Our missionary daughter, Genesis, told us about a remarkable service project her Chicago stake held last month. The stake president requested several thousand pounds of clothes from Deseret Industries which were delivered via semi-truck, unpacked, then spread out throughout the stake center for a one-day mass-community event to get access to much-needed clothing. A similar event is held several times a year, and apart from meeting community needs, the missionaries receive scores of referrals from individuals and families touched by the outpouring of love.
I have been thinking lately about one of my favorite stories from the Old Testament, found in Genesis 27. A conniving and dishonest wife (Rebekah), a striving and equally dishonest prophet-to-be son (Jacob), a wild and rebellious son (Esau), and a father/prophet physically and spiritually blinded by favoritism (Isaac), all combine, in their conspicuous brokenness, to accomplish the Lord’s will (that Jacob receive the birthright). Despite one of the most dysfunctional family moments in the canon, somehow God’s will prevails. It doesn’t happen perfectly, or neatly, or even just normally. Each person’s weakness and sins are on full display, and it’s a mess! My favorite moment in the story is when Isaac realizes what’s happened, starts to freak out about it, but then is jolted back by what appears to be a revelation, exclaiming, “yea, and he shall be blessed!” (v33) Everything everyone did was immature, if not downright sinful (except for Esau, ironically), but somehow God uses this dysfunctional family to get the job done. Even crazier, later in ch. 33, it’s the supposed rebel Esau and his willingness to forgive his brother Jacob that may have been the source of his nephew Joseph’s willingness to forgive his brothers later in Egypt, ensuring the survival of Israel. My point is this—life may look messy, we are likely doing many things wrong, at least not exactly right, and sin is inescapable; but God can and will still use us to accomplish his purposes, especially when we are willing to repent, which, as the story goes, each of the above characters seems to have done. When we are constantly burning bridges, God’s greatest gift may be that he can replace “beauty for ashes” (Isaiah 61:3).
I came across the word JOMO this past week, a term that has somehow escaped me despite being well aware of its foil, FOMO. Avoiding FOMO (the fear of missing out) is a worthwhile goal but cultivating JOMO (the joy of missing out) is a quest of a different sort. The elder brother in the Parable of the Prodigal Son struggled with FOMO (you mean I could have gone out like my brother and had all that fun and just come back?), but he also missed the JOMO—the safety, security, peace, and happiness of always being with his father and his family, as his father reminds him, “thou art ever with me…” (Luke 15:31). Had he focused on the JOMO, he would have never worried about the FOMO and would have had compassion for his brother rather than jealousy. I’ve been thinking that in my own efforts to do what’s right, I sometimes find it difficult because I focus on what I am missing. Instead, I can look for what I am actually gaining by choosing the right—at least a settled soul, or as I heard once, “the peace of years.”
While reading the Come Follow Me assignment a week ago, I was particularly struck when Peter compares not just Christ to a “living stone” but all disciples to “lively stones” (1 Pet 2:4-6). Christ may be the “chief [living] corner stone” (v6), but we are also “lively/living stones” because we too were once spiritually dead and are now reborn, alive in Christ, built (stacked, founded) on Him. Thus, the House/Church of God is built up, stone upon stone. Later Peter describes disciples in other ways—chosen generation, royal priesthood, holy nation, peculiar people (vs 9)—but I like being described as a “lively stone” best… but I like rocks ;).
God tells stories. He is a master storyteller. Jesus must have learned it somewhere. The gospel is largely taught in scripture through story. Prophets create stories, sometimes from real-life events, others made-up. They craft meaning as they insert their own perceived plots and impute grand designs in their characters’ lives. The paradox of scriptural stories is that they can be both untrue and the truest of true at the same time. Job, for example, may have been a made-up parable, but the lessons are as true as any. Good stories help us be more Christlike because they force us to expand beyond ourselves and enter others’ suffering in a uniquely intimate way, just as Christ somehow entered into our own lives and suffered with us in His act of atonement. As He did, we too learn to judge less and empathize more with a story’s characters. We learn to love them, all of them. In Victor Hugo’s novel Les MiserablesI weep with Jean Valjean, but by the end of the story I also weep with Javert. Albert Camus said that “fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” Good fiction asks probing questions, nurtures empathetic thinking, encourages creative problem-solving, and reflects humanity. Reading good, true fiction, viewing it in film, as well as the act of creating it, can be an act of worship.
I recently read an article by Reverend Robert Sirico, president emeritus and the co-founder of the Acton Institute of Religion & Liberty. One line struck me, “An entrepreneur is a kind of impresario, one who organizes numerous factors, and brings things into connection so as to produce. This creative aspect of the entrepreneur is akin to God’s creative activity as we read it in the book of Genesis.” As a business owner and entrepreneur-wannabe for most of my life, I often think about God’s power to create that we have presumably inherited in our divine make-up. Speaking to the women of the church, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf once mused on our creative potential: “The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before. Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty. Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty… Remember that you are spirit daughters of the most creative Being in the universe… To what end were we created? We were created with the express purpose and potential of experiencing a fulness of joy. Our birthright—and the purpose of our great voyage on this earth—is to seek and experience eternal happiness. One of the ways we find this is by creating things.” (Happiness: Your Heritage, GC Oct 2008). We do a lot of buttressing in our lives—supporting what others have created. If one of the key aspects of God is creation, and thus a key aspect of eternal joy, the question for us should be, “What are we creating?” D&C 58:27-29 is apt. The power to do many things of our own free will, to bring things to pass, to do good, is in us as divine agents.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge—it’s nature, scope, and origin. In our modern, post-Darwinian world, we sometimes forget that the scientific method, while both revolutionary and vital, is only one of perhaps thousands of ways of knowing. In a religious context, for example, when devotees say they know something is true, what are they saying? That is an epistemological question, and one that could give us more insight into what testimony actually is (and what it is not). Rather than devaluing that kind of knowledge, a look into what it actually means and how it came about could actually give it more value. In fact, a profession of belief says so much more than a stated fact—it embodies a life of experience that has led someone to exclaim that he or she “knows” something. Experiential knowledge ought to be taken just as seriously as the empirical.
Quotes:
- (Serious) “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” – C.S. Lewis
- (Humorous) “I may not always walk the straight and narrow, but I sure in hell try to cross it as often as I can.” – J. Golden Kimball
Holy Envy 