~Just for the heck of it

Home from church now.

Thinking a lot about the Sunday School lesson I gave last week.  And here to bring you yet another shocking article about how oddly LDS people see the universe.

Three words we don’t use a whole lot:

sin

hell

damnation

Not that we never use them.  We just don’t put the mileage on them some people of popular religion like to do.  And I expect that, when we do use them, the shapes they take on are a bit different than you might expect.

Altogether, as I have said before, LDS people spend much less time threatening each other with the dire consequences of wickedness than they do talking about what we should be doing, if we want to be happy and make our Father happy he ever created us.

For us, and understand that  I am only giving you my take on this, “sin” is pretty much anything that takes you out of harmony with the Spirit.  Like eating too much at Thanksgiving.  Or doing something in spite of the fact that you know it’s not right.  Being rude.  Being angry.  Being selfish.  Causing harm.  Jumping out of metaphorical airplanes without respect for the realities of gravity.  All of those things that have a jarring, twisting effect on your peace and effectiveness.  And most of those things are pretty well covered by the commandments. All of us pretty much suffer from a superfluity of this stuff, stubborn folk as we are.

(Gary Larson, master of oddness of mind)

As for hell, (again – only my take on this) we believe that the sacrifice and atonement of Christ has saved (at least to some degree) every person who signed on to be born on this planet from that.  From hell as a final destination.  So we don’t waste a lot of time worrying about ending up in hell as a place.  What we do worry about is the hell we can build for ourselves—out of regret for opportunities missed, loneliness, ill health, fear, hopelessness—out of guilt for damage we’ve done, harm to others.  There is no lake of fire and brimstone worse than living with these things.

So I’m discussing these things with my twelve and thirteen year olds.  And at the end of the lesson, there’s this sort of diagnostic quiz.  True or false.  Really, no matter how thoroughly you think you have a kid educated, a quiz like this shows you just how deluded you probably are.  As for this quiz, I was most interested in their answers to these:

True or False?

4.  To be damned is to be stopped or held back from blessings we might have received if we had obeyed God’s commandments.

5.  Hell is a place of never-ending suffering where sinners go.  Most mankind will be there forever because of their wickedness.

It was fun to watch these kids wrestle with the ideas.  Some of them were actually kind of writhing.  And it’s no wonder.  Like I say, they don’t hear discussion of this kind of thing much.  And these were a kind of one-two punch.

Imagine their surprise when I happily suggested that we are ALL pretty much damned in some way at any given moment.  The word is so often used to mean: You Have Arrived at Your Final Destination, and It Ain’t Pretty.  But really, the way I see it, “damnation” isn’t some definitive pronouncement on your eternal state.  Not till the judgment day, anyway.  It’s actually just a process word.

All human beings are a work in progress.  And only one that I know of was ever perfect.

And nobody does it TO you.  We just start out that way. When you’re born, you have no skills.  Your body knows how to stay alive, but that’s about all you got.  There is your first bit of damnation: you are limited in what you CAN do, because you don’t have the skill sets that would allow you to do more.  Including imagination.  You can’t really serve other people because you don’t know enough about being alive to imagine what other people might be feeling or needing.  So you can’t help them.  And that’s a damnation.

Growing up is a matter of gathering tools.  You learn how to imagine, empathize, change a tire, read, cook—and then you learn how to apply those tools in making the world more beautiful for everybody around you.  And in doing that, you begin to tear down all the little damns that held you back.

“What if you never learned to read?” I asked my kids.  “If you needed to know how to shut off a flooding toilet, and the instructions were written in a book, and you had the book in your hands, but you couldn’t look at the words and understand what they meant – could you save yourself from having a flooded house and a gross mess to clean up?”  (I didn’t use that example in church; I have my limits.)

But that’s what I mean — any time you don’t have the tools to do something you need to/want to/long to do – be they physical, spiritual, psychological, intellectual—language tools, strength in your muscles, the ability to play an instrument, having enough money to help—coming up short and being denied the desired outcome?  That’s the state of damnation.

So name me somebody who isn’t (aside from the notable exception)?

So we learn.  And we spend every day of our life practicing so that we can be ready to do things. We will never be good at ALL things, and aside from rare moments when we’re oddly inspired, we will rarely be perfect at anything.  But the truth is, most of the beautiful things we end up doing are not Great Things.  But little things.  The right thing at the right moment.  The brave thing.  The sweet thing.  The innocent thing.  To bring relief, joy, understanding.

This process of learning, even counting all of our million mistakes, cannot be taken as wickedness.  Wickedness is having the tools to do something good and choosing to use them to do something harmful instead.  Wickedness is doing things that damage others – or yourself – on purpose.  Maybe even getting a kick out of the process.  Ignorance isn’t even wickedness, though tons of harm may come of it.  Doing what you know is wrong—or even what you’ve been taught but chose not to hear—that’s wickedness.

So the process of spiritual growth is peeling back those layers of “damnation” as we learn and practice—to make ourselves more effective, productive, happy, strong, healthy – all that’s good and powerful—every time we make a new decision.

In talking about this, I envision that scene outside Scrooge’s window; he sees the formerly powerful men of the world wailing in sorrow and frustration because they, now in spirit only, find that their old tools no longer translate into ability.  They hadn’t used their tools for any truly important purpose when they were alive.  And that, then, is hell.  When it really is too late.  Not a place, but understanding without power to act.

The personal hells we build so carefully: fat, heavy bodies, craving for substances not natural or healthful, regret for words said, actions not taken, opportunities lost—love squandered, healing deferred in the name of self-righteous bitterness, secrets that might someday come to light—all the things that undermine our joy and freedom and effectiveness—these hells are very real.   And they aren’t going to disappear just because the Lord forgives us.  Unless he erases our memories for us, and changes the wiring in our brains.  Which I don’t believe he does.

Which means, when we die—and find out that we’re still real, still ourselves—just no longer alive on the earth—it’s not like we shed those memories and feelings, so we carry them with us, and they cripple us after this life, too.

If “heaven” were a living room, I think I’d feel really stupid walking into it.  I’d feel out of place and loud and not dressed right and terrified I was going to say something really, really stupid. And all of that, of course, is because I’m thinking mostly about myself in the first place.  I’d figure everybody else in there belonged and had friends and deserved to be there.  I’d be looking for the servant’s entrance, like I do at weddings, because I feel MUCH more comfortable if I’m cleaning tables rather than sitting at them.

So what I’m saying here is that I carry with me the thought patterns that characterize me now, and keep me from feeling happy and free.  And because I am still carrying them, they’ll keep me from being free, healthy and useful AFTER this life as well.  Because I’m always going to be myself.  Whatever it is I have chosen my self to become.

And therein lies the concept of differing degrees of eternal joy.

If you can’t swim, you stay out of the ocean.  If you can’t stand light, you won’t want to wander out into the brilliance of full day.  If you love the shadow and the dark, that’s what you’re going to look for.  If you’ve sat on your back end and stuffed your face all your life, you’re not going to be able to take a hike up the mountain, or run fast enough to get there in time.  If all you can think about is food, that’s going to make living immortally a little awkward.

All stuff we’ve chosen.

How can being forgiven change what we’ve already chosen?

Don’t we have to change that ourselves?  Before it’s too late?

Answers to the questions:

4. True

5. False, unless you are counting your own heart.

So there you are, my take on LDS doctrine.  Tomorrow, I’ll just show you pictures.

I promise.