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To Live with Gratitude Ever in Our Hearts is to Touch Heaven!
It is very peaceful to be able to live for your work alone. The self-denial, the sacrifices that our work demands are all compensated for by that lovely serenity of giving yourself to inherit the kingdom of Heaven. Many people believe that we can only experience peace when the conditions in our lives are pleasant. However, we can even feel peace in times of war, and when there is no war raging, many people often lack peace. In order to have peace a person must first find atonement; peace is the result of change within humans in which union has replaced alienation. Peace is harmony and union between humans, it is the overcoming of separateness and alienation. Peace comes through the gospel—through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Even when the World is in turmoil all around us, we can receive the blessings of inner peace. This blessing will continue with us as we stay true to our testimony of the gospel and as we remember that Heavenly Fathers and Jesus Christ love us and watch over us. In addition to feeling peace ourselves, we can be an influence for peace in our families, our community, and the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
When we keep the commandment, give service, care for family members and neighbour’s, and share the gospel, we work for peace. Think about it. Why do people make fun of people and spread vicious rumors and lies? Because they want to spread evil and hate. However, if we share the Word of God, we will spread love and peace. Whenever we help relieve the suffering of another, we work for peace. “The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall tech you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the World giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid,” reports John 14.26-27. At this time of year, we frequently think of gifts. We sometimes obsess over gifts we want to give and gifts we hope to receive. However, do we consider the great gift of gratitude? Gratitude is deeper than thanks. Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude. Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words. Gratitude is shown in acts. It especially blesses of families. The Saviour exemplified and taught the importance of gratitude. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Many of us had a hard year, and some of us knew 2020 was not going to be a great year. As we lay in bed on the first day of 2021, I am sure a lot of people were thinking, “Is this going to be worth it. Going through another year of uncertainty. Nothing ever changes.” However, a grateful heart comes through expressing gratitude to our Heavenly Father for His blessings and to those around us for all that they bring into our lives. To live with gratitude ever in out hearts is to touch Heaven. When our lives change or become difficult and we have to deal with a lot of difficult people and it seems we are not getting the help we need and thinks are taking much longer than we expect them to, sometimes we need someone to help teach us how to think and look at life. The Scriptures and church are the best way to reeducate ourselves and train our brains to think different. You could spend years trying to convince the people around you to live right and confess their sins, and in many cases, all they will do is get more entrenched in lives, sarcasm, and ignorance. To some people sinning and lying and breaking the law is cool. They think it allows them to be part of an elite group and that they are cool, hip, trendsetters. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Therefore, it is important to focus on self. Our hearts must be changed in order to inherit the kingdom of God. How might we change our actions so that our heart may be changed int a grateful hearts and touch heaven? Our Father in Heaven has placed great trust in you. He has a work for you to do. Seek His guidance in prayer. The decisions you make now will set the course for much of what will follow during your mortal life and throughout eternity. We testify that God lives. It is our fervent prayer that you will remain steadfast and valiant throughout your lives and that you will trust in the Saviour and His promises. As you do this, you will be an influence for good in helping to build the kingdom of God and prepare the World for the Second Coming of the Saviour. Heavenly Father has given to us agency, the ability to choose right from wrong and to act four ourselves. Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct our life is one of God’s greatest gifts. We are responsible for the choices we make and must have the agency and courage to stand firm in obeying God’s will, even if we have to stand alone. While we are free to choose our course of actions, we are not free to choose the consequences. Whether for good or bad, consequences follow as a natural result of the choices we make. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Some sinful behaviour may bring temporary, Worldly pleasures, but such choices delay our progress and lead to heartache and misery. Righteous choices lead to lasting happiness and eternal life. Remember, true freedom comes from using our agency to choose obedience; loss of freedom comes from choosing disobedience. We are responsible for developing the talents and abilities Heavenly Father has given us. We are accountable to God for what we do with our talents and how we spend our time. Choose to do many good things of your own free will. It seems evident, that humans are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external Universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist, though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. Even the animal creation are governed by a like opinion, and preserve this belief of external objects, in all their thoughts, designs, and actions. It seems also evident, that, when humans follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images, presented by these senses, to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion, that the one are nothing but a representation of the other. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This very table, which we see white, and which we feel hard, is believed to exist, independent of our perception, and to be something external to our mind, which perceives it. Our presence bestows not being on it. Our absence does not annihilate it. It preserves its existence uniform and entire, independent of the situation of intelligent beings, who perceive or contemplate it. However, this universal and primary opinion of all humans is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourses between the mind and the object. The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove father from it: But the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: It was, therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason; and no human, who reflects, ever doubted, that the existences, which we consider, when we say, this house and that tree, are nothing but perceptions in the mind, and fleeting copies or representations of other existences, which remain uniform and independent. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
So far, then, are we necessitated by reasoning to contradict or depart from the primary instincts of nature, and to embrace a new system with regard to the evidence of our sense. However, here philosophy finds herself extremely embarrassed, when she would justify this new system, and obivate the cavils and objections of sceptics. She can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instincts of nature: For that led us to a quite different system, which is acknowledged fallible and even erroneous. And to justify this pretended philosophical system, by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of all human capacity. By what argument can it be proved, that the perceptions of the mind must be caused by external objects, entirely different from them, though resembling them (if that be possible) and could not arise either from the energy of the mind itself, or from the suggestion of some invisible and unknown spirit, or from some other cause still more unknown to us? It is acknowledged, that, in fact, many of these perceptions arise not from anything external, as in dreams, madness, and other diseases. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
And nothing can be more inexplicable than the manner, in which the body should so operate upon the mind as ever to convey an image of itself to a substance, supposed of so different, and even contrary a nature. It is a question of fact, whether the perceptions of the sense be produced by external objects, resembling them: How shall this question be determined? By experience surely; as all other questions of a like nature. However, here experience is, and must be entirely silent. The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with object. The supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning. To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being in order to prove the veracity of our sense, is surely making a very unexpected circuit. If one’s veracity were at all concerned in this matter, our sense would be entirely infallible; because it is not possible that one can ever deceive. Not to mention, that, if the external World be once called in question, we shall be at a loss to find arguments, by which we may prove the existence of that Being or any of his attributes. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The Darwinian idea of evolution as a struggle for existence is blind; the philosophic idea sees it as rhythmic unfoldment, following a spiral pattern and accompanied by involution. If we start with the theory that the human form was born out of a pair of apes, that it originated by a process of natural selection, a different view of the descent of humans may be obtained. However, we still need the Missing Link. This is something which will never be found by the methods of scientific investigation. There is evolution only in outward appearance but unfoldment inward reality. The human entity paradoxically contains within itself all lower forms of life from the very beginning, although they are quite different from the one it manifests when fully developed. The living, intelligent human entity preexists elsewhere, and takes up its physical residence on Earth only when it is ready for it. From the moment this specific unit of life separated from the cosmic Life, through all the differences experiences whereby it developed, and through all the different kingdoms of Nature, its spiritual identity as Man was predetermined. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
The materialist belief that humans have evolved from the monkey is not accepted by philosophy. The race of apes came from a conjunction of primitive man and a female beast. It was a degeneration, not an evolution. It is true that we got our bodies, as Dr. Darwin says, from the best type of animals on Earth through a utilization of them at the time of conception. The progeny was animal plus human. The monkey did not precede man, as so many materialistic biologists assets, but appeared after hi. Had it really preceded him it would not have been in existence today, for in ever case of the evolution of species the predecessors die off and disappear. There is a long evolutionary arch between a thinking animal in human form and a beauty-inspired man. According to philosophic tradition, we are in the “monkey” stage of development where our relationship toward the full “human” stage is as far away as that of a monkey is to a present-day man. The “half-ape” half-human being which passes today for a real “man” will one day give place to the real thing. Only then will it deserve the appellation. The grossest humans, not far from animals in habits and ways, and the most unrefined primitive communities contain this possibility of eventual development. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
However, the full humans realization can come only with time, with birth after birth slowly and spirally unfold the World-Idea. Anne Rice also mentioned in the Vampire novels that humans may not be God’s final and best creation and that they could still be evolving. Is man only a reasoning ape—a creative animal? The religious instinct, the ethical conscience, the metaphysical faculty, and the mystical intuition proclaim, with one vice, the answer: “No!” Man is the keystone of the arch of material life, whereas an animal lives solely under the impulses of self-preservation and self-procreation. Only in man can this Divine Being arrive at Self-consciousness, because only man can develop intelligence in its fullness. The intelligence which animals possess, however excellently it suffices them, is after all one which is concerned purely with objective things. Animals cannot move in the realm of abstract ideas, but man can escape from the concrete through his developed reason, his religious feeling, his mystic intuition. So far as man is an animal body, he shares with the other animals their interest in eating, drinking, and copulation. However, their interest does not go beyond this point where his does. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Men and woman want to know about other things and to express what they know or to receive communications from others concerning what they know. No living creature in the kingdom of animals knows more than its immediate surroundings or cares for more than the sustenance of its immediate existence. It lives in an immense and varied Universe but that fact is lost to its mentality and outside its interest. Only when the evolving entity attains the stage of developed human beings does this unconsciousness disappear. Then life takes on a larger meaning and the life-force becomes aware of itself, individualized, self-conscious. Only then does a higher purpose become possible and apparent. Is there any animal which tries to understand the meaning of is life, much more the meaning of life in the whole cosmos? Only when its consciousness has advanced to some extent to the human kingdom does the beginning of such an attempt become noticeable. When Consciousness in any creature reaches by successive periods of growth the stage where it asks itself “What am I?” thus betraying developed intelligence of a kind which no animal possesses, it is ready to seek the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
As far as we know, the moral idealism and metaphysical thinking which is possible to humans may be impossible to animals. What animal could hold any metaphysical theory, could generalize ideas about space, time, and mind, could analyse situations and relationships, could be seriously concerned about a higher ethical problem? Since we cannot truly communicate with animals, we do not truly understand their mental capabilities, and therefore they do not seem to have the capacity to get outside themselves and to perceive themselves quite impersonally. Some humans do have it and more will have it as they develop their potentialities. A self-conscious creature is one that not only knows its own individual feelings and thoughts, its own mind, but can also reflect upon them. The animal, as far as we know, has not reached this stage but the human has. If there were no way of going beyond it, tied to the physical body as humans are, the outlook would seem bleak for humans. However, they have mental and emotional possibilities and capacities, imaginations and sensitivities, which can carry them where animals may not be able to penetrate. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
There are certain ideas which belong exclusively to the higher part of human’s nature. We would look in vain into any animal’s mind to match them. Humans are the only creature among Earth’s animals which, as far as we know, aspires to reach beyond themselves, which has the inner urge to grow. Humans also are the only creature which desires to know what life is here for. The human animal is unique. Yes, let it be admitted that man moves and acts with a terrestrial body but let it not be forgotten that humans think with a human brain and feel with a heart capable of responding to calls for charity. More, there is something in them which aspires to spirituality. There are two basic feelings, pleasure and pain, attached to two basic drives: libidinal/pleasure-seeking and aggressive/destructive/pain-associated respectively. According to this view, all pleasurable experiences are associated with libidinal drives, all painful experiences with aggressive/destructive drives. The emergence of self and other out of the earliest units of experience is attributable to these two drives and their associated feelings. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
The painful experiences which the infant encounters are the first to be organized, and they are experienced as somehow inflicted on the infant by an “other.” This primitive organization of experience constitutes the first differentiation of self from other. It is as though the baby knew that the self is good and the other bad. According to this theory, organization starts when something is experiences as bad—it does not start from an experience of well-being. The sense of “other” is thought to come from times of distress which the infant experiences in terms of “this is terrible but it is not me.” This is in contrast to what is thought to happen at times of well-being. These are so pleasant that it is thought to be of no advantage to the infant to organize the experience into “this is very nice but it is not me. On the contrary. This is how the sense of omnipotent well-being develops which Dr. Freud calls the “purified pleasure-ego”: “all that is good is me and all that is me is good.” The purified pleasure-ego and the pleasant experiences which lead to its construction are the core or germ of the self. The basic units of experience are “precipitants” round which parts of the self “consolidate.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
They consolidate by virtue of the common element of pleasure in a number of experiences. What is important is the intense, overwhelming nature of early feeling and its irradiating effect on all other perceptual elements of the introjection. In this view, not only does distress not get organized at this stage with what will become part of the self, but also distressing experiences are not recognized as having a common factor—they are not given meaning except as “other.” Unpleasant experiences are kept apart from each other, and from the sense of well-being—defensively. From this viewpoint, pleasure and pain are the organizing principles for all experiences, taking precedence over any other means of conceptualizing experience. It is not difficult to imagine circumstances in which this could be so, for instance when the infant is so frequently uncomfortable that this makes an overwhelming impact on its development: distress and the absence of distress could come to matter more than anything else. And if we picture a system in which those neural pathways come to be the most dominant, down which pleasure-messages and pain-messages flow, we may imagine how this can happen; this would be a system in which those pathways have more enduring and more extensive reverberations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
We could also account for the relatively later conceptualization of distressing experiences, by imagining that, in early states of development, distress somehow disrupts normal message-sending. This disruptive process would be the same as that referred to when it is said of a human baby that the ego is overwhelmed by anxiety, and disintegrates. In the adult, we call it panic. When distress disrupts the immature organism’s organization, this prevents it doing anything other than calling for help from more mature animals. There may be survival-value in this. If the young organism is too immature to react to danger with fight or flight in a successful way, it is perhaps safest that it should be unable to try, and be reduced to only crying for help. The beginnings of ego-functioning are thought to be defensive in this tradition, the purpose being to maintain a sense of well-being and to ward off the infant’s discover that the distress is also its own. However, it may not be true that the sense of well-being and the sense of distress can be the original organizing principles of self and other in every case, though perhaps it was the general cause among those who sought psychotherapeutic help at a particular time during this century. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
For the most part, to my mind, people need to be fairly well and integrated, before they are able to organize their experiences of the World in terms of “I like” versus “I do not like,” “libidinally” versus “aggressively.” I think it is at least as possible for people’s minds to be organized according to what happened in their early relationships with others, whether pleasurable or painful. Sensations and emotions are thought of as organized into the landscape of what occurs as experience follows experience. Psychic structures form because repeated experiences create them from the most commonly experiences connections, which after a certain point gain some independence from the structures in which they were originally embedded. To my mind, the neurophysiological/classificatory/concept-attaining/structure-building approach provides the basic ideas in terms of which we should understand the emergence of self and other from the original state which Dr. William James (1890) called a “big buzzing blooming confusion,” and Dr. Balint a “harmonious interpenetrating mix-up.” #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Pleasure and pain may profoundly affect the harmonious interpenetrating mix-up differentiation, but they are not solely responsible. The process I have called concept-formation start off the differentiation of self from other, as they start every other differentiation and integration. Growth is the characteristic of the plant kingdom, movement of the animal, thought of the human. The mineral, the plant, and the animal have the infinite Life-Power within them, too, but they do not know that they have it. Humans alone can know their own divinity. Indeed one is not truly a human until one has know it. What the fishes and birds cannot attain, the human can. And that is the Supreme Awareness, the Divine Being discovered under the cosmic masquerade. The first main element in the transformed social dimension is for individuals to come to see themselves whole, as God Himself sees them. Such a vision sets them beyond the wounds and limitations they have received in their past relationships to others. It is this vision of oneself from God’s point of view that makes it possible to regard oneself as blessed, no matter what has happened. “We are dead,” Paul tells us, and “our life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then we will appear with him, glorious,” reports Colossians 3.3-4. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
We have stepped into a new life where the primary relationship is with Christ and we are assured of a glorious existence forever. If we place our hope entirely in God, God has a plan for each of us in the work he is doing during our lifetime, and no ne can prevent this from being fulfilled. The part we play in His plans now will extend to the role God has set before us for eternity. Our life in Him is whole and it is blessed, no matter what has or has not been done to us, no matter how shamefully our human circles of sufficiency have been violated. It is God’s sufficiency to us that secures everything else. Paul again said, “Our sufficiency is of God.” “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes for God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,” reports 2 Corinthians 3.5-6. “And God is able to make all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: ‘He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever,’” reports 2 Corinthians 9.8-9. It is the God-given vision of us as whole in Him that draws all the poisons from our relationships to others and enables us to go forward with sincere forgiveness and blessings toward them. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
Only when we have the God-given vision can we stand free from the wounds of the past and from those who have assaulted or forsaken us. Every efficient cause is greater than the thing effected. However, nothing is greater than the will of God. We must not then seek for a cause of it. In no wise has the will of Gd a cause. In proof of which we must consider that, since the will follows from the intellect, there is cause of the will in the person who wills, in the same way as there is a cause of the understanding, in the person that understands. The case with the understanding is this: that if the premiss and its conclusion are understood separately from each other, the understanding the premiss is the cause that the conclusion is known. If the understanding perceive the conclusion in the premiss itself, apprehending both the one and the other at the same glance, in this case the knowing of the conclusion would not be caused by understanding the premises, since a thing cannot be its own cause; and yet, it would be true that the thinker would understand the premises to be the cause of the conclusion. It is the same with the will, with respect to which the end stands in the same relation to the means to the end, as do the premises to the conclusion with regard to the understanding. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
Hence, if anyone in one act wills and end, and in another act means to that end, one’s willing that end will be the case of one’s willing the means. If in one act one will both end and the means to the end, this cannot be the case. Yet it will be true to say that one wills to order to the end the means to the end. Now as God by one act understands all things in His essence, so by one act He wills all things in His goodness. Hence, as in God to understand the cause is not the cause of His understanding the effect, for He understand the effect in the cause, so, in Him, to will an end is not the cause of His willing the means, yet He wills the ordering of the means to the end. Therefore, He will this to be as means to that; but does not will this on account of that. The will of God is reasonable, not because anything is to God a cause of willing, but in so far as He wills one thing to be on account of another. Since God wills effects to proceed from definite causes, for the preservation of order in the Universe, it is not unreasonable to seek for causes secondary to the divine will. It would, however, be unreasonable to do so, if such were considered as primary, and not as dependent on the will of God. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Philosophers have their vanity have thought fit to attribute contingent effects to other causes, being utterly unable to perceive the cause that is shown above all others, the will of God. Since God wills effects to come from causes, all effects that presuppose some other effect do not depend solely on the will of God, but on something else besides: but the first effect depends on the divine will alone. Thus, for example, we may say that God willed humans to have hands to serve His intellect by their work, and intellect, that humans might be human; and willed humans to be humans so that they might enjoy Him (God), or for the completion of the Universe. However, this cannot be reduced to other created secondary ends. Hence such things depend on the simple will of God; but the others on the order of other causes. Look! The garden is growing well! Through your help, and through my work, we have done a great deed, Holy Ones. We have produced food from seeds’ promise. I stop for a moment to praise tomatoes, honouring them by eating one. Lovely is the Spirit of God who grows such things. First I praise their shapes—they shun the easy perfection of the sphere and take instead their own forms. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
The weight of these tomatoes is worth praising, and the depth of their colour. Before I eat this one, I smell it, taking its scent in deeply, finding in me a resonance that tells me that this is the smell of fertile Earth. Their skin, though stretched tightly, yields quickly; it has performed its duty of containing treasure with uncommon devotion and now relinquishes command to me. With silent thanks, then, I accept the task and eagerly receive the honour so bestowed, hoping, by so doing, to honour in turn the giver of the gift and the gift itself. Our soul has waited for the Lord; He is our help and shield. For our heart rejoices in Him, because we have trusted in His holy name. Let Thy mercy, O Lord, be upon us, according as we have hoped in Thee. Show us Thy loving kindness, O Lord, and please grant us Thy salvation. Arise for our help and redeem us for Thy mercy’s sake. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt; open your mouth, and I shall grant you of My bounty. Happy is the people that fares thus, happy is the people whose God is the Lord. As for me, in Thy loving kindness do I trust; my heart rejoices in Thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because He hath dealt bountifully with me. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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I Have a Little Shadow that Goes in and Out with Me
The knights-errant, who wandered about to clear the World of dragons and giants, never entertained the least doubt with regard to the existence of these monsters. What is a human? This is the most important question which has ever been put before the mind. The idea of a human which exists in and is eternally known by the World-Mind is a master-idea. When we can learn what the true worth of a human is and wherein lies one’s real salvation, we shall learn the most practical of all things. For this, more than anything else, will show us how to live on Earth peacefully, prosperously, healthily, and usefully. If a human does not know what one is in the very essence of one’s human beingness, one does not really know what one is talking about. Scientific concepts of the nature of humans which leave out the intuitive and spiritual element in it as existing independently and in its own level, will always remain inadequate to explain humans, however brilliant they themselves admittedly often are. If a human’s life were nothing more than a physiochemical process, then human’s highest aspirations and intuitions, unselfishness and aestheticism would still need an explanation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
For more than a century we have been listening to what humans think about the Universe. It might be more illuminating, now, to learn what the Universe thinks about humans. The more one perceives the immensity of intelligence behind the World-Idea, the more one perceives the insignificance of one’s own entity in relation to it. This increasing humility is in striking contrast to the increasing pride which so many intellectuals develop. It is not arrogantly to overrate the function of humans in the Universe to say that one has a co-operative and creative role to play in it. Those who point to one’s insignificance and helplessness do well, but they do not do enough. If experience teaches anything at all, it teaches the littleness of humans but the greatness of Humans. Science frightened humans when, in the last century, it told them that they were not the constant attention of God, as they believed but a most insignificant particle in an immense Universe. Against this immense cosmic background, we may see the paltriness of human pride, the ridiculousness of human conceit. Although it is not possible to offer irrefutable scientific prof of the doctrine of spiritual evolution, it can be shown to be as reasonable a doctrine as any of is rivals. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
And for those who have had mystical experience of the divine presence behind the mind, of divine wisdom being the cosmos, it is the only acceptable doctrine. For a while after birth, the infant has experiences and memory-traces of experiences, but these are isolated and not connected with each other. The infant’s mind is then like the first map of an unexplored country, mostly blank spaces. Or, since that is too static a picture, the infant’s mind would have a number of what is called units of experience floating around in it, more or less connected with each other but as yet in no ordered or meaningful fashion. Slowly they become organized in gradually more enduring ways. As experiences continue to happen, and repeatedly have common elements, connections begin to be made. These connections are like threads—nerve fibers. The processes referred to are similar but the pictures are different because people need different elements to enliven their imagination. As further experiences become introjected, units of experience can begin to merge, to integrate. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
This integration is complex business. There is both fusion and fission, both merging and separation as things begin to sort themselves out. Some units of experience will merge with others into more general organizations, but others will separate out (or more accurately will have followings) before merging elsewhere. How this will happen will depend on what “followings” the experiences have in common. Experiences, at this very early stage in life, integrate and develop toward conceptual status, but we can safely say that these experiences are very different form their adult equivalent. Infants cannot organize their World in adult fashion because not enough has happened yet to get more than some very blurry-edged units of experience, each rather separate from the others in some ways, and each incorporating that the observer might call inappropriate (that is misclassified) components. We may think of a sea with floating bits of seaweed, shipwreck wood, fishes, and birds. Slowly, under the impact of further experiences, the flotsam and jetsam of events begin to fit together and to merge into more complex islands, floating in the sea. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
This merging is accompanied by all kinds of differentiation: all fishes are organized under the heading “fish,” all seaweed—wherever it is and of whatever kind—with seaweed, all gulls with gulls and separate from albatross, and so on. In at least one way, the metaphor of “islands” is a dangerous one, for the early clusters of memory-traces do not disappear upon reorganization, the way islands would disappear if they were magically shunted elsewhere to join up with others. We should rather say new followings both give new significance to the experience and also submerge it in the new contexts, just as a figure may be harder to find once it has been put into a new context. Meanings depend on context. However, the original meanings are not destroyed in the process of further organization—in regression something like the original experiences can be re-experienced. To return from these imaginative flights back to more sedate metaphors: from the beginning of life, experiences leave their mark. That is from the beginning of life, an experience becomes an internalized object-relation with potentially three elements: a sense of self, a sense of other people and things, and a sense of what goes on between the two. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
And almost from the beginning, some aspects of some experiences have something in common with what has already been experienced. And almost from the beginning, some aspects of some experiences have something in common with what has already been experienced. The common factor may lie mainly in the regions of self-imagery, or in the regions representing other people and things, or in the regions registering relating and feeling, or in all of them, of course. Because of this, our experiences of ourselves are affected by the structures we already have, although of course the later experience may modify them. Similarly our experiences of other people and things are affected by already established structures reflecting our sense of other people and things, although these are, in turn, modified. From the earliest days on, then, differentiating and integrating processes are expanding, solidifying, attenuating, structuring, organizing. The boundaries between self and other (ego-boundaries) become ever more delineated, what the ego (or the self) exerts increasingly more central control over perception and action. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
As life unfolds, experiences are integrated into more and more complex structures. More object-relations are continually acquired, internalized, differentiated, integrated, made part of the person. This complex reorganizing and integrating does not proceed evenly: there will be some highly organized structures, and others less highly organized: some experiences will be more tightly integrated (that is with many connections to other structures) and some will be connected very loosely indeed. The more easily new experiences are absorbed into structures which already exist (that is the more easily they are connected with them, and organized and integrated with them), the less we notice them. We hardly ever seen experiences for what they are at first glance—our existing structures are so tightly organized that we do not allow the actual information to reach us consciously. Concepts that are strongly connected with other structures and ideas are more difficult to abstract out again. However, things that are more tightly organized as structured patterns (that is they are less integrated with the surrounding structures and less embedded in them), are more easily noticed or understood. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Of course, readers who have made a hobby of looking deeper at puzzling things and deceptions will already have strongly established structures with programmes to look for the catch, and they will see exactly what is in the message—but that is just the point I am making. Stronger and more tightly organized structures will act as a context for new experiences, giving meaning which depend on the established context. A slap in the face can be experienced: purely as pain (non-integrated), or as mother attacking me, or as mother angry because I spilled honey all over the tablecloth, or as mother inadvertently hitting me as she whirled round while playing rounders with us. The “slap” can be integrated in different ways. In the final example the “slap” may not have “hurt” at all. Meaning depends more on the context in more integrated structures. It will become less important later that we can use consciousness, words, and language to reassess the context and hence the meaning of an experience. By these means we can abstract even well-absorbed experiences from the context in which they have become embedded. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
The process by which an experience is integrated into an existing psychic structure is called “metabolizing.” This means the transformation of an experience so that it becomes part of a person, in the same way that we metabolize a biscuit by eating it and it becomes part of our bodies. I used to amuse Leo by saying it is raining cats and dogs. This metaphor of “metabolizing” is useful, providing that we do not lose sight of the fact that the process may also be described by other metaphors, such as “organizing” and “integrating.” The faculties, as we have seen, enabled humans to know and to act. Humans acquired knowledge because learning and knowing in themselves give satisfaction and pleasure. Humans also desire to know because they want to act better, that is, to conduct themselves more effectively and acceptably among their fellows and before their God. Voluntary movement is the kind that humans themselves have control over; they decide whether to act or not to act, to believe or not to believe. Appetite is held to be the efficient cause of actions that are affective or emotional, and nonreflective. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The will, distinct from the appetite, is the efficient cause of reflective behaviour. It is the power of saying yes or no prior to action. It is heralded in consciousness by moments of choice. All movement has to have causes, one of which is the efficient cause—that which makes effective all other casual conditions of motion. That which originates any and all human movement is called appetite or desire. It is originative in the sense that it literally starts or triggers off a motion. There are other less immediate causative conditions—material, formal, and final—but they are ineffective without the trigger. Furthermore, appetite is itself best thought of as a kind of conduct-oriented motion. It is the last of a series of events that prompts action, and hence could be have been moved or nudged by forces temporally prior to it. In turn it moves, and thus set things into motion, as for example, the muscles involved in gesturing and speaking. The motion of appetite is like that of a ball and socket joint, having a convex and concave side. There is both a receiving aspect and an impelling aspect, a notion used when postulating a receiving and giving force in the appetites of inanimate things, in their consents and sympathies, and the like. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
The receiving aspect of notion we still have in our idiom, as when we refer to the moving of the appetite, or to the moving of the will. The impelling aspect of the idea lingers in phrases such as strength of will, strength of appetite, and one had the will to do so-and-so. The idea that the appetite is itself moved prior to moving something else has an important consequence. It is easier to analyze the means of moving the appetite than to describe the impelling aspect of appetite; hence in most analyses of appetite as a force in voluntary movement one discovers much talk and description of the means of moving the appetite and will, and little about the mechanism involved when the appetite and will are movers. There are two forms of appetite. One is the sensitive appetite, which is the efficient cause of all action and conduct that is habitually associated with the senses and emotion. The guides of appetite are pleasure and pain as features or outcomes of the immediate behaviour in prospect. The vision of pleasure is enough to initiate a pleasurable act; the specter of pain is sufficient to inhibit a painful act. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
The other form of appetite is rational in character, and is best verbalized in English as will. The will is the efficient cause of deliberative or calculative behaviour. As a movement, it is preceded by activity of the rational faculties, notably reason and judgment, when they are directed to practical matters entailing choice and decision. In consciousness it is marked by feelings pleasant and unpleasant and by designations of right and wrong, good and bad. Human action, the sensitive appetite beholds apparent good; the will always takes into account the real good. In the one case, conduct looks good, because the image promises pleasure; in the other case, conduct is good, because it rests on the solid ground of valid and true judgment. Apparent good is that which passes the test of sense experience; real good is that which passes the test of reason. Rational knowledge to moral knowledge is signaled by the announcement, “We proceed now to that knowledge which considers of the Appetite and Will of Humans.” Voluntatem humanam is voluntary movement, id est, all conduct over which the human being can exercise control. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
The will is governed by right reason, seduced by apparent good, having for its spurs that passions, for its ministers the organs and voluntary motions. We also find that pictures of good, virtue, duty, and felicity are the true objects for the will and desires of humans to aim at. The word desire here and elsewhere refers most often to the appetite of living things, although it is applied metaphorically as in the desire of the magnet for iron particles. “Now I, Moroni, write somewhat as seemeth me good; and I write unto my brethren, the Lamanites; and I would that they should know that more than four hundred and twenty years have passed away since the sign was given of the coming of Christ. And I seal up these records, after I have spoken a few words by way of exhortation unto you. Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things, if it be wisdom in God that ye should read them, that ye would remember how merciful the Lord hath been unto the children of humans, from the creation of Adam even down until the time that ye shall receive these things, and ponder it in your hearts. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
“And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things. And whatsoever thing is good is just and true; wherefore, nothing that is good denieth the Christ, but acknowledge that he is. And ye may know that he is, by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore I would exhort you that ye deny not the power of God; for he worketh by power, according to the faith of the children of humans, the same today and tomorrow, and forever. And again, I exhort you, my brethren, that ye deny not the gifts of God, for they are many; and they come from the same God. And there are different ways that these gifts are administered; but it is the same God who worketh all in all; and they are given by the manifestations of the Spirit of God unto humans, to profit them. For behold, to one is given by the Spirit of God, that he may teach the word of wisdom; and to another, that one may teach the word of knowledge by the same spirit. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
“And to another, exceedingly great faith; and to another, the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; and again, to another, that one may work mighty miracles; and again, to another, that one may prophesy concerning all things; and again, to another, the beholding of Angels and ministering spirits; and again, to another, all kinds of tongues; and again, to another, the interpretation of languages and of divers kinds of tongues. And all these gifts come by the Spirit of Christ; and they come unto every human severally, according as he will. And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that every good gift cometh of Christ. And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that all these gifts of which I have spoken, which are spiritual, never will be done away, even as long as the World shall stand, only according to the unbelief of the children of men. Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope; and if there must also be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
“And except ye have charity ye can in nowise be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God; neither can ye be saved in the kingdom of God if ye have not faith; neither ye can do all things which are expedient unto me. And now I speak unto all the ends of the Earth—that is the day cometh that the power and gifts of God shall be done away among you, it shall be because of unbelief. And wo be unto the children of men if this be the case; for there shall be none that doeth good among you, no not one. For if there be one among you that doeth god, one shall work by the power and gifts of God. And wo unto them who shall do these things away and die, for they die in their sins, and they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God; and I speak it according to the words of Christ; and I lie not. And I exhort you to remember these things; for the time speedily cometh that ye shall know that I lie not, for ye shall see me at the bar of God; and the Lord God will say unto you, which were written by this man, like as one crying from the dead, yea, even as one speaking out of the dust? #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
“I declare these things unto the fulfilling of the prophecies. And behold, they shall proceed forth out of the mouth of the everlasting God; and his word shall hiss forth from generation to generation. And God shall show unto you, that which I have written is true. And again I would exhort you that ye would come unto Christ, and lay hold upon every good gift, and touch not the evil gift, nor the unclean thing. And awake, and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem; yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion; and strengthen thy stakes and enlarge thy borders forever, that thou mayest no more be confounded, that the covenants of the Eternal Father which he hath made unto thee, O house of Israel, may be fulfilled. Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
“And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, and deny not his power, then ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, which is in the covenant of the Father unto the remission of your sins, that ye become holy, without spot. And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great God Almighty, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen,” Moroni 10.7-34. So, to heal the open sore of social existence, there is no doubt we must start with the marriage relationship—or, more inclusively, with how men and women are together in our World. If that relationship is wrong in its many dimensions, all who come through it will be seriously damaged. And they will be further damaged by a surrounding World of similarly damaged people, who are trying to manage their ways of being together on the assumption that assault and withdrawal are just the facts of life. Consequently, spiritual formation, and all our efforts as Christians to minister to people, must focus on this humanly most central relationship. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Frankly, however, we sometimes see families arriving at church frozen in coldness or seething in anger about many things, even about what it took to get them there on times. And then we may have people conducting the services who can hardly endure one another because of disagreements and painful incidents that have occurred between them—even in the process of determining how the service should be done. Do we need a bumper sticker that says, “There is no excuse for hostility and coldness among Christians”? Yes, that might help. Obviously it is relevant. However, we can only begin to recover the correct social dimension of our lives under Christ by unshakable recognition that there is no human answer to human problems, not even a “religious” answer—which is why the various humanistic “spiritualities” of our day are dead ends. Of course they may offer some help to the distressed human condition. However, they are powerless to dissolve the pervasive structures of assault and withdrawal that characterize our individual and corporate existence. Or, if they are not, then let them do it. They in turn can rightly say to the church, “You do it.” And that too is fair enough. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
The visible churches, congregations of apprentices to Jesus, must return to the transcendent power of Christ for which they stand. They must drain the assault and withdrawal, the attack and coldness, from the individual men and women who form families under their ministry of Jesus and his kingdom. We must affirm, and make clear by teaching and example, both that and how it takes “three to get married.” (The “Third” of course is God.) That is the true meaning of the union “with benefit of the clergy” that the people of Christ offer. From this basis in the home, established through the church of Jesus Christ, the power of God on Earth can break up the deadly hold of assault and withdrawal over the entire social dimension of the human self. Please rise up, Judge of the Earth, render to the arrogant their recompense. Deliverance comes from the Lord; Thy blessing be upon Thy people. The Lord of hosts be with us; the God of Jacob be our high tower. O Lord of hosts, happy is the human that trusts in Thee. Save, O Lord; O King, please answer us on the day that we call. Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance; tend them, and sustain them forever. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Let Us Inspect the Lyre, and Weigh the Stress of Every Chord, and See what May be Gained!
Future freedom has no reality; it is only an idea. Reality is what is. The individual is born in a state of intense relatedness to one’s environment, both biologically and libidinally. Prior to birth, self and environment are harmoniously “mixed up,” in fact they interpenetrate each other. In this World there are as yet no objects, only limitless substances and expanses. The large clear cosmological vistas of philosophy reveal the unflattering return of the evolutionary spiral upon itself and help us to appreciate the superb harmony of the World-Idea. With every finished cycle the evolutionary lines moves up higher and thus becomes a spiral. The evolutionary movement moves through a series of advances and retrogressions, and through slow steps broken periodically by violent spurts. Evolution threads its way spiral-fashion, mostly by slow, unhurried inches but at critical periods by mounting leaps. Nor is it seen aright unless its complement and corollary, involution, is seen along with it. All things and all beings, all events and all phenomena are interrelated in an endless chain. In this way evolution circles the Universe again and again, spiral-like. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Evolution is not only accomplished by a series of rising and falling arcs but also across long flat plains. There is a pool where we begin to live, a harmonious interpenetrating mix-up, a womb, an ocean. There is a deluge, an unorganized sensory flowing. Then new features begin to appear: volcanoes and lava flows of anger, pits of despair, rocks of detachment. The oceans are bounded and contained by shores. If the shores are calm and sweet, we find ourselves as homebodies. If the shores have breakers and rocks, we turn away oceanwards and become spacebats. Near the shores may be breakers and rollers—but also harbours, reefs and tiny islands, and sandbanks. Islands form in the limitless expanses of the sea, and in the lee of the shore. The islands will form clusters of islands, and eventually landmasses. Each island starts as a cluster of tinier islands. Each landmass starts as a collection of clusters. From all this, something like a personality emerges, and we can begin to consider its structure. Memory-traces, introjections, and internalizations are processes which happen as a result of external stimuli, and they are also structures, that is to say they endure after the stimuli have ceased. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
An introjection is both a process of the psychic apparatus, and, as a result of that process, a structure. This way of thinking is very much in line with the structure-building connection-strengthening ideas advocated. There are no static structures, only dynamic processes moving at different speeds so that they seem relatively enduring or relatively fleeting. It is a way of thinking which allows us to regard all experiences as processes which in turn start off other processes which make it possible to retain memories of what is happening now so that these experiences can be recalled or built on at a late date. It allows also for the possibility that the memories of our experiences are not static and unalterable but continually subject to further changes with further experiences. Thus we can think of early introjections as contributing to the first outline of a “map” in Dr. Hayek’s sense, and of internalization in general as contributing to map and working model in the continuous monitoring self-steering way which Dr. Hayek postulates. One of Dr. Kernberg’s most useful contributions to developmental theory is his acceptance of the unitary nature of experience. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Almost without exception, Western psychological theories have tended to cut experiences into different and separate and often contrasting basics: thinking or feeling or acting; conation or cognition or affect; will or emotion or thought or perception. Since Old Testament times, since Plato and Aristotle, we have tended to believe that thought somehow happens in one part of a person, feeing in another, will and action in another. For Dr. Kernberg, experience comes in wholes: any encounter provides an experience which has unity and leaves an integrated memory behind, though of course some parts of the experience may remain unconscious or preconscious or get repressed or remain unnoticed because the culture does not provide a word—a concept-label—for it. Although experience comes in wholes, an observer, or a very self-aware person, might abstract from the experience afterwards. “Abstract” would be precisely the right word for that, for it would be like considering the colour of a flower abstracted from its other qualities, such as shape or scent, each of which could also be abstracted. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
What is so interesting about Dr. Kernberg is that, while granting that the mature person can split experiences in these abstract ways, one maintains that the newly born infant cannot, and will not do so for a while. The fact that we adults can do it, can analyse and abstract and split our experiences, makes it difficult for some of us to imagine a kind basic unit of experience in which this split does not exist. In trying to imagine what it might be like to be a baby having basic units of experience, we are limited additionally by the fact that the baby has not yet clearly differentiated “self” from what is “not self” so that we cannot use the word “I” to describe the experience. We are of course also limited by the fact that we have to use words to describe the experience while the baby has no language as yet and is not having an experience with words in it! However, the idea of a basic unit of experience is so essential to what we are trying to think about in this essay, that it is worth trying for an imaginative reconstruction even though it is bound to fail. Imagine a tiny baby being lifted up: There is a great whoosh which is frightening or thrilling or both. There is a sense of very powerful things going on. There is either a sense of sharing in that power (being it) or a sense of being at the mercy of it. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
That experience, just described, has made a difference to that baby, in that there are now memory-traces. There is not yet an “I” with a memory of that experience, but the memory-trace is there and will affect the next experience because there is now already something established with which the next experience will be met, and which forms part of its context. And the whoosh is there forever, still going on now, in the reverberating memory-traces. And meaning depends on context. And meaning depends on context. So these memory-traces—primitive introjections—can function as an organizing principle for what happens next: the next experience, which is affected by what has gone before, assimilated into it, and so confused. Taking our imaginative reconstruction a bit further, suppose that the baby’s feeling is of fright and not of thrill (and perhaps anger and distress at the nasty sensation), and that the next thing to happen is a bowel movement. Something unaccountable is felt to be happening and is felt to be part of the general discomfort of things. If nothing happens to allay this feeling, then, the original feeling of fright, and perhaps distress and anger, is likely to be confirmed by a bowel movement. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
In contrast, suppose that the feeling is of thrill and not of fright; then there is now, not a feeling of powerlessness, but rather a sense of glory. And suppose that there is a bowel movement next, then this might be experienced as part of a general splendidness, thrill, powerfulness. If the baby could speak, it might say: Either “Oh! that was nasty, I did not like that and now something else I do not like is happening to me.” Or “Oh! I like that, it is thrilling, I feel grand and do wonderful things.” Something like that is what is meant by the introjection is the earliest, most primitive and basic level in the organization process. It is the reproduction and fixation of an interaction with the environment by means of an organized cluster of memory-traces. A person is not born with an original ego, psyche, self, core, or anything of that sort. The sense of self, of being a person, of identity comes from a gradual emergence of a set of experiences. This set of experiences does not spring from an individual core-self but involves other people from the start. However, the potential person-in-relationship-with-other is there from the start. There is an experience of an event, typically an encounter with someone or something, often called an “object.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
This basic unit of experience is called an internalized object. Internalized reminds us that it is learnt and also that it is all happening inside the head of one person: the experience is not what an observer might see while watching a human talking to one’s dog, for instance, but what it is for the human. The simplest internalized object-relation consists of: Some memory-traces which will eventually become organized into structures (processes) which will contribute mainly to a sense of self; some memory-traces getting organized into that will eventually contribute mainly to structures (processes) which build up our images and representations of “objects” (that is of other people and things); some memory traces of the feelings or relationships or transactions implicit in the experience—these can be said to connect with both the above. This sense that experience comes in a harmonious interpenetrating mix-up of self and other is not easily arrived at by introspection. In our culture, just as we abstract from our experiences in terms of feelings versus thoughts, so we also abstract in terms of self versus others. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
Culture goes deep, which is what makes it hard for us to accept that way of thinking about our experiences is not the only way, not necessarily even a good way. In the unconscious of every man there is hidden a feminine personality, and in that of every woman a masculine personality. It is a well-known fact that gender is determined by a majority of male or female genes, as the case may be. However, the minority of genes belonging to the other gender does not simply disappear. A human therefore has in one a feminine side, an unconscious feminine figure—a fact which one is generally quite unaware. I may take it as known that I have called this figure the “anima,” and its counterpart in a woman the “animus.” This figure frequently appears in dreams, where one can observe all the attributes I have mentioned. Another, no less important and clearly defined figure is that “shadow.” Like the anima, it appears either in projection on suitable persons, or personified as such in dreams. The shadow coincides with the “personal” unconscious (which corresponds to Dr. Freud’s conception of the unconscious). Again like the anima, this figure has often been portrayed by poets and writers. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
I would like to mention the 2002 Warner Brother’s film, Queen of the Damned, by Anne Rice, as an example. Queen Akasha represents is Prince Lestat’s shadow and personifies everything that he refuses to acknowledge about himself and yet, throughout the film, he is always thrusting her domineering and controlling characteristics upon himself directly or indirectly—for instance when he claims an entire band as his children, or feeds upon a young unsuspecting woman after his concert and other incompatible tendencies. The fact that the unconscious spontaneously personifies certain affectively toned contents in dreams is the reason why I have taken over these personifications in my terminology and formulated them as names. Besides these figures there are still a few others, less frequent and less striking, which have likewise undergone poetic as well as mythological formulation. I would mention, for instance, the figure of the hero and of the wise old man, to name only two of the best known. Reason, memory, and imagination are powers of an encompassing soul. When one ponders on the provinces of memory and imagination, they both partake of rationality. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
The human body is a manifestation of the soul. It is possible to entertain a soulless notion of the body, but that is considered an aberration. By nature and function, memory and imagination are more rational than sensory, no matter whether they are regarded as aspects of an understanding, or a rational soul, or of mind. The term faculty, accordingly, referred to a dominant feature or characteristic mode of human behaviour. It refers to a kind of movement, to a species of movement of which motion itself is the genus. We do not need to chop up intellect into an active, a passive, and a possible intellect. The movement of the mind is abstracted, apprehended, and reasoned. It lies at the root of all natural actions, subject to the configurations of matter. Among the motions is the motion of Signature or Impression; that is, operation without the communication of substances. Here is the suggestion that the shape or form of motions and their amount (their “how much or dose in nature”) are among the effective conditions to be looked for. One of the effective conditions to be measure is the influence of the stimulus of surrounding things. Voluntary motion in animal and human behaviour cannot be described entirely in terms of quantitative variations. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Furthermore, the actions of the senses, motion of imagination, appetite, and will; motion of the mind, determination, and intellectual faculties—these are not entirely physical motions; and although their material and efficient causes should not be disregarded, their formal and final causes must receive prime attention. We are dealing with whole humans. Even when we concentrate on things intellectual, we are mindful of human’s other parts and powers. Of all living and breathing substances human are the most susceptible of education, and not only in their body, but in their mind and spirit, and there again not only in one’s appetite and affection, but in one’s power of wit and reason. Development is not continuous. It moves forward through alternations of lulls and renewals, peaks and valleys and plateaus, in rhythmic fluctuation. The course taken by the universal movement may be upward in spiral evolution or downward in spiral retrogression. The materialist who assets humans to be wholly the product of environment is half right. The immaterialist who assets the opposite is likewise half right. This is because development moves alternately in two opposed directions, never stays in a single one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
The course taken by each life-entity in it slow development is neither straight nor direct, but a winding one, going forward and backward upward and downward, curved like a series of interwoven spirals. Why should the waves of life-entities take this spiral-like two-way course? Why do they not go along a direct single one? The answer is that they have to gather experience to grow; if this experience includes totally opposed conditions, all the parts of each entity can grow, all its latent qualities can be stirred into unfoldment. In the opposition of birth and death, growth and decay, in-breathing and exhaling, youth and age, joy and suffering, introversion and extroversion, spirit-form and body-form, it fulfills itself. If these alternating sequences through which every entity has to pass were subject to endless repetition, we would be entitles to criticize the absurdity and uselessness of it all. However, they are not. If the repetitions do occur, they do so on a higher level each time. The net result is genuine evolution of the entity. The cosmic movement traces a circular path, which is why the evolving entity has to pass through opposite extremes and why it is guaranteed a fullness of experience. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
In no other way could the entity progress toward a higher level be made sure by the periodic arrest of it downward courses. Contrast and difference are innate in the divine World-Idea to control and adjust the conflicting and opposing forces. Life subjects humans to the pairs of opposites, throws them into the conditions one needs to balance one’s experience. In undergoing this reversal of patter, one is compelled to draw upon all one’s latent resources, not merely upon one of them. The movement along a turning spiral road through one birth after another, will in time pass through seemingly unrelated extremes and unfriendly opposites. We see a perpetual struggle going on in the cosmos between two contrary forces. It appears not only in Nature’s operations but also in a human’s inner being. Thus there is no continuous upward movement but rather an alternation, which is of cyclic and spiral kind. Repulsion follows attraction in the human mind, decay contradicts growth in the universal life. The ensouled body is in communion with the body of the World and finds its health in that intimacy. When we relate to our bodies as having a soul, we attend to their beauty and expressiveness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
The soul wants more intimacy between consciousness and the soul, between our body and the World’s body, and between ourselves and our fellow human being. The spiritual malformation of children is the inevitable result of not developing the soul. What can inhibit soul development? If children live in an environment where their parents or other adults are constantly engaged conflict habitual, the children and their precious souls, bodies, and minds cannot but absorb the reality of assault and withdrawal in such a climate, and even as infants, it leaves memory traces engrained in their being. As a result, the children feel as if they are being attacked and frozen out and it becomes part of their consciousness. In such a context, you can almost see the children shrivel. Their only hope of survival is to become hardened. This amounts to a constant posture of withdrawal, even from oneself. It is a defensive posture, which, incidentally, makes attack (on others and on oneself) easy and inevitable. Hardened, lonely little souls, ready for addiction, aggression, isolation, self-destructive behaviour, and for some, even extreme violence, go out to mingle their madness with other another in nightmarish school grounds and “communities.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
As a result of the chaos and destruction engrained in these children, they turn to their bodies for self-gratification and to control others, or for isolation and self-destruction. The wonder is not that they sometimes destroy one another, but that the adults who produced them and live with them can, with apparent sincerity ask “Why?” Do they really not know? Can they really not see the poison in the social realm? It is another profound case of the blind leading the blind and both falling into a pit. “Every plant that my Heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots. Leave them; they are blind guides. If a blind man lead a blind man, both will fall into a pit,” reports Matthew 15.13-14. Marching onward in life, these little people become big people and move on with their malfunctioning souls into workplace, profession, citizenship, and leadership. From them proceeds the next generation of wounded souls. Many of these now “big people,” perhaps “the best and brightest,” try hard to rectify the situation. They sponsor sickeningly shallow solutions to the human problem, such as “education” or “diversity” or “tolerance.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Not that these are not good things in themselves. They are. However, they do not come close to the root of the human problem. They are superficial. The deep root is not ignorance (at least not ignorance of the things you learn getting an “education”) not prejudice, and not intolerance. A very small percentage of human evil comes from them, everything considered; and almost none of that does which affects our most intimate relations and turns us into the kind of people we are. Ignorance, prejudice, and intolerance, far from being the primary sources of evil draw upon the still deeper-lying soul structures of assault and withdrawal, without which they would have little effect. “Difference” only serves as one occasion of assault and withdrawal. Unless the sources deeper than it are effectively dealt with, education, diversity, and “tolerance” will only yield another version of secular self-righteousness and legalism. They will further crush the already famished human frame, being just the opposite of “connecting.” Instead of healing relationships, they will only establish a somewhat more socially stable context within which people shrivel and die. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
The soul has a vernacular life and has a relationship to the local place and culture. It has a preference for details and particulars, intimacy and involvement, attachment and rootedness. The soul feeds on whatever life grows in its immediate environment. To the soul, the ordinary is sacred and the everyday is the primary source of religion. The soul also needs spirituality. “My beloved son, I write unto you again that ye may know that I am yet alive; but I write somewhat of that which is grievous. For behold, I have had a sore battle with the Lamanites, in which we did not conquer; and Archeantus has fallen by they sword, and also Luram and Emron; yea, and we have lost a great number of our choice humans. And now behold, my son, I fear lest the Lamanites shalls destroy this people; for they do not repent, and Satan stirreth them up continually to anger one with another. Behold, I am labouring with them continually; and when I speak the word of God with sharpness they tremble and anger against me; and when I speak the word of God with sharpness they tremble and anger against me; and when I use no sharpness they harden their hearts against it; wherefore, I fear lest the Spirit of the Lord hath ceased striving with them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“For so exceedingly do they anger that is seemeth me that they have no dear of death; and they have lost their love, one towards another; and they thirst after blood and revenge continually. And now, my beloved son, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labour diligently; for if we should cease to labour, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labour to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rests our souls in the kingdom of God. And now I write somewhat concerning the sufferings of this people. For according to the knowledge which I have received from Amoron, behold, behold, the Lamanites have many prisoners, which they took from the tower of Sherrizah; and there were men, women, and children. And the husbands and fathers of these women and children they have slain; and they feed the women upon the flesh of their husbands, and the children upon the flesh of their fathers; and no water, save a little, do they give unto them. And notwithstanding this great abomination of the Lamanites, it doth not exceed that of our people in Moriantum. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners; and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue—and after they had done this thing, they did murder them in the most cruel manner, torturing their bodies even unto death; and after they have done this, they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts, because of the hardness of their hearts; and they do it for a token of bravery. O my beloved son, how can a people like this, that are without civilization—(And only a few years have passed away, and they were a civil and a delightsome people) but O my son, how can a people like this, whose delight is in so much abomination—how can we expect that Gd will stay his hand in judgment against us? Behold, my heart cries: Wo unto this people. Come out in judgment, O God, and hide their sins, and wickedness, and abominations from before thy face! And again, my son, there are many widows and their daughters who remain in Sherrizah; and that part of the provisions which the Lamanites did not carry away, behold, the army of Zenephi has carried away, and left them to wander withersoever they can for food; and many old women do faint by the way and die. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“And the army which is with me is weak; and the armies of the Lamanites are betwixt Sherrizah and me; and as many as have fled to the army of Aaron has fallen victims to their awful brutality. O the depravity of my people! They are without order and without mercy. Behold, I am but a man, and I have but the strength of a man, and I cannot any longer enforce my commands. And they have become strong in their perversion; and they are alike brutal, sparing none, neither old nor young; and they delight in everything save that which is good; and the suffering of our women and our children upon all the face of this land doth exceed everything; yea, tongue cannot tell, neither can it be written. And now, my son, I dwell no longer upon this horrible scene. Behold, thou knowest the wickedness of this people; thou knowest that they are without principle, and past feeling; and their wickedness doth exceed that of the Lamanites. Behold, my son, I cannot recommend them unto God lest he should smite me. However, behold, my son, I recommend thee unto God, and I trust in Christ that thou wilt be saved; and I pray unto God that he will spare thy life, to witness the return of his people unto him, or their utter destruction; for I know that they must perish except they repent and return unto him. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“Ad if they perish it will be like unto the Jaredites, because of the willfulness of their hearts, seeking for blood and revenge. And if it so be that they perish, we know that many of our brethren have deserted over unto the Lamanites, and many more will also desert over unto them; wherefore, write somewhat a few things, if thou art spared and I shall perish and not see thee; but I trust that I may see thee soon; for I have sacred records that I would deliver up unto thee. My son, be faithful in Christ; and may not the things which I have written grieve thee, to weigh thee down unto death; but may Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death, and the showing his body unto our fathers, and his mercy and long-suffering, and the hope of his glory and of eternal life, rest in your mind forever. And may the grace of God the Father, whose throne is high in the Heavens, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who sitteth on the right hand of his power, until all things shall become subject unto him, be, and abide with your forever. Amen,” reports Moroni 9.1-26. God is awe-inspiring in your holy places; the God of America giveth strength and power unto the people; blessed be God. O Lord of retribution, O Lord of retribution, please reveal Thyself! #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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A Human that Studieth Revenge Keeps One’s Own Wounds Green!
Success is a drug in itself. When you strive to become somebody and you become that person, it is difficult to give it up. The cycles which show the path of the universal movement are not horizontal ones, but ascending spirals. If there is return to the same place, it is on a higher level. The eye of understanding is like the eye of the sense; for as you may see great objects through small crannies or levels, so you may see great axioms of nature through small instances. The understanding is found of darting around in all directions. It is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest. It presses onward, looking for final causes; that is, it is looking for purpose and design in nature that will satisfy its own craving for order and form in everything. It desires regularity, perhaps because of the homogeneity of the substance of the human spirit. It seeks to give a substance and reality to things that are fleeting. The real business of the human understanding is with the figments of the human mind. Except for a few natural forms—it will be recalled that quantity is one of them—the mind frames its own experience according to the categories and rubrics it finds necessary and inevitable. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
By its own nature the mind is compelled to categorize and so by nature its own activity is channeled. The human understanding can be like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolours the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it. The human of a human is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not delivered and reduced. The mind cannot be like a fair sheet of paper with no writing on it. There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and Ideas of the divine. An idolon involves images of sense; the term also means images of other kinds of mental experience, such as ideas and feelings about ourselves, about things familiar and authoritative, et cetera. These might or might not be false, but when they are false we usually term them idol rather than image. Hence, idols mean false appearances. There are four kinds of them, according to their sources or causes. As monitors to the understanding, the idols are to the interpretation of nature what the traditional doctrine of fallacies are to traditional logic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Idols are errors of apprehension to be recognized, allowed for, and if possible, circumvented. All Interpretation of Nature commences with the senses, and leads from the perceptions of the sense by a straight, regular, and guarded path to the perceptions of the understanding, which are true notions and axioms. Thus one may see what the senses can do, what the understanding can do, and one becomes aware of distinct levels of abstraction. The culmination of the method is to discover the nature of the nature being investigated, and this means to discover the form, or true specific difference, or nature-engendering nature, or source of emanation. Obviously the object of search is at the top of the abstraction ladder, and a statement describing the nature discovered will reflect a high-level abstraction. When a change in concrete bodies is being investigated, one searches for the latent process carried on from the manifest efficient and the manifest material to the form which is engendered; and in like manner the discovery of the latent configuration of bodies at rest and in motion. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
True knowledge, after all, is the knowledge of causes, and this knowledge entails statements that identify form, or “Forms.” The inward-going and outward-turning forces of the cosmos work with perfect reciprocity and carry everything with them by turns. The line they follow is a spiral curve. The neural points where they meet are points of rest and inactivity. Thus, although they oppose each other, they also balance each other. The movement of every energy and trend takes a curved direction. This is why there is no straight-line, lapse-free evolution in human nature or history. And the curse develops itself with time into a circle, and this again with further time into a spiral. The history of the Universe is a history of cycles: of birth, development, disintegration, death, and rest endlessly repeated on higher and higher levels. The energy impulses which rise from the void and accumulate as electrons, only to disperse later, reproduce the same cycles through which the entire Universe itself passes. Political justice has two aspects arising from the fact that a just constitution is a case of imperfect procedural justice. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
First, the constitution is to be a just procedure satisfying the requirements of equal liberty; and second, it is to be framed so that all the feasible just arrangements, it is the one more likely than any other to result in a just and effective system of legislation. The justice of the constitution is to be assessed under both headings in the light of what circumstances permit, these assessments being made from the standpoint of the constitutional convention. The principle of equal liberty, when applied to the political procedure defined by the constitution, I shall refer to as the principle of (equal) participation. It requires that all citizens are to have an equal right to take part in, and to determine the outcome of, the constitutional process that established the laws with which they are to comply. Justice as fairness beings with the idea that where common principles are necessary and to everyone’s advantage, they are to be worked out from the viewpoint of a suitably defined initial situation of equality in which each person is fairly represented. The principle of participation transfers this notion from the original position to the constitution as the highest-order system of social rules for making rules. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
If the state is to exercise a final and coercive authority over a certain territory, and if it is in this way to affect permanently human’s prospects in life, then the constitutional process should preserve the equal representation of the original position to the degree that this is practicable. For the time being I assume that a constitutional democracy can be arranged so as to satisfy the principle of participation. However, we need to know more exactly what this principle requires under favourable circumstances, when taken to the limits so to speak. These requirements are, of course, familiar, comprising what Constant called the liberty of the ancients in contrast to the liberty of the moderns. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to see how these liberties fall under the principle of participation. The adjustments that need to be made to existing conditions. We may want to recall certain elements of a constitutional regime. First of all, the authority to determine basic social policies resides in a representative body selected for limited terms by and ultimately accountable to the electorate. This representative body has more than a purely advisory capacity. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
The representative body is a legislature with lawmaking powers and not simply a forum of delegates from various sectors of society to which the executive explains its actions and discerns the movements of public sentiment. Nor are political parties mere interest groups petitioning the government on their own behalf; instead, to gain enough support to win office, they must advance some conception of the public good. The constitution may, of course, circumscribe the legislature in numerous respects; and constitutional norms define its actions as a parliamentary body. However, in due course a firm majority of the electorate is able to achieve its aims, by constitutional amendment if necessary. All sane adults, with certain generally recognized exceptions, have the right to take part in political affairs, and the precept one elector one vote in honoured as far as possible. Elections are fair and free, and regularly held. Sporadic and unpredictable tests of public sentiment by plebiscite or other means, or at such times as may suit the convenience of those in office, do not suffice for a representative regime. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
There are firm constitutional protections for certain liberties, particularly freedom of speech and assembly, and liberty to form political associations. The principle of loyal opposition is recognized, the clash of political beliefs, and of the interests and attitudes that are likely to influence them, are accepted as a normal condition of human life. A lack of unanimity is part of the circumstances of justice, since disagreement is bound to exist even among honest humans who desire to follow much the same political principles. Without the conception of loyal opposition, and an attachment to constitutional rules which express and protect it, the politics of democracy cannot be properly conducted or long endure. Three points concerning the equal liberty defined by the principle of participation call for discussion: its meaning, its extent, and the measures that enhance its worth. Starting with the question of meaning, the precept of one elector one vote implies, when strictly adhered to, that each vote has approximately the same weight in determining the outcome of elections. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Making sure electoral votes are fair requires, assuming single member territorial constituencies, that members of legislative districts be drawn up under the guidance of certain general standards specified in advance by the constitution and applied as far as possible by an impartial procedure. These safeguards are needed to prevent gerrymandering, since the weight of the vote can be as much affected by feats of gerrymander as by districts of disproportion size. The requisite standards and procedures are to be adopted from the standpoint of the constitutional convention in which no one has the knowledge that is likely to prejudice the design of constituencies. Political parties cannot adjust boundaries to their advantage in the light of voting statistics; districts are defined by means of criteria already agreed to in the absence of this sort of information. Of course, it may be necessary to introduce certain random elements, since the criteria for designing constituencies are no doubt to some extent arbitrary. There may be no other fair way to deal wit these contingencies. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
The principle of participation also holds that all citizens are to have equal access, at least in the forma sense, to public office. Each is eligible to join political parties, to run for elective positions, and to hold places of authority. To be sure, there may be qualifications of age, residency, and so on. However, these are to be reasonably related to the tasks of office; presumably these restrictions are in the common interest and do not discriminate unfairly among persons or groups in the sense that they fall evenly on everyone in the normal course of life. The second point concerning equal political liberty is its extent. How broadly are these liberties to be defined? Offhand it is not clear what extent means here. Each of the political liberties can more or less widely defined. Somewhat arbitrarily, but nevertheless in accordance with tradition, I shall assume that the main variation in the extent of equal political liberty lies in the degree to which the constitution is majoritarian. The definition of the other liberties I take to be more or less fixed. Thus the most extensive political liberty is established by a constitution that uses the procedure of so-called bare majority rule (the procedure in which a minority can neither override nor check a majority) for all significant political decisions unimpeded by any constitutional constraints. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
Whenever the constitution limits the scope and authority of majorities, either by requiring a greater plurality for certain types of measures, or by a bill of rights restricting the powers of the legislature, and the like, equal political liberty is less extensive. The traditional devices of constitutionalism—bicameral legislature, separation of powers mixed with checks and balances, a bill of rights with judicial review—limit the scope principle participation. I assume, however, that these arrangements are consistent with equal political liberty provided that similar restrictions apply to everyone and that the constrains introduced are likely over time to fall evenly upon all sectors of society. And if the fair value of political liberty is maintained, this seems probable. The main problem, then, is how extensive equal participation should be. Turning now to the worth of political liberty, the constitution must take steps to enhance the value of the equal rights of participation for all members of society. It must underwrite a fair opportunity to take part in and to influence the political process. The distinction here is analogous to that made before: ideally, those similarly endowed and motivated should have roughly the same chance of attaining positions of political authority irrespective of their economic classes. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
But how is this fair value of these liberties to be secured? We may take for granted that a democratic regime presupposed freedom of speech and assembly, and liberty of thought and conscience. These institutions are not only required by the first principle of justice but, as Dr. Mill argued, if political affairs are to be conducted in a rational fashion, they are necessary. While rationality is not guaranteed by these arrangements, in their absence the more reasonable course seems sure to be rejected in favour of policies sought by special interests. If the public forum is to be free and open to all, and in continuous session, everyone should be able to make use of it. All citizens should have the means to be informed about political issues. They should be in a position to assess how proposals affect their well-being and which policies advance their conception of public good. Moreover, they should all have a fair chance to add alternative proposals to the agenda for political discussion. The liberties protected by the principle of participation lose much of their value whenever those who have greater private means are permitted to use their advantages to control the course of public debate. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
For eventually these inequalities will enable those better situated to exercise a larger influence over the development of legislation. In due time they are likely to acquire a preponderant weight in settling social questions, at least in regard to those matters upon which they normally agree, which is to day in regard to those things that support their favoured circumstances. Compensating steps must, then, be taken to preserve the fair value for all of the equal political liberties. A variety of devices can be used. For example, in a society allowing private ownership of them means of production, property and wealth must be kept widely distributed and government monies provided on a regular basis to encourage free public discussion. In addition, political parties are to be made independent from private economic interest by allotting them sufficient tax revenues to play their part in the constitutional scheme. (Their subventions might, for example, be based by some rule on the number of votes received in the las several elections, and the like.) What is necessary is that political parties be autonomous with respect to private demands, that is, demands not expressed in the public forum and argued for openly by reference to a conception of the public good. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
If society does not bear the costs of organization, and party funds need to be solicitated from the more advantaged social and economic interests, the pleadings of these groups are bound to receive excessive attention. And when the less favoured members of society, having been effectively prevented by their lack of means from exercising their fair degree of influence, this is all the more likely t withdraw into apathy and resentment. Historically one of the main defects of constitutional government has been the failure to insure the fair value of political liberty. The necessary corrective steps have not been taken, indeed, they never seem to have been seriously entertained. Disparities in the distribution of property and wealth that far exceed what is compatible with political equality have generally been tolerated by the legal system. Public resources have not been devoted to maintaining the institutions required for the fair value of political liberty. Essentially the fault lies in the fact the democratic political process is at best regulated rivalry; it does not even in theory have the desirable properties that price theory ascribes to truly competitive markets. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Moreover, the effects of injustices in the political system are much more grave and long lasting than market imperfections. Political power rapidly accumulates and becomes unequal; and making use of the coercive apparatus of the state and its law, those who gain the advantage can often assure themselves of a favoured position. Thus inequities in the economic and social system may soon undermine whatever political equality might have existed under fortunate historical conditions. Universal suffrage is an insufficient counterpoise; for when parties and elections are financed not by public funds but by private contributions, the political forum is so constrained by the wishes of the dominant interests that the basic measure needed to establish just constitutional rule are seldom properly presented. These questions, however, belong to political sociology. Our discussion is part of the theory of justice and must not be mistaken for a theory of political system. We are in the way of describing an ideal arrangement, comparison with which defines a standard for judging actual institutions, and indicates what must be maintained to justify departures from it. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
A just constitution sets up a form of fair rivalry for political office and authority. By presenting conceptions of the public good and policies designed to promote social end, rival parties seek the citizens’ approval in accordance with just procedural rules against a background of freedom of thought and assembly in which the fair value of political liberty is assured. The principle of participation compels those in authority t be responsive to the felt interests of the electorate. Representatives are not, to be sure, mere agents of their constituents, since they have a certain discretion and they are expected to exercise their judgment in enacting legislation. In a well-ordered society they must, nevertheless, represent their constituents in the substantive sense: they must seek first to pass just and effective legislation, since this is a citizen’s first interest in government, and secondly, they must further their constituents’ other interests insofar as these are consistent with justice. The principles of justice are among the main criteria to be used in judging a representative’s record and the reasons one gives in defense of it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Since the constitution is the foundation of the social structure, the highest order system rules that regulates and controls other institutions, everyone has the same access to the political procedure that is sets up. When the principle of participation is satisfied, all have the common status of equal citizen. Finally, to avoid misunderstanding, it should be kept in mind that the principle of participation applies to institutions. It does not define an ideal of citizenship; nor does it lay down a duty requiring all to take an active part in political affairs. The duties and obligations of individuals are a separate question. What is essential is that the constitution should establish equal rights to engage in public affairs and that measures be taken to maintain the fair value of these liberties. In a well-governed state only a small fraction of persons may devote much of their time to politics. There are many other forms of human good. However, this fraction, whatever its size, will most likely be drawn more or less equally from all sectors of society. The many communities of interests and centers of political life will have their active members who look after their concerns. #RandolphHrris 17 of 24
In the conditions of modern life, especially since the two World Wars, it has, for various reasons, been increasingly unclear how marriage, union of souls, could be caried out in practice. Individual desire has come to be the standard and rule of everything. If individual desire is the standard for everything, and if what we desire can be acquired from many competing providers, how are we to serve one another in intimate relations? The ways in which man and wife, or parents and children, would “naturally” serve one another—and traditionally have done so—are increasingly viewed as available (usually less expensively and perhaps with “better quality”) from various sources. This is true all the way from food, clothing, entertainment, attractiveness, to romance, gratifications involving pleasures of the flesh, and surrogate “motherhood” and “fatherhood.” The perilous condition of labours competing with others to sell their labour is now the condition of everyone in current society. Individual desire is accepted as a principle governing everything. When one or both parties are constantly shopping for “a better deal” or constantly appraising one another in light of convenient alternatives, what, then, does devotion to another mean? #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Withdrawal, rejection, and assault will naturally become a constant factor in the most intimate human relations. That is what Satan has always used to defeat God’s plans for human community on Earth, from Adam blaming Eve for his own sin, to Cain killing Abel, to the latest cases of “ethnic cleansing,” and the million of men, women, and children living on their own in the streets and sewers of urban centers around the globe or starving in poverty. The very same principle of withdrawal and assault operates at the highest levels of cultural, social, and political interaction, with constant glorification in the popular arts and media. “An epistle of my father Mormon, written to me, Moroni; and it was written unto me after my calling to the ministry. And on this wise did he write unto me, saying: My beloved son, Moroni, I rejoice exceedingly that your Lord Jesus Christ hath been mindful of you, and hath called you to his ministry and to his holy work. I am mindful of you always in my prayers, continually praying unto God the Father in the name of his Holy Child, Jesus, that he, though his infinite goodness and grace, will keep you through the endurance of faith on his name to the end. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“And now, my son, I speak unto you concerning that which grieveth me exceedingly; for it grieveth me that there should disputations rise among you. For, if I have learned the truth, there have been disputations among you concerning the baptism of your little children. And now, my son, I desire that ye should labour diligently, that this gross error should be removed from among you; for, for this intent I have written this epistle. For immediately after I had learned these things of you I inquired of the Lord concerning the matter. And the word of the Lord came to me by the power of the Holy Ghost, saying: Listen to the words of Christ, your Redeemer, your Lord and your God. Behold, I came into the World not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance; the whole need no physician, but they that are sick; wherefore, little children are whole, for they are not capable of committing sin; wherefore the curse of Adam is taken from them in me, that it hath no power over them; and the law of circumcision is done away in me. And after this manner did the Holy Ghost manifest the word of God unto me; wherefore, my beloved son, I know that it is solemn mockery before God, that ye should baptize little children. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“Behold I say unto you that this thing shall ye teach—repentance and baptism unto those who are accountable and capable of committing sin; yea, teach parents that they must repent and be baptized and humble themselves as their little children, and they shall all be saved with their little children. And their little children need no repentance, neither baptism. Behold, baptism is unto repentance to the fulfilling the commandments unto the remission of sins. However, little children are alive in Christ, even from the foundation of the World; if not so, God is a partial God, and also a changeable God, and a respecter to persons; for how many little children have died without baptism! Wherefore, if little children could not be saved without baptism, these must have gone to an endless hell. Behold I say uno you, that one that supposeth that little children need baptism is in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; for one hath neither faith, hope, nor charity; wherefore, should one be cut off while in the thought, one must go down to hell. For awful is the wickedness to suppose that God saveth one child because of baptism, and the other must perish because one hath no baptism. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“Wo be unto them that shall pervert the ways of the Lord after this manner, for they shall perish except they repent. Behold, I speak with boldness, having authority from God; and I fear not what humans can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear. And I am filled with charity, which is everlasting love; wherefore, all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are alike and partakers of salvation. For I know that God is not a partial God, neither a changeable being; but he is unchangeable from all eternity. Little children cannot repent; wherefore, it is awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them, for they are all alive in him because of his mercy. And one that saith that the little children need baptism denieth the mercies of Christ, and setteth at naught the atonement of him the power of his redemption. Wo unto such, for they are in danger of death, hell, and an endless torment. I speak it boldly; God hath commanded me. Listen unto them and give heed, or they stand against you at the judgment-seat of Christ. For behold that all little children are alive in Christ, and also all they that are without the law. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“For the power of redemption cometh on all them that have no law; wherefore, one this is not condemned, or one that is under no condemnation, cannot repent; and unto such baptism availeth nothing—but it is mockery before God, denying the mercies of Christ, and the power of his Holy Spirit, and putting trust in dead works. Behold, my son, this thing ought not to be; for repentance is unto them that are under condemnation and under the curse of a broken law. And the first fruits of repentance is baptism; and baptism cometh by faith unto the fulfilling the commandments; and the fulfilling the commandments bringeth remission of sins; and the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowlines of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God. Behold, my son, I will write unto you again if I go not out soon against the Lamanites. Behold, the pride of this nation, or the people of the Nephites, hath proven their destruction except they should repent. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“Pray for them, my son, that repentance may come unto them. However, behold, I fear lest the Spirit hath ceased striving with them; and in this part of the land they are also seeking to put down all power and authority which cometh from God; and they are denying the Holy Ghost. And after rejecting so great a knowledge, my son, they must perish soon, unto the fulfilling of the prophecies which were spoken by the prophets, as well as the words of our Saviour himself. Farewell, my son, until I shall write unto you, or shall meet you again. Amen,” reports Moroni 8.1-30. In the cold days of December, I am reminded of you by the Frost-covered grass now white in my yard. It is frozen and dormant. It is life appearing in the semblance of timelessness, for when the winter rains come, it will be green again. Of such small miracles, splendid God, is your World made. May the Lord bless thee and keep thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord make His countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord turn His countenance unto thee and give thee peace. So may it be His will. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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This is the Soul-Searching Fact at the Heart of Our Modern Sadness!
Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment. A time comes when one must weary of one’s paradise, when a desire appears for the conditions which ne was formerly glad to leave behind but now would be glad to take up again. Thus it is that humans shuttle through this Universe of opposites. We find a certain phenomena in nature. We seek a cause or author. We imagine that we have found Him. We afterwards become so enamoured of this offspring of our brain, that we imagine it impossible, but He must produce something greater and more perfect than the present scene of things, which are so full of ill disorder. In a since, God has allowed humans to be the authors of their existence or order it the Universe; it follows, that they possess that precise degree of power, intelligence, and benevolence, which appears in their craft. They have assisted the ascent of reason by the wings of imagination; otherwise humans could not change their manner of inference, and argue from causes to effects; presuming, that a more perfect production than the present World would be more suitable to such perfect beings as the gods, and forgetting that they have no reason to ascribe to these beings any perfection or any attribute, but what can be found in the present World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 31
Hence all the fruitless industry to account for the ill appearances of nature, and save the honour of the gods; while we must acknowledge the reality of that evil and disorder, with which the World so much abounds. Physics finds that nothing is ultimately permanent, that everything moves from its present condition to its opposite. Need we be surprised that history finds somewhat the same cyclic movement in the activities of humankind, that deterioration of even the best comes with time, that improvement of even the worst follows too? It is as true in the domain of inner life as in the outer one that Nature must restore equilibrium when it is lacking, must compensate opposing forces by balancing them. If it were not continuously being equilibrated in some of its parts, there could not be any stable Universe. This is happening by obedience to law, not by chance. It is happening wherever the movement or development of human and Nature reaches an extreme, when it forces a reversal of direction of the movement backward toward the other and totally dissimilar extreme. The pattern followed is therefore a rhythmic one, shuttling between one pole and its opposite. #RandolphHarris 2 of 31
In this history of humans, when the point of fullness in any particular development is approached, a contradictory movement begins to come into play and, at first gradually but later suddenly, reverses the direction of one’s tendencies. In this way not only are neglected potentialities activated but also some sort of an equilibrium is maintained. These critical turning points are always marked by great and violent upheavals. The Universe is not only constructed by divine intelligence no a two-way oscillating rhythm, but also on a balancing force between both movements. If humans upset Nature’s equilibrium by excess, she sets up a reversal in compensation, a movement toward lack, restraint. This is the endless oscillation of things, history. There is a threefold movement in nature and life—forward, backward, and neutralizing. There is an Old World theory that everything that has been will be again, repeating itself by a precise mathematical law when the same particles of matter are brought together again. And that there is a perpetual alternation between change and changelessness, of endless rhythm and periodicity which provides no evolutionary goal but makes life an end in itself. #RandolphHarris 3 of 31
Why take these attributes for granted, or why ascribe to the cause any qualities but what actually appear in the effect? Why torture your brain to justify the course of nature upon suppositions, which, for aught you know, may be entirely imaginary, and of which there are to be found no traces in the course of nature? It is useless; because our knowledge of this cause being derived entirely from the course of nature, we can never, according to the rules of reasoning, return back from the cause with any new inference, or making additions to the common and experienced course of nature, establish any new principles of conduct and behaviour. Eternal Recurrence is the eternal law, that perpetual repetitive movement is the universal condition, is questionable at the very least, unjustifiable at the very most. If the human race, for example, were doomed to repeat all its mistakes and misdeeds again and again, its life would be senseless. Such an outlook is not far from the merely materialistic one. The idea of recurring historic cycles is well established in the Old World. If you saw, for instance, a half-finished building, surrounded with heaps of brick and stone and mortar, and all the instruments of masonry; could you not infer from the effect, that it was a work of design and contrivance? #RandolphHarris 4 of 31
And could you not return again, from this inferred cause, to infer new additions to the effect, and conclude, that the mansion would soon be finished, and receive all the further improvements, which art could bestow upon it? If you saw upon the sea-shore the print of one human foot, you would conclude, that a man had passed that way, and that he had also left the traces of the other foot, though effaced by the rolling of the sands or inundation of the waters. Why then do you refuse to admit the same method of reasoning with regard to the order of nature? Consider the World and the present life only as an imperfect Victorian mansion, from which you can infer a superior intelligence; and arguing from that superior intelligence, which can leave nothing imperfect; why may you not infer a more finished scheme or plan, which will receive its completion in some distant point of space of time? Are not these methods of reasoning exactly similar? And under what pretence can you embrace that one, while you respect the other? All things move forward, stop, and wheel back on themselves. They increase and strengthen but also bend and submit. This advance and retreat is both a cycle and a spiral. It is not blind, for thus it established equilibrium and obeys law, that is, it gives meaning. #RandolphHarris 5 of 31
Nowhere in Nature does a situation, a circumstance, a creature, or a person recur exactly as before. It is that Nature repeats herself, but during the interval the spiral has wound its way onward. In the spiral’s form we see the coming together of that which is the hidden being and that which is the visible one, so the full truth is revealed. It is true f a creature or a globe. Whenever you see a spiral form in nature, you will find it stands for a form which is developing, growing, changing, or moving. The infinite difference of the subjects is a sufficient foundation for this difference in my conclusions. In works of human art and contrivance, it is allowable to advance from the effect to the cause, and returning back from the cause, to form new inferences concerning the effect, and examine the alterations, which it has probably undergone, or may still undergo. However, what is the foundation of this method of reasoning? Plainly this; that humans are beings, whom we know by experience, whose motives and designs we are acquainted with, and whose projects and inclinations have a certain connexion and coherence, according to the laws which nature has established for the government of such a creature. #RandolphHarris 6 of 31
When, therefore, we find, that any work has proceeded from the skill and industry of humans; as we are otherwise acquainted with the nature of the animal, we can draw a hundred inference concerning what may be expected from one; and these inferences will all be founded in experience and observation. However, did we know humans only from the single work or production which we examine, it were impossible for us to argue in this manner; because our knowledge of all the production, it is impossible they could point to any thing farther, or be the foundation of any new inference. When considered alone, the print of a foot in the sand can only prove that there was some figure adapted to it, by which it was produced: However, the print of a human foot proves likewise, from our other experience, that there was probably another foot, which also left its impression, though effaced by time or other accidents. Here we mount from the effect to the cause; and descending again from the cause, infer alterations in the effect; but this is not a continuation of the same simple chain of reasoning. #RandolphHarris 7 of 31
We comprehend in this case a hundred other experiences and observations, concerning the usual figure and members of that species of animal, without which this method of argument must be considered as fallacious and sophistical. The case is not the same with our reasonings from the works of nature. The Deity is known to us only by one’s productions, and is a single being in the Universe, not comprehended under any species or genus, from whose experienced attributes or qualities, we can, by analogy, infer any attribute or quality in one. As the Universe shows wisdom and goodness, we infer wisdom and goodness. As it shows a particular degree of these perfections, we infer a particular degree of them, precisely adapted to the effect which we examine. However, father attributes or father degrees of the same attributes, we can never be authorized to infer or suppose, by any rules of just reasoning. Now, without some such licence of supposition, it is impossible for us to argue from the cause, or infer any alteration in effect, beyond what has immediately fallen under our observation. Greater good produced by this Being must still prove a greater degree of goodness: A more impartial distribution of reward and punishments must proceed from a greater regard to justice and equity. #RandolphHarris 8 of 31
Every supposed addition to the works of nature makes an addition to the attributes of the Author of nature; and consequently, being entirely unsupported by any reason or argument, can never be admitted but as mere conjecture and hypothesis. I tried to reason my way to the truth, but that only got me through the door. From there I had to learn faith. We were raised to be loyal to our faith, to believe in God, to attend church, and to obey the commandments—and we saw no need to change. We paid little attention to the criticism of our faith. In some of the classes I was taking, the professors taught that the purposes and object of laws is to maintain peace, structure, safety, and stability in a community. It struck me then that this was the purpose of God’s laws. Obeying them created peace and harmony within the community. If God has laws (and he must), and if He has a proper interpretation of them (which He must), a community that followed those laws would be God’s perfect community, one of peace and order—pure peace and order. #RandolphHarris 9 of 31
A community where the people of God could live together in peace and harmony. A kingdom where God could dwell. Through studying the teachings of humans and the teachings of God, I found that some arguments against the true gospel seem, at times, more convincing than arguments for it. Not only are the philosophies of humans very persuasive and usually easier to live, but reason alone is in most cases sufficient to the convincing of natural humans. The gospel of Jesus Christ, however, is not always persuasive to the natural human, entrapped as one is in the entanglements of logic and reason. Sometimes, somewhere, that person who would be truly converted to the Church, be one member or not, must be humble and submissive enough to have an overwhelming desire to know the truth. Not just to continue the aimless, well-worn path from philosophy to philosophy to mythology, but to seek to actually know God’s absolute truths and to live them. If it were not for the witness of the Spirit to confirm truth to us, we would be as confused and perplexed as the philosophies themselves. Through keeping baptismal covenants, we lay aside the natural human. #RandolphHarris 10 of 31
As a result, we create the void which necessitates a spiritual witness; reason alone is no longer sufficient. However, besides that ordinary course of nature may convince us, that almost everything is regulated by principles and maxims very different from ours; Besides this, I say, it must evidently appear contrary to all rules of analogy to reason, from the intentions and projects of humans, to those of a Being so different, and so much superior. In human nature, there is a certain experienced coherence of designs and inclinations; so that when, from any fact, we have discovered one intention of any human, it may often be reasonable, from experience, to infer another, and draw a long chain of conclusions concerning one’s past or future conduct. However, this method of reasoning can never have place with regard to a Being, so remote and incomprehensible, who bears much less analogy to any other being in the Universe than the sun to a waxed taper, and who discovers oneself only by some faint traces or outlines, beyond which we have no authority to ascribe to Him any attribute or perfect. What we imagine to be a superior perfection, may really be a defect. #RandolphHarris 11 of 31
Or were it ever so much a perfection the ascribing of it to the Supreme Being, where it appears not to have been really exerted, to the full, in His works, savours more of flattery and panegyric, than of just reasoning and sound philosophy. All the philosophy, therefore, in the World, and all the religion, which is nothing but a species of philosophy, will never be able to carry us beyond the usual course of experience, or give us measures of conduct and behaviour differ from those which are furnished by reflections on common life. No new fact can ever be inferred from the religious hypothesis; no event foreseen or foretold; no reward or punishment expected or dreaded, beyond what is already know by practice and observation. Yet, if there is your stance on God and religion, there is still one circumstance, which you seem to have overlooked. This seems to fulfill the words of Moroni: “Dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith,” reports Ether 12.6. By obeying the commandments, we become worthy of further witness. The Saviour said: “If any human will do God’s will, one shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself,” reports John 7.17. #RandolphHarris 12 of 31
God lives and He is speaking to us in these last days. As witnesses we know this. God has been seen, heard, and felt. With the declaration that the gospel has been restored is the promise that the Holy Ghost will also witness the fact to you, and then you will know. God is trying to straighten out all of our concerns, and only when one has enough faith will one be able to hear his message. God went to quite a bit of trouble so that we could have the gospel, and now the prophet is telling us that we had better pay attention because these things are for our happiness and that the “rebellious shall be pierced with much sorrow,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 1.3. Today there is about a fifty-percent divorce rate in America, and the rate is not much lower for professing Christians. However, the problem is not divorce—though divorce generates a set of problems all its own. The problem is that people do not know how to be married. They do not actually get married in many cases, though they go through a legal and possibly a religious ceremony. They are, sad to say, incapable of marriage—the kind of constant mutual blessing that can make two people in conjugal relation literally one whole person. “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. #RandolphHarris 13 of 31
“For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband,” reports Ephesians 5.22-33. It is not their fault that so many marriages end in divorce. In their World, how could they know? Who would teach them? This is the soul-searing fact at the heart of our modern sadness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 31
To be married to give oneself to another person in the most intimate and inclusive of human relationships, to support one for good in every way possible—physically, emotionally, and spiritually, of course, but in every way conceivable dimension of one’s being. Nothing ever given to humanity more adequately portrays what marriage is than the “traditional service,” the “Form of Solemnization of Matrimony,” in the old Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England. Just consider some of its wording. Anyone who wished the situation with divorce and family breakup today should begin with careful study of the giving of oneself and the receiving of another that is manifested in the vows of this traditional service: “I…take thee…to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part…” Insight into the meaning of the vows will clearly bring out why the ideal intent of marriage is one man, one woman for life (or whatever newer forms may be considered). The “mutual submission to each other in awe of the Lord,” which is the vision of marriage in Christ, eliminates both assault and withdrawal from this most basic of human relationships. #RandolphHarris 15 of 31
Thereby marriage provides the matrix of womb from which (in God’s plan) whole human being can emerge to form whole and human communities, under God. This “womb” is then, of course, the overall home life of the child, not just a particular part of the woman’s body. Birth should only be a move from one part to a larger part of the same home. This home is as much or more the man’s responsibility as the woman’s for it is the man’s role to make it possible for the woman to do what she alone can do for the child—and for him. And for her part, then, she is to help in making it possible for him to do what he alone can do for her and the child—and this in the midst of constant sacrificial submission on the part of each to overall good of the other. In case there are no children involved, they still “lay down their life” for each other. That is what marriage involves. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this right. ‘Honour your father and mother’—which is the first commandment wit a promise—‘that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the Earth.’ Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord,” reports Ephesians 6.1-4. #RandolphHarris 16 of 31
The human who wisely disciplines oneself for godliness understand the necessity of prioritizing and realism and prayer and accountability and that failure is part of success, but one’s greatest wisdom and impetus comes from one’s understanding of grace. Everything in one’s life comes from God’s grace—sola gratia—grace alone! Salvation itself is by grace alone. We were dead in our transgressions and sins, captive to dark powers, no more capable of effecting our own salvation than a corpse. “But…God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgression—it is by grace you have been saved…For it is by grace you have been saved through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast,” reports Ephesians 2.4, 8, 9. We are saved by God’s grace, His unmerited favour. Even the smallest percentage of works debases saving grace, as Paul made so pointedly clear: “And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace,” reports Romans 11.6. Sola gratia. Salvation is by grace alone, and living the Christian life is by grace alone also. James makes this stunning declaration regarding the believer’s universal experience in this World: “But he gives us more grace,” reports James 4.6. #RandolphHarris 17 of 31
This is not saving grace, but grace to live our lives as we ought in this fallen World—literally, “greater grace.” There is always “more grace.” An artist once submitted a painting of Niagara Falls to an exhibition, but neglected to give it a title. The gallery, faced with the need to supply one, came up with these words: “More to Follow.” Old Niagara Falls, spilling over billions of gallons per year for thousands of years, has more than met the needs of those below and is a fit emblem of the floods of God’s grace He showers upon us. There is always more to follow! The Apostle John referred to this reality, saying, “For of His fulness we have all received, and grace upon grace,” reports John 1.16—literally, “grace instead of grace,” or as others have rendered it, “grace following grace” or “grace heaped upon grace.” “For daily need there is daily grace; for sudden need, sudden grace; for overwhelming need, overwhelming grace, proclaims John Blanchard. As we tackle the disciplines of a Godly human, we must remember it is a matter of grace from beginning to end. #RandolphHarris 18 of 31
Consider slowly and carefully Paul’s words, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me,” reports 1 Corinthians 15.10. You see there is no contradiction between grace and hard work. In fact, grace produces spiritual sweat! It is God’s grace that energizes us to live out the disciplines of a Godly human. There is always more grace. Grace of Purity, Grace for Marriage, Grace for Fatherhood, Grace for Motherhood, Grace for Friendship, Grace for Mind, Grace for Devotion, Grace for Prayer, Grace for Worship, Grace for Integrity, Grace for Tongue, Grace for Work, Grace for Church, Grace for Leadership, Grace for Giving, Grace for Witness, Grace for Ministry. Brothers and Sister, when we attempt to do God’s will, God always gives more grace. When we have exhausted our store of endurance, when our strength has failed ere the day is half done; when we reach the end of our hoarded resources, our Father’s full giving is only begun. God’s love has no limits, His grace has no measure. #RandolphHarris 19 of 31
God’s power has no boundary know unto humans; for out of His infinite riches in Jesus, God giveth, and giveth, and giveth. Make a complete listen of all the areas of your life in which you need greater discipline. Then, for each, write down what you can do to experience increased discipline. Since you cannot accomplish this in your own strength and must have God’s help, your answers should include ways you can receive divine assistance and enabling. During my junior-high years, in the midst of a time of uncertainty and insecurity, I remember having a keen interest in spiritual matters. I felt a strong desire to go to church, but could find no answers. I recall a stained-glass window in our church depicting an Angel kneeling with its wings outstretched. How I yearned to crawl under those wings for security, protection, and peace. I wanted to know what I believed. I was searching for meaning in my life. The people in the church seemed to sincerely care about each other. There was not the superficiality I had encountered at so many other social and business groups. During the holidays, a family with adult children, three boys, two of them twins, and an adult daughter really impressed me. #RandolphHarris 20 of 31
They hungout in their living room, and the dad read stories from a book, and his wife and kids all laughed, and they really liked each other and enjoyed being together. I was overcome with emotions of joy, awe, and thankfulness. This magnificent moment this family shared with me tugged at my spiritual chords within me. They were generous, living, gracious, compassionate, kind, and humble. I admired this family’s strength of character that I sensed was lacking in myself. They trusted Christ to rule their lives instead of themselves. That was so contrary to the way I was living my life. It was during this time that I received another invitation to a dinner being held at a country club by a business acquaintance. It was to feature a testimony by a business executive and his wife on what their relationship with Christ has meant in their lives. Out of respect for my friend, I went. Here I heard what I had been hearing at Bible study but from a business executive, someone who had been struggling with many of the things that I was struggling with. I could definitely identify with him. I realized that Revelations 3.20 was speaking to me: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with one, and one with me.” #RandolphHarris 21 of 31
A new relationship was deepening within me—one with Christ. My desire to follow, serve, and obey Christ had become first in my life. With that decision I wanted to spend my time differently. Lifestyle preferences changed. The power of Scripture was beginning to take root for the first time in my life. I was stronger, more forgiving, more independent, and less argumentative. I began to trust God in daily decisions and realized that God is sovereign and in control of my life. God had done what He promised, “I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God,” reports Ezekiel 11.19-20. God’s forgiveness and grace makes people feel free and alive in a new way. God will fill a person with a new power and a totally new sense of self-worth. By trusting in God, things will workout better. Trying to please Him instead of oneself somehow takes the pressure off and makes one feel better about life. #RandolphHarris 22 of 31
Jesus Christ can make all this difference in our lives. Our lives are a living testimony of His power. Through countless trials, struggles, and everyday events Christ has guided our path. He has blessed us beyond our hopes. We are grateful to the many who pray for, nurture, and bless us. As most business people know, by profession a healthy skepticism comes naturally. However, once one discovered the Way, the Truth, and the Life—the Lord Jesus Christ—we learn where to put our trust. God is faithful. He loves you, and He loves me. Trust in Him. “And now I, Moroni, write a few of the words of my father Mormon, which he spake concerning faith, hope, and charity; for after this manner did he speak unto the people, as he taught them in the synagogue which they have built for the place of worship. And now I, Mormon, speak uno you, my beloved brethren; and it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, and his holy will, because of the gift of his calling unto me, that I am permitted to speak unto you at this time. Wherefore, I would speak unto you that you are of the church, that are the peaceable followers of Christ, and that have obtained a sufficient hope by which ye can enter into the rest of the Lord, from this time henceforth until ye shall rest with him in Heaven. #RandolphHarris 23 of 31
“And now my brethren, I judge these things of you because of your peaceable walk with the children of men. For I remember the word of God which saith by their works ye shall know them; for if their works be good, then they are good also. For behold, God hah said a man being evil cannot do what which is good; for if one offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except one shall do it with real intent it profiteth one nothing. For behold it is not counted unto one for righteousness. For behold, if a human being evil giveth a gift, one doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted evil before God. And likewise also is it counted evil unto a human, if one shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth one nothing for God recieveth none such. Wherefore, a human being evil cannot do what which is good; neither will one give a good gift. For behold, a bitter fountain cannot bring forth good water; neither can a good fountain bring forth bitter water; wherefore, a human being a servant of the devil cannot follow Christ; and if one follow Christ one cannot be a servant of the devil. Wherefore, all things which are good cometh of God; and that which is evil cometh of the devil; for the devil is an enemy unto God. #RandolphHarris 24 of 31
“Being an enemy unto God the devil fighteth against him continually, and inviteth and enticeth to sin, and to do that which is evil continually. However, behold, that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God. Wherefore, take heed, my beloved brethren, that ye do not judge that which is evil to be of God, or that which is good and of God to be of the devil. For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the ways to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night. For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every human, that one may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is God. However, whatsoever thing persuadeth humans to do evil, and believe not in Christ, and deny him, and serve not God, then ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of the devil; for after this manner doth the devil work, for he persuadeth no human to do good, no, not one. #RandolphHarris 25 of 31
“Neither do the devil’s angels; neither do they who subject themselves unto the devil. And now, my brethren, seeing that ye know the light by which ye may judge, which light is the light of Christ, see that ye do not judge wrongfully; for with that same judgment which ye judge ye shall also be judged. Wherefore, I beseech of you, brethren, that ye should search diligently in the light of Christ that ye may know good from evil; and if ye will lay hold upon every good thing, and condemn it not, ye certainly be a child of Christ. And now, my brethren, how is it possible that ye can lay hold upon every good thing? And now I come to that faith, of which I said I would speak; and I will tell you the way whereby ye may law hold on every good thing. For behold, God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting, behold, he sent Angels to minister unto the children of men, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ; and in Christ there should come every good thing. And God also declared unto prophets, by his own mouth, that Christ should come. And behold, there were divers ways that he did manifest thing unto the children of men, which were good; and all things which are good cometh of Christ. #RandolphHerris 26 of 31
“Otherwise humans were fallen, and there could be no good come unto them. Wherefore, by the ministering of Angels, and by every word which proceeded forth out of the mouth of God, men began to exercise faith in Christ; and thus by faith, they did lay hold upon every good thing; and thus it was until the coming of Christ. And after that he same unto men also were saved by faith in his name; and by faith, they become the sons of God. And as surely as Christ liveth he spake these words unto our fathers, saying: Whatsoever thing ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is good, in faith believing that ye shall receive, behold, it shall be done unto you. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased because Christ hath ascended into Heaven, and hath sat down on the right hand of God, to claim of the Father his rights of mercy which he hath upon the children of men? For he hath answered the ends of the law, and he clamieth all those who have faith in him; and they who have faith in him will cleave unto every good thing; wherefore he advocated the cause of the children of men; and he dwelleth eternally in the Heaven. #RandolphHarris 27 of 31
“And because he hath done this, my beloved brethren, have miracles ceased? Behold I say unto you, Nay; neither have Angels ceased to minister unto the children of men. For behold, they are subject unto him, to minister according to the word of his command, showing themselves unto them of strong faith and firm mind in every form and Godliness. And the office of their ministry is to call humans unto repentance, and to fulfill and to do the work of the covenants of the Father, which he hath made unto the children of men, to prepare the way among the children of men, by declaring the word of Christ unto the chosen vessels of the Lord, that they may bear testimony of him. And by so doing, the Lord God prepareth the way that the residue of men may have faith in Christ, that the Holy Ghost may have place in their hearts, according to the power thereof; and after this manner bringeth to pass the Father, the covenants which he hath made unto the children of men. And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me. And he hath said: Repent all ye ends of the Earth, and come unto me, and be baptized in my name, and have faith in me, that ye may be saved. #RandolphHarris 28 of 31
“And now, my beloved brethren, if this be the case that these things are true which I have spoken unto you, and God will show unto you, with power and great glory at the last day, that they are true, and if they are true as the day of miracles ceased? Or have Angels ceased to appear unto the children of men? Or has he withheld the power of the Holy Ghost from them? Or will he, so long as time shall last, or the Earth shall stand, or there shall be one man upon the face thereof to be saved? Behold I say unto you, Nay; for it is by faith that miracles are wrought; and it is by faith that Angels appear and minister unto humans; wherefore, if these things have ceased wo be unto the children of men, for it is because of unbelief, and all is vain. For no man can be saved, according to the words of Christ, save they shall have faith in his name; wherefore, if these things have ceased, then has faith ceased also; and awful is the state of man, for they are as though there had been no redemption made. However, behold, my beloved brethren, I judge better things for you, for I judge that ye have faith in Christ because of your meekness; for if ye have not faith in him then ye are not fit to be numbered among the people of his church. #RandolphHarris 29 of 31
“And again, my beloved brethren, I would speak unto you concerning hope. How is it that ye can attain unto faith, save ye shall have hope? And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise. Wherefore, if a human have faith one must needs have hope; for without faith there cannot be any hope. And again, behold I say unto you that one cannot have faith and hope, save one shall be meek, and lowly of heart. If so, one’s faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart; and if a human be meek and lowly in heart, and confesses by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, one must needs have charity; for if one have not charity one is nothing; wherefore one must needs have charity. And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not one’s own , is not easily provoke, thinketh no evil, and rejoice not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. #RandolphHarris 30 of 31
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—but charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is fund possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with one. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen,” reports Moroni 7.1-48. For all this, Thy name, O our King, shall be blessed and exalted for ever and ever. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who art our salvation and our help. Blessed be Thou, O, Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. Our God and God of our fathers, bless us. #RandolphHarris 31 of 31
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And Now the Purple Dusk of Twilight Time Steals Across the Meadows of My Heart!
Civilization beings with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos. If one is always a little hungry, never quite warm enough, and never falling prey to the dangers of the soft life of self-gratification, a person can think and meditate better. Meditation is just oiling the machinery and making the unused parts come into use. You have not done enough, you have never done enough, so long as it is possible that you have something of value to contribute. Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them. I shall discuss the matter in connection with religious toleration. With appropriate alterations the argument can be extended to these other instances. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Several questions should be distinguished. First, there is the question whether an intolerant sect has any title to complain if it is not tolerated; second, under what conditions tolerant sects have a right not to tolerate those which are intolerant; and last, when they have the right not to tolerate them, for what ends it should be exercised. Beginning with the first question, it seems that an intolerant sect has no title to complain when it is denied an equal liberty. At least this follows if it is assumed that one has no title to object to the conduct of others that is in accordance with principles one would use in similar circumstance to justify one’s action toward them. A person’s right to complain is limited to violations of principles one acknowledges oneself. A complaint is a protest addressed to another in good faith. It claims a violation of a principle that both parties accept. Now, to be sure, an intolerant human will say that one acts in good faith and that one does not ask anything for oneself that one denies to others. One’s view, let us suppose, is that one is acting on the principle that God is to be obeyed and the truth accepted by all. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
This principle is absolute authority is perfectly general and by acting on it one is not making an exception in one’s own case. As one sees that matter, one is following the correct principle others reject. The reply to this defense is that, from the standpoint of the original position (designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice), no particular interpretation of religious truth can be acknowledged as binding upon citizens generally; nor can it be agreed that there should be one authority with the right to settle questions of theological doctrine. Each person must insist upon an equal right t decide what one’s religious obligations are. One cannot give up this right to another person or institutional authority. In fact, a human exercises one’s liberty in deciding to accept anther as an authority even when one regards this authority as infallible, since in doing this one in no way abandons one’s equal liberty of conscience as a matter of constitutional law. For this liberty as secured by justice is imprescriptible: a person is always free to change one’s faith and this right does not depend upon one’s having exercised one’s powers of choice regularly or intelligently. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
We may observe that human beings having an equal liberty of conscience is consistent with the idea that all humans ought to obey God and accept the truth. The problem of liberty is that of choosing a principle by which the claims humans make on one another in the name of their religion are to be regulated. Granting that God’s will should be followed and the truth recognized does not as yet define a principle of adjudication. From the fact that God’s intention is to be complied with, it does follow that any person or institution has authority to interfere with another’s interpretation of one’s religious obligations. This religious principle justifies no one in demanding in law or politics a greater liberty for oneself. The only principles which authorize claims on institutions are those that would be chosen in the original position. Let us suppose, then, that an intolerant sect has no title to complain of intolerance. We still cannot say that tolerant sects have the right to suppress them. For one thing, others may have a right to complain. They may have this right not as a right to complain on behalf of the intolerant, but simply as a right to object whenever a principle of justice is violated. For justice is infringed whenever equal liberty is denied without sufficient reason. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The question, then, is whether being intolerant of another in grounds enough for limiting someone’s liberty. To simplify things, assumes that the tolerant sects have the right not to tolerate the intolerant in at least one circumstances, namely, when they sincerely and with reason believe that intolerance is necessary for their own security. This right follows readily enough since, as the original position is defined, each would agree to the right of self-preservation. Justice does not require that humans must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence. Since it can never be to human’s advantage, from a general point of view, to forgo the right of self-protection, the only question, then, is whether the tolerant have a right to curb the intolerant when they are of no immediate danger to the equal liberties of others. Suppose that, in some way or other, an intolerant sect comes to exist within a well-ordered society accepting the two principles of justice. How are the citizens of this society to act in regard to it? Now certainly they would not suppress it simply because the members of the intolerant sect could not complain were they to do so. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Rather, since a just constitution exists, all citizens have a natural duty of justice to uphold it. We are not released from this duty whenever others are disposed to act unjustly. A more stringent condition is required: there must be some considerable risks to our own legitimate interests. Thus just citizens should strive to preserve the constitution with all its equal liberties as long as liberty itself and their own freedom are not in danger. They can properly force the intolerant to respect the liberty of others, since a person can be required to respect the rights established by principles that one would acknowledge in the original position. However, when the constitution itself is secure, there is no reason to deny freedom to the intolerant. The question of tolerating the intolerant is directly related to that of the stability of a well-ordered society regulated by the two principles. We can see this as follows. It is from the position of equal citizenship that persons join the various religious associations, and it is from this position that they should conduct their discussions with one another. Citizens in a free society should not think one another incapable of a sense of justice unless this is necessary for the sake of liberty itself. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
If an intolerant sect appears in a well-ordered society, the others should keep in mind the inherent stability of their institutions. The liberties of the intolerant may persuade them to a belief in freedom. This persuasion works on the psychological principle that those whose liberties are protected by and who benefit from a just constitution will, ceteris paribus (other things equal), acquire an allegiance to it over a period of times. So even if an intolerant sect should arise, provided that it is not so strong initially that it can impose its will straightway, or does not grow so rapidly that the psychological principle has no time to take hold, it will tend to lose its intolerance and accept liberty of conscience. This is the consequence of the stability of just institutions, for stability means that when tendencies to injustice arise other forces will be called into play that work to preserve the justice of the whole arrangement. Of course, the intolerant sect may be so strong initially or growing so fast that the forces making for stability cannot convert it to liberty. This situation presents a practical dilemma which philosophy alone cannot resolve it. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Whether the liberty of the intolerant should be limited to preserve freedom under a just constitution depends on the circumstances. The theory of justice only characterizes the just constitution, the end of political action by reference to which practical decisions are to be made. In pursuing this end the natural strength of free institutions must not be forgotten, nor should it be supposed that tendencies to depart from them go unchecked and always win out. Knowing the inherent stability of a just constitution, members of a well-ordered society have the confidence to limit the freedom of the intolerant only in the special cases when it is necessary for preserving equal liberty itself. Therefore, while an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger. The tolerant should curb the intolerant only in this case. The leading principle is to establish a justice constitution with the liberties of equal citizenship. The just should be guided by the principles of justice and not the fact that the unjust cannot complain. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
It should be noted that even when the freedom of the intolerant is limited to safeguard a just constitution, this is not done in the name of maximizing liberty. The liberties of some are not suppressed simply to make possible a greater liberty for others. Justice forbids this sort of reasoning in connection with liberty as much as it does in regard to the sum of advantages. It is only the liberty of the intolerant which is to be limited, and this is done for the sake of equal liberty under a just constitution the principles of which the intolerant themselves would acknowledge in the original position. The argument in this and in the preceding sections suggests that the adoption of the principle of equal liberty can be viewed as a limiting case. Even though their differences are profound and no one knows how to reconcile them by reason, humans can, from the standpoint of the original position, still agree on this principle if they can agree on any principle at all. This idea which arose historically with religious toleration can be extended to other instances. Thus we can suppose that the persons in the original position know that they have moral convictions although, as the veil of ignorance requires, they do not know what these convictions are. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
They understand that the principles they acknowledge are to override these beliefs when there is a conflict; but otherwise they need not revise their opinions nor give them up when these principles do not uphold them. In this way the principles of justice can adjudicate between opposing moralities just as they regular the claims of rival religions. Within the framework that justice established, moral conceptions with different principles, or conceptions representing a different balancing of the same principles, may be adopted by various parts of society. What is essential is that when persons with different convictions make conflicting demands on the basic structure as a matter of political principle, they are to judge these claims by the principles of justice. The principles that would be chosen in the original position are the kernel of political morality. They not only specify the terms of cooperation between persons but they define a pact of reconciliation between diverse religions and moral beliefs, and the forms of culture to which they belong. If this conception of justice now seems largely negative, we shall see that it has a happier side. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
When we overcome our own selfish desires and put God first in our lives and covenant to serve God regardless of the cost, we are then living the law of sacrifice. One of the best ways to be sure we are keeping the first great commandment is to keep the second. “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange god before me. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The faithful are required to honour the name of God. If we are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, it makes sense that we are naturally to respect the name of God with equal passion and vigour. The law of sacrifice provides an opportunity for us to prove to the Lord that we love Him more than any other thing. As a result the course sometimes becomes difficult since this process of perfection that prepares us for the celestial kingdom to “dwell in the presence of God and His Christ forever and ever,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 76.62. The sacred mission of the Church is to “invite all to come unto Christ,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 20.59. Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him. In that light, the law of sacrifice has always been a means for God’s children to come unto the Lord Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation; it is though the medium of the sacrifice of all Earthly things that humans do actually know that they are doing the things that are well pleasing in the sight of God. When a human has offered in sacrifice all that one has for the truth’s sake, not even withholding one’s life, and believing before God that one has been called to make this sacrifice because one seeks to do one’s will, one does know, most assuredly, that God does and will accept one’s sacrifice and offering, and that one has not, nor will seek one’s face in vain. Under these circumstances, then one can obtain the faith necessary for one to lay hold on eternal life. We know what we do is pleasing before God and understand that this knowledge comes to us through sacrifice and obedience. Those who come unto Christ in this way receive a confidence that whispers peace to their souls and that will eventually enable them to lay hold upon eternal life. Sacrifice allows us to learn something about ourselves—what we are willing to offer the Lord through our obedience. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
Through sacrifice and service, one comes to know the Lord. As we sacrifice our selfish desires, serve our God and others, we become more like Him. We do this by our obedience to the commandments of God. Thus, the laws of obedience and sacrifice are indelibly intertwined. As we comply with these and other commandments, something wonderful happens to us. We become more sacred and holy—more like our Lord! In fact, the word sacrifice means literally “to make scared,” or “to render sacred.” Our first lessons about the law of sacrifice, as well as other gospel principles, began in our premotal life. We were taught the fulness of the gospel and the plan of salvation. We knew of the Saviour’s mission and of His futre atoning sacrifice, and we willingly sustained Christ as our Saviour and our Redeemer. In fact, we learn from Revelation 12.9, 11 that it is by “the blood of the Lamb” (Christ’s atoning sacrifice) and our testimony that we are able to overcome Satan. The Lord designed in the beginning to place before humans the knowledge of good and evil, and gave one a commandment to cleave to good and abstain from evil. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
However, if one should fail, God would give unto one the law of sacrifice and provide a Saviour for one, that one might be brought back again into the presence and favour of God and partake of eternal life with God. This is the plan of redemption chosen and instituted by the Alight before human was placed on Earth. Adam and Eve were taught the law of sacrifice and were commanded to practice it by giving offerings. These included two emblems: the firstlings of the flock and the first fruits of the field. They obeyed without questioning. The effect of this law was that the best of the Earth produced, the best specimen in the flock or heard should not be sued for self, but for God. At a time in history when it was a struggle to make sure the family had food, those who sought to worship the Lord were asked to sacrifice the best part of their source of life. It was the real test of Adam and Eve’s faith, and they obeyed. “And now I speak concerning baptism. Behold, elders, priests, and teachers were baptized; and they were not baptized save they brought forth fruit meet that they were worthy of it. Neither did they receive any unto baptism save they came forth with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, and witnessed unto the church that they truly repented of all their sins. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
“And none were received unto baptism save they took upon them the name of Christ, having a determination to serve him to the end. And after they had been received unto baptism, and were wrought upon and cleansed by the power of the Holy Ghost, they were numbered among the people of the church of Christ; and their names were taken that they might be remembered and nourished by the good word of God, to keep them in the right way, to keep them continually watchful unto prayer, relying alone upon the merits of Christ, who was the author and the finisher of their faith. And the church did meet together oft, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls. And hey did meet together oft to partake of bread and wine, in remembrance of the Lord Jesus. And they were strict to observe that there should be no iniquity among them; and whoso was found to commit iniquity, and three witnesses of the church did condemn them before the elders, and if they repented not and confessed not, their names were blotted out, and they were not numbered among the people of Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
“However, as oft as they repented and sought forgiveness, with real intent, they were forgiven. And their meetings were conducted by the church after the manner of the workings of the Spirit, and by the power of the Holy Ghost; for as the power of the Holy Ghost led them whether to preach, or to exhort, or to pray, or to supplicate, or to sing, even so it was done,” reports Moroni 6.1-9. It is especially in our families and similarly close associations that we must identify the elements of assault and withdrawal that defeat love and right relation to others. By insight and practice we must break away from them and reserve them, first by learning a calm but firm non-cooperation with those poisonous elements, and then by initiatives of goodwill and blessing in the midst of them. What we do in our meetings as Christians should be focused on enabling us to do this effectively wherever we are. Those meetings should and could be centers from which powerfully redemptive community spreads. Where to start? In various parts of the United States of America, publicly owned vehicles (police, street maintenance, schools) wear a bumper sticker that proclaims, “There is No Excuse for Domestic Violence.” It is a wonderful idea. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
However, we need to go deeper, of course. We need to become the kind of people whom domestic violence is unthinkable and never an option. We must be transformed in such a way that our minds and bodies—our very souls—simply do not have the makeup for it. This is the work of the Christian spiritual formations. We must begin in the family. Now the slogan must be, “There is No Excuse for Assault or Withdrawal in the Home.” Do you think that would take care of intimate partner violence? Of course it would. However, the reserve is not true: merely avoiding the subject of intimate partner violence, domestic violence or assault can still leave the home a hell of cutting remarks, contempt, coldness, and withdrawal or noninvolvement. Such a hell is often found in the homes of Christians and even of Christian leaders. Frequently they seem to honestly think that such a condition is normal, and they have no knowledge of any other way. Their very theology may strengthen this tragically false outlook. If I were married, I would seek the help of my spouse in this matter. If not, then a trusted friend who is spiritually mature and not abusive. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
I would then number my areas of need in order of importance, say: Purity, Mind, Prayer, Witness, Giving, Work, Friendship, and Leadership. Then, beginning with the first need, Purity, I would look over the suggested sub-disciplines and choose one to three things which I think would best help me improve. In doing this, I would resist the temptation to commit myself to too many disciplines. Better to succeed in a few than to assure failure by overcommitment. Perhaps, regarding the discipline of Purity I would choose to commit myself, first, to memorizing Scripture which help steel me to temptations, and second, to not watching anything sensual on TV or at the movies. Perhaps under Witness, I would make commitments to pray that God would give me someone to share Christ with and to join an interest club to meet unchurched people. After going through my life I would have perhaps twenty specific things which I could do to improve my eight weakest areas. However, before commitment to the specifics, I would look at the whole list with honest realism, asking, “Are the things which I am about to commit to really within my reach with the help of God?” #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
Perhaps, regarding the discipline of Mind, I have become so convicted that I am considering committing myself to reading the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice, plus reading The Book of Mormon. Make sure your commitments make you sweat, but also make sure that taken together they are manageable. It is better to increase your commitments as you succeed than to bite off more than you can do. Success begets success. Before setting your commitments in concrete, give yourself a week to think about them and pray over them. Seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance for other ways of personal discipline not mentioned in this essay. Ask your spouse of friend to hold you accountable for your disciplines. Even if it has to be over the phone, make sure you regularly confer and pray. Be honest about your success and failures. And be willing to take advice and make adjustments. You may have some complications, no doubt, and may not succeed at time. When this happens, wounded pride and embarrassment can make you want to take your marbles and go home. We do not like to do things which we fail. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
However, we must realize that failure is a part of succeeding, provided we admit our failures and go at it again. Moreover, we are not under Law but grace. God is not counting our failure against us, and we are not building a treasure of merit with our success. We are simply trying to live a disciplined life which pleases our loving Father—and He understands our failures better than we understand our own children’s. When the movement in one direction has exhausted itself, there is a pause, and then a reversal directs the movement into the opposite direction. The flow of Nature follows the course indicated by the Principle of Reversion, which throws it back after a time in the opposite direction. When the point of farthest travel is reached, the forces reverse themselves. In this way, excess disciplines and even defeats itself. In this way too the Universe and all the different kinds of existence in it are kept in equilibrium. In the to-and-fro movement of human breathing, we have a kay to human development. Study it well with this assistance and you will discern a forward and backward movement, a pendulum-like swing, here too. Everything in the Universe is subject to a pendulum-like movement. It shuttles to and from with a coming-to-be and a ceasing-to-be effect. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
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Admittedly, We Now Live in a Different World!
The horse weighs one thousand pounds and I weigh ninety-five. I guess I had better get him to cooperate. Nevertheless, we cannot overlook the fact that, just as consciousness arises from the unconscious, the ego-center, too, crystallizes out of a dark depth in which it was somehow contained in potential. Just as a human mother can only produce a human child, whose deepest nature lay hidden during its potential existence within her, so we are practically compelled to believe that the unconscious cannot be an entirely chaotic accumulation of instincts and images. There must be something to hold it together and give expression to the whole. Its center cannot possibly be the ego, since the ego was born out of it into consciousness and turns its back on the unconscious, seeking to shut it out as much as possible. Or can it be that the unconscious loses its center with the birth of the ego? In that case we would expect the ego to be far superior to the unconscious in influence and importance. Or can it be that the unconscious loses it center with the birth of the ego? #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
In that case we would expect the ego to be far superior to the unconscious in influence and importance. The unconscious would then follow meekly in the footsteps of the conscious, and that would be just what we wish. Unfortunately, the facts show the exact opposite: consciousness succumbs all too easily to unconscious influences, and these are often truer and wiser than our conscious thinking. Also, it frequently happens that unconscious motives overrule our conscious decisions, especially in matters of vital importance. Indeed, the fate of the individual is largely dependent on unconscious factors. Careful investigation shows how very much our conscious decisions depend on the undisturbed functioning memory. However, memory often suffers from the disturbing inference of unconscious contents. Moreover, it functions as a rule automatically. Ordinarily it uses the bridges of association, but often in such an extraordinary way that another thorough investigation of the whole process of memory-reproduction is needed in order to find out how certain memories managed to reach consciousness at all. And sometimes these bridges cannot be found. In such cases it is impossible to dismiss the hypothesis of the spontaneous activity of the unconscious. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
Another example is intuition, which is chiefly dependent on unconscious processes of a very complex nature. Because of this peculiarity, I have defined intuition as “perception via the unconscious.” Normally the unconscious collaborates with the conscious without friction or disturbance, so that one is not even aware of its existence. However, when an individual or a social group deviates too far from their instinctual foundations, they then experience the full impact of unconscious forces. The collaboration of the unconscious is intelligent and purposive, and even when it acts in opposition to consciousness its expression is still compensatory in an intelligent way, as if it were trying to restore the lost balance. There are dreams and visions of such an impressive character that some people refuse to admit that they could have originated in an unconscious psyche. They prefer to assume that which phenomena derive from a sort of “superconsciousness.” Such people make a distinction between a quasi-physiological or instinctive unconscious and a psychic sphere or layer “above” consciousness, which they style the “superconscious.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
As a matter of fact, this psyche, which in Indian philosophy is called the “higher” consciousness, corresponds to what we in the New World called the “unconscious.” Certain dreams, visions, and mystical experiences do, however, suggest the existence of a consciousness in the unconscious. However, if we assume a consciousness in the unconscious, we are at once faced with the difficulty that no consciousness can exist without a subject, that is, an ego to which the contents are related. Consciousness needs a center, an ego to which something is conscious. We know of no other kind of consciousness, nor can we imagine a consciousness without an ego. When there is no one to say: “I am conscious,” there can be no consciousness. Much like there could be no World without God. “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, an there was morning—the first day,” reports Genesis 1.1-5. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
It is unprofitable to speculate about things we cannot know. I therefore refrain from making assertions that go beyond the bounds of science. It was never possible for me to discover in the unconscious anything like a personality comparable with the ego. However, although a “second ego” cannot be discovered (except in the rare cases of dual personality), the manifestations of the unconscious do at least show traces of personalities. A simple example is the dream, where a number of real or imaginary people represent the dream-thoughts. In nearly all the important types of dissociation, the manifestations of the unconscious assume a strikingly personal form. Careful examination of the behaviour and mental content of these personifications, however, reveals their fragmentary character. They seem to represent complexes that have split off from a greater whole, and are the very reverse of a personal center of the unconscious. I have always been greatly impressed by the character of dissociated fragments as personalities. RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Hence I have often asked myself whether we are not justified in assuming that, if such fragments have personality, the whole from which they were broken off must have personality to an even higher degree. #Since it does not depend on whether the fragments are large or small, the inference seemed logical. Why, then, should not the whole have personality too? Personality need not imply consciousness. It can just as easily be dormant or dreaming. The general aspect of unconscious manifestations of the unconscious assume a strikingly personal form. Careful examination of the behaviour and mental content of these personifications, however, reveals their fragmentary character. They seem to represent complexes that have split off from a greater whole, and are the very reverse of a personal center of the unconscious. I have always been greatly impressed by the character of dissociated fragments as personalities. Hence I have often asked myself whether we are not justified in assuming that, if such fragments have personality, the whole from which they were broken off must have personality to an even higher degree. The inference seemed logical, since it does not depend on whether the fragments are large or small. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
Why, then, should not the whole have personality too? Personality need not imply consciousness. It can just as easily be dormant or dreaming. The general aspect of unconscious manifestations is in the main chaotic and irrational, despite certain symptoms of intelligence and purposiveness. The unconscious produces dreams, visions, fantasies, emotions, grotesque ideas, and so forth. This is exactly what we would expect a dreaming personality to do. It seems to be a personality that was never awake and was never conscious of the life it had lived and of its own continuity. The only question is whether the hypothesis of a dormant and hidden personality is possible or not. It may be that all of the personality to be found possible or not. It may be that all of the personality to be found in the unconscious is contained in the fragmentary personifications mentioned before. Since this is very possible, all my conjecture would be in vain—unless there were evidence of much less fragmentary and more complete personalities, even though they are hidden. I am convinced that such evidence exists. Unfortunately, the material to prove this belongs to the subtleties of psychological analysis #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
It is therefore not exactly easy to give the reader a simple and convincing idea of it. There are ideas which beco.me obsolete and are allowed to die. However, three ideas are so fundamental that they will always reappear. They are built into the Universe and therefore into humans themselves. These three cosmic forces—Attraction, Repulsion, and Rest—constitute the triune manifestation of the World-Idea. You will find them in every department of existence. There is a movement in the Universe which during one phase seems constructive, but in a later phase seems destructive. However, both are really part of its order, its divine order, for the two phases belong to each other, complement each other, and are necessary to each other. There are two poles of this universal movement: the one, a going-out, affirming, and the other a coming-back and denying. All nature is bisected by this two-way process. The life of the Universe moves through a series of evolutionary oscillations between rest and activity. It is the increasing of one movement which runs parallel with the decrease of the other movement. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
One is constructive even while the other is destructive. The rhythmic life alternates and reacts. It brings alternation of the alternations and reactions against the reactions. Just as humans and animals pass through their cycles of infancy, youth, maturity, and senility, so does the planet itself which is their abode. The cycle of existence is never-ending. Whoever understands this truth and his own relationship to it will become humble. Existence is an endless affair but it has periods of rest and withdrawal, changes of form and body, of consciousness and selfhood. We are developments brought forth from it and taken back into it. The Universe plays its little part on the surface of unknowable and ineffable Mind and is gone—only to reappear at some immensely far-off time. Worlds come into being, are maintained for a long or short while, change, and dissolve. As we can readily see by observation and experience, this is not less the situation for the creatures—including human creatures—who inhabit these Worlds. Yet most people are too unprepared, too weak and too shallow, to be willing to take these truths. Infinite Mind releases from within itself an infinite variety of suns, stars, planets, substances, plants, and creatures. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Even the process itself is an infinite one, countered only by necessary dissolutions and destructions, pauses and rests. Even Universes get old and die off. All that is released into manifestation is subject to this perpetual law of movement and change, growth and decay, death, reappearance, and recurrence. The Universe comes into being, maintains its varied operations, or passes into dissolution by inherent necessity. The entire Universe will dissolve and vanish into the unseen Power whence it came. However, there are many other Universes and galaxies to replace our own. Dawn follows night in the vast cosmos with rhythmical recurrence. Therefore the self-actualized say that there is neither beginning nor end to the Universe but the perennial flow of eternity. The Final is likewise the First. We must understand clearly that creation and dissolution, evolution and involution continue t recur perpetually. It is not a question of long periods of time coming to a final close. This rhythm of the Universe is incessant. According to the Chinese wisdom, when either of the two aspects has developed to its utmost limit, then it begins to transform itself into the polar opposite of its own accord. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Our own proverb “The night is darkest just before dawn” is also apt in the transformation of polar opposites. In the sky we see the same phenomenon. The moment when the waxing moon has reached its fullest is immediately followed by the moment when the process of waning begins. The higher position of the mourning sun is no sooner attained in the overhead sky at noon the great orb begins its downward descent. At new mon the waning process comes to an end and the reverse process occurs. The same turning point is reached at winter and summer solstices. The interrelation of these phenomena with the larger phenomenon of the universal creation and dissolution may be seen. At the extreme point of either process there is a turning. Every moment in Nature ultimately reverses itself, but the point of reversal is not reached until it has gone to the extreme. With the reversal it begins to develop opposite qualities. This is an old and well-known idea in China, not only among the people but also among the philosophers. Lao Tzu for instance, says, “To go father and father means to revert back again.” #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
In this shuttle-and-loom, two-way alternating rhythm of the Universe, when the forces attain the midpoint of their arc, they start working in reverse, going down instead of evolving up, decaying and destroying instead of nurturing and vitalizing, yielding pain instead of pleasure. Every condition in human, every effect in Nature is forever seeking to attain its own fullness. Yet the moment that is attained and a pause ensures, it reverses its direction and begins to seek union with its opposite. Thus it balances itself in the end. Evolution is never a straight line. It could not be, in a two-way Universe. At the crisis-point on each way a shock becomes necessary to force a turnabout. This is the same point referred to by ancient Greek thinkers, where everything destroys itself in the end by its own excesses. Heraclitus meant the same when he too taught that all things tend to turn into their opposites. The movement in one direction sooner or later provokes a countermovement in the opposite direction. This reaction leads to a resistance at some point or points; it may also lead to friction and then to fighting. Each phase of this to-and-fro movement covers long periods. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
When the impetus in one direction exhausts itself, the opposing impetus awakens from tranquility and it active. Today we are not so far removed in time from a social World in which such a constantly generous response was the presumed ideal. I recall from my childhood that my father, as he drove along in his car, always raised his hand to the driver of an oncoming vehicle, and he or she nearly always reciprocated. (Just recently while driving in rural Georgia, a man acknowledged me in this way. I was mildly shocked.) Of course there were not that many oncoming vehicles then. My father also never passed anyone on sidewalk without acknowledging him or her, unless he was in a crowd; and he would always tip his hat to a woman (who, as such, was assumed to be a lady). These, it might be thought, are small things, and if you tried to acknowledge all the drivers you meet today, you would probably wreck your Ultimate Driving Machine. If you spoke to people on the sidewalk that you were unfamiliar with, they would probably think you were crazy or dangerous. No doubt the profound moral insight of our times would also point out the “hypocrisy” involved in such responses. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
Admittedly, we now live in a different World. However, is it a better World for that? Could the epidemic of addictions and dysfunctions from which the masses duffer possibly be related to that fact that we are constantly in the presence of people who are withdrawn from us, who do not want to acknowledge we are there and frankly would feel more at ease if we were not—people who in many cases explicitly reject us and feel it only right to do so? Is it not the desperate need for approval that drives people so relentlessly today—causing them to go foolish and self-destructive lengths to be “attractive” or at least to get attention—nothing but the echo of a lost World of constant mutual welcome and blessing in family, neighbourhood, school, and work? “Being attractive” and getting attention is the absolute bottom of barrel of being “with others” –the fifteen minutes of fame (for which Andy Warhol is famous) that is now down to fifteen seconds or less. I do not mean to suggest that anyone can overcome our desperate social situation by an individual act of will. Far from it. Whatever might be done, that is not it. This is the World we now have. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
To do anything of substance about it will require a grace and wisdom that is at no individual’s disposal, and a long-range plan of personal and social development is required. No doubt God has one in mind. However, to make a start where we are, we must recognize that this our World is not normal, but is only usual at present. We must try to see it for what it is and then begin to think of specific ways grace and truth can begin to change it. And above all, we who follow Jesus must understand that a couple of hours per week of carefully calibrated distance in a church setting will be of little help, and may only enforce the patterns of withdrawal that permeate our fallen World. What could we do in our fellowships that would really help make a difference? “The manner of administering the wine—Behold, they took the cup, and said: O God, the Eternal Father, we ask thee, in the name of thy Son, Jesus Christ, to bless and sanctify this wine to the souls of all those who drink of it, that they may do it in remembrance of the blood of thy Son, which was shed for them; that they may witness unto thee, O God the Eternal Father, that they do always remember him, that they may have his Spirit to be with them. Amen,” reports Moroni 5.1-2. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
Dear Lord in Heaven, Who have the secrets of planting, Who has the secrets of growth, who has the secrets of harvest, it is a harvest that we pray to you, it is today that we pray to you, your holy day, the celebration of Christ. We thank you, God, for your protection, for watching over our field against all danger, whether animals who might have eaten our crops whether humans who might have encroached in our land, whether spirits who might have wished us ill: against all these, Long-Arm, you have defended us and ours. And so to you, guider and protector, teacher and champion, we pray on this day, which is rightly called yours. We thankfully acknowledge that Thou art the Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of all the lives, our Creator and Creator of the Universe. We offer blessings and thanksgiving to Thy great and holy names because Thou hast kept us in life and sustained us; s mayest Thou continue to keep us in life and sustain us. O gather our exiles into the courts of Thy holy sanctuary to observe Thy statues, to do Thy will, and to serve Thee with a perfect heart. We give thanks unto Thee. Blessed be God to whom we are ever grateful. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
Cresleigh Homes
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It is the Nature of Faith to Believe God Upon His Bare Word!
Sometimes you win in the first year under a new coach on enthusiasm and vitality and newness alone. It is a kind of high unto itself. However, then, when the romance is tailing off, you have to find a way to keep it up. That is the hard part. In football or any other marriage. A very relevant point—and one interesting for the analysis of contemporary industrial society deals with the whole question of economic scarcity among primitive hunters and the modern attitude toward the problem of what constitutes poverty. By common understanding an affluent society is one in which all the people’s wants are easily satisfied; and though we are pleased to consider this happy condition the unique achievement of industrial civilization, a better case can be made for hunters and gatherers, even many of the marginal ones spared to ethnography. For wants are “easily satisfied,” either by producing much or desiring little there are, accordingly, two possible roads to affluence. Adopting a Zen strategy a people can enjoy an unparalleled material plenty, although perhaps only a low standard of living. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Scarcity is the peculiar obsession of a business economy, the calculable condition of all who participate in it. The market makes freely available a dazzling array of products—all these “good things” are within a human’s reach—but never one’s grasp, for one never has enough to buy everything. To exist in a market economy is to live out a double tragedy, beginning in inadequacy and ending in deprivation. We stand sentenced to life at hard labour. It is from this anxious vantage that we look back on the hunter. However, if modern humans, with all their technical advantages, still has not got the wherewithal, what chance has this naked savage with one’s puny bow and arrow? Having equipped the hunter with bourgeois impulses and Paleolithic tools, we judge one’s hopeless situation in advance. Scarcity is not an intrinsic property of technical means. It is a relation between means and ends. We might entertain the empirical possibility that hunters are in business for their health, a finite objective, and bow and arrow are adequate to that end. A fair case can be made that hunters often work much less than we do, and rather than a grind the food quest is intermittent, leisure is abundant, and there is more sleep in the daytime per capita than in any other conditions of society. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
Rather than anxiety, it would seem, the hunters have a confidence born of affluence, of a condition in which all the people’s wants (such as they are) are generally easily satisfied. This confidence does not desert them during hardship. Many people question the assumption that a hunter-gather life is generally a precarious one of struggle for existence: Rather data on hunter-gathers, show a radically different picture. Reputable archaeologists have sometimes failed to appreciate the fallacy inherent in rating prehistoric communicates in terms of their surviving material culture. Words such as “degenerate” are taken from their usage to denote an assumed place in a typological series of pots, for instance, and transferred with an emotive and even moral connotation to the markers of the vessels; people with poor and scanty pottery become stigmatized as “poverty-stricken,” though their poverty may well have been only in their failure to provide the archaeologist with one’s favourite product. Social scientists distort the picture of societies under their observations by judging them from what seems to be the “nature” of economics, just as they come to conclusion about the nature of humans from the data, if not modern humans, at least of humans as we know them through most of the civilized history. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Justice as fairness provides strong arguments for an equal liberty of conscious. Therefore the parties have good grounds for adopting this principle. It is obvious that these considerations are also important in making the case for the priority of liberty. From the perspective of the constitution convention these arguments lead to the choice of a regime guaranteeing moral liberty and freedom of thought and belief, and of religious practice, although these may be regulated as always by the state’s interest in public order and security. The state can favour no particular religion and no penalties of disabilities may be attached to any religious affiliation or lack thereof. The notion of a confessional state is rejected. Instead, particular associations may be freely organized as their members wish, and they may have their members have a real choice of whether to continue their affiliation. The law protects the right of sanctuary in the sense that apostasy is not recognized, much less penalized, as a legal offense, any more than is having no religion at all. In these ways the state upholds moral and religious liberty. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Liberty of conscience is limited, everyone agrees, by the common interest in public order and security. This limitation itself is readily derivable from the contract point of view. First of all, acceptance of this limitation does not imply that public interests are in any sense superior to moral and religious interests; nor does it require that government view religious matters as things indifferent or claim the right to suppress philosophical beliefs whenever they conflict with affairs of state. The government has no authority to render associations either legitimate or illegitimate any more than it has the authority in regard to art and science. These matters are simply not within its competence as defined by a just constitution. Rather, given the principles of justice, the state must be understood as the association consisting of equal citizens. It does not concern itself with philosophical and religious doctrine but regulates individuals’ pursuit of their moral and spiritual interests in accordance with principles to which they themselves would agree in an initial situation of equality. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
By exercising its powers in this way the government acts as the citizens’ agent and satisfies the demands of their public conception of justice. Therefore the notion of the omnicompetent laicist state is also denied, since from the principle of justice it follows that government has neither the right nor the duty to do what it or a majority (or whatever) wants to do in questions of morals and religion. Its duty is limited to underwriting the conditions of equal moral and religious liberty. Granting all this, it now seems evident that, in limiting liberty reference to the common interest in public order and security, the government acts on a principle that would be chosen in the original position. For in this position each recognizes that the disruption of these conditions is a danger for the liberty of all. This follows once the maintenance of public order is understood as a necessary condition for everyone’s achieving one’s ends whatever they are (provided they lie within certain limits) and for one’s fulfilling one’s interpretation of one’s moral and religious obligations. To retrain liberty of conscience at the boundary, however inexact, of the state’s interest in public order is a limit derived from the principle of the common interest, that is, the interest of the representative equal citizen. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
If the government is to carry out its duty of impartially supposing the conditions necessary for everyone’s pursuit of their interests and living up to their obligations as they understand them, the government’s right to maintain public order and security is an enabling right, a right which the government must have. Furthermore, only when there is a reasonable expectation that not doing so will damage the public order which the government should maintain, is it acceptable for liberty of conscience to be limited. This expectation must be based on evidence and ways of reasoning acceptable to all. It must be supported by ordinary observation and modes of thought (including the methods of rational scientific inquiry where these are not controversial) which are generally recognized as correct. Now this reliance on what can be established and known by everyone is itself founded on the principles of justice. It implies no particular metaphysical doctrine or theory of knowledge. For this criterion appeals to what everyone can accept. It represents an agreement to limit liberty only by reference to a common knowledge and understanding of the World. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Adopting this standard does not infringe upon anyone’s equal freedom. On the other hand, a departure from generally recognized ways of reasoning would involve a privileged place for the views of some over others, and a principle which permitted this could not be agreed to in the original position. Furthermore, in holding that the consequences for the security of public order should not be merely possible or in certain cases even probable, but reasonably certain or imminent, there is again no implication of a particular philosophical theory. Rather this requirement expresses the high place which must be accorded to liberty of conscience and freedom of thought. We may note at this point an analogy with the method of making interpersonal comparisons of well-being. These are founded on the index of primary goods that one my reasonably expect, primary goods being those which everyone is presumed to want. This basis of comparison is one to which the parties can agree for the purposes of social justice. It does not require subtle estimates of human’s capacity for happiness much less of the relative worth of their plans of life. We need not question the meaningfulness of these notions; but they are inappropriate for designing just institutions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Similarly, the parties consent to publicly recognized criteria to determine what counts as evidence that their equal liberty is pursued in ways injurious to the common interest in public order and to the liberty of others. These principles of evidence are adopted for the aims of justice; they are not intended to apply to all questions of meaning and truth. How far they are valid in philosophy and science is a separate matter. The characteristic feature of these arguments for liberty of conscience is that they are based solely on a conception of justice. Toleration is not derived from practical necessities or reasons of state. Moral and religious freedom follows from the principle of equal liberty; and assuming the priority of this principle, the only ground for denying the equal liberties is to avoid an even greater injustice, an even greater loss of liberty. Moreover, the argument does not rely on any special metaphysical or philosophical doctrine. It does not presuppose that all truths can be established by ways of thought recognized by common sense, a logical construction out of what can be observed or evidenced by rational scientific inquiry. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The appeal is indeed to common sense, to generally shared ways of reasoning and plain facts accessible to all, but it is framed in such a way as to avoid these larger presumptions. Nor, on the other hand, does the case for liberty imply skepticism in philosophy or indifference to religion. Perhaps arguments for liberty of conscience can be given that have one or more of these doctrines as a premise. There is no reason to be surprised at this, since different arguments can have the same conclusion. However, we need not pursue this question. The case for liberty is at least as strong as its strongest argument; the weak and fallacious ones are best forgotten. Those who would deny liberty of conscious cannot justify their action by condemning philosophical skepticism and indifference to religion, nor by appealing to social interests and affairs of state. Only when it is necessary for liberty itself, to prevent an invasion of freedom that would be still worse is the limitation of liberty is justified. The parties in the constitutional convention, then, must choose a constitution that guarantees an equal liberty of conscience regulated solely by forms of argument generally accepted, and limited only when such argument establishes a reasonably certain interference with the essentials of public order. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Liberty is governed by the necessary conditions for liberty itself. Now by this elementary principle alone many grounds of intolerance accepted in past ages are mistaken. Thus, for example, Dr. Aquinas justified the death penalty for heretics on the ground that is it a far graver matter to corrupt the faith, which is the life of the soul, than to counterfeit money which sustains life. So if it is just to put to death forgers and other criminals, heretics may a fortiori be similarly dealt with. However, the premises on which Aquinas relies cannot be established by modes of reasoning commonly recognized. It is a matter of dogma that faith is the life of the soul and that the suppression of heresy, that is, departures from ecclesiastical authority, is necessary for the safety of souls. Again, the reasons given for limited toleration often run afoul of this principle. Thus Dr. Rousseau thought that people would find it impossible to live in peace with those whom they regarded as damned, since to love them would be to hate God who punishes them. Dr. Rousseau believed that those who regard others as damn must either torment or convert them, and therefore sects preaching this conviction cannot be trusted to preserve civil peace. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Dr. Rousseau would not, then, tolerate those religions which say that outside the church there is no salvation. However, the consequences of such dogmatic belief which Dr. Rousseau conjectures are not borne out by experience. A priori psychological argument, however plausible, is not sufficient to abandon the principle of toleration, since justice holds that the disturbance to public order and to liberty itself must be securely established by common experience. There is, however, an important difference between Dr. Rousseau and Dr. Locke, who advocated a limited toleration, and Dr. Aquinas and the Protestant Reformers who did not. Dr. Locke and Dr. Rousseau limited liberty on the basis of what they supposed were clear and evident consequences for the public order. If Catholics and atheists were not to be tolerated, it was because it seemed evident that such persons could not be relied upon to observe the bonds of civil society. Presumably a greater historical experience and a knowledge of the wider possibilities of political life would have convinced them that they were mistaken, or at least that their contentions were true only under special circumstances. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
However, with dr. Aquinas and the Protestant Reformers the grounds of intolerance are themselves a matter of faith, and this difference is more fundamental than the limits actually drawn to toleration. For when the denial of liberty is justified by an appeal to public order as evidenced by common sense, it is always possible to urge that the limits have been drawn incorrectly, that experience does not in fact justify the restriction. Where the suppression of liberty is based upon theological principles or matters of faith, no argument is possible. The one view recognizes the priority of principles which would be chosen in the original position whereas the other does not. The power of life in Christ is seldom realized, but spiritual formation in Him, carried to fulfillment, would mean that the church as the body of Christ, and the members are nourishing one another with the transcendent power that raised up Christ from the dead and is not following through each of its members. That is what produces the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
The visible church, which anyone can look at if one wills, is—with all her imperfections—the outward manifestation in history and society of the invisible church, which God sees alone. The spiritual unity of the Church is a primal synthesis willed by God. It is not a relationship that has to be established, but one that is already posited (iustitia passive), and remains invisible. It is not made possible by concord, similarity or affinity between souls, nor should it be confused with unity of mood. Instead it is real just where seemingly the most intractable outward opposition prevail, where each human leads one’s quite individual life, and it is perhaps absent where it seems to prevail most. It can shine more brightly in the conflict between wills than in concord. Into this church, the invisible body of her risen Lord, we come when we place our confidence in Jesus. He takes us in and forms a circle of sufficiency that is real and ultimate. It is first in relation to Christ that we begin to know about connecting; and we can then begin to see how the flow of loving presence from Christ extends through others to us and from us to others. This must happen within the imperfect communities and congregations available to us now. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
However, the new life can and must eventually transform the entire social dimension of ourself toward the Heavenly future in which we shall know as we are now known by God—where every boo shall lie open to one another. John’s Gospel informs us that when Jesus completed His baptizing ministry in Jueda and decided to return to Galilee, He deemed it necessary to go through Samaria, which brought him to the ancient town of Sychar. Specifically, John tells us that “Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour,” reports John 4.6. The sixth hour was noon, midday, time for a meal. So the Lord sent His disciples into town for groceries while He wearily sat sown by the well for some needed rest. The words “tired as he was” seem to indicate that he sat down just as a tired man collapses in motionless heap after a hard day’s work. He was exhausted, and for good reason. A glance at the Gospels revels that Jesus rarely had any time for Himself unless he stole away. When not being pressed by the multitude, He was ministering to the Twelve or the inner circle of three to irrepressible Peter. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
And Jesus was always on the dusty road. At one point He had Himself said, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” reports Matthew 8.20. No wonder Jesus was more weary than His disciples, for when mental fatigue and physical wariness meet, there you find an exhausted man. So Jesus plopped down motionless. It was so nice to be alone in the warm sun and not moving. It is quite possible that the Lord has His eyes closed when He heard approaching steps and looked up to see a Samaritan woman. It would have been so easy for Jesus to sleepily close his eyes, saying to Himself, “I have been ministering to thousands…she is alone…just one person. And I have got to relax. If I do not take care of My body, who will?” However, not Jesus! Our Lord went for her heart in one of the grandest cases of spiritual aggression ever recorded. Jesus’s heart was so given to the care of souls that He mustered up the strength to minister even when He was at the edge of His physical capacity. People who share the disciplines of Christ’s heart will likewise reach out even when exhausted. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
It has been said that the World is run by tired humans, and it is true, for we daily see that America is run by tired political leaders—and that wars are now won with exhausted generals—and that peace is secured by tired diplomats—and that peace is secured by tired diplomats—and that great legislation is accomplished by weary legislators. The reason for this is that such leaders are willing to put themselves out whenever necessary in order to accomplish their noteworthy tasks. Likewise, the Christian World is ministered to by tired people. Eastern Europe is being evangelized by tired missionaries who are making the most of the fleeting day of opportunity. Show me a great church and I will show you some tired people, both up front and behind the scenes, because greatness depends on a core of people who are willing to put out the situation demands. Humans, even when bone tired, we have to understand that we will never do great things for God without the willingness to extend ourselves for the sake of the gospel. Christ’s example teaches us that a ministering heart must of necessity be a labouring heart. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
The Apostle Paul had a heart like that: “Surely you remember, brothers,” he says, “our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you,” reports 1 Thessalonians 2.9. This apostolic work ethic is a prominent theme with Paul: “I have laboured and toiled,” he told the Corinthians, “and have often gone without sleep,” reports 2 Corinthians 11.27. The fact is, anyone who has ever done anything for God has had a labouring heart—no exceptions. Dr. Luther is said to have worked so hard that he often fell into bed. D.L. Moody’s bedtime prayer on one occasion, as he rolled his bulk into bed, was, “Lord, I am tired! Amen.” Big heart, the enlarged hearts that God uses, are labouring hearts which, though weary, will willingly be expended as necessary. You may fancy that you have a ministering heart, but if you are not labouring for the gospel in the place God where has put you, and do not find yourself being inconvenienced by your commitment, you are deluding yourself. Ministering hearts are disciplined to labour, for they regularly move beyond their comfort zones, they put themselves in vulnerable spots, they makes commitments which cost, they get tired for Christ’s sake, they pay the price, the encounter rough seas. However, their sails billows full of God’s spirit. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
This play of opposites exists not only in Nature but also in human destiny. We observe repeatedly how fortune and misfortune are either intermingled or follow one another in phases. The modern Italian writer Cesare Pavese received in 1950 the highest literary praise of his country, yet before the year came to its end, he took his own life. There are two principles which are fundamental in the operations of our Universe, even though they are opposed to one another. We humanly label one good and the other bad, not seeing how one is necessary to the existence of the other and both to the Universe. A World without pain, without suffering, is a utopian, impossible World. Geometrical patterns and designs not only symbolize the Universe’s structure and nature, process and operation; they also show its harmonies and symmetries, conflicts and oppositions, its lights and shadows. Both forces—the static and the dynamic—are present in existence, in Nature and human life. In the Universe everything has its opposite; the one cannot exist unless at some point in time the other also exists. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“The manner which the disciples, who were called the elders of the church, ordained priests and teachers—after they had prayed unto the Father in the name of Christ, they laid their hands upon the, and said: In the name of Jesus Christ I ordain you to be a priest (of if he be a teacher, I ordain you to be a teacher) to preach repentance and remission of sins through Jesus Christ, by the endurance of faith on his name to the end. Amen. And after this manner did they ordain priests and teachers, according to the gifts and callings of God unto humans; and they ordained them by the power of the Holy Ghost, which was in them,” reports Moroni 3.1-4. The feast of bread we celebrate with bread baked and on our table to be shared among us, but first to be shared with the Lord of Grain. And so I break off this piece and pass it among you. Bless it, each who is here, that it may be the holy which we share with the holy, placing it in the [field/garden]; and sharing the rest, eating together with the Holy One. And this second loaf we give, turning it over wholly, after blessing it, each one of us, separating it out for him alone. And then we will place it, as well, in the [field/garden]. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
We are grateful to you, Grain God, we send you our blessings. Please look kindly on us, King of bread, and continue to send us blessings in return. O Lord our God, please be gracious unto Thy people of America and accept their prayer. Please restore the worship to Thy sanctuary and receive in love the supplications of America; and may the worship of Thy people be ever acceptable unto Thee. O may our eyes witness Thy return to American. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest Thy divine presence unto America. We thankfully acknowledge Thee, O Lord our God, our fathers’ God to all eternity. Our Rock art Thou, our Shield that saves through every generation. We give Thee thanks and we declare Thy praise for all Thy tender care. Our lives we trust into Thy loving hand. Our souls are ever in Thy charge; Thy wonders and Thy miracles are daily with us, evening, morn and no one. O Thou who art all-good, whose mercies never fails us, Compassionate One, whose loving kindnesses never cease, we every hope in Thee. “And at that every hour there was a severe Earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the Earthquake, and the survivous were terrified and gave glory to the God of Heaven. The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon,” reports Revelation 11.13-14. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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The Fateful Call Came During Dinner with All My Family as Witnesses!
You really have to experience the feeling of being with the president in the oval office. If he hears the lark singing and notes its joy, he hears also the captured prey of hawk and owl and notes their screams. If he admires the beauty of the Himalaya, he remembers the large number of living creatures buried at its upheaval. When it comes to equal liberty, one might say that those who hold this belief regard themselves as having moral or religious obligations which they must keep themselves free to honour. Of course, from the standpoint of justice as fairness (a society of free citizens holding equal basic rights and cooperating within an egalitarian economic system), these obligations are self-imposed; they are not bonds laid down by this conception of justice. The point is rather that the persons in the original position (which focuses on the concept of what is fair in terms of social cooperation for free and equal citizens) are not to view themselves as single isolated individuals. To the contrary, they assume that they have interests which they must protect as best they can and that they have ties with certain members of the next generation who will also make similar claims. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Once the parties consider these matters, the case for the principles of justice (reconciliation of liberty and equality that is meant to apply to the basic structure of a well-ordered society) is very much strengthened. The question of equal liberty of conscience is settled. It is one of the fixed points of our considered judgments of justice. However, precisely because of this fact it illustrates the nature of the argument for the principle of equal liberty. The reasoning in this case can be generalized to apply to other freedoms, although not always with the same force. Turning then to liberty of conscience, it seems evident that the parties must choose principles that secure the integrity of their religious and moral freedom. They do not know, of course, what their religious or moral convictions are, or what is the particular content of their moral or religious obligations as they interpret them. Indeed, they do not know that they think of themselves as having such obligations. The possibility that they do suffices for the argument, although I shall make the stronger assumption. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
Further, the parties do not know how their religious or moral views fares in their society, whether, for example, it is in the majority or the minority. All they know is that they have obligations which they interpret in this way. The question they are to decide is which principle they should adopt to regulate the liberties of citizens in regard to their fundamental religious, moral, and philosophical interests. Now it seems that equal liberty of conscience is the only principle that the persons on the original position can acknowledge. If wishes be, they cannot take chances with their liberty by permitting the dominant religious or moral doctrine to persecute or to suppress others. Even granting (what may be questioned) that it is more probable than not that one will turn out to belong to the majority (if a majority exists), to gamble in this way would show that one did not take one’s religious or moral convictions seriously, or highly value the liberty to examine one’s beliefs. Nor on the other hand, could the parties consent to the principle of utility. If, in this case, it would lead to a greater net balance of satisfaction, their freedom would be subject to the calculus of social interests and they would be authorizing its retraction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Of course, as we have seen, a utilitarian (a view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good) may try to argue from the general facts of social life that when properly carried out the computation of advantages never justifies such limitations, at least under reasonably favourable conditions of culture. However, even if the parties were persuaded of this, they might as well guarantee their freedom straightway by adopting the principle of equal liberty. There is nothing gained by not doing so, and to the extent that the outcome of the actuarial calculation is unclear a great deal may be lost. Indeed, if we give a realistic interpretation to the general knowledge available to the parties, they are forced to reject the utilitarian principle. These considerations have all the more force in view of the complexity and vagueness of these calculations (if we can so describe them) as they are bound to be made in practice. Moreover, the initial agreement on the principle of equal liberty is final. An individual recognizing religious and more obligations regards them as binding absolutely in the sense that one cannot qualify one’s fulfillment of them for the sake of greater means for promoting one’s other interests. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Greater economic and social benefits are not a sufficient reason for accepting less than equal liberty. Only if there is a threat of coercion which it is unwise to resist from the standpoint of liberty itself, then it seems possible to consent to an unequal liberty. For example, the situation may be one in which a person’s religion or one’s moral view will be tolerated provided that one does not protest, whereas claiming an equal liberty will bring greater repression that cannot be effectively opposed. However, from the perspective of the original position there is no way of ascertaining the relative strength of various doctrines and so these considerations do not arise. The veil of ignorance leads to an agreement on the principle of equal liberty; and the strength of religious and moral obligations as humans interpret them seems to require that the two principles be put in serial order, at least when applied to freedom of conscience. It may be said against the principle of equal liberty that religious sects, say, cannot acknowledge any principle at all for limiting their claims on one another. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The duty to religious and divine law being absolute, no understanding among persons of different faiths is permissible from a religious point of view. Certainly humans have often acted as if they held this doctrine. It is unnecessary, however, to argue against it. It suffices that if any principle can be agreed to, it must be that of equal liberty. A person may indeed think that others ought to recognize the same beliefs and first principles that one does, and that by not doing so they are grievously in error and miss the way to their salvation. However, an understanding of religious obligation and of philosophical and moral first principles shows that we cannot expect others to acquiesce in an inferior liberty. Much less can we ask them to recognize us as the proper interpreter of their religious duties or moral obligations. We should now observe that these reasons for the first principle receive further support once the parties’ concern for the net generation is taken into account. Since they have a desire to obtain similar liberties for their descendants, and these liberties are also secured by the principle of equal liberty, there is no conflict of interests between generations. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Moreover, only if the prospects offered by some other conception, say that of utility or perfection, were so attractive that the persons in the original position must not have properly considered their descendants wen they rejected it, the next generation could object to the choice of this principle. We can express this by nothing that were a father, for example, to asset that one would accept the principle of equal liberty, a son could not object that were he (the father) to do so he would be neglecting his (the son’s) interests. The advantages of the other principles are not this great and appear in fact uncertain and conjectural. The father could reply that when the choice of principles affects the liberty of others, the decision must, if possible, seems reasonable and responsible to them once they come of age. Those who care for others must choose for the in the light of what they will want whatever else they want once they reach maturity. Therefore following the account of primary goods, the parties presume that their descendants will want their liberty protected. At this point we touch upon the principle of paternalism that is to guide decisions taken on behalf of others. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
If they were at the age of reason and deciding rationally, we must choose for others as we have reason to believe they would choose of themselves. Trustees, guardians, and benefactors are to act in this way, but since they usually know the situation and interests of their way, but since they usually know the situation and interests of their wards and beneficiaries, they can often make accurate estimates as to what is or will be wanted. The persons in the original position, however, are prevented from knowing any more about their descendants than they do about themselves, and so in this case too they must rely upon the theory of primary goods. Thus, if he were not to guarantee the rights of his descendants by adopting the principle of equal liberty, the father can say that he would be irresponsible. From the perspective of the original position, one must assume that this is what they will come to recognize as for their good. By taking liberty of conscious as an example, this shows how justice as fairness provides strong arguments for equal liberty. The same kind of reasoning applies, I believe, in other cases, though it is not always so convincing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
I do not deny, however, that persuasive arguments for liberty are forthcoming on other views. As understood by Dr. Mill, the principle of utility often supports freedom. Dr. Mill defines the concept of value by reference to the interests of humans as progressive beings. By this idea he means that interest men would have and the activities they would rather pursue under conditions encouraging freedom of choice. Dr. Mill adopts, in effect, a choice criterion of value: if it is preferred by those who are capable of both and who have experience each of them under circumstances of liberty, one activity is better than another. Using this principle Dr. Mill adduces essentially thee grounds for free institutions. For one thing, they are required to develop human’s capacities and powers, to arouse strong and vigorous natures. Unless their abilities are intensely cultivated and their abilities are intensely cultivated and their natures enlivened, humans will not be able to engage in and to experience the valuable activities of which they are capable. Secondly, if human’s preferences among different activities are to be rational and informed, the institutions of liberty and the opportunity for experience which they allow are necessary, at least to some degree. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Human beings have no other way of knowing what things they can do and which of them are most rewarding. Thus if the pursuit of value, estimated in terms of the progressive interests of humankind, is to be rational, that is, guided by a knowledge of the human capacities and well-formed preferences, certain freedoms are indispensable. Otherwise society’s attempt to follow the principle of utility proceeds blindly. The suppression of liberty is always likely to be irrational. Even if the general capacities of humankind were known (as they are not), each person has still to find oneself, and for this freedom is a prerequisite. Finally, Dr. Mill believes that human beings prefer to live under institutions of liberty. Historical experience shows that humans desire to be free whenever they have not resigned themselves to apathy ad despair; whereas those who are free never want to abdicate their liberty. Although humans may complain of the burdens of freedom and culture, they have an overriding desire to determine how they shall live and to settle their own affairs. Thus by Dr. Mill’s choice criterion, free institutions have value in themselves as basic aspects of rationally preferred forms of life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
These are certainly forceful arguments and under some circumstances anyway they might justify many if not most of the equal liberties. They clearly guarantee that in favourable conditions a considerable degree of liberty is a precondition of the rational pursuit of value. However, even Dr. Mill’s contentions, as cogent as they are, will not, it seems, justify an equal liberty for all. We still need analogues of the standard utilitarian assumptions. One must suppose a certain similarity among individuals, say their equal capacity for the activities and interests of humans as progressive beings, and in addition a principle of the diminishing marginal value of basic rights when assigned to individuals. In the absence of these presumptions the advancement of human ends may be compatible with some persons’ being oppressed, or at least granted but a restricted liberty. Whenever a society sets out to maximize the sum of intrinsic value or the net balance of satisfaction of interests, it is liable to find that the denial of liberty for some is justified in the name of this single end. When founded upon teleological principles, the liberties of equal citizenship are insecure. The argument for them relies upon precarious calculations as well as controversial and uncertain premises. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Moreover, as if they were part of utility, nothing is gained by saying that persons are of equal intrinsic value unless this is simply a way of using the standard assumptions. That is, as if these assumptions were true, one applies this principle. Doing this certainly has the merit of recognizing that we have more confidence in the principle of equal liberty than in the truth of the premises from which a perfectionist or utilitarian view would derive it. The grounds for this confidence, according to the contract view, is that the equal liberties have a different basis altogether. They are not a way of maximizing them sum of intrinsic value or of maximizing the sum of intrinsic value or of achieving the greatest net balance of satisfaction. The notion of maximizing a sum of value by adjusting the rights of individuals does not arise. Rather, when each is fairly represented as a moral person, these rights are assigned to fulfill the principles of cooperation that citizens would acknowledge. The conception defined by these principles is not that of maximizing anything, except in the vacuous sense of best meeting the requirement of justice, all things considered. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Now, here in America we pledge our allegiance to a flag that represents “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” However, who has any idea of what this would mean for real life on the street and how it applies to them? And the biblical vision of human unity under God is even more so one that few people today can even imagine, much less regard as realistically possible for themselves or others. Only the message and people of Jesus Chris can give it substance. Perhaps someone with no real knowledge of Christ could imagine that kind of “communal solidarity” for a few people, carefully selected—people of “the right kind.” However, certainly not for people generally, and especially not for those imposed upon us by “accidents” of birth, and thereby of history and society. Sin structures embedded deeply in our souls and bodies have almost totally disabled us for those relationships to others that our hearts desire and that were meant by God to be—relationships that our public discourse in American idealizes without understanding what they are. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
When two people connect, when their beings intersect as closely as the clouds and the sky on a rainy day, something is poured out of one and into the other that has power to heal the soul of its deepest wounds and restore it to health. The one who receives the experiences the joy of being healed. The one who gives knows the even greater joy of being used to heal. Something good is in the heart of each of God’s children that is more powerful than everything bad. It is there, waiting to be released, to work its magic, but it rarely happens. For people who claim the name of Christ, there are two distinct courses of life available. One is to cultivate a small heart. This by far seems the safest way to go because it minimizes the sorrows of life. If our ambition is to dodge the troubles of human existence, the formula is simple: avoid entangling relationships, do not give yourself to others, and be sure not to seriously embrace elevated and noble ideals. If we do this, we will escape a host of afflictions. This life principle bears out in other logics of life as well. Cultivated deafness and we will be spared hearing the discords of life. Cultivate blindness and we will be shielded from seeing ugliness. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
If we want to get through life with a minimum of trouble, all we have to do is wear blinders. This is how many people, even those who profess to be Christians, get through life with such ease—they have successfully nurtured smallness of heart. The other path is to cultivate a ministering heart. Open yourself to others, and you will become susceptible to an index of sorrows scarcely imaginable to a shriveled heart. Enlarge and ennoble your ideals, and your vulnerability will increase proportionately. In the shape of converts I have seen no result. “I have not, as far as I am aware, seen anyone who even wanted to be a Christian.” Painful words. However, the depth of this pain can only be seen dimly until one turns to the opening words of his diary, written when I first arrived in Sacramento: “Several beautiful, expansive, custom homes, with green laws and three slots for a garage, maybe one is the laundry room, even a mail box for the Sacramento Bee Newspaper on the lawn. I wonder what these people in this peaceful community do for a living? O Lord, suggest by the Spirit how I should come among them, and in preparing myself to teach the life and love of Christ Jesus.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
“Most of the people have changed so much, I have not, as far as I am aware, seen anyone who even wanted to be a Christian.” His throbbing words ooze his life’s blood. We naturally think “poor Dallas.” However, in truth the case lay in Dallas himself, for he had a “problem”—an enlarged heart. If he had not cared, Dallas would never have penned those pathos filled lines. If he had not cultivated a ministering heart, if he had not cared. If he had listened to the counsel of his friends, he would have remained in comfortable England instead of going to that hostile land. Enlarge your heart, cultivate your heart, discipline yourself for ministry, and you will enlarge your experience of pain. This is an irrefragable spiritual axiom. No one has ever cultivated a ministering heart and lived to tell of a life of ease. Of course, the effects of these two kinds of hearts are drastically different. Little hearts, though safe and protected, never contribute anything. No one benefits from their restricted sympathies and vision. On the other hand, hearts that have embraced the disciplines of ministry—though they are vulnerable—are also the hearts which possess the most joy and leave their heart print on the World. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Cultivate deafness and we will never hear discord, but neither will we hear the glorious strains of a great symphony. Cultivate blindness as we will never see ugliness, but we also will never hit a home run in the bottom of the nineth with bases loaded to win the game! Never climb a mountain and you will never get banged up on the mountain’s side, but you will also never stand on an alpine peak exulting in abundant natural beauty. Years ago I experience the grand reality of this principle. My wife, Bianca, informed me that she had received a call from our local youth soccer league, with which my boys were signed up to play, notifying her there were a shortage of coaches and that some boys would have to be left out—unless some fathers (like me!) would take a team. Bianca indicated I might be interested. My response was that I was too busy and that she would have to tell them so. She replied that I could do it myself, and that a call was coming that evening. I said, “Fine, no problem.” The fateful call came during dinner with all my family as witnesses. As the caller explained the league’s plight, I found myself nodding assent and committing myself to be coach of the Las Plumas Thunderbirds Varsity Soccer. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
The Scriptures wisely say, “If the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” reports 1 Corinthians 14.8—and that was the initial experience of my poor Thunderbirds. I did not even know what a fullback was, the offside rule remained inscrutable for most of the season, and we got clobbered in our first few games. Humbled and desperate, I checked out soccer films and spent some evenings late in frantic reading. I also recruited a retired Scotsman who has once played professionally and persuaded another father to assist me. We discovered we had some good athletes, and we began to win. We did so well that we went to the play-offs. And it was here that I had one of the great experience in my life when I played Nick Oliver’s team in the opening round. Mr. Oliver was the founder of the league, at the time, and a perennial winner. However, miracles of miracles, we were ahead 1.0 at halftime. In the third quarter Mr. Oliver’s team tied it up, and the 1-1 tie held deep into the fourth quarter. Five minutes were left—then three—then one—thirty seconds—ten—two—and we scored just before time ran out! There is no describing the thrill of that moment. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
Never coach soccer and you will never know the ignominy of being the league doormat, but you will never know the thrill of beating Mr. Oliver either! Cultivate a small heart and life may be smooth sailing, but you will never know the heady wind of the Holy Spirit in your sails and the exhilaration of being used by God. Cultivate a small heart and you will never be the heroic likes of Dallas Brunton, and you will certainly never have the heart God desires for you. We only have to glance at a newspaper to be reminded that we live in a time when there is an urgent need for enlarged, caring hearts which are disciplined for ministry. Some of you are experiencing the elevating, frightening stirrings which accompany the enlarging of the heart, and you need to be encouraged to cultivate your expanding sympathies and broadening horizons. If so, the Biblical account we are about to consider—the story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well—is for you because it brilliantly showcases Jesus’ own discipline of ministry, one we are to imitate as His followers. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
God wills His own goodness necessarily, even as we will our own happiness necessarily, and as any other faculty has necessary, and as any other faculty has necessary relation to its proper and principal object, for instance the sight to colour, since it tends to it by its own nature. However, God wills things apart from Himself in so far as they are ordered to His own goodness as their end. Now in willing an end we do not necessarily will things that conduce to it, unless they are such that the end cannot be attained without them; as, we will take food to preserve life, or to take ship in order to cross the sea. However, we do not necessarily will things without which the end is attainable, such as a horse for a journey which we can take on foot, for we can make the journey without one. The same applies to other means. Hence, since the goodness of God is perfect, and can exist without other things inasmuch as no perfection can accrue to Him from them, it follows that His willing things apart from Himself is not absolutely necessary. Yet it can be necessary by supposition, for supposing that God wills a thing, then He is unable not to will it, as His will cannot change. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
God wills from eternity whatever He wills, it does not follow that He wills it necessarily; except by supposition. God of Liberty, we pray to you today. Please grant freedom to all your children, no matter their country. We take time today to remember the examples of freedom we have seen in our time. We think of the citizens of America, who are locked in their homes and being forced out of work and out of business, and unable to pay their rents and mortgages and car notes, unable to buy food and pay the electricity bill, kids who are unable to attend school, college, and medical school and wish for them to experience a Christmas blessing and have a financial miracle. We remember how people have burned the America flag, that stands for freedom, but refuse to leave the country, as people have been deployed to fight for their freedom. And remember those who struggled and failed, such as the martyrs in America in 2020, who have demanded freedom and equality. We remember those who lost their lives on September 9, 2001 in the towers, on the planes, and on the streets or in their homes, and the first responders who lost their lives that day and due to subsequent injuries. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
Please, Lord, give us the courage to earn our freedom and to regain it as it has been stolen. We ask this of you, Who are the source of all freedom. And may the tears from Heaven rain down on us, soaking the Earth so we have a pleasant spring and summer. American, your beacon of hope shines undimmed by the years. If our eyes have lost sight of you, it is our fault and not yours. We have turned our vision away from being “One Nation Under God with Liberty and Justice for All,” including all Americans, and we are missing the heights from which your streets paved with gold shine, and seen only that which divides us. Be our beacon, Father God of our nation, and show us the way again. Father of the Peoples, please unite your scattered children unto one tribe, one people, one country. “The words of Christ, which he spake unto his disciples, the twelve whom he had chosen, as he laid his hands upon them—and he called them by name, in mighty prayer; and after he have done this ye shall have power that to one upon whom ye shall lay your hands, ye shall give the Holy Ghost; and in my name shall ye give it, for thus do mine apostles. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“Now Christ spake these words unto them at the time of his first appearing; and the multitude heard it not, but the disciples heard it; and on as many as they laid their hands, fell the Holy Ghost,” reports Moroni 2.1-3. Revere the Lord, all that inhabit the Earth; the World is firmly established that it cannot be moved. Let the Heavens be glad, and the Earth rejoice; let them declare among the nations: “The Lord reigneth.” Let the sea roar and all within it give praise; let the field, and all within it exult. Then shall the trees of the forest sing before the Lord, as He cometh to judge the Earth. O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good; for His lovingkindness endureth forever. And say: “Save us, O God of our salvation, please gather us and deliver us from among the nations, that we may give thanks unto Thy holy name, and find honour in praising Thee.” Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting even to everlasting. And all the people said: “Amen,” and praised the Lord. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool; holy is He. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Are Not Our Fates All Cast? Why Stand We Here?
To treat comrades like enemies is to go over to the stand of the enemy. It is evident that some sort of framework is needed to simplify the application of the two principles of justice. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. Social and economic inequalities are t be arranged so that they are both: to the greatest benefit to the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings, and attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. One must judge the justice of legislation and social policies. However, one also knows that one’s opinions will not always coincide with those of others, since human’s judgments and beliefs are likely to differ especially when their interests are engaged. Therefore, a citizen must decide which constitutional arrangements are just for reconciling conflicting opinions of justice. We may think of the political process as a machine which makes social decision when the views of representatives and their constitutions are fed into it. A citizen will regard some ways of designing this machine as more just than others. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
So a complete conception of justice is not only able to assess laws and policies but it can also rank procedures for selecting which political opinion is to be enacted into law. There is still another problem. The citizen accepts a certain constitution as just, and one thinks that certain traditional procedures are appropriate, for example, the procedure of majority rule duly circumscribed. Yet since the political process is at best one of imperfect procedural justice, one must ascertain when the enactments of the majority are to be complied with and when they can be rejected as no longer binding. In short, one must be able to determine the grounds and limits of political duty and obligation. Thus a theory of justice has to deal with at least three types of questions, and this indicates that it may be useful to think of principles as applied in a several-stage sequence. The original position is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice. Yet, an elaboration of the original position is necessary. So far I have supposed that once the principles of justice are chosen the parties return to their place in society and henceforth judge their claims on the social system by these principles. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
However, if several intermediate stages are imagined to take place in a definite sequence, this sequence may give us a schema for sorting out the complications that must be faced. Each stage is to represent an appropriate point of view from which certain kinds of questions are considered. Thus I suppose that after the parties have adopted the principles of justice in the original position, they move to a constitutional convention. Here they are to decide upon the justice of political forms and choose a constitution: they are delegates, so to speak, to such a convention. Subject to the constraints of the principles of justice already chosen, they are to design a system for the constitutional powers of government and the basic rights of citizens. It is at this stage that they weigh the justice procedures for coping with diverse political views. Since the appropriate conception of justice has been agreed upon, the veil of ignorance is partially lifted. The persons in the convention have, of course, no information about particular individuals: they do not know their own social position, their place in the distribution of natural attributes, or their conception of the good. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
However, in addition to an understanding of the principles of social theory, they now know the relevant general facts about their society, that is, its natural circumstances and resources, its level of economic advance and political culture, and so on. They are no longer limited to the information implicit in the circumstances of justice. Given their theoretical knowledge and the appropriate general facts about their society, they are to choose the most effective just constitution, the constitution that satisfies the principles of justice and is best calculated to lead to just and effective legislation. At this point we need to distinguish two problems. Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome. The procedure would be the political process governed by the constitution, the outcome of the body of enacted legislation, while the principles of justice would define an independent criterion for both procedure and outcome. In pursuit of this ideal of perfect procedural justice, the first problem is to design a just procedure. To do tis the liberties of equal citizenship must be incorporated into and protected by the constitution. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
These liberties include those of liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, liberty of the person, and equal political rights. If it did not embody these liberties, the political system, which I assume to be some form of constitutional democracy would not be a just procedure. Clearly any feasible political procedure may yield an unjust outcome. In fact, there is no scheme of procedural political rules which guarantees that unjust legislation will not be enacted. In the case of a constitutional regime, or indeed of any political for, the ideal of perfect procedural justice cannot be realized. The best attainable scheme is one of imperfect procedural justice. Nevertheless some schemes have a greater tendency than others to result in unjust laws. The second problem, then, is to select from among the procedural arrangements that are both just and feasible those which are most likely to lead to a just and effective legal order. Once again this is Dr. Bentham’s problem of the artificial identification of interest, only here the rules (just procedure) are to be framed to give legislation (just outcome) likely to accord with the principles of justice rather than the principle of utility. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
To solve this problem intelligently requires a knowledge of the beliefs and interest that humans in the system are liable to have and of the political tactics that they will find it rational to use given their circumstances. The delegates are assumed, then, to know these things. Provided they have no information about particular individuals including themselves, the idea of the original position is not affected. In framing a just constitution I assume that the two principles of justice already chosen define an independent standard of the desired outcome. If there is no such standard, the problem of constitutional design is not well posed, for this decision is made by running through the feasible just constitutions (given, say, by enumeration on the basis of social theory) looking for the ne that in the existing circumstances will most probably result in effective and just social arrangements. Now at this point we come to the legislative stage, to take the next step in the sequence. The justice of laws and policies is to be assessed from this perspective. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
Proposed bills are judged from the position of a representative legislator who, as always, does not know the particulars about oneself. Statues must satisfy not only the principles of justice but whatever limits are laid down in the constitution. By moving back and forth between the stages of the constitutional convention and the legislature, the best constitution is found. Now the question whether legislation is just or unjust, especially in connection with economic and social policies, is commonly subject to reasonable differences of opinion. In these cases judgment frequently depends upon speculative political and economic doctrines and upon social theory generally. Often the best that we can say of a law of policy is that it is at least not clearly unjust. The application of the difference principle in a precise way normally requires more information than we can expect to have and, in any case, more than the application of the first principle. It is often perfectly plain and evident when the equal liberties are violated. These violations are not only unjust but can be clearly seen to be unjust: the injustice is manifest in the public structure of institutions. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
However, this state of affairs is comparatively rare with social and economic policies regulated by the difference principle. I imagine then a division of labour between stages in which each deals with different questions of social justice. This division roughly corresponds to the two parts of the basic structure. This division roughly corresponds to the two parts of the basic structure. The first principle of equal liberty is the primary standard for the constitutional convention. Its main requirements are that the fundamental liberties of the person and the liberty of conscience and freedom of thought be protected and that the political process as a whole be a just procedure. Thus the constitution establishes a secure common status of equal citizenship and realized political justice. The second principle comes into play at the stage of the legislature. It dictates that social and economic policies be aimed at maximizing the long-term expectations of the least advantaged under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, subject to the equal liberties being maintained. At this point the full range of general economic and social facts is brought to bear. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The second part of the basic structure contains the distinctions and hierarchies of political, economic, and social forms which are necessary for efficient and mutually beneficial social cooperation. Thus the priority of the first principle of justice to the second is reflected in the priority of the constitutional convention to the legislative stage. The last stage is that of the application of rules to particular cases by judges and administrators, and the following of rules by citizens generally. At this stage everyone has complete access to all the facts. No limits on knowledge remain since the full system of rules has now been adopted and applies to persons in virtue of their characteristics and circumstances. However, it is not from this standpoint that we are to decide the grounds and limits of political duty and obligation. This third type of problem belongs to partial compliance theory, and its principles are discussed from the point of view of the original position after those of ideal theory are chosen. Once these are on hand, we can view our particular situation from the perspective of the last stage, as for example in the cases of civil disobedience and conscientious refusal. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
The availability of knowledge in the four-stage sequence is roughly as follows. Let us distinguish between three kinds of facts: the first principles of social theory (and other theories when relevant) and their consequences; general facts about society, such as its size and level of economic advance, its institutional structure and natural environment, and so on; and finally, particular facts about individuals such as their social position, natural attributes, and peculiar interests. In the original position the only particular facts known to the parties are those that can be inferred from the circumstances of justice. While they know the first principles of social theory, the course of history is closed to them; they have no information about how often society has taken this or that form, or which kinds of societies presently exist. In the next stages, however, the general facts about their society are made available to them but not the particularities of their society are made available to them but not the particularities of their own condition. Since the principles of justice are already chosen, limitations on knowledge can be relaxed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
The flow of information is determined at each stage by what is required in order to apply these principles intelligently to the kind of question of justice at hand, while at the same time any knowledge that is likely to give rise to bias and distortion and to set humans against one another is ruled out. The notion of the rational and impartial application of principles defines the kind of knowledge that is admissible. At the last stage, clearly, there are no reasons for the veil of ignorance in any form, and all restrictions are lifted. It is essential to keep in mind that the four-stage sequence is a device for applying the principles of justice. This scheme is part of the theory of justice as fairness and not an account of how constitutional conventions and legislatures actually proceed. It sets out a series of points of view from which the different problems of justice are to be settled, each point of view inheriting the constraints adopted at the preceding stages. Thus a just constitution is one that rational delegates subject to the restrictions of the second stage would adopt for their society. And similarly just laws and policies are those that would be enacted at the legislative stage. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Of course, this test is often indeterminate: it is not always clear which of several constitutions, or economic and social arrangements, would be chosen. However, when this is so, justice is to that extent likewise indeterminate. Institutions within the permitted range are equally just, meaning that they could be chosen; they are compatible with all the constraints of the theory. Thus on many questions of social and economic policy we must fall back upon a notion of quasi-pure procedural justice: laws and policies are just provided that they lie within the allowed range, and the legislature, in ways authorized by a just constitution, has in fact enacted them. This indeterminacy in the theory of justice is not in itself a defect. It is what we should expect. If it defines the range of justice more in accordance with our considered judgments than do existing theories, and if it singles out with greater sharpness the graver wrongs a society should avoid, justice as fairness will prove a worthwhile theory. “The works, and the designs, and the purposes of God cannot be frustrated, neither can they come to naught. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
For God doth not walk in crooked paths, neither doth he turn to the right hand nor to the right hand nor to the left, neither doth he vary from that which he hath said, therefore his paths are straight, and his course is one eternal round. Remember, remember, that it is not the works of Gd that is frustrated, but the work of humans; for although a human may have many revelations, and have power to do many might works, yet if one boasts in one’s own strength, and sets at naught the counsels of God, and follows after the dictates of one’s own will and carnal desires, one must fall and incur the vengeance of a just God upon one. For, behold, you should not have feared humans more than God. Although humans set at naught the counsels of God, and despise God’s words—yet you should have been faithful; and God would have extended His arm and supported you against all the fiery darts of the adversary; and God would have been with you in every time of trouble. However, remember, God is merciful; therefore, repent of that which thou hast done which is contrary to the commandment which I gave you, and thou art still chosen, and art again called to work,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 3.1-4, 7-8, 10. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Once of the basic concepts of forgiveness is that one must be truly repentant, having satisfied justice before forgiveness can take place. There should be no license for sin, but mercy should go hand and hand with reproof. There are many people who seem to rely solely on the Lord’s mercy rather than on accomplishing their own repentance. The Lord may temper justice with mercy, but he will never supplant it. Mercy can never replace justice. God is merciful, but he is also just. An eternal aspect of justice has been decreed by divine law, that “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a human soweth, that shall one also reap,” reports Galatians 6.7. The gospel of Jesus Christ is founded on law for the salvation and blessing of its people. For every law the Lord give us, there is also a penalty for its violation. The prophet Alma explained this very plainly: “Now,” he said, “how could a human repent expect one should sin? If there was no law, how could one sin? How could there be a law save there was a punishment?” reports Alma 42.17. The Saviour Himself declared that He came to fulfill the law, not to do away with it, but with the law Jesus brought the principle of mercy to temper its enforcement, and to bring hope and encouragement to the offenders for forgiveness through repentance. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Liberty can always be explained by a reference to three items: the agents who are free, the restrictions or limitations which they are free from, and what it is that they are free to do or not to do. Complete explanations of liberty provide the relevant information about these three things. Very often certain matter are clear from the context and a full explanation is unnecessary. The general description of liberty, then, has the following form: this or that person (or persons) is free (or not free) from this or that constraint (or set of constraints) to do (or not to do) so and so. Associations as well as natural persons may be free or not free, and constraints may range from duties and prohibitions defined by law to the coercive influences arising from public opinion and social pressure. When we consider liberty in connection with constitutional and legal restrictions, in these cases liberty is a certain structure of institutions, a certain system of public rules defining rights and duties. Set in this background, liberty always has the above three-part form. Moreover, just as there are various kinds of agents who may be free—persons, associations, and states—so there are many kinds of conditions that constrain them and innumerable sorts of things that they are or are not fee to do. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
In this sense there are many different liberties which on occasion it may be useful to distinguish. Yet these distinctions can be made without introducing different senses of liberty. Thus when their doing something or not doing something is protected from interference by other persons, persons are at liberty to do it. If, for example, we consider liberty of conscience as define by law, then individuals have this liberty when they are free to pursue their moral, philosophical, or religious interests without legal restrictions requiring them to engage or not to engage in any particular form of religious or other practice, and when other humans have a legal duty not to interfere. A rather intricate complex of rights and duties characterize any particular liberty. Not only must it be permissible for individuals to do or not to do something, but government and other persons must have a legal duty not to obstruct. I shall not delineate these rights and duties in any detail, but shall suppose that we understand their nature well enough for our own purposes. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
First of all, it is important to recognize that the basic liberties must be assessed as a whole, as one system. That is, the worth of one liberty normally depends upon the specification of the other liberties, and this must be taken into account in framing a constitution and in legislation generally. While it is by and large true that a greater liberty is preferable, this holds primarily for the system of liberty as a whole, and not for each particular liberty. Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another. To illustrate by an obvious example, certain rules of order are necessary for intelligent and profitable discussion. Without the acceptance of reasonable procedures of inquiry and debate, freedom of speech loses its value. It is essential in this case to distinguish between rules of order limit own freedom, since we cannot speak whenever we please, they are required to gain the benefits of this liberty. Thus the delegates to a constitutional convention, or the members of the legislature, must decide how the various liberties are to be specified so as to yield the best total system of equal liberty. They have to balance one liberty against another. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
The best arrangement of the several liberties depends upon the totality of limitations to which they are subject, upon how they hang together in the whole scheme by which they are defined. While the equal liberties may, therefore, be restricted, these limits are subject to certain criteria expressed by the meaning of equal liberty and the serial order of the two principles of justice. Offhand there are two ways of contravening the first principle. Liberty is unequal as when one class of persons has a greater liberty than another, or liberty is less extensive than it should be. Now all the liberties of equal citizenship must be the same for each member of society. Nevertheless some of the equal liberties may be more extensive than others, assuming that their extensions can be compared. More realistically, if it is supposed that at best each liberty can be measured on its own scale, then the various liberties can be broadened or narrowed according to how they affect one another. When lexical order holds, a basic liberty covered by the first principle can be limited only for the sake of liberty itself, that is, only to insure that the same liberty or a different basic liberty is properly protected and to adjust the one system of liberties in the best way. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
The adjustment of the complete scheme of liberty depends solely upon the definition and extent of the particular liberties. Of course, this scheme is always to be assessed from the standpoint of the representative equal citizen. From the perspective of the constitutional convention or the legislative stage (as appropriate) we are to ask which system it would be rational for one to prefer. A final point. The inability to take advantage of one’s rights and opportunities as a result of poverty and ignorance, and a lack of means generally, is sometimes counted among the constraints definitive of liberty. I shall not, however, say this, but rather I shall think of these things as affecting the worth of liberty, the value to individuals of the rights that the first principle defines. With this understanding, and assuming that the total system of liberty is drawn up in the manner just explained, we may not that the two-part basic structure allows a reconciliation of liberty and equality. Thus liberty and the worth of liberty are distinguished as follows: liberty is represented by the complete system of the liberties of equal citizenship, while the worth of liberty to persons and groups is proportional to their capacity to advance their ends within the framework the system defines. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
Freedom as equal liberty is the same for all; the question of compensating for a lesser than equal liberty does not arise. However, the worth of liberty is not the same for everyone. Some have greater authority and wealth, and therefore greater means to achieve their aims. The lesser worth of liberty is, however, compensated for, since the capacity of the less fortunate members of society to achieve their aims would be even less were they not to accept the existing inequalities whenever the difference principle is satisfied. However, compensating for the lesser worth of freedom is not to be confused with making good an unequal liberty. Taking the two principles together, the basic structure is to be arranged to maximize the worth to the least advantaged of the complete scheme of equal liberty shared by all. This defined the end of social justice. These remarks about the concept of liberty are unhappily abstract. At this stage it would serve no purpose to classify systematically the various liberties. Instead I shall assume that we have a clear enough idea of the distinctions between them, and that in the course of taking up various cases these matters will gradually fall into place. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
When does repentance become effective? When are the demands of justice satisfied? When does the principle of mercy take over? I suppose the answer as clear as that given by Alma: “For behold, justice exerciseth all his demands, and also mercy claimeth all which is her own; and thus, none but truly penitent are saved. What do ye supposed that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God,” reports Alma 42.24-25. This is possible and can be actual for each of us because of what God, the source and governor of all, is. “God is Love.” Yes. However, we must not miss the essential point. The profound good news is not just that he loves us, as is often said. A pretty mean person can love someone for special reasons. “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than other? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” reports Matthew 5.46-48. God is Love and sustains His love for us from His basic reality as Love, which dictates his Trinitarian nature. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
God is in Himself a sweet society of love, with a first, second, and third person to complete a social matrix where not only is there love and being loved, but also shared love for another, the third person. Community is formed not by mere love and requited love, which by itself is exclusive, but by shared love for another, which is inclusive. And within the Trinity there is, I believe, not even a thought of “First, Second, and Third.” There is no subordination within the Trinity, not because of some profound metaphysical fact, but because the members of the Trinity will not have it. The nature of personality is inherently communal, and only the Trinity does justice to what personality is. Aristotle, pagan but profound, says of human personality: The individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing, and therefore one is like a part in relation to the whole. However, whoever is unable to live in society, or who has no need of it because one is sufficient for oneself, must be either a beast a god. However, this fundamental fact about human personality is rooted in the nature of its Creator, and the writers of the Bible were well aware of it long before Aristotle. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
We are told on the earliest pages of the Bible that “it is not good that the man should be alone,” and so God decided to make “a helper to be a match for him,” reports Genesis 2.18. Centuries later Paul pointed out that “not one of us lives unto oneself and not one dies unto oneself,” reports Romans 14.7. Paul knew something that Aristotle could not know, however: “whether we live or die we are the Lord’s,” reports Romans 14.8. And for this purpose, “Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living,” reports Romans 14.9. Human beings are really together only in God, and all other ways of “being with” fall short of the needs of basic human nature. The secret of all life-giving relations to others, and of all that is social, lies in the fact that the primary other for a human being, whether one wants it or not, is always God. All human kind is of one Author, and is one volume; when one human dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language, and every chapter must be translated. God employs several translators: some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
However, God’s hand is in every translation, and His hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that liberty where every book shall be open to one another. “Now I, Moroni, after having made an end of abridging the account of the people of Jared, I had supposed not to have written more, but I have not as yet perished; and I make not myself known to the Lamanites lest they should destroy me. For behold, their wars are exceedingly fierce among themselves; and because of their hatred they put to death every Nephite that will not deny the Christ. And I, Moroni, will not deny the Christ; wherefore, I wander withthersoever I can for the safety of mine own life. Wherefore, I write a few more things, contrary to that which I had supposed; for I had supposed not to have written any more; but I write a few more things, that perhaps they may be worth unto my brethren, the Lamanites, in some future day, according to the will of the Lord,” reports Moroni 1.1-5. God of planting and grown, please bless my work today. Please bring together water and soil and seed, please bring to the abundant rain, snow, light, and air. Please stir life up with them. Please provide rain and snow so my garden will have prosperous growth in the spring and summer. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
The covenant which God made with Abraham, and His pledge unto Isaac, which God established unto Jacob as a statute, unto Israel for an everlasting covenant; Saying: “Unto you will I give the land of Canaan, as the portion of your inheritance.” When you were but few in number, yea, very few, mere sojourners in the land, wandering from people to people, and from one kingdom to another, God permitted no human to oppress you; yea, for your sake God reproved kings, saying: “Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm.” Sing unto the Lord, all the Earth; proclaim His salvation from day to day. Declare God’s glory among the nations, His marvellous works among all the peoples. For great is the Lord, and highly to be praised; He is to be revered above all who are worshipped as gods. The gods of the heathens are things of nought; but the Lord made the Heavens. Honour and majesty are before God; strength and gladness are in His abode. Ascribe unto the Lord, O families of humankind, ascribe unto the Lord glory and strength. Render unto the Lord the glory due unto His name; with offerings of homage come into His courts; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Randolph Harris II International 