disciples for joy yet doubted their own senses, Jesus emphasized the reality by eating some broiled fish and honeycomb to demonstrate the tangible nature of it all (Luke 24:41-43).  The disciples even felt His breath on them (see John 20:22).  In the Americas, shortly afterwards, thousands more beheld the resurrected Christ and personally felt the wounds of His execution (see 3 Nephi 11). 

In this mortal world, death is as common as birth.  The resurrection, already begun, will become as common as death, and will overcome death, making death as temporary as mortal life.  Hence the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians that, because of the resurrection, “Death is swallowed up in victory.”  (1 Corinthians 15:54)  That very physical resurrection rescues from oblivion all done in this very physical world, endowing it all with lasting meaning, nothing of value lost.

The fact that we each and all existed before we were born, in another sphere and in the presence of God, our Father, is another revolutionary doctrine of Christ.  Jesus taught that His Father was also our Father, the literal Father of our spirits.  On the morning of His resurrection, Jesus commanded Mary Magdalene to tell His disciples, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father” (John 20:17).  The Apostle Paul, who taught that we should obey “the Father of spirits, and live” (Hebrews 12:9), wrote to the Romans, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:  and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16, 17). 

As His spirit children, we lived in the presence of our Eternal Father before this creation.  The earth was purposely made for us, designed for our growth and development in our brief mortality.  Not only did Christ’s resurrection preserve meaning and purpose for this mortal existence, but that purpose preceded the beginning of mortality.  Among the many consequences of that revolutionary truth is the reality that all members of the human race are more than figuratively brothers and sisters.  The children born to mortal parents existed before their birth, and they come from the same eternal home as did their parents.  There is a deep-rooted respect that is due in both directions between parent and child.

In that context it is appropriate to recognize the revolutionary import of the Christian doctrine of the eternal nature of the marriage relationship.  If we come from an eternal family that was formed before the earth was, then it becomes natural to recognize that life’s closest relationship, between husband and wife, is not a temporary arrangement.  Love is the highest virtue of the highest heaven.  Love finds its deepest manifestation in the marriage union.  God, who preserves all good things, could not mean for that relationship to end with death.  As Christ paved the way for us to live on through the eternities, so He prepared the way for a loving marriage to last forever for those who desire it enough.

Perhaps on another day I will more than touch upon other Christian doctrines that revolutionize the world and human relations.  Among these would be the opportunity to talk with God and receive direct, personal revelation; the ability to change human nature, for better or for worse; the reality of individual freedom, such that God is not responsible for our personal decisions, we own them; and the continuing, unfinished canon of divine scripture, from ancient time into the modern era (scriptures were always revealed in a modern era to those who first received them).

These revolutionary doctrines of Christ are eternal, connecting us to an eternal universe, which makes them revolutionary to a mortal world where endings seem to prevail.  They are rejuvenating to mind and spirit.  When Christ taught them to the people of the ancient Americas, He declared that “all things have become new.” (3 Nephi 12:47)  They make things new today.