Founding Principles Lost to the “Silent Artillery of Time”©

Revised, 9 September 2019

Back in October of 2018, I wrote an essay on “Valuable Things that Get Lost in Modern Philosophy and Culture.” There I lamented the modern propensity to think that current ideas, philosophies, and practices are superior to those of the past. Examples I mentioned were the loss of emphasis on character, the worship of celebrity culture, and the philosophy that winning is everything. 

I’m not unaware or unappreciative of the amazing progress in science and technology which has characterized nearly my entire life and which has blessed the lives of billions. However, I am also aware of a problem. Evidence suggests to me that for many–especially the young who have little knowledge of much history before the Internet and the smart phone–there are many important things that are lost, ignored, or shoved aside because of the glorification of the present and the great and often unrecognized ignorance about the value of what is being jettisoned.  My observations have recently been seconded by an insightful historian, Wilfred M. McClay, who is the Blankenship Professor in the History of Liberty at the University of Oklahoma.  He said:

It’s harder than usual today to get young people interested in the past because they are so firmly convinced that we’re living in a time so unprecedented, enjoying pocket-sized technologies that are so transformative, that there’s no point in looking at what went on in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  To them the past has been superseded–just as our present world is forever in the process of being superseded.

While this posture may be ill-informed and lazy, a way to justify not learning anything, it also represents a genuine conviction, amply reinforced by the endless passing parade of sensations and images in which we are enveloped–one thing always being succeeded by something else, nothing being permanent, nothing enduring, always moving, moving, moving into a new exceptional Now.  But it is a childish and disabling illusion that must be countered....(1)

One thing I didn’t mention in that previous blog overshadows in importance the things written of there. What is it? The loss of understanding of and commitment to the principles of the Founding of America. This was brought starkly to my attention in a marvelous quotation of Abraham Lincoln, who, speaking to young people in 1838, said:

I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time.... At the close of the struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family.... But those histories are gone.  They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foemen could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the leveling of its walls.(2)

That is so self-evident and meaningful to me. If it was true in 1838, what about 2019? Though Abe refers to the Revolution, I believe he was speaking not just about the eight-year war, but the much longer struggle to ferret out and codify fundamental principles of democratic government and society in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. I would also add, the greatest commentary on the Constitution, The Federalist Papers. That was the real Revolution, the one the War was fought for! My religious faith teaches me that these men were inspired by God, and I heartily believe it. These are the things–“a fortress of strength”–which have been and are being lost by the “silent artillery of time” and the consequent lack of commitment to them such as we see in the vast majority of high schools and colleges in the land.

As the 4th of July approaches (incidentally my favorite secular holiday), it is my wish for America on her birthday that Lincoln’s warning may not only be heard, but acted upon. Happy birthday America–the greatest and most blessed nation in the history of this planet. May your founding principles ever guide its government and society. May your glorious flag ever wave over the land of the free!

Let’s think together again, soon.

Notes:

1.  Wilfred M. McClay, “Rediscovering the Wisdom in American History.”  Imprimis 48, nos. 7-8 (July/August 2019): 4-5.

2. Abraham Lincoln, Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, 27 January 1838, cited in George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility, New York: Hachette Books, 2019, ix.  (I do not know if the emphasis is Lincoln's or Will's, but I left it because I liked it.)

Biological Predestination--A New Form of an Old Doctrine©

Introduction:  This week just by happenstance (or was it?), I encountered two pretty profound quotations on the same subject, one from a Latter-day Saint and one from a non-member who was President of Boston University for many years. The subject is a modern version of the doctrine of predestination. In the Christian world John Calvin taught that mankind was either elected to salvation or they weren’t. Men were predestined to be saved or damned. It is a harsh, and from my perspective, a damnable doctrine, especially because it denies any act of free will on the part of man in accepting or rejecting the Savior’s invitation to “come unto me” and be saved. The doctrine of predestination is a continuation of Satan’s efforts to destroy the agency of man, which was one of his primary objectives in the pre-mortal war in heaven. 

From the two quotations which follow it appears that Satan has not given up on that objective, nor the usefulness of the theology of predestination. I have been aware for a long time that science and social sciences have increasingly postulated genetic predispositions and argued for genetic causation of human behavior, but it was not until I read Harper’s paper and the statement quoted here that I realized the theological implications of these ideas. So, those who say, “I’m the way I am because God made me this way and there is nothing I can do about it", have unwittingly taken up the old Calvanistic doctrine of predestination wrapped in the new garb of what Silber would call “scientism” rather than science. It was a profound and powerful insight for me. How about you?

Here are the quotations:

Steven Harper:

So postmodern relativism, which includes the idea that no absolute laws exist, undermines agency.  It is not empowering doctrine.  Moreover, much like Calvinism, genetic predisposition has become a doctrine of biological predestination, convincing many that they are not agents empowered to act for themselves but simply matter to be acted upon by unaccountable chemicals.  This subtle doctrine is embraced by people who have long since rejected John Calvin’s cruel dogma that one has no control over his or her destiny.(1)

John Silber:

The scientific assault on the place and dignity of humankind has continued and accelerated. While Copernicus and Darwin announced their findings with reluctance and trepidation, their followers announced further denigrations of the human species with the enthusiasm of tub-thumping evangelists. Freud, in claiming to have discovered the unconscious, proclaimed that individuals were no longer masters in their own houses; thoughts and behavior were determined instead by irrational and largely unconscious motivations. Edward O. Wilson in his Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene further extended Darwinism by reducing humans to the levels of animals whose behavior, like that of ants, is genetically determined. B. F. Skinner easily matched their extreme reductionism with his denial of the relevance of conscious thought in human action. ... What are we to make of our own experience if the mind–thought, ideas, and consciousness for which there is no scientific understanding–is held to play no role in the behavior of individuals?  According to these reductionists, all mental phenomena are at most epiphenomena, associated in totally inscrutable ways with brain functions responding to genetic mandates.  In the final analysis, what an individual human being thinks or does cannot be an expression of will or consciousness but, to use the current metaphor, of the way that person is wired.  Criminal behavior, for example, is simply an expression of the genes. The self, understood “scientifically,” disappears as a causal responsible being. Praise and blame, guilt, pride, and shame are equally misplaced and illusory ideas.(2)

Let’s think together again, soon.

PS: If you have quotations of a similar nature please share them with me.

Notes:

1.  Steven C. Harper, “Endowed with Power,” The Religious Educator 5, no. 2 (2004): 90-91.

2.  John R. Silber, Seeking the North Star: Selected Speeches, Boston: David R. Godine, 2014, 273-74.  The next sentence of this paragraph reads: "Scientism, this reductionistic unscientific extension of science, has furthered the climate of anti-humanist secularism and practical atheism in universities and intellectual circles."

Evidence Sixty: Joseph Smith vs. St. Augustine as Theologian”©

101 Reasons Why I Believe Joseph Smith Was a Prophet of God:

Evidence Sixty:

“Joseph Smith vs. St. Augustine as Theologian”

I don’t know a great deal about this yet, but apparently it has been coming to light among scholars of Christian history for some time that the early Western church, and subsequently the Protestant Reformation, were led down the garden path by a theologically inadequate St. Augustine! The great saint, “the father of Western Christianity,” imposed upon the early church two ideas that have become “fundamentals” of Christianity. They were the doctrines of predestination and original sin--that man had no choice in his own salvation and from birth man was sinful, evil, and depraved. These two doctrines have, for 1,500 years and more, influenced the thinking of the Western Christian world. The trouble is, scholars now find that Augustine was wrong on both counts. Here is an excerpt from an article recently published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, by Terryl Givens on these points:

One of the great scholars of early Christianity [David Bentley Hart], has recently noted that the father of Western Christianity predicated his entire theological edifice on blatant, demonstrable errors of translation.  Not proficient in Greek, Augustine did not know that the proorizein of the New Testament should be rendered “to mark out in advance,” or as Mormons would say, “to foreordain,” not to predestine.7 As a consequence, Augustine vanquishes the efficacy of human agency and individual choice, in the face of a predestinating God of caprice, whim, and indefensible cruelty. This is the God fully embraced and taught by the great Reformers, a sovereign deity who damns and saves indiscriminately and independently of human efforts, choices, or desires. 

Augustine compounds the error by elaborating a pernicious dogma of original sin.  In David Bentley Hart’s analysis (which is, by the way, seconded in numerous sources), “only in the West did the idea arise that a newborn infant is somehow already guilty of transgression in God’s eyes,” because the Latin text Augustine relied upon “contained a mistranslation that suggested that “in’ Adam ‘all sinned.’”The actual Greek text,” he continues” says nothing of the sort.” So sin and depravity become the basis, the default, on which Western theology is constituted.(1)

How interesting, and the more so because Joseph Smith taught in the King Follett sermon that, “It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God....”(2) In the third Lecture on Faith he also taught that having “a correct idea”–and he emphasized the word “correct”– “the correct idea of his character, perfections and attributes,” was one of three things necessary for a disciple to possess in order to “exercise faith in God unto life and salvation.”(3) Alas, we are now learning from scholars of the world that St. Augustine had an erroneous intellectual conception of God based on faulty understanding and mistranslations. Nor did he possess personal knowledge of God’s character, perfections, and attributes based on revelation.

No wonder there was a need for a Restoration! And among the first things restored was a correct idea of the character, perfections and attributes of God, starting with the First Vision and continuing to the end of the Prophet’s life. That understanding was intertwined with a new understanding of theology that taught a doctrine of foreordination, but not predestination; a Fall, but not original sin and the depravity of man. Terryl Givens wrote: “Taken together, Joseph’s revelations restore a God wholly devoted to our fullest thriving who safeguards our agency at terrible cost, who sacrificed beyond imagining to bring us healing in his wings and guide us through this terrible but necessary mortal crucible.”(4)

Somehow, even against a man considered one of the greatest intellects of the Western world, Joseph Smith didn’t flinch.  He always seems to get religious things right. The contrast between Joseph and St. Augustine as theologians teaching about God is stark.  To me, this is not an insignificant evidence of his divine appointment as a Prophet of God.

Thank God for Joseph Smith!

Lets think together again, soon.

7 David Bentley Hart, The Story of Christianity: An Illustrated History of 2000 Years of the Christian Faith (New York: Quercus, 2012), 77.

Notes:

1.  Terryl L. Givens, “Heretics in Truth: Love, Faith, and Hope as the Foundation for Theology, Community, and Destiny,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 51, no. 4 (Winter 2018): 13-14, my bold emphasis added.

2.  Joseph Fielding Smith, comp., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1967, 345.

3.  The original publication of the Lectures on Faith was in the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants.  See, “Lecture Third,” in Doctrine and Covenants, Kirtland, Ohio: F. G. Williams, 1835), 36.

4.  Givens, “Heretics in Truth,” 14.

Evidence Fifty-Nine: The Difference Between Thieves and Robbers in the Book of Mormon and the Bible.©

101 Reasons Why I Believe Joseph Smith Was a Prophet of God:

Evidence Fifty-Nine: 

The Difference Between Thieves and Robbers in the Book of Mormon and the Bible.

Here is a simple little thing–the distinction between thieves and robbers as portrayed in the Book of Mormon. Research by John Welch and Kelly Ward, shows that anciently there was a difference between the two; robbers were generally in bands such as we find in the Book of Mormon, thieves were more like the one in your neighborhood or community. However, that same distinction didn’t exist in American jurisprudence at the time of Joseph Smith. Nor is it present in the King James Bible. So, how did he know to separate them? Ah, there’s the rub.  Here is an excerpt from Jack Welch’s 1992 book, Reexploring the Book of Mormon, which is a collection of updates on research on the Book of Mormon as published by the F.A.R.M.S. organization then at B.Y.U.

***

Although there is only little difference between a thief and a robber in most modern minds, there were considerable differences between the two under ancient Near Eastern law. A thief (ganab) was usually a local person who stole from his neighbor. He was dealt with judicially. He was tried and punished civilly, most often by a court composed of his fellow townspeople. A robber, on the other hand, was treated as an outsider, as a brigand or highwayman. He was dealt with militarily, and he could be executed summarily.

The legal distinctions between theft and robbery, especially under the laws of ancient Israel, have been analyzed thoroughly by Bernard S. Jackson, Professor of Law at the University of Kent-Canterbury and editor of the Jewish Law Annual. He shows, for example, how robbers usually acted in organized groups rivaling local governments and attacking towns and how they swore oaths and extorted ransom, a menace worse than outright war. Thieves, however, were a much less serious threat to society.1

Recently studies have shown in detail how the ancient legal and linguistic distinctions are also observable in the Book of Mormon.

...

The importance of this ancient legal tradition in the Book of Mormon is further enhanced by the fact that Anglo-American common law would have provided Joseph Smith with quite a different understanding of the legal definitions of the terms theft and robbery, inconsistent in many ways with usages found in the Book of Mormon.

Moreover, if Joseph Smith had relied on the language of his King James Bible for legal definitions of these terms, he would have stumbled into error, for that translation renders "thief" and "robber" indiscriminately. For example, the same phrase is translated inconsistently as "den of robbers" and "den of thieves" in Jeremiah 7:11 and Matthew 21:13. The same word (lestai) is translated sometimes as "thieves" (Matthew 27:38), other times as "robber" (John 18:40). But there was an ancient distinction between thieves and robbers that no translator should neglect, and over which Joseph Smith did not blunder.(1)

1 Bernard S. Jackson, Theft in Early Jewish Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972).

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Interesting stuff!  One more bit of evidence that Joseph Smith was not the author of the Book of Mormon but its translator under the influence of the “gift and power of God.” A tidbit that adds to my belief that he was a prophet of God.

Let’s think together again, soon.

Notes:

1.  John W. Welch and Kelly Ward, “Thieves and Robbers,” in John W. Welch, ed., Reexploring the Book of Mormon, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992, 248-49.

"How Unpardonable Would it Have Been in You to Have Turned Out a Blockhead:" The Incomparable Wisdom, Courage, Vision, and Example of Abigail Adams©

Introduction: This morning I had the good fortune and pleasure of reading one of the most inspiring stories a former educator could read and I had to share it with you. It concerns the attempts of John and Abigail Adams to educate their young son John Quincy Adams. David McCullough one of America’s premier historians, as you will see below, thought John Quincy one of the best educated men to inhabit the White House, so his parents did pretty well. Below is the story of sending him off with his father, from the east coast of the United States, during the middle of the winter and the middle of the Revolutionary War, to France for an important part of his education. John Quincy Adams was a child at the time–equivalent to our elementary school children!  

Consider Abigail’s courage, her faith, her vision, and her commitment to not only allow, but to encourage this voyage. McCullough includes two truly amazing and inspiring quotations from letters she wrote to her son; one when he had to return to France a second time, and a second letter when she later learned the boy was a little uppity when he came home about his education and opinions. I think you will agree the wisdom of this woman is a wonder to behold. This episode should stand as a model for parents and children alike. I for one am grateful for her incomparable example and this story which is a significant part of our legacy as Americans. God has blessed America!  PS:  I didn't know they used the word "blockhead" in the Revolutionary period. I nearly fell out of bed laughing when I read it.

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I want to read to you, in conclusion, a letter that John Quincy Adams received from his mother. Little John Adams was taken to Europe by his father when his father sailed out of Massachusetts in the midst of winter, in the midst of war, to serve our country in France. Nobody went to sea in the wintertime, on the North Atlantic, if it could possibly be avoided. And nobody did it trying to cut through the British barricade outside of Boston Harbor because the British ships were sitting out there waiting to capture somebody like John Adams and take him to London and to the Tower, where he would have been hanged as a traitor. But they sent this little ten-year-old boy with his father, risking his life, his mother knowing that she wouldn’t see him for months, maybe years at best. Why? Because she and his father wanted John Quincy to be in association with Franklin and the great political philosophers of France, to learn to speak French, to travel in Europe, to be able to soak it all up. And they risked his life for that—for his education. We have no idea what people were willing to do for education in times past. It’s the one sustaining theme through our whole country—that the next generation will be better educated than we are. John Adams himself is a living example of the transforming miracle of education. His father was able to write his name, we know. His mother was almost certainly illiterate. And because he had a scholarship to Harvard, everything changed for him. He said, ”I discovered books and read forever,“ and he did. And they wanted this for their son.

Well, it was a horrendous voyage. Everything that could have happened to go wrong, went wrong. And when the little boy came back, he said he didn’t ever want to go across the Atlantic again as long as he lived. And then his father was called back, and his mother said you’re going back. And here is what she wrote to him. Now, keep in mind that this is being written to a little kid and listen to how different it is from how we talk to our children in our time. She’s talking as if to a grownup. She’s talking to someone whom they want to bring along quickly because there’s work to do and survival is essential:

These are the times in which genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life or the repose of a pacific station that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.

Now, there are several interesting things going on in that letter. For all the times that she mentions the mind, in the last sentence she says, ”When a mind is raised and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.“ In other words, the mind itself isn’t enough. You have to have the heart. Well, of course he went and the history of our country is different because of it. John Quincy Adams, in my view, was the most superbly educated and maybe the most brilliant human being who ever occupied the executive office. He was, in my view, the greatest Secretary of State we’ve ever had. He wrote the Monroe Doctrine, among other things. And he was a wonderful human being and a great writer. Told to keep a diary by his father when he was in Europe, he kept the diary for 65 years. And those diaries are unbelievable. They are essays on all kinds of important, heavy subjects. He never tells you who he had lunch with or what the weather’s like. But if you want to know that, there’s another sort of little Cliff diary that he kept about such things.

Well after the war was over, Abigail went to Europe to be with her husband, particularly when he became our first minister to the court of Saint James. And John Quincy came home from Europe to prepare for Harvard. And he had not been home in Massachusetts very long when Abigail received a letter from her sister saying that John Quincy was a very impressive young man —and of course everybody was quite astonished that he could speak French—but that, alas, he seemed a little overly enamored with himself and with his own opinions and that this was not going over very well in town. So Abigail sat down in a house that still stands on Grosvenor Square in London—it was our first embassy if you will, a little 18th century house—and wrote a letter to John Quincy. And here’s what she said:

If you are conscious to yourself that you possess more knowledge upon some subjects than others of your standing, reflect that you have had greater opportunities of seeing the world and obtaining knowledge of mankind than any of your contemporaries. That you have never wanted a book, but it has been supplied to you. That your whole time has been spent in the company of men of literature and science. How unpardonable would it have been in you to have turned out a blockhead.

How unpardonable it would be for us–with all that we have been given, all the advantages we have, all the continuing opportunities we have to enhance and increase our love of learning–to turn out blockheads or to raise blockheads. What we do in education, what these wonderful teachers and administrators and college presidents and college and university trustees do is the best, most important work there is.(1) 

Let’s think together again, soon.

Notes:

1.  David McCullough, “Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are,” address to the Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar, 15 February 2005, in Imprimis, 34, no. 4 (April 2005), available online at: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/knowing-history-and-knowing-who-we-are/  See also, David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017, 115-19.

Why I Believe: Evidence Fifty-Eight: The Book of Mormon Resolves The Question Whether the Holy Ghost Falls On a Person or Enters Into a Person©

101 Reasons Why I Believe Joseph Smith Was a Prophet of God:

Evidence Fifty-Eight:

The Book of Mormon Resolves The Question Whether the Holy Ghost Falls On a Person or Enters Into a Person© 

I have repeatedly argued that one of the great blessings arising from the prophetic ministry of Joseph Smith is that he answers, often in great simplicity, a multitude of important theological and doctrinal question. Joseph Smith is a man with the answers. In asserting this, I do not mean to suggest that his answers were whole-cloth creations of his personal creativity. His answers to important religious questions grow out of the inspiration and revelation given to him, and through the 900 pages of scripture he produced under the direction of God. These answers are roughly of two types. Some were revealed to Joseph Smith directly as he encountered a problem or issue and took the matter to the Lord. Awareness of many other answers grows out of study of the scriptures he produced. I suspect we have only begun to plumb the depths of this fruitful avenue of study.  

I recently encountered an example of this second type which greatly impressed me, both in its profundity and simplicity. Mark 1:10 says that after Christ was baptized, as he came out of the water, “he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him.” Julie M. Smith, commenting about this passage observes that some NT manuscripts read “to/into him” and others say “upon him” in reference to the Spirit’s descent. She believes “to/into him” was the earlier reading and the change to “upon” was occasioned by debates then raging about the identity of Jesus. Then, in a footnote she offers the following helpful insights: 

Restoration scripture, when it speaks of Jesus’ baptism, uses “upon” (see 1 Ne. 11:27; 2 Ne. 31:8; D&C 93:15). It may be that scripture translated by or revelation received by Joseph Smith used “upon” because that was the language he was familiar with from the NT, or it may weigh in favor of reading “upon” in Mark. Note that the difference between the two variants implies a choice between the Holy Ghost being “upon” a person or “in” a person, but Restoration scripture suggests that no choice is really necessary; 3 Ne. 19:13 uses both concepts: the Holy Ghost did fall upon them, and they were filled with the Holy Ghost.” Generally, the Book of Mormon describes people as being “filled” with the Holy Ghost (see Alma 8:30; 36:24; 3 Ne. 26:17; and D&C 84:27; 107:56.)(1)

How simple is that? One Book of Mormon verse resolves the matter. Both ideas are correct. It remains for the dedicated student to follow Smith’s lead and work out the differences between upon and in, and the importance of each.

I hasten to offer another observation here, one perhaps easy to overlook. There is nothing in the 3 Nephi passages that suggests either 1) any explicit awareness of an issue about the difference that arises out of two possible meanings in Mark’s account of the descent of the Spirit following the baptism of Jesus; nor 2) does there appear to be any overt attempt in this and other Book of Mormon passages to intentionally address the matter. The descent of the Spirit upon/into Christ is not the subject of this passage. Rather it is a natural, but unique statement in the 3 Nephi narrative of the baptism and descent of the Spirit at the time the Nephite Twelve were chosen. Joseph Smith is not lurking in the shadows of this episode to resolve yet another theological problem; but the Lord God is. For me this is one more in a growing list of evidences of the inspiration of the Book of Mormon, and therefore, of the divine calling of Joseph Smith; and therefore, one more reason why I believe.

You have to love Joseph Smith, the man who provides a seemingly endless supply of answers to interesting and important religious questions. Thank God for him!

Let’s think together again, soon.

Notes:  

1.  Julie M. Smith, The Gospel according to Mark, Brigham Young University New Testament Commentary, Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2018, 93, and n. 83.

The Love of God for His Children--A Wonderful Excerpt Shared©

About three months ago I started a study of the Lord’s Prayer found in Mt. 6:5-15. I have about 50 old, many public domain, commentaries I picked up online. I am going through each one, culling out the gems on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s been a remarkable experience for many reasons. First, though I anticipated the possibilities would be good, I have learned much, much more about the Lord’s Prayer than I anticipated. Virtually every day there is something new. With this many commentaries, one can imagine the variety of approaches, thought, and analysis I have experienced. It  has redounded as a great blessing to me; one that is difficult to summarize.  Second, I have come to appreciate that there are many faithful students of the scriptures who are not Latter-day Saints, but who love the Lord and have invested considerable thought and creative effort to express those thoughts in their writings about scripture. I know that many, if not most of them, would disagree with my basic Christian view, but that said, I have been lifted, edified, inspired, motivated, and thrilled by the things I have encountered in this three-month journey. I not only don’t mind saying so, I feel an obligation to do so.  

An example of all of this is below. If you have served a mission you may have experienced something which seems to be common–sometimes you don’t find that golden investigator until you reach the last house on the lane after hours of walking and being rejected, or at the top of a large apartment building which you were ready to leave to go to dinner, but you only had one more floor to finish it up. Well, that is sort of what happened to me this morning. I have studied these commentaries a half an hour or more each morning for the past three months. I am presently working on the 48th one in the collection. Yet, this morning I read one of the very best items of many great ones I’ve encountered during this journey.

I know nothing about David James Vaughan, except I love what he wrote which I have reproduced below.  In Mt. 6:9 the Lord instructs us to address God as “Our Father which art in heaven.” In the excerpt below Vaughan concentrates on one aspect of the fatherhood of God–his love for his children.  His insights touched me deeply. You read it (I suggest carefully) and then I will have a few additional comments (please note especially number 6 below.)  Enjoy!

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There is no greater secret, of all truth and holiness and joy, than to have correct and grand views of the ‘fatherly’ relationship and character of God. Therefore, by all strange ways, the enemy of our peace tries to misrepresent it. God has made ‘the father’ His metaphor, and one great reason why God has established the relationship of a ‘father’ for this earth is to lead up to Him.

I. Love antecedent.—A ‘father’s’ love must, of necessity, precede the love of the child: long before the child can really know or love him, he has known and loved the child. The child’s love is the response and echo, after long intervals. You cannot conceive the time when God began to love you. But you can very easily date almost the hour when you began to love Him. God had done thousands of things for you before you ever did one thing for Him.

II. Love anticipatory.—Being antecedent, it is always anticipatory. It is a love that always stands in the front. A son little knows and thinks of all that’ a father’ has been thinking for him when he was helpless, and unconscious, and asleep. And you are not conscious of a millionth part of what has been going on within the veil of the great Father’s address to you. When you came into the world, there was everything ready for you; and your life commenced, has gone on all through, a planned one. It has all been a copy of a chart which lay for ever and ever in the breast of Godhead. Therefore it is the Divine love so exceeds the human.

III. Love prospective.—A ‘father’s’ love to his child has always—though the child may not see it—a reference to the child’s future. A ‘father’s’ love always has in itself something of the nature of education—therefore it disciplines you. It is just so with God. His love, and every act of it, always has a future in it. And just as a ‘father,’ being a man, trains his child for manhood, so God, being eternal, trains his creatures for eternity. You can only read a ‘father’s’ love in that light. It is always prospective love, mysterious—just because God sees: a future which His child does not see.

IV. Love’s qualities.—

(a) A ‘father’ never magnifies a child’s faults. He always sees excellences more than he sees the bad points. Is that the way in which you think of God’s looking on you? Do not you generally think of God exactly the opposite?—quick to see what is wrong—watching for sins—and, when He sees them, slow to forgive them.

(b) A ‘father’s’ love is always equal to all his children. Can God be partial? And yet you often think of God as very partial, and fancy that He does not love you as much as He loves some other.

(c) A ‘father’s’ love is a very wide thing. It takes in with a large embrace all the little things and all the great things in his child’s life—all and everything.

(d) A ‘father s’ love never dies. Whatever the child may do—whatever the ‘father’ may be constrained to do, upon whatever his child does, it does not alter a ‘father’s’ love. He may punish—he may be angry—he may hide himself; but his love is unchanging. And why is this in the ‘father’? Because his relation approaches and assimilates to God’s relation to His creatures. He is a representative on earth of God. He is a ‘father.’ God is a ‘Father’!

It will take you out of a great many distresses and difficulties if you will only remember ‘the Fatherhood of God.’(1)

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Here are just a few of the thoughts that this passage generated:

1. The first sentence reminds me very much of something Joseph Smith said in his famous King Follett discourse: “It is the first principle of the Gospel to know for a certainty the Character of God....”(2) Vaughan’s addition is that Satan tries to misrepresent God’s character as Father.

2. There is a spirit and sweetness permeating this passage which strikes at the core of my being.

3. I am pretty sure my children would raise an eyebrow at his assertion that a father “never magnifies a child’s faults.”  I was young, had almost no wisdom, and had never been a father before!  But I do try now to see their excellencies more than their faults.

4. I was taken aback, nearly bowled over, by his explanation that the love God as our Father has for us, like our earthly fathers, began long before we knew or loved him.  “You cannot conceive the time when God began to love you,” he writes.  Latter-day Saints may have a leg up on most Christians as far as that is concerned.  Nevertheless, even we probably only see through a glass darkly on that subject.  But this statement wrenched my heart as I realized the truth of it, because of my knowledge of the pre-mortal existence.

5. Similarly, the truth of the expression “A son little knows and thinks of all that ‘a father’ has been thinking for him when he was helpless, and unconscious, and asleep.  And you are not conscious of a millionth part of what has been going on within the veil of the great Father’s address to you.”  The frequency with which that happened and continues to happen, should have led me to consider this in relationship to Heavenly Father long before now.  Alas!  

6. The truth of these ideas is really almost self-evident, but I only encountered them the first time this morning!  I am writing this and sharing it with you in hopes that learning them now may be a great blessing to you for a much longer period of your life than it will be for mine.

7. Finally, he gives two examples of principles pertaining to God’s love as a Father, which when we  think of God, we often do in the exact opposite way.  1) Do we not think God concentrates on and magnifies our faults, rather than our excellencies?  2) Do we not think God’s love is partial and fancy that he does not love us as much as others, rather than loving all of his children equally?  Take the positive view here and these become stunning and meaningful insights that tend to draw your heart to God.

I hope you enjoyed James Vaughan.

Let’s think together again, soon.

Notes:

1.   The Rev. James Vaughan, cited in James Nisbet, The Church Pulpit Commentary, (Mt. 6:9),  from Bible Analyzer software available online at http://bibleanalyzer.com/

2.  Joseph Fielding Smith, comp., Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1967, 345.