My Land Full of Idols

A short time ago, my wife and I were reading together in 2 Nephi. In chapter 12, Jacob is quoting a prophesy of Isaiah about our days. Verse 8 reads, “Their land is also full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.” As I read that, my heart dropped. He was talking about me.

Immediately I remembered how proud I have felt about accomplishments at work; I remembered how I feel more talented than others in my CS classes because of what I do; I remembered how it makes me feel like I’m somebody that’s worth something.

Even Hobbes understands how ridiculous this is:

Of the passions that most frequently are the causes of crime [or sin], one, is vain glory, or a foolish overrating of their own worth; as if difference of worth, were an effect of their wit, or riches, or blood, or some other natural quality... (Hobbes, Leviathan: Pt. 2, Ch 27)

He’s right. I was foolishly overrating my own worth.

As my wife and I continued reading, I learned of my plight:

“For the day of the Lord of Hosts soon cometh upon all nations, yea, upon every one; yea, upon the proud and lofty, and upon every one who is lifted up, and he shall be brought low.”

That prophesy was quickly fulfilled in my own life. First, weaknesses in my talents were exposed. For a week I had been trying to fix a bug in a program I was writing for one of my classes. Finally the due date came and I still hadn’t figured it out. So much for programming talent.

Then General Conference began and Elder Uchtdorf threw me down even lower as he spoke of the evils and dangers of pride.

Pride is sinful... because it breeds hatred or hostility and places in opposition to God and our fellow men. At its core, pride is the sin of comparison. For though it usually begins with ‘Look at how wonderful I am and what great things I have done’ it always seems to end with ‘therefore I am better than you.’ When our hearts are filled with pride we commit a great sin, for we violate the two great commandments. Instead of worshipping God and loving our neighbor, we reveal the real object of our worship and love: the image we see in the mirror.

I stood chastised, repentant, and humbled. My vision was corrected. I remembered how I had previously thought: I was grateful for talents and work that allowed me to provide for my family and focus on things which mattered more. Hopefully I can maintain that perspective for a prolonged period of time.

Why I Believe in God

Last summer I volunteered at a special daycare center for children from troubled families. In the back they had a playground and sandbox that the children loved to play in. One day while in the sandbox with the kids, a little girl walked up (so young that she couldn’t talk yet) who seemed very hesitant to play in the sand. She stopped right at the edge of the sand and look around with trepidation. I soon realized she probably had no idea what sand was and must not have been the adventurous type. I picked up some sand and showed it to her. She hesitated, then touched it a little. After prodding at it for a few moments, I slowly poured it in front of her and grabbed some more. Her fear began to dissipate. Soon she walked slowly into the sand and began to pick up handfuls of it for herself.

I was once like that little girl. I didn’t know who I was or what the purpose of life was. It brought fear, trepidation, and sorrow into my life. Once when I was around the age of 11, while riding my bike home from a neighbor’s house, I began to cry because I wasn’t happy. I didn’t know what life was about and so I most certainly wasn’t doing anything to fulfill its purpose. Sometime thereafter I began to search for answers, for something that seemed to fulfill and teach of my purpose. I looked in many places. Prestige among friends didn’t work; video games, movies, and music didn’t work; neither did K’NEX, Legos, the great outdoors or rebellion against my parents. At last I was left with the most obvious choice, one that had been staring me in face my entire life: God.

One day I realized that there were two boys at church, who a year or two older than me, that appeared to have what I was searching for. I also noticed that they were the most faithful in following the teachings of Christ. Perhaps, then, I should do the same. At the pivotal moment in my life I also had the most excellent Sunday School teacher (who was also the father of one of the previously mentioned boys). For the first time I felt anxious to be taught. What I remember most is how frequently he exhorted us to read the scriptures and pray consistently, and that he always testified of how much it blessed his life. Eventually I decided to try it.

I wish I could remember the day that I first began, but in the end its rather insignificant. What matters is that it was the most important decision I made in my youth. I began to read the scriptures and pray every morning and then pray again at night. After realizing how much of a difference it made, I also began to read at night. Once in 8th grade I went on a day trip with my father to some convention. We got back in the early hours of the morning on the next day. We were both dead tired, but I still picked up my scriptures and read a chapter before I went to bed. My desire for truth and guidance from God was more important to me than sleep. I was only 13 then.

I didn’t do it because my parents told me to or because I was just following everyone else (for 95% of the time I spent outside of my home, there wasn’t a single Mormon present). I did it because something deep inside yearned for truth and couldn’t be satisfied with anything else. There was something beyond what the world would have me believe. I felt it when I knelt down and prayed to God, when I peacefully studied the scriptures in the seclusion of my own room, when I listened attentively to things I was taught at church, and when I obeyed the commandments of God. It was as though God were picking up handfuls of sand and teaching me.

“This is who you are...”
“This is who I am...”
“This is your purpose...”
“This is what you should do...”

There have been times since then that I consciously choose to take a path against the counsel of God. I have regretted it every time. He is the only one whose answers have never failed me.

I am reminded of the hymn “When Faith Endures.”

I will not doubt, I will not fear;
God’s love and strength are always near.
His promised gift helps me to find
An inner strength and peace of mind.
I give the Father willingly
My trust, my prayers, humility.
His Spirit guides; his love assures
That fear departs when faith endures.

Today, my prayers are still answered, my wisdom continues to increase, my happiness is at greater levels than it has ever been in my life, and I am convinced more each day of God’s existence.

I know God lives.

I Don't Always Judge Righteously

This past Sunday someone shared a story during Sacrament Meeting. He was waiting in the checkout line at a grocery store behind a grungy man who smoked and had a lot of tattoos. He probably judged him, thinking he wasn’t that great of a person, otherwise what happened next wouldn’t have been very memorable. The cashier asked the grungy man if he would like to donate a dollar to a charity. He said, emphatically, “Of course!” This shocked the person behind him. “I never said yes to those things,” he told us. “But I do now.”

That story brought to mind similar experiences that I’ve had, showing me that my initial judgments are often incorrect. A few weeks ago I was on the bus up to Sandy (about a 60 minute bus ride). In front was a man dressed in all black, complete with a black bandana (so it wasn’t Goth style, it was biker-punk style).  He looked bitterly angry, and if it hadn’t been for his left foot being in a cast I would’ve been worried about him coming over and picking a fight with me because I looked at him. This man then began talking to another man in the front who had boarded with an old bicycle and three old bags of stuff. He appeared to be more quiet and respectful than the first but hadn’t shaved in a while.

The two were talking about welfare and unemployment. Their tone was disdainful so I assumed they were complaining. About 20 minutes later the bus took a sharp turn and the quiet man’s bike tipped over and hit the other man’s leg that was in the cast. He let out a groan and grabbed his leg, but he didn’t yell. The quiet man apologized, to which the other man replied, “That’s okay, it’s not like you threw the bike down.” I was shocked. I assumed that he was an angry man. I had passed a terribly incorrect judgment.

Someday shortly after my first experience I was again on the bus, only this time coming home from work. At one point two people boarded and continued a conversation they had begun while waiting for the bus. One was a girl a little older than me, and the other was a boy just a few years younger than me. The boy smelled of cigarette smoke and so I labeled him as a disrespectful trouble maker. I wasn’t too far from the truth because he began to speak of how terrible his time in jail was. He told the girl, “I tried to tell my siblings how terrible it was to make sure they didn’t end up there too. You’re treated like nothing there, not matter how small your offense was. Good thing too, or else you might want to go back.” As that statement settled in, I realized that again I was wrong about who he was. He did care about others and he did have some sense.

I have known many people who smoked or drank, had lots of tattoos, and weren’t well kept. I know that they can be wonderful people, having of more charity and respect than I do. But too often I fall into the trap of putting myself above them.

“Therefore, my son, see that you are merciful unto your brethren; deal justly, judge righteously, and do good continually; and if ye do all these things then shall ye receive your reward; yea, ye shall have mercy restored unto you again; ye shall have justice restored unto you again; ye shall have a righteous judgment restored unto you again; and ye shall have good rewarded unto you again.” – Alma 41: 14

A Learning Revolution

Sir Ken Robinson spoke recently at the TED Conference about the need for a revolution in education. Some highlights:

And human resources are like natural resources; they're often buried deep. You have to go looking for them. They're not just lying around on the surface. You have to created the circumstances where they show themselves. And you might imagine education would be the way that happens. But too often, it's not. Every education system in the world is being reformed at the moment. And it's not enough. Reform is no use anymore, because that's simply improving a broken model. What we need, and the word's been used many times during the course of the past few days. Is not evolution, but a revolution in education. This has to be transformed into something else.

...

A friend of mine once said, "You know, a three year-old is not half a six year-old." (Laughter) (Applause) They're three. But as we just heard in this last session, there's such competition now to get to kindergarten, to get to the right kindergarten, that people are being interviewed for it at three. Kids sitting in front of unimpressed panels, you know, with their resumes, (Laughter) flipping through and saying, "Well, this is it?" (Laughter) (Applause) "You've been around for 36 months, and this is it?" (Laughter) "You've achieved nothing, commit. Spent the first six months breastfeeding, the way I can see it." (Laughter) See, it's outrageous as a conception, but it attracts people.

The other big issue is conformity. We have built our education systems on the model of fast food. This is something Jamie Oliver talked about the other day. You know there are two models of quality assurance in catering. One is fast food, where everything is standardized. The other are things like Zagat and Michelin restaurants, where everything is not standardized, they're customized to local circumstances. And we have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education. And it's impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies.

I think any of us who have gone through the public education system understands exactly what he is talking about. The change he is hoping for is drastic, and since it would involve many decisions by bureaucrats, it certainly won't be easy. So, meanwhile, I think I'll opt for educating my kids at home.

The Influence of a Friend

In Sunday School this past Sunday we discussed some stories from the beginning of the Book of Judges. While discussing the story of Deborah, we talked about the influence and importance of friends. We all know how much of an effect our friends have on us. I began thinking about the friends I've had. I then realized that two of the best decisions in my life were with respect to the friends I chose.

Sometime around the age of 14 I changed the friends I spent most of my time with because they were having quite a negative effect on me. Then, when I returned to BYU last January, I sought out friends who would help me maintain a level of spirituality most similar to what I had while on my mission in Chile. They changed me in a lot of ways, entirely for the better. And most of all, if it hadn't been for that, my wife and I would never have started dating.

After writing those thoughts down in a notebook, I remembered a study which came out about 18 months ago. It found that happiness was contagious up to three degrees of separation (a friend of a friend of a friend) over long periods of time.

A friend who lives within a mile (about 1.6 km) and who becomes happy increases the probability that a person is happy by 25% (95% confidence interval 1% to 57%). Similar effects are seen in coresident spouses (8%, 0.2% to 16%), siblings who live within a mile (14%, 1% to 28%), and next door neighbours (34%, 7% to 70%). Effects are not seen between coworkers. The effect decays with time and with geographical separation.

On a side note, it is interesting to note that in this study happy coresident spouses only increased someone's possibility of becoming happy by 8%, compared to 34% by a next door neighbor. We must be really disconnected from our spouses in this country. Perhaps that sheds more light on high divorce rates.

I like the following quote which The Washington Post shared in their story:

"For a long time, we measured the health of a country by looking at its gross domestic product," said Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego who co-authored the study. "But our work shows that whether a friend's friend is happy has more influence than a $5,000 raise. So at a time when we're facing such economic difficulties, the message could be, 'Hang in there. You still have your friends and family, and these are the people to rely on to be happy.'"

What Makes People Happy?

CNN has a religion blog which recently had an entry titled What Makes People Happy?. They asked five "faith leaders" to answer that question.

The first two, an expert in mind-body healing and a humanist chaplain, agreed that happiness comes from helping others. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. The rabbi agreed too, but he also added, "Happiness results from the fullest utilization of your talent." When I'm slacking, I certainly don't feel as happy as I normally do. I'm sure that's one reason why I'm much happier now than I was in High School.

Two Christian pastors responded and both made a distinction between happiness due to external circumstances and long-lasting happiness which comes from the soul. I agree with those distinctions. I have never been happier in my life, but I didn't feel happy when I read and saw pictures of the plane that crashed in India.

Jonathan Falwell, a Baptist pastor from Lynchburg, Virginia, continues, "The happiness that springs forth from the heart and soul is the only path to true satisfaction in life. And I believe that kind of happiness is found through a personal relationship with God accomplished through the sacrifice of His only Son, Jesus Christ. He is the source of soul satisfaction." That is where I have found the most happiness. Faith in Christ rings true with something deep in my soul. The closer I grow to God, the more I feel at home, and the happier I am.

What makes you happy?

Thoughts on Sam Harris's TED Talk

Almost two months ago I read an article on CNN about Sam Harris. It linked to a talk he gave at a TED conference. He spoke about how science can answer the most important questions in life, moral questions, questions about human wellbeing and human suffering. Shockingly, I agreed with much of what he said.

If questions affect human wellbeing then they do have answers, whether or not we can find them. And just admitting this -- just admitting that there are right and wrong answers to the question of how humans flourish -- will change the way we talk about morality, and will change our expectations of human cooperation in the future. ...

Whenever we are talking about facts, certain opinions must be excluded. ... How have we convinced ourselves that in the moral sphere there is no such thing as moral expertise, or moral talent, or moral genius even? How have we convinced ourselves that every opinion has to count? How have we convinced ourselves that every culture has a point of view on these subjects worth considering? Does the Taliban have a point of view on physics that is worth considering? No. How is their ignorance any less obvious on the subject of human wellbeing?

So, this, I think, is what the world needs now. It needs people like ourselves to admit that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human flourishing, and morality relates to that domain of facts. It is possible for individuals, and even for whole cultures to care about the wrong things: Which is to say that it's possible for them to have beliefs and desires that reliably lead to needless human suffering. Just admitting this will transform our discourse about morality. ...

We live in a world filled with destructive technology, and this technology can not be uninvented, it will always be easier to break things than to fix them. It seems to me therefore, patently obvious that we can no more respect and tolerate vast differences in notions of human wellbeing, than we can respect or tolerate vast differences in the notions about how disease spreads, or in the safety standards of buildings and airplanes. We simply must converge on the answers we give to the most important questions in human life. And to do that, we have to admit that these questions have answers. Thank you very much.

I agree that questions of morality are some of “the most important questions in human life,” and that they do have answers. I also agree that moral expertise exists, and therefore certain opinions on morality are better than others. And I accept that science can provide the answers to some of these questions, but even Sam Harris admitted that science is not guaranteed to provide all of the answers. If a system of morality does exist, would it make sense for the source of knowledge on such a matter to be incomplete?

Sam Harris's spectrum of morality is based on human wellbeing and human suffering. The correct answers to moral questions promote wellbeing, and incorrect answers cause suffering. However, according to science, why do we care about the wellbeing of others? I do not mean to imply that I don't care, or that I see no reason to care, just that I don't know anyone who cares because science told them it was morally correct.