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In two articles published here (Bridle Your Empathy and Empathy or Echo Chambers), I have discussed some lesser-understood challenges in the exercise of empathy. In response to these previous articles, I saw my stance labeled “anti-empathy”––a response I expected. In popular culture, empathy is understood to have an almost sacred value: empathy is never to be scrutinized, questioned, or second-guessed. To even suggest empathy can be a force for anything but good surprises many people. Since many have never imagined criticizing empathy in any possible way, anything but affirmation and praise only registers as an attack on empathy.

Some might be inclined to “balance” the always positive messaging surrounding empathy by making sharp statements about empathy’s problems and drawbacks. This seems to have been the logic behind two recent book titles. The first is The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits by Christian theologian Joe Rigney, which offers a Christian perspective on how empathy is misused in the context of faith. The second is the forthcoming book Suicidal Empathy by Concordia University professor Gad Saad, which will reflect his popular commentary on how societies implement self-destructive policies in the name of empathy. However, those of us engaged in critical discussions of empathy have a greater task beyond articulating negatives. Our real challenge is in educating and promoting readers toward an effective mode of empathy. 

Reality Testing

Expanding upon my previous articles, I suggest empathy leads to good only when paired with reality testing. A concept commonly employed in psychotherapy, reality testing is the process of examining beliefs and perceptions to see if they align with reality.

Beyond the context of mental health, reality testing is considered to be important in politics. I say “considered to be” because many tend to assume their political views are based in reality. Many also believe that differing political views arise because others have not engaged in sufficient reality testing. Further, individuals often delegate the task of reality testing to those who curate their political information. By assuming the source has already done their due diligence of reality testing, they treat the information they receive from them as a final product. Reality testing in politics involves accounting for bias in our sources and actively seeking multiple perspectives.

In the United States and Europe, our politics are in a crisis of empathy without reality testing, and much of our lack of reality testing comes from our lack of confidence in institutions that we relied upon in the past to perform that function. This has been a long process, underway for decades. For example, some readers remember the presentation made by General Colin Powell to the United Nations in 2003, making the case that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction. When the extensive WMD program described in his speech was not found in our subsequent invasion of Iraq, the U.S. intelligence community suffered a tremendous loss of public credibility as a source for reality testing.

More recently, The Atlantic writer Thomas Chatterton Williams described how decisions in the public health establishment during the COVID pandemic helped to undermine this confidence:

… As the direct consequence of lockdowns and quarantines, many millions of people around the world lost their income, depleted their savings, missed farewells and funerals of loved ones, postponed cancer screenings, never experienced graduations and proms, at times went without human touch entirely, and generally put their lives on pause for the indefinite future. They accepted these sacrifices as awful but necessary when confronted by an otherwise unstoppable virus. And then, from one day to the next, they were told with a straight face that this had all been done in vain. “The risks of congregating during a global pandemic shouldn’t keep people from protesting racism,” NPR announced with eyebrow-raising certitude, citing a letter signed by dozens of American public health officials and disease experts. “White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19,” the letter further explained. One prominent epidemiologist went still further, arguing that the public health risks of not protesting for an end to systemic racism “greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”

To encourage protesting and thereby spread a deadly disease among the protestors themselves, members of our public health establishment gave the impression they were driven by ideology more than public safety. Because of that decision, public health officials ceased to be a viable source of reality-testing for many. The consequences of this have been severe. On questions of public health, a large segment of Americans has turned to alternative voices for reality testing, and it is possible that institutions like the Centers for Disease Control will never recover the valuable role for reality testing they once held.

Other examples could be cited, but Americans who wish to employ reality testing for our political views face an uphill battle when seeking sources that have not been significantly compromised.

Reality testing in faith

The council system of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is an excellent mechanism for bringing reality testing into decision-making. Many painful moments in the Church’s history resulted from decisions made outside the council system and the reality testing it offers. Perhaps the most notable example is the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where local church leaders in Southern Utah sent a request for guidance from President Brigham Young, and then, in a failure of the council process, they made terrible decisions before allowing enough time to include his voice in their deliberations. President James E. Faust once said the council system among the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve “provides a check on bias and personal idiosyncrasies … guard[ing] against the foibles of man.”

When President Dieter F. Uchtdorf encouraged church members to “doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith,” this was another invitation to reality testing. To “doubt our doubts” is to honestly inquire whether those doubts are the product of sound assumptions and mature thinking. Many people over the years have assumed that if something can be criticized without a satisfactory response, then––by default––it must not be true. But this same logic leads people to “deconstruct” their belief that the world is round or adopt other wild conspiracy theories. For people in these situations, the solution is to learn to deconstruct one’s own deconstruction and apply reality testing to the doubts.

Empathy and reality testing

The motte and bailey is a rhetorical trick where an individual gets an opposing party to agree with a very agreeable position (the motte). However, the individual then swaps the agreeable position for an extreme position (the bailey) to reframe the opposing party’s agreement within the more extreme argument. An example is the following hypothetical exchange:

Person 1: “The Bible says that we should be kind to the stranger among us.” (motte)

Person 2: “I agree.”

Person 1: “Then of course you must also agree that no one should ever be deported or extradited from our country. If not, then you don’t believe in the Bible!” (bailey)

Empathy is manipulatively employed in the motte for a number of baileys that afflict the nations of the world. For example, in 1987, the popular rock band U2 released a haunting song called “Mothers of the Disappeared,” written for the grieving mothers of youth who disappeared under right-wing authoritarian movements in South America during the 1970s. I consider it one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard, and the song always achieves its intended purpose with me: leading me to feel deep mourning for the political violence of that era. Since I first heard “Mothers of the Disappeared,” I have learned more of the history and have wondered, why has not a similar song been written for the children taken from their families under the regime of Mao Tse-Tung, or for the quarter of the population of Cambodia wiped out under the Khmer Rouge? Fascist right-wing movements tend to arise in response to fear and legitimate grievances in the wake of cruel, authoritarian left-wing Marxist movements. Both Marxism and fascism exploit empathy over grievances and injustice toward specific groups as the motte for authoritarian baileys of oppression. Part of reality testing is to apply scrutiny to empathy itself and discern whether empathy is applied selectively to one group or another based on whether they align with the ideological left or right. If so, then one is not really practicing empathy, only partisan sympathy.

In a recent article for Quillette, Brian Stewart wrote a criticism of the empathy-drenched commentary of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof:

From his perch at America’s newspaper of record, Kristof has spent many years travelling to far-flung places ravaged by poverty, famine, genocide, and war, and rubbing his nose in the misery he finds there. These trips through landscapes of privation and atrocity have brought forth a steady stream of lugubrious dispatches documenting the world’s ills and enjoining the rest of us to do something about them.

Stewart argues that Kristof’s columns reflect no understanding of tradeoffs or unintended consequences. In his reporting on Gaza in particular, Kristof makes claims and moral judgments and avoids asking necessary questions like what Israel is facing, what Hamas intends, and what the consequences would be for different choices. Kristof speaks to the empathy of his readers, but does no reality testing.

And so, we return to the question: If empathy has possible drawbacks, then what is a positive and healthy exercise of empathy? The answer: empathy becomes a force for good only when paired with reality testing. Only then can empathy lead to human flourishing as opposed to performative partisan sympathy, moral grandstanding, and other unhelpful behaviors. 

As Edith Stein expressed, “Do not accept anything as truth that lacks love. Do not accept anything as love which lacks truth.”

The post The Limits of Empathy: Why Feeling Isn’t Always Knowing appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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In a Latter-day Saint meeting I attended two  years ago on September 17, we sang patriotic hymns and marked Constitution Day. To my surprise, many young single adults didn’t realize the significance of the date.

In comparison to Independence Day, Constitution Day isn’t celebrated at all. Especially for Latter-day Saints, this is unfortunate. Many doctrines from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are directly connected to the Constitution. President Dallin H. Oaks has taught, “The United States Constitution is unique because God revealed that He ‘established’ it ‘for the rights and protection of all flesh’ (Doctrine and Covenants 101:77; see also verse 80).” Why is the Constitution so important?

Second, the constitution presupposes a clear-eyed view of human nature, one we find illustrated and explained in scripture. The Old Testament is replete with examples of peoples, kings, and nations repeatedly falling into sin and pride. In the Doctrine and Covenants, we read: “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion” (D&C 121:39).

Because humans are fallen and have a tendency to misuse power, government should be structured so that bad actors have a hard time oppressing others. The checks-and-balances system among the three branches of government outlined in the Constitution allows human nature to be used against itself. Instead of relying on the goodwill of leaders, the three-branch government relies on the fact that each branch of government will become jealous of the other’s power, and “check” the other. In a way, the problem becomes the solution. 

“Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart,” John Adams wrote. “The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable. There is danger from all men. The only maxim of the free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

When humans ignore or deny this tendency, tyrants have an opening. Many revolutions result in another tyrant. The perpetrators of the French Revolution were upset by the aristocracy’s abuse of power, but they themselves became abusers of power.

Because of fallen human nature, it’s remarkable that our system of government has lasted as long as it has. Our ingenious system has stayed in operation longer than any other government in the world with a written charter. This is because the Constitution relies on the realities of human nature demonstrated through scripture and historical reflection.

Latter-day Saints believe in a war in heaven, where Satan rebelled because he wanted to destroy the agency of man (Moses 4:3). “The warfare is continued in mortality in the conflict between right and wrong,” the Bible Dictionary entry under War in Heaven reads, “between the gospel and false principles, etc. The same contestants and the same issues are doing battle, and the same salvation is at stake.”

We came to earth under God’s plan of agency, where Jesus Christ’s atonement enables us to make choices for ourselves, instead of being forced or excused by the lack of law or consequence. “Choosing” to follow God wouldn’t matter much if we were forced to do it by Satan or an earthly tyrant. As Princeton’s Robert P. George argues, authentic religious belief “cannot, by its very nature, be established by coercion.”

God cares about government and how we are governed. He cares about whether government leaders or voters desire to seek to exercise unrighteous dominion over others, even under the guise of noble political pursuits. The Book of Mormon teaches, “Because all men are not just, it is not expedient that ye should have a king or kings to rule over you” (Mosiah 29:16). The Book of Mormon also outlines the tendencies governments have toward collapsing because of corruption.

The signing of the Constitution was a great victory for moral agency. God established the constitution so that no man “should be in bondage one to another” (D&C 101:79). Under its principles, no one political leader can gain control of a whole nation. While there have been varieties of corruption from the founding of the nation to today, our system still operates with those same three branches of government.

If you have the capacity to eat a cookie on National Cookie Day, you likely have the capacity to pick up a pocket constitution this September 17 and give it a read. It’s striking to see how the checks and balances were designed to work, and how carefully the founders limited federal power. At the very least, say a prayer to God thanking Him for the wise men He raised up and continues to raise up. The Constitution remains one of the great blessings of our time.

The post The Constitution Was Built on Human Weakness, Not Idealism appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountains down.

Bryan Johnson wants to live forever. He’s not alone. From Silicon Valley biohackers to Saudi-funded biotech firms, the world’s wealthiest men are trying to outrun the grave. Their weapons are cold plunges, gene edits, transfusions, calorie counting, and near-religious adherence to lab results. Longevity clinics have sprung up from L.A. to Dubai. The language has shifted. People now talk about “biological age,” “epigenetic clocks,” and “lifespan escape velocity.” Death, once a certainty, is being rebranded as a failure of maintenance. They dream of endless decades. Of forever.

But forever is not a blank slate. It has a shape. And that shape is not beautiful.

J.R.R. Tolkien understood this long before the blood boys and cold plunges. He gave us characters who lived too long, not as an ideal, but as a warning. His most haunting case wasn’t an emperor or a god. Small, shriveled, and half-mad, this creature endured far beyond his natural years. Not because he deserved to, but because he was chained to something unnatural. The result wasn’t wisdom. It was ruin.

This is the unspoken danger of the longevity movement. When we talk about reversing age, we rarely ask what we’re becoming in the process. We treat time as neutral, as if more of it must be good. But there is a kind of life that corrodes as it stretches. And there is a kind of man who stops living long before he stops breathing.

We’ve met him before. His name was Gollum.

Gollum the Preserved

He hated it and loved it, as he hated and loved himself.

~Gandalf, about Gollum and the Ring

Gollum didn’t thrive. He lingered. That’s all.

He had no greatness in him. No ambition. No strength. He was a frightened, petty creature who stumbled onto something too powerful, and it refused to let him go. The Ring extended his life, but not to elevate it. Only to use it. And so he remained, not as a man, but as a husk. Not aging, not dying, not changing. Preserved.

Preservation is not life, it’s suspension. Gollum wasn’t alive in any meaningful sense. His body withered. His voice broke into fragments. His mind splintered into quarrels. He was meat kept too long, sealed off from time, no longer rotting, but no longer whole. In the darkness, he stopped becoming. He just … persisted.

Gollum’s tragedy wasn’t that he died. It’s that he didn’t. He became smaller with every passing year, not because he was weak, but because he was no longer allowed to break. Yet mortality is not the end of the story. It’s the form that gives the story meaning.

He should have died. Instead, he lingered. And that was his curse.

The Object Becomes the Soul

We swears to serve the master of the Precious. We swears … on the Precious!

~Gollum, to Frodo and Sam

Gollum didn’t hold the Ring; the Ring held him. Over time, it stopped being a tool and became the axis of his identity. He no longer had desires of his own—he bent around the thing that sustained him until he was indistinguishable from it.

This is not an ancient problem but a modern one. Men who build their lives around supplements, routines, and trackers are no longer pursuing health. They’re outsourcing the self. The aura ring becomes a confession booth. The lab report becomes scripture. Their souls are managed through metrics until nothing left inside isn’t optimized.

Gollum once had a name: Sméagol—a person with history, guilt, and possibility. But the Ring erased all that and replaced relationships with fixation. He no longer lived to build, to love, to know. He lived to possess, and all possession inverts.

We see the same pattern in addiction. In obsession. In the man who lives for his fortune but no longer knows what to do with it. In the influencer who curates every image but can’t form a thought without applause. In the striver whose health is perfect but whose life is barren.

When life depends on an object, the soul eventually conforms to it. Gollum’s will, language, posture, and even his voice all twisted around the Ring. His desires didn’t serve his identity. They replaced it.

This is the true cost of dependency-based immortality. The longer you survive through something external, the less you exist apart from it.

The Mad Math of Eternal Time

Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small, slimy creature. I don’t know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Gollum.

Time without end doesn’t liberate. It erodes.

Gollum didn’t live in time; he sank in it. Years passed without structure, without company, without change. His mind folded in on itself, repeating old phrases, replaying old injuries, splitting into fragments that argued in circles. His long life didn’t bring wisdom. It brought decay without death.

We assume more time means more clarity. But time, without limits, becomes background noise. Without endings, we lose urgency. Without death, there is no reason to forgive or to act. There is only delay. Gollum didn’t plan or aspire. He reacted. He returned, always, to the moment he lost the Ring. That moment swallowed the future. All meaning collapsed into retrieval.

Tolkien gave Gollum a long life not to glorify him but to show what happens when time is unmoored from mortality. There is no arc, only repetition. No growth, only fixation. He was frozen in compulsion because there was no reason not to be.

The problem wasn’t that Gollum lived too long. The problem was that nothing meaningful could occur. His wound never healed because it was never allowed to close. And when the music of life has no final note, even the most beautiful themes lose their shape. Time, unchecked, becomes noise. And the soul, unstretched by struggle, folds in on itself.

The Death of Desire

We soon forgot the taste of bread, the sound of wind in the trees … We even forgot our name.

Gollum didn’t want the good, the true, or the beautiful. He wanted the Ring. And once that want took root, all other desires withered. Food meant nothing. Light hurt. Friendship confused him. He was not tempted by joy. He was terrified of anything that might threaten his obsession. The Ring promised life. In return, it consumed every other reason to live.

This is the cost of unnatural immortality. It doesn’t simply extend the body. It distorts the soul. When your life depends on a single object, everything else becomes noise. Desire shrinks to fit the terms of survival. Pleasure becomes a threat. Love becomes a risk. Even mercy feels like a trick.

You can already see the pattern emerging. Men who track every biomarker but feel nothing. Men who sacrifice relationships for regimes of control. Men who fear aging more than they fear irrelevance. They live to preserve their bodies. Yet their souls lose their salt. Passion is replaced with protocol. Risk is replaced with ritual. And desire is strangled by its own guardrails.

Gollum didn’t protect the Ring. The Ring consumed his capacity to want anything else. He wasn’t loyal. He was trapped. He wasn’t focused. He was hollow.

To be human is to dream and to desire beyond your means. To risk heartbreak. To hunger for something greater than safety. Immortality doesn’t allow for that. It demands narrowing, shielding, hoarding. But a life spent hoarding cannot hope. And without hope, desire dies.

That is the final degradation. And it wears Gollum’s face.

Mercy Is Better Than Immortality

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

~Gandalf, to Frodo about Gollum

In the end, Gollum didn’t find peace. He fell into fire, clutching the very thing that ruined him. But his death mattered. It closed a chapter. It made the story whole. And it only happened because someone showed him mercy.

Frodo spared him. Again and again. Not because Gollum deserved it, but because Gandalf had said something true: even the wise cannot see all ends. Mercy creates space for grace to act. It opens a future you can’t predict or control. And that virtue, in the end, is what destroyed the Ring. Not power. Not cunning. Mercy.

Immortality has no place for this. It sees no virtue in endings. It sees no glory in surrender. It replaces love with calculation and hope with protocol. But the soul is not a system. It needs more than time. It needs transcendence. That comes not from extending life, but from offering it to something higher.

Gollum’s final act was not heroic. It was selfish, compulsive, pathetic. But it mattered because someone else had chosen love over fear. That choice gave the story meaning. Immortality cannot offer that. It does not bend. It does not resolve. It only continues.

The moguls of Silicon Valley would do well to understand this: Life cannot be engineered. It must be lived, and to be lived, it must be allowed to end.

The post The Fantasy of Forever: The Danger Behind Biological Immortality appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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This is the 7th article in our Peacemaking Series. The previous article: The Complex Art of Christian Kindness: Building Bridges

I don’t agree, but I’m not saying anything. 

I’m going to keep my opinion to myself. I don’t want to rock the boat. I’m just trying to avoid contention; I don’t want to argue or start a fight. I want to maintain the peace, get along, and play well with others. If I say something, it’s a party foul: nobody likes a party-pooper, buzzkill, debbie-downer, wet blanket, tight-wad, stickler, contrarian, Nazi, one-upper, smart-aleck, know-it-all, skeptic, cynic, nay-sayer, zealot, fanatic, troublemaker, right-winger, left-winger, fence-sitter anyways! There’s a lot of pressure to choose a side and be a team player. It takes less effort to go with the flow, blend in, keep my head down, and roll with the punches. Right now, I’m being selfish: I need to let others have their turn. It’s important to listen to those you disagree with, be open-minded, and have diversity of thought. If things get out of hand, then the system will correct itself. Plus, it’s not like they’d listen anyways…right?

There are so many “good” reasons to stay quiet.

Many haven’t had effective communication patterns modeled for them. Online, clickbait writing and algorithms tend to exploit extreme opinions and communication tactics, promoting the most extreme and loudest “shouted” opinions because it maximizes engagement. For the same reasons, so many movie conflicts get “resolved” by shouting matches, fist-fights, gun-fights, building smashings, battles, death, and war. Not to say these problems are new; they’re only the most recent evolution in negative gossip and tall tales. We are saturated with extreme portrayals of what disagreements can lead to.

But disagreeing is so important. I’m sure we’ve all felt the crushing blow of accountability when hearing variations of the quote, “Bad men need no better opportunity than when good men look on and do nothing” (Mill). But realistically, not all disagreements are good versus evil; rather, they distinguish among variants of “good, better, best” (Oaks). Unilaterally shared information, collaboration, and perceptive participation are necessary in resolving such issues. 

The seventh of its kind, the following article is a compilation of research used when creating a video for The Skyline Institute’s playful yet informative videos on conflict resolution called the Peacemaking series. This month’s video, “Disagreements Bring Balance,” teaches the value of and tactics for voicing one’s opinion, even when disagreeing.

Our intent is to help people embrace vocal disagreement through an empathetic framework that can align actions with beliefs. There are several contributing factors affecting one’s ability to disagree effectively, such as personality, emotions, and verbal tactics.

What Makes Me So Special?

It is clear our genetics––as much as how we were raised––have a significant influence on our personalities. Psychologists often use the Big Five personality traits—or Five Factor Model (FFM)—to describe our natural tendencies. The traits are Openness (to new experiences), Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism—often remembered by the acronym OCEAN. For our purposes, Agreeableness is most relevant. Agreeableness describes the tendency to be compassionate, cooperative, and trusting in social interactions. Individuals high in agreeableness are typically described as friendly, patient, and often prioritizing the needs of others––seeking to maintain positive relationships. Personalities oriented toward agreeableness are just going to have a harder time finding the internal motivation to disagree. Those who score low in agreeableness (or high in disagreeableness, depending on how you wish to phrase it) will find the motivation to disagree easier. However, they will find it harder than agreeable people to express their disagreements in a socially effective way.

Consider the irony of staying silent because of wanting to respect and not contradict someone else’s opinion. It’s almost as if saying, Their opinion is important, they should share it, and I should listen to it. In fact, everyone’s opinion is important, everyone should share, and we all should listen. Except for my opinion, I will not share it, and therefore, no one can listen to it. When stated in this way, the illogic is exposed. 

As an example of this same sort of illogic, one co-author of this current video works as a mental health professional at an OCD clinic and interacts with clients who have determined they are unworthy of God’s forgiveness, often diagnosed as scrupulosity. When he asks them, “Who is God willing to forgive?” They reply, “Well, everyone.” He then, smiling, gently asks them, “So what makes you so special?” To which they often chuckle, recognizing their own mistaken perception of themself. So for those of us who don’t share our opinions out loud for fear of whatever reason, consider: What makes me so special that I’m the only exception to the rule ‘every voice matters’, or ‘two heads are better than one’? We invite you to consider yourself responsible for voicing your perspective; every voice matters.

Brene Brown’s research on these ideas clarifies the power of vulnerability. Vulnerability is a social currency that strengthens and deepens relationships. Relationships die when only one side is vulnerable. Internally, if I consistently diminish and disregard my own voice by not sharing my opinions out loud, I reinforce a negative perception of my own thoughts and ideas or a negative perception of other people’s opinions about my thoughts and ideas; and, repetitive silence can lead to resentment and emotion bottling. Externally, it will eventually impact my relationships with others “because, as it turns out, we can’t practice compassion with other people if we can’t treat ourselves kindly” (Brown). Instantly obliging without voicing one’s opinion excludes the other participants from the opportunity of increased perspective and possible collaboration (to be explored more in an upcoming article). Intrapersonally and interpersonally, a deep sense of connection can only come from authenticity: letting go of who one thinks they should be in order to be who they are. The principle of sharing isn’t just for kindergarten. To truly connect with others, we also have to share our honest thoughts and feelings—starting with ourselves.

Some might not share because they think other people aren’t worthy of their opinion. It’s worth considering whether that reluctance comes from a place of insecurity masked as arrogance—often, what looks like detachment is a quiet need for compassion.

Tactics for Assertive Communication

With motivation lined up inside of an empathy-oriented framework that is mutual empathy toward self and others, we can move on to verbal strategies that help structure disagreements effectively. Last month, we highlighted the importance of curiosity—like asking questions and restating the opposing view before expressing disagreement. This month, we share tools for expressing disagreement. These help foster “emotional safety” in our relationships.

Assertive communication clearly states personal needs with consideration for the needs of others. This is in contrast to passive or aggressive communication. Passive communication is preoccupied with the needs of others, inappropriately apologetic, and timid or silent. Aggressive communication focuses only on personal needs, often with an intensity, blame, or shame at the expense of others. Then, of course, there is that toxic cocktail of passive-aggressive communication that shames others while never clearly expressing personal needs. Just like other problems, the best way to address passive-aggression from others is not to ignore it (that would be passive), or by attacking it head-on (that’s aggressive), but by 1. keeping emotions in check, 2. directly addressing the negative behavior, and 3. asking direct questions. For example, you might say calmly, “It looked to me like you rolled your eyes. That makes me feel small and disrespected. I think I’ve upset you—do you want to talk about it?” This is what assertive language reads like; it clearly states personal needs; it is unambiguous and addresses the actual issue (which is not eye-rolling); and, it creates space for them to express their needs and feelings; also, it doesn’t force a conversation. However, even if the language is assertive, but the emotion is uncontrolled, then the communication is no longer assertive: the emotional intensity tips it into aggressive communication. The manner of conduct and the language expressed contribute to the quality of communication, whether it’s aggressive, passive, passive-aggressive, or assertive. 

Communication that is couched in personal experience doesn’t shift blame and direct anger toward other people. Instead, it focuses on personal feelings and personal perceptions of the situation. The Gottmans––marriage relationship experts––recommend using “I statements” or “I language” as a technique for verbally structuring disagreements. Begin any statement with an “I,” and make sure what follows is factual information from your own perspective. For example, an “I think…”, “I feel…”, or “I noticed…” are all particularly good ways to generate a “soft start” in a disagreement. This isn’t an excuse to say something like, “I think you waste your time on video games.” That’s still blaming and shaming the other person. Instead, describing without placing judgment, like “I’m worried you’re spending too much of your time on video games,” would be way better. Better yet, adding “… and I think it could be affecting your grades and relationships. I want to see you succeed and spend more time with you myself. Can you help me understand this from your perspective?” The real concern is addressed, vulnerability is shared, and an abundance of space has been created for the other person to share their feelings. There’s a chance the person could be wasting their time, but the latter conversation could foster an environment for the next Shigeru Miyamoto. 

Lastly, we offer the tool of talking in parts as a way of exploring and giving voice to the complex array of emotional nuances inside of oneself, especially when in a conflict. This technique draws from therapeutic models like Internal Family Systems (IFS), which recognize that we often have multiple internal perspectives. “Part of me wants to, but another part of me doesn’t.” One of the benefits is that there’s no limit to how many parts of you there are; “Part of me feels angry, but part of me gets where you’re coming from, and another part of me doesn’t want me to admit that.”

Closing Exercises

As our last exercise, let’s construct a “soft start” for an argument. Think of the last conflict you had or one that’s preoccupying your mind right now. Surely something came up. For the sake of exercise, let’s go with it. No scenario works out perfectly, but assuming the best, let’s apply the techniques in this article. 

1. What am I feeling? Emotions—like awkwardness, frustration, or fear—usually pass within 10–90 seconds. Instead of pushing them away, notice what you’re feeling and name it. Then choose how to respond. For the sake of the exercise, name the emotion, and accept it. Whether it sticks around depends on how we react to it, our thoughts, and our actions. So, what am I gonna do? Let’s decide to say something—which might not be appropriate for every situation (more on that in a future article), but for the sake of the exercise, let’s play it out in our mind.

2. What questions should I ask? Find my curiosity. Foster a feeling of goodwill. Ask as many clarifying questions as necessary. Do not try to trap or blame, seek understanding. For the sake of the exercise, think of at least 2-3 questions that could help or would have helped.

3. What is their perspective? Restate their perspective for them to hear in a way with which they would be completely satisfied and wholeheartedly agree. It is a generous and compassionate perspective of the other person, not some reduced characterization or strawman. We must steelman their argument and maybe even take the time to consider, Do I really disagree? At the very least, what do we agree on? Vocalize what you agree on. For the sake of the exercise, restate their opinion in the best version you can consider.

4. Share my perspective. Use assertive language. State actual needs and feelings. Use “I statements” or talk in “parts” to help. Avoid shame, and seek the deeper connection your vulnerability has enabled. For the sake of the exercise, structure an example of using at least one “I statement” and one talking in “parts”.

Depending on the situation, these steps may not always happen in the same order. But generally, understanding the other person (Step 3) follows curiosity (Step 2). And, Step 4 often clarifies Step 1 as we speak out loud.

May you find belonging and a deeper connection, and make more peace within yourself and your relationships.

The Peacemaking Series

You can view the rest of the videos in the Peacemaking Series HERE on YouTube. Each month, a companion article is released with new tools and insights. Next month’s topic is Forgiveness. To explore more articles by The Skyline Institute published in Public Square Magazine, visit us HERE. You’ll also find our original research supporting The Family Proclamation, along with videos and podcasts, at TheFamilyProclamation.org. Follow us on social media for more.

The post Disagreements Bring Balance: When Silence Isn’t Peace appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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Nearly one year ago, the world watched the 2024 Summer Olympics. We celebrated the record-setting accomplishments of athletes from around the world. A year or two later, we may remember only a few medal-winning performances. In contrast, an athlete who finished last long ago may be a hero, indelibly engraved in our memory. The 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, were more than 20 years ago. Few remember who won the 400-meter race, yet millions have a vivid memory of the runner who finished last—because sometimes finishing last is the most heroic accomplishment of all.

What happened next made the whole world stand still. Eyes riveted on their screens, the world watched as Derek Redmond, with tears of pain and disappointment, rose on one leg and began to hobble forward. A stretcher was brought by medical personnel, but Derek refused it, instead hobbling forward on his own. From the stands, Derek’s father pushed past security to help his son. Derek kept going. Quickly, it became clear to everyone that Derek intended to cross the finish line, and that roused the whole watching world. They knew that they were not spectators to defeat, but witnesses to a different race—one run with heart, not haste. In worldwide unison, fans rose to their feet and cheered more loudly and proudly for Derek than for those who crossed the finish line first. That day, Derek claimed victory as he limped over the finish line. And in witnessing his triumph, the world too claimed something: a spark of hope and quiet personal triumph within themselves. 

“Never Out of the Fight”

One might feel as though the world is upside-down, hearing a crowd cheering loudest for the runner who finishes last. To finish the race you know you can’t “win” is one of the most impressive accomplishments in life. But finishing heroically is what all but three athletes in every race do. In every race you watch, most of the runners know they won’t medal, but they shred the track with their cleats as though they were racing for the win. They are—their win! That spirit to fight on to the finish lives within ordinary people every day. That is why the whole world resonated with and cheered the heroism of Derek Redmond finishing. In that moment, Derek Redmond was the avatar of what is best in all of us—Derek Redmond was Everyman. We strive for this heroism in ourselves, and can’t help but honor it in others. Derek Redmond’s story is indelible because it traces the contours of our own lives and strikes that chord of agony, courage, and undying will.

When Finishing Last Is Victory

Disappointments, setbacks, and failures are the inheritance of mortality. We’ve all felt it. We understand what it’s like not to be the best when we desperately try to be. When a runner stumbles, we naturally recoil and turn away—we resonate with the painful reality of stumbling. But respect is granted to the runner who gets up and finishes—after all, they’ve shown us how to care about nothing so much as our own very best. 

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf acknowledges the challenge of mortality and the reality of coming up short, again and again—“falling is what we mortals do.”  We may be tempted to stay down—we may even believe that falling is our destiny. In the race of life, it’s not where you place but staying in the race that counts. “As long as we are willing to rise up again and continue on … we can learn something from failure and become better and happier as a result,” Elder Uchtdorf assures. 

There will be times we find ourselves in Derek Redmond’s situation: dreams dashed and hearts broken as we recognize we have fallen impossibly behind. As it was with Redmond, pain and despair may overtake and immobilize us as we watch the dream slip from us. The temptation to forsake it all is typical. If you can’t win, if you’ve lost everything, why keep trying? Why not throw it all away?

Addiction: The Inspiration of Derek Redmond for Repentance and Recovery 

Becoming entangled in a web of temptations may be an enticing distraction from painful realities, but often this trap only leads to shattered hopes and dreams. The race seems lost, and despair is easy. The dream of finishing “first” (whatever that means) may in reality be lost, but by the grace of God, finishing well is never beyond reach. Repentance and recovery from a myriad of challenges in life is an inspiring story of heroic “last place” finishes.

Mark, a marriage and family therapist for 30 years, remembers working with a young husband and father who had struggled desperately for years to overcome compulsive pornography use, only to “fail” again and again; or so it seemed to him, even though any objective observer could see a steady growth trend over his years of committed struggle. 

Mark remembers the day that young man expressed in fight-tempered firmness, “I don’t know whether I will ever overcome this”—he paused, then declared—“but as long as I draw breath, I will not quit fighting!” Another young man in recovery similarly wrote: “Even if I lose, I prefer who I am when I fight to who I am when I give up.”   There’s something of that warrior spirit in all of us. The motto of the warrior spirit is “never out of the fight.” Even when some dreams disappear, we stand, if not to win, then to fight on. With that fighting spirit and vision that refuses surrender, change is empowered as one keeps stepping forward. 

Victim Mentality—The First Enemy

Persons struggling to overcome any of life’s myriad weaknesses, appetites, or addictions may discover that the greatest barrier to beginning recovery is the powerlessness of a victim mentality—the idea that life has conspired against them. Owning up to personal failures is painful. Casting blame elsewhere may be palliative—‘it’s not my fault’—but it is also disempowering—if we’re not at fault, then there is nothing we can do about it. We must not escape from or sidestep holding ourselves accountable; otherwise, we surrender our power.

Even when “if only” thoughts and feelings may be justified, indulging them only disempowers us—leads us to dwell on things we cannot change instead of the things we can change, and on what we will do now. How inspiring are Paralympic athletes, wheelchair marathoners, and others, who show us how to face our reality and run with it! Our experiences with “failure” can ultimately produce vital learning, which leads to growth and change. Falling short of success presents the opportunity for us to focus our attention and energy on what more we can do.

Be Willing to Change the Dream 

The longer we dwell on the race that’s lost, the stronger the impulse to just give up takes hold. Instead, we can quickly change focus from what’s lost to what’s still possible—shift defeat to motivation. The irrepressible mantra of the mother of one young man who had wrestled with addiction was “look ahead, don’t look back.” Her words were true. Only misery, torment, and despair came to this young man as he obsessed over his losses.

Endure to the End

In life’s most difficult circumstances, the seeming futility of it all can make trying seem pointless. Surely the runner is not at fault for mourning the loss of dreams. Surely those watching bear empathic witness to the pain. When he gathers himself to his feet, though, it is then that we see the spirit that cannot, will not be defeated.  It’s in the fight we choose now that we show who we are. While some dreams and relationships may be lost, we can pick ourselves up and push for our own finish line.

In this world, often only the first-place finisher hears the raucous cheering of the crowd. But “heaven is cheering [us] on today, tomorrow, and forever,” Elder Jeffrey R. Holland assures, and encourages us all: “Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing.”  Every race in life is really our own personal record (PR) challenge. Each of us is running in our own lane. We can find contentment, peace, and satisfaction in today’s PR, improving today over yesterday, reaching for the best possible future version of ourselves, starting from today. In the kingdom of God, every son or daughter who gives their all—their personal best, their very best—sees the loving smile of God and hears those precious celebratory finish-line words, “well done” (Matthew 25:21, 23). Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow. That’s our race.

The post Winning the Race You’ve Lost: The Unique Heroism of Finishing appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

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For a Latter-day Saint, I’m unusually interested in alcohol.

I’ve rarely felt tempted to drink it; I know myself well enough to know it wouldn’t end well—when the Word of Wisdom speaks to “the weak and the weakest of all saints,” I smile and say thankfully, “That’s me.” And yet the names of unfamiliar spirits can send me down Wikipedia rabbit holes, seeking strange knowledge like the difference between “liquors” and “liqueurs,” or ales and lagers, and why James Bond drinks his martinis shaken, not stirred.

It’s the culture of the thing that attracts me: the history, the creativity; the vineyards from the Renaissance still run by the same families and the beers hand-brewed by monks; it’s the way a beverage (Scotch, bourbon, absinthe) can represent a place or a people or an era; it’s all the bottles in all the cellars of the world, filled decades ago by men now dead, waiting to be opened and emptied in an evening.

And we teetotalers get … Sprite? No, thanks. I’ll just have water.

This essay isn’t about alcohol. It’s about storytelling, and my vehicle for conveying my thoughts is Star Wars’ Andor, about to begin its second season on Disney Plus.

And then, a bit later, I realized something interesting was going on.

If you haven’t watched Andor, ask yourself: how would Hollywood usually treat these deaths? The guards were bad guys. They worked for the Empire, if only indirectly, and they were telling the protagonist at gunpoint that he had to give them money or go to jail. If they were in the original Star Wars trilogy, the movie would make sure you forgot them immediately—their dialogue would be limited to “Stop right there!” or “You rebel scum,” they’d be wearing helmets to cover their faces, and their voices would be distorted to help you pretend they’re not human. For allegedly antifascist art like Star Wars, it’s an awfully fascist way to treat people.

In Andor, these guys have faces, and their deaths have consequences.

While our protagonist anxiously builds a false alibi, we learn there are detectives on the case—two of them, the inspector and his deputy. The deputy has stayed up all night gathering evidence and thinks he can find the killer in a matter of days, but his boss is about to leave for a performance review where he has to report his crime statistics to the Empire. He knows what will happen if he ends his report with, “And by the way, two of my own were bumped off last night.”

The inspectors’ dialogue deserves an essay of its own. It’s an argument between youth and age, zeal and world wisdom, between an Imperial true believer and a very mild sort of Rebellion—it’s even a philosophical contest between deontology and consequentialism—and it’s all carried off with a mixture of wit and realism I can’t remember Star Wars ever achieving before. Both inspectors make good points; each is self-serving in ways he won’t admit, and if you think it’s obvious which decision they should make, then you probably haven’t thought the thing through.

And remember, these are the bad guys—low-ranking bad guys, no less, invested with agency, intelligence, and humanity. And they’re not the only ones.

Prison guards? They have faces, too. We see their sadism, yes, but also their fear of their victims and their mundane frustrations with being understaffed at work.

Imperial soldiers? We see their disappointment with bad assignments and their hope for a better life; we see their heroism, as when an Imperial colonel dies trying to save civilians.

Even in the Empire’s Gestapo, we see humanity: a rare woman in the officer corps, determined and talented, her eyes locked on whatever floats beyond the glass ceiling; a senior officer, undoubtedly a wicked war criminal but also a very good boss; a man—just one would-be righteous man—who’s realized what he’s involved in and desperately wants out.

We’ve come a long way from “These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.”

Now, back to alcohol.

There was a golden age of TV recently, or so I’ve been told. The mostly episodic shows of my childhood were replaced by a new era in which entire multi-season series were planned out before their pilots aired. Successful shows could become something like 40-hour movies, and writers used them to develop characters and themes in ways no visual medium had ever allowed before.

The golden age’s brightest gems could usually be found on HBO, whose The Sopranos and The Wire often appear as numbers 1 and 2 in rankings of the best TV shows of all time, with AMC’s Breaking Bad also in the conversation. If you follow publications that review pop culture, you could probably name another dozen acclaimed series from the era: Mad Men, parts of Game of Thrones, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, Girls, Fleabag, The Americans, and so on.

And we teetotalers get … Marvel? Disney? I love Encanto and Coco, but I get tired of choosing between movies for children and movies for perpetual adolescents; why is it so hard for a Latter-day Saint grown-up to find a grown-up movie?

No—really. I know some of you just rolled your eyes: “Where does this guy get off calling my favorite movies adolescent?”

But ask yourself how the typical PG-13 blockbuster presents the world lately, and especially its protagonist. He’s usually young and attractive—I say “he,” but “strong female characters” often fit the type—and he’s defined by two things: some special gift and some dream or destiny implied by the gift.

The gift and destiny define the story, too: maybe the protagonist knows his destiny, and the story will tell how he and his gift overcame the haters and doubters to attain it; or maybe he doesn’t know his destiny, and the story will tell how he discovers it. Either way, the decisive moment comes when the protagonist chooses once and for all to believe in his destiny and believe in himself.

What time of life does that story symbolize, if not adolescence, the age of discovering your talents and choosing your career? The story’s not about children, who define themselves by what they love and not yet by gifts and destinies; it’s not about the elderly, who have only one grand destiny left and yet often say they’re in the happiest time of their lives. It’s certainly not about the middle-aged, who are defined less by gifts than by burdens, and the many people who depend on them.

No: today’s typical blockbuster, in part for the most practical of box-office reasons, is about the most self-centered decade of American life: 15 to 24, the age when childhood dependency is ending and adult commitments aren’t yet formed—when you can choose whatever future you wish, and anything seems possible if you just want it hard enough. In fact, it’s the age portrayed by the original Star Wars, the age of Luke yearning to escape his uncle’s farm and “Do or do not, there is no try.”

There’s nobody like that in Andor.

In Andor, the rebels’ leader is daring and devious, but he can’t fight or even know what’s going on without his network of guerrillas and informers, any one of whom, if caught, could mean the end of him and all his schemes. The rebels’ financial backer has plenty of money, but she needs help to cover up what she’s doing; the Empire is closing in, and we watch in heartbreaking real time as she discovers she has already sacrificed her family to the cause.

Like human beings, Andor’s characters need each other. Like grown-ups, they know it. And so, when they interact—speak, touch, trust, doubt, betray—it actually matters.

Does it make each character less important not to be self-sufficient, not to make a difference by himself—not to have the one gift to rule them all?

Much the opposite. Let me ask you: when was the last time you saw a movie or series whose hero was elderly? I don’t mean a show with Harrison Ford or Samuel L. Jackson in his mid-70s, with directors and stunt coordinators straining the limits of their art to pretend he can still beat everyone up. I mean an old person behaving like an old person; in fact, I mean the true hero of Andor, the protagonist’s mother, Maarva, a sick old woman hobbling about on a cane.

She hasn’t always hobbled. In a flashback, we see her in an adventurous middle age, stealing salvage from a crashed ship minutes before the navy arrives and then risking her life to rescue an orphan from certain death. Later we hear she was the president of some big civic organization. But those days are long past when the show starts, and now she spends most of her time resting in a chair, nagging her aimless son when he’s present and fretting while he’s away.

Most blockbusters that included such a hero—and there aren’t many—would force her through the same adolescent character arc as their protagonist. Her incapacity is all in her mind! She just needs to believe in herself! Then she can prove she’s still got it, that she’s not so old after all.

Maarva might be the first elderly character I’ve seen whose heroism doesn’t require her to become young again, who conquers with the powers appropriate to old age. It’s her experience and wisdom—and even her day-to-day uselessness—that let her see the truth while her younger friends, blinded by daily cares, treat Imperial occupation as just one more of life’s hassles to be put up with and outlasted. And when she speaks, it’s the love she’s earned through a lifetime of service that makes her friends listen.

Not that they want to, not at first; at first, they don’t know whether to laugh or cry. What she’s taking on is so comically beyond her strength and so likely to cost them her life—forget spies and stormtroopers; if she doesn’t stay warm and take her medicine, she’s not going to last long enough to be captured. But once again, she sees what they don’t: the worth of what’s left of her life and the worth of what she can do with it.

* * *

Alcohol won’t always be dangerous. I don’t know whether its nature will change or ours will, but there will come a day when the saints and their Master drink of the fruit of the vine in their Father’s Kingdom, and no alcoholism or drunk driving or domestic violence will follow.

Someday, storytelling will be safe, too. Someday, “adult” won’t mean “pornographic,” and “mature” won’t mean “nihilistic”; someday, our culture won’t ask us to choose between childishness and wickedness.

In the meantime, though, I’ll be grateful that healthy grown-up stories aren’t quite as rare as Word of Wisdom–compliant grown-up drinks, even if, for the moment, our culture shows little interest in either. Star Wars looks set to move on as if Andor had never happened, and I expect it to keep spinning out mostly bad, mostly adolescent stories as long as people will still watch them, after which it may well be replaced by something still worse and more adolescent. (Probably something distributed on TikTok.)

But so what? I don’t have to watch all that. And if Andor’s moral revolution in Star Wars was doomed to fail, at least it had—like Maarva—the wisdom to know it should still try.

The post Why Andor’s Grown-Up Heroes Matter to Faithful Adults appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

This is me late to the game, but like… Mormon theology is basically Nietzsche right… Why did I just notice this… THAT is why Bryan Johnson is like that!

First off, we should brush aside Roberts’s comments about the ex-LDS Bryan Johnson and his search for a medical, godless, eternal life. Johnson no longer practices nor believes the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Roberts’ comment was certainly intended as a criticism, but hopefully, one issued for the purpose of engendering some good theological conversation. Of course, this statement was made casually on a casual social media platform, but for the LDS faithful and those like me, interested in or sympathetic to the LDS faith, this is still a statement worth engaging. Why would one of the main editors of one of America’s leading Christian publications, someone who has done great, quality work with a fantastic publication, make such a statement?

As a point of clarification, I am not trying to pick a fight with Mrs. Roberts. I love the work she has done, especially at Plough. I am simply trying to respond to her in a manner in which a serious person ought to respond to a good provocation: by using it as a prompt for reflection.

“Proper Christians” and Latter-day Saints

First, we must momentarily get over the distaste many good people have for Friedrich Nietzsche and his legacy. Roberts’s intended insult highly oversimplifies Nietzsche and misunderstands Mormonism. In “What Does Nihilism Affirm?” delivered at Pembroke College, Oxford, and in another 2017 lecture, American philosopher and LDS member James Faulconer shows that “Nietzschean nihilism” (understood correctly) is not only compatible with Christian thought, but does a better job addressing important philosophical problems than alternative views. Nietzsche should not be dismissed simply because he has a bad reputation in some circles. As Cornel West says, “Every major intellectual has to come to terms with Nietzsche,” even if they ultimately disagree with him. 

Second, we must realize that Roberts, like many such Christians, believes that the Church of Jesus Christ gets God wrong in a way similar to how Nietzsche gets God wrong. According to this view, both members of the Church of Jesus Christ and Nietzsche believe they can make themselves into gods or even God Himself. Those believers also see “proper” Christianity as Christ reaching down to pick up the oppressed and the powerless in the palm of His hand for protection and asking His followers to prioritize doing the same. (The same individuals tend to think that Latter-day Saint theology is somehow opposed or indifferent to this.) Additionally, these Christian people seem to think of ‘Mormons’ as not properly monotheistic, while some would even go so far as to say they are polytheistic.  

Despite the supposed anti-Christian philosophies espoused by Nietzsche and his followers, who often misconstrue his admittedly esoteric teachings, it is important to remember that Nietzsche wished to condemn the lack of vitality that he saw in the essentially godless modern iterations of European Christianity. It is possible, I believe, to make the case that Latter-day Saints, even as seen in The Book of Mormon itself, also critique the inert “slave morality” of modern Western Christianity, particularly in the forms it existed at the time of The Book of Mormon’s publication in 1830—a full three decades before Nietzsche’s first publication. Importantly, The Book of Mormon amazingly and shockingly addresses the major philosophical questions facing the modernizing nineteenth-century world, but also by predating and predicting them, as must be obvious even for those who only consider The Book of Mormon as having been written in the 1820s.

What Nietzsche Actually Wrote

In such works as On the Genealogy of Morality and Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche critiques Christianity—and similar religions—as having developed a “slave morality.” A slave morality reverses the natural order of things, glorifying suffering and victimhood and vilifying strength and power. He believes this was innovated by the oppressed in Rome to overthrow the Hellenistic powers. Nietzsche also lumped Stoicism in with this critique, claiming that Stoicism paved the way for this overthrow by being a philosophy of resignation, making its practitioners weak, and even wrongly making Zeus into a monotheistic god. He thinks these beliefs were implemented subtly, starting with slaves and servants, then women, then men. Ultimately, Nietzsche felt that this kind of Christianity encouraged the masses to accept subjugation, powerlessness, and suffering as goods in and of themselves. This was Nietzsche’s complaint with Christianity rather than a critique of Christ Himself, whom Nietzsche greatly admired and held in high esteem, even above Socrates.

Instead, Nietzsche sought to build on and correct Schopenhauer’s “will to life” with his embrace of the “will to power”—the desire to live, to embrace suffering for life not because of life, to overcome individual weaknesses, to channel force and strength for creative rather than destructive purposes. In a word, to say “Yes!” to life.

Nietzsche and The Book of Mormon

Similarly, The Book of Mormon supports, highlights, and emphasizes agency. As many prophets and apostles have loved to say in conference talks, “Pray as though everything depends on God, and work as though everything depends on you.” The Book of Mormon regularly teaches a form of self-reliance and righteousness pursued by an active rather than a passive engagement with the suffering of life for life. 2 Nephi 2 clarifies this by stating that redemption comes through Jesus the Messiah, that freedom of choice and real agency are essential to existence and the progression of man, that Adam fell in The Garden that men might exist for good, and that humans are free to choose true freedom and eternal life. One section reads: 

Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. And the Messiah cometh in the fullness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given. Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

This is not a passive morality. Rather, like Nietzsche’s, it is a morality for individuals who are highly accountable for their specific actions and are essentially proactive in their salvation (though not through so-called “saved by works” doctrine, as some Christians accuse). It is a living engagement with The Truth, with the foundational nature of the universe.

A key illustration of this is the way the Book of Mormon contrasts the active righteousness of the Nephites with the decadent laziness of the Lamanites. Or the way the book condemns the institution of priestcraft among the Nephites by Nehor, as well as condemning the Zoramites in Alma 31, who began to worship idols and practice in synagogues that appealed to their vanity and moral relativism.

In his own way, too, Nietzsche somewhat supports the view of the Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, and Joseph Smith’s “King Follet Discourse” that God is a truly real being to whom eternal, spiritual men should aspire. Nietzsche certainly explicitly wanted to leave behind the powerless, abstracted God of modern Europe (Pascal’s “God of the Philosophers”) for a wilder, more primitive god or gods. The God of Latter-day Saint theology is a powerful, physical, “wild” God—not wild in the Dionysian sense Nietzsche desired but certainly not separated from the God of the Old Testament as the God of modern Christianity often seems to be.  This is God as present, material, in real existence, ever-expanding, eternally progressing, dynamic; God as the Hebrews experienced Him in the wilderness, as Lehi experienced Him in leaving Israel for America. As Terryl Givens puts it in Wrestling the Angel, LDS beliefs represent a “drastic redefining of primitive Christianity and its tangible, speaking God. … The texts of [Joseph] Smith’s revelations at times sound like the voice of God orienting a lost pedestrian to the site for New Jerusalem.”

Nietzsche … was a huge catalyst for my return to religion, to Christianity. I think in some ways his book The Anti-Christ  … catalyzed my own interest in learning about early Christianity. … Nobody takes questions as seriously as Nietzsche. … What really gripped me with Nietzsche was this idea that we can become so much more than we are. That was like a siren call that just went straight into the center of me, and I think it was what I was always hoping Christianity would be about. And in some ways, of course, Christianity is about that. But the version of Christianity I encountered in a suburban Midwestern upper-middle-class white church seemed not at all to foreground that project of self-transformation and self-transcendence. I heard it in Nietzsche, and I fell hard for him, and that question has been an absolute mainstay of my adult life.

The “Madman” and Joseph Smith

In The Gay Science (which Faulconer usefully examines in his 2020 book Thinking Otherwise: Theological Explorations of Joseph Smith’s Revelations), in a precursor parable to the infamous Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche says there once was a “madman” who ran to the market seeking God, but the people of the market did not believe in God and mocked him. So the “madman” chastised the people, saying that God was indeed real but that they had killed him, causing great harm to the world, making an irreparable crack in history. When the people of the market only stared at the “madman” with astonishment at his interruption, he realized he had come too early and that the citizens there did not yet realize what they had done. So the “madman” ran to all the churches he could find, trying to make them understand “the death of God.” When the churchgoers argued with him, he could only reply, “What, after all then, are these churches now but the tombs of God?” Both the people of the market and the people of the churches had “killed God” through the emptiness and unseriousness of their belief and the poverty of their credence, and they had locked His body away in the sepulchers of their powerless churches.

Likewise, in Pearl of Great Price, in Chapter 1 of “Joseph Smith—History” (verses 18-19), Smith says about the appearance of The Father and The Son to him in the forest:

My object in going to inquire of the Lord was to know which of all the sects was right, that I might know which to join. No sooner, therefore, did I get possession of myself, so as to be able to speak, then I asked the Personages who stood above me in the light, which of all the sects was right (for at this time, it had never entered into my heart that all were wrong)—and which I should join. I was answered that I must join none of them, for they were all wrong; and the Personage who addressed me said that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt; that: “they draw near to me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, they teach for doctrines the commandments of men, having a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”

For reasons such as these, it appears that the Book of Mormon miraculously appeared in history at just the right time, including many elements of classic and classical philosophy within it, essentially baptizing the best classical philosophical ideas, answering many issues of Enlightenment philosophy, and thinking the thoughts of the best modern philosophers before they even conceived of them. And it is true, of course, that statements like 2 Nephi 2:11’s “It must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things” places Latter-day Saint theology outside of typical Christian orthodoxy.

Additionally, Latter-day Saint theology answers Nietzsche’s issues with historical Christianity in part by emphasizing that followers of Christ ought, as Romans 8 says, to remember they “have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear” and that “we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.”

Bringing it all Together

Latter-day Saint theology explicitly works to answer the problems with Christianity—and the Christian-influenced world at large—that were obvious in the nineteenth century, issues that continue and persist to the present day, the kinds of problems Nietzsche expressed so thoroughly in his work but never quite answered himself.

As Eric McDonough said to me when we discussed the topic of this article:

The Book of Mormon synthesizes all these advanced things quite adeptly, and makes it look easy, doing so with simple language. Joseph Smith was 23 when it was published, and he had no context for any of this from his environs. And he dictated it in one draft. This is what it looks like when God moves in history. He does little things—like publish a book—from an obscure source. Then he lets those things change the world through the power of the Holy Ghost—the power of the truth of the idea—as people accept it with their agency. This is how the Condescension itself worked and even the Atonement, which was acted out in relative obscurity on a thief’s cross. If God were to act in history to restore His authority and His doctrine, this is how He would do it.

When people who are against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issue provocations against the LDS faith (which common occurrence is often never met with any intellectual rigor by thinkers outside the Church), it would do the faithful well to remember why they believe what they believe, and how this helps them live a good life, by the grace of God. For those, like me, who are not LDS but are Christian, it would do us well to learn from the same. As Joseph Smith said in History of the Church, “By proving contraries, truth is made manifest.”

The post Nietzsche and The Book of Mormon: Unexpected Philosophical Parallels appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Christine Rosen, author of The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World (2024), updates Camus this way: “He fornicated and checked his phone.” But actually, if Rosen is correct, she should have gone one step further in her revision: “(Post)Modern man rarely fornicated, but instead used his phone to look at porn.”

We’re experiencing an epidemic of “excarnation”, says Rosen, which is an estrangement from our real, fleshy bodies and the real, fleshy bodies of other people as we increasingly embrace “mediated” forms of disembodied, technological existence. No more sex with a real human being, which can be clumsy and awkward and require practice, communication, and compromise. Instead, we have a smorgasbord of pixelated pornstars ready to cater to our most idiosyncratic kinks or pliant Chatbot girlfriends who send us AI-generated NSFW pictures directly to the phone in our palms, which leaves one hand free for—well, you know what.

We’ve accepted the premise of technology that everything “frictionless,” “seamless,” and more convenient is better. What we’ve discovered is that the source of much “friction” in social life is other people in their messy, awkward, unpredictable quirkiness. Almost overnight, we came to accept the idea that people should deliver our food to our doorstep, send us a photo of our bagged burritos, and disappear back into their cars before we are assaulted by their presence or inconvenienced by the pleasantries of small talk. And it’s not just DoorDash. A dozen innovations in recent decades, like AirPod headphones or self-checkout in grocery stores, serve the many of us who feel it should be an inalienable right to be insulated from face-to-face interaction with other people.

People are spending enormous amounts of time in virtual spaces. Some people, finding their own (real) lives lacking, pour their energies into creating an ersatz one on platforms like Second Life. But if you find this disconcerting, you’re liable to be shot down as a naive and backward-looking Luddite. Some have even gone so far as to argue that any preference for the real, flesh-and-blood material reality over virtual ones is mere prejudice. In a hilarious co-opting of the language of DEI, some technocrats have even claimed that such prejudice is merely “Reality Privilege.” Only some very privileged realities are rich and varied enough to compete with the abundance of virtual worlds, the argument goes. For most people, reality is dull, beige, and boring. And so, as one technocrat Rosen quotes puts it,  “Who is to say that a virtual life that is better than one’s physical life is a bad thing?” 

This mass “excarnation” of society—this estrangement from our own and others’ real, physical bodies—has serious consequences. We’re losing specific skills that make us human: the skills of reading others’ facial cues, of inferring others’ emotions, of understanding our own emotions, of navigating or orienting ourselves in a physical landscape, of appreciating the slow pleasures of art, of handwriting, of physical play, of daydreaming, of having sex. Almost all of these skills are being outsourced to technology, including those skills that seem most personal and most immune to technological encroachment. Consider, for example, the understanding of one’s own emotions. Certainly, nobody can understand our emotions better than ourselves! But some wearable technology companies promise to interpret your biometric data for you, such that your own messy interior emotional lives become simple and legible. No more difficult self-reflection necessary! 

Before Rosen, Yuval Harari predicted in his 2018 book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow that algorithms will become so powerful and knowledgeable that we will consult them in making all of our decisions. In one of my favorite hypothetical examples, Harari imagines a woman consulting algorithms to help her decide between two suitors. She asks Google, do I marry John or Jerry? Google says something like, “Well, I’ve read all of your e-mails and text messages you’ve sent to John and Jerry and the messages they sent to you. I’ve analyzed their syntax and diction and have determined that you have better communication and romantic connection with John. A cross-reference of your wearable technologies confirms this—your heart rate and perspiration are greater when in John’s company than Jerry’s. Considering the relationships in your past, your family history, and John’s past and family history, I give you an 85% chance of a successful relationship with John. I know this upsets you—because Jerry is more handsome, and you value the social capital his handsomeness provides. But trust me. Your biological evolution puts too high a premium on good looks—but good looks have low correlation to long-term relationship success.” To Harari, this is a good thing. Algorithms will eliminate the biases and prejudices of human beings so that they can cut through the psychic smog and make the decisions that would actually result in the greatest happiness.

To hear Rosen tell it, the encroachment of technology into these most intimate parts of our lives has happened because we’ve uncritically accepted the myth of progress: the idea that human history is defined by a steady, linear improvement in knowledge, technology, morality, and overall quality of life. This myth, which assumes that change is inherently good and that modernity is intrinsically superior to the past, has blinded us to the costs and consequences of our innovations. In Rosen’s account, the myth lulls us into a kind of passivity, leaving us unaware and uncritical as technology encroaches upon our lives.

While this is surely part of the story, I think Rosen misses a deeper, more personal dimension of our uncritical embrace of technological “solutions.” One of the most valuable insights of existentialists like Camus, Kierkegaard, and Dostoyevsky is that most human beings experience freedom as a kind of burden and, in fact, one they are often anxious to give away. The staggering array of choices available to us today and the accompanying realization that we are wholly responsible for those choices produces what Kierkegaard called “angst.” Dostoyevsky observed that people are willing to relinquish their freedom to paternalistic authority figures in exchange for security and simplicity. And he was right; we are not merely passive victims of the myth of progress. Rather, we have actively sought out technological “solutions” to outsource the existential risk of making choices for ourselves, even in matters as profound as love and marriage. Today’s Grand Inquisitor isn’t a religious figure, it’s Mark Zuckerberg.

But even if you are someone who would never consult Google about such questions of the heart, we must concede that, to some extent, we’ve all become accustomed to the “frictionless” experience. But we also have a sneaking suspicion despite all of this convenience we’re losing something valuable. For one, Rosen says, the experience of “serendipity” is on the brink of extinction. Serendipitous experiences like stumbling into a new restaurant, following only the cues of your nose, are increasingly unlikely because algorithms relentlessly nudge us in particular directions. We research Yelp reviews before trying a restaurant, scouring hundreds of photos of dishes and scrutinizing hundreds of customer reviews. In this way, we allow the aggregate mass of people to determine which restaurants we try, with no allowance that our own idiosyncratic tastes might differ from those of the many. When we go to a new city, there’s little chance we “lose ourselves” in the city’s nooks and crannies, alleys, or stores. Our GPS-enabled phones mean that we know exactly where we are at all times, and algorithms will send you personally tailored “push” notifications when you’re nearing your favorite, familiar haunts. The music and movies we enjoy are also algorithmically determined; no longer can we stumble into a record store or Blockbuster and have the coincidental experience of taking home something truly novel, something completely outside our usual patterns of consumption. The “Recommended For You” features on Netflix and Amazon narrow the scope of our possible experiences and make serendipitous surprises less likely.

According to Rosen, we need to be more skeptical about technology. More than a century ago, Thoreau wrote, “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” We need to think more like Thoreau: when we use technology, how does it use us in turn? 

We need to remember that, despite all of our technological sophistication, we are human beings with human bodies. As Ecclesiastes put it, “You who do not know how the mind is joined to the body know nothing of the works of God.” Or, as Montaigne put it more humorously: “And upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still about our arses.”

We need to take account of the qualitative losses suffered on account of our uncritical adoption of technological “solutions” to human “problems”.  As Rosen writes at the close of her book, 

Accounting for what we have lost is also the beginning of the process of reclaiming it. Despite what Silicon Valley marketing messages insist, history is not always a steady march toward progress, and not every new thing is an improvement on the old. If we are to reclaim human virtues and save our most deeply rooted human experiences from extinction, we must be willing to place limits on the more extreme transformative projects proposed by our techno-enthusiasts, not as a means of stifling innovation but as a commitment to our shared humanity. Only then can we live freely as the embodied, quirky, contradictory, resilient, creative human beings we are.

During the Renaissance, humanists like Pico della Mirandola celebrated the unique place of human beings on the Great Chain of Being. Unlike animals, whose natures were fixed, human beings possessed a malleable nature: they could choose to rise to the divine heights of the angels or degrade themselves to the level of beasts. For Renaissance humanists, this capacity for transformation was a glorious privilege. But today, rather than becoming angels or beasts, as Pico Della Mirandola imagined, human beings are becoming machines. Or, more accurately, we are outsourcing our experiences of being human—thinking, feeling, connecting—to our machines, as if they could live for us. Rosen’s book is a call for a new humanism—one that rejects this abdication and embraces the messy, wondrous glory of embodiment, emotion, and connection.

The post The Epidemic of Excarnation: What We Lose When We Forget Our Flesh appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

A decade later, after an extensive review of more than 40 rigorous studies designed to “tease out” the effects of family structure on children, McLanahan and her co-author concluded:

If we were asked to design a system for making sure that children’s basic needs were met, we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent ideal. Such a design, in theory, would not only ensure that children had access to the time and money of two adults, it also would provide a system of checks and balances that promoted quality parenting. The fact that both parents have a biological connection to the child would increase the likelihood that the parents would identify with the child and be willing to sacrifice for that child…

From personal experience, she knew that divorce could help children by taking them out of a destructive environment. But it was clear that the ideal context for development was a married mother and father parenting together. Resources were a large part of the story. Two parents generally means more resources to devote to the intensive developmental needs of children. Yet it was not just resources. There also seemed to be something powerful in the design—mother and father—devoted to something larger than themselves, nurturing the children their love brought into being.

Like all infants, his primary task was to search out a face—wired to seek the one whose heartbeat and smell and voice he already intimately knew, whose blood and organs and bones built his. His fetal cells will circulate in her body long after he has grown into adulthood. The bond they were primed to form is an intuitive extension of their biological connection.  

For the next year of his life, they will communicate through emotions, eye to eye, body to body. She will regulate his inner world by intuitively synchronizing herself with his inner state, then upregulating the emotion, doing what he cannot yet do for himself. In the process, their bond of emotional communication will lay the foundations for his emotional awareness, personality, self-regulation, and capacity for intimacy.

Together, they will offer him a fuller and more complete understanding of himself and the world and how he can navigate its complexity with assurance and capacity. When he calls out “Dad,” the voice that responds will assure him that needed protection, guidance, and help are close. His call for “Mom” will bring a different, also essential, form of soul-nourishing protection, help, and guidance. 

There is something irreplaceable in this complementary design, offering a wholeness to the building of a soul that is already the living, genetic evidence of two being made one. And yet, they will also fail in it. Developing this level of love and intimacy is not an easy process. 

There will be episodes of anger, rejection, impatience, and selfishness. Mothers and fathers will fail to love one another and cause their children fear and pain. Their sense of responsibility will get tangled up with using their children as evidence of their goodness as parents, blocking them from truly seeing and knowing. And children will make countless mistakes in the process of growing, bringing fear and disappointment.

This is some of what Sara McLanahan was picking up in her very human metrics—a divine design in this thing we call family. It’s worth everything to seek to strengthen our family so that we might all be better able to experience what it is designed to create. Nothing else can quite replace it, and God Himself assures us He will make it whole. 

The post How Parents and Children Benefit from Fidelity to One Another appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

Anesthesia. Whether it be from injections or gas, pain can be effectively obliterated. If you want to have a pain-free experience AND avoid the horrid sounds and smells, you can even opt for full-out sedation dentistry. In which case, they completely knock you out, do the work, and then wake you back up. What a blessing it is for us in all fields of dentistry and medicine. In the days before anesthesia, it was to tag a swig of this, bite the wooden spoon, and hang on. It takes a good deal of training to know how to effectively administer anesthetics. Some people study for years to be anesthetists or anesthesiologists. And aren’t we glad they do?

Both halves of Mike’s statements are important, and I want to give them the time they deserve. Particularly because, if I am being honest, I LIKE anesthesia. 

Jesus Christ: The Great Physician

Throughout the New Testament, we find story after story of Christ healing both the physical and spiritual infirmities of those around Him. One of the many examples is the wonderful story of the healing of the man at the Pool of Bethesda. Additionally, when Christ appeared to the Nephites, He immediately stepped into the role of Physician when He extended the invitation,

Have ye any that are sick among you? Bring them hither. Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, or maimed, or leprous, or that are withered, or that are deaf, or that are afflicted in any manner? Bring them hither, and I will heal them, for I have compassion upon you; my bowels are filled with mercy. 

The Apostle David A. Bednar made the link to Christ’s ability to heal us spiritually when he said, 

The Savior is often referred to as the Great Physician, and this title has both symbolic and literal significance. All of us have experienced the pain associated with a physical injury or wound. …From the Atonement of the Savior flows the soothing salve that can heal our spiritual wounds and remove guilt.”

The Great Physician is only one of many noble titles for our Savior.

Satan: The Great Anesthetist

If we view Christ as the Great Physician, how is Satan “The Great Anesthetist,” especially when I spent the first part of the blog singing the praises of anesthesia? It is as simple as this: Satan does not care about you sleeping through a tooth extraction or an appendectomy. He has much bigger ambitions than that. He wants to numb our spirits so that we sleep through life. Elder Alvin F. Meredith illustrated this point in his 2021 conference address, “The adversary seems determined to get good people to do nothing, or at least to waste their time on things that will distract them from their lofty purposes and goals.”

How does he do this? How does he distract and numb us to the important things in life? Back in 2014, then-President Uchtdorf itemized three specific ways that we can be put to sleep and, in doing so, miss out on what matters. 

1. Selfishness

2. Addiction

3. Competing Priorities

The adversary would love for us to be so caught up in other things that we become spiritually numb. Asleep? Even better.

The Adversary would also love nothing more than to see us cut ties with our Father. Elder Eyring touched on this in a BYU address when he said: 

… one of the effects of disobeying God seems to be the creation of just enough spiritual anesthetic to block any sensation as the ties to God are being cut. Not only did the testimony of truth slowly erode, but even the memories of what it was like to be in the light began to seem to him like a delusion.

A numb spirit equals a score for the adversary. These are very individual and personal things. I would suggest, however, that Satan has successfully “sedated” enough people—as to the things of God—that that numbness is being felt throughout our society, both nationally and worldwide. In turn, that numb society sings a lullaby to put everyone to sleep, a lullaby that is often heard within the very membership of the Church: “Things are fine. We are catching up to the world. Everyone needs to just chill,” or “I am enough.” The Book of Mormon, a book of scripture specifically written for our day, alludes to this lullaby in these words:  

And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.

We need to wake up! As Father Lehi begged his sons in his dying breaths:

Oh that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe … Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust.

These words were echoed later by Nephi as he self-evaluated, “Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.” In the latter days, the message still rings out, “Yea, let the cry go forth among all people: Awake and arise and go forth to meet the Bridegroom …” Just as it did in the days of Isaiah, “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments …” We can see that the temptation to be ‘lulled to sleep’ has been a theme throughout time, a common tactic of the Adversary.

As Paul encouraged, “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” The Lord echoed these ideas to Joseph Smith almost a millennium later, “Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.” Even more recently, Elder Richard G. Scott gave some great counsel when he said:

Avoid worldly wickedness. Know that God is in control. In time, Satan will completely fail and be punished for his perverse evil. God has a specific plan for your life. He will reveal parts of that plan to you as you look for it with faith and consistent obedience. His Son has made you free—not from the consequences of your acts, but free to make choices. God’s eternal purpose is for you to be successful in this mortal life. 

To accomplish these things and to continue fighting the good fight, we need to be three things:

1. Awake

2. Coherent

3. Sensitive

Three things and qualities that The Great Anesthetist would love to help us forget. A sleeping saint poses no threat to him.

The post Anesthesia of the Soul & The Lullaby of Complacency appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

We may not want to admit it, but many of us are like this fat gray cat. We don’t do harm; we don’t do much good—we get by.  

I recently listened to an interesting YouTube video where the presenter asked, “Do we live in a pathologically mediocre society where people are thin and flimsy, aggregates of human qualities rather than actual human beings?”  He went on to make his case that most of us are mediocre. He quoted Kierkegaard, who said, “Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is wretched; for it lacks passion.”  

I think he is right. Occasionally I will meet someone who is truly Alive—it is rare enough to make an impression. But otherwise, we seem mostly to be getting by like this fat gray cat. We move about, we seem occupied, but underlying boredom and apathy haunt our busyness.

Why are we mediocre?

G.K. Chesterton would argue that the cause of our wretchedness is a lack of wonder: “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.”

At the beginning of the story, he holds a pistol to the head of Professor Eames, a man famous for his lectures on pessimism. His ideology sees pessimism as the one true philosophy—life is not worth living. However, the shock of being nearly murdered by Innocent Smith forces Professor Eames to realize that life is, in fact, precious. He wakes up to Life and discards his cynicism. 

Innocent Smith finds that to stay “Alive,” he must continually re-enchant his life with wonder. He wanders the world so he may return to his home with a rekindled appreciation. He has affairs with numerous women who all turn out to be his own wife. He breaks into his own home like a robber so he can view his possessions with envy. His behavior is disconcerting to most people who encounter him. However, others, in seeing his vitality and joy, awaken to the mediocrity and ingratitude of their lives.

When accused of insanity because of his continual breach of norms, Innocent Smith corrects our notion of madness, “Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.”

Professor Eames encourages him to keep his gun and use it to awaken others from their self-deceit and mediocrity. Smith declares, “I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him—only to bring him to life.”

Be a Holy Fool

Manalive follows the theme of many works of great literature, which depict a character, a holy fool or unlikely hero, who seems slow, idealistic, silly, or backward to others—yet who we discover is the one character who truly sees the world as it should be seen. Some books with this holy fool include—Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, Diamond in At the Back of the North Wind, Don Quixote, Pollyanna, and Despereaux in The Tale of Despereaux.

We are commanded to become like little children, and children are “holy fools.” They stare in wonder at the caterpillar crossing the road. They are enchanted by a snowstorm. They beg to push the button on the elevator. They will trade all their savings for one gummy bear.

“What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world.”  ~G.K. Chesterton

My youngest daughter, 6, is one of the most dramatic people I know. She bounces between extreme excitement and boiling anger. I am the “best mother in the entire world,” or I have “never done anything nice for her, EVER!” I have had many discussions with her about showing proper respect and controlling her emotions—but at the same time, I am glad she is passionate. I never want my teaching on manners and self-control to stamp out her wild and wondrous nature. 

Our modern pharmaceutical mindset would cause many to want to “cure” the bipolar tendencies of such a changing nature. If Mozart, Van Gogh, Tesla, Poe, and Newton were born today, they would likely be medicated out of their eccentricities, as well as their geniuses. Truth, goodness, and beauty are not tame and controllable; they are wild and free. Often I find myself in a room of adults and discover that everyone seems bored—we are “all politeness” and no excitement—we have been tamed. 

Robert Boyle, the Father of modern Chemistry, explains that in childhood, we can see most clearly, that we are our most true selves. We are not yet bored by the miracle of everyday living. He writes: 

We must try to recover the candour and wonder of the child—the unspoilt realism and objectivity of innocence. Or if we cannot do that, we must try at least to shake off the cloud of mere custom and see the thing as new, if only by seeing it as unnatural. Things that may well be familiar so long as familiarity breeds affection had much better become unfamiliar when familiarity breeds contempt. We must invoke the most wild and soaring sort of imagination—the imagination that can see what is there.

Awake

In the Bible, many scriptures begin with the plea to Awake! God seems to be pleading with us like our 1st-period high school teacher would—care, act, see, listen!

Thessalonians 4:6 says, “So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake.”

Sleep is a coping mechanism. We have all awoken to a gloomy, rainy day, pulled the sheets over our heads, and gone back to sleep. Childhood trauma, unresolved grief, and chronic adversity can cause us to determine that to live, and to feel, will only lead to more suffering. When we live in fear of pain and loss, we may go out into this gloomy life, but we won’t risk being hurt as we once were. So we push down our vitality, our passion, our wonder—we get by. 

Years ago, I became acquainted with a young mother who, because of trauma from her childhood, had decided that caring about things had led to too much suffering. I could never get her engaged in more than shallow conversations; she would never show joy or sorrow. Her children were similar to their mother, as is often the case. She had wrapped her broken heart in a blanket of apathy. She did not feel the pain of disappointment and sorrow, but her range of emotion had narrowed so that love and joy also eluded her. 

Thankfully she began speaking to a trusted friend who helped her see the importance of letting herself feel what needs to be felt and finding herself protected in the arms of her Heavenly Father. She summoned the one virtue that can most aid us in this awakening—in pushing the covers off and waking up—Courage. She changed. She let herself become vulnerable. Her children begin to feel the vitality of their mother’s unmuted love. Pain came, and then it went—for she now knew her God. 

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one … But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”  ~C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Rejoice

Our brains are wired to see the negative before the positive. This is a protective mechanism—our brains want us to notice the snake and not be distracted by the beautiful roses. That’s good because we want to avoid snakes, but we need to rise above it. We need to allow our souls, who still recognize the safe arms of God, to override our brain’s negative tilt. We need to willfully smell the roses. We need to overemphasize the good to compensate. Healthy cultures and people dance, they have feasts, they have days of celebration, they worship—and they are enlivened and ready to face the rain and gloom.

Life is for rejoicing, for action, for victory—with a good mix of suffering thrown in to keep us grateful for the joyful interludes. We live in a universe full of wonders. 

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

     Life is but an empty dream!—

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

     And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

     And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

     Was not spoken of the soul.

~Excerpt from Psalm of Life, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

To avoid becoming a mediocre, dreary, predictable, “tame” person, we must shake off the dust of our own numbing ingratitude and truly appreciate the everyday wonders before us. The love of a spouse is a miracle. The song of a bird is a miracle. The taste of a mango is a miracle.

“The whole order of things is as outrageous as any miracle which could presume to violate it.”  ~G.K. Chesterton

If we succeed in truly Living, we will likely seem strange to those around us, as the holy fools in literature are strange to all but the most humble. “Living” men and women change the way they view the world. They reject the drudgery of materialism. They believe in things that others have grown cynical about, such as love, sacrifice, and faith. They fight and forgive. They glory and praise.

Living Below Our Birthright

We are meant to be Awake and Alive, even if everyone else is dull and asleep. Kierkegaard continues his commentary on the passionless ordinary man to point out that we are living far below our potential: 

Men’s thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace … The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm, it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God.

Christ would compare our propensity to mediocrity to the temperature of lukewarm water. He Himself suggests it is better to run hot, for at least then you have actively chosen your fate. The passionately-wrong are, if they are open, more easily turned in the opposite direction. A speeding vehicle can easily do a donut and face the other way. A slow and steady truck—weighed down by habit and custom—is much more difficult to shift. Saul became Paul in an instant as he rushed to imprison Christians in Damascus. The more measured and compromising Sadducees were witnesses to miracles, yet their weight of tradition, pride, and prejudice made them unchangeable. 

We are beings of eternal destiny. What a tragedy it is to be a fat gray cat in human form. 

C.S. Lewis gave us a glimpse of what we may be in his famous quote from The Weight of Glory: 

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. 

How do we develop and become this goddess? How can we reignite this wonder? That fat gray cat is a product of his environment and has been trained to be mediocre, and mediocre he will stay—he can’t grow back his claws, he can’t regain his killer instinct. But we retain a wild and free will, buried and dusty though it may be. We can shake off the dust. We can discover again the wildness of life and allow it to flow through our lives. As we begin to recognize our need for wonder and gratitude and the need to recognize miracles and be a miracle in the lives of others—we can learn to LIVE AGAIN.

The post Living In a World of Declawed Souls appeared first on Public Square Magazine.

But there was an unforeseen snag. In our previous usage of the “You cut, I pick” remedy, soft foods were contested, such as cookies and brownies—so the division was simple. The “cutter” would, with the precision of a surgeon, cut directly down the middle. Candy canes, on the other hand, are not as compliant with such surgery. I quickly came to understand the applicability of the common cliché—“Them’s the Breaks.”

It’s true. It wasn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. This phrase has a familiar ring to me. As the youngest of seven children, this was one of my mother’s mantras. Attempting to divide up resources and favors equally between seven kids was not easy. Even with her attempts to accommodate all our demands for fairness, the nature of life is such that it simply isn’t always possible.

Why is fairness important? We all demand fairness. For some reason, we come into this world thinking it should be just, even though from the very beginning, we can see it isn’t. “I am too small to play—this isn’t fair!” “My younger brother is taller than me—that isn’t fair!” “My sister has better hair than I do. That isn’t fair.” “My friends get cell phones, and I don’t. This isn’t fair!” 

In Plato’s Republic, Socrates examines justice. He even builds a city that operates according to perfect justice. When played out in a city, we see that justice must be the motivator for every actor in that city. Justice cannot live in the world unless it lives in each individual in the world. 

“Justice in life and conduct of the state is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.”  ~Plato, The Republic

Much of our injustice, therefore, is our own fault—meaning the fault of mankind. But Plato also recognizes the injustice of life in general. The “gods’ don’t always dish out favors equally or based on merit and need. Life seems arbitrary sometimes. A devoted mother gets cancer; a jerk wins the lottery. These aren’t small things that we can just toss aside with a laugh. However, they are the nature of existence, and wishing it weren’t so doesn’t help.

First, it might help to examine the particular injustice done to us and see if perhaps we may be misrepresenting it. My ten-year-old daughter, for example, gets upset if we ever let her older brother stay up and watch a football game while she has to go to sleep. Yet, if she were open to the truth (as I have tried to explain it many times), the reality is not as unfair as she believes. Unfortunately, kids don’t remember the years before they were born—those two years, he had to go to sleep early while she got to stay up all night in heaven. He also starts school one hour later than she does, so he can sleep in. He has a great passion for football, and she could care less about it. So as a parent, I try to give “good gifts to my children.” I am attempting to be fair to each, but it looks like unfairness to her. For her part, she would rather that no one stays up than suffer this injustice. But demanding that he goes to sleep when she does, is unjust to him.

“For it is not because they fear doing unjust deeds, but because they fear suffering them, that those who blame injustice do so.”  ~Plato, The Republic

I have seen women who have a similar mindset towards men. They see that historically women did not hold many positions of power, that women did not go explore new lands, they didn’t get to study under the Masters in Florence—and they see this as evidence of oppression by men. Wicked men were oppressing women for their advantage. There certainly were, and still are, evil men who oppressed and persecuted women—but is that the whole story? Many Gender Studies professors suffer from the same disadvantage as my daughter—they don’t remember the way things were and don’t seem overly concerned with understanding intricacies. Not having birth control or menstrual products had a big influence on what women could do. Our technological advances and education have brought freedom for women that was impossible in previous generations. Women’s relative physical weakness has become less important in these comparatively safe times, allowing women more freedom of movement. As the value of children decreases, women make different life choices. So perhaps, with a more complex and open-minded investigation, we may understand that the inequality we see historically between the sexes was not entirely due to the free choice of evil men but more a function of the nature of reality—and even sometimes out of a desire to protect women.

When we examine injustices in our lives, we seek meaning—we seek a reason and a cause. Sometimes those examinations end in disappointment as we realize “them’s the breaks.” For example, I recently found the book The Gruffalo on my bookcase—a book I had read at least 100 times to my oldest son when he was a toddler. He would ask me to read it to him again and again. I got so sick of reading that book! But I did it because it brought him so much joy. After finding it, I showed it to him so we could reminisce about those days. My son, now 12, could not remember the book at all! At all! Upon this realization, It seemed like all those hours of self-sacrifice dissipated into thin air. So much of mothers’ hardest work: dirty diapers, early morning feedings, potty training trauma—they are all forgotten and unappreciated. Our child loses memory of our hard work, and they never look back to ask how they know to use the toilet or why they have the habit of brushing their teeth. I tried to recount to my son all the hours we had spent reading that book—seeking some kind of appreciation, but I could see it fell on deaf ears. My credit was gone with his memory. I felt the harsh unfairness of it all. No wonder mothers have such a low standing in society—none of these people even remember their own mothers’ greatest sacrifices! I don’t know why we don’t retain these memories of our loving mothers. In the next life, perhaps I will discover a good reason. Maybe being a mother is meant to be selfless—perhaps meaning would be lost if we received admiration or glory. I do trust that those hours were not wasted and that he is the good boy he is, in part, because of The Gruffalo. 

“To love is to suffer, and there can be no love otherwise.”   ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We perceive justice and fairness with such a limited vision. The world cannot be divided down the middle. We develop different strengths, unique experiences, and perspectives precisely because of the unfairness of the world. Do we want to make everything equal? No, and we can’t anyway. My shorter son has developed ball-handling skills that my taller son doesn’t bother with. My daughter’s friends get cell phones, but she has more time to develop her talents and less drama. 

“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”  ~ attributed to Aristotle

So we see that fairness is not easily discerned by us—my daughter still can’t comprehend it after many attempts to explain it. That is because we don’t have the big picture. We can’t see the end from the beginning. We don’t see what we really need or how the unfairness now may be for our benefit. But we can trust that our Transcendent God does know how to dish out justice—now and in eternity. What we are asked to do is simple: “Do unto others as we would have them do to us.” That is how we act in fairness and justice.

Matthew 7:11, 12 says, “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Although life can’t be fair and we are often treated unjustly —we can deal justly. We can treat people the way we want to be treated and teach our children to do the same. 

“If it were necessary either to do wrong or to suffer it, I should choose to suffer rather than do it.”  ~Plato, Gorgias

If we believe in the eternal nature of our soul, we see that it really doesn’t matter, ultimately, how unjustly others may treat us—only what we do to them. We have faith that virtue will win, and that happiness comes from living virtuously.

“It is a small thing to a man whether or not his neighbor be merciful to him; it is life or death to him whether or not he be merciful to his neighbor.”   ~George MacDonald

When I look back at the last 14 years of motherhood, the episodes I most regret usually involve failed attempts to make things fair. In attempting to make everybody happy—more often than not, we end up with everyone unhappy. With different ages, personalities, and preferences, we simply can’t please everyone. 

So we end up disappointing one child, and then to make them happier, we disappoint another child. We cannot let our desire to make peace allow us to give bad gifts to our children. 

When we discover unfairness—such as the candy cane breaking unevenly—we want to swoop in and try and make things fair. And that is just what I did. I chiseled away at that candy cane to try and make it perfectly even until it was mostly shards and a pile of sugar dust, and both children were crying at the unfairness of life.

If I could do it again, I would have told my son—after some comforting: Them’s the breaks. You chose to cut—and that is how it broke. This is unfortunately how life works out. Sometimes we don’t have as much control as we think. I will not do further injustice to your sister by breaking the code of “You cut, I pick.” It is sad, but at least now you don’t have to ingest as much sugar, which is actually to your benefit. 

But instead, my poor daughter wept—her trust in You Cut, I Pick may be gone forever—for I had been unjust and broken the rules of the game. We cannot correct the unfairness of life by perpetrating more unfairness. We cannot bring justice to women by being unjust to men. We cannot make life better for a sorrowful child by taking the joy from a happy child.

So why discuss justice and fairness? Is fairness possible? After all, this is a topic that has confused the world for at least 3,000 years. Because it is important to recognize what we don’t always understand, for acting without understanding can do great damage to the world. 

“Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free.”  ~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

As mothers, we should seek justice and fairness within our homes. I believe that we have a God-given ability to discern what is best for our children—if we clear our minds of an inordinate need to make everyone happy, we can discover the best path forward in time. I now understand why my mom had to so often turn to the phrase “life isn’t fair.” This was a perspective we children needed, even if it stung a bit. It’s a perspective I still need. As my pile of sugar dust and crying children demonstrate.

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