Getting into heaven

Before I left Jordan a few weeks ago, I had a cool experience that I wanted to share on this blog. I’m interested in sharing it because it helps illustrate the truth behind one of religion’s most controversial issues: how “to get into heaven.”

So, most religions make claims of an afterlife – something after death. Basically, we go on living in some state or another after we die, and religions generally make an attempt to describe that state. That there is indeed an afterlife I am certain. Not 100% scientifically certain, but then again not even scientists are 100% certain of anything. There is always an error term, no matter how small. Suffice it to say that I’m pretty sure that this life isn’t the end of the road. But there’s a common understanding of the monotheistic description of the afterlife that doesn’t sit right with me.

To put it simply, most major world religions – and certainly all three of the monotheistic ones (Islam, Judaism, Christianity) – claim there are two worlds that exist, heaven and hell, and that we will all be sent to one or the other after we die. Heaven is a good place – you want to go there. Hell is not. You don’t want to go there. How do I know which one I’m destined for? Well, religions try to answer that question, and basically it comes down to this: if you’re a member of the correct religion (i.e. ‘ours’), and you’re a reasonably good person, you go to heaven. Otherwise, you’re hell-bound.

It’s as if there are certain conditions you have to fill – like boxes you have to check off on a “to-do list” – in order for some austere God to let you pass the “gates of heaven.” It’s almost like God is an immigrations officer at an airport, carefully checking your passport for all the requisite stamps, visas, etc, and making sure you haven’t been to Las Vegas too often, before letting you into the country.

Some of my friends have asked me how such a view of God is consistent with the often-heard claim that he is loving, caring, compassionate, and devoid of any hateful feelings or desire to harm. How can such a being thrust someone down to hell?  I mean, isn’t hell endless torment? I wouldn’t wish that on anybody, so how could a loving God do such a thing?

These are very good questions. My recent experience might provide some illumination.

So I lived in Amman, Jordan, during this past summer. Jordan is a predominantly Muslim country – though there are a few Christians and other religious minorities too. The Muslims in Jordan tend to be quite conservative and practice their religion, at least more faithfully than many Christians in the West do. Anyway, the month of Ramadan was ongoing at the time, which means that Muslims don’t eat or drink from sunup to sundown each day. As soon as the sun goes down, they have a huge meal called iftar, after which they sit around for hours enjoying their favorite vices (coffee, cigarettes, etc – many of them don’t drink, as it’s forbidden in Islam) while generally shooting the breeze and relaxing. It’s fairly challenging to fast all day for an entire month, so as soon as the sun goes down Muslims tend to reward themselves for their abstinence with a larger-than-normal amount of their favorite pleasures – food, coffee, tea, sweets, cigarettes, talking, joking, sitting around and generally relaxing.

I got invited to iftar by a couple generous brothers – both about my age – whom I had met just the day before. There were a number of young men at their house – maybe 15 or 20 of us in all – and we were sitting outside in the garden shooting the breeze after the meal was finished. The house was quite large, especially for Jordan (a relatively poor country); my friends’ father was clearly someone important and influential.

I didn’t have to wait long to learn more about him though, as he soon entered the garden from the street. As soon as he did, the atmosphere changed completely. Everyone put out their cigarettes, set down their coffee, and stood up. There was complete silence, except the quiet sound of this man’s steps as he approached our group. I have never experienced the word “patriarch” quite like this before. He was a middle aged man, dressed in a long white robe (a ‘dishdash’ in the local dialect) which came up to a collar that buttoned at his neck. His arms were hidden in his billowing sleeves, so that all you could see of his body were his face, hands, and sandal-clad feet.

He had a kind, pleasant face with a bright smile, and he greeted each of us in turn, shaking our hands. All of us remained completely silent while this was going on, and only sat down when he finally did. In a quiet voice (he didn’t need to speak loudly, as there were no other sounds to speak over) he politely asked about those of us whom he didn’t yet know. No one spoke unless spoken to, and then each responded quietly, modestly, and respectfully. After inquiring about iftar and wishing us a happy evening, he arose and entered the house.

The change in the atmosphere was again as sudden as when he had entered the garden. It felt as if the very air had been holding its breath, trying not to make a sound, out of respect for this man; as if his presence required everything around him to exist in perfect order and peace; as if he couldn’t tolerate disorder or chaos, and wherever he went these things fled, or else were temporarily held in obedience.

After he left, you could almost feel the group of us sigh in relief, slouch down in our seats a little more, light up cigarettes again, and resume our casual jokes and conversation.

As soon as things went back to normal, the thought crossed my mind that what had just happened was somewhat analgous to being in God’s presence, in heaven.

I want to make a few observations that I think are pivotal to understanding this concept of “getting into heaven.” First, there was nothing compulsory, or forceful, about my friends’ father. To use a favorite phrase of mine from the Doctrine and Covenants (a book of scripture of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), his effect on us occurred “without compulsory means” (D&C 121:46). He didn’t force us to stop talking, put out our cigarettes (I’m speaking for the group – I don’t actually smoke), and stand up as he walked over. He didn’t even ask us to. We did it naturally, on our own. We chose to behave that way out of respect for the kind of man he was.

Second, being in this man’s presence was ennobling. It brought out the best in each of us, and made us wish we were nobler than we were. it also made us wish we had more to show for our twenty-some-odd years on Earth. It was clear that my friends’ father was evaluating what we had done with our lives so far. This judgment was anything but severe – he inquired respectfully about each person he didn’t know and never expressed disapproval. But the sense of assessment, of evaluation, was unshakable.

Finally, being around that man was hard. What exactly do I mean by that? Well, as I said before, being around him made us want to be our best – and that takes hard work! It really does. It means you have to suppress decisively the impulse to settle for something less than what you’re capable of. When he left, the collective sigh of relief was quite audible (after he was out of earshot, of course). We each slumped back down to the mediocre state we spend most of our lives living in.

It was kind of like an electron in an excited state. An electron in an excited state has more energy – and therefore more potential – than it does in the ground state, but it doesn’t last there for long. Nature prefers lower energy states (the lower the better), and systems tend to move that direction over time in the absence of an external source of energy.

Similarly, you and I have more energy to be the kind of person we know we should be – and that, deep down, we really want to be – when we’re under the influence of an ennobling force. But it takes real effort to remain there, fighting the urge to just accept mediocrity and give up on excellence. To be honest, our group of twenty-somethings was perfectly happy to slide back down to our ground state, so to speak, as soon as the patriarch left.

So what does all this have to do with “getting into heaven”? Quite simply this: there are no walls around heaven designed to keep people out. If there are walls and a gate, they are purely cosmetic – and the gate is open 24/7. Anyone who wants to come to heaven can, and no one will stop her – except, perhaps, herself. You see, the catch is this: to live in heaven, you have to be able to endure it.

It isn’t easy living with God. He brings out the best in us, and giving him anything less is unacceptable. Not because he would expel us if we didn’t, but because we would expel ourselves before we dared. Anything that isn’t pure, honest, virtuous, kind, true, and noble can’t endure God’s presence and would rather flee than be less than he knows we can be.

So we have two simple choices: conform to the holy order that his presence requires, or live according to our own personal preferrences somewhere else. Those who don’t live in heaven don’t live there because they chose not to live there. In fact, God begs, persuades, and cajoles all of us to come to heaven, and throws the gates wide open. But some of us will decide that they would rather live elsewhere – because they can’t live up to the caliber of man that he is, and couldn’t possibly feel comfortable being anything less around him.

There is a simple principle taught in the Doctrine and Covenants that beautifully summarizes what I’ve tried to explain. And small wonder: it’s the reason I believe what I do. “For he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory.”

I guess I’ll finish with one final question and answer as food for thought: how do we become able to abide a celestial glory? We learn how here, on Earth. The things we experience here, during our mortal lives, are preparing us to be able to endure the loving, ennobling, glorious presence of God.

Some thoughts on misery and faith

Warning: this post doesn't claim to solve any mysteries or make any grand claims. I hope it doesn't sound preachy. I only wanted to venture some insights on what is for some a very difficult, painful topic.

I have recently been reflecting on misery. I’m not talking about having a rough day, or a string of bad luck, here. I mean real misery – the kind that doesn’t go away, that doggedly follows you all your life; the kind of misery that makes you want to scream out, “Why am I like this?! What possible purpose could this serve?!” I’m talking about the kind of misery and the kind of trials that you’re dead sure are far worse than what most people go through, and that are so huge and insurmountable that they make you want to just give up.

Let me restate the principle question that got my wheels turning: What possible purpose could such immovable, unconquerable, overwhelming trials serve? This is, in my humble opinion, one of the most difficult questions of life. And I don’t pretend to have the answer, though many have been offered over the years, and I am sure there is some truth to most of them.

Still, they always seem a little insufficient. I mean, if we’re talking about questions like: why do people have to suffer? Or: why isn’t the world perfect? Or: what is the role of trials in life? Then yeah, most standard answers are usually sufficient and can provide enough context and perspective to help people deal with day-to-day hardships, or even a hard week or month or year. But what we’re dealing with here are the types of problems that probably won’t go away for the duration of one’s mortal experience. Someone who longs to find a life companion but who spends his or her entire life single and lonely; those who suffered abuse in childhood and must live with the scars for the rest of their life; those who feel endlessly confused or conflicted about their gender or sexual orientation; someone who cannot, no matter how hard he or she tries, overcome or change a debilitating personality trait or habit; those who suffer from severe, chronic depression; and the list goes on.

These trials are different in that they can severly impair one’s ability to find joy and happiness in life; and also in their longevity – most of them cannot be banished forever, and can only be moderated with the greatest of effort and personal exertion. They’re the kinds of problems that you do battle with every single day, and never feel like you’re making progress. They aren’t accurately described as a “rainy day”, or month, or year. They are the thorns in our sides that God sees fit, in some wisdom privy only to himself, not to remove.

It’s really hard to know why these kinds of trials, and the misery they inflict, are “allowed” in life. It seems they are simply too hard, too hurtful, too impairing, too unfair to be inflicted on anyone, no matter how you spin it. I don’t intend in this post to offer the magic response that will make everyone feel better, heave a big sigh, and say, “Ah, so that’s why!” Instead, I only want to offer an insight (or a series of them) that I’ve had recently that shed further light on the issue for me, that led me to a greater (if still very incomplete) understanding.

Through interactions and conversations with several friends over the past few months, I’ve come to recognize – slowly – that the key principles underlying this mystery are probably agency, grace, and faith – in order of importance. By agency I mean the freedom God grants us to choose what kind of life we will lead, and how we will act (or react) to what life throws at us. By grace, I mean the divine strength and enabling power that comes from Jesus Christ by virtue of his atonement in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross. And by faith, I mean the active choice to believe in God, despite everything.

Agency is one of the fundamental principles on which this life operates. It sets us apart as individuals, in that we are – thanks to agency – the ultimate masters of our souls. On this board of directors there is only one member, who also happens to be the CEO. Agency gives us the freedom to decide who we are and who we want to become.

But it also sets limits on the ways and the extent to which God can intervene in our lives. This is because agency (the freedom and ability to choose between opposing options) is essential if we want to learn and grow. If our heavenly Father wants us to mature, he has to give us the necessary space – even if it makes us feel alone at times.

This conundrum isn’t unique to God: every parent faces it, in fact. Think of a parent with a toddler who is learning to walk. At first, the child’s father holds her hand, helping her gain a sense of balance and preventing her from falling. But there comes a time when the father has to let go and allow his daughter the space to try it on her own. If he doesn’t, she will always rely on him and never learn. But if he lets go, she is bound to fall and tears are inevitable. It is easy to see the fear, frustration, discouragement on the face of a toddler after a couple of falls.

A casual observer might characterize the father as uncaring, since he let his daughter fall and cry when it was clearly within his power to prevent it from happening. Obviously, he allowed his daughter to suffer. But in reality, the father’s helping hand was limiting her agency; she needed the freedom and space to try to walk on her own.

So then, if this analogy is appropriate, are we destined to go through life alone? No. Because the same principle that sets us on our own and makes us feel alone also provides the key to gaining God’s grace: his help, strength, and love. Again, it is agency – through the medium of faith.

And again, the analogy to the child learning to walk is instuctive: while the father must eventually let go and give his daughter space to learn (and fall) on her own two feet, he is never far away. In fact, he is as close as he can be without interfering with his daughter’s growth and impairing her ability to mature. And, if she looks to him and trusts him and listens to his encouragement, he can become an enormous source of strength and support, enabling her to get through this (from her perspective, at least) trying experience. And he does this without diminishing her agency.

The father’s help, support, and encouragement are analogous to God’s grace, except that the latter is infinite; it is an endowment that Jesus gained when he chose (again, agency at work) to suffer for us and in our place in Gethsemane and on the cross.

So why doesn’t he grant us infinite strength to vanquish our demons? Because receiving grace is conditioned on our asking for it, and God will never violate our agency. In other words, God cannot intervene in our lives until we invite him to do so. This requires we use our agency – asking him to help us is a conscious act – but in a specific way. We have to choose to believe in God, to trust that he will hear our prayers and answer them, and come to our aid when we most need him – even when he won’t give us proof of his existence and it’s sometimes hard to see his hand in our lives.

I guess what I’m trying to get at here, in a nutshell, is that trials – like them or not – force us to exercise faith. And exercising faith is an extremely important part of what life is about.

A word about faith here. I won’t try to delve deeply into the topic, as it’s worthy of volumes. But I want to point out something that often gets lost in our understanding of faith: it is an extremely active phenomenon, by its very nature. Exercising faith is very much that: it’s a workout. A spiritual workout. And often an emotional and mental (and sometimes physical) workout too. You don’t exercise faith simply by thinking – you have to act, and it requires a great deal of trust, diligence, determination, and – above all –  patience. Building faith is like building cardio-vascular endurance or muscle strength – it requires consistent effort, couple with the firm belief that what you’re doing will pay off, that it’s working.

Ironically, faith is what you most need when you feel like you have the least of it. When you’re at the end of your rope; when you can’t see much past the end of today; when you’ve just about lost all hope of ever being happy again, and the future has nothing in it worth living for; that is precisely when you need faith the most. The bright side is that you don’t need any faith to start building it. Just like building muscle strength, no one is so weak that they’re incapable of getting stronger. What you need, at first, is nothing more or less than a desire to believe. If that’s all you can muster, then act on it.

Again, faith is the key to accessing grace. And grace is the only thing that will get you through the kinds of trials I mentioned earlier.

So, to return to where I started: why are debilitating, insoluble, chronic, crushing trials and burdens allowed? And what purpose could they possibly serve? I don’t pretend to have a decisive answer. But one thing I know for sure: they provide us the opportunity (if we will choose to take it) to exercise faith and call on the grace of God constantly, daily, with everything we have.

This may not seem like a compelling reason, and it may not make you feel grateful to be dealing with what you’re facing. But at least consider this: developing that spiritual strength and maturity is crucial – now and in the future. It’s one of the major reasons we are here on Earth right now, instead of with God in heaven, where we were before. But that, of course, is a matter for a different post.

Dealing with pain: becoming like little children

Previously, I wrote a post about the link between pain and anger. I would like to add an insight I recently had on this subject, since it strikes at the heart of what it means to be human.

In that previous post, I asserted that anger arises from pain, and that humans react to pain by becoming angry. We do this because it distracts us from the pain and restores a sense of power following a moment of powerlessnes. Anger is a reaction, and I feel that all reactions are inherently inferior to actions, which are consciously enacted by an agent – someone who possesses the freedom and knowledge necessary to make her own choices. Actions stand in stark contrast to reactions, which are simply responses to stimuli. After all, you don’t even need a simple nerve net to react: plants and bacteria react all the time. Humans are unique in all the universe in their ability to act, yet we often forgo its usage and spend our lives reacting, like lesser creatures.

Anger is, in fact, one of the most destructive and harmful reactions of all. As I said earlier, pain inspires both sympathy and empathy, and urges others around you to come to your aid. Anger drives others away at precisely the moment you most need comfort and consolation. And I haven’t even mentioned the enormous damage you can inflict on others (and yourself) when you lash out in anger.

The alternative, however, is to endure the pain quietly and humbly, without seeking revenge or blaming others for your suffering, as if discovering who is at fault will make the pain magically dissipate.

This is terribly difficult, of course. Turning the other cheek is one of Jesus’ most controversial and difficult commandments. A wise friend of mine once asked me, “what do you do if you just can’t take it anymore? Sometimes the pain is just too much to bear.”

I’ve thought a lot about what my friend said, and was struck by a thought I had while taking a walk this morning. I realized that resorting to anger as a knee-jerk response to pain is a learned behavior. This isn’t something that we’re born with – we learn it as we go through life. It’s those damn offenses that we suffer every day, both small and not-so-small, that teach us to react that way.

The reason is fear: we’re afraid of pain, so we react in anger because we have learned that it lessens the pain and removes the awful sense of powerlessnes and hurt that comes when someone offends you – and by “offense” I am referring broadly to any action that causes someone hurt or pain. There are few teachers in life more effective than pain, and fear is the result of lessons learned. We learn to fear the things that caused us pain, and we develop strategies to cope with it; anger is one of the most powerful of these strategies.

So what am I trying to get at? I have always been fascinated, and even somewhat confused, by Jesus’ teaching to become like a little child. In both the New Testament and the Book of Mormon, he repeatedly insists that conversion to his way of life is tantamount to becoming like a child again, that it is a rebirth – involving necessarily an unlearning of some of the things we learned as we grew up and became adults. (See, for example, 3 Nephi 11:37 in the Book of Mormon, or Matthew 18:3-4).

Thinking about children and offenses (incidentally, right after exhorting his disciples to become as little children, Jesus goes on to teach about offenses), I realized that children react to offense without anger and without apportioning blame on others. They simply absorb the pain, and often simple sit down and cry. They don’t try to discover the cause of the pain, but rather to deal with the pain itself. A child knows no other way to react than to cry it out, and to reach out for his mom or his dad, or someone else nearby, to comfort him and help him make it through.

I realize now that Jesus’ words were more profoud than I had thought – that in this sense, we truly do need to become as children. And I would like to take children as our examples of how to deal with pain, in an attempt to respond to my friend’s question.

First of all, children teach us that the way to deal with pain is to cry it out, so to speak. I’m not advocating literally crying everytime we endure an offense of any kind. Nor am I trying to discourage understanding the painful situation in an attempt to minimize needless painful encounters in the future. But the ability to cry is cathartic and healthy, and in moments of serious pain there is nothing wrong with shedding tears. One of my greatest fears is to some day become so stone-hearted, so covered in callouses and scars that I lose the ability to cry. Of course, those who know me well know that this is an unlikely eventuality ;)

But far more important than simply crying it out, we need to learn how to reach out to others when we’re in pain, the way children do. Instead of focusing on who we can blame, we should focus on who we can ask for understanding and comfort. Despite being individuals, and even though life has a powerful tendency to isolate us from one another, we were not meant to go through this life alone. No one is strong enough to bear their burdens alone. We all need help. Indeed, I think one of the reasons God has created a world in which offenses abound is to give us the opportunity and need to reach out and help each other when we’re hurting.

Like the command to endure offenses well, without anger or retaliation (the “turn the other cheek” principle), the act of helping others through their trials and pain is also a core part of the Jesus’ teachings, and personifies the very heart and soul of Christianity. The parabol of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament, and the prophet Alma’s sermon at the waters of Mormon in the Book of Mormon are two examples. In the later case, Alma teaches that all Christians must be willing to bear one another’s burdens, mourn with those that mourn, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.

We don’t need to endure life’s pain, trials, and agonies alone. We shouldn’t try. Children don’t, they always reach out for loving arms in times of distress. We should reach out, first and foremost, to God, who possesses not only an infinite love for us, but also the power to heal our wounds and pour in balm. But we must not neglect our friends, either – many of whom stand willing to help if we but ask. In fact, it is often in wading through pain together that we learn to love and ties of friendship are strengthened. It is in being there for each other that relationships sink deep roots, allowing what might otherwise have stayed a superficial relationship to develop into real friendship.

Perhaps most of all, it is in serving one another, in being there for each other, and by reaching out to others when we need comfort, as little children do, that we slowly transform into true Christians – the kind of transformation Jesus was talking about when he urged his disciples to become as little children.    

The ultimate virtue

It is common, during moments when our patience is sorely tried, to hear someone say, admonishingly, “patience is a virtue.” I would like to rephrase this wise statement slightly: patience is the virtue.

Or perhaps, stated another way, patience is the ultimate virtue. With it, every other virtue becomes attainable, every trial is conquerable, and true strength is found. Without it, every virtue disappears, strength withers, and vices of all kinds, shapes, and flavors take their place.

Franz Kafka put it best. He said (and I paraphrase somewhat): “there is only one major sin: impatience. Because of impatience we lost the Garden of Eden, and because of impatience we may never return.”

I first began to see the connection between patience and every other virtue – and its converse correlation: impatience’s link to every kind of sin – while thinking about the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Kafka must have noticed the same connection, because his quote resonated strongly in my mind when I read it.

This ancient and well-known story has never seemed quite complete to me, and I don’t think we generally understand it. As it is commonly told, God gave Adam and Eve two commands: not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; and to have children. But there is a contradiction in the two commandments – as they were stated above, Adam and Eve could not obey both forever. As long as they kept one, they could not keep the other.

Let me explain. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (myself included) believe that before we were born here on Earth, each of us lived with God as a spirit; the soul, in other words, existed long before it was joined with a mortal body through birth. It was God’s plan that we each obtain a physical body in addition to our spiritual one, and this was to happen by being born to a mother and father here on Earth. Adam and Eve were the first couple, and all the rest of us would gain a physical body through them or their children. Hence, the commandment to multiply and have children. So far, so good.

But unless they ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve would remain in their innocent state, not able to tell the difference between good and evil. They were like little children, who have no comprehension of sex and the process of reproduction, let alone the mental, physical, and emotional maturity necessary to be a parent and raise children. So if they didn’t eat the fruit (commandment #1) then they would never be able to have children of their own (commandment #2).

Why would God give contradictory commandments? The answer is quite simple: he wouldn’t. He’s not dumb, and he doesn’t give commandments that are impossible to obey. Clearly, the story is not telling us everything – we’re only getting part of the picture. What I think God actually told Adam and Eve was: don’t eat the fruit of the tree yet. He knew perfectly well that Adam and Eve would eventually need to be able to comprehend good from evil. That was, after all, a core part of the whole plan he had put together. Understanding good and evil and learning to choose the good is at the core of what this life is all about. So why would God forbid it absolutely? It makes no sense. It seems pretty clear to me that God fully intended for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit eventually, but not right away.

Why couldn’t they eat the fruit right away? Good question. And I don’t know the answer for sure. But I have a couple guesses.

First, Adam and Eve needed to grow and increase in understanding before they could eat the fruit. You might be thinking, “wait a second! I thought you told me they couldn’t grow in understanding until they ate the fruit.” Good point. But just as a child grows in understanding very gradually at first, so perhaps did Adam and Eve. Even though a one-year-old doesn’t fully grasp what good and evil are, and has a very limited understanding of the world, he certainly knows and understands more than an infant who is, say, only one week old. Perhaps Adam and Eve needed a similar growth period before they could understand the consequences of eating the fruit of the tree. I mean, it would change their world forever – opposition would enter the story and the perfect world they had inhabited would become the imperfect one we all know so well. The God I know would never force anyone – let alone his own children – to make that choice without understanding what it meant. If Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree, it would be because they chose to do so.

Second, perhaps patience was the very lesson God was trying to teach Adam and Eve by telling them not to eat the fruit just yet. In essence, he was testing their ability to wait. After all, the fruit was delicious, and some of the consequences at least were very desirable. I mean, if someone else knows something that you don’t, it makes you want to know too, doesn’t it? Adam and (especially) Eve realized that there was a lot more to life than what they knew, and that eating the fruit was the key to discovering what that was. I even believe that God may have told them that eating the fruit was a good and necessary step for the plan to unfold – but that they were to wait until later to eat it.

What does all this have to do with patience, virtue, and vice? In essence, Eve’s sin – the first of all and, I believe, the archetype of all sin – was impatience. When she ate the fruit from Satan’s hand, she was saying to God, “I want this, and I want it now. I’m not willing to wait for you to give it to me when you think the timing is right.”

Similarly, nearly all our sins are impatience in some form or another. Take immorality, for instance. Sexual desire is neither virtue nor vice, in and of itself. It all depends on how and when it is acted upon. And it’s primarily a question of timing: sex with someone with whom you have not made sacred, solemn commitments is a serious sin; sex with that same person after making those solemn commitments (i.e. the commitments entailed in the marriage covenant) is not. Sexual sin, therefore, is fundamentally a matter of impatience. By the same token, virtue – immorality’s opposite – can only be found where there is patience enough to wait until marriage vows have been made.

Our ability to forsake sin and return to God’s presence after this life is predicated on cultivating patience. Without patience, we will never be able to return home to the paradise with God our Father that the Garden of Eden represents.

But patience isn’t only necessary to forsake sin. It is also essential to cultivate every virtue that we have a name for. This is in part because we are all imprefect beings and overcoming  our weaknesses and cultivating virtues in their place is a painstaking, slow process that requires persistent effort over time. In effect, it requires patience. But even more than that, every virtue incorporates patience into its very essence. Patience is the very fabric out of which each virtue is woven.

It’s like energy: almost every form of energy man knows how to exploit is, in essence, solar energy. Obviously photovoltaic solar panels use solar energy, but nearly all the other forms we’re familiar with do as well. Take wind power, for instance. The sun heats up the land masses and seas of the Earth at different speeds. This is because the specific heat of water is higher than that of rock or earth – meaning that during the day the land heats up faster than the oceans and seas, while at night the land cools faster. This temperature difference between land and sea gives rise to a corresponding temperature difference in the air directly above them, and masses of air with different temperatures have different pressures also. It is this pressure difference in adjacent masses of air that gives rise to wind, which we harvest for energy using wind turbines. So even wind energy is, essentially, solar energy. Similar arguments can be made for oil and natural gas too, which are solar energies at heart.

In the same way, all virtues are patience in essence, but in a different form. Take hope, for instance – in my mind one of the greatest virtues. Hope is more than mere wishing, it is believing in good things, and believing that good things will come. The realization of our hope is not instantaneous, obviously, or else there would be no need to hope at all. To hope, then, is to be patient. It is to accept a delay between our good, noble decisions, and the consequences that we firmly believe will follow from them. One cannot hope, therefore, without patience. And patience brings hope within reach.

With all the numerous ways in which we can do evil and hurt or harm others; and with the equally numerous virtues we can and must cultivate, it can seem overwhelming and even impossible to lead a good life by forsaking sin and cultivating virtue. Our attention is pulled in too many directions at once, and we never seem to make any real progress in any of them. So, for me at least, it’s comforting to greatly reduce the complexity of the picture and simply focus on one virtue and on discovering its applications in all areas of life.

Patience is the ultimate virtue.

Catching a cab in Amman

Life is like trying to catch a cab in Amman during rush hour.

This epiphany struck me just the other day while I was trying to just that. For those of you who haven’t been there, Amman in the capital city of Jordan, a small desert kingdom in the Middle East, definitely a developing country without oil or water or much of anything else to support itself. The city itself is a sprawl of similarly constructed buildings without any discernible planning or organization. There is no mass transit to speak of – the buses have no published routes or scheduled times, nor are there any official bus stops. You just figure out generally where they go and hail one that you think is headed in your direction, and get off when it seems to have decided to go elsewhere.

I don’t use the bus; I prefer taxis. They are extremely cheap compared to American cabs, and they are ubiquitous throughout the city. But they have their problems too. They are very well-used, since there is little alternative to getting around, and thus during rush hour 99% of them are full. And their drivers are a diverse and eccentric lot, to say the least. I met one who was a Canadian-educated engineer who spoke perfect English (don’t ask me why he was driving a cab); I’ve had many others tell me to cross the street and get a cab over there because I was headed in that direction and they didn’t want to have to turn around. Others have been alternately friendly, full of advice or admonition, or just plain rude. Many have tried to cheat me out of a lot of money (up to 10 times what the fare should have been), taking advantage of the fact that I was new to the city and didn’t know the ins and outs of cabs and where everything is located in the city. In brief, in four short weeks I have had the gamut of experiences with cabs in Amman.

One more thing about getting a cab in Amman. During rush hour, like I said, the cabs are nearly all full. And those who aren’t full typically don’t want to pick you up. I have no idea why. Plenty of guesses, but no real answers. The real answers probably vary widely anyway. The upshot is that you can wait – along a busy road, even – for 30 minutes or more with your hand out before a cab will stop to pick you up. I have seen literally hundreds if not thousands of cabs drive past me before one stopped to take me back to my apartment. And very often, after stopping, as soon as the driver sees who I am and hears me tell him where I want to go in my imperfect Modern Standard Arabic (rather than the local dialect, which I am only slowly picking up and have never studied) he shakes his heads, waves his hands at me and drives away, leaving me standing there like a fool who has no idea what just happened or why.

Let me share something about myself: I don’t like being rejected; I don’t like being made to look like a fool, or like I got duped because I’m some naïve, kid who is easily taken advantage of. But what I hate most of all is to have that happen while lots of other people are watching. I think everyone fears rejection, but I fear it more than most, and I’m absolutely terrified of others watching me get rejected.

The reason I’m telling you this is that I have to face exactly this fear every day after class when I want to go home. I’m tired, somewhat depressed from a hard day learning a hard language, and I want to retreat to the quiet, contemplative sanctuary of my apartment. Instead, I have to stand on the side of a very busy road with my hand out getting rejected by literally hundreds of taxis – all the while getting gawked at by everyone – those in their cars, those in the cabs, and those walking past me along the road. I mean, I’m the foreigner who looks lost and probably doesn’t know his way around – an easy target for stares.

It’s hard. Let me tell you, there are times when I wonder if I will ever get a cab, if this ordeal will ever end and I’ll ever get home. And when I finally do catch a cab (thirty long minutes later), I never know if I’m going to have to fight tooth and nail in a language I don’t speak well not to get totally ripped off and cheated. You just never know what’s going to happen when you try to catch a cab in Amman.

So how is this like life? In lots of ways. First off, it requires serenity of spirit and mind, and a great deal of patience. I remember a day when I lacked both, and after 10 emotionally abusive minutes in which several cabs rudely and condescendingly told me to cross the street because their cars happened to be pointed the wrong way at the moment, I stormed away, angry and hurt, to find some meager degree of privacy where I could recover and get ready to try again. Other days I’ve had serenity and patience, but boy could I feel how much I was using and needing both.

Getting a cab in Amman is also unpredictable, just like life. You never know what kind of cab driver you’ll end up with – could be a jerk; could be completely indifferent and silent; could be extroverted and talkative; could be friendly, caring, and interested. He could try to cheat you for all your worth. Or he could treat you with perfect fairness – or more.

Some of these experiences are unpleasant or downright hurtful. I hate being cheated, but far more than that I hate the feeling I get when I know the person across from me is trying to cheat me – that he or she has malicious, hurtful intent, and that it doesn’t even bother them to feel that way about me, someone they have never met before. I hate having to get in their face, stand my ground, and call them out on their lies and mean-spiritedness. I hate calling people out on their bad behavior – it embarrasses them and therefore embarrasses me.

So I’ve come to hate taking taxis in Amman, because I’m afraid of those hurtful situations. I’m afraid of the public rejection and I’m afraid of interacting with people who bear me ill will – who are actively trying to hurt me and treat me poorly. In fact, I dread going to class in the morning (when it’s much easier to get a cab, and they tend to be nicer) because I know that if I do I will have to go through the ordeal of trying to get a cab home in the evening.

Getting a cab in Amman has therefore taught me this life lesson: because life is unpredictable and you never know when you’re going to have a hurtful encounter you have to put some space between your feelings and others’ actions. Even if the person across from you is trying to hurt your feelings, you can’t let them. You have to create a buffer between their intent and your reaction that absorbs the venom and neutralizes it before it reaches your heart. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself fearing and avoiding life because of the fear of being hurt. What a tragedy that would be, fearing life while living it!

Finally, getting a cab in Amman during rush hour has reminded me that life isn’t all bad! The other day, after 20 or 30 minutes of watching people stare at me as I stood there with my hand out, supplicating for a taxi, one finally stopped. When I got in, I immediately knew I had lucked out. He understood my less-than-perfect Arabic, knew where I wanted to go, and then asked me where I was from. We had a friendly conversation for the length of the ride. It was obvious he was doing more than making conversation; he was legitimately interested, and I could feel the goodness of his intentions. He corrected my Arabic mistakes and told me about himself as well. When we reached my apartment he asked for no more than what the fare ought to have been. I had a broad smile on my face and said a sincere “thank you.” He said goodbye using my name, and really meant it.

I had a glow in my heart that after that encounter that lasted all evening and that erased all the weariness and uncertainty of the day. Life is like that. You have to take it as it comes. But there are wonderful encounters ahead of you, mixed in with less pleasant ones. The trick is not to fear, but rather to hope. It is in becoming strong enough to endure the offenses of life, with an attitude of hope for the marvelous encounters that fill it with light, that makes life beautiful.  

Learning and faith

Learning and faith are powerfully connected. Learning increases faith, and faith is required for learning to take place. Faith and learning are a self-reinforcing pair that can form a virtuous cycle – leading the learner to ever greater light and knowledge of the truth. But the right conditions must be in place. This concept is very new to me and I have only begun to explore it, so this post is just a first stab at what seems to be an extremely important area of study.

While my exposure to the concept goes back further, I was most recently inspired by a passage in the Doctrine and Covenants (a book of revelations given by Jesus Christ to his prophet, Joseph Smith and considered scripture by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), section 88, verse 118. Let me quote the passage here:

“And as all have not faith, seek ye diligently and teach one another words of wisdom; yea, seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”

I found it striking that the response to a lack of faith was to teach: “as all have not faith…teach one another…” Learning, in other words, begets faith. But also, at the end of the verse, we are commended to “seek learning…by faith.” So the reverse is also true: faith is essential to learning!

Now, the atheist or agnostic is probably rolling her eyes at this point, thinking “hey, I don’t need to believe in God to be able to learn. And learning doesn’t make me believe in God either.” Good point. But I never said one had to believe in God to be able to learn. What I said, was that faith was necessary for learning. Let me clarify: faith is belief. To have faith is to believe something with less than 100% certainty. Anytime you have less than absolute proof of something, but you believe it none the less, you have faith.

Faith is therefore a part of every human life, not just those with spiritual or religious inclinations. When scientists first propose a new theory or idea, they have little proof that they’re right. But they advance the idea anyway – believing it to be true before they know for sure. This is faith. Even after much evidence has been collected, there is still uncertainty in the result. In fact, scientists are required to quantify their uncertainty. For example, they might be able to say, “we are confident of this result to within one tenth of a percent.” But even then they can’t know for sure that their theory is correct. Further experimentation might overturn their theory, or reveal it to have been only partially true. So to believe the theory is correct still requires faith.

Another way to see it is that faith is confidence that something is true. The more faith you have in someone or something, the more confident you are in that person or thing. Under this definition, a scientist’s faith in a theory increases as more evidence is discovered that supports the theory. This may seem counter-intuitive, but faith is actually proportional to the degree of certainty, not inversely proportional – as many mistakenly think.

Now back to learning. My first claim was that learning increases faith. How is this so? If we use the concept of faith as confidence that something is true, then it becomes clearer. Say I have heard of a particular principle, idea, or concept (let’s go with ‘concept’ from here on out, for simplicity’s sake), but I’m not at all sure I believe it is true. Perhaps I have only heard it explained vaguely or briefly and my understanding of it is not very strong. At this stage, my lack of faith (or confidence) in the concept is justified: I cannot have faith in something I do not even understand. That would be foolish, and atheists and agnostics are right to criticize this behavior – what is often referred to as ‘blind faith.’ True faith is not blind: it is a well-founded confidence that something is true. To gain that confidence, I must first increase my understanding; in other words, I must learn.

There is, of course, no guarantee that the more I learn about a concept the more confident I will be in its truthfulness. On the contrary, I may discover that it is an unreliable or even completely false concept, and my faith in it will diminish. And rightfully so: since faith is confidence in the truthfulness of something, as you discover that it is not true, your faith in that thing should diminish.

From the preceding argument it should now be clear that as knowledge and understanding grow, so does faith. This is simply because you cannot have faith (or confidence) in something you do not understand. If, through learning and increased understanding, you discover a concept to be false, then you discard it and your faith is no greater than before. But if you discover it to be true (or that there is some truth to be found in it – perhaps it is only partly true), then your faith has grown in that thing – and your overall faith in the truth has therefore augmented. As you discard false notions and embrace those that are true, your knowledge expands to an ever-wider circle, encompassing a larger subset of all truth. And as it does, so does your faith in the truth.

So much for learning increasing faith. One final word, however. And this is so important that I feel bad adding it as an addendum, but this post is getting too long and I need more time to think about it. For this process to occur (for learning to increase faith), the teacher must also have faith in what she is teaching. Faith increases a teacher’s capacity to promote learning.

The key here is that the teacher must teach with her faith. In other words, she must communicate her faith in the concept to the student. A teacher who does not really believe what she is teaching – or who is incapable of communicating that faith to the student – is much less likely to be able to assist the student in increasing her own understanding and faith. In other words, she will be a less effective teacher.

This is because it is very possible to learn something by rote without really gaining confidence that it is true. Stated otherwise, it is possible to simply learn about something without really learning it. To truly understand something, you must find out for yourself if it is true. You must be confident about the matter. Only then have you truly learned it. Faith, therefore, is a strong barometer for learning.

Which brings us, of course, to my second claim: that faith is necessary to learning, and increases both its pace and quality. But this point will have to wait for a later post.

The meaning of each day

The prime value and meaning of each new day is that it is an opportunity to love. If we cannot come to see life this way, we will not have lived to the fullest, or gained what we were intended to gain.

One of the best pieces of advice I have ever heard is that you should always be thankful every day just for waking up. Don’t take it for granted that you will wake up tomorrow and have another day to live.

I’ve often wondered about this advice. It sounds so true – to use a physics analogy (which I warned you in my introductory post might happen occasionally), it makes my soul resonate on some of its most fundamental frequencies when I hear it and think about it. But I’m not sure I truly know why. I mean, most days I’m not frankly that grateful to wake up. I know that sounds awful, but it’s true. And why? Because most days are so full of responsibilities, expectations, requirements, work and stress that I can’t honestly say that I wake up saying to myself, “Oh goody, here we go again! I love this!”

Which gives me pause to consider why the advice to be grateful every day just for waking up is so profoundly true. I mean, I’m not grateful. But I ought to be. What am I missing?

My own experience has provided a window of insight (and I’m sure, on reflection, you will discover yours has too) that might lead to a breakthrough on this one. In an attempt to resolve the conundrum, I asked myself, “have I ever been grateful just to wake up? When have I been grateful to be alive, to have the incredible pleasure of living? When has life been joyful to me?” Let me share with you some examples I thought of, and see if you can tease out the commonalities, the underlying themes.

The first experience I thought of was during my two year volunteer mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter referred to as “the church” – yeah, it’s kinda long). For two years I spent all day, every day with a colleague talking to people about God, his son Jesus, and the plan they have for our lives here on Earth. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but for most of it I was legitimately happy. Sure, there were times when the homesickness (I served thousands of miles from home), difficulty getting along with my colleague, or the stress of talking to complete strangers in a foreign language overwhelmed my happiness. I’m only human. But for most of the time, life was joyful and I was happy. Not because life was easy. It certainly wasn’t. But even though it was hard, I was happy.

Second, I thought of a time when I volunteered (after my mission ended) on a committee – again, affiliated with the church – that organized, planned, and put on inspirational talks and lectures about spiritual matters and life in general for the students at my university. We would invite talented, wise individuals to come address the student body (the event was open to the entire university, but most of those who attended were members of the church), then prepare the main meeting hall of one of our churches for the event. This involved setting up hundreds if not thousands of chairs. Then, after everyone had left (which often took an hour after the event ended) we would take down the chairs and clean the building before heading home. In all, it would often take four or more hours of effort on the day of the event and several hours of preparation beforehand.

One winter night after one of these events I left particularly late. As I exited the building I realized it had been snowing hard the entire time and the ground was covered in at least 2 feet of snow. It was cold, and I hadn’t dressed for the snow, as it wasn’t snowing when I had arrived hours before. I trudged across the parking lot, the snow coming up past my knees, heading towards my car. It was a lump of white in an otherwise deserted parking lot: I was the last to leave. As I unburied my car with my arms, I remembered I had a test the following day in a very difficult physics class and I hadn’t had time to study much.

It was then that a funny realization hit me: I was happy! I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. I was cold; I was wet; I was the last to leave on a miserable snowy night; I had a test the next morning that I should have been stressed out about. But I wasn’t – on the contrary, I was happy.

I could mention other experiences too, but for the sake of brevity I’ll leave it at two. Thinking back on these and other times I felt truly happy to be alive, I discovered the following remarkable correlation: my being happy had nothing whatever to do with the ease of my life. The level of ease, of pain, of convenience, of entertainment and fun; all these had nothing to do with my happiness. In fact, if these had been the prime determinants of my happiness or misery, I should have been very miserable, not happy.

Instead, it seemed to me that I had been ignoring my own ease, pain, convenience, or entertainment, and that this had somehow caused me to be happy. As soon as this thought hit me, I remembered my reasons for not being happy to wake up every morning. I had thought that so long as my life were stress-free, responsibility-free – in short, full of ease, convenience, fun, and short on pain, then I should be happy. And being grateful to wake up every day would be natural.

I realized that I was completely wrong. In fact, the focus on my own life and my stress, troubles, responsibilities, etc was what was bringing me down! When I forgot to think about them because I was too busy thinking about others, worrying about or serving others, I was truly happy. The motto “forget yourself” came to mind. As did Jesus’ teaching, “for whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

Which leads me back to my conclusion: the meaning of each day – the reason to be grateful and happy just to wake up one more time – is that it affords each of us the opportunity to live for others, not ourselves. In short, each day is an opportunity to love.