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Had a Fairy Come and Offered to Fulfill My Desires, I Should Not Have Known what to Ask!
Did you hear about the fellow who blamed arithmetic for his divorce? His wife put two and two together. In spite of various pronouncements concerning the “death of God,” there was never any likelihood that religion would wither away in American life. Both suburbanization and higher education were secularizing forces, in that they brought together people of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds on the same turf in a manner that could not help but erode certain traditional loyalties. Still many Americans choose from a cafeteria-style theological menu because they have been exposed to other religions or need to find a way to justify their actions. For example, 66 percent of Americans believe in Heaven, while less than 50 percent believe in hell. In the same sort of inconsistency, some sins that people know are wrong are acceptable, while others are not. None of us are perfect Christians, but many do try and repent from their sins. Many enslaved people in America used to look to the Bible, especially the story of Exodus, as divine source of hope for liberation for slavery. The Bible is still were most Americans turn today for hope of salvation. Some 75 percent of American believe in God. In fact, more than 60 percent who were surveyed said the Bible, not the will of the people should shape US Law. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Most of these people also believe that liberal secularists have gone too far in trying to remove religion from public life. God and science have been proven methods for prolonging Earthly life. There is a deep desire for spiritual moorings—a hunger for God. People miss prayer in schools and pledging allegiance to the flag. It is believed that these two activities kept Americans in line and loyal to their country. The humbling of ourselves under God’s mighty hand always leads to exaltation. Sometimes this may consist in the removal of whatever affliction God has brought into our lives and the restoration of peaceful circumstances, perhaps even more prosperous circumstances than before. This happened in the case of Job: “The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first,” reports Job 42.12. At other times, though the circumstances are not changed, as in the case of the death of a loved one, the heaviness and painful grief or agony are removed. This happened in the case of Paul’s thorn. He was given grace to accept his thorn. When it often seems to us God has forgotten us, how are we to obtain such faith? The answer lies in 1 Peter 5.7: “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” God cares for you. Even though He is disciplining you, He cares for you. As we have already seen, discipline is an indication of God’s care. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
However, God’s care goes beyond necessary discipline. Even as He disciplines you, He shares in your pain. Isaiah described God’s attitude toward Israel, “In all their distress He too was distressed,” report Isaiah 63.9. The same can be said of God’s attitude toward you. In all your distress He too is distressed. Because God cares for you, you can cast your anxiety on Him. Do not get these thoughts reversed. The text does not say, “If you cast your anxieties on Him, He will care for you.” His care is not conditioned on our faith and our ability to cast our anxiety on Him; rather, it is because He does care for us that we can cast our anxiety on Him. Even at this point, we need the help of the Holy Spirit to do this. Even with all the assurance this whole passage provides us, its truth sometimes fails to reach our hearts. Sometimes we have to pray for the grace to humble ourselves under His mighty hand and the grace to believe that He does in fact care for us. Sometimes we must pray as did the father who came to Jesus asking Him to heal his son. When Jesus said to him, “Everything is possible for one who believes,” the father exclaimed, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief,” reports Mark 9.32-24. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
In Modern American culture, what psychologist call the empty self has emerged in epidemic proportion. The empty self is constituted by a set of values, motives, and habits of thought, feeling, and behaviour that perverts and eliminates the life of the mind and makes maturation in the way of Christ extremely difficult. There are several traits of the empty self that undermine intellectual growth and spiritual development. The empty self is inordinately individualistic. A few years ago, I was sitting in an elementary school gym with other parents at a DARE graduation (a public-school program designed to help children say no to drugs) for my daughter’s sixth-grade class. Five sixth graders were about to read brief papers expressing their reasons for saying no to drugs. I leaned over to the coupe sitting next to me and made a prediction: each paper, I said, would be a variation of the same reason for refusing to take drugs: self-interest. Sure enough, student after student said he or she would refuse drugs because of a desire to stay healthy, become a doctor or athlete, or do well in school. Conspicuous by its absence was one single reference to virtue or duty to community. Not one student anathematized drug use because of the shame it would bring to family, community, or God. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
Individualist reasons were the only ones given for abstaining from drug use, a fact to be expected in a generation whose moral education is exhausted by values clarification. By contrast, when a Japanese ice skater fell during an Olympic performance a few years ago, her main concern was not the endorsement opportunities she had lost. She feared that shame had been brought onto her family and people. Community loomed large in the way she understood her own sense of self. A healthy form of individualism is a good thing. Sadly, we have all known people who fail to draw appropriate boundaries and do not separate and individuate from others in a healthy way. Such people do not think or feel for themselves, they are easy to manipulate, and their well-being is far too dependent on what others think of them. A person with a healthy individualism learns to avoid these problems in order to mutually to depend upon and relate to members of the body of Christ. This sort of individualism produces strong selves who have the power to practice self-denial to enrich the broader groups (for example, family, church) of which they are part of. However, the empty self-populating American culture is a self-contained individual who defines one’s own goals, values, and interests as though one were a human atom, isolated from other with little need or responsibility to live for the concerns of the broader community. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Self-contained individuals do their own thing and seek to create meaning by looking within their own selves. However, as psychologist Martin Seligman, “the self is a very poor site for finding meaning.” The empty self is infantile. It is widely recognized that adolescent personality traits are staying with people longer today than in earlier generations, sometimes manifesting themselves into the early thirties. Created by a culture filled with pop psychology, schools and media that usurp parental authority, and television ads that seem to treat every like a teenager, the infantile part of the empty self needs instant gratification, comfort, and soothing. The infantile person is controlled by infantile cravings and constantly seeks to be filled up with and made whole by food, entertainment, and consumer goods. Such a person is preoccupied with pleasures of the flesh, physical appearance, and body image and tends to live by feelings and experiences. For the infantile personality type, pain, endurance, hard work, and delay gratification are anathema. Pleasure is all that matters, and it had better be immediate. Boredom is the greatest evil, amusement the greatest good. The empty self is narcissistic. Narcissism is an inordinate and exclusive sense of self-infatuation in which the individual is preoccupied with one’s own self-interest and personal fulfillment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Narcissists manipulate relationships with others, including God, to validate their own self-esteem and cannot sustain deep attachments or make personal commitments to something larger than their own ego. Narcissists are superficial and aloof and prefer to “play it cool” and “keep their options open.” Self-denial is out of the question. The Christian narcissist brings a Copernican revolution to the Christian faith. Historically, the Copernican revolution dethroned the Earth from the center of the Universe and put the Sun in its place. Spiritually, the narcissist dethrones God and His purposes in history from the center of the religious life and replaces them with one’s own personal fulfillment. The narcissist evaluates the local church, the right books to read, and the other religious practices worthy of one’s time on the basis of how they will further one’s own agenda. God becomes another tool in a narcistic bag of tricks, along with the car, workouts at the fitness center, and so on—things that exist as mere instruments to facilitate a life defined largely independent of biblical Worldview. Narcissists see education solely as a means to enhance their own careers. The humanities and general education that historically were part of a university curriculum to help develop people with the intellectual and moral virtues necessary for life directed at he common good, just do not fit into the narcissist’s plans. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
Narcissistic students object to the introduction of requirements in general education because the work demands too much of them and seldom leads to lucrative employment. The empty self is passive. The couch cheese burger is the role model for the empty self, and without question, modern Americans are becoming increasingly passive in their approach to life. We let other people do our living and thinking for us: the pastor studies the Bible for us, the news media does our political thinking for us, and we let our favourite sports team exercise, struggle, and win for us. From watching television to listening to sermons, our primary agenda is to be amused and entertained. Holidays have become vacations. Historically, a “holiday” was a “holy day,” an intrinsically valuable, special, active change of pace in which, through proactive play and recreation, you refresh your soul. A “vacation” is a “vacating”—even the language is passive—in order to let someone else amuse you. The passive individual is a self in search of pleasure and consumer goods provided by others. Such an individual increasingly becomes a shriveled self with less and less ability to be proactive and take control of life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
Many factors have contributed to the emergence of passivity as an aspect of the empty self. However, in my view, television is the chief culprit, and its impact begins early life. Elementary school children watch an average of twenty-five hours of television per week, and high schoolers spend six times as many hours watching television as they invest doing homework. Studies indicate that such widespread television viewing induces mental passivity, inhibits motivation and the ability to stick to something, negatively affects reading skills (especially those needed for higher-level mental comprehension), weakens the ability to listen and stay focused, and encourages an overall passive withdrawal from life. The widespread passivity of the empty self explains the proliferation of magazines like People, of television shows like Entertainment Tonight, and of an overidentification with sports teams and figures. Passive people do not have lives of their own, so they must live vicariously through the lives of others, and celebrities become the codependent enablers of a passive lifestyle. They very idea of a Christian celebrity may be considered an oxymoron. However, for the passive, empty self, it is a spiritual life-support system. The empty self is sensate. Modern life is thoroughly mediated by electronic images. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Today, we may decisions and even judge what is and is not real on the basis of electronic images. If it is on TV, it is real. Advertisements sell us thing based on images, not on thoughtful content about a product. On television, discourse is conducted largely through visual imagery, which is to day that television gives us a conversation in images, not words. The emergence of the sensate self has produced two disastrous results. For one thing, people no longer base their decisions on a careful use of abstract reasoning in assessing the pertinent issues, nor are they as capable of doing so compared to earlier generations when thought was communicated by writing and abstract ideas, not by images. For another thing, people are coming to believe more and more that the sense-perceptible World is all there is. Cultures come in two major types: sensate and ideational. In a sensate culture people believe only in the reality of the physical Universe capable of being experienced with the five sense. A sensate culture is secular, this-Worldly, and empirical. By contrast, an ideational culture embraces the sensory World but also accept the notion that an extra-empirical, immaterial reality can be known as well—a reality consisting in God, the soul, immaterial beings, values, purposes, and various abstract objects like numbers and propositions. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
A senate culture will eventually disintegrate because it lacks the intellectual resources necessary to sustain public and private life conducive of corporate and individual human flourishing. And this is precisely what we see happening to modern American culture. The widespread emergence of the sensate self has caused us to be shallow, small-souled people. The empty self has lost the art of developing an interior life. In the medieval times, the self used to be defined in terms of internal traits of virtue and morality, and the successful person, the person of honour and reputation, was the person of deep character. In such a view, the cultivation of an interior life through intellectual reflection and spiritual formation was of critical importance. In the last few decades, however, the self has come to be defined in terms of external factors—the ability to project a pleasurable, powerful personality and the possession of consumer goods—and the quest for celebrity status, image, pleasure, ad power has become the preoccupation of a self so defined. A careful development of an inner life is simply irrelevant in such a view of the good life. The empty self is hurried and busy. The empty self is a hurried, busy self gorged with activities and noise. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
The empty self is consumed with consumer goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathetic therapists. The empty self experiences a significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning, a lack of personal conviction and worth, and it embodies the absences as a chronic, undifferentiated emotional hunger. Because the empty self has a deep emotional emptiness and hunger, and because it has devised inadequate strategies to fill that emptiness, a frenzied pace of life emerges to keep the pain and emptiness suppressed. One must jump from one activity to another and not be exposed to quiet for very long or the emptiness will become apparent. Such a lifestyle created a deep sense of fatigue in which passivity takes over. And fatigued people wither do not have the energy to read or, when they do, choose undemanding material. Shortly after noting that our capacity to think is on the decrease today, it is obvious that the modern individual is too rushed and distracted to look for something to improve one’s mind, demand an effort for oneself, or give rise to reflection, awareness, or sustained thought. Distraction and noise are enemies of an intellectual and spiritual life; focus and quiet are its friends. Americans are raging against the consequences of their own inclinations in these modern times, something was wrong with society and people’s actions to cause these outbursts. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
The old American tradition that every individual is somehow unique is something we epitomize. And the notion that education having individual potential can be more powerful than sliver and gold. A cultivated mind will not only come up with legal ways to make money, but will also find ways to retain wealth. The concept of this potential does not all fall on the parents, but because this potential is seen as innate, partially hidden, gradually unfolding, fluid, and malleable it does help to have encouragement and guidance to access these talents. However, the parent cannot simply coerce the child into a set uniform pattern of behaviour, because it is important, given our achievement ethic, that a child realize one’s maximum potential, and this means taking into account present, anticipated, or fantasied characteristics of one’s own. This potential is thus rooted in individualism and achievement ideology. It also serves, however, as a kind of compromise between biological and environmental determinism. The parent is given not clay but some more differentiated substance with which to mold an adult. We have a need to instill a social consciousness, which is why so many people want to bring up their families in the Church. Yet, keep in mind, even the deliberate push in a given direction will not always produce the expected outcome. Still, it is better to try. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
Actually a good part of the difficulty starts in the confusion relating to the nature and scope of one’s own experience and particularly as it is extended to the interpretations of one’s relation to others. When one is in an authoritative relation to another as expert, leader, or parent, this is especially obvious. True, good and evil exists for us in our pain and misery, joy and exaltation. Yet the thing-in-itself is not good or bad but only in its relationship. Any one thing is sometimes good and sometimes evil and only the extremely misexperienced can ultimately fail to see this. Very recently some things like love were good, others like pleasure of the flesh were bad. Yet, if one is of the other, how can this be? We admired the highly motivated but despised the over emotional yet the intense disregard of emotion is nothing but the negative aspect of high motivation. To do any one thing intensively is far that time to neglect and obviate all other values. Too often we developed pairs of names to designate the good and bad aspects of a thing separately, yet failed to realize we were but naming the same thing twice instead of the different relationships which were the actual basis of the differentiations. The epiphanous experience in and of itself is always ambivalent. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Only the context of the experience enables the discrimination of its relative values. The psychoanalyst has long been aware of this ambivalence and of course it has been long recognized as the “golden mean,” “tao,” or “way.” From birth, and possibly from even before, such choices are apparent and are usually mishandled by those in the dominant political (power) relationship to the developing individual. For the authority in attempting to choose for someone else sets up rules or lists by which to ease this take for oneself. No longer can one permit others the exercise of taste for obviously one’s tastes are one’s own and not the others’. An authority then, if one is to control the actions of others, must resort to standards and external sanctions. Only in this way can one maintain one’s special privilege. And yet if dynamic experience or taste is the basis of choice how mad one must be to think one can in any way choose for another. Because of one’s often superhuman sense of power and its complement of obligation one feels it is one’s responsibility, which, of course it would be if one were omniscient. Yet does not the parent think one knows better in relation to the child, the child to the dog, the teacher to the student, the lawyer to one’s client, the doctor to one’s patient, the governor to one’s people, the priest to one’s parish? #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
The superior, the expert, because it is what one knows is one’s own absolute experience is mislead to believe it is all that is to be known and so offers a rule, a list of sanctions and values. And because the recipient is likely to be unaware of such origins in the absolutes and relationships in the experience of the authority, one can only apply the rules to the thing and so probably is doubly mistaken and confused. The last statement is somewhat misleading for the submitter does not experience the list or rule of things entirely without relationships. In fact, the matter is far worse than one might suspect. The additional trouble lies in that there is always and very definitely a relationship but it is to the authority and not to the situation that the relationships is established. The concept of the “evil eye,” the authority by trying to establish an experience of relationships to some situation succeeds only in establishing it to oneself. However, when asked for what one has done this one will usually deny that was one’s intent and answer instead that one was trying for the development of independent and responsible experience in the existence of others. As such, all authority is truly made. At best the expert, the individual, who, because of more experience has some advantage, can only lead by example and guidance and not by command and instruction if both of these dilemmas are to circumvented. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Specific examples of this type of difficulty are extremely easy to find for they are most of our life. The mother who is anxious for the welfare of her newly born child prevents it from putting strange objects in its mouth for fear of contaminative results to the infant. She has established that habit when the time for weaning arrives and she must now cope with a child which rejects what is for it, the “bad” strange objects, its new solid food. Simultaneously this rejection of what was learned to be avoided incurs the loss of one’s mother’s affection for which the avoidance relationship has been established in the first place. One soon ceases to trust the evidence of one’s senses and in one’s turn seeks signs of eternal truth instead of reliable knowledge. Again strictures regarding pleasures of the flesh, especially for females, cause them to abhor the act for the first third of their existence but then they discover after receiving the ring that it takes the next third of existence to overcome this former set of values to what formerly was bad is now good. No wonder that so may reach the menopause thoroughly confused. The student in submitting to “basic disciplines” soon abandons thinking about the subject matter of the discipline and instead thinks primarily of how to please one’s superior, the teacher. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
And since one’s own original work is likely to be highly unbasic or individual and not in strict conformity with the “basic discipline” one to ceases to trust in one’s own experience and seeks sanctions in a white coat, collar, or particular skin colour. Yet when out of school one discovers the one must learn to choose for oneself. We can only pray one has not learned the original less too well. Of course one could continue to develop food aversions, frigidity, or slavish professionalism instead of fighting though the limitations. Such individuals are frequently comfortable in their selves even though to others they are dull and a threat to the freedom of everyone. It is possible to let the ambivalent remain bad always or good always. One can place the blame or praise elsewhere and so not have to choose now one way now another according to the relative circumstances. I just suggest that since choice is possible, and if we wish to have a democratic society with a self-choosing and responsible people, we can do much to make such choose probable. We do not have to give in to totalitarian measures. All of this has special relevance to our contemporary life and to spiritual formation under modern conditions. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
We now live within the life form called “modernity,” where revered ritual and personal relations do not smoothly govern life, because human solidarity (in family, neighbourhood, school, workplace, church) has been pulverized. There are few things of equal significance to this fact for serious Christians to understand today. In the “modern” condition, feeling will come to exercise almost total mastery over the individual. This is because people in that condition will have to constantly decide what they want to do, and feeling will be all they have to go on. Here lies the secret to understanding contemporary Western life and its peculiar proneness to gross immoralities and addictions. People are overwhelmed with decisions and can only make those decision on the basis of feelings. More than a century ago, Leo Tolstoy experiences the effects of “modernity” in the circle of wealth, upper-class Russians who made up his World. In that World, he relates, “My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable. Had a fairy come and offered to fulfil my desires, I should not have known what to ask.” This is exactly the World of pointless activity portrayed in such staples of the contemporary American consciousness as television shows The Good Place, The Ranch, Superstore, and New Girl. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
In the course of events, however, Tolstoy became involved in the life of the less affluent Russians. “I saw that the whole life of these people was passed in heavy labour, and that they were content with life. And they all—endlessly different in their manners, minds, education, and position, as they were—all alike, in complete contrast to my ignorance, knew the meaning of life and death, laboured quietly, endured deprivations and sufferings, and lived and died seeing therein not vanity but good.” The less affluent whom Tolstoy admired so much were not yet swallowed up in modernity. They had solid traditions of faith and community that provided a ritual form of life—and of death. The result was that they knew what was good to do without regard to their feelings. Good was not determined for them by how they “felt” or by what they thought was “the best deal.” The same was true for the “homemaker” and the “wage-earner” of our recent past. Not to say that all was well with them or with Tolstoy’s less affluent. However, individuals in their roles knew without thinking about it what to do with their minutes, hours, and days, and only rarely were faced with having to do what they “felt like doing.” The overall order in which they lived usually gave them great strength and inner freedom derived from their sense of place and direction, even in the midst of substantial suffering and frustration. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
In a situation such as today, by contrast, where people constantly have—only think they have—to decide what to do, they will almost invariably be governed by feelings. Often they cannot distinguish between their feelings and their will, and in their confusion they also quite commonly take feelings to be reasons. And they will in general lack any significant degree of self-control. This sill turn their life into a mere drift through the days and years, which addictive behaviour promises to allow them to endure. Self-control is the steady capacity to direct yourself to accomplish what you have chosen or decided to d and be, even though you “do not feel like it.” Self-control means that you, with steady hand, do what you do not wan to do (or what you want not to) when that is needed and do not do what you want to do (what you “feel like” doing) when that is needed. In people without rock-solid character, feeling is a deadly enemy of self-control and will always subvert it. The mongoose of a disciplined will under God and good is the only match for the cobra of feeling. “And it came to pass in the commencement of the thirty and sixth years of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Shiblon took possession of those sacred thing which had been delivered unto Helaman by Alma. And he was a just man, and he did walk uprightly before God; and he did observe to do good continually, to keep the commandments of the Lord his God; and also did his brother. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“And it came to pass that Moroni died also. And thus ended the thirty and sixth year of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass that in the thirty and seventh year of the reign of the judges, there was a large company of men, even to the amount of five thousand and four hundred men, with their wives and their children, departed out of the land of Zarahemla into the land which was northward. And it came to pass that Hagoth, he being an exceedingly curious man, therefore he went forth and built him an exceedingly large ship, on the borders of the land Bountiful, by the land Desolation, and by the narrow neck which led into the land northward. And behold, there were many of the Nephites who did enter therein and did sail forth with much provisions, and also many women and children; and they took their course northward. And thus ended the thirty and seventh year. And in the thirty and eighth year, this man built other ships. And the first ship did also return, and many more people did enter into it; and they also took much provisions, and set out again to the land northward. And it came to pass that they were never heard of more. And we suppose that they were drowned in the depth of the sea. And it came to pass that one other ship also did sail forth; and whither she did go we know not. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And it came to pass that in this year there were many people who went forth into the land northward. And thus ended the thirty and eight years. And it came to pass in the thirty and ninth year of the reign of the judges, Shiblon died also, and Corianton had gone forth to the land northward in a ship, to carry forth provisions unto the people who had gone forth into that land. Therefore it became expedient for Shiblon to confer those sacred things, before his death, upon the son of Helaman, who was called Helaman, being called after the name of his father. Now behold, all those engravings which were in the possession of Helaman were written and sent forth among the children of humans throughout all the land, save it were those parts which had been commanded by Alma should not go forth. Nevertheless, these things were made to be kept sacred, and handed down from one generation to another; therefore, in this year, they had been conferred upon Helaman, before the death of Shiblon. And it came to pass also in this year there were some dissenters who had gone forth unto the Lamanites; and they were stirred up again to anger against the Nephites. And also in this same year they came down with a numerous army to war against the people of Moronihah, or against the army of Moronihah, in which theu were beaten and driven back again t their own lands, suffering great loss. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“And thus ended the thirty and ninth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus ended the account of Alma, and Helaman his son, and also Shiblon, who was his son,” reports Alma 63.1-17. Ruling the storm, He comes in the night, losing his axe again and again. The Bull of Storms comes bellowing, scattering seed over the Earth. A strong king He is, spreading fire and water as He rampages. In His wake he will leave fertile ground. Grant that we lie down in peace, secure in Thy protecting love, and shelter us beneath Thy wings to keep us safe throughout the night. On the morrow raise us up in perfect peace to life, O God, to face each task with faith in Thee, our zeal renewed and strength restored. Please save us for Thine own name’s sake, and guard us from all lurking foes. Remove all sorrow, hatred, strife, and turn Thy children’s hearts to Thee. Spread Thy tent of peace, O Lord, above Earth, we pray, and shield Thy people Israel, dispersed aboard in every land. Praised be Thou, our Lord and King, Whose sheltering love spreads over us, enfolding all who seek Thy peace, who find their hope and strength in Thee. Magnified and sanctified be the name of God throughout the Word which He hath created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all the house of Earth, speedily, yea, soon; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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In a Moment, in the Twinkling of an Eye, at the Last Trump!
We need this person of action, this person of accomplishment, this person of experience, this person of courage; we need this person of faith in America….who has brought us to the threshold of peace. The youth culture derived its immense power precisely from its capacity to transcend social and ideological boundaries that Americans had long taken for granted, and that transcendence was made possible by the huge young demographic and a completely apolitical marketing machines eager to meet every desire of those under the magical mark of thirty. Youth preference in fashion, movies, digital streaming, car design, television programs, poetry (remember Rod McKuen?), and, above all, music became indistinguishable from popular culture as a whole. Music and art are a whole spiritual World in Russian. When people go to a concert, they do not go to it as an attraction, as an entertainment, but to feel life. For them art is bread. That may be something people in Russian and in the United States of America have in common. Musical performances and fashion concerts tend to be full of life and very exciting. Another thing Russia and America have in common is they take academics very seriously. Many parents are requesting the primary schools, secondary colleges and centers of higher learning beef up their science, English, history and mathematics departments to ensure that America will remain a top competitor in the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The culture of celebrity, defined by the media’s circular capacity to create stars who shine not because of specific deeds but mainly because they are objects of media attention is why Paris Hilton became famous. People respect famous people—they are automatically interested in what they have to say. Imagine how powerful it would be to get a star to endorse education. For the past is a chaos of events and personalities into which we cannot penetrate. It is beyond retrieval and it is beyond reconstruction. All historians know this in their souls. Conceptions of the past are far from stable, and when new urgencies arise in our own times and lives, the historian’s spotlight shifts, probing now into the shadows, throwing into sharp relief things that were always there but that earlier historians had carelessly excised from the collective memory. Abandonment to feeling, allowing oneself to be “carried away” by feeling, is actually sought by many, and a regular basis. That is a testimony to our epidemic deadness of soul. People want to feel, and to feel strongly, and in the very nature of life they need to do so. The opposite of peace is really not war, but deadness. The “dead soul” is one waiting to explode or fall apart, and one that will seek out trouble for reasons it cannot understand. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
In its desolate life away from God, there is no drama to provide constructive feeling tones that would keep life from being a burden. Such persons really have no hope. This is the key to those “lives of quiet desperation” Thoreau attributed to “most humans.” Feeling will then be sought for its own sake, and satisfaction in feeling alone always in turn demands stronger feeling. It cannot limit itself. This simple point is what explains the powerful grip of addiction to praise. Addiction is a feeling phenomenon. The addict is one who, in one way or another, has given in to feeling of one kind or another and has placed it in the position of ultimate value in one’s life. Of course addicts may also hold other things to be very valuable, and their life may be (usually will be) torn and even tragic because of conflicts. However, they nevertheless have inwardly conceded the final word to some feeling—emotion, sensation, or desire. It may be that they have come to fear or even hate that feeling and that in their present condition their mind is blinded and they see no way out. At this point suicide sometimes occurs. However, in their heart of hearts they have accepted the rule of the feeling and have conceded its right to satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
An aspect of the Christian work ethic, very close to energy and enthusiasm, but nevertheless bearing a distinctive and important nuance, is wholeheartedness: “Slaves, obey your Earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not humans, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good one does, whether one is slave or free,” reports Ephesians 6.5-8. If you have ever observed a gym class doing push-ups, you will understand the sense of this verse. The coach orders everyone down and begins to intone “up-down, up-down,” and all are following until he looks to the right, because in that moment the half on the left go on “hold,” until one’s gaze begins to move back to the left, whereupon they begin to do proper push-ups again, and those on the right go on “hold.” There are employees who are all action when their boss is around, but otherwise loll around the Jura S8 Automatic Coffee Machine. Out of one’s eye there is no energy, no enthusiasm, no heart. The cheerful wholeheartedness recommended here comes, as before, when one’s work is done for the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Humans, we are to work as we did as children when we knew our father was watching, because He is always! Our work must be done with an eye to excellence. Many Churches in our time have forgotten that the secular vocation is sacred. Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work must be good work before it can call itself God’s work. Work that is truly Christian is work well done. Genesis 1 logs God’s commitment to excellence when it says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good,” reports Genesis 1.31. Christians should always do good work. Christians ought to be the best workers wherever they are. They ought to have the best attitude, the best integrity, and be the best in dependability. If what the pollsters tell us is true—that there is little difference in the work ethics of Christians and non-Christians—we have cause for alarm. If there is no difference, then large numbers of God’s children have succumbed to the extremes of laziness and overwork which characterize today’s work force. It also means that vast numbers of Christian lives are spiritually dysfunctional, for it is impossible to dedicate over half of one’s waking hours (some 80- to 100,000 hours in an average lifetime) to a sub-Biblical work ethic and not suffer immense spiritual trauma. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
We must recover the Biblical truth—the Reformation truth—that our vocation, be it ever so humble, is a divine calling and thus be liberated to do it for the glory of God. This alone will take the Church out into the World. Humans, if you sense your deficient, you need to do three things. First, take an honest assessment of your life, using the Scriptures as a standard as you answer the questions: Do I do my work for the glory of God? Do I honestly work hard? Do I work with enthusiasm? Do I work wholeheartedly? Do I do excellent work? Second, after honest evaluation confess your sins. And, thirdly, commit your work life to the glory of God alone. Will you do this? “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. Thus the Heavens and the Earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work,” reports Genesis 1.1 and Genesis 2.1-2. What do we learn about the example God sets as a worker? How should what you see there be applied to your working life? “To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, You must not eat of it,’ Cursed is the ground because of your; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” reports Genesis 3.17-19. What does Genesis 3.17-19 tell us about the current nature of work? Does this mean it is useless to seek fulfillment or usefulness or success in our business, family, and church labours? If not, why not? “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” reports Ephesians 2.10. What is the origin of this work? Its purpose? What must you do to experience this work in your life? Do you agree with Martin Luther that “Your work is a very sacred matter”? What can you do to remind yourself that your work matters to God? What is the relation between a healthy work ethic and wholeheartedness? “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that one who is both their Master and yours is in Heaven, and there is no favoritism with Him,” reports Ephesians 6.9. It is difficult for us to see God’s hand of love in the adversities and heartaches of life because we persist in thinking, as the World does, that happiness is the greatest good. Thus we tend to evaluate all our circumstances in terms of whether or not they produce happiness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Holiness, however, is a greater good than happiness, so God arranges ad orchestrated circumstances to produce holiness before happiness. He is more concerned about our eternal than our temporal welfare and more concerned about our spiritual than our material welfare. So all the trials and difficulties, all the heartaches, disappointments, and humiliations come from His loving hand to make us partakers of His holiness. John Newton expressed this intent of God in our trials and afflictions in his hymn “Prayer Answered by Crosses”: I asked the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace, might more of his salvation know, and seek more earnestly his face. ‘Twas he who taught me thus to pray; and he, I trust, has answered prayer; but it has been in such a way as almost drove me to despair. I hoped that, in some favoured hour, at once he would answer my request, and by his love’s constraining power subdue my sins, and give me rest. Instead of this, he made me feel the hidden evils of my heart, and let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Yea, more, with his own hand he seemed intent to aggravate my woe, crossed all the fair designs I schemed, blasted my gourds, and laid me low. Lord, why is this? I trembling cried; wilt thou pursue this worm to death? #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
“This is the way, the Lord replied I answer prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials I now employ from self and pride to set three free, and break they schemes of Earthly joy, that thou may’st seek thy all in me.” However, it is not enough to see God’s mighty hand behind the immediate causes of all our adversities, nor to see it as the hand of a loving Father discipling His children. I have seen the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in the Scriptures for so many years that I instinctively see his hand behind every circumstance. And I have come to the place where I acknowledge, almost reluctantly sometimes, that all hardship is God’s discipline, either corrective or remedial. The rub comes in submitting to it. Sometimes we resist it. However, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our trial, we must first submit to His hand, which brought the trial. God gives grace only to the humble, to those who are not only humble toward other people, but are humble, or submissive, under His mighty hand. John Lillie expressed this idea so well. He said, “’Humble yourselves, therefore,’ receiving in silent, meek submission whatever humiliation it [God’s hand] may now lay upon you. For this is your time of trial, and, when paternal rod meets thus with the child-like spirit, will be surely followed by another time of healing and joy.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Then Dr. Lillie added an important word of exhortation: “See that you do not frustrate the gracious purpose of God and lose the blessing of sorrow. Rather make that purpose yours also.” Lord, I am willing to receive what You give, to lack what You withhold, to relinquish what You take, to suffer what You inflict, to be what You require. We must have that spirit if we are to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand and receive the grace He has promised to give. However, there is still one more essential element in this exercise of humbling ourselves under His mighty hand. We must not only submit, we must also do so in faith that He will lift us up in due time. The “due time,” is when the adversity has accomplished its purpose. As the prophet Jeremiah said, “For humans are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love,” reports Lamentations 3.31-32. God will not leave His heavy hand of adversity on us one moment more than is necessary to accomplish His purpose: “For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of humans,” Lamentations 3.33. The empty self is filled up with consumer goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathetic therapist. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
The empty self experiences a significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning, a lack of personal conviction and worth, and it embodies the absences as a chronic, undifferentiated emotional hunger. Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. In their uncompromising determination to proclaim truth, Christians must avoid the intellectual flabbiness of the larger society. They must rally against the prevailing distrust of reason and the exaltation of the irrational. Emotional self-indulgence and irrationalities have always been the enemies of the gospel, and the apostles warned their followers against them. If we spend all of our time trying to look directly at ourselves, our lives dart around, become unstable, and get drastically out of focus. However, if we deny ourselves daily for Christ’s sake (Matthew 16.24)—that is, if we gaze past ourselves and stare at Him with dedication and affection—as a byproduct we come into focus and stabilize in the foreground. This sort of self-denial actually requires a strong, integrated self. An immature, fragmented, narcissistic person cannot bring oneself to live with this sort of focus and discipline. The intellectual life requires the same sort of self-denial and dedication to be part of a larger life of spiritual power and productivity for the kingdom of God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
For Christians, the intellectual life of cultivating the mind and valuing rationality makes sense and receives its proper motivation and balance when seen as part of an overall view of what life is all about. The purpose of life is to bring honour to God, to know, love, and obey Hum, to become like Him, and to live for His purposes in this World as I prepare to live in the next one. A life that is intentionally lived for this purpose will be characterized by certain attitudes and action. For one thing, if I am to progress in this sort of life, I must regularly live for a larger whole. I must live for the kingdom of God and be involved aggressively in the war between that kingdom and the kingdom of darkness. Further, while self-interest and personal joy are important components of Christian motivation, they are not adequate in and of themselves to carry the weight of a skillful Christian life. I must also seek to live for others. Among other things, this means that I need to discover my vocation, my overall calling in life, composed of my talents, spiritual gifts, historical circumstances, and so forth. And I should passionately seek to occupy my vocational place for the good of believers and unbelievers alike. This would be my understanding of the good life. Make no mistake. Such a life is not easy. It involves discipline, hard work, suffering, patience, and endurance in forming habits conducive to and characteristic of this kind of life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
It requires taking a long-haul view of my life and learning to defer intellectual and moral virtues and habits before I can become fully skilled at living this way. Unfortunately, the intellectual life, the life of intentional, habitual cultivation of my mind under Christ’s lordship, can be valued and entered into only as a part of the overall approach to life just described, and this approach runs contrary to the conditions that define our modern lifestyles. Many people today, including many Christians, simply do not read of think deeply at all. And when believers do read, they tend to browse self-help books or other literature that is not intellectually engaging. I once wrote a piece for what is most likely the top Christian periodical of the last thirty years, and I was warned to keep my prose to about an eighth-grade level. How far we have come since the time of Joseph Butler (1692-17520 when, as one historian put it, the church could still out-think her critics. Butler was an Anglican minster at Rolls Chapel in England. His fifteen-part sermon series on ethics is regarded as one of the finest pieces of moral reasoning in the history of philosophy and has, in the words of philosopher Stephen L. Darwall, “influenced moral philosophy ever since.” The mind is like a muscle. If it is not exercised regularly and strenuously, it loses some of its capacities and strength. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
We modern evangelicals often feel small and without influence in the public square. If we are to present to our brothers and sisters, our children, and post-Christian culture a version of Christianity rich and deep enough to challenge the dehumanizing structures and habits of thought of society gone mad, we must recapture our intellectual heritage. To do this, we must change our reading habits; indeed, we must alter our entire approach to the life of the mind as part of Christian discipleship. “And now it came to pass that when Moroni has received this epistle his heart did take courage, and was filled with exceedingly great joy because of the faithfulness of Pahoran, that he was not also a traitor to the freedom and cause of his country. However, he did also mourn exceedingly because of the iniquity of those who had driven Pahoran from the judgment-seat, yea, in fine because of those who had rebelled against their country and also their Gd. And it came to pass that Moroni took a small number of humans, according to the desire of Pahoran, and gave Lehi and Teancum command over the remainder of his army, and took his march towards the land of Gideon. And he did raise the standard of liberty in whatsoever place he did enter, and gained whatsoever force he could in all his march towards the land of Gideon. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
“And it came to pass that thousands did flock unto his standard, and did take up their swords in the defence of their freedom, that they might not come into bondage. And thus, when Moroni had gathered together whatsoever men he could in all his march, he came to the land of Gideon; and uniting his forces with those of Pahoran they became exceedingly strong, even stronger than the men of Pachus, who was the king of those dissenters who had driven the free humans out of the land of Zarahemla and had taken possession of the land. And it came to pass that Moroni and Pahoran went down with their armies into the land of Zarahemla, and went forth against the city, and did meet the men of Pachus, insomuch that they did come to battle. And behold, Pachus was slain and his men were taken prisoners, and Pahoran was restored to his judgment-seat. And the humans of Pachus received their trial, according to the law; yea, those humans of Pachus and those king-men, whosoever would not take up arms in the defence of their country, but would fight against it, were put to death. And thus it became expedient that this law should be strictly observed for the safety of their country; yea, and whosever was found denying their freedom was speedingly executed according to the law. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
“And thus ended the thirtieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi; Moroni and Pahoran having restored peace to the land of Zarahemla, among their own people, having inflicted death upon all those who were not true to the cause of freedom. And it came to pass in the commencement of the thirty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, Moroni immediately caused that provisions should be sent, and also an army of six thousand humans should be sent unto Helaman, to assist him in preserving that part of the land. And he also caused that an army of six thousand humans, with a sufficient quantity of food, should be sent to the armies of Lehi and Teancum. And it came to pass that this was done to fortify the land against the Lamanites. And it came to pass that Moroni and Pahoran, leaving a large body of humans in the land of Zarahemla, took their march with a large body of men towards the land of Nephihah, being determined to overthrow the Lamanites in that city. And it came to pass that as they were marching towards the land, they took a large body of men of the Lamanites, and slew many of them, and took their provisions and their weapons of war. And it came to pass after they had taken them, they caused them to enter into a covenant that they would no more take up their weapons of war against the Nephites. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
“And when they had entered into this covenant they sent them to dwell with the people of Ammon, and they were in number about four thousand who had not been slain. And it came to pass that when they had sent them away they pursued their march towards the and of Nephihah, they did pitch their tents in the plains of Nephihah, which is near the city of Nephihah. Now Moroni was desirous that the Lamanites should come out to battle against them, upon the plains; but the Lamanites, knowing of their exceedingly great courage, and beholding the greatness of their numbers, therefore they durst not come out against them; therefore they did not come to battle in that day. And when the night came, Moroni went forth in the darkness of the night, and came upon the top of the wall to spy out in what part of the city the Lamanites did camp with their army. And it came to pass that they were on the east, by the entrance; and they were all asleep. And now Moroni returned to his army, and caused that they should prepare in haste strong cords and ladders, to be let down from the top of the wall into the inner part of the wall. And it came to pass that Moroni caused that his men should march forth and come up the top of the wall, and let themselves down into that part of the city, yea, even on the west, where the Lamanites did not camp with their armies. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
“And it came to pass that they were all let down into the city by night, by the means of their strong cords and their ladders; thus when the morning came they were all within the walls of the city. And now, when the Lamanites awoke and saw that the armies of Moroni were within the walls, they were affrighted exceedingly, insomuch that they did flee out by the pass. And now when Moroni saw that they were fleeing before him, he did cause that his men should march forth against them, and slew many, and surrounded many others, and took them prisoners; and the remainder of them fled into the land of Moroni, which was in the borders by the seashore. Thus had Moroni and Pahoran obtained the possession of the city of Nephihah without the loss of one soul; and there were many of the Lamanites who were slain. Now it came to pass that many of the Lamanites that were prisoners were desirous to join the people of Ammon and become a free people. And it came to pass that as were desirous, unto them it was granted according to their desires. Therefore, all the prisoners of the Lamanites did join the people of Ammon, and did begin to labour exceedingly, tilling the ground, raising all manner of grain, and flocks and herds of every kind; and thus were the Nephites relieved from a great burden; yea, insomuch that they were relieved from all the prisoners of the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“Now it came to pass that Moroni after he had obtained possession of the city of Nephihan, have taken many prisoners, which did reduce the armies of the Lamanites exceedingly, and having regained many of the Nephites who had been taken prisoners, which did strengthen the army of Moroni exceedingly; therefore Moroni went forth from the land of Nephihah to the land of Lehi. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that Moron was coming against them, they were again frightened and fled before the army of Moroni. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that Moroni was coming against them, they were again frightened and fled before the army of Moroni. And it came to pass that Moroni and his army did pursue them from city to city, until they were met by Lehi and Teancum; and the Lamanites fled from Lehi and Teancum, even down upon the borders by the seashore, until they came to the land of Moroni. And the armies of the Lamanites were all gathered together, insomuch that they were all in one body in the land of Moroni. And the armies of the Lamanites were all gathered together, insomuch that they were all in one Ammoron, the king of the Lamanites, was also with them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And it came to pass that Moroni and Lehi and Teancum did encamp with their armies round about in the borders of the land of Moroni, insomuch that the Lamanites were encircled about in the borders by the wilderness on the south, and in the borders by the wilderness on the east. And thus they did encamp for the night. For behold, the Nephites and the Lamanites also were weary because of the greatness of the march; therefore they did not resolve upon any stratagem in the night-time, save it were Teancum; for he was exceedingly angry with Ammoron, insomuch that he considered that Ammoron, and Amalickiah his brother, had been the cause of this great and lasting war between them and the Lamanites, which had been the cause of so much war and bloodshed, yea, and so much famine. And it came to pass that Teancum in his anger did go forth into the camp of the Lamanites, and did let himself down over the walls of the city. And he went forth with a cord, from place to place, insomuch that he did cast a javelin at him, which did pierce him near the heart. However, behold, the king did awaken his servants before he died, insomuch that they did pursue Teancum, and slew him. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“Now it came to pass that when Lehi and Moroni knew that Teancum was dead they were exceedingly sorrowful; for behold, he had been a man who had fought valiantly for his country, yea, a true friend to liberty; and he had suffered very many exceedingly sore afflictions. However, behold, he was dead, and had gone the way of all the Earth. Now it came to pass that Moroni marched forth on the morrow, and came upon the Lamanites, insomuch that they did slay them with a great slaughter; and they did drive them out of the land; and they did flee, even that they did not return at that time against the Nephites. And thus ended the thirty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi; and this they had had wars, and bloodsheds, and famine, and affliction, for the space of many years. And there had been murders, and contentions, and dissensions, and all manner of iniquity among the people of Nephi; nevertheless for the righteous’ sake, yea, because of the prayers of the righteous, they were spared. However, behold, because of the exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites many had become hardened, because of the exceedingly great length of the war; and many were softened because of their afflictions, insomuch that they did humble themselves before God, even in the depth of humility. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And it came to pass that after Moroni had fortified those parts of the land which were most exposed to the Lamanites, until they were sufficiently strong, he returned to the city of Zarahemla; and also Helaman returned to the place of his inheritance; and there was once more peace established among the people of Nephi. And Moroni yielded up the command of his armies into the hands of his son, whose name was Moronihah; and he retired to his own house that he might spend the remainder of his days in peace. And Pahroan did return to his judgement-seat; and Helaman did take upon him again to preach unto the people the word of God; for because of so many wars and contentions it had become expedient that a regulation should be made again in the church. Therefore, Helaman and his brethren went forth, and did declare the word of God with much power unto the convincing of many people of their wickedness, which did cause them to repent of their sins and to be baptized unto the Lord their God. And it came to pass that they did establish again the church of God, throughout all the land. Yea, and regulations were made concerning the law. And their judges, and their chief judges were chosen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And the people of Nephi began to prosper again in the land, and began to multiply and to wax exceedingly strong again in the land. And they began to grow exceedingly rich. However, notwithstanding their riches, or their strength, or their prosperity, they were not lifted up in the pride of their eyes; neither were they slow to remember the Lord their God; but they did humble themselves exceedingly before him. Yes, they did remember how great things the Lord had done for them, that he had delivered them from death, and from bonds, and from prisons, and from all manner of afflictions, and he had delivered them out of the hands of their enemies. And they did pray unto the Lord their God continually, insomuch that the Lord did bless them, according to his word, so that they did wax strong and prosper in the land. And it came to pass that all these things were done. And Helaman died, in the thirty and fifth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Alma 62.1-51. God is the One who sits in protection over the World, who spreads His wings over us as a shield: King God, You are the One I praise! He is the one who is the throne of Kings, who established governments and maintains them in power: King God, you are the One I praise! #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
God is the One who rises from the sea in glory, who rocks the cradle with his own hand: King God, you are the one I praise! God is the one who is King of the Universe, who created the World. God, You are the one I praise. True and certain it is that there is one God, and there is none like unto Him. It is He who redeemed us from the might of tyrants, and executed judgment upon all our oppressors. Great are the things that God hath done; His wonders are without number. He causes us to triumph over our enemies, and raises up our glory above our foes. Wondrously He visited judgment upon Pharaoh, performing signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. He brought forth the children of Israel from bondage, and delivered them from slavery unto freedom. In every age the Lord hath been our hope; He rescued us from enemies who sought to destroy us. May He continue His protecting care over the Universe and beyond, and guard all His children from disaster. When the children of Earth beheld the might of the Lord, they gave thanks unto Him and praised His name. They accepted His Sovereignty willingly, and sang a song unto Him. Moses and the Children of Israel exultingly proclaimed: Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the mighty? Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness, revered in praises, doing wonders? #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
When Thou didst rescue Israel at the Red Sea, Thy children beheld Thy supreme power. This is my God! they exclaimed, and said: The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. As Thou didst deliver Israel from a power mightier than he, so mayest Thou redeem all Thy children from oppression. Blessed art Thou, O Lord Redeemer of the Universe and beyond! Cause us, O Lord our God, to lie down in peace, and rise us up again, O our King, unto life. Please spread over us They tabernacle of peace. Direct us aright through Thine own good counsel. Save us for Thy name’s sake. Be Thou a shield about us. Please remove from us every enemy, pestilence, sword, famine and sorrow. Please help us, O Lord, to resist temptation. Please shelter us with Thy protecting love for Thou art our guardian and deliverer. Yea, Thou God and King art gracious and compassionate. Guard our going out and our coming in unto life and peace, henceforth and forevermore. Yea, do Thou spread over us the tabernacle of Thy peace. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who spreadest the tabernacle of peace over us, over Earth and the Universe and Beyond. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last,” reports Revelation of St. John 22.13. If a teacher must put into finite phrases every communication from one’s inner being to a pupil, if one must use material means for every transmission of one’s own thought, then the being yet ready to be a disciple. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters with a butler’s pantry to provide easy access to the dining room. The great room is spacious and its open floor plan allows all parts of the home to flow. The Owner’s suite nestled away from the secondary bedrooms allowing for maximum privacy, yet still accessible.
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Houses with abundant space and charming comforts are a singular symbol of progress and proof that the American way is winning.
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It is Not Unusual for the Inventive Genius to Claim the Voice of God as the Only Authority!
No one on Earth is more ingenious than an addict out to score. Protestant fundamentalists built a kindergarten-through-college network of Christian schools whose graduates would become warriors in the army of the religious right. Even as students were attacking the authority of secular universities, fundamentalist proselytizers were brining millions of other young people into their fold. Parents do not want their families and children and homes and businesses being destroyed by the demonic decade. The scripts goes something like this: Once upon a time, there was both order and freedom in American cultural life, especially in the universities that served as citadels of learning and beacons to the rest of society. Yes, a few professors were thought to be unpatriotic, but anyone who saw something wrong with American society was acting like a baby. The veterans who took advantage of the GI Bill were profoundly grateful for the chance to go to college because a diploma was their passport to a white-collar job, and their children regarded higher education as a birthright and assumed that jobs would be there when they were ready to take on adult responsibilities. For the most part, students and professors pursed truth with little interference from the Worlds of gross commercialism and gross politics. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Think Periclean Athens, the University of Heidelberg in the nineteenth century, Oxford and Cambridge before the Great War, and that is the higher learning Americans enjoyed—except in much larger numbers than had ever been the case in human history. Then the barbarians stormed the gates—no, the barbarians were already inside the gates. Instead of studying for their exams and listening to their teachers, students began to fancy themselves liberators of Americans. Much of the great tradition was still ere, but then decay or collapse started to set in. In the guise of students, an alien cultural started to attack. They were on the warpath against all forms of authority, including the educational authority of the universities and the pieties of middlebrow culture. The American university that was a glorious center of higher learning, was now spewing out nonsense about how awful McMansions where, what an atrocious symbol Germans automobile were, and how middle managers were glorified baby sitters and how they rich deserve nothing. The sentimental falsehoods in public and private institutions poisoned the core curriculum and infected the minds of vulnerable youth for it told them that no matter how hard they work, they should feel guilty about success, and that they do not deserve what they earn. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
All the anti-intellectuals were doing was filling Americans with shame so they could strip away the American Dream. And then the flags were removed from the class rooms, students were no longer allowed to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. The pinkos wanted to replace McMansions with high rise apartment buildings with paper thin walls so they could monitor you. They wanted to popularize Korean cars instead of Germany luxury automobiles, and instead of people reading books and studying to become doctors, lawyers, nurses, and engineers, they would watch countless hours of TV and become experts on celebrity popular culture. However, many Americans believed that university presidents and college chancellors were captains of erudition. Veterans were thankful that the GI Bill made is possible for millions of working-class people who served their country to become the first members of their families to attend college. Even women attended college and earned a bachelor’s degree to become educated, well-rounded mothers so they would be better equipped to educate their children. So, the Ivy Tower on the Hill—the place where committed scholars search for truth in a World that desperately needs help is one of the best institutions in the World, no matter what critics say. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
A college education is the best aspect of the civil rights movement in the World. It allows our youth to learn and use their minds, to obtain job so they do not have to sit around being poor and bitter. It is still possible to get a first-rate education in any number of American colleges. Some institutions have more rigorous requirements than others, and, in any event, it is always possible for self-selected lovers of learning to learn. High culture can never be obliterated as long as the species continues to produce extraordinary individuals with the inclination and fortitude to pursue their interests and talents against the grain and the mass culture surrounding them. However, because of the erosion of core studies, it is now possible at many institutions of so-called higher learning for students to receive a degree in psychology without having taken mid-level biology courses; for a cultural studies major to graduate without reading the basic texts of American history, Economic, or studying the Enlightenment; and for business majors to graduate without having studied any literature after one’s freshman year. And all of these college graduates, should they choose to become teachers at any level of the educational system, will pass on their narrowness and ignorance to the next generation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
During the past ten years, many institutions have moved to restore a stronger core curriculum (as they also did in the late seventies), but this grudging, formulaic trend is higher education’s equivalent of the frantic emphasis on standardized testing in elementary and secondary schools: it as everything to do with politics—both academic politic and, in the case of public universities, the politics of getting financial support from state legislatures. When university officials start talking about a return to “the basics,” it is a sure bet that some prominent state legislator or governor or President Trump has zeroed in on the academic shortcoming of State U. and that no one is referring to the unquantifiable and more genuine learning whose importance within a society cannot be measured by test scores and can only be mourned in its absence. The Whole World is Watching, and that is true. Parents want their kids to think of college as a safe and accepting place, where people who have been sheltered from crime and chaos can go and see the trees, drink mochas and lattes, espresso and cappuccinos with the other kids, eat cobb salads and avocado toast, filet mignon and foie gras, read Shakespeare, invest in a McMansion with roommates as a form of student housing, and once in the spring the boys can go to a dance with the girls. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This image of peaceful, privileged youth is what the intellectuals who are presumably running the colleges want—and they want to run the goodly, so parents can be happy about writing tuition checks. They want to being back clubs like the Campus Crusade, which is a powerful Christian right-wing youth movement that is really popular in the Bible Belt. Evangelists are trying to save the nation by appealing to young men and women, many who are disillusioned with drugs and the revolution involving pleasures of the flesh, by providing students with a way to remake their lives. These groups even enhance their appeal by their deliberate adoption and adaption of popular fashion trends and language, minus obscenities and showing too much skin, for the purpose of preaching old-time religion. They even have fashionable hairstyles and look just like other college students. Some organizations have names like the Christian World Liberation Front and the Jesus Christ Light and Power Company and open shelters for young people who are burnt out from Worldly ways, which may not even be their fault because they do not know better or just got caught up. Whatever the case, accepting God has been proven to help depression and can put youth in contact with important members of the community who may offer them careers or internships upon graduation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Conservatives want people to celebrate the old American Dream of love and education and Jesus Christ as our Saviour. One might even say that it is a revival and reformation of the Christian American Dream, which is embedded in everyday life society and still manages to dominate attitudes and even behavior within certain limited spheres. Christianity is a ritual of purification and cleansing, a celebration of the capacity of feeling to triumph over Worldly patterns. And it is important that human feelings should occasionally win—as important as occasional epiphanies and miracles are for religion. In our society this issue is a matter of life and death (of society, if not the individual). I also have come to a better understand of what people are saying about injustice in society. They want more funding for adequate programs like education, legal assistance, public defenders, child care, and government investigators who actually will help them because that will prevent people from being arrested. As it stands, these government agencies do not have the ability or skill, time or desire to help people. Then problems fester until it becomes a police matter and people are arrested. At that point, prosecutors will spend countless hours and millions of dollars to prosecute individuals even for minor crimes that would have been avoided if the resources were provided to help these people with ongoing problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
As it stands, the media likes to play it off like there is some major mental health crisis in America, but the fact is that no one helps people when they are facing problems. Now, there may be a mental health issue with some of these people in the news media, politicians, and some people running businesses. However, when people are doing wrong to individuals, even if it is a problem that there is clear cut discrimination, harassment or some kind of other crime a person is a victim of, it is ignored and that is why people end up in police custody. The government is not willing to put ethical people in place to help them and maybe spend $10,000.00 on an investigation, but they are willing to spend millions of dollars prosecuting a person. So these people are not saying defend the police, they are saying there are ways to use resources that will save money and keep these matters from becoming police problems. As it stands, society is abusing the police because all of these problems, and many of them are really petty, get kicked over to law enforcement and then law enforcement is expected to be a lawyer, psychologist doctor or guardian when that is not even their job because other government agencies are not handling their mandated responsibilities. RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The youth assume that their elders are attempting to deceive them with this talk of proper channels—that is deliberate obstruction, since the elders know that “proper channels” are designed to negate rather than to facilitate change. Their reactions are then a horror of social uproar that many people cannot comprehend because they have never experienced what these people are going through. The elders’ notion that radical leaders are “just trying to get their names in the papers” has been replaced by calling the people liars and saying they are crazy. Parents believe that is it their responsibility to make their child into the most all-around perfect adult possible, which means paying a great deal of attention to their inner states and latent characteristics. The child no longer has a private sphere, but one’s entire being is involved with parental aspirations, and it really hurts when you invest so much love, time, money, and energy into a being for society to rip that individual apart, while people sit back watching and laughing. Our children do not even take their own personalities for granted, and it really hurts them to have their dreams crushed by racism and injustice. Parents believe they are required not just to put in the time but to make their children motivated. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
However, some parents are willing to throw their children to the dogs for something so trivial as etiquette and it makes a deep impression. So, yeah, some of these problems are not just with government institutions, but within the house. Some children are too young to know their parents do not wish them well and want to see them fail. Since these children cannot see anything so important as to justify this betrayal, all social situations seem to have a dishonest quality. However, parents who are good Christians, absorbed with the goal of molding their child’s total character, are much less inclined to sacrifice the child to the etiquette concerns of strangers. The artist working on one’s masterpiece does not let guests use it to wipe their feet on. As a result, their children have grown up to feel that human needs have some validity of their own, ad their careful socialization to upper-middle-class values has well prepared them to accept the responsibility of becoming a gainfully employed, good citizen. Because of the parents know that there is a deep need for economic and status security, they want their children to face reality (by which they mean social reality). “My money is not your money. I am paying all the major bills and providing you with a place to stay, nice clothes, hot meals, and even an Ultimate Driving Machine. Because of this, life seems easy, but it is not.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
This unique power that parents have—to give their children attributes they do not themselves possess—is perhaps the unconscious determinant of an otherwise incomprehensible theme that appears so often in fairy tales: that of the impoverished old parent or helper who gives the hero magic gifts that could have made the giver oneself wealthy and powerful but apparently did not. However, upper-middle-class Americans parents relate to their children in a somewhat vampiresque way. They feed on the child’s accomplishments, sucking sustenance for their pale lives from vicarious enjoyment of one’s development. In a sense this sucking is appropriate since the parents give so much—lavish so much care, love, thoughtfulness, and self-sacrifice on their blook bank. However, this is little comfort for the child, who at some point must rise above one’s guilt and live one’s own life—the culture demands it of one. And after all, a vampire is a vampire. Basically, parents want their children to become mannikins which their fathers can display his influence to his friends. The crosses many youth wear around their necks are actually necessary to ward off the elders, whose vampiresque involvement who has been insufficiently exorcized. It is not that they are offended by the elders, but their hope is to magically neutralize their symbiotic relationship. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Many youths are asked to take note of their hostile reaction towards older adults in the society, because it is bad to consider any one as being “unnecessary” and their rude reactions are in “bad taste.” One day, we will all be elders and will want our due respect. No one likes to admit that they have spent their lives in a foolish, evil, or crazy manner. That is why God tells us to humble ourselves and respect our elders. Furthermore, youth do not realize that elders are taught to lie about their feelings. They are not likely to say: “You frighten and depress us. We are afraid we have spent our lives on nurturing an ungrateful family, who brutalizes their neighbours, purses useless electronic devices and creates a joyless environment. It always seemed that right thing to do, to try to raise up a family in the way of the Lord, with Christian values, but now we are a little unsure, and if we had known how you would behave so wretchedly, we would have bought a smaller home and took more vacations instead of having children.” Instead, they suppress their doubts and fears about themselves by refusing to perceive the meaning of the stimulus. When their children cry for peace of social justice they says, “Do not talk dirty,” or “Go read the ‘Good Book.’” This is a way of saying, “There is nothing important or disturbing going on here—this is just my child who is mischievous or careless at times—it is just a family affair.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
It is a desperate attempt for them to enjoy their lives and want you to enjoy the fact that you are privileged enough to not have to endure injustice and hearing about it makes them feel like failures. They view the World as unchanging—to convert the deep social unrest of the day into the blank torpor of lace curtain suburban life. This philosophy also speaks to a much larger social phenomenon. How, for example, can matters so intrinsically important, such as politics, government positions, new broadcasting be trusted to be handled by people who present themselves as not the most sane, unstable, and ineffective members of our society? The answer is two incompatible processes are taking place at once: politicians are supposed to be philanthropists, they are not supposed to be getting paid to help society, while pretending that the people do not exist. It has become a self-serving job, where many people become wealthy, while citizens and corporation feel it is taxation without representation, and not providing for the general welfare of the people. Assuming the framework of institutions required by equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity, the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The intuitive idea is that the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate. A strongly egalitarian conception in the sense of distribution is that unless it makes both persons better off (limiting ourselves to the two-person case for simplicity), an equal distribution is to be preferred. Also, nothing is lost if an accurate interpersonal comparison of benefits is impossible. It suffices that the least favoured person can be identified and one’s rational preference determined. Also, if each person gains relative to the other, further benefits to one become less valuable from a social point of view. If art helps us to define the absolute, so madness brings us to a closer understanding of the relative. For whereas we sometimes can accept the aesthetic, the immediacy of the work of art, we fight acceptance of the products of the deluded and call it madness. We say no to the possessions, the compulsions, the hallucinations. We deny their uniqueness, their absoluteness and immediacy, and place them in relation to something that can be accepted. We say these are the products of diseased minds, of sick brains and glands, of distorting heat waves, of propaganda and suggestion, or drugs and poisons, of the experience of frustration, conflict, and trauma. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
For these other categories are acceptable. The unacceptable is thus related to the sick organism, to the false culture, to the disproportionate environment: we feel safe once again. And we may be at that, sometimes. For in the relational dimension there is mobility, change, and the chance to choose. One is not captivated entirely; one can compare, discriminate, and select. It is possible to move from or toward, increase or decrease one over the other. Then there is the chance to get out of trouble or into still more. There is freedom to the n—1 absolutes available within the perspective allowed. One has gone from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality; but when no choice continuum is offered, when there are no degrees of freedom, then one is frustrated in that dimension. We may try to fight as long as there is some dimly sensed hope, but when that too disappears that dimension is dead for us and we are left just a little less alive. Of course for one who is “adjusted” to one’s madness, who accepts one’s mission, who no longer questions one’s lost, the same epiphanous structure of experience is evident as in the case of the experience called aesthetic. There is no need to distinguish between abnormality in the absolute dimension of experience. The mad person like the priest accepts one’s calling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
In fact it is not unusual for the inventive genius to claim the voice of God as the only authority. For the new absolute is not derivative, has no ultimate sanction beyond its being, its epiphany. Each individual, including the reader, must refer to one’s own insight for an ostensive definition. To some extent experience in madness and aesthetic experience differ only as a matter of taste. There is no difference that cannot be questioned. Each may be accepted for itself and that is the point. It is only in so far as we see that each leads to consequences of different value to us that any distinction between the two may be noticed. Madness too frequently is self-limiting, and as such defeats its protective function by ultimately removing or devaluating that which it would protect. The question which madness does not answer or answers but poorly is: “Madness, then what?” In fact any inability to answer the questions: “Then what?” is revealing of madness; to the degree that the answer evades this question, to that degree there is madness. That is the only test of the abnormal. The normal epiphany of experience is, like most science and art, open ended. Growth may still occur, selection take place, change be accepted with grace and interest. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Life can expand in depth and scope, in richness of action and experience. The completion of one leads to the opening of the next, not to boredom, self-destruction, or fear. Theoretically, if the paths chosen were completely normal, there should be no termination to life. Even at present there is usually continuity of life on into the future somewhere of some species. And that life can be called normal, the healthy life. No, it is not in the absolute dimension that the difference between normal and abnormal lies. It is only in the relative dimension that such a consideration gains significance. Then why do we continue to make the mistake of judging the absolute as good and bad, healthy and diseased, normal and abnormal? I do not know entirely the probable answer to this but the fact is that we do confuse these and I would like to point to a few crucial areas where this confusion causes no end of needless suffering to those so misinformed. This includes all of us. Job and Joseph are examples of those who saw the hand of God in their circumstances. In one day the Sabeans stole Job’s oxen, and the Chaldeans carried off his camels and ended the lives of his servants. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Lightning burned up his sheep, and a mighty wind struck the house of his oldest son, ending the lives of all his children. Later Job himself was afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job’s response at the loss of his children and his possessions was, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away,” reports Job 1.21. And with respect to his own afflictions he said, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble,” reports Job 2.10. Quite apart from Job’s humble reaction toward God, we should note first that he ascribed his sufferings to the hand of God. We must learn to see beyond the actions of evil people and the disasters of nature to the sovereign God who controlled these events. And the inspired writer who recorded the trials of Job, at the close of his account, said, “They [his relatives and friends] comforted and consoled him [Job] over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him,” reports Job 42.11. Even though the writer had himself reported the malicious activity of Satan in Job’s life at the beginning of the narrative, he still ultimately ascribed Job’s troubles to the Lord. Joseph, when he finally revealed his identity to his wicked brothers who had sold him into slavery, saw beyond their evil acts and said, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God,” reports Genesis 45.8. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Joseph recognized that God in His sovereignty used even the heinous sins of his brothers to accomplish His purpose. So, you and I, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our times of need, must see His sovereignty ultimately ruling in all the circumstances of our lives. And when those circumstances are difficult, or disappointing, or humiliating, we must humble ourselves under His mighty hand. Not only must we see God’s mighty hand behind our circumstances, we must also see it as the hand of the loving Father discipling His children. We lose a lot of comfort in times of trials because we tend to view them as evidences of God’s desertion of us rather than evidences of His Fatherly discipline and care. Endure all hardships—all of it—as God’s discipline. You may be sure that whatever hardship comes into your life from whatever immediate source, God is in sovereign control of it and is using it as an instrument of discipline in your life. Discipline is a proof of God’s love, “because the Lord disciplines those He loves,” Hebrews 12.6. This is not a word of warning, but a word of encouragement. The purpose of God’s discipline is that so we may share in His holiness, that we may be conformed in our character to His character. Discipline may be either corrective or remedial. It may be sent for the purpose of correcting some sinful attitude or action, or to remedy some lack of our character. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
In either case, discipline is administered by our Heavenly Father in love, not wrath. Jesus has already borne the wrath of God in our place, so all adversities that come to us, come because God loves us and designs to conform us to the likeness of His Son. God has thoughts of love in all He does to His people. The ground of His dealings is love, and the purpose of His dealings is love. He has regard, in all, to our good here, to make us partakers of His holiness, and to our glory hereafter, to make us partakers of His glory. From the Light of God that I am. From the Love of God that I am. From the Power of God that I am. From the Heart of God that I am. I decree—I dwell in the midst of Infinite Abundance. The Abundance of God is my Infinite Source. The River of Life never stops flowing and it flows through me with lavish expression. Good comes to me through unexpected avenues and God works in a myriad of ways to bless me. I now open my mind to receive my good. Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to happen With God as my Source nothing amazes me. I am not burdened by thoughts of past or future. One is gone. The other is yet to come. By the power of my belief, couped with my purposeful fearless actions and my deep rapport with God, my future is created and my abundance made manifest. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
I ask and accept that I am lifted in this and every moment into Higher Truth. My mind is quiet. From this day forward I give freely and fearlessly into Life and Life gives back to me with a fabulous increase. Blessings come in expected and unexpected ways. God provides for me in wondrous ways for the work that I do. I AM indeed grateful. And so it is. Join me in a POWERFUL ABUNDANCE MASTERCLASS. Set your intentions for the goodness and abundance of all and you will indeed be blessed. “Behold, now it came to pass that soon after Moroni had sent his epistle unto the chief governor, he received an epistle from Pahoran the chief governor. And these are the words which he received: I, Pahoran, who am the chief governor of this land, do send these words unto Moroni, the chief captain over the army. Behold, I say unto you, Moroni, that I do not joy in your great afflictions, yea, insomuch that they have risen up in rebellion against me, and also those of my people who are free humans, yea, and those who have risen up are exceedingly numerous. And it is those who have sought to take away the judgment-seat from me that have been the cause of this great iniquity; for they have used great flattery, and they have led away the hearts of many people, which will be the cause of sore affliction among us; they have withheld our provisions, and have daunted our free people that they have not come unto you. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“And behold, they have driven me out before them, and I have fled to the land of Gideon, with as many humans as it were possible that I could get. And behold, I have sent a proclamation throughout this part of the land; and behold, they are flocking to us daily, to their arms, in the defence of their country and their freedom, and to avenge our wrongs. And they have come unto us, insomuch that those who have risen up in rebellion against us are set at defiance, yea, insomuch that they do fear us and durst not come out against us to battle. They have got possession of the land, or the city, of Zarahemla; they have appointed a king over them, and he hath written unto the king of the Lamanites, in the which he hath joined them an alliance with him; in the which alliance he hath agreed to maintain the city of Zarahemla, which maintenance he supposeth will enable the Lamanites to conquer the remainder of the land, and he shall be placed king over this people when they shall be conquered under the Lamanites. And now, in your epistle you have censured me, but it mattereth not; I am not angry, but do rejoice in the greatness of your heart. I, Pahoran, do not seek for power, save only to retain my judgment-seat that I may preserve the rights and the liberty of my people. My soul standeth fast in that liberty in the which God hath made us free. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And now, behold, we will resist wickedness even unto bloodshed. If they would stay in their own land, we would not shed the blood of the Lamanites. If they would not rise up in rebellion and take the sword against us, we would not shed the blood of our brethren. If it were requisite with the justice of God, or if He should command us so to do, we would subject ourselves to the yoke of bondage. However, behold he doth not command us that we shall subject ourselves to our enemies, but that we should put our trust in Him, and He will deliver us. Therefore, my beloved brother, Moroni, let us resist evil, and whatsoever evil we cannot resist with our words, yea, such as rebellions and dissensions, let us resist them with our swords, that we may retain our freedom, that we may rejoice in the great privilege of our church, and in the cause of our Redeemer and our God. Therefore, come unto me speedily with a few of your men, and leave the remainder in the charge of Lehi and Teancum; give unto them power to conduct the war in that part of the land, according to the Spirit of God, which is also the spirit of freedom which is in them. Behold I have sent a few provisions unto them, that they may not perish until ye can come unto me. Gather together whatsoever force ye can upon your march hither, and we will go speedily against those dissenters, in the strength of our God according to the faith which is in us. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“And we will take possession of the city of Zarahemla, that we may obtain more food to send forth unto Lehi and Teancum; yea, we will go forth against them in the strength of the Lord, and we will put an end to this great iniquity. And now, Moroni, I do joy in receiving your epistle, for I was somewhat worried concerning what we should do, whether it should be just in us to go against our brethren. However, ye have aid, except they repent the Lord hath commanded you that ye should go against them. See that ye strengthen Lehi and Teancum in the Lord; tell them to fear not, for God will deliver them, yea, and also all those who stand fast in that liberty wherewith God hath made them free. And now I close mine epistle to my beloved brother, Moroni,” reports Alma 61.1-21. Wheat for you, Father of Grain. Barley for you, Father of Grain. Corn for you, Father of Grain. I scatter them for you, Father of Grain: a tribute to your well-famed generosity. God, you are worthy of worship: please hear me. I remember you every moment of the day. I pray to the one whose arrows bring health, to God the beautiful one. From your lyre come tunes of harmonious enchantment, and I listen entrapped, sweet-singing God. We will look to all commandments of the Lord, and do them; Lord bless us that we not follow our own heart and own eyes, but fortify us in your will. We will be holy to the Lord our God. #Randolphharris 24 of 24
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I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Memory is More Incredible than Ink for it is a Wise Father who Knows His Own Child!
The generation gap is just another way of saying that the younger generation makes overt what is covert in the older generation; the child expresses openly what the parents represses. The mass media with the use of television ( “The Most Effective Devil in America,” is telling you a vision) has flooded out local boundaries and forced the total society into a dim awareness of what it is like to live in fear. It is not so much the increase in violence that upsets middle-class Americans as the democratization of violence: the less affluent and underrepresented have become less willing to serve as specialized victims of violence from a political agenda (“legally”) and each other (illegally). The same point can be made about crimes against property, given the well-known class bias in our legal system. Since the ways in which the affluent steal from the less affluent are rarely defined as crimes (when executives of a major corporation were jailed for a few days some years ago for stealing millions of dollars from the public through antitrust violations many people were shocked that respectable humans could be treated in such a rude fashion) rising property crimes rates may only reflect an increase in the democratization of larceny, a result attributable in part to the success of the mass media in convincing the less affluent that only the possession of various products can satisfy their various social, pleasures of the flesh, and moral requirements. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Leaving aside these more likely to be considered violent when they have political overtones. Our nation has never known a time without serious urban riots—usually about some kind of economic or social injustice—but it was only when they began to have a political thrust and to attack business districts that the concerns about the rioting began to grow. The same relationship holds true for the college campus. It is not violence as such but its political aims that arouse concern. The same people who assail the violence of campus radicals are quite happy to regale listeners with tales of their own (apolitical) childhood pranks—pranks that would bring a jail sentence if committed today. College students on many campuses have rioted annually for generations, and the injuries and vandalism resulting from such riots have often far exceeded that produced by protests. Yet these apolitical riots have always been considered venial. The difference is that student pranks and riots in the past attacked authority but accepted it. The protests of today confront authority and question it. Thus although no violence at all may occur, those toward whom the protest is directed may feel that violence has been done to them. The disruption of ordinary daily patterns and assumptions are experienced as a kind of psychological violence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Consider what happens when a defective traffic light fails to change from red to green. The line of cars grows and restlessness increases. At some point someone decides that the symbol of order is in fact in disorder and either goes through the red light or begins to honk one’s hor. As soon as one goes through, the others all follow suit. The initiator in this situation is engaging in a kind of civil disobedience. One is challenging the specific rule about red lights in terms of a broader understanding which says that the purpose of traffic laws is to regulate traffic not to disrupt it. Yet because the situation has no real political significance the incidence carries no threat or violent connotation. We live in a society in which cruelties inflicted upon humanity can be exposed in every living room through mass media or on Facebook and Twitter. We discuss and debate constantly the appearance of any instance anywhere in the World of inhumane treatment of one person by another, but we still do not always get the full story. Nonetheless, we stress that every human life, even corporations, are beings of value. We live, in short, in modern, secure, civilized World, in which a single isolated act of violence is a calamity, an outrage. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Yet, innocent people still have their characters and beings terminated by the most barbarous means possible and shows no qualms about it. These techniques are a bit reminiscent of the dunking stool used in earlier centuries to test potential witches: if the person was not a witch the individual would drown—if one did not drown thus proved one was a witch and one was burned to death. The energy required to avoid even the most obvious forms of exploitation by commercial enterprises in our society would not permit the individual to lead a normal active life. Like Looking-glass Country, it takes all the running one can do to stay in the same place. Powerlessness has always been the common lot of most of humankind. However, the more we attempt to solve problems through increased autonomy the more we find ourselves at the mercy of these mysterious, impersonal, and remote mechanisms that we have ourselves created. Their indifference is a reflection of our own. All societies, optimally, must allow for both change and stability since: effective adaptation to the environment requires both modification and consolidation of existing reposes; social integration depends both upon the preservation and upon the periodic dissolution of existing structural differentiation; and personal happiness rest upon both familiarity and novelty in everyday life. Every society evolves patterns for attempting to realize these mutually incompatible needs. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
We talk of technology as the servant of humans, but it is a servant that now dominates the households, too powerful to fire, upon whom everyone is helplessly dependent. We tiptoe about and speculate upon his mood. What will be the effects of such-and-such an invention? How will it change our daily lives? We never ask, do we want this, is it worth it? (We did not ask ourselves, for example, if the major conveniences offered by social media could really offset the calamitous disruption and depersonalization of our lives that it brought about.) We simply say, “You cannot stop progress,” and shuffle back inside. We pride ourselves on being a “democracy” but we are in fact slaves. We submit to an absolute ruler who governs our state or city whose edicts and whims we never question. We watch that individual carefully, hang on to one’s every word; for technology is a harsh and capricious king, demanding prompt and absolute obedience. We laugh at the old lady who holds off the highway bulldozers with a Winchester Rifle, but we laugh because we are Uncle Toms. We try to outdo each other in singing the praises of the oppressor, although in fact the value of technology in terms of human satisfaction remains at best undemonstrated. For when evaluating its effects we always adopt the basic assumptions and perspective of technology itself, and never examine it in terms of the totality of human experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
We say this or that invention is valuable because it generates other inventions—because it is a means to some other means—not because it achieves an ultimate end. We play down the “side effects” that so often become the main effects and completely negate any alleged benefits. The much-vaunted “freedom” of American life is thus an illusion, one which underlies the sense of spuriousness so many Americans feel about their basic institutions. We are free to do only what we are told, and we are “told” not by a human master but by a mechanical construction. However, how can we be the salves of technology—is not technology merely an extension of, a creation of, ourselves? This is only metaphorically true. The forces to which we submit so abjectly were not generated by ourselves but by our ancestors—what we create will in turn rule our progeny. It takes a certain amount of time for the social effects of technological change to make their appearance, by which time a generation has usually passed. Science-fiction writers have long been fascinated with the notion of being able to create material objects just by imagining them, and have built novels, stories, and films around the idea. Actually, it is merely an exaggeration of what normally takes place. Technology is materialized fantasy. We are ruled today by the material manifestations of the fantasies of previous generations. #RanolphHarris 6 of 25
We treat technology as if it were a fierce patriarch—we are deferential, submissive, and alert to its demands. Perhaps, that is why men dominate the Silicon Valley in San Jose, California USA, and in Shenzhen, a city in south China’s Guangdong province known as the “Silicon Valley of China.” (The Silicon Valley of China has gradually become a global hardware center and hub for scientific and technological advances, where skyscrapers appear commonplace and the population has surged past 13 million.) We feel spasms of hatred toward technology, and continually make fun of it but we do little to challenge the rule. People who develop technology, like Wolfgang Egger who is a World-famous Germany car designer, reports, “to have this opportunity to create something like this [an electric car] from nothing is a big challenge that I need.” That is the main reason why he joined the Chinese car manufacturer BYD three years ago. Technology has inherited the fantasy of the authoritarian father. Furthermore, since the technological environment that rules, frustrates, and manipulates us is a materialization of the wished of our forefathers, it is quite reasonable to say that technology is the authoritarian father in our society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The American father can be a good-natured humble man in the home precisely because he is so ruthless toward the nonhuman environment, leveling, uprooting, filling in, building up, tearing down, blowing up, tunneling under. This ruthlessness affects his children only indirectly, as the deranged environment afflicts the eyes, ears, nose, and nervous system of the next generation. However, it affects them nonetheless. Through this impersonal intermediary we inflict our will upon our children, and punish them for our generous indulgence—our child-oriented, self-sacrificing behaviour. It I small wonder that the myth of the punitive patriarch stays alive. From this viewpoint, then, delegating to technology the role of punitive patriarch is another example of the first process we described: the tendency to avoid interpersonal conflict by compartmentalization and a false illusion of autonomy—to place impersonal mechanisms between and around people and imagine that we have created a self-governing paradise. It is a kind of savage joke in its parental form. We say: “Look, I am an easy-going, good-natured, affectionate father. I behave in a democratic manner and treat you like a person, never pulling rank. As to all those roads and wires and social media and clones and machines and bombs and complex bureaucratic institutions out there, do not concern yourself about them—this is my department.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
However, when the child grows up one discovers the fraud. One learns that one is a slave to his father’s unconscious and unplanned whims—that the area of withheld power was crucial. The child becomes angry and rebels, saying, “You were not what you pretended, and I cannot be what you encouraged me to be.” The child attacks “the system” and authority everywhere, trying to find the source of the deception, and using techniques that reflect one’s commitment to what one’s father deceived one into thinking one was—a person. However, by this time one has also learned the system of avoiding conflict through impersonal mechanism and is ready to inflict the same deception on one’s own children. We love and indulge our children, and would never dream of hurting them. If they are poisoned, bombed, gassed, burned, or whatever, it is surely not our fault, since we do not even know how to manipulate those objects. The danger comes from outside. Perhaps long ago we did something to deliver them into these impersonal hands, but we have forgotten, and in any case it is not our responsibility. Technology, in other words, is our plains sorcerer. Because Americans have submitted so passively to the havoc wreaked by technological change, they have had to convince themselves that their obsequiousness is right and good and appropriate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Any challenge to the technological-over-social priority threatens to expose the fact that Americans has lost their adulthood and their capacity to control their environment. So long as the priority is unchallenged and unmentioned, the human surrender involved need not be confronted. However, youth is increasingly saying: “What about the people? Why have you abdicated your birthright to hardware?” It is a humiliating question, and humiliating questions tend to be answered with blows. Furthermore, the social changes wrought by technological change are so vast and shattering and we are kept so off-balance by them that the desire for independent social change (that is, change produced by human needs rather than technology) appears not as a solution and the assumption of control, but as still another disruptive force. It is like the inhabitants of an occupied country, who say to their militants, “do not fight the enemy, it will just bring more massive retaliation down upon us. Attack your own family.” The predominant feeling is that there is more change than anybody can tolerate already, so how can anyone ever consider a radical reevaluation of the whole system. I felt sure that it was just a public-relations problem that only needed a public-relations solution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
I do not give a damn how it is done; do whatever has to be done to stop these leaks and prevent further lies and unauthorized disclosures. I do not want excuses. I want results…whatever the cost. It became necessary for Americans to express themselves on a middle plane between vaporous idealism and self-interested practicality. The association of highbrow culture with vaporous idealism and lowbrow culture with self-interested practicality exemplified the widespread acceptance, by intellectuals as well as noneintellectuals, of the idea that devotion to the life of the mind must somehow be opposed to a decent regard for the exigencies of everyday life. The distinctive feature of American middlebrow culture was its embodiment of the old civic credo that anyone willing to invest time and energy in self-education might better oneself. Many uneducated people cherished middlebrow values: the millions of sets of encyclopedias sold door to door from the 1920s well into the 1980s were often purchased through an installment plan by parents who had never owned a book but were willing to sacrifice to provide their children with information about the World that had been absent from their own upbringing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Remnants of earnest middlebrows striving today among various communities, but the larger edifice of middlebrow culture, which once encompassed Americans of many social classes as well as ethnic and racial backgrounds, has collapsed. The disintegration and denigration of the middlebrow are closely linked to the political and class polarization that distinguishes the current wave of anti-intellectualism from the popular suspicion of highbrows and eggheads that have always, to a greater or lesser degree, been a part of the American psyche. What has been lost is an alterative to mass popular culture, imbibed unconsciously and effortlessly through the audio and video portals that surround us all. What has been lost is the culture of effort. Middlebrow culture was, above all, a reading culture. In the 1950s, to be raised in a middlebrow family meant that there were books, magazines, newspapers in the house and that everyone old enough to read had a library card. Some schools in Sacramento, California would even pause for fifteen minutes a day for reading time, where students could read whatever they wanted, as long as it was a book, it was appropriate, and educational. If much of the reading material was scorned by highbrow intellectuals, the books certainly provided ample room for growth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
People had books clubs, much like Reese Witherspoon has popularized, where people select a book each month, read it and talk about. And people who live in segregated communities were taught to learn to appreciate masterpieces like The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and many more, and to make sure that no one could segregate one’s mind. Still, 25 percent of American high school biology teachers still believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. American ideal of self-education is a distinct era of self-help, and people placed far more emphasis on improving personality and public image and the mind like never before. However, “civilized” is still defined by the gatekeeps of greatness on the installment plan. Many people want to make it into the “Fat Man’s” class which was dubbed that for the size of their pocketbooks. We want everything to be cheap and high quality, but do not look at the value and utility it provides, and then complain about how little we get paid. Our parents, grandparents, and maybe for some of you, great grandparents had it a lot harder than we do today. We hear about how inexpensive everything used to be, but do not take inflation into account. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
In 1952, a great book cost $249.95, in 2020 dollars that is $2,470.21. Imagine what a luxury a book was back then. In fact, reading books was a status symbol because the proved to the World that one was the sort of person who did read and who could afford the price of a book. People like Reese Witherspoon is doing an excellent job trying to get Americans back into reading books. When a celebrity is seen doing anything, it becomes a trend and what could be a more productive trend than getting people to expand their minds. The possession of certain kinds of knowledge, and the ability to recalls facts before an audience of millions, could provide both fame and fortune. When being smart become a trend, imagine how much better off our society will be, how much productive our children will be. They will learn the root of what it takes to have fun and know they have to study and work hard to earn the money it takes to have fun. Because, as one gets older, fun gets more expensive. Getting a day off from school and watching TV is no longer fun, but having the ability to legally buy new cars and houses and take vacations and decorate your own private home is fun. Having privacy and dignity in your own environment is fun. Being able to relocate or explore the World when you want to is fun. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
An aspect of the Christian work ethic is enthusiasm. “Whatever you do,” Paul told the Colossians, “work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for humans,” reports Colossians 3.23. To the Romans Pail admonished, “Never be lacking in seal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord,” reports Romans 12.11. It is natural—actually quite easy—to be enthusiastic if your work is prominent, but less natural the more hidden it is, as the conductor of a great symphony orchestra once reveled when asked which was the most difficult instrument to play. “Second violin,” he answered. “We can get plenty of first violinists. However, to get someone who will play second violin with enthusiasm—that is a problem!” And so it is. However, actually, doing one’s work with enthusiasm, even if hidden, plays for an audience far greater than that of the most famous symphony orchestras or World champion sports teams! If we could be really see this, our enthusiasm would never flag. However, it can still be hard to reason with some people. Their very mind has been taken over by one or more feelings and is made to defend and serve those feelings at all costs. It is a fearful condition from which some people never escape. We have noted how thoughts generate feelings. If we allow certain negative thoughts to obsess us, then their associated feelings can enslave and blind us—that is, take over our ability to think and perceive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
As humans, we can unknowingly become slaves to technology, or feelings and so man other things. Here, for example, is a woman (it could have just as well have been a man) who has taken in the thought that she has been treated unfairly for years in her marriage and her job. Rather than sensibly addressing the circumstances or just turning her mind away from this thought, she receives it and broods over it—for years—developing a tremendous sense of injustice and outrage, which she also welcomes and cultivates with the assistance of sympathetic friends. The “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12.15) gradually spreads over her whole personality, seeping deeply into her body and soul. It becomes something you can see in her bodily motions and actions and hear oozing through the language she uses. It affects her capacity to see what is actually going on around her, to realize what she is actually doing, and to think thoroughly and consistently. She is in the prison of resentment, though she thinks she is perhaps for the first time acting freely. Beyond the individual level, poisonous emotions and sensations often take over entire social groups, blinding them and impelling them on terrible courses of destruction. This is nearly always what has happened in cases where repression of ethnic groups or genocide occurs. Thus, to the onlooker the participants (the tyrants) seem to be deaf, blind, and insane—which, in a sense, they are. They, too, are imprisoned. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Feelings can be successfully reasoned with, can be corrected by reality, only in those (whether oneself or others) who have the habit and are given the grace of listening to reason even when they are expressing violent feelings or are in the grip of them. A feeling of sufficient strength may blot out all else and will invariably do so in one who has not trained oneself, or been trained, to identify, to be critical of, and to have some distance from one’s own feelings. Combined with a sense of righteousness, strong feeling becomes impervious to fact and reason. I beseech ye brethren, by the bowels of Christ, believe ye may be wrong! One’s feelings of righteousness does not mean one is right and actually should alert one to be very cautious and humble. Those who are wise will, accordingly, never allow themselves, if they can help it, to get in a position where they feel too deeply about any human matter. They will never willingly choose to allow feeling to govern them. They will carefully keep the pathway open to the house of reason and go there regularly to listen. If we are to appropriate God’s grace, we must humble ourselves, we must submit to His providential working in our lives. To do this we must first see His mighty hand behind all the immediate causes of our adversities and heartaches. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
We must believe the biblical teaching that God is in sovereign control of all our circumstances, and whatever or whoever is the immediate cause of our circumstances, God is behind them all. “And it came to pass that he wrote again to the governor of the land, who was Pahoran, and these are the words which he wrote saying: Behold, I direct mine epistle to Pahoran, in the city of Zarahemla, who is the chief judge and the governor over the land, and also to all those who have been chosen by this people to govern and manage the affairs of this war. For behold, I have somewhat to say unto them by the way of condemnation; for behold, ye yourselves know that we have been appointed to gather together humans, and arm them with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war of every kind, and send forth against the Lamanites, in whatsoever part they should come into out land. And now behold, I say unto you that myself, and also my men, and also Helaman and his men, have suffered exceedingly great sufferings; yea, even hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and all manner of afflictions of every kind. However, behold, were this all we had suffered we would not murmur nor complain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“However, behold, great has been the slaughter among our people; yea, thousands have fallen by the sword, while it might have otherwise been if ye had rendered unto our armies sufficient strength and succor for them. Yea, great has been your neglect towards us. And now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect; yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state. Can you think to sit upon your thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor, while your enemies are spreading the work of death around you? Yea, while they are murdering thousands of your brethren—yea, even they who have looked up to you for protection, yea, have placed you in a situation that ye might have sent armies unto them, to have strengthened them, and have saved thousands of them from falling by the sword. However, behold, this is not all—ye have withheld your provisions from them, insomuch that many have fought and bled out their lives because of their great desires which they had for the welfare of this people; yea, and this they have done when they were abut to perish with hunger, because of your exceedingly great neglect towards them. And now, my beloved brethren—for ye ought to have stirred yourselves more diligently for the welfare and the freedom of this people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“However, behold, ye have neglected them insomuch that the blood of thousands shall come upon your heads for vengeance; yea, for known unto God were all their cries, and all their sufferings—behold, could ye suppose that ye could sit upon your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God ye could do nothing and he would deliver you? Behold, if ye have supposed this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose that, because so many of your brethren have been killed it is because of their wickedness? I say unto you, if ye have supposed in vain; for I say unto you, there are many who have fallen by the sword; and behold it is to your condemnation; for the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgment may come upon the wicked; therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost because they are slain; but behold, they do enter into the rest of the Lord their God. And now behold, I say unto you, I fear exceedingly that the judgments of God will come upon this people, because of their exceeding slothfulness, yea, even the slothfulness of our government, and their exceedingly great neglect towards their brethren, yea, towards those who have been slain. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“For were it not for the wickedness which first commenced at our hear, we could have withstood our enemies that they could have withstood our enemies that they could have gained no power over us. Yea, had it not been for the war which broken out among ourselves; yea, were it not for these king-men, who caused so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, at the time we were contending among ourselves, if we had united our strength as we hitherto have done; yea, had it not been for the desire of power and authority which those king-men had over us; had they been true to the cause of our freedom, and untied with us, and gone forth against our enemies, instead of taking up their swords against us, which was the cause of so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, if we had gone forth against them in the strength of the Lord, we should have dispersed our enemies, for it would have been done, according to the fulfilling of his word. However, behold, now the Lamanites are coming upon us, taking possession of our lands, and they are murdering our people with the sword, yea, our women and our children, and also carrying them away captive, causing them that they should suffer all manner of afflictions, and this because of the great wickedness of those who are seeking for power and authority, yea, even those king-men. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
However, why should I say much concerning this matter? For we know not but what ye yourselves are seeking for authority. We know not but what ye are also traitors to your country. Or is it that ye have neglected us because ye are in the heart of our country and ye are surrounded by security, that ye do not cause food to be sent unto us, and also humans to strengthen our armies? Have ye forgotten in the commandments of the Lord your God? Yea, have ye forgotten the captivity of our fathers? Have ye forgotten the many times we have been delivered out of the hands of our enemies? Or do ye supposed that the Lord will still deliver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make us of the means which the Lord has provided for us? Yea, will ye sit in idleness while ye are surrounded with thousands of those, yea, and tens of thousands, who do also sit in idleness, while there are thousands round about in the borders of the land who are falling by the sword, yea, wounded and bleeding? Do ye supposed that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, Nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And now, expect ye do repent of that which ye have done, and begin to be up and doing, and send forth food and humans unto us, and also unto Helaman, that he may support those parts of our country which he had regained, and that we may also recover the remainder of our possession in these parts, behold it will be expedient that we contend no more with the Lamanites until we have first cleansed our inward vessel, yea, even the great head of our government. And expect ye grant mine epistle, and come out and show unto me a true spirit of freedom, and stive to strengthen and fortify our armies, and great unto them food a part of my freemen to maintain this part of our land, and I will leave the strength and the blessings of God upon them, that none other power can operate against them—and this because of their exceeding faith, and their patience in their tribulation—and I will come unto you, and if there be any among you that has a desire for freedom, yes, if there be even a spark of freedom remaining, behold I will stir up insurrections among you, even until those who have desires to usurp power and authority shall become extinct. Yea, behold I do not fear your power nor your authority, but it is my God whom I fear; and it is according to his commandments that I do take my sword to defend the cause of my country, and it is because of your iniquity that we have suffered much loss. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“Behold, I wait for assistance from your; and except ye do administer unto our relief, behold, I come unto you, even in the land of Zarahemla, and smite you with the sword, insomuch that ye can have no more power to impede the progress of this people in the cause of our freedom. For behold, the Lord will not suffer that ye shall live and wax strong in your iniquities to destroy his righteous people. Behold, can you suppose that the Lord will spare you and come out in judgment against the Lamanites, when it is the tradition of their fathers that has caused their hatred, yea, and it has been redoubled by those who have dissented from us, while your iniquity is for the cause of your love of glory and the vain things of the World? Ye know that ye do transgress the laws of God, and ye do know that ye do trample them under your feet. Behold, the Lord saith unto me: If those whom ye have appointed your governors do not repent of their sins and iniquities, ye shall go up to battle against them. And now behold, I, Moroni, am constrained, according to the covenant which I have made to keep the commandments of my God; therefore I would that ye should adhere to the word of God, and send speedily unto me of your provisions and of your men, and also to Helaman. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“And behold, if ye will not do this I come unto you speedily; for behold, God will not suffer that we should perish with hunger; therefore he will give unto us of your food, even if it must be by the sword. Now see that ye fulfill the word of God. Behold, I am Moroni, your chief captain. I seek not for power, but to pull it down. I seek not for honour of the World, but for the glory of my God, and the freedom and welfare of my country. And thus I close mine epistle,” reports Alma 60.1-36. A lion protecting His young, you rage when aroused. Nothing stands before You, no troubles can resist You, no enemies defeat You. A roaring in the distance announces your arrival, scattering the dealers of cares. You shake the Earth beneath their feet, upsetting all the plans. “Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontless between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorpost of thy house, and upon thy gates; that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land which the Lord promised unto your fathers to give them, as the days of the Heavens above the Earth,” reports Deuteronomy 11.16-21. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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I Do Not Know the Method of Drawing Up an Indictment Against a Whole People!
Diplomacy is the art of the possible, and we have to keep readjusting our concept of what is possible. In the past, Americans were addressed as people or, in the more distant past, ladies and gentlemen. Now we are consumers. This is symptomatic of a debasement of public speech inseparable from a more general erosion. Proper grammar and respectful forms of address were mandatory not only for people seeking professional jobs, but also for those seeking high office. We have to call for resolution and a spirit of patriotism and sacrifice to encourage people to rise above their everyday selves and to behave as true citizens. To keep telling Americans that they are just consumers is to expect nothing special. The English language is becoming ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish. The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. As it stands, some people never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human intelligence. However, few people like to consider themselves enemies of thought and culture. Still, there is a suggestion in society that there is something sinister, even un-American, about intense devotion to ideas, reason, logic, evidence, and precise language is one of them. Anti-intellectualism is turning a treatable, livable condition into a morbid disease affecting the entire community. #RandolphHarris 1 of 28
The media seems to offer ladies and gentlemen an unprecedented variety of choices—television programs on hundreds of channels; movies; news; video games; music; and the Internet versions of these products, available in so many portable electronic packages that it is entirely possible to go through an entire day without being deprived for a second of commercial entertainment. And it is not that the television, or any of its successors in the World of video was designed as an enemy of active intellectual life in American, but the media has restricted their audience’s intellectual parameters by fulling time—a huge amount of time—that used to be occupied by engagement in the written word. However, in the early fifties, many intellectuals had great hops for television as an educational medium and as a general force for good. Television used to be a treat rather than the metronome of everyday life. Medical research does indicate that frequent exposure to any form of video in the early years of life produces older children with shortened attention spans. It does not matter whether the images are produced by a television network, a film studio, or a computer software company: what matters is the amount of time children spend starting at a monitor. The American Academy of Pediatrics has concluded that there is no safe level of viewing for children under age two. #RandolphHarris 2 of 28
Video has a capacity to dull the wits of highly educated professionals as well as innocent babies. However, the way to introduce children to music is by playing good music, uninterrupted by video clowns, at home; the way to introduce poetry is by reciting or reading it at bedtime; and the way to instill an appreciation of beauty is not to bombard a toddler with screen images of Monet’s Giverny but to introduce one to the real sighs and scents of a garden. Still, only a Luddite would claim that the video culture, whether displayed on television screens or computer monitors, has nothing to contribute to individual intellectual development or the intellectual life of society. Yet, there is little question that the intrusion of video into the psyches of Americans at ever earlier ages is not only making it unnecessary for young children to entertain themselves but is also discouraging them from thinking and fantasizing outside the box, in the most literal as well as a figurative sense. In the nineteenth century, London readers used to get up early and wait in line for the newest installment of a novel by Charles Dickens; in New York, Dickens fans would meet at the boasts known to be carrying copies of the tantalizing chapters. The Web, however, is all about the quickest possible gratification; it may well be that people most disposed to read online are least disposed to wait any length of time for a new chapter of work by their favourite writer. #RandolphHarris 3 of 28
The Internet is the perfect delivery medium for reference books and textbooks, which were never designed to be read from cover to cover. However, a narrow, time-saving focus is inimical not only to the reading for enjoyment but to reading that encourages the retention of knowledge. Memory, which depends on the capacity to absorb ideas and information through exposition and to connect new information to an established edifice of knowledge, is one of the first victims of video culture. Without memory, judgments are made on the unsound basis of the most recent bit of half-digested information. All mass entertainment media, and the expanding body of educational media based on the entertainment model, emphasize “stand alone” programming that does not require a prior body of knowledge. The media provide the yeast, which, when added to others American social forces and institutions, creates a fertile culture for the spread of invincible ignorance throughout the public square. Modern media also overtly and covertly appeals to the emotion rather than reason. To begin with it may happen that an affect or an emotion is perceived but misconstrued. By the repression of its proper presentation it is forced to become connected with another idea, and is now interpreted by consciousness as the expression of this other idea. #RandolphHarris 4 of 28
If we restore the true connection, we call the original affect “unconscious” although the affect was never unconscious but its ideational presentation had undergone repression. Motive and wish, as aspect of affect, are certainly assumed to be potentially unconscious. Boredom involves an unconscious attempt to convince oneself that one does not want to gratify an instinctual wish that is frightening, and therefore one has no wish to do anything. We must go beyond the organism and the physical environment to account for human emotions. Social factors enter not simply before and after but interactively during the experience of emotion. Let us say that humans become violently angry when insulted. What, in one’s cultural milieu, constitutes an insult? As one’s anger rases, does one recodify the reality to which one responds? Does some feature of the social context assist or inhibit one in this situation? Simultaneous to one’s outburst, does one react with shame or with pride at the anger? Does one express the anger in ways that work it up or ways that bind it? These are the questions of the interactionist. If we conceptualize emotion as instinct, we never pose questions about these points of social entry in the first place. #RandolphHarris 5 of 28
There are an indefinite number of original or instinctive activities which are organized into interests and dispositions according to the situation to which they respond. Thus, fear or anger have no common origin in a constitutional disposition. Rather, each feeling takes its shape, and in a sense becomes itself only in social context. The self, in the process of charting a course of action actively recharts and alters that course while interacting with the situation. When our feelings are vague and inchoate, the reactions of others to our gestures may help define what we really comes to feel. For example, if a girl has been jilted at the alter and is generally upset about it, the responses of her mother may define the girl’s feelings of sadness and great grief, or of indignation and anger. In such cases, our gestures do not necessarily “express” our prior feeling. They make available to others a sign. However, what it is a sign of may be influenced by their reactions to it. We, in turn, may internalize their imputation and thus define our inchoate feelings. The social interaction of gestures may thus not only express our feelings but define them as well. The girl cries. The mother defines the crying as a sign of anger. The girl responds to her mother’s interpretation of her tears. “Yes, anger more than sadness.” And what the crying “is a sign of” is in this way swayed in interaction with the mother. #RandolphHarris 6 of 28
How do other people influence our understanding of what we feel and, more deeply, even change the “object” of our understanding? How does this influence work differently in differently cultural context? Each situation “taxes” the individual, who in return gets protection from unpredictability and membership in something larger. The affective deviant is one who tries to avoid paying these social taxes. Taxes, in turn, come in emotive currency. For example, embarrassment is an individual’s contribution to the group in the singular sense that embarrassment indicates that the individual cares how one seems in company. Not to feel embarrassed in certain situations is to violate the latent rule that one should care about how the group handles or mishandles one’s identity. The problem with this rendition of reality is that there is no structural bridge between all the situations. There are “taxes” here and “taxes” there but no notion of an overarching pattern that would connect the “collections.” Social structure is only our idea of what many situations of a certain sort add up to. From one fractured island of reality to the next, and all the work of making a situation seem real must begin afresh each time. To solve this problem, we should take this development and link it to institutions on the one had and to personality on the other. This would enable us to account for what we predicate from one situation to the next, in both institutions and individuals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 28
You yourself are the eternal energy which appears as the Universe. You did not come into this World. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here. Every role one assumes is also audience to all the other, and the play is performed so convincingly that the audience takes it “for real.” Independence training in American society begins almost at birth—babies are held and carried less than in most societies and spend more time in complete isolation—and continues, despite occasional parental ambivalence, throughout childhood and adolescence. When a child is admonished to be a “big boy” or “big girl” this usually means doing something alone without help (the rest of the time it involves strangling feelings, but this norm seems to be on the wane). Signs of independence are usually rewarded, and a child who in too obvious a manner calls attention to the fact that human intelligence is based almost entirely on the process of imitation is ridiculed by calling him a copycat or a monkey (after the paradoxical habit humans have of projecting their most uniquely human attributes onto animals). There have been many complaints in recent years that independence training is less rigorous than it once was, but again, as in the case of competitiveness, this is hard to assess. #RandolphHarris 8 of 28
To be on one’s own in a simple, stable, and familiar environment requires a good deal less internal “independence” than to be on one’s own in a complex, shifting, and strange one. Certainly a child could run about more freely a century ago without coming to harm, and one’s errors and misdeeds had far more trivial consequences than today; but this decline in the child’s freedom of movement says nothing about the degree to which the child is asked to forego the pleasures of depending upon one’s parents for nurturance and support. If the objective need is greater, it may offset a small increase in parental tolerance for dependent behaviour, and cause the child to experience the independence training as more severe rather than less. In any case, American independence training is severe relative to most of the rest of the World, and we might assume this to have emotional consequences. This is not to say that such training is not consonant with the demands of adult society: the two are quite in accord. Sociologists and anthropologists are often content to stop at this point and say that as long as this accord exists there is no problem worth discussing. However, in frustration of any need has its effects (one of them being to increase the society’s vulnerability to social change) and these should be understood. #RandolphHarris 9 of 28
An example might help clarify this issue. Ezra and Suzanne Vogel observe that some Japanese parents encourage dependency as actively as many American parents push independence, and that healthy children and adults in Japan rely heavily on others for emotional support and decisions about their lives. A degree of dependence on the mother which in America would be considered “atypical” prepares the Japanese for a society in which far more dependency is expected and accepted than in ours. The Japanese firm is highly paternalistic and takes a great deal of responsibility for making the individual employee secure and comfortable. The Vogels observe, however, that just as the American mother tends to complain at the success of her effort and feel that her children are too independent, so the Japanese mother tends to feel that her children are too dependent, despite the fact that she has trained them this way. Regardless of the congruence between socialization practices and adult norms, any extreme pattern of training will produce stresses for the individuals involved. And just as the mothers experience discomfort with the effects of these patterns, so do the children, although barred by cultural values from recognizing and naming the nature of their distress, which in our society takes the form of a desire to relinquish responsibility for control and decision-making in one’s daily life. #RandolphHarris 10 of 28
Deeply felt democratic values usually stand in the way of realizing this goal through authoritarian submission, although our attitudes toward democracy are not without ambivalence, as has been suggested elsewhere; but the temptation to abdicate self-direction in more subtle ways is powerful indeed. Perhaps the major problem for Americans is that of choice: Americans are forced into making more choices per day, with fewer “givens,” and more ambiguous criteria, less environmental stability, and less social structural support, then any people in history. Many of the mechanisms through which dependency is counteracted in our society have already been discussed, but a word should be said about the complex problem of internalized controls. In stable societies, as many authors have pointed out, the control of human impulses is usually a collective responsibility. The individual is viewed as not having within oneself the controls required to guarantee that one’s impulses will not break out in ways disapproved by the community. However, this matters very little, since the group is always near at hand to stop one or shame one or punish one should one forget oneself. In more fluid, changing societies we are more apt to find controls that are internalized—that do not depend to so great an extent on control and enforcement by external agents. #RandolphHarris 11 of 28
It has long been characteristic of American society—de Tocqueville observed in 1830 that generally American women were much more independent than European women, freer from chaperonage, and able to appear in what a European would consider “compromising” situations without any sign of involvement in pleasures of the flesh. Chaperonage is in fact the simplest way to illustrate the difference between external and internalized controls. In chaperon cultures—such as traditional Middle-Eastern and Latin societies—it simply did not occur to anyone that a man and a woman could be alone together and not copulate. In American, which represents the opposite extreme, there is almost no situation in which a man and a woman could find themselves in which pleasures of the flesh could not at least be considered problematic (Hollywood comedies have exploited this phenomenon—well past the point of exhaustion and nausea—over the past 35 years). Americans are virtuosi of internalized control of expressions dealing with pleasures of the flesh (the current relaxation of norms involving pleasures of the flesh in no way changes this), and this has caused difficulties whenever the two systems have come into contact. An unchaperoned young lady in a bikini or mini-skirt means one thing in America, another in Baghdad. #RandolphHarris 12 of 28
It is a mistake to consider a chaperon society more prudish—the compliment is likely to be returned when the difference is understood. Even Americans consider some situations inherently to involve pleasures of the flesh: if a young lady from some mythical culture came to an American’s house, disrobed, and climbed into bed with him, he would assume she was making an overture for pleasures of the flesh and would be rather indignant if he found that she was merely expressing casual friendship according to her native customs. If he were also called prudish, he would be puzzled, and we need not speculate as to what he would call her. However, how are internalized controls created? We know that they are closely tied to what are usually called “love-oriented” techniques of discipline in childhood. These techniques avoid physical punishment and deprivation of privileges and stress reasoning and the withdrawal of parental affection. The basic difference between “love-oriented” and “fear-oriented” techniques (such as physical punishment) is that in the later case the child simply learns to avoid punishment while in the former one tends to incorporate parental values as one’s own in order to avoid losing parental love and approval. #RandolphHarris 13 of 28
When fear-oriented techniques prevail, the child is in the position of inhabitants of an occupied country, who obey to avoid getting hurt but disobey whenever they think they can get away with it. Like them, the child does not have any emotional commitment to one’s rulers—one does not fear losing their love. Love-oriented techniques require by definition that love and discipline emanate from the same source. When this happens it is not merely a question of avoiding the punisher: the child wishes to anticipate the displeasure of the loved and loving parent, wants to be like the parent, and takes into oneself as a part of oneself the values and attitudes of the parent. One wants to please, not placate, and because one has taken the parent’s attitudes as one’s own, pleasing the parents comes to mean making one feel good about oneself. Thus while individuals raised with fear-oriented techniques tend to direct anger outward under stress, those raised with love-oriented techniques tends to direct it inward in the form of guilt—a distinction that has important physiological correlates. Under stable conditions external controls work perfectly well. Everyone knows one’s own place and one’s neighbour’s, and deviations from expected behaviour will be quickly met from all sides. #RandolphHarris 14 of 28
When social conditions fluctuate, social norms change, and people move frequently from one social setting to another and are often among strangers, this will no longer do. An individual cannot take one’s whole community with one wherever one goes, and in any case the rules differ from place to place. The mobile individual must travel light, and internalized controls are portable and transistorized, as it were. Anger directed inward is also made from mobile conditions. In a stable community two youths who start to get into a fight will be held back by their friends—they depend upon this restraint and can abandon themselves to their passion, knowing that it will not produce harmful consequences. However, where one moves among strangers it becomes increasingly important to have other mechanisms for handling aggression. In situations of high mobility and flux the individual must have a built-in readiness to feel oneself responsible when things go wrong. Most modern societies are a confused mixture of both systems, a fact that enables conservative spokes persons to attribute rising crime rates to permissive child-rearing techniques. The overwhelmingly majority of ordinary crimes, however, are committed by individuals who have not been reared with love-oriented techniques, but, insofar as the parents or parents have been able to rear them at all, by the haphazard use of fear-oriented discipline. #RandolphHarris 15 of 28
Love-oriented child-rearing techniques are a luxury that some less affluent parents, for example, can seldom afford, not only for financial reasons, but for social reasons also. Furthermore, it is rather misleading to refer to the heavily guilt-inducing socialization techniques of middle-class parents as “permissive.” Misbehaviour in less affluent children is more often greeted with a cuff, possibly accompanied by some non-informative response such as “stop that!” However, it may not be at all clear to the child which of the many motions one is now performing “that” is’ and indeed, “that” may be punished only when the parent is feeling irritable. A child would have to have achieved an enormously high intelligence level (which, of course, it has not, for his very reason) to be able to form a moral concept out of a hundred irritable stop-that’s. What one usually forms is merely a crude sense of when the “old man” or the “old lady” is to be avoided. The self-conscious, highly verbal, middle-class parent is at the opposite extreme. One feels that discipline should relate to the children’s act, not the parent’s own emotional state, and is very careful to emphasize verbally the principle involved in the misbehaviour (“it is bad to hit people” or “we have to share with guests”). Concept-formation is made very easy for the middle-class child, and one tends to think of moral questions in terms of principles. #RandolphHarris 16 of 28
As one grows older this tendency is reinforced by one’s encounter with different groups with different norms. In a mobile society, one cannot simply accept the absolute validity of any rule because one’s experiences competing moral codes. As a result the middle-class child tends to evolve a system of meta-rules, that is, rules for assessing the relative validity of these codes. The meta-rules tend to be based upon the earliest and most general principles expressed by the parents; such as prohibitions on violence against others, egalitarianism, mutuality, and so on. This ability to treat rules in a highly secular fashion while maintaining a strong moral position is baffling to those whose control mechanisms are more primitive, but it presupposes a powerful and articulate conscience. Such an individual can expose oneself to physical harm and to violence-arousing situations without losing control and while maintaining a moral position. This may seem inconceivable to an uneducated working-class authoritarian whose own impulses are barely held in line by a jerry-built structure of poorly articulated and mutually contradictory moral absolutes. Hence one tends to misinterpret radical middle-class behaviour as a hypocritical mask for mere delinquency. #RandolphHarris 17 of 28
However, internalization is a mixed blessing. It may enable one to get one’s head smashed in a good cause, but the capacity to give oneself up completely to an emotion is almost altogether lost in the process. Where internalization is high there is often a feeling that the controls themselves are out of control—that emotion cannot be expressed when the individual would like to express it. Life is muted, experience filtered, emotion anesthetized, affective discharge incomplete. Efforts to shake free from this hypertrophied control system include not only drugs, and sensation-retrieval techniques such as those developed at the Esalen Institute in California, but also confused attempts to reestablish external systems of direction and control—the vogue currently enjoyed by astrology is an expression of this. The simplest technique, of course, would be the establishment of a more authoritarian social structure, which would relieve the individual of the great burden of examining and moderating one’s own responses. One could become as a child, lighthearted, spontaneous, and passionate, secure in the knowledge that others would prevent one’s impulses from causing one harm. Realization of this goal is prevented by democratic values and the social conditions that foster them (complexity, fluidity, change). #RandolphHarris 18 of 28
However, the desire plays a significant part in conventional reactions to radical underrepresented groups, who are all felt to be seeking the abandonment of self-restraints of one kind or another and at the same time demanding more responsible behavior from the establishment. This is both infuriating and contagious to dominant affluent adults, who would like very much to do the same, and their call for “law and order” (that is, more external control) is an expression of that desire as well as an attempt to smother it. This conflict over dependency and internalization also helps explain why official American anticommunism always lays so much stress on the authoritarian (rather than the socialistic) aspects of Communist states. “And now it came to pass that in the commencement of the thirtieth year of the reign of the judges, on the second day in the first month, Moroni received an epistle from Helaman, stating the affairs of the people in that quarter of the land. And these are the words which he wrote, saying: My dearly beloved brother, Moroni, as well in the Lord as in the tribulations of our warfare; behold, my beloved brother, I have somewhat to tell you concerning our warfare in this part of the land. Behold, two thousand of the sons of those men who Ammon brought down out of the land of Nephi—now ye have known that these were descendants of Laman, who was the eldest son of our father Lehi. #RandolphHarris 19 of 28
“Now I need not rehearse unto you concerning their traditions or their unbelief, for thou knowest concerning all these things. Therefore it sufficeth me that I tell you that two thousand of these young men have taken their weapons of war, and would that I should be their leader; and we have come forth to defend our country. And now ye also know concerning the covenants which their fathers made, that they would not take up their weapons of war against their brethren to shed blood. However, in the twenty and sixth year, when they saw our afflictions our tribulations for them, they were about to break the covenant which they had made and take up their weapons of war in our defence. However, I would not suffer them that they should break this covenant which they had made, supposing that God would strengthen us, insomuch that we should not suffer more because of the fulfilling the oath which they had taken. However, behold, here is one thing in which we may have great joy. For behold, in the twenty and sixth year, I, Helaman, did march at the head of these two thousand young men to the city of Judea, to assist Antipus, whom ye had appointed a leader over the people of that part of the land. And I did join my two thousand sons, (for they are worthy to be called sons) to the army of Antipus, in which strength Antipus did rejoice exceedingly; for behold, his army had been reduced by the Lamanites because their forces had slain a vast number of our men, for which cause we have to mourn. #RandolphHarris 20 of 28
Nevertheless, we may console ourselves in this point, that they have died in the cause of their country and of their God, yea, and they are happy. And the Lamanites had also retained many prisoners, all of whom are chief captains, for none other have they spared alive. And we suppose that they are now at this time in the land of Nephi; it is also if they are not slain. And now these are the cities of which the Lamanites have obtained possession by shedding of the blood of so many of our valiant men: the land of Manti, or the city of Manti, and the city of Zeezrom, and the city of Cumeni, and the city of Antiparah. And these are the cities which they possessed when I arrived at the city of Judea; and I found Antipus and his men toiling with their might to fortify the city. Yea, and they were depressed in body as well as in spirit, for they had fought valiantly by day and toiled by night to maintain their cities; and thus they had suffered great afflictions of every kind. And now they were determined to conquer in this place of die; therefore you may well suppose that this little force which I brought with me, yea, those sons of mine, gave them great hopes and much joy. And now it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that Antipus had received a greater strength to his army, hey were compelled by the orders of Ammoron to not come against the city of Judea, or against us, to battle. #RandolphHarris 21 of 28
“And thus were we favoured of the Lord; for had they come upon us in this our weakness they might have perhaps destroyed our little army; but thus were we preserved. They were commanded by Ammoron to maintain those cities which they had taken. And thus ended the twenty and sixth year. And in the commencement of the twenty and seventh year we had prepared our city and ourselves for defence. Now we were desirous that the Lamanites should come upon us; for we were not desirous to make an attack upon them in their strongholds. And it came to pass that we kept spies out round about, to watch the movements of the Lamanites, that they might not pass us by night nor by day to make an attack upon our other cities which were on the northward. For we knew in those cities they were not sufficiently strong to meet them; therefore we were desirous, if they should pass by us, to fall upon them in their rear, and thus bring them up in the rear at the same time they were met in the front. We supposed that we could overpower them; but behold, we were disappointed in this our desire. They durst not pass by us with their whole army, neither durst they with a part, lest they should not be sufficiently strong and they should fall. Neither durst they marched down against the city of Zarahemla; neither durst they cross the head of Sidon, over to the city of Nephihah. #RandolphHarris 22 of 28
“And thus, with their forces, they were determined to maintain those cities which they had taken. And now it came to pass in the second month of this year, there was brought unto us many provisions from the fathers of those my two thousand sons. And also there were sent two thousand men unto us from the land of Zarahemla. And thus we were prepared with ten thousand men, and provisions for them, and also for their wives and their children. And the Lamanites, thus seeing our forces increase daily, and provisions arrive for our support, they began to be fearful, and began to sally forth, if it were possible to put an end to our receiving provisions and strength. Now when we saw that the Lamanites began to grow uneasy on this wise, we were desirous to bring a stratagem into effect upon them; therefore Antipus ordered that I should march forth with my little sons to a neighbouring city, as if we were carrying provisions to a neighbouring city. And we were to march near the city of Antiparah, as if we were going to the city beyond, in the borders by the seashore. And it came to pass that we did march forth, as if with our provisions, to go to the city. And it came to pass that Antipus did march forth with a part of his army, leaving the remainder to maintain the city. However, he did not march forth until I had gone forth with my little army, and came near the city Antiparah. #RandolphHarris 23 of 28
“And now, in the city Antiparah were stationed the strongest army of the Lamanites; yea, the most numerous. And it came to pass that we did flee before them, northward. And thus we did lead away the most powerful army of the Lamanites; yea, even to a considerable distance, insomuch that when they saw the army of Antipus pursuing them, with their might, they did not turn to the right nor to the left, but pursued their march in a straight course after us; and, as we suppose, it was their intent to slay us before Antipus should overtake them, and this that they might not be surrounded by our people. And now Antipus, beholding our danger, did speed the march of his army. However, behold, it was night; therefore they did not overtake us, neither did Antipus overtake them; therefore we did camp for the night. And it came to pass that before the dawn of the morning, behold, the Lamanites were pursuing us. Now we were not sufficiently strong to contend with them; yea, I would not suffer that my little sons should fall into their hands; therefore we did continue our march, and we took our march into the wilderness. Now they durst not turn to the right nor to the left lest they should be surrounded; neither would I turn to the right nor to the lest they should overtake me, and we could not stand against them, but be slain, and they would make their escape; and thus we did flee all that day into the wilderness, even until it was dark. #RandolphHarris 24 of 28
“And it came to pass that again, when the light of the morning came we saw the Lamanites upon us, and we did flee before them. However, it came to pass that they did not pursue us far before they halted; and it was in the morning of the third day of the seventh month. And now, whether they were overtaken by Antipus we knew not, but I said unto my men: Behold, we know not but they have halted for the purpose that we should come against them, that they might catch us in their snare; therefore what say ye, my sons, will ye go against them to battle? And now I say unto you, my beloved brother Moroni, that never had I seen so great courage, nay, not amongst all the Nephites. For as I had ever called them my sons (for they were all of them very young) even so they said unto me: Father, behold our God is with us, and he will not suffer that we should fall; then let us go forth; we would not slay our own brethren if they would let us alone; therefore let us go, lest they should overpower the army of Antipus. Now they never had fought, yet they did not fear death; and they did think more upon the liberty of their fathers than they did upon their lives; yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them. And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it. #RandolphHarris 25 of 28
“And it came to pass that I did return with my two thousand against these Lamanites who has pursued us. And now behold, the armies of Antipus has overtaken them, and a terrible battle had commenced. The army of Antipus being weary, because of their long march in so short a space of time, were about to fall into the hands of the Lamanites; and had I not returned with my two thousand they would have obtained their purpose. For Antipus has fallen by the sword, and many of his leaders, because of their weariness, which was occasioned by the speed of their march—therefore the men of Antipus, being confused because of the fall of their leaders, began to give way before the Lamanites. And it came to pass that the Lamanites took courage, and began to pursue them; and thus were the great Lamanites pursuing them with great vigour when Helaman came upon their rear with his two thousand, and began to slay them exceedingly, insomuch that the whole army of the Lamanites halted and turned upon Helaman. Now when the people of Antipus saw that the Lamanites had turned them about, they gathered together their men and came again upon the rear of the Lamanites. And now it came to pass that we, the people of Nephi, the people of Antipus, and I with my two thousand, did surround the Lamanites, and did slay them; yea, insomuch that they were compelled to deliver up their weapons of war and also themselves as prisoners of war. #RandolphHarris 26 of 28
“And now it came to pass that when they had surrendered themselves up unto us, behold, I numbered those young men who had fought with me, fearing lest there were many of them slain. However, behold, to my great joy, there had not one soul of hem fallen to the Earth; yea, and they had fought as if with the strength; and with such mighty power did they fall upon frighten them; and for this cause did the Lamanites deliver themselves up as prisoners of war. And as we have no place for our prisoners, that we could guard them to keep them from the armies of the Lamanites, therefore we sent them to the land of Zarahemla, and a part of those men who were not slain of Antipus, with them; and the remainder I took and joined them to my stripling Ammonites, and took our march back to the city of Judea,” reports Alma 56.1-57. Space was born from you in the time before time, and time itself, and death. The Son of God was born leaping fully armed from the womb, rising up to bring miracles to the World and set an example of Godliness. The water poured out, to be placed in their proper locations, and solid ground was born, to support their weight, to be the cup of heir encircling border. The directions were placed, each where it belonged. And life itself was born, the unpredictable, always yet going where it belongs. #RandolphHarris 27 of 28
“And now I wish to praise the Mother, who made these things to be, the source of existence, granter of life. You to whom we all belong, you who knows the way we should go, I praise you with my words, I hold you in my heart. The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree, and grow mighty like a cedar in Lebanon. Planted in the house of the Lord, they shall flourish in the courts of our God. Even in old age they shall being forth fruit, they shall be full of vigour and strength, declaring that the Lord is just, my Rock in whom there is no unrighteousness. The Lord reigneth; He is robed in majesty; the Lord is robed, He hath girded Himself with strength. Now is the Earthy firmly established; it shall not be moved. Thy throne is established of old; Thou art from everlasting. The waters lift up their voices, O Lord, the waters life up their roaring; yet above the voices of many waters, the mighty waters, breakers of the sea, Thou, O Lord, art might on high. Thy law is true and unfailing; holiness is becoming to Thy house, O Lord, forevermore. Praised be the Lord who is blessed for all eternity. Praised be Thou, O Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who with Thy word bringest on the evening twilight, and with Thy wisdom openest the gates of the Heavens. With understanding Thou dost order the cycles of time and variest the seasons, setting the stars in their courses in the sky, according to Thy will. #RandolphHarris 28 of 28
Cresleigh Homes
Residence Two a spacious single story home with over 2,500 square feet of home thoughtfully designed to maximize every available foot of space. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a three car garage all come included in this home. The layout if an entertainer’s dream with large kitchen and working island, dining room connected through the butler’s pantry, and a large great room overlooking the ample rear yard.
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But Love is Blind, and Lovers Cannot See the Pretty Follies that themselves Commit
My total conscious search in life has been for a new seeing, a new image, a new insight. This search not only includes the object, but the in-between place. The dogma of Chalcedon is that in Jesus as the Christ, the human nature and the divine nature co-existed, and the human nature, soul and body, was actuated by the divine Person, the Word of God. Thus there was a real unity between the two natures of Christ while they both remained distinct, the one being merely human, undergoing all the tragedies of existence, sin excepted, the other being purely God. This dogma was required as a safeguard against pagan distortions that would have seen Christ as a half-god: Christ had to be affirmed as fully divine. And it was also needed to counteract Monophysite tendencies, which would not have made Christ fully human. These are two dangers that a Christology must avoid, and the two elements that is must protect. An attempt to express the mystery of Christ conceptually can lead to an actual denial of the Christ-character of Jesus as the Christ or it can lead to an actual denial of the Jesus-character of Jesus as the Christ. Christology must always find its way on the ridge between these two chasms. The Christ-character of Christ refers to his divine dimensions; the Jesus-character to his human finitude. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
The dogma of Nicaea had begun solving the Christological dilemma of the divine nature of God the Son and his relationship to God the father by identifying the Christ-character of Jesus with the eternal Logos. The dogmas of Chalcedon continued in the same line: it described Jesus as having two natures, the human nature and the nature of the eternal Logos, expressed in the formula: two natures, human and divine in ne divine Persona of the Logos. This dogma was necessary and saved the Church. It has substantial truth and historical significance. Nevertheless, Nicene and Chalcedonia formulations ended in inescapable definitive failure. The dogmas of Chalcedon have substantial truth because in it both the Christ-character and the Jesus-character of the event of Jesus as the Christ were preserved. Yet it failed to formulate a definitive dogma, a dogma that would permanently protect the Church from error, because it used very inadequate conceptual tools. The basic inadequacy lies in the term nature. More specifically, the term human nature is ambiguous and the term divine nature is wholly inadequate. Human nature refers to three elements in a human. It refers to human’s essence, to one’s estranged existence, or to the ambiguous unity of the two. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
As regards the Christ, the first and the third notions apply: Jesus was man, and he was involved in the tragic ambiguities of life for which the Cross stands as a symbol. As for the second notion, one must qualify Christ’s participation in estrangement: He had human’s existential nature as a real possibility, but in such a way that temptation, which is the possibility, is always taken into the unity with God. When applied to the Christ, the word nature should therefore be qualified: it cannot be used without distinctions and corrections. Under these circumstances it is imperative to dismiss altogether the term human nature in relation to the Christ and replace it by a description of the dynamics of life. As to the expression “divine nature,” it cannot be applied to the Christ in any meaningful way; for the Christ (who is Jesus of Nazareth) is not beyond essence and existence. The divine nature is, by definition, beyond essence and existence. If this is the nature of Christ, then Christ could not be a personal life living in a limited period of time, having been born and having to die, being finite, tempted, and tragically involved in existence. What in Christ is not beyond essence and existence is the human element, the divine element remaining, by definition, beyond essence and existence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
The two natures in Christ remain unexplained. The two nature lie beside each other like blocks and their unity cannot be understood at all, unless one pays attention to the hupostasis or persona. The two natures are joined in what is called a hypostatical union by later theology. These two natures, then, are united, namely, in one person and one subsistence, not partitioned or divided in two persons, but in the one and self-same Son and only-born of God, the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ. The two nature are no longer seen as blocks, but they are animated by one and the same centre of divine life, the Word of God. The person of the Word, in which the two natures of Christ subsist, is itself a relational concept. The Word is a substantial relation to the Father. The Word also contains in oneself the divine picture of all being. Created beings exist, precisely because they are related to their being-thought-by-God, that is, to the Word. In the case of Jesus, his created relation to the Word is, as it were, duplicated by the immediate presence of the Uncreated Relation to the Father, which is the eternal Logos. Jesus is perfectly human, and also perfectly the Logos. Thus the Chalcedonian formula provides a basis for a relational understanding of Jesus as the Christ, but still conflicts with our development of a relational Christology! #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
There we can consider Christ an eternal God-man-unity or eternal Godmanhood, this is a Trinitarian theology. The Christ is not God. He may be called divine because what he manifests is the eternal ground of being. The event of Jesus as the Christ remains unique. It is made possible by what it reveals, namely that there is an eternal unity of God and humans within the divine life. For most humans, this unity is a potentiality; it is in our life, actualized through finite freedom and therefore ambiguously. On the contrary, in Jesus, the unity of God and humans was actualized against existential disruption in a triumph over ambiguity. The Christ submitted to, and conquered, the tragedy of existence. He thus manifested the New Being for which humankind had been longing. In terms of doctrine, what we can say of this unity of God and human in Christ is limited. Abstract definitions of the nature of this unity are as impossible as psychological investigations into its character. One can only say that it is a community between God and the centre of a personal life which determines all utterances of the life and resists the attempts within existential estrangement to disrupt it. In other words, one can describe Jesus as the Christ: one cannot explain him. The victory belongs to faith, to perceiving the revelatory power of the Christ, not to philosophy or rational theology. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
To the question, What is the Christ? one can answer: He is the New Being, eternal Godmanhood manifested in existence. However, to the question, Who is the Christ? there is no answer. The Christ of history is hidden by two thousand years of piety and research. The Christ of faith is beyond historical or psychological investigation. “Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth; for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away. And I say the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down and I heard a great voice from the throne saying: Behold, the dwelling of God is with humans, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, for the former things have passed away. Behold, I make all things new,” reports Revelations 21.1-5. Let us mediate on the old and the new, in ourselves and in our World. In these Biblical texts the new is contrasted with the old: the old is rejected, and there is stated, in passionate words, expectations of the new. Even the Preacher, who denies the possibility of anything really new on Earth, does not hide one’s longing for the new, and his disappointment in not being able to find it. Why do these writers feel and speak in this way? Why do they prefer the new to the old, and why do they believe that God is the God of the new? Why do they demand and expect the new birth, the new heart, the new human, the new covenant, the New Jerusalem, the new Heaven and the new Earth? #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
They do not announce the new because they believe what many people of the last decades have believed: that the later things are better than the former things simply because they are later; that new developments are more divine than old ones, because they are nearer to a final perfection; that God guarantees a perpetual progress, and that for this reason He is the God the new. Against such illustrations the disappointed words of the Preacher are true for all history. And certainly such illusions are not the content of the prophetic and apostolic preaching concerning the new. What is the content of their expectation? What do they mean when they warn us not to consider the things of old? What are those old things, and what are the new things which they ask us to see and to accept? “Old” sometimes means that which lasts through all times, that which is today as it was in the past and as it shall be in all the future. There is something that does not age, something that is always old and always new and at the same time, because it is eternal. God is sometimes called the “ancient of days” or the “Redeemer of old.” The wisdom of old and the law of God, which are as old as the foundations of the Earth, are praised just because they are old; nothing new is set against them as no new God is set against the God of old. “Old” as it is used here means “everlasting,” pointing to that which is no subject to change. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
However, in the texts we have read from the words of the unknown prophet of the exile, in the 43rd chapter of Isaiah, “old” means just the opposite. It means that which passes away and all shall not be remembered any more—the destiny of everything created, of the stars as well as of the grass in the field, of humans as well as of animals, of nations as well as of the Earth. They all become old and pass away. What does it mean to say that somebody or something becomes old? All life grows; it desires and strives to grown, and it lives as long as it grows. Humans always have been fascinated by the law of growth. They have called that which helps growth good, an they have called that which hinders it evil. However, let us look more deeply into the law of growth of a living cell or of a human soul or of a historical period, we see that growth is gain and loss at the same time; it is both fulfillment and sacrifice. Whatever grows must sacrifice many possible developments for one through which it chooses to grow. One who wants to grow as a scientist many have to sacrifice poetic or political possibilities which one would like to develop. One has to pay a price. One cannot grow equally in all directions. The cells of the body lose the lower to adapt themselves to other functions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Periods of history which are determined by one idea suppress the truth of others possible ideas. Every decision excludes possibilities and makes our life narrower. Every decision makes us older and more mature. Youth is openness. However, every decision closes doors. And that cannot be avoided; it is an inescapable destiny. Life makes decisions in every moment; life closes doors in every moment. We proceed from the first minute of our lives to the las minute, because we are growing. The law of growth lends us greatness, and therefore tragedy. For the excluded possibilities belong to us; they have right of their own. Therefore, they take their vengeance upon our lives which have excluded them. They may die; and with them, great powers of life and large resources of creativity. For life, as it grows, becomes a restricted power, more rigid and inflexible, less able to adapt itself to new situations and new demands. Or, on the other hand, the excluded possibilities may not die. They may remain within us, repressed, hidden, and dangerous, prepared to break into the life process, not as a creative resource, but as a destructive disease. Those are the two ways in which the aging life drives toward its own end: the way of self-limitation, and the way of self-destruction. Often the two ways merge, carrying death into all realms of life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Many of the phenomena we have discussed can also be linked to a compulsive American tendency to avoid confrontation of chronic social problems. This avoiding tendency often comes as a surprise to international travelers, who tend to think as Americans as pragmatic and down-to-Earth. However, while trying to solve long-range social problems with short-run “hardware” solutions produces a lot of hardware—a down-to-Earth result, surely—it can hardly be considered practical when it aggravates the problems, as it almost always does. American pragmatism is deeply irrational in this respect, and in our hearts we have always know it. One of the favourite themes of American cartoonists is the man who paints himself into a corner, saws off the limb he is sitting on, or runs out of space on he sign he is printing. The scientist of science-fiction and horror films, whose experimentation leads to disastrously unforeseen consequences, is a more anxious representation of this same awareness that the most future-oriented nation in the World shows a deep incapacity to plan ahead. We are, as a people, perturbed by our inability to anticipate the consequences of our acts, but we still wait optimistically for some magic telegram, informing us that the tangled skein of misery and self-deception into which we have woven ourselves has vanished in the night. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Each month popular magazines regale their readers with such telegrams: announcing that our transportation crisis will be solved by a bigger plane or a wider road, mental illness with a pill, poverty with a law, slums with a bulldozer, urban conflict with gas, racism with a goodwill gesture. Perhaps the most grotesque of all these telegrams was an article in Life showing a group of suburbanites participating in a “Clean-Up Day” in an urban slum. When Americans exhibit this kind of naivete and/or cynicism about social problems, international community members are surprised, but their surprise is inappropriate. Whatever realism we may display in technical areas, our approach to social issues inevitably falls back on cinematic tradition, in which social problems are resolved by gesture. Deeply embedded in the somnolent social consciousness of the broom wielding suburbanites is a series of climactic movie scenes in which a long column of once surly natives, marching in solemn silence and as one man, framed by the setting Sun, turn in their weapons to the chief who has done them a good turn, or menace the adventurer’s enemy (who turns pale at the sight), or rebuild the missionary’s church, destroyed by fire. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
When a social problem persists (as they tend to do) longer than a few days, those who call attention to its continued presence are viewed as “going too far” and “causing the pendulum to swing the other way.” We can make war on poverty but shrink from the extensive readjustments required to stop breeding it. Once a law is passed, a commission set up, a study made, a report written, the problem is expected to have been “wiped out” or “mopped up.” Bombs abroad are matched by “crash programs” at home—the terminological similarity reveals a psychological one. Our approach to transportation problems has had the effect, as many people have observed, of making it easier to travel to more and more paces that have become less and less worth driving to. Asking us to consider the manifold consequences of chopping down a forest, draining a swamp, spraying field with poison, making it easier to drive into an already crowded city, or selling deadly weapons to everyone who wants them arouses in us the same impatience as a chess problem would in a hyperactive six-year-old. The avoiding tendency lies at the very root of American character. This nation was settled and continuously repopulated by people who were not personally successful in confronting the social conditions obtaining in their mother country, but fled these conditions in the hope of a better life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
This series of choices (reproduced in the westward movement) provided a complex selection process—populating America disproportionately with a certain kind of person. In the past we have always, explicitly or implicitly, stressed the beneficial side of this selection, implying that America thereby found itself blessed with an unusual number of energetic, mobile, ambitions, daring, and optimistic persons. Now there is no reason to deny that a number of traits must have helped to differentiate those who chose to come from those who chose to stay, nor that these differences must have generated social institutions and habits of mind that tended to preserve and reproduce these characteristics. However, very little attention has been paid to the more negative aspects of the selection. If we gained the energetic and daring we also gained the lion’s share of the rootless, the unscrupulous, those who value money over relationships, and those who put self-aggrandizement ahead of love and loyalty And most of all, we gained a critically undue proportion of persons, when faced with a difficult situation, tended to chuck the whole thing and flee to a new environment. Escaping, evading, and avoiding are responses which lie at the base of much that is peculiarly American—the suburb, the automobile, the self-service store, and so on. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
These responses also contribute to the appalling discrepancy between our material resources and our treatment of those who cannot adequately care for themselves. This is not argument against institutionalization: American society is not geared to handle these problems in any other way, and this is in fact the point I wish to make. If everything else is left the same, one cannot successfully alter one facet of a social system, for the patterns are interdependent and reinforce one another. In a cooperative, stable society the aged, infirm, or psychotic person can be absorbed by the local community, which knows and understands one. One presents a difficulty which is familiar and which can be confronted daily and directly. This condition cannot be reproduced in our society today—the burden must be carried by a small, isolated, mobile family unit that is not really equipped for it. However, understanding the forces that require us to incarcerate those who cannot function independently in our society does not gives us license to ignore the significance of doing so. The institutions we provide for those who cannot care for themselves are human garbage heaps—they result from and reinforce our tendency to avoid confronting social and interpersonal problems. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
They make life “easier” for the rest of society, just as does the automobile. And just as we find ourselves having to devise ridiculous exercises to counteract the harmful effects of our dependence upon the automobile, so the “ease” of our nonconfronting social technology makes us bored, flabby, and interpersonally insensitive, and our lives empty and mechanical. There is a Christian view of work which makes God the center of the equation. To be sure, God does not remove the curse and its painful, sweaty toil, but He does replace the meaninglessness. Those who have been saved by faith fall heir to this grand declaration: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” reports Ephesians 2.10. Being His workmanship, his work of art, his masterpiece—we are the pinnacle of God’s creation because, above every other created thing (even angels!), we are made in His image. This has mind-boggling possibilities. Beyond his, we have been regenerated—created in Chris Jesus—thus undergoing an even greater second creation. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.17, “If anyone is in Christ, one is a new creation.” God’s most stupendous creation is made alive in Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The spiritual life which is reached in work of conversation, is a far greater and more glorious effect than mere being and life. As subjects of Christ’s two creations, we are His ultimate workmanship! As His masterworks, we have been created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Each of us has an eternally designed work assignment which incudes the task, the ability, and a place to serve. Whatever the task to which He has called you, you will be equipped for it as surely as a bird is made for flight. And in doing the works He has called you to do, you will be both more and more His workmanship and more and more your true self. The practical implications of this are stupendous. There is no secular/sacred distinction, for all honest work done for the Lord is sacred. Historians agree that Luther’s understanding of this revolutionized his life, and indeed the World of his day. He wrote: “Your work is a very sacred matter. God delights in it, and through it He wants to bestow His blessings on you. This praise of work should be inscribed on all tools, on the forehead and the faces that sweat from toiling.” There are no first-class and second-class Christians because of their varying jobs. All work is sacramental in nature, be it checking groceries, selling futures, cleaning teeth, driving a street sweeper, teaching, or painting trim. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Everything we do ought to be one to the glory of God. Listen to God’s call to serve Him: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.31. “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him,” reports Colossians 3.17. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for humans, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving,” reports Colossians 3.23, 24. You may feel you are in a “nothing job.” Because of the Curse, your job may involve painful toil and yield little job satisfaction. However, you can glorify God where you are by your heart attitude. You may fee your occupation is not holy, but it is if you see it so and do it for God’s glory. You are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God planned in advance for you. Humans, everything about your work must be directed toward Him—your attitudes, your integrity, your intensity, and your skill. What is this experience like? It is a primary feeling—it feels like receiving the deed to my house. It is the experience of my own aliveness no caring whether it turns out to be an ion or just a wave. It is like when a very young child I once reached the core of a peace and cracked the pit, not knowing what I would find and then feeling the wonder of finding the inner seed, good to eat in its bitter sweetness. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Knowing that the work I do is for God because I am his masterpiece is like a sailboat in the harbour being given an anchor so that, being made out of Earthly things, it can by means of its anchor get in touch again with the Earth, the ground from which its wood grew; it can lift its anchor to sail but always at times it can cast its anchor to weather the storm or rest a little. It is my saying to Descartes, “I AM, therefore I think, I feel, I do.” It is like an axiom in geometry—never experiencing it would be like going through a geometry course not knowing the firs axiom. It is like going into my very own Garden of Eden where I a beyond good and evil and all other human concepts because my works if for God. It is like the experience of the poets of the intuitive World, the mystics, except that instead of the pure feeling of and union with God it is the finding of and the union with my own being It is like owning Cinderella’s shoe and looking all over the World for the foot it will fit and realizing all of the sudden that one’s own foot is the only one it will fit. It is a “Matter of Fact’ in the etymological sense of the expression. It is like a globe before the mountains and oceans and continents have been drawn on it. It is like a child in grammar finding the subject of the verb in a sentence—in this case the subject would be one’s work and own life span. It is ceasing to feel a theory towards one’s self. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
God has stated that the quintessence of divinity is the power to be. “And it came to pass that they did set guards over the prisoners of the Lamanites, and did compel them to go forth and bury their dead, yea, and also the dead of the Nephites who were slain; and Moroni placed humans over them to guard them while they should perform their labours. And Moroni went to the city of Mulek with Lehi, and took command of the city and gave it unto Lehi. Now behold, this Lehi was a man who had been with Moroni in the more part of all his battles; and he was a man like unto Moroni, and they rejoiced in each other’s safety; yea, they were beloved by each other, and also by all the people of Nephi. And it came to pass that after the Lamanites had finished burying their dead and also the dead of the Nephite, they were marched back into the land of the Nephites, they were marched back into the land Bountiful; and Teancum, by the orders of Moroni, caused that they should commence labouring in digging a ditch round about the land, or the city, Bountiful. And he caused that they should build a breastwork of timbers upon the inner bank of ditch; and they cast up dirt out of the ditch against the breastwork of timbers; and thus they did cause the Lamanites to labour until they had encircled the city of Bountiful round about with a strong wall of timbers and Earth, to an exceeding height. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And this city became an exceeding stronghold ever after; and in this city they did guard the prisoners of the Lamanites; yea, even within a wall which they had caused them to build with their own hands. Now Moroni was compelled to cause the Lamanites to labour, because it was easy to guard them while at their labour; and he desired all his forces when he should make an attack upon the Lamanites. And it came to pass that Moroni had thus gained a victory over one of the greatest of the armies of the Lamanites, and had obtained possession of the city of Mulek which was one of the strongest holds of the Lamanites in the land of Nephi; and thus he had also built a stronghold to retain his prisoners. And it came to pass that the did no more attempt a battle with the Lamanites in that year, but he did employ his men in preparing for war, yea, and in making fortifications to guard against the Lamanites, yea, and also delivering their women and their children from famine and affliction, and providing food for their armies. And now it came to pass that the armies of the Lamanites, on the west sea, south, while in the absence of Moroni on account of some intrigue amongst the Nephites, which caused dissensions among them, had gained some ground over the Nephite, which caused dissensions amongst them, had gained some ground over the Nephites, yea, insomuch that they had obtained possession of a number of their cities in that part of the land. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
And thus because of iniquity amongst themselves, yea, because of dissensions and intrigue among themselves they were placed in the most dangerous circumstances. And now behold, I have somewhat to say concerning the people of Ammon, who, in the beginning, were Lamanites; but by Ammon and his brethren, or rather by the power and word of God, they have been converted unto the Lord; and they had been brought down into the land of Zarahemla, and had ever since been protected by the Nephites. And because of their oath they had been kept from taking up arms against their brethren; for they had taken an oath that they never would shed blood more; and according to their oath they would have perished; yea, they would have suffered themselves to have fallen into the hands of their brethren, had it not been for the pity and the exceeding love which Ammon and his brethren had had for them. And for this cause they were brought down into the land of Zarahemla; and they ever had been protected by the Nephites. However, it came to pass that when they saw the danger, and the many afflictions and tribulations which the Nephites bore for them, they were moved with compassion and were desirous to take up arms in the defence of their country. However, behold, as they were about to take their weapons of war, they were overpowered by the persuasions of Helaman and his brethren for they were about to break the oath which they had made. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“And Helaman feared lest by so doing they should lose their souls; therefore all those who had entered into this covenant were compelled to behold their brethren wade through their afflictions, in their dangerous circumstances at this time. However, behold, it came to pass they had many sons, who had not entered into a covenant that they would not take their weapons of war to defend themselves against their enemies; therefore they did assemble themselves together at this time, as many as were able to take u arms, and they called themselves Nephites. And they entered into a covenant to fight for the liberty of the Nephites, yes, to protect the land unto the laying down of their lives; yea, even they covenanted that they never would give up their liberty, but they would fight in all cases to protect the Nephites and themselves from bondage. Now behold, there were two thousand of those young men, who entered into this covenant and took their weapons of war to defend their country. And now behold, as they never had hitherto been a disadvantage to the Nephites, they became now at this period of time also a great support; for they took their weapons of war, and they would that Helaman should be their leader. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all—they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted. Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they have been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him. And now it came to pass that Helaman did march at the head of his two thousand stripling soldiers, to the support of the people in the borders of the land on the south by the west side. And thus ended the twenty and eight year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Alma 53.1-23. I speak of He who is beyond comparison, the greatest of Fathers who created all wonders. To us, you are Father, and to everything else. The Father of Friends and the Father of blessings. You do not distinguish between your children, but spread your love freely without judgment or preference. Sabbath, to welcome thee, joyous we haste; fountain of blessing from ever thou wast—first in God’s planning, though fashioned the last, Crown of His handiwork, chiefest of days. City of holiness, filled are the years; up from thine overthrow! Forth from thy fears! Log hast thou dwelt in the valley of tears, now shall God’s tenderness shepherd thy ways. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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You cannot have a constitutional right to do something that is illegal. Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with similar liberty for others. Furthermore, social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and also attached to positions and offices open to all. There are two ambiguous phrases in the second principle, namely “everyone’s advantage” and “open to all.” Determining their sense more exactly will lead to a second formulation of the principle. The final version of the two principles considers the rendering of the first principle. By way of general comment, these principles primarily apply to the basic structure of society. They are to govern the assignment of rights and duties and to regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages. As their formulation suggests, these principles presuppose that the social structure can be divided into two more or less distinct parts, the first principle applying to the one, the second to the others. They distinguish between those aspects of the social system that define and secure the equal liberties of citizenship and those that specify and establish social and economic inequalities. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
The basic liberties of citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (the right to vote and to be eligible for public office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person along with the right to hold (personal) property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. These liberties are all required to be equal by the first principle, since citizens of a just society are to have the same basic rights. The second principle applies, in the first approximation, to the distribution of income and wealth and to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority and responsibility, or chains of command. While the distribution of wealth and incomes need not be equal, it must be to everyone’s advantage, and at the same time, positions of authority and offices of command must be accessible to all. One applies the second principle by holding positions open, and then, subject to this constraint, arranges social and economic inequalities so that everyone benefits. These principles are to be arranged in a serial order with the first principle prior to the second. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
This ordering means that a departure from the institutions of equal liberty required by the first principle cannot be justified by, or compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages. The distribution of wealth and income, and hierarchies of authority, must be consistent with both the liberties of equal citizenship and equality of opportunity. It is clear that these principles are rather specific in their content, and their acceptance rests on certain assumptions that I must eventually try to explain and justify. A theory of justice depends upon a theory of society in ways that will become evident as we proceed. For the present, it should be observed that the two principles (and this holds for all formulations) are a special case of a more general conception of justice that can be expressed as follows: All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage. Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all. The illegal begins immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer. Of course, this conception is extremely vague and requires interpretation. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
As a first step, suppose that the basic structure of society distributes certain primary goods, that is, things that every rational human is presumed to want. These goods normally have a use whatever a person’s rational plan of life. For simplicity, assume that the chief primary goods at the disposition of society are rights and liberties, powers and opportunities, income and wealth. (Later on in Part Three the primary good of self-respect has a central place.) These are the social primary goods. Other primary goods such as health and vigor, intelligence and imagination, are natural goods; although their possession is influenced by the basic structure, they are not so directly under its control. Imagine, then, a hypothetical initial arrangement in which all the social primary goods are equally distributed: everyone has similar rights and duties, and income and wealth are evenly shared. This state of affairs provides a benchmark for judging improvements. If certain inequalities of wealth and organizational powers would make everyone better off than in this hypothetical starting situation, then they accord with the general conception. Now it is possible, at least theoretically, that by giving up some of their fundamental liberties humans are sufficiently compensated by the resulting social and economic gains. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
The general conception of justice imposes no restrictions on what sort of inequalities are permissible; it only requires that everyone’s position be improved. We need not suppose anything so drastic as consenting to a condition of slavery. Imagine instead, when the economic returns are significant and their capacity to influence the course of policy by the exercise of these rights would be marginal in any case, that humans forego certain political rights. It is this kind of exchange which the two principles as stated rule out; being arranged in serial order they do not permit exchanges between basic liberties and economic and social gains. The serial ordering of principles expresses an underling preference among primary social goods. When this preference is rational so likewise is the choice of these principles in this order. In developing justice as fairness, I shall, for the most part, leave aside the general conception of justice and examine instead the special case of the two principles in serial order. The advantage of this procedure is that from the first the matter of priorities is recognized and an effort made to find principles to deal with it. One is led to attend throughout to the conditions under which the acknowledgement of the absolute weight of liberty with respect to social and economic advantages, as defined by the lexical order of the two principles would be reasonable. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
Offhand, this ranking appears extreme and too special a case to be of much interest; but there is more justification for it than would appear at first sight. Or at any rate, so I shall maintain. Furthermore, the distinction between fundamental rights and liberties and economic and social benefits marks a difference among primary social goods that one should try to exploit. It suggests an important division in the social system. Of course, the distinctions drawn and the ordering proposed are bound to be at best only approximations. There are surely circumstances in which they fail. However, it is essential to depict clearly the main lines of a reasonable conception of justice; and under many conditions anyway, the two principles in serial order may serve well enough. When necessary we can fall back on the more general conception. The fact that the two principles apply to institutions has certain consequences. Several points illustrate this. First of all, the rights and liberties referred to by these principles are those which are defined by the public rules of the basic structure. Whether humans are free is determined by the rights and duties established by the major institutions of society. Liberty is a certain pattern of social forms. The first principle simply requires that certain sorts of rules, these defining basic liberties, apply to everyone equally and that they allow the most extensive liberty compatible with a like liberty for all. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
The only reason for circumscribing the rights defining liberty and making human’s freedom less extensive than it might otherwise be is that these equal rights as institutionally defined would interfere with one another. When principles mention persons, or require that everyone gain from an inequality, another thing to bear in mind is that the reference is to representative persons holding the various social positions, or offices, or whatever, established by the basic structure. Thus in applying the second principle I assume that it is possible to assign an expectation of well-being to representative individuals holding these positions. This expectation indicates their life prospects as these positions. This expectation indicates their life prospects as viewed from their social station. In general, the expectations of representative persons depend upon the distribution of rights and duties throughout the basic structure. When this changes, expectations change. I assume, then, that expectations are connected: by raising the prospects of the representative human in one position we presumably increase or decrease the prospects of representative humans in other positions. Since it applies to institutional forms, the second principle (or rather the first part of it) refers to the expectations of representative individuals. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
Neither principle applies to distributions of particular goods to particular individuals who may be individuals who may be identified by their proper names. The situation where someone is considering how to allocate certain commodities to less affluent persons who are known to one not within the scope of the principles. They are meant to regulate basic institutional arrangements. We must not assume that there is much similarity from the standpoint of justice between an administrative allotment of goods to specific persons and the appropriate design of society. Our common-sense intuitions for the former may be a poor guide to the latter. Now the second principle insists that each person benefit from permissible inequalities in the basic structure. When one views it as a concern, this means that it must be reasonable for each relevant representative human defined by this structure to prefer one’s prospects with the inequality to one’s prospects without it. One is not allowed to justify differences income or organizational powers on the ground that the disadvantages of those in one position are outweighed by the greater advantage of those in another. Much less can infringements of liberty be counterbalanced in thus way. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
Applied to the basic structure, the principle of utility would have us maximize the sum of expectations of representative humans (weighted by the number of persons they represent, on the classical view); and this would permit us to compensate for the losses of some by the gains of others. Instead, the two principles required that everyone benefit from economic and social inequalities. It is obvious, however, when the initial arrangement of equality is taken as a benchmark that there are indefinitely many ways in which all may be advantaged. The grasping of the being of another person occurs on a quite different level from our knowledge of specific things about an individual. Obviously a knowledge of the drives and mechanisms which are in operation in the other person’s behaviour is useful; a familiarity with one’s patterns of interpersonal relationships is highly relevant; in formation about one’s social conditioning, the meaning of particular gestures and symbolic actions is of course to the point, and so on ad infinitum. However, when we confront the overreaching, most real fact of all—namely, the immediate, living person oneself, all these fall on to a quite different level. When we seek to know a person, the knowledge about one must be subordinated to the overarching fact of one’s actual existence. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
In the ancient Greek and Hebrew languages the verb “to know” is the same word as that which means to copulate with. This is illustrated time and again in the King James translation of the Bible—“Abraham knew his wife and she conceived…” and so on. Thus the etymological relation between knowing and loving is exceedingly close. Though we cannot go into this complex topic, we can at least say that knowing another human being, like loving one, involves a kind of union, a dialectical participation with the other. This is called the “duel mode.” If one is to be able to understand an individual, one must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking. The encounter with the being of another person has the power to shake one profoundly and may potentially be very anxiety-arousing. It may also be joy-creating. In either case, it has the power to grasp and move one deeply. And obviously the individual has defended oneself from anxiety at the price not only of the isolation of oneself from the other but also of the radical distortion of reality. For one does not ten really see the other person. It does not disparage the importance of the technique to point out that technique, like data, must be subordinated to the fact of the reality of two persons in the room. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
However, we find ourselves up against a dilemma. Our human being has become a sort of indeterminate clay which would have to receive [the desires] passively—or one would be reduced to a simple bundle of these irreducible drives or tendencies. In either case the human disappears; we can no longer find “the one” to whom this or that experience has happened. Either in looking for the person we encounter a useless, contradictory metaphysical substance—or else the being whom we seek vanishes in a dust of phenomena bound together by external connections. However, what each of us requires in this very effort to comprehend another is that one should never resort to this idea of substance, which is inhuman because it is well this side of the human. Also, if we admit that the person is a totality, we can not hope o reconstruct one by an addition or by an organization of the diverse tendencies which we have empirically discovered in one. Every attitude of the person contains some reflection of this totality. A jealousy of a particular date in which a subject posits oneself in history in relation to a certain person signifies for the one who knows how to interpret it, the total relation to the World by which the subject constitutes oneself as a self. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
This empirical attitude is by itself the expression of the choice of an intelligible character. There is no mystery about this. It is interesting that the term “mystic” is used in this derogatory sense to mean anything we cannot segmentize and count. The odd belief prevails in our culture that if we cannot make it mathematical, a thing or experience is not real, and if we can reduce it to numbers it is somehow real. Thus we deny reality of our own experience. The term “mystic,” in this disparaging sense, is generally used in the service of obscurantism; certainly avoiding an issue by derogation is only to obscure it. Is not the scientific attitude rather, to try to see clearly what it is we are talking about and then to find whatever terms or symbols can best, with least distortion, describe this reality? It should not so greatly surprise us to find that “being” belongs to that class of realities, like “love” and “consciousness” (for two other examples), which we cannot segmentize or abstract without losing precisely what we set out to study. This does not, however, relieve us from the task of trying to understand and describe them. The loss of the sense of being is related on one hand to our tendency to subordinate existence to function: a human knows oneself not as a human or self but as a ticket-seller in the subway, a grocer, a professor, a vice president of Cresleigh, or by whatever one’s economic function may be. #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
And on the other hand, this loss of the sense of being is related to the mass collectivist trends and widespread conformist tendencies in our culture. Indeed, I wonder if a psychoanalytic method, deeper and more discerning than any of that has been evolved until now, would not reveal the morbid effects of the repression of this sense and of the ignoring of this need. We need to be cognizant of freedom to become aware that there are forces in the World acting upon us. This is the sphere where we have the potential capacity to pause before reacting and thus to cast some weight on whether our reaction will go this way or that. And this, therefore, is the sphere where one, the human being, is never merely a collection of drives determined forms of behaviour. Hymans are the beings who can be conscious of, and therefore responsible for, their existence. It is this capacity to become aware of one’s own being which distinguishes the human being from other beings, as far as we know. Humans are not only being-in-itself, as all beings are, but also being-for-itself. They are the person-who-is-responsible-for-one’s-own-existence choosing. If the reader will keep in mind that being is a participle, a verb form implying someone in the process of being something, the full meaning of the term human being will be clearer. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
We can understand another human being only as we see what one is moving toward, what one is becoming; and we can know ourselves only as we project our potentia in action. The significant tense for human beings is thus the future—that is to say, the critical question is what I am pointing toward, becoming, what I will be in the immediate future. Thus, being in the human sense is not given once and for all. It does not unfold automatically as the cypress tree does from the seed. For an intrinsic and inseparable element in being human is self-consciousness. If one is to become oneself, humans are the particular being who has to be aware of oneself, be responsible for oneself. As far as we know, human beings are also the particular being who knows that at some future moment one will not be; one is the being who is always in a dialectical relation with nonbeing, death. And one not only knows one will sometime not be, but one can, in one’s own choices one makes once and for all at the point of considering suicide; it reflects to some degree a choice made at every instant. The profound awareness of human beings is one pictured with incomparable beauty. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
The do-it-yourself movement has accompanied, paradoxically, increasing specialization in the occupational sphere. As one’s job narrows, perhaps, one seeks the challenge of new skill-acquisition in the Cresleigh Home. However, specialization also means that one’s interpersonal encounters with artisans in the Cresleigh Home proliferate and become more impersonal. It is not a matter of familiar encounter with the local smith or grocer—a few well-known individuals performing a relatively large number of functions, and with whom one’s casual interpersonal contacts may be a source of satisfaction, and are in any case a testimony to the stability and meaningful interrelatedness of human affairs. One finds instead a multiplicity of narrow specialists—each perhaps a stranger (the same type of repair may be performed by a different person each time). Every relationship, such as it is, must start from scratch, and it is small wonder that the householder turns away from such an unrewarding prospect in apathy and despair. Americans thus find themselves in a vicious circle, in which their extrafamilial relationships are increasingly arduous, competitive, trivial, and irksome, in part as a result of efforts to avoid or minimize potentially irksome or competitive relationships. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
As the few vestiges of stable and familiar community life erode, the desire for a simple, cooperative life style grows in intensity. The most seductive appeal of radical ideologies for Americans consists in the fact that all in one way or another attack the competitive foundations of our society. Each touches a responsive doubt, and the stimuli arousing this doubt must be carefully unearthed and rooted out, just as the Puritan must unearth and root out the stimuli of the pleasures of the flesh that excite one. Both efforts are ambivalent, since, the seek and destroy process is a part a quest for the stimulus itself. The Puritanical censor both wants the stimuli of the pleasures of the flesh and is in part of a quest to destroy it, and one’s job enables one to gratify both of these contradictory desires. There is a similar prurience in the efforts of groups such as the House UnAmerican Activities Committee to uncover subversion. Just as the censor gets to experience far more pornography than the average human, so the Congressional red-baiter gets to hear as much Anti-Patriot ideology as one wants, which is apparently quite a lot. Now it may be objected that American society is far less competitive than it once was, and the appeal of radical ideologies should hence be diminished. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
A generation of critics has argued that the entrepreneurial individualist of the past has been replaced by a bureaucratic, security-minded, Organization Human. Much of this historical drama was written through the simple device of comparing yesterday’s owner-president with today’s assistant sales manager; certainly these nostalgia-merchants never visited a nineteenth-century company town. Another distortion is introduced by the fact that it was only the most ruthlessly competitive robber barons who survived to tell us how it was. Little is written about the neighbourhood store that extended credit to the less affluent, or how Mrs. Sarah Winchester paid her employees three times the national average and built houses for them and their families on her estate around her mansion (unfortunately most the Victorian homes that were around the mansion were destroyed, but the mansion still stands as well as one guest house), or the small town industry that refused to lay off local workers in hard times—they all went under together. And as for the organization humans—they left us no sags. Despite these biases real changes have undoubtedly occurred, but even if we grant that the business World as such was more competitive, the total environment contained more cooperative, stable, and personal elements. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
The individual worked in smaller firm with lower turnover in which one’s relationships were more enduring and less impersonal, and in which the ideology of Adam Smith was tempered by the fact that the participants were neighbours and might have been childhood playmates. Even if the business World was a cannibalistic as we imagine it (which seems highly unlikely), one encountered it as a deviant episode in what was otherwise a more comfortable and familiar environment than the organization human can find today in or out of one’s office. The organization human complex is simply an attempt to restore the personal, particularistic, paternalistic environment of the family business and the company town; and the other-directed “group think” of the suburban community is a desperate attempt to bring some old-fashioned small-town collectivism into the transient and impersonal life-style of the suburb. The social critics of the 1950’s were so preoccupied with assailing these rather synthetic substitutes for traditional forms of human interdependence that they lost sight of the underlying pathogenic forces that produced them. Medical symptoms usually result from attempts made by the body to counteract disease, and attacking such symptoms often aggravates and prolongs the illness. This appears to be the case with the feeble and self-defeating efforts of twentieth-century Americans to find themselves a viable social context. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
“And now, it came to pass in the twenty and sixth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, behold, when the Lamanites awoke on the first morning of the first month, behold, they found Amalickiah was dead in his own tent; and they also saw that Teancum was ready to give them battle on that day. And now, when the Lamanites saw this they were affrighted; and they abandoned their design in marching into the land northward, and retreated with all their army into the city of Mulek, and sought protection in their fortifications. And it came to pass that the brother of Amalickiah was appointed king over the people; and his name was Ammoron; thus king Ammoron, the brother of king Amalickiah, was appointed to reign in his stead. And it came to pass that he did command that his people should maintain those cities, which they had taken by the shedding of blood; for they had not taken any cities save they had lost much blood. And now, Teancum saw that the Lamanites were determined to maintain those cities which they had taken, and those parts of the land which they had obtained possession of; and also seeing the enormity of their number, Teancum thought it was not expedient that he should attempt to attack them in their forts. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
“However, he kept his men around about, as if making preparations for war; yea, and truly he was preparing to defend himself against them, by casting up walls round about and preparing places of resort. And it came to pass that he kept thus preparing for war until Moroni had sent a large number of humans to strengthen his army. And Moroni also sent orders unto him that he should retain all the prisoners who fell into his hands; for as the Lamanites had taken many prisoners, that he should retain all the prisoners of the Lamanites as a ransom for those whom the Lamanites had taken. And he also sent orders unto him that he should fortify the land Bountiful, and secure the narrow pass which led into the land northward, lest the Lamanites should obtain that point and should have power to harass them on every side. And Moroni also sent unto him, desiring him that he would be faithful in maintaining the quarter of the land, and that he would seek every opportunity to scourge the Lamanites in that quarter, as much as in his power, that perhaps he might take again by stratagem or some other way those cities which had been taken out of their hands; and that he also would fortify and strengthen the cities round about, which had not fallen into the hands of the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
“And he also said unto him, I would come unto you, but behold, the Lamanites are upon us in the borders of the land by the west sea; and behold, I go against them, therefore I cannot come unto you. Now, the king (Ammoron) had departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and had made known unto the queen concerning the death of his brother, and had gathered together a large number of humans, and had marched forth against the Nephites on the borders by the west sea. And thus he was endeavouring to harass the Nephites, and to draw away a part of their forces to that part of the land, while he had left to possess the cities which he had taken, that they should also harass the Nephites on the borders by the east sea, and should take possession of their lands as much as it was in their power, according to the power of their armies. And thus were the Nephites in those dangerous circumstances in the ending of the twenty and sixth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. However, behold, it came to pass in the twenty and seventh year of the reign of the judges, that Teancum, by the command of Moroni—who has established armies to protect the south and the west borders of the land, and had begun his march towards the land Bountiful, that he might assist Teancum with is humans in retaking the cities which they had lost– #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
“And it came to pass that Teancum had received orders to make an attack upon the city of Mulek, if it were possible retake it. And it came to pass that Teancum made preparations to makes an attack upon the city of Mulek, and march forth with one’s army against the Lamanites; but he saw that it was impossible that he could overpower them while they were in their fortifications; therefore he abandoned his designs and returned again to the city Bountiful, to wait for the coming of Moroni, that he might receive strength to his army. And it came to pass that Moroni did arrive with his army at the land of Bountiful, in the latter end of the twenty and seventh year f the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And in the commencement of the twenty and eight year, Moroni and Teancum and many of the chief captains held a council of war—what they should do to cause the Lamanites to come out against them to battle; or that they might by some means flatter them out of their strongholds, that they might gain advantage over them and take again the city of Mulek. And it came to pass they sent embassies to the army of the Lamanites, which protected the city of Mulek, to their leader, whose name was Jacob, desiring hm hat he would come out with is armies to meet them upon the plains between the two cities. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
“However, behold, Jacob, who was a Zoramite, would not come out with his army to meet them upon the plains. And it came to pass that Moroni, having no hopes of meeting them upon fair grounds, therefore, he resolved upon a plan that he might decoy the Lamanites out of their strongholds. Therefore he caused that Teancum should take a small number of humans and march down near the seashore; and Moroni and his army, by night, marched in the wilderness, on the west of the city Mulek; and thus, on the morrow, when guards of the Lamanites had discovered Teancum, they ran and told it unto Jacob, their leader. And it came to pass that the armies of the Lamanites did march forth against Teancum, supposing by their numbers to overpower Teancum because of the smallness of his numbers. And as Teancum saw the armies of the Lamanites coming out against him he began to retreat down by the seashore, northward. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that he began to flee, they took courage and pursued them with vigour. And while Teancum was thus leading away the Lamanites who were pursuing them in vain, behold, Moroni commanded that a part of his army who were with him should march forth into the city, and take possession of it. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
“However, behold, Jacob, who was a Zoramite, would not come out with his army to meet them upon the plains. And it came to pass that Moroni, having no hopes of meeting them upon fair grounds, therefore, he resolved upon a plan that he might decoy the Lamanites out of their strongholds. Therefore he caused that Teancum should take a small number of humans and march down near the seashore; and Moroni and his army, by night, marched in the wilderness, on the west of the city Mulek; and thus, on the morrow, when guards of the Lamanites had discovered Teancum, they ran and told it unto Jacob, their leader. And it came to pass that the armies of the Lamanites did march forth against Teancum, supposing by their numbers to overpower Teancum because of the smallness of his numbers. And as Teancum saw the armies of the Lamanites coming out against him he began to retreat down by the seashore, northward. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that he began to flee, they took courage and pursued them with vigour. And while Teancum was thus leading away the Lamanites who were pursuing them in vain, behold, Moroni commanded that a part of his army who were with him should march forth into the city, and take possession of it. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
“And thus they did, and slew all those who had been left to protect the city, yea, all those who would not yield up their weapons of war. And thus Moroni had obtained possession of the city Mulek with a part of his army, while he marched with the remainder to meet the Lamanites when they should return from the pursuit of Teancum. And it came to pass that the Lamanites did pursue Teancum until they came near the city Bountiful, and then they were met by Lehi and a small army, which had been left to protect the city Bountiful. And now behold, when the chief captains of the Lamanites had beheld Lehi with his army coming against the, they fled in much confusion, lest perhaps they should not obtain the city Mulek before Lehi should overcome them; for they were wearied because of their march, and the humans of Lehi were fresh. Now the Lamanites did not know that Moroni had been in their rear with his army; and all they feared was Lehi and his men. Now Lehi was not desirous to overtake them till they should meet Moroni and his army. And it came to pass that before the Lamanites had retreated far they were surrounded by the Nephites, by the humans retreated far they were surrounded by the Nephites, by the humans of Moroni on the one hand, and the humans of Lehi on the other, all of whom were fresh and full of strength. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
“However, the Lamanites were wearied because of their long march. And Moroni commanded his humans that they should fall upon them until they had given up their weapons of war. And it came to pass that Jacob, being their leader, being also a Zoramite, and having an unconquerable spirit, he le the Lamanites forth to battle with exceeding fury against Moroni. Moroni being in their course of march, therefore Jacob was determined to slay them and cut his way through the city of Mulek. However, behold, Moroni and his humans were more powerful; therefore they did not give way before the Lamanites. And it came to pass that they fought on both hands with exceeding fury; and there were many slain on both sides; yea, and Moroni was wounded and killed. And Lehi pressed upon their rear with such fury with his strong humans, that the Lamanites in the rear delivered up their weapons of war; and the remainder of them, being much confused, knew not whither to go or to strike. Now Moroni seeing their confusion, he said unto them: If ye will bring forth your weapons of war and deliver them up, behold we will forbear shedding your blood. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
“And it came to pass that when the Lamanites had heard these words, their chief captains, all those who were not slain, came forth and threw down their weapons of war at the feet of Moroni, and also commanded their humans that they should do the same. However, behold, there were any that would not; and those who would not deliver up their swords were taken and bound, and their weapons of war were taken from them, and they were compelled to march with their brethren forth int the land Bountiful. And now the number of prisoners who were taken exceeded more than the number of those who had been slain, yea, more than those who had been slain on both sides,” reports Alma 52.1-40. He walked the path that descends to death; Himself still living, He braved the journey and brought rebirth to those beyond hope dwelling in the coldest regions, living in the halls of Earth. Facing Death boldly, He led him to love and taught him the secrets that only He knew. It was His great courage that taught us to dare and His example that we should follow in the heart of trouble that may beset us. Come, my beloved, with chorus of praise, welcome Bride Sabbath, the Queen of the days. “Keep and Remember!”—in divine Word He that is One Alone, made His will heard; One is the name of Him, One is the Lord! His are the fame and the glory and praise! #RandolphHarris 26 of 26
Cresleigh Homes
It may be warm, but we still feel the fall spirit creeping in! 🍂 Have you started decorating your home for fall?
If you are stumped on where to start, keep an eye out for our upcoming blog post for how to get into the fall spirit! 😍 https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
You Always Hold Your Loved One in Your Heart, but You Must Let Go of Your Grief!
We have probed the Earth, excavated it, burned it, ripped things from it, buried things in it….That does not fit my definition of a good tenant. If we were here on a month-to-moth bases, we would have been evicted long ago, and perhaps that is what is going on with COVID-19. Perhaps the Earth is tired of being abused. After 96 percent of wildfires are caused by humans. Reentering America, one is struck first of all by the grim monotony of American facial expressions—hard, surly, and bitter—and by the aura of deprivation that informs them. One goes abroad forewarned against exploitation by grasping foreigners, but nothing is done to prepare the returning traveler for the fanatical acquisitiveness of one’s compatriots. It is difficult to become reaccustomed to seeing people already weighted down with possession acting as if every object they did not own were bread withheld from a hungry mouth. These perceptions are heightened by the contrast between the sullen faces of real people and the vision of happiness television offers: men and women ecstatically engaged in stereotyped symbols of fun—running through fields, strolling on beaches, dancing and singing. Smiling faces with chronically open mouths express their gratification with the manifold bounties offered by the culture. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
One begins to feel there is a sever gap between the fantasies Americans life by and the realities they live in. Americans know from an early age how they are supposed to look when happy and what they are supposed to do or buy to be happy. However, for some reason their fantasies are unrealizable and leave them disappointed and embittered. The traveler’s antennae disappear after a time. These impressions fade, and reentry process is gradually effected. American once again seem familiar, comfortable, ordinary. Yet some uneasiness lingers on, for the society seems troubled and self-preoccupied—as if suddenly large numbers of America were scrutinizing their own society with the doubtful eyes of a traveler. One of the functions of a society is to make its inhabitants feel safe, and American devote more of their collective resources to security than to any other need. They build McMansions in gated communities, have cameras inside and outside the home, every member of the family has a mobile phone and every kind of insure you can dream of. Some people even go as far as buying armored (bullet proof) Ultimate Driving Machines. Yet American still think they need more safety because of shotguns in the close, nuclear bombers patrolling overhead, and the fiction the passes as news. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
With each decade we seem to accumulate more fears, and most of these fears seem to be about each other. In the fifties we were afraid of native Communists, and although we now feel sheepish about that moment of panic, today we express the same kind of fears about the mainstream media and the political party; and in our reactions to all of these fears we have created some very real dangers. Our intense fears make many people believe their race, way of life, religion, wealth, family, home and country are in danger of total extinction. During this COVID-19 crisis, many people have seriously become fearful of a World War III. Given this lack of concern for an overwhelming threat, how can we account for the exaggerated fear of climate change? From Dr. Freud we learned long ago to suspect, when a fear seems out of proportion, that is has been bloated by a wish; and this seems particularly likely when the danger is defined as a psychological one—an evil influence. The truth about climate change is if we want to save the World, we need to stop destroying forests and rain forests. We fear storms and wild beasts, but we do not censor them. If we must guard ourselves against evil influences we there by admit to their seductive appeal. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Thus the McCarthy era reached its peak after the discovery that a few Americans has responded to “brainwashing” efforts, and the fear of conversion to Communism was quite explicit in public statements and popular surveys. One survey respondent, for example, made the revealing statement that “so many people in America are eager like those soldiers of ours in Korea to fall into the traps set by Communist propaganda.” The anticommunism of that period and its institutional residues have served as a kind of political fig leaf. The same emphasis surrounds of fears of radicalism today. The political party, peace demonstrations, militance, dens, and student protests are disturbing not only because they provide a serious physical danger (say the equivalent of walking through a street gang wearing the wrong colour), but also because we fear having our secret doubts about the viability of our social system voiced aloud. It is not what happens abroad that generates hysteria, but rather what appears to be happening within ourselves. This is why force must be used against the expression of certain ideas—if the ideas pluck a responsive chord counterarguments are difficult to remember, and one must fall back on clubs and tear gas. However, what is the nature of the attraction exerted by radical ideas on unwilling conservatives? #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
We know something about the hopes that tige the old maid’s search for a ravisher under her bed, but we need to understand better the seductive impact that informs our enraged fascination with the revolutionary currents of American society. Since the very form of this question rests on certain assumptions about culture and personality, however, let me first makes these explicit. The emotional repertory of human beings is limited and standard. When caressed, we are built to feel warm, happy, and content, when frustrated feel angry, when attacked feel frightened, when insulted feel offended, when excluded jealous, and so on. However, every culture holds some of these human reactions to be unacceptable and attempts to warp its participants int some peculiar specialization. Since human beings are malleable within limits, the warping is for the most part successfully achieved, so that some learn not to laugh, some not to cry, some not to love, and some not to hate in situations in which these reactions might appropriately be expressed. This cultural warping of human emotionality is eased by compartmentalization: there are special times and places and situations where the disparaged responses are permitted, or classes of people who can provide vicarious satisfaction through conspicuous performance of some kind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Yet there are always a few of these responses with which every society and every individual has trouble. They must be shouted down continually, although they are usually visible to the outsider. Thus although the Germans, for example, have always placed great stress on order, precision, and obedience to authority, they periodically explode into revolutionary chaos and are driven by romantic Gotterdammerung fantasies. In the same way there is a cooperative underside to competitive America, a rich spoofing tradition in ceremonious England, an elaborate pornography in all prudish societies, and so on. Rather than saying Germans are obedient or Anglo-Saxon societies stuffy or puritanical, it is more correct to day that Germans are preoccupied with issues of authority, Anglo-Saxons with the control of emotional and pleasures of the flesh expression, and so forth. Those issues about which members of a given society seem to feel strongly all reveal a conflict one side of which is strongly emphasized, the other side as strongly (but not quite successfully) suppressed. These opposing forces are much more equally balanced than the society’s participants like to recognize—were this not true there would be no need for suppression. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Life would indeed be much less frantic if we were all able to recognize the diversity of responses and feelings within ourselves, and could abandon our somewhat futile efforts to present a monolithic self-portrait to the World. Probably some exaggeration of uniformity is necessary, however, in order for us to act at all, or at least with enough consistency to permit smooth social functioning. On the individual level the delicate balance reveals itself though conversion. An individual who “converts” from one orientation to its exact opposite appears to oneself and others to have made a gross change, but actually it involves only a very small shift in the balance of a focal and persistent conflict. Just as only one percent of the voting population is needed to reserves the results of an American election, so only one percent of an individual’s internal “constituencies” need shift in order to transform one from voluptuary to ascetic, from police officer to criminal, from Communist to anticommunist, or whatever. The opposite sides are as evenly matched before, and the apparent change merely represents the desperate efforts made by the internal “majority” to consolidate its shaky position of dominance. The individual must expend just as much energy shouting down the new “minority” as one did the old; some of the most dedicated witch hunters of the 1950’s, for example, were ex-Communist. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
So the reason there is so much division in America right now is because the majority is now becoming the minority, as the demographics change. On the society levels there are more outlets from the expression of “minority” themes and sentiments, and reversals of emphasis involve more overlap between the opposing trends. The United States of America, for example, traditionally one of the most prudish societies in the World, has long displayed, in a somewhat warped and mechanical way, the greatest profusion of stimuli involving pleasures of the flesh. These considerations suggest that the fear of radical movements in America derives much of its intensity from the attraction that such movements have for their opponents—an attraction that must be stifled. However, what is it? What is so severely lacking in our society that the assertion of an alternative life style throws so many Americans into panic and rage? I would like to suggest three human desires that are deeply and uniquely frustrated by American culture: The desire for community—the wish to live in trust and fraternal cooperation with one’s fellows in a total and visible collective eternity. The desire for engagement—the wish to come directly to grips with social and interpersonal problems and to confront on equal terms an environment which is not composed of ego extensions is another human desire that is deeply and uniquely frustrated by American culture. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The third is the desire for dependence—the wish to share responsibility for the control of one’s impulses and the direction of one’s life. When I say that these three desires are frustrated by American culture, this need not conjure up romantic images of individual struggling against society. In every case it is fair to say that we participate eagerly in producing the frustration we endure—it is not something merely done t us. For these desires are in each case subordinate to their opposites in that vague entity called the American Character. Americans have voluntarily created and voluntarily maintained a society which increasingly frustrates and aggravate these secondary yearnings, to the point where they threaten to become primary. Groups that in any way personify this threat are therefore feared in an exaggerated way, and will be until Americans as a group are able to recognize and accept those needs within themselves. “Thus says the Lord Who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters. Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing, even now it is springing to light. Do you not perceive it? A way will I make in the wilderness and rivers in the desert!” (Isaiah 43.16, 18-19.) #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Most of the conditions we commonly speak of as feelings are really not feelings at all; but the feeling tones or sensations that accompany those conditions are so powerful that the conditions themselves become identified with the associated sensations. This is true love and hatred or contempt, for example, but also with hurry and peace and with self-esteem and discouragement. Now, there are some extremely serious dangers here. When we confuse the condition with the accompanying feeling—peace, for example, with the feeling of peacefulness—we very likely will try to manage the feelings and disregard or deny the reality of the conditions. That way lie such things as “falling in love with love” and most of all the well-known addictions. The person who primarily wants the feeling of being loved or being “in love” will be incapable of sustaining loving relationships, whether with God or with other humans. And the person who wants the feeling of peacefulness will be unable to do the things that make for peace—especially, doing what is right and confronting evil. So, as far as our planning for spiritual formation is concerned, we must choose and act with regard to the condition, good or bad, and allow the feelings to take care of themselves, as they certainly will. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
In particular, we must never directly cherish, protect, or manipulate feelings, whether in ourselves or others. When negative feelings have themselves become so overwhelming that they threaten to take over our lives, this is the only exception to this rule. Then we must take steps to remove the negative feeling (grief or pain, for example). Prayer or even medication for such feelings is then wise. However, even so, the focus on the feeling must not be allowed to prevent our dealing, when and as we can, with the conditions from which that feelings arises. A well-known minister, after his wife passed away, said he had learned that there is a difference between turning loose your loved one and turning loose your grief. You always hold your loved one in your heart, but you must let go of your grief. So far as possible, we must always away from painful and destructive feelings. Simply that. Walk away. “Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers. On the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, so that I had to reject them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
However, this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people for I will forgive their guilt and I will remember their sins no more,” reports Jeremiah 31.31-34. Charles Darwin. Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) has offered a model of emotion for various other theorists and researchers. Darwin focuses on emotive expressions—that is, on visible gestures—and not on the subjective meanings associated with them. These gestures, he posits, were acquired during a prehistoric period and have survived as “serviceable associated habits.” Originally linked to actions these emotive gestures become actions manque. The emotion of love, for example, is the vestige of what was once a direct act of copulation. The baring of teeth in rage is a vestige of the once immediate act of biting. The expression of disgust is the vestige of what was once the immediate act of regurgitating a noxious thing. For Darwin, there is no emotion without gesture although there may be gesture without action. (The says the Lord God: ) “I will give them a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within them. I will remove their heart of stone and will give them a heart of flesh,” reports Ezekiel 11.19. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Darwin’s theory of emotion, then, is a theory of gesture. The question for later students thus became: are emotive gestures universal or are they culturally specific? Darwin’s own general conclusion was that they were universal. Darwin distinguished between facial expressions of emotion that are innate and universal and facial gestures (not necessarily of emotion) that are learned and thus culturally variable. He devised a sixteen-item questionnaire and sent it to thirty-six missionaries and others who had lived in non-Western societies. One question was: “Can a dogged or obstinate expression be recognized, which is chiefly shown by the mouth being firmly closed, a lowering brow, and a slight frown?” Based on his returned questionnaires, Darwin concluded that “the chief expressive actions” of human beings were innate and therefore universal. Despite his generally universalist interpretations, however, Darwin concluded that some nonverbal behaviours (such as weeping, kissing, nodding, and shaking the head in affirmation and negation) were not universal but culture-specific and “learned like the words of a language.” However, the debate has been carried forward by those who argue that emotional expressions are probably innate, and those who argue that they are modeled on language and therefore culturally variable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
What is missing from both sides of this debate is what was missing in Darwin’s theory from the beginning: a conception of emotion as subjective experience and a more subtle and complex notion of how social factor impinge. Humans compete with each other for control of the ritual apparatus, which is a powerful tool for commanding people by controlling their emotions. The ego is a mediator between the id (drive) and conscious expression. Affects are seen as signals of impending danger (from inside or outside) and as an impetus to action. The ego is assigned the capacity to postpone id drives, to neutralize or bind them. One emotion—anxiety—is the model for all others because it is more important due to the unpleasantness of anxiety which leads to the development of various ego defenses against unpleasantness. As analysts we recognize that anxiety occupies a special position in mental life. It is the motive for defense. Defenses serve the purpose of minimizing, or, if possible, preventing the development of anxiety. Anxiety was initially defined in a way that bypasses the ego: anxiety is the reaction to an influx of stimuli which is too great for the mental apparatus to master or discharge. (Thus says the Lord God: ) “I ignore the troubles of the past. I shut mine eyes to them. For, behold, I create new Heavens and a new Earth. The past shall be forgotten and never come to mind. Humans shall rejoice forever in what I now create,” reports Isaiah 65.16, 17. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
So we see that God is a worker and that humans, created in God’s image, is a worker and that work is good. However, then come the Fall and the Curse. “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” Genesis 3.17-19. The Curse made nature uncooperative, so that work became painful toil and humans had to sweat for a living. Today our working conditions vary. Some sweat more than others. We may be in a better position than some. However, the norm for the World is “painful toil.” Even more, the normal experience of humankind is one’s labour is a malaise of futility. The writer of Ecclesiastes gave this universal expression as he bemoaned his plight from the perspective of one who leaves God out of his life. In 2.4-10 he describes his professional success in acquiring vineyards and gardens and parks and enslaved humans and flocks and treasures. He was greater than all his contemporaries. He was denied nothing his eyes desired. However, he concluded in verse 11, “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing gained under the Sun.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
And he reiterates in verse 17, “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the Sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the win.” Humans and others, this is as far as work will take you apart from God. You will engaged in it because, though fallen, you are in the image of God and because work is part of the natural order, and it will produce its benefits and satisfactions—but it will also be toil, and its joys will be ephemeral. Studs Terkel has revealed what has always been true under the Sun when God is left out. “And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites; for he caused that his armies should commence in the commencement of the twentieth year of the reign of the judges, that they should commence in digging up heaps of Earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land which was possessed by the Nephites. And upon the top of these ridges of Earth he caused that there should be timers, yea, works of timbers built up to the height of a human, round about the cities. And he caused that upon those works of timbers there should be a frame of pickets built upon the timbers round about; and they were strong and high. And he caused towers to be erected that overlooked those works of pickets, and he caused places of security to be built upon those towers, that the stones and the arrows of the Lamanites could not hurt them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
“And they were prepared that they could cast stones from the top thereof, according to their pleasure and their strength, and slay one who should attempt to approach near he walls of the city. Thus Moroni did prepare strongholds against the coming of their enemies, round about every city in all the land. And it came to pass that Moroni caused that his armies should go forth into the east wilderness; yea, and they went forth and drove all he Lamanites who were in the east wilderness into their own lands, which were south of the land of Zarahemla. And the land of Nephi did run in a straight course from the east sea to the west. And it came to pass that when Moroni had driven all the Lamanites out of the east wilderness which was north of the lands of their own possessions, he caused that the inhabitants who were in the land of Zarahemla and in the land round about should go forth into the east wilderness, even to the borders by the seashore, and possess the land. And he also placed armies on the south, in the borders of their possessions, and caused them to erect fortifications that they might secure their armies and their people from the hands of their enemies. And thus he cut off all the strongholds of the Lamanites in the East wilderness, yea, and also on the west, fortifying the line between the land of Zarahemla and the land of Nephi, from the west sea, running by the head of the river of Sidon—the Nephites possessing all the land northward, yea, even all the land which was northward of the land Bountiful according to their pleasure. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
“Thus Moroni, with his armies, which did increase daily because of the assurance of protection which his works did bring forth unto them, did seek to cut off the strength and the power of the Lamanites from off the lands of their possession, that they should have no power upon the lands of their possession. And it came to pass that the Nephites began the foundation of a city, and they called the nae of the city Moroni; and it was by the east sea; and it was on the south by the line of the possessions of the Lamanites. And they also began a foundation for a city between the city of Moroni and the city of Aaron, joining he borders of Aaron and Moroni; and they called the name of the city, or the land, Nephihah. And they also began in that same year to build many cities on the north, one in a particular manner which they called Lehi, which was in the north by the borders of the seashore. And thus ended the twentieth year. And in these prosperous circumstances were the people of Nephi in the commencement of the twenty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And they did prosper exceedingly, and they became exceedingly rich; yea, and they did multiply and wax strong in the land. And thus we see how merciful and jus are all the dealings of the Lord, to the fulfilling of all his words unto the children of humans; yea, we can behold that his words are verified, even at this time, which he spake unto Lehi, saying: #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
“Blessed art thou and thy children; and they shall be blessed, inasmuch as they shall keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. However, remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. However, remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And we see that these promises have been verified to the people of Nephi; for it has been their quarrelings and their contentions, yea, their murderings, and their plunderings, their idolatry, their whoredoms, and their abominations, which were among themselves, which brought them their wars and their destructions. And those who were faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord were delivered at all times, whilst thousands of their wicked brethren have been consigned to bondage, or to perish by the sword, or to dwindle in unbelief, and mingle with the Lamanites. However, behold, there was never a happier time among the people of Nephi, since the days of Nephi, than in the days of Moroni, yea, even at this time, in the twenty and first year of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass that the twenty and second year of the reign of the judges also ended in peace; yea, and also the twenty and third year. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“And it came to pass that in the commencement of the twenty and fourth year of the reign of the judges, there would also have been peace among the people of Nephi had it not been for a contention which took place among them concerning the land of Lehi, and the land of Morianton, which joined upon the borders of Lehi; both of which were on the borders by the seashore. For behold, the people who possessed the land of Morianton did claim a part of the land of Lehi; therefore there began to be a warm contention between them, insomuch that the people of Morianton took up arms against their brethren, and they were determined by the sword to slay them. However, behold, the people who possessed the land of Lehi fled to the camp of Moroni, and appealed unto him for assistance; for behold they were not in the wrong. And it came to pass that when the people of Morianton, who were led by a man whose name was Morianton, found that the people of Lehi had fled to the camp of Moroni they were exceedingly fearful lest the army of Moroni should come upon them and destroy them. Therefore, Morianton put it into their hearts that they should flee to the land which was northward, which was covered with large bodies of water, and take possession of the land which was northward. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“And behold, they would have carried this plan into effect, (which would have been a cause to have been lamented) but behold, Morianton being a man of much passion, therefore he was angry with one of his maid servants, and he fell upon her and beat her much. And it came to pass that she fled, and came over to the camp of Moroni, and told Moroni all things concerning the matter, and also concerning their intentions to flee into the land northward. Now behold, the people who were in the land Bountiful, or rather Moroni, feared that they would hearken to the words of Morianton and unite with his people, and thus he would obtain possession of those parts of the land, which would lay a foundation for serious consequences among the people of Nephi, yea, which consequences would lead to the overthrow of their liberty. Therefore Moroni sent an army, with their camp, to head the people of Morianton, to stop their flight into the land northward. And it came to pass that they did not head them until they had come to the borders of the land Desolation; and there they did head them, by the narrow pass which led by the sea into the land northward, yea, by the sea, on the west and on the east. And it came to pass that the army which was sent by Moroni, which was led by a man whose name was Teancum did meet the people of Morianton. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
And when Teancu met the people of Morianton, so stubborn were the people of Morianton, (being inspired by wickedness and his flattering words) that a battle commenced between them, in which Teancum did slay Morianton and defeat his army, and took them prisoners, and returned to the camp of Moroni. And thus ended the twenty and fourth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus were the people of Morianton brought back. And upon their covenanting to keep the peace they were restored to the land of Morianton, and a union took place between them and the people of Lehi; and they were also restored to their lands. And it came to pass that in the same year that the people of Nephi had peace restored unto them, that Nephihah, the second chief judge, died, having filled the judgment seat with perfect uprightness before God. Nevertheless, he had refused Alma to take possession of those records and those things which were esteemed by Alma and his fathers to be most sacred; therefore Alma had conferred them upon his son, Helaman. Behold, it came to pass that the son of Nephihah, Pahoran, was appointed to fill the judgment-seat, in the stead of his father; yea, he was appointed chief judge and governor over the people, with an oath and sacred ordinance to judge righteously, and to keep the peace and the freedom of the people. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Pahoran also had the power to grant unto them their sacred privileges to worship the Lord their God, yea, to support and maintain the cause of God all his days, and to bring the wicked to justice according to their crime. And Pahoran did fill the seat of his father, and did commence his reign in the end of the twenty and fourth year, over the people of Nephi,” Alma 50.1-40. Wonder and awe, as I sit in your presence, you who sit in the gateway, in this World and in the other, mediating the power that shines through, letting pass what I need, and what I can use, holding back in mercy what I cannot. Seen against the brightness, your dark silhouette is still and sharp and clear. Sitting fiercely, with perfect intent, pure in your purpose, source of terror and comfort. A roaring fire, you sit in my heart’s center. A rampaging bull, you tear through my soul. A searing bolt, you cut through my life. A skirring arrow, you slice me in two. A standing stone, you are my anchor. The Lord reigneth while the people stand in awe; He is enthroned upon His judgment seat, while the Earth trembles. The Lord is mighty in Zion; He is exalted over all peoples. They praise His name: “God is great and revered, is holy.” Mighty King who loveth justice, Thou hast established equity; Justice and righteousness hast Thou wrought in Jacob. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
A tall-standing cypress tree is our God, supporting the Worlds on his limbs, each World ordered according to the spreading of His branches. Into each World, His twigs extend, bearing the leaves and birds that are our lives. From what source is the tree nourished? Where do its roots extend? Deep within the void they reach and are fed there from the substance of the Goddess. He makes known her will, giving it form, from which we might know it and live according to its pattern. Shaper and essence, open my eyes, open my ears, open my heart, that I might perceive the sacred pattern and conform my life to it. The goddess is the one who is Lady of all, and she is the one of whom I would speak, the one who gives birth and the one who brings death, beginning and end of the course of our lives. God is the Lord Almighty. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool, declaring: “Holy is He!” Moses and Aaron were among His priests; Samuel was among those that called upon His name, calling upon the Lord and being answered. He would speak unto them out of a pillar of cloud; they kept His testimonies and the laws He gave them. Thou, O Lord, didst answer them; Thou wast a forgiving God unto them, through punishing them for their evil. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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Waiting for the Angel to Stir the Water, I Realized I am Almost a God the Creator—The World I See is My World!
The faces of the past are like leaves that settle to the ground, they may the Earth rich and thick, so that new fruit will come forth every Summer. Radio and television have contributed greatly to the demise of the art of conversation. Scientist have attempted to pin down the difference between the effects of radio and television and have not as yet been able to turn up any solid results. It seems to me that neither radio nor television is an agent of dialogue. They work indirectly. In both of them there is someone on the giving end and someone on the receiving end. There can be no contradictions, no back talk. When the radio or TV is turned on, conversation stops. Radio and TV can create the impression of conversation, but they cannot really make it come about. That, I think, is a privilege reserved for living human beings. The crucial issue is whether radio and television invite us, stimulate us, challenge us to converse or whether they are inimical to the conditions that make conversation possible. However, in that regard radio seems less harmful to me than television. Television encourages passivity, a comfortable consumer mentality, more than any other medium. It is the most successful means we have ever developed to help us “pass time.” However, real conversation demands time. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
If we pass our time and kill our time, conversation cannot flourish. Radio, if I am seeing things rig, does not exert so strong an attraction. It promotes and demands more alertness, more imagination. It could be, if it wanted to be, an inexhaustible source of material for conversation. It cannot offer conversation itself, but it can offer the stuff of conversation. It can point us toward other, more basic and direct means of communication, calling our attention, say, to the uniqueness and delight of face-to-face conversation. In many cases, when people turn on the radio, they are still free. However, when an individual turns on the TV and there is a program that interests them, they become addicted to them and do not want to move from in front of the screen. With the assistance of radio technology, one can listen to a conversation somewhat in the same way that they listen to someone else speaking on the telephone, and to be honest, it can be much better than the gibberish and chatter coming out of most people’s mouths because there is a topic that is meant to keep people interested. What we hear on the radio is not, of course, as personal as a telephone conversation, but we take both the telephone and radio in stride. We are not fascinated by them, and so I can truly say that we are free either to listen to the radio or not listen to it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
My reaction to television is quite different. With television I lose a bit of my freedom. The minute the set is turned on and I see the picture on it, I experience what I would hesitate to call a compulsion but what is certainly a strong impulse or inclination to watch, even if I know intellectually that the program is utter drivel. I do not means to say that everything on television is drivel, some of it is very fascinating and highlights lifestyles we may be interested in, or inform of about myths we what to know about, some people even use television shows like a book club and discuss them so they forego sin by gossiping about real life people. People feel drawn to watch TV because it transports them to other realities they want to explore. Television holds a fascination far greater than that of radio. It exerts a kind of psychological spell that cannot be explained in terms of the content of any particular program. I have often asked myself what this fascination is, and I think it is rooted in some very profound level of our nature: By merely pressing a button, we can summon another World into our living rooms. That appeals to profound magical instincts. With television I become a kind of god. I can get rid of the reality I actually live with, and in its place I can create a new reality that appears when I press the button. #RandolpHarris 3 of 23
I am almost God the Creator. The World I see is my World. That reminds me of a story that not only illustrates this point vividly but also has the advantage of being true. A father and his six-year-old son were riding in the family car on a rainy, stormy day. They had a flat tire and had to stop to change it. Given the weather, that was a thoroughly unpleasant task, and the boy said to his father, “Daddy, can we not change to a different channel?” that is the way the child saw the World. If this one does not suit me, I will switch to another one. My wife recently read a novel by a Polish author and then told me a story, which I found utterly intriguing. The novel tells about the son of a very wealthy and eccentric man. The body grows up in his parental house but in total isolation. All he has available to him is a television set. He leaves it on all day, and he thinks that what he sees on it is reality (acute television intoxication). The young man never says a word, cannot say a word, because he knows nothing. All he can do is watch, because for him the World is nothing but a television show. However, precisely because he says nothing and because he eventually winds up in the house of one of the most powerful men in America, people think he must be terribly important. Pretty soon everyone knows his name, and in the end he is nominated for president because he never says anything and has not any opinions at all. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
This story illustrates just what I have been talking about. Reality and what we see in television have become one, and I think that this experience of being able to press a button and makes another World become a reality is—as you have said—a profound, atavistic experience and one that we find incredibly seductive. That is why television has no need, as it were, to offer anything “good.” Its appeal lies in the very nature of the medium. People are drawn to it the way they are to shooting star or to any other exciting spectacle—where they can remain spectators and are in no way prepared to take any action themselves. The flip side of this illusion of power (that can be had by pressing a button) is, then, total passivity. With radio, the possibility still remains that listening can be a kind of response, a predisposition to activity that should not be confused with merely waiting for enlightenment. Television has brought about drastic changes in our listening habits. Now that television has gotten people of the habit of attending to anything fully and closely, we can no longer assume that we have our listeners’ attention. Television has reduced radio to a more modest role. Indeed, radio hardly qualifies as a mass medium any more—a situation for which we should perhaps be grateful. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Should not radio therefore be defining new tasks for itself that will take into account these differences we have been discussing here? I know that South German Radio has offered an extensive series of programs covering subjects ordinarily treated in university courses. The language has been somewhat simpler perhaps, but that is all to the good. (If instructors used simpler language to convey more content, it would be an improvement in our university courses.) This, it seems to me, is an admirable task for radio and one in which it can fill a significant educational role. It is remarkable with how little concentration people think, live, and work these days. Work is so fragmented and shattered that concentration is usually only mechanical and partial. We rarely encounter that full concentration that involves the whole person. A worker on an assembly line who has to tighten the same screw over and over again needs a certain kind of concentration is usually only mechanical and partial. We rarely encounter that full concentration that involves the whole person. A worker on an assembly line who has to tighten the same screw over and over again needs a certain kind of concentration to keep up one’s pace, but this type of concentration is capable of listening without one’s thoughts wandering off; one will not try to do five things at once because one cannot find any one thing that really satisfies one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
And, of course, without concentration we cannot accomplish anything. Everything we do without concentration will have little value. If concentration is lacking, our activities will not provide us or anyone else with satisfaction. That holds true for all of us, not just for great artist or scientist. I now turn to the notion of reflective equilibrium. The need for this idea arises as follows. According to the provisional aim of mortal philosophy, one might says that justice as fairness is the hypothesis that the principles which would be chosen in the original position are identical with those that match our considered judgments and so these principles describe our sense of justice. However, this interpretation is clearly oversimplified. In describing our sense of justice an allowance must be made for the likelihood that considered judgments are no doubt subject to certain irregularities and distortions despite the fact that they are rendered under favourable circumstances. When a person is presented with an intuitively appealing account of one’s sense of justice (one, say, which embodies various reasonable and natural presumptions), one may well revise one’s judgments to conform to its principles even though the theory does not fit one’s existing judgments exactly. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
One is especially likely to do this if one can find an explanation for the deviations which undermines one’s confidence in one’s original judgments and if the conception presented yields a judgment which one finds one can now accept. From the standpoint of moral philosophy, the best account of a person’s sense of justice is not the one which fits one’s judgments prior to one’s examining any conception of justice, but rather the one which matches one’s judgments in reflective equilibrium. As we have seen, this state is one reached after a person has weighed various proposed conceptions and one has either revised one’s judgments to accord with one of them or held fast to one’s initial convictions (and the corresponding conception). The notion of reflective equilibrium introduces some complications that call for comment. For one thing, it is a notion characteristic of the study of principles which govern actions shaped by self-examination. Moral philosophy is Socratic: we may wan to change our present considered judgments once their regulative principles are brought to light. And we may want to do this even though these principles are a perfect fit. A knowledge of these principles may suggest further reflections that lead us to revise our judgments. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
This feature is not peculiar though to moral philosophy, or to the study of other philosophical principles such as those of induction and scientific method. For example, while we may not expect a substantial revision of our sense of correct grammar in view of a linguistic theory the principles of which seem especially natural to us, such as change is not inconceivable, and no doubt our sense of grammaticalness may be affected to some degree anyway by this knowledge. However, these is a contrast, say, with physics. To take an extreme case, if we have an accurate account of motions of the Heavenly bodies that we do not find appealing, we cannot alter these motions to conform to a more attractive theory. It is simply good fortune that the principles of celestial mechanics have their intellectual beauty. There are, however, several interpretations of reflective equilibrium. For the nation varies depending upon whether one is to be presented with only those descriptions which more or less match one’s existing judgments except for minor discrepancies, or whether one is to be presented with all possible descriptions to which one might plausibly conform one’s judgements together with all relevant philosophical arguments for them. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
In the first case we would be describing a person’s sense of justice more or less as it is although allowing for the smoothing out of certain irregularities; in the second case a person’s sense of justice may or may not undergo a radical shift. Clearly it is the second kind of reflective equilibrium that one is concerned with in moral philosophy. To be sure, it is doubtful where one can ever reach this state. For even if the idea of all possible descriptions and of all philosophically relevant arguments is well-defined (which is a questionable one), we cannot examine each of them. The most we can do is to study the conceptions of justice known to us through the tradition of moral philosophy and any further ones that occur to us, and then to consider these. This is pretty much what I shall do, since in presenting justice as fairness I shall compare its principles and arguments with a few other familiar views. In light of these remarks, justice as fairness can be understood as saying that the two principles previously mentioned would be chosen in the original position in preference to other traditional conceptions of justice, for example, those of utility and perfection; and that these principles give a better match with our considered judgments on reflection than these recognized alternatives. Thus justice as fairness moves us closer to the philosophical ideal; it does not, of course, achieve it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
This explanation of reflective equilibrium suggests straightway a number of further questions. For example, does a reflective equilibrium (in the sense of the philosophical ideal) exist? If s, is it unique? Even if it is unique, can it be reached? Perhaps the judgments from which we begin, or the course of reflection itself (or both), affect the resting point, if any, that we eventually achieve. It would be useless, however, to speculate about these matters here. They are far beyond our reach. I shall not even ask whether the principles that characterize one person’s considered judgments are the same as those that characterize another’s. I shall take for granted that these principles are either approximately the same for persons whose judgments are in reflective equilibrium, or if not, that their judgments divide along a few lines represented by the family of traditional doctrines that I shall discuss. (Indeed, one person may find oneself torn between opposing conceptions at the same time.) If human’s conceptions of justice finally turn out to differ, the ways in which they do is a matter of first importance. Of course we cannot know how these conceptions vary, or even whether they do, until we have a better account of their structure. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
And this we now lack, even in the case of one human, or homogeneous group of humans. Here too there is likely to be a similarity with linguistics: if we can describe one person’s sense of grammar we shall surely know many things about the general structure of language. Similarly, if we should be able to characterize one (educated) person’s sense of justice, we would have a good beginning toward a theory of justice. We may suppose that everyone has in oneself the whole form of a moral conception. So for the purposes of this essay, the views of the reader and the author are the only ones that count. The opinions of others are useful only to clear our own heads. I wish to stress that a theory of justice is precisely that, namely, theory. It is a theory of the moral sentiments (to recall an eighteenth-century title) setting out the principles governing our moral powers, or, more specifically, our sense of justice. These is a definite if limited class of facts against which conjectured principles can be checked, namely, our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. A theory of justice is subject to the same rules of method as other theories. Definitions and analyses of meaning do not have a special place: definition is but one device used in setting up the general structure of theory. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Once the whole framework is worked out, definitions have no distinct status and stand or fall with the theory itself. In any case, it is obviously impossible to develop a substantive theory of justice founded solely on truths of logic and definition. The analysis of moral concepts and the a priori, however traditionally understood, is too slender a basis. Moral philosophy must be free to use contingent assumptions and general facts as it pleases. There is no other way to give an account of our considered judgments in reflective equilibrium. This is the conception of the subject adopted by most classical British writers through Sidgwick. I see no reason to depart from it. I believe that his view goes back in its essentials to Aristotle’s procedure in the Nicomachean Ethics. And Sidgwick thought of the history of moral philosophy as a series of attempts to state in full breadth and clearness those primary intuitions of Reason, by the scientific application of which the common moral thought of humankind may be at once systematized and corrected. He takes for granted that philosophical reflection will lead to revisions in our considered judgments, and although there are elements of epistemological intuitionism in his doctrine, these are not given much weight when unsupported by systematic considerations. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Moreover, if we can find an accurate account of our moral conceptions, then questions of meaning and justification may prove much easier to answer. Indeed some of them may no longer be real questions at all. Note, for example, the extraordinary deepening of our understanding of the meaning and justification of statements in logical and mathematics made possible by developments since Frege and Cantor. A knowledge of the fundamental structures of logic ad set theory and their relation to mathematics has transformed the philosophy of these subjects in a way that conceptual analysis and linguistic investigations never could. One has only to observe the effect of the division of theories into those which are decidable and complete, undecidable yet complete, and neither complete no decidable. The problem of meaning and truth in logic and mathematics is profoundly altered by the discovery of logical systems illustrating these concepts. Once the substantive content of moral conceptions is better understood, a similar transformation may occur. It is possible that convincing answers to questions of the meaning of justification or moral judgments can be found in no other way. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
I wish, then, to stress the central place of the study of out substantive moral conceptions. However, the corollary to recognizing their complexity is accepting the fact that our present theories are primitive and have great defect. We need to be tolerant of simplifications if they reveal and approximate the general outlines of our judgments. Objections by way of counterexamples are to be made with care, since these may tell us only what we know already, namely that our theory is wrong somewhere. The important thing is to find out how often and how far it is wrong. All theories are presumably mistaken in places. The real question at any given time is which of the views already proposed is the best approximation overall. To ascertain this some grasp of the structure of rival theories is surely necessary. It is for this reason that I have tried to classify and to discuss conceptions of justice by reference to their basic intuitive ideas, since these disclose the main difference between them. In presenting justice as fairness I shall contrast it with utilitarianism. I do this for various reasons, partly as an expository device, partly because the several variants of the utilitarian view have long dominated our philosophical tradition and continue to do so. And this dominance has been maintained despite the persistent misgivings that utilitarianism so easily arouses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The explanation for this peculiar state of affairs lies, I believe, in the fact that no constructive alternative theory has been advanced which has the comparable virtues of clarity and system and which at the same time allays these doubts. Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable. My conjecture is that the contract doctrine properly worked out can fill this gap. I think justice as fairness an endeavor in this direction. Of course the contract theory as I shall present it is subject to the strictures that we have just noted. It is no exception to the primitiveness that marks existing moral theories. It is disheartening, for example, how little can now be said about priority rules; and while a lexical ordering may serve fairly well for some important cases, I assume that it will not be completely satisfactory. Nevertheless, we are free to use simplifying devices, and this I have often done. We should view a theory of justice as a guiding framework designed to focus our moral sensibilities and to put before our intuitive capacities more limited and manageable questions for judgment. The principles of justice identify certain considerations as morally relevant and the priority rules indicate the appropriate precedence when these conflict, while the conception of the original position defines the underlying idea which is to inform our deliberations. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
If the scheme as a whole seems on reflection to clarify and to order our thoughts, and if it tends t reduce disagreements and to bring divergent convictions more in line, then it has done all that one may reasonably ask. Understood as parts of a framework that does indeed seem to help, the numerous simplifications may be regarded as provisionally justified. However, achieving this new vision of oneself—of who one would be—must not be presumed to be a mere snap of the fingers. It will require genuine openness to radical change in oneself, careful and creative instruction, and abundant supplies of divine grace. For most people all of this only comes to them after they reach the lowest level of their lives or the worst point of a decline, and discover the total hopelessness of being who they are. Most people cannot envision who they would be without the fears, angers, lusts, power ploys, and woundedness with which they have lived so long. They identify with their habit-worn feelings. When Jesus said to the man by the pool of Bethesda, waiting for the angel to stir the waters, “Wilt thou be made whole?” he was not just passing the time of day (John 5.6). #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
We are not told how old he was, but this man had been in his impotent condition for thirty-eight years! If made whole, he would have to deal with a career change of immense proportions. To all his relatives and acquaintances he would no longer be “the one whom we take to the pool every day to wait for the angel.” He would now be…What? Who? How would he identify himself? How would be now relate to others and they to him? He might even have to get a job. Doing what? However, really, this man’s problems was nothing compared to an individual undergoing the transformation of his feelings (emotions, sensations, desires) from those he learned in the home, school, and playground as he grew up to those that characterize the inner beings of Jesus Christ. He is not no to be one who will spend hours watching TV, listening to the radio, fantasizing sensual indulgence or revenge, or who will try to dominate or injure others in attitude, word, or deed. He will no repay evil for evil—push for push, blow for blow, taunt for taunt, hatred for hatred, contempt for contempt. He will not be always on the hunt to satisfy his lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life (1 John 2.16). #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
No wonder he has no real ideal who he will be; and he must content himself with the mere identity: “apprentice of Jesus.” That is the starting point from which his new identity will emerge, and it is in fact powerful enough to bear the load. “Behold, now it came to pass that the people of Nephi were exceedingly rejoiced, because the Lord had again delivered them out of the hands of their enemies; therefore they gave thanks unto the Lord their God; yea, and they did fast much and pray much, and they did worship God; yea, and they did fast much and pray much, and they did worship God with exceedingly great joy. And it came to pass in the nineteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Alma came unto his son Helaman and said unto him: Believest thou the words which I spake unto thee concerning those records which have been kept? And Helaman said unto him: Yea, I believe. And Alma said again: Believest thou in Jesus Christ, who shall come? And he said: Yea, I believe all the words which thou has spoken. And Alma said unto him again: Will ye keep my commandments? And he said: Yea, I will keep thy commandments with all my heart. Then Alma said unto him: Blessed art thou; and the Lord shall prosper thee in this land. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“However, behold, I have somewhat to prophesy unto thee; but what I prophesy unto thee ye shall not make known; yea, what I prophesy unto thee shall not be made known, even until the prophecy is fulfilled; therefore write the words which I shall say. And these are the words: Behold, I perceive that this very people, the Nephites, according to the spirit of revelation which is in me four hundred years from the time that Jesus Christ shall manifest himself unto them, shall dwindle in unbelief. Yea, and then shall they see wars and pestilences, yea, famines and bloodshed, even until the people of Nephi shall become extinct—yea, and this because they shall dwindle in unbelief and fall into the works of darkness, and lasciviousness, and all manner of iniquities; yea, I say unto you, that because they shall sin against so great light and knowledge, yea, I say unto you, that from that day, even the fourth generation shall not pass away before this great iniquity shall come. And when that great day cometh, behold, the time very soon cometh that those who are now, or the seed of those who are no numbered among the people of Nephi, shall no more be numbered among the people of Nephi. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“However, whosoever remaineth, and is not destroyed in that great and dreadful say, shall be numbered among the Lamanites, and shall become like unto them, all, save it be a few who shall be called the disciples of the Lord; and them shall the Lamanites pursue even until they shall become extinct. And now, because of iniquity, this prophecy shall be fulfilled. And now it came to pass that after Alma had said these things to Helaman, he blessed him, and also his other sons; and he also blessed the Earth for the righteous sake. And he said: Thus saith the Lord God—Cursed shall be the land, yea, this land, unto every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, unto destruction, which do wickedly, when they are fully ripe; and as I have said so shall it be; for this is the cursing and the blessing of God upon the land, for the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. And now, when Alma has said these words he blessed the church, yea, all those who should stand fast in the faith from that time henceforth. And when Alma had done this he departed out of the land of Zarahemla, as if to go into the land of Melek. And it came to pass that he was never heard of more; as to his death or burial we know not of. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“Behold, this we know, that he was a righteous man; and the saying when abroad in the church that he was taken up by the Spirit, or buried by the hand of the Lord, even as Moses. However, behold, the scripture saith the Lord took Moses unto himself; and we suppose that he has also received Alma in the spirit, unto himself; therefore, for this cause we know nothing concerning his death and burial. And now it came to pass in the commencement of the nineteenth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, that Helaman went forth among the people to declare the word unto them. For behold, because of their wars with the Lamanites and the many little dissensions and disturbances which had been among the people, it became expedient that the word of God should be declared among them, yea, and that a regulation should be made throughout the church. Therefore, Helaman and his brethren went forth to establish the church again in all the land, yea, in every city throughout all the land which was possessed by the people of Nephi. And it came to pass that they did appoint priests and teachers throughout all the land, over all the churches. And now it came to pass that after Helaman and his brethren had appointed priests and teachers over the churches that there arose a dissension among them, and they would not give heed to the words of Helaman and his brethren. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“However, they grew proud, being lifted up in their hearts, because of their exceedingly great riches; therefore they grew rich in their own eyes, and would not give heed to their words, to walk uprightly before God,” reports Alma 45.1-24. Most High, from all directions about me, the spirits are praying. The spirits of east and south are praying. The spirits of west and north are praying. The spirits below and above are praying. The spirits are praying with me. We all together are praying to you, Ancient one. Please open Heaven’s door. Looking out at my yard, I see a leaf falling from a tree, and I raise a prayer of awe for God who caused such a marvel to me. This is a sign of the necessity of Grace, the Fatherly tenderness of God, the might of the all-prevailing Name; which are never weak, never diluted, never drawling, never ill-arranged, never provocation to listlessness; which exhibit an exquisite skill of antithesis and a rhythmical harmony which he ear is loth to lose. With a marvellous flexibility, my Lord, thank you for accepting all of your children with all of the different conditions of the human spirit. This is an example of a rich variety of construction, subject to a general law of threefold division. We give glory to God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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I Feared Dying, Not Because of Death, but Because it Would End My Career!
People talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do. Every society faces not merely a succession of probable futures, but an array of possible futures, and a conflict over preferable futures. The pace of events is moving so fast that unless we can find some way to keep our sights on tomorrow, we cannot expect to be in touch with today. Millions of people regard their work as something they must bear, a living indignity. Their feelings are not without precedent. A dark could of dissatisfaction blankets today’s work force. For the overwhelming majority, work is dull and meaningless. This pervasive discontent has spawned the paradoxical problems of laziness on the one hand and overwork on the other. Twenty five percent of employees gives one’s best effort on the job, and about twenty percent of the average worker’s time is wasted, thus producing, in effect, a four-day work week. However, sloth is an epidemic, so is over overwork. Moonlighting is a way of life for a substantial part of our work force. When the workers at a rubber manufacturing plant in Akron, Ohio USA, were given six-hour workdays—and over half of them took on a second full- or part-time job—this was a classic illustration! #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The managerial counterpart to workers’ moonlighting is the workaholism of those who sublimate everything—family, leisure, friends, church—to career. The depths to which careerism can go is chronicled and is extreme but not an uncommon expression when a man confessed he feared dying, not because of death, but because it would end his career. This mind-set has produced an unending list of shallow folk-religion epigrams which tout the requisite qualities of successful careers: discipline—creativity is two percent inspiration and ninety eight percent perspiration; goals—if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time; savvy—success in life some not from holding a good hand, but from playing a poor hand well; perseverance—tough times never last, but tough people do; vision—some people dream dreams and ask, Why? I dream dreams and ask, Why not?; self-confidence—believe in God, and you are halfway there; believe in yourself, and you are three-quarters there. The careerists who espouse the hubris of these credos wrongly think themselves heirs of the Protestant work ethic, but they are anything but that, as we shall see. This delusion takes on personally tragic dimensions, because surveys have indicated that the work ethics of Christians and non-Christians are virtually identical. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
At church they swear allegiance to values informed by creeds and Scriptures. However, at work they bow to idols of expedience and career success. Moral camouflage has become de rigueur (required by etiquette or current fashion) in the workplace. The plain truth is, many Christian humans miserably fail in their work ethics either because of sloth or overwork or, ironically, both. What we need is a work ethic which is informed by God’s Word and religiously lived out in the workplace and the Church. The reason this is so important is that most of us spend eight to twelve of our sixteen waking hours at work five or six days a week. So how we work not only reveals who we are, but determines what we are. The Christian discipline of work must be observed de rigueur wherever God has placed us. “Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. However, where in abounded, grace did much more abound,” reports Romans 5.20. Thee words of Paul summarize his apostolic experience, his religious message as a whole, and the Christian understanding of life. To discuss theses words, or to make them the text of even several sermons, has always seemed impossible to me. I have never dared to use them before. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
However, something has driven me to consider these words during the past few months, a desire to give witness to the two facts which appeared to me, in hour of retrospection, as the all-determining facts of our life: the abounding sin and the greater abound of grace. There are few words more strange to most of us than “sin” and “grace.” They are strange, just because they are so well-known. During the centuries they have received distorting connotations, and have lost so much of their genuine power that we must seriously ask ourselves whether we should use them at all, or whether we should discard them as useless tools. However, there is a mysterious fact about the great words of our religious tradition: they cannot be replaced. All attempts to make substitutions, including those I have tried myself, have failed to convey the reality that was to be expressed; they have led to shallow and important talk. There are no substitutes for words like “sin” and “grace”. However, there is a way of rediscovering their meaning, the same way that leads us down into the depths of our human existence. In that depth these words were conceived; and there they gained power for all ages; there they must be found again by each generation, and by each of us for ourselves. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Let us therefore try to penetrate the deeper levels in our life, in order to see whether we can discover in them the realities of which our text speaks. It seems desirable at this point, in order to prevent misunderstanding to discuss briefly the nature of moral theory. I shall do this by explaining in more detail the concept of a considered judgment in reflective equilibrium and the reasons for introducing it. Let us assume that each person beyond a certain age and possessed of the requisite intellectual capacity develops a sense of justice under normal social circumstances. We acquire a skill in judging things to be just and unjust, and in supporting these judgments by reasons. Moreover, we ordinarily have some desire to act in accord with there pronouncements and expect a similar desire on the part of others. Clearly this moral capacity is extraordinarily complex. To see this suffices to note the potentially infinite number and variety of judgments that we are prepared to make. The fact that we often do not know what to day, and sometime find our minds unsettled, does not detract from the complexity of the capacity we have. Now one may think of moral philosophy at first (and I stress the provisional nature of the view) as the attempt to describe our moral capacity; or, in the present case, one may regard a theory of justice. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
This enterprise is very difficult. For by such a description is not meant simply a list of the judgments on institutions and actions that we are prepared to render, accompanied with supporting reasons when these are offered. Rather, what is required is a formulation of a set of principle which, when conjoined to our beliefs and knowledge of the circumstances, would lead is to make these judgements with their supporting reasons were we to apply these principles conscientiously and intelligently. A conception of justice characterizes our moral sensibility when the everyday judgments we do make are in accordance with its principles. These principles can serve as part of the premises of an argument which arrives at the matching judgments. We do not understand our sense of justice until we know in some systematic way covering a wide range of cases what these principles are. Only a deceptive familiarity with our everyday judgments and our natural readiness to make them could conceal the fact that characterizing our moral capacities is an intricate task. The principles which describe them must be presumed to have a complex structure, and the concepts involved will require a serious study. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
A useful comparison here is with the problem of describing the sense of grammaticalness that we have for the sentences of our native language. In this case the aim is to characterize the ability to recognize well-formed sentences by formulating clearly expressed principles which make the same discrimination as the native speaker. This is a difficult undertaking which, although still unfinished, is known to require theoretical constructions that far outrun the ad hoc precepts of our explicit grammatical knowledge. A similar situation presumably holds in moral philosophy. There is no reason to assume that our sense of justice can be adequately characterized by familiar common-sense precepts, or derived from the more obvious learning principles. A correct account of moral capacities will certainly involve principles and theoretical constructions which go much beyond the norms and standards cited in everyday life; it may eventually require fairly sophisticated mathematics as well. This is to be expected, since on the contract view theory of justice is part of the theory of rational choice. Thus the idea of the original position and of an agreement on principles there does not seem too complicated or unnecessary. Indeed, these notions are rather simple and can serve only as a beginning. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
So far, though, I have not said anything about considered judgments. Now, as already suggested, they enter as those judgments in which our moral capacities are most likely to be displayed without distortion. Thys in deciding which of our judgement to take into account we may reasonably select some and exclude others. For example, we can discard those judgments made with hesitation, or in which we have little confidence. Similarly, those given when we are upset or frightened, or when we stand to gain one way or the other can be left aside. All these judgments are likely to be erroneous or to be influenced by an excessive attention to our own interests. Considered judgements are simply those rendered under conditions favourable to the exercise of the sense of justice, and therefore in circumstances where the more common excuses and explanations making a mistake do not obtain. The person making the judgment is presumed, then, to have the ability, the opportunity, and the desires to reach a correct decision (or at least, not the desire not to). Moreover, the criteria that identify these judgments are not arbitrary. They are, in fact, similar to those that single out considered judgments of any kind. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
And once we regard the sense of justice as a mental capacity, as involving the exercise of thought, the relevant judgments are those given under conditions favourable for deliberating and judgment in general. Have the people of our time still a feeling of sin? Do they, and do we, still realize that sin does not mean an immoral act, that “sin” should never be used in the plural, and that not our sins, but rather our sin is the great, all-pervading problem of our life? Do we still know that it is arrogant and erroneous to divine humans by calling some “sinners” and others “righteous”? For by way of such a division, we can usually discover that we ourselves do not quite belong to the “sinners”, since we have avoided heavy sins, have made some progress in the control of this or that sin, and have been even humble enough not to all ourselves “righteous”. Are we still able to realize that this kind of thinking and feeling about sin is far removed from what the great religious tradition, both within and outside the Bible, has meant when it speaks of sin? I should like to suggest another word to you, not as a substitute for the word “sin”, but as a useful clue in the interpretation of the word “sin”: “separation”. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Separation is an aspect of the experience of everyone. Perhaps the word “sin” has the same root as the word “asunder”. In any case, sin is separation. To be in the state of sin is to be in the state of separation. And separation is threefold: there is separation among individual lives, separation of humans from oneself, and separation of all humans from the Ground Being. This three-fold separation constitutes the state of everything that exists; it is a universal fact; it is the fate of every life. And it is our human fate in a very special sense. For we as humans know that we are separated. We not only suffer with all other creatures because of the self-destructive consequences of our separation, but also know why we suffer. We know that we are estranged from something to which we really belong, and with which we should be united. We know that the fate of separation is not merely a natural event like a flash of sudden lightening, but that it is an experience in which we actively participate, in which our whole personality is involved, and that, as fate, it is also guilt. Separation which is fate and guilt constitutes the meaning of the word “sin”. It is this which is the state of our entire existence, from its very beginning to its very end. Such separation is prepared in the mother’s womb, and before that time, in every preceding generation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Separation is manifest in the special actions of our conscious life. It reached beyond our graves into all succeeding generations. It is our existence itself. Existence is separation! Before sin is an act, it is a state. We can say the same thing about grace. For sin and grace are bound to each other. We do not even have a knowledge of sin unless we have already experienced the unity of life, which is grace. And conversely, we could not grasp the meaning of grace without having experienced the separation of life, which is sin. Grace is just as difficult to describe as sin. For some people, grace is the willingness of a divine king and a father to forgive over and again the foolishness and weakness of his subjects and children. We must reject such a concept of grace; for it is a merely childish destruction of a human dignity. For others, grace is a magic power in the dark places of the soul, but a power without any significance for practical life, a quickly vanishing and useless idea. For others, grace is the benevolence that we may find beside the cruelty and destructiveness in life. However, it does not mater whether we say “life goes on”, or whether we say “there is grace in life”; if grace means no more than this, the word should, and will, disappear. For other people, grace indicates the gifts that one has received from nature or society, and the power to do good things with the help of those gifts. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
However, grace is more than gifts. In grace something is overcome; grace occurs “in spite of” something; grace occurs in spite of separation and estrangement. Grace is the reunion of life with life, the reconciliation of the self with itself. Grace is the acceptance of that which is rejected. Grace transforms fate into a meaningful destiny; it changes guilt into confidence and courage. There is something triumphant in the word “grace”: in spite of the abounding of sin grace abounds much more. Implicit in the emphasis of orthodox psychotherapy is the point of view that the neurotic is a person who once had a problem, and that the resolution of this past problem is the goal of psychotherapy. The whole approach to treatment through memory and the past indicates this assumption, which runs directly counter to everything we observe about neurosis and the neurotic. The neurotic is not merely a person who once had a problem, one is a person who has a continuing problem, here and now, in the present. Although it may well be that one is acting the way one is today “because” of things that happened to one in the past, one’s difficulties today are connected with the ways one is acting today. One cannot get along in the present, and unless one learns how to deal with problems as they arise, one will not be able to get along in the future. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
The goal of therapy is to reunite the individual with one’s soul and give one the means with which one can solve one’s present problems and any that may arise tomorrow or next years. That tool is self-support, and this one achieves by dealing with oneself and one’s problems with all the means presently at one’s command, right now. If one can become truly aware at every instant of oneself and one’s actions on whatever level—fantasy, verbal or physical—one can see how one is producing one’s difficulties, one can see what one’s present difficulties are, and one can help oneself to solve them in the present, in the here and now. Each one the individual solves makes easier the solution for the next, for every solution increases one’s self-support. It is usual for humans, in such difficulties, to have resource to some invisible intelligent principle, as the immediate cause of that event, which surprises them, and which they think, cannot be accounted for from the common powers of nature. However, philosophers, who carry their scrutiny a little farther, immediately perceive, that, even in the most familiar events, the energy of the cause is as unintelligible as in the most unusual, and that we only learn by experience the frequent conjunctions of objects, without being ever able to comprehend any thing like connection between them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Here then, many philosophers think themselves obliged by reason to have recourse, on all occasions, to the same principle, which the vulgar never appeal to but in cases, that appear miraculous and supernatural. They acknowledge mind and intelligence to be, not only the ultimate and original cause of all things, but the immediate and sole cause of every event, which appears in nature. They pretend, that those objects, which are commonly denominated causes, are in reality nothing but occasions; and that the true and direct principle of every effect is not any power or force in nature, but a volition of the Supreme Being, who wills, that such particular objects should, forever, be conjoined with each other. Instead of saying, that one billiard-ball moves another, by a force, which it has derived from the author of nature; it is the Deity oneself, they say, who, by particular volition, moves the second ball, being determined to this operation by the impulses of the first ball; in consequence of those general laws, which one has laid down to oneself in the government of the Universe. However, philosophers advancing still in their enquiries, discover, that, as we are totally ignorant of the power, on which depends the mutual operation of bodies, we are no less ignorant of that power, on which depends the operation of mind on body, or of body on mind. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
Nor are we able, either from our senses or consciousness, to assign the ultimate principle in one cause, more than the other. The same ignorance, therefore, reduces them to the same conclusions. They assert, that the Deity is the immediate cause of the union between soul and body; and that they are not the organs of sense, which, being agitated by external objects, produce sensations in the mind; but that it is a particular volition of our omnipotent Maker, which excites such sensation, in consequence of such a motion in the organ. In like manner, it is not any energy in the will, that produces local motion in our members: It is God himself, who is pleased to second our will, in itself impotent, and to command that motion, which we erroneously attribute to our own power and efficacy. Nor do philosophers stop at this conclusion. They sometimes extend the same inference to the mind itself, in its internal operations. Our mental vision or conception of ideas is nothing but a revelation made to us by our Maker. When we voluntarily turn our thought to any object, and rise up its image in the fancy; it is not the will which crates the idea: It is the Universal Creator, who discover it to the mind, and renders it present to us. “And now it came to pass that the sons of Alma did go forth among the people, to declare the word unto them. And Alma, also, himself, could not rest, and he also went forth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
“Now we shall say no more concerning their preaching, except that they preached the word, and the truth, according to the spirit of prophecy and revelation; and they preached after the holy order of God by which they were called. And now I return to an account of the wars between the Nephites and the Lamanites, in the eighteenth year of the reign of the judges. For behold, it came to pass that the Zoramites became Lamanites; therefore, in the commencement of the eighteenth year the people of the Nephites saw that the Lamanites were coming upon them; therefore they made preparations for war; yea, they gathered together their armies in the land of Jershon. And it came to pass that the Lamanites came with their thousands; and they came into the land of Antionum, which is the land of the Zoramites; and a man by the name of Zerahemnah was their leader. And now, as the Amalekites were of a more wicked and murderous disposition than the Lamanites were, in and of themselves, therefore, Zerahemnah appointed chief captains over the Lamanites, and they were all Amalekites and Zoramites. Now this he did that he might preserve their hatred towards the Nephites, that he might bring them into subjection to the accomplishment of his designs. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
“For behold, his designs were to stir up the Lamanites to anger against the Nephites; this he did that he might usurp great power over them, and also that he might gain power over the Nephites by bringing them into bondage. And now the design of the Nephites was to support their lands, and their houses, and their wives, and their children, that they might preserve them from the hands of their enemies; and also that they might preserve their rights and their privileges, yea, and also their liberty, that they might worship God according to their desires. For they knew that if they should fall into the hands of the Lamanites, that whosoever should worship God in spirit and in truth, the true and the living God, the Lamanites would destroy. Yes, and they also knew the extreme hatred of the Lamanites towards their brethren, who were the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi, who were called the people of Ammon—and they would not take up arms, yea, they had entered into a covenant and they would not break it—therefore, if they should fall into the hands of the Lamanites they would be destroyed. And the Nephites would not suffer that they should be destroyed; therefore they gave them lands for their inheritance. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
“And the people of Ammon did give unto the Nephites a large portion of their substance to support their armies; and thus the Nephites were compelled, alone, to withstand against the Lamanites, who were a compound of Laman and Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael, and all those who had dissented from the Nephites, who were Amalekites and Zoramites, and the descendants of the priests Noah. Now those descendants were as numerous, nearly, as were the Nephites; and this the Nephites were obliged to contend with their brethren, even unto bloodshed. And it came to pass as the armies of the Lamanites had gathered together in the land of Antionum, behold, the armies of the Nephites were prepared to meet them in the land of Jershon. Now, the leader of the Nephites, or the man who has been appointed to be the chief captain over the Nephites—now the chief captain took the command of all the armies of the Nephites—and his name was Moroni; and Moroni took all the command, and the government of their ways. And he was only twenty and five years old when he was appointed chief captain over the armies of the Nephites. And it came to pass that he met the Lamanites in the borders of Jershon, and his people were armed with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“And when the armies of the Lamanites saw that the people of Nephi, or that Moroni, has prepared his people with breastplates and with arm-shields, yea, and also shields to defend their heads, and also they were dressed with thick clothing—now the army of Zerahemnah was not prepared with any such thing; they had only their swords and their cimeters, their bows and their arrows, their stones, and their slings; and they were naked, save it were a skin which was girded about their loins; yea, all were naked, save it were the Zoramites, and the Amalekites. However, they were not armed with breastplates, nor shields—therefore, they were exceedingly afraid of the armies of the Nephites because of their armour, notwithstanding their number being so much greater than Nephites. Behold, not it came to pass that they durst not come against the Nephites in the borders of Jerson; therefore they departed out of the land of Antionum into the wilderness, and took their journey around about in the wilderness, away by the head of the river Sidon, that they might come into the land of Manti and take possession of the land; for they did not suppose that the armies of Moroni would know whither they had gone. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“However, it came to pass, as soon as they had departed into the wilderness Moroni sent spies into the wilderness to watch their camp; and Moroni, also, knowing of the prophecies of Alma, sent certain humans unto him, desiring him that he should inquire of the Lord whither the armies of the Nephites should go to defend themselves against the Lamanites. And it came to pass that the word of the Lord came unto Alma, and Alma informed the messengers of Moroni, that the armies of the Lamanites were marching round about in the wilderness, that they might come over into the and of Manti, that they might commence an attack upon the weaker part of the people. And those messengers went and delivered the message unto Moroni. Now Moroni, leaving a part of his army in the land of Jershon, lest by any means a part of the Lamanites should come into that land and take possession of the city, took the remaining part of his army and marched over into the land of Manti. And he caused that all the people in that quarter of the land should gather themselves together to battle against the Lamanites, to defend their lands and their country, their rights and their liberties; therefore they were prepared against the time of the coming of the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“And it came to pass that Moroni caused this his army should be secret in the valley which was near the bank of the river Sidon, which was on the west of the river Sidon in the wilderness. And Moroni placed spies round about, that he might know when the camp of the Lamanites should come. And now, as Moroni knew the intention of the Lamanites, that it was their intention to destroy their brethren, or to subject them and bring them into bondage that they might establish a kingdom unto themselves over all the land; and he also knowing that it was the only desire of the Nephites to preserve their lands, and their liberty, and their church, therefore he thought it no sin that he should defend them by stratagem; therefore, he found by his spies which course the Lamanites were to take. Therefore, he divided his army and brought a part over into the valley, and concealed them on the east, and on the south of the hill Riplah; and the remainder he concealed in the west valley, in the west of the river Sidon, and so down into the borders of the land of Manti. And thus having placed his army according to his desire, he was prepared to meet them. And it came to pass that the Lamanites came upon the north of the hill, where a part of the army of Moroni was concealed. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And as the Lamanites has passed the hill Riplah, and came into the valley, and began to cross the river Sidon, the army which was concealed on the south of the hill, which was led by a man whose name was Lehi, and he led his army forth and encircled the Lamanites about on the east in their rear. And it came to pass that the Lamanites, when they saw the Nephites coming upon them in their rear, turned them about and began to contend with the army of Lehi. And the work of death commenced on both sides, but it was more dreadful on the part f the Lamanites, for their nakedness was exposed to the heavy blows of the Nephites with their swords and their cimeters, which brought death almost at every stroke. While on the other hand, there was now and then a man fell among he Nephites, by their swords and the loss of blood, they being shielded for the more vital parts of the body, or the more vital part of the body being shielded from the strokes of the Lamanites, by their breastplates, and their armshields, and their head-plates; and thus the Nephites did carry on the work of death among the Lamanite. And it came to pass that the Lamanites became frightened, because of the great destruction among them, even until they began to flee towards the river Sidon. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And they were pursued by Lehi and his men; and they were driven by Lehi into the waters of Sidon, and they crossed the waters of Sidon. And Lehi retained his armies upon the bank of the river Sidon that they should not cross. And it came to pass that Moroni and his army met the Lamanites in the valley, on the other side of the river Sidon, and began to fall upon them and to slay them. And the Lamanites did flee again before them, toward the land of Manti; and they were met again by the armies of Moroni. Now in this case the Lamanites did fight exceedingly; yea, never had the Lamanites been known to fight exceedingly; yea, never had the Lamanites been know to fight with such exceedingly great strength and courage, no, not even from the beginning. And they were inspired by the Zoramites and the Amalekites, who were their chief captains and leaders, and by Zerahemnah, who was their chief captain, or their chief leader and commander; yea, they did fight like dragons, and many of the Nephites were slain by their hands, yea, for they did smite in two many of their head-plates, and they did pierce man of the breastplates, and they did smite off many of their arms; and this the Lamanites did smite in their fierce anger. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“Nevertheless, the Nephites were inspired by a better cause, for they were not fighting for a monarchy nor power but they were fighting for their homes and their liberties, their wives and children, and their all, yes, for their rites of worship and their church. And they were doing that which they felt was the duty to which they owed to their God; for the Lord had said unto them, and also unto their fathers, that: Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain by the hands of your enemies. And again, the Lord has said that: Ye shall defend your families even unto bloodshed. Therefore for this cause were the Nephites contending with the Lamanites, to defend themselves, and their families, and their lands, their country, and their rights, and their religion. And it came to pass that when the humans of Moroni saw the fierceness and the anger of the Lamanites, they were about to shrink and flee from them. And Moroni, perceiving their intent, sent forth and inspired their hearts with these thoughts—yea, the thoughts of their lands, their liberty, yea, their freedom from bondage. And it came to pass that they turned upon the Lamanites, and they cried with one voice unto the Lord their God, for their liberty and their freedom from bondage. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“And they began to stand against the Lamanites with power; and in the selfsame hour that they cried unto the Lord for their freedom, the Lamanites began to flee before them; and they fled even to the waters of Sidon. Now, the Lamanites were more numerous, yea, by more than double the number of the Nephites; nevertheless, they were driven insomuch that they were gathered together in one body in the valley, upon the bank by the river Sidon. Therefore the armies of Moroni encircled them about, yes, even on both sides of the river, for behold, on the east were the humans of Lehi. Therefore when Zerahemnah saw the humans of Lehi on the east of the river Sidon, and the armies of Moroni on the west of the river Sidon, that they were encircled about by the Nephites, they were struck with terror. Now Moroni, when he saw their terror, commanded his humans that they should stop shedding their blood,” reports Alma 43.1-54. Within the tangle of bushes and wines, among the stones and under fallen trees, the spirit of God is in the forest waiting for me. I go to Him with gifts as a token friendship. Hidden from me in the forest around me within each tree, behind each rock, the Spirit of God is gathered, unseen by people who walk, heavy-footed, through the World. I will sit quietly and wait for you, leaving you these gifts. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Randolph Harris II International 