Meekness and Faith

Meekness is one of the least understood principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We often think of meekness as a synonym of humility or patience, or with other non-Christian expressions of submissiveness. But these are not the same thing. Being told that you are patient or humble is a compliment. Being told that you are meek may not be. When was the last time you complemented your friend by calling him meek? You might as well tell him he is spineless.

And yet whether we ignore it, think of it as an inappropriate synonym, or otherwise misunderstand it, Christian meekness remains a critical virtue. In fact it is one of those uncommon diagnostic doctrines of Christ. I mean by this that it is unique, among world religions, to Christianity. And it is a key component of Christian faith.  

Part of our misunderstanding comes from the fact that there are only a few references to meekness in the scriptures. And one of the most important references doesn’t even use the word meekness at all. It is found in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells His disciples to “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye meet, it shall be measured to you again.” (Matthew 7:1-2.)  Let me explain.

I hope to convince you that the closest single word to meekness is forbearance. And that Christian forbearance (meekness) is possible when we let Christ be the judge, as the New Testament clearly defines His role (see John 5:22). In other words, meekness requires of us that we stop being critical of other people – even when they have harmed or otherwise offended us.

Trust me on this for now and open your dictionary. You will find that forbearance means an act of refraining. It can also mean tolerance or restraint when being provoked.

Imagine an angry driver causing a traffic jam that nearly involves you in an accident. You get flustered, prepare to lean on the horn, and then stop yourself. Maybe this driver is experiencing a medical emergency, you tell yourself. Perhaps there are circumstances I am not aware of. Your heart rate goes down. You have just exercised meekness.

This simple story is not necessarily an example of Christian meekness, although it might be. For it to become Christian meekness, it needs to involve faith in Christ. Let me give another example.

Suppose that someone steals your watch. You aren’t absolutely sure who it is, but you have a fairly good idea. It’s the fellow two cubicles down from your office. You ask around to know if anyone has seen it – making sure that your suspect hears you. But the watch remains lost. You stew over ways to confront him – or to turn him in. You get pretty upset by the whole thing.

And then you stop yourself. Maybe you misplaced it? No, you’re certain where you left it. Is it worth making an enemy over a lost watch? Probably not. Then you remember the words of Jesus about not judging, and then that very challenging commandment, “but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Mathew 5:39.)

At this point your anger is mellowing, or maybe it is just simmering at a lower temperature. And then a remarkable thing happens. You turn the situation over to Christ. Yes you lost a watch. But the promises of the Son of God to those who follow Him are so much more significant than a mere timepiece that such frustration no longer matters. But faith in Christ’s promises does matter. Suddenly you feel at peace. You have just exercised Christian meekness.

You can see from these examples that meekness is not the same things as humility or submissiveness. It very often involves active forbearance. And surprisingly, it is a precursor to faith. Mormon (in the Book of Mormon) is clear on this.

“And again, behold I say unto you that ye cannot have faith and hope, save ye shall be meek and lowly of heart.” (Moroni 7:43.)

This is an interesting verse, coming as it does from a man experienced in war and the exigencies of wilderness survival. Mormon (and his son Moroni who copied this verse) just doesn’t seem to be the kind of person that gets walked on – that feels the need to submit to anybody. That such a man would think so highly about meekness should give us a clue that maybe we haven’t been thinking about meekness the way we should.

A perceptive analogy of meekness and its power was given years ago by Michael Wilcox who recounted the story of an automobile crushing machine that was kept from destroying a man’s watch by a knowledgeable control officer. When the crusher came within inches of the watch and suddenly stopped, a wise leader explained that this was an example of meekness: “great power under complete control”.

This is a wonderful example but I have occasionally heard it misinterpreted. The power of meekness does not reside in an imperfect man or woman. The power comes from Christ himself. The power of meekness comes in knowing that Christ is with you, that He will help you, that you can, in fact, turn your troubles over to Him. This is why Christian meekness is so intimately associated with faith.

Consider Isaiah’s words : “But with righteousness will he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth…And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reigns.” (Isaiah 11:4-5). Righteousness, meekness and faith – and notice the way judgment is associated with meekness. Christ’s role as a just judge is for the benefit of the meek. It begins to make sense how it is that the meek shall inherit the earth (Mathew 5:5).

Obviously the meek aren’t going to muster a global coup. Instead, they will gain the world by refusing to arrogantly judge others or to enforce equity even as they follow the Master Himself.

Neal A. Maxwell has written more on meekness than any other person. His book Meek and Lowly (the title of which was taken from the scripture in Moroni) is the most important discussion of this principle of the gospel that we have. He provides three scriptural examples of real meekness and how it is tied with faith. All three involve the relinquishing of one’s will to God.

Two of the examples are from the Book of Mormon and one is from the Old Testament. The first is of Abinadi (in Mosiah 13:9) who is in chains before wicked King Noah because he refuses to follow the king’s evil commands. “But I finish my message,” says Abinidi, “and then it matters not wither I go, if it so be that I am saved.”

The second example is of Ether who, after watching the destruction of his people (Ether 15: 34), concludes his record with these words: “Whether the Lord will that I be translated, or that I suffer the will of the Lord in the flesh, it mattereth not, if it so be that I am saved in the kingdom of God.”

And then there is the profound story in the Book of Daniel of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who, after refusing to worship Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image, consigned themselves to walk into a fiery furnace. They placed their trust in God to deliver them, “but if not,” they boldly stated, “be it known unto thee O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.”

These remarkable words “but if not”, “it mattereth not”, “it matters not” are hallmarks of Christian meekness. These are not words spoken by weak individuals who have given up on the world. They were spoken by men of great faith who were diligent in their individual circumstances.

And it’s important to point out that none of them was involved in the work of self-promotion. Nor were they so pre-occupied with their own positions that they felt compelled to administer justice. They trusted in God, and they let Him worry about the outcome. They had faith in God.

This is a doctrine particularly alien to our time. It isn’t a mystical Eastern doctrine of fate. Abinidi, Mormon, and Daniel’s friends were all men that were “anxiously engaged in a good cause”. But neither is this a popular Western doctrine of reformed and “enlightened” humanity. When was the last time you were instructed by your boss to be meek? Leadership – at least a certain kind of leadership – is the watch-cry of our time.  And meekness seems to be the antithesis of this leadership.

And so here we are, a small group of committed Christians, trying to follow the Master’s teaching: “judge not that ye be not judged”. We are commanded to be forbearing. We are to watch without complaining when, at times, the world takes advantage of us. Yet, surprisingly, this is not to be done with a fateful resignation.

When injustice becomes so apparent that it befouls so many others, our course is clear. We are to love and serve our neighbors. In fact we are to love and serve our enemies. Only a meek individual is capable of such a thing.

How does one gain such incredible inner strength? It is really all so simple – at least in principle. It comes from faith in Christ: faith in His fairness, faith in His justice, faith in His love. Who are we to presume judgment in this fallen world anyway? And besides, why should we complain when He has promised us the world? 

References

Michael Wilcox’s story of the car crusher and the watch can be found in the January Ensign (1991): The Beatitudes – Pathway to the Savior. Neal A. Maxwell’s Meek and Lowly was published by Deseret Book Company (in 1987). His examples of “it mattereth not” are found in a footnote at the end of Chapter Two. On Christ’s role as judge, please refer to my essay Living Beyond Judgment (August 27, 2010):  http://resrustica.blogspot.com/2010/08/living-beyond-judgment.html.

Organic Agriculture in Perspective

Earlier this month a handful of scientists and doctors hailing primarily from Stanford University published an article about the health benefits of organically grown food. What they found was quite controversial: that organically grown foods are not any safer or healthier than conventionally grown foods.

The response to this article has been substantial. Organic interests have quickly replied that the study fails to address many issues that make organic agriculture so necessary and important. Some of these arguments are thoughtful. Others are simply ridiculous – and amusing. All of them that I have read, however, fail to take a broader look at the organic movement and appreciate the reality of the world we currently inhabit.

Take the pesticide issue as a case in point. This is the main issue (of any credibility) that the organic apologists make against the Stanford study. It is argued that conventionally grown crops contain pesticide residues that are not found on organically grown crops. This is true for the most part. But this claim needs to be considered along with the fact that the residues occurring on non-organic produce fall below the danger zone established by EPA and FDA. They have to. It’s the law.

Well yes, argues the organic lobby, but what about the long-term effects of these pesticide residues? Certainly they can’t be healthy.

And the answer to this troubling question is that we don’t know for sure? And this is my point. Arguing about the dangers of miniscule amounts of chemicals on food makes about as much sense as arguing about the quality of the air we breathe. And I don’t mean this as an analogy. The air we breathe is probably just as dangerous to our long-term health as anything on the skin of unwashed apples. It may be more dangerous in some instances.

I don’t mean to poke fun at the organic movement. I would be a hypocrite to do so. But for a long time now, the purveyors of the organic gospel have been pushing an agenda that is quite different from the way their own movement got started. Special interests in recent years have focused on the evils of big business – the big chemical business in particular – whereas originally, the organic movement focused on the health of the soil.  

Sir Albert Howard is generally recognized as the father of organic agriculture. His book, An Agricultural Testament, published in 1943, is a clear statement on the importance of composting to good health. Howard was an agricultural adviser in India during the early part of the 20^th Century and faced the challenging problem of low soil fertility in a land that did not use cow manure in agriculture (manure was/is used as a fuel for cooking and heating homes). His solution was to use so-called “green manure” or decomposing plant material to add fertility to impoverished soils.

Howard named his composting method the Indore Process, after the village where he worked. It was a great success and became the basis for many books and articles published by J.I. Rodale (via Rodale Books and the Rodale Press).

Some of this early literature does address the importance of limiting the inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, but these issues seem to be mere tangents. The clear message is that healthy soils produce healthy food; which, in turn, produces healthy people.

Then the environmental movement came along. And after Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, many things changed within the organic movement. Pesticides became the causa belli. During the decades following the 1960’s many pesticides were banned and the Environmental Protection Agency became a powerful organization deciding what could and could not be used to protect the nation’s food from pests. The widely active biocides and pesticides with long residual activity were the first to be taken off the market. Many others have since followed in their wake.

This has been a positive thing for the most part. Growers are better educated on how to manage pests, and they generally have more products to choose from than they used to. Of course, it’s more expensive now to kill pests and the long-established problems of pesticide resistance continue to plague us. But the future of agriculture is promising – in spite of the many more mouths we have to feed.   

And through all of this the organic movement has felt the need to adapt its message. From healthy soils it now focuses on pesticide-free food. Unfortunately (for them) this will turn out to be a poor course to follow. The credibility of the organic movement (already limited) will become even more limited. Claims to better health and living can hardly be justified anymore.  The Stanford Study is a clear case of this.

But there have been hints of this for some time now. You may have been part of taste tests that used to be popular. Two plates of carrots (or apples, grapes, or other food) would be placed side-by-side. One plate would hold organic carrots, the other would hold conventional carrots. The challenge was to taste a difference between them. If you could taste a difference, then you had to rank them by preference. In the tests I participated in, there were often differences detected, and conventional produce tasted best. You may have experienced the same thing. The reason for this is that food tastes best when it is kept from spoiling. And the truth of the matter is that organically grown foods spoil quicker than conventionally grown food.

Another popular series of studies have looked at the productivity of conventional farming compared to organic farming. In many of these studies, organic farms produced less in acre-by-acre comparisons than conventional farms.

So the question becomes, if conventionally grown food is tastier, is just as healthy, and is less expensive than organically grown food, why should we bother with organic foods at all?

The answer may not be what you expect. We need organically produced food because it is old fashioned. Or rather, the answer lies with old fashioned organic agriculture. It lies with the soil. Organic farms that fail to compare favorably with conventional farms do so because they are trying to copy conventional markets. A dedicated organic grower that focuses on Albert Howard’s organic method of composting can out-compete conventional growers in both the quantity and quality of food produced. But this almost always happens on a small scale.

The farm that focuses on organic soil fertility can harvest fresh produce over a long growing season. If this is supplemented with modern pesticides (if they are needed) a farm will out-compete conventional growers.

You may say that this does not count as “organic” and you would be right. The rules of the organic movement (having started in California) are now official nationally (and are expanding globally). Using un-certified pesticides disqualifies a product as “organic”.

My response to all of this may seem harsh: Who Cares? If “organic” produce is not healthier, is less tasty, and costs more than my grocery store produce, I’m not going to buy the organic food. It doesn’t bother me to wash my vegetables.

But there is still a big need to improve the soil. And I still keep my own vegetable garden (and compost pile) because I much prefer the taste of fresh garden produce. I promise you that my fresh garden salad tastes better than conventionally grown salads (which taste better than flagging organic salads).

This is because I use tastier varieties (that aren’t “tough” enough for shipping) that come straight from plants that have been fed from rich compost. We may have a lot of sandy soil here in Fresno but my garden is full of organic matter and my plants love it. And they taste really good.

I think it’s time to give Sir Albert Howard a closer look. We’ve learned our lesson from Silent Spring. It’s time to move on. If we’re really serious about our health, let’s go outside and start a real organic garden. Let’s build up our soils.

References

The Stanford Study: Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives?: A Systematic Review, was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (vol. 157(5)) in September of this year (2012). My copy of Sir Albert Howard’s An Agricultural Testament is a reprint published by Oxford City Press in 2010.

Review of The Mormonizing of America by Stephen Mansfield

A month ago, while browsing through the shelves of our local Barnes & Noble (here in Fresno), I came across Stephen Mansfield’s The Mormonizing of America. There was a large pile of the books on the floor ready to be shelved - which made me look a little closer. Mormon books do not, in general, get inventoried in pile-sized quantities by major book dealers outside of Utah.

Glancing through the opening pages, I read how much the author enjoyed his visit to Brigham Young University, how much he benefited from discussions with Mormon scholars, and how nice the candy is at the BYU Bookstore. And to be fair, he also expressed gratitude to thinkers more critical of Latter-day Saints (or Mormons).

“This may be a fair book,” I said to myself as I proceeded to the checkout counter. At the very least it ought to be worth reading a Mormon book that Barnes & Noble has obviously tagged as a text that will sell.

And so began a very disappointing read. I do admit that Mansfield has something interesting to say when he tells of his travels among Mormons. And at various points throughout the book he shares snippets of how typical Americans encounter the Mormon reality in today’s world.

For example, we read of the friendship of a Catholic priest and a Mormon Stake President who play racquetball together. They enjoy kidding each other over individual matters of faith but, at one point in their relationship, came to a falling out. The priest finds out that Mormon ceremonies were at one time critical of Catholic priests and the Stake President is annoyed that many Catholics view Mormonism as a cult. The two eventually reconcile their differences.

Or there is the story about Hugh Riddick who teaches his grandson about the priesthood in a touching narrative where we learn of the death of Hugh’s son in battle. His boy had hoped to ordain his own son (Hugh’s grandson) to the priesthood when he returned from the war.

These are valuable additions to the ongoing dialogue between Mormons and non-Mormons in America. If Mansfield had continued along these lines, he would have written a useful book. It is his foray into Mormon beliefs and Mormon history that make his book so obviously tendentious and, ultimately, so forgettable.

I don’t mean to be spiteful. I offer my judgment as an observer of such Mormon ephemera through several decades. Mansfield says nothing that Mormon detractors haven’t said many times before. Sadly, he makes no attempt to meet Latter-day Saint thinkers on questions he decides to critique. His habit is to remind us of anti-Mormon positions without trying to understand what thoughtful Mormons actually think about such topics themselves. My experience is that such head-nodding narratives seldom endure.

Mansfield’s point is that Mormons are “better than their leaders and better than the doctrines their leaders have given them”. This sounds trendy. But Neal A. Maxwell’s point that “One will not find a perfect people with mediocre doctrines” is more substantial. And Jesus’ timeless teaching that “by their fruits ye shall know them” stands as a direct challenge to Mansfield’s thesis.

A particularly egregious example is his treatment of the Book of Mormon. As one expects, he includes the over-used witticisms of Mark Twain and gives offensive dialogue about the recent Mormon farce on Broadway. But he says nothing of the rich doctrines found in the text (a subject that we would expect from a thesis that rests on a doctrinal position). Nor does he mention the numerous external evidences of the Book of Mormon from the Old World, of the book’s many Hebraisms, or of its literary significance. What we do get is a very misguided account the Witnesses of the Book of Mormon that completely ignores Richard Anderson’s important research on this critical issue.

In one particularly misinformed paragraph Mansfield manages to claim: that there is very little evidence for the book’s claims (ignoring hundreds of serious studies), that there is no evidence for “Reformed Egyptian” (completely unaware of written Algonquin texts),  that the geography of the book is “entirely unconfirmed” (ignoring Warren and Michaela’s Aston’s remarkable findings in the Arabian Peninsula), and that there is no evidence that Native American DNA is remotely related to Semitic peoples (ignoring dozens of important observations made recently by serious Mormon scientists). Mansfield may have made a few visits and phone calls to come up with evidence for his cultural arguments. But he has certainly not visited a library with serious Mormon literature. It is obvious to me why he had to choose a small Christian company to print his book. No serious publisher would let him get away with such things.

Mansfield’s treatment of Mormon polygamy is hardly any better. He assumes that such a doctrine automatically dismisses Joseph Smith as a credible religious voice. We all know that the history of Mormon polygamy contains any kind of story one wishes to find. But as a weapon against Joseph, it hardly signifies what Mansfield wants it to.

Joseph’s delay in implementing the principle, his concern for elderly and abandoned women, the love that his wives had for him and his loving relationship with Emma are never mentioned. I doubt that Mansfield has intentionally withheld this information. He just hasn’t done his homework. He assumes that Joseph was a sinful man that will ultimately prove to be a great embarrassment to Mormons. All this to prove his point that Mormons are nice people but their history is awful.

But Joseph proves just the opposite – at least he does to millions of people (many of whom are better informed than Mansfield). We revere him and we are moved by his history. I can’t read about his own resignation to a mob that would ultimately kill him without sensing his love for Emma. She wanted him to come back from hiding and he did – knowing he would die. And the histories of thousands of other people, that knew Joseph and followed him in spite of his pecuniary weaknesses, stand as testimony against Mansfield. Joseph’s detractors have occasionally been jealous contemporaries, more often people who never knew him, almost never the thousands that knew him personally – even intimately. Mansfield’s claim that Mormonism has a history that will prove its undoing is quite frankly ridiculous, coming as it does from someone that hasn’t read the history himself. 

Mansfield’s forgettable book reminds me of Mary McCarthy’s fascinating essay written several decades ago about prejudice. She recounts a conversation she had with a Colonel in the American military while on a train ride. The man insisted that most Communists were Jews. The discussion went on for quite a while until he learned that his companion was a writer. He then became embarrassed and tried to back out of his prejudiced opinions – emphasizing that Hitler was clearly misguided. The essay is both funny and sad. Funny because the author is a good writer, and sad because it reveals how prejudiced many of us are on subjects we hardly know anything about.

So it is with Mansfield who admits that Mormons are good citizens. And I’ll admit that this is refreshing because for decades we were accused of being quite the opposite. But the truth is that such a conclusion is almost required now that most Americans have friends or acquaintances that are Mormons - and it becomes obvious that we tend to be good citizens that care about family, community and faith. To argue differently is hardly credible anymore.

Unfortunately the same is not true about unbiased Mormon history and doctrine. They are not commonly known to non-Mormon Americans. Because of this, Mansfield tries to get away with single sentence dismissals on subjects that we have deeply thought about (and written seriously about) for decades.

This may be the new trend among prejudiced non-Mormons now that we are so increasingly in the public eye. Maybe it’s an easy position to assume. But it certainly isn’t accurate. For those of you who care about our remarkable history and profound doctrines, I suggest that you talk to an informed Mormon and get a more balanced view. Reading Mansfield’s book won’t help.

References

The Mormonizing of America by Stephen Mansfield was published this year by Worthy Publishing. Neal A. Maxwell’s quote comes from Wherefore, Ye Must Press Forward (end of Chapter One). Mary McCarthy’s essay, Artists in Uniform, is reprinted in The Best American Essays of the Century.  For the Aston discoveries in the Arabian Peninsula see Warren P. Aston and Michaela Knoth Aston, In the Footsteps of Lehi: New Evidence for Lehi's Journey across Arabia to Bountiful (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1994). A good place to start on American Indian DNA and the Book of Mormon is Michael Whiting’s DNA and the Book of Mormon: A Phylogenetic Perspective, reprinted in The Book of Mormon and DNA Research. Daniel C. Peterson Ed., The Neal A. Maxwell Institute 2008.

Faith and Those Magical Moments of the Mind

There are certain magical moments in our minds that we hardly ever pay attention to. They happen more often in some people than in others, but they are not uncommon to most of us. They happen almost as naturally as the beating of the heart, only they are something that we can control. The nature of these magical moments determines to a large degree the make-up of our lives. They are tremendously important. I refer to those moments that happen at the point when our thoughts are transformed into plans to act.

I watched this happen a few days ago with my wife. She had just received a new cookbook – something her sister had recommended. At first she just enjoyed turning the pages and looking at the pictures. Then I heard her mention how nice a few of the dishes looked. A few moments later, she mentioned that she had decided to prepare one of them for dinner the next day. As it turned out, it was quite delicious.

It was all very natural. There was no alarm that went off as soon as her thoughts became a decision. There was not even a realization that something important had happened. I noticed that it did change her mood a bit though. Instead of being relaxed and reflective, she became animated and galvanized to do something. These magical moments have a way of doing that.

What makes these decisions so magical is that they are hidden within us and yet, over a lifetime, they define who we are. A person who is aware of these decisions and learns to work with them has tremendous advantages. This is true in a practical quotidian sense and it is also true in a religious sense. When a decision is made with a focus on Christ, the person is exercising faith in Christ. This is the most magical kind of moment of all. It is important (in fact it is very important) that this kind of faith be distinguished from that ersatz faith that masquerades as passive reflection.

Of course not every decision that we make is morally significant. Much of the time decisions are fairly mundane. We may remember that our keys are in the car and decide to retrieve them. Or we may realize that the dog needs exercise and decide to take her on a walk.

Maybe it is a stretch to call these mundane moments magical. I’ll leave that up to you to decide. Magical or not, they are important enough as a general category to be aware of their significance. There are certainly decisions that are not magical: I mean bad decisions. These include many spontaneous decisions that are mere reactions to our changing environment.

Maybe we honk at a rude driver or say something because we are upset – only to regret it later. Or even worse we deliberately plan to cause somebody grief. As a society we reserve our harshest punishments for those who commit premeditated acts of violence. Clearly, all decisions are not good ones. With criminals as with saints, a powerful will is a force to be reckoned with. Sadly, so few of us use it for good as often as we should.

I am reminded of Emerson’s essay on Power where he argues that, “No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.” And then as an example, he tells us that even among the very talented, knowing is only second best. “The good Speaker of the House is not the man who knows the secrets of parliamentary tactics, but the man who decides offhand.”

One of Emerson’s examples gives me pause. It is a note he makes about a man I admire quite a bit - a man who changed the world for the better because of his mental discipline. I refer to Isaac Newton. For Emerson, Newton’s success came because he “always intended [his] mind”. This is the sort of cerebration that changes the world: the arrival at intention – a truly magical place.

And yet, for all the hundreds of books and articles written about the mind, so little is mentioned about these magical moments. This is a real shame because this is the area that is truly human. The path from abstract thought to intention – especially of powerful intention - is a path that we hardly understand physiologically. And even though it would be the crowning breakthrough of our understanding of the brain, we shy away from it because it is too numinous. It comes too close to the great religious questions that we so studiously ignore.

Instead we read histories about mind / body dualism (stemming from Descartes). This was the understanding that the physical body (including the brain) was a very different thing than the thoughts and feelings that made up the mind. The one was comprised of substance, the other of a non-material substance of the spirit.

Among modern philosophers, the mind has taken on a different significance. It is becoming the focus for understanding freedom – or more commonly the academic illusion of freedom.

Among biologists it is being considered quite differently still. Studies of the mind fill dense physiological texts describing the action of nerve cells, and of the interaction of neurons between different parts of the brain. Some very fascinating work is being done considering the changes in the brain through human development. Many significant breakthroughs in our understanding of the brain have come from studying identical twins and from persons suffering from mental handicaps or diseases.

But notice that these technical studies are focused on the reducible brain. Almost nothing is mentioned about the mind in any higher sense. This is because of an unspoken agreement among credentialed researchers that forbids suggesting that the mind might be anything other than a neural epiphenomenon. To do so smacks of mysticism – something that must be avoided in mainstream science.

Take for example Carl Sagan’s influential The Dragons of Eden where he makes this clear from the start: “I will not in these pages entertain any hypothesis on what used to be called the mind-body dualism, the idea that inhabiting the matter of the body is something made of quite different stuff, called mind.” Most modern forays into brain science are not so explicit.

What happens is that the mind is considered strictly to be the result of a functioning brain. It is then neatly put aside as a subject for a later time when we have more facts to bring to the table. The reality is that this practice will never bring us closer to understanding the mind. We waited for the sequencing of the human genome to reveal secrets of the mind. It hasn’t been very revealing. We now wait for further breakthroughs in our understanding of gene expression. But what we get is better and better at understanding the basics of the mind (of mental awareness and sensation, for example) without even touching the miraculous moments when information is processed and decisions are made.

At least part of the reason for this is our refusal to take the will seriously. It is the will, after all, that makes all the difference during those magical moments of the mind. It is the will that turns reflection into intention. In short, it is the will that makes thing happen. But it is also the will, considering its own experiences in the light of religious truth, that becomes faith. It’s no wonder that we hardly hear of it anymore.

Take, for example, the very respectable Oxford Companion to the Mind. This is a thick book with over 800 pages and thousands of scholarly entries and yet there is virtually nothing written about the will. A brief biographical note referring to one Maine de Biran is all we get and this is just a historical note of little contemporary interest.

You see, the modern world has only a couple of ways to understand the will. It is either a part of the mind that is detected by the brain (i.e. it is different from the brain, making this a dualistic approach) or it is the product of evolution. No one seems to be considering the very basic possibility that the decision making part of the mind can be studied outside of a neurology lab. I’m not sure it even matters if we discover a neuronal or a genetic tie to the will. Either way, it is a part of us that touches the very heart of our search for God. We should be paying much closer attention.

Maybe some of this will happen as we better understand the way emotions interact with the mind. Some of this work is underway (for example in research being conducted by Candace Pert on the emotions of the mind). But there is much left to do.

In the meantime let me presume to ask for the involvement of religiously minded people in this effort. Right now the work is being done by a handful of well-meaning researchers with backgrounds in science and with little religious interest, or it is done by researchers with Eastern religious sympathies. I in no way mean to belittle Eastern religions. I am, however, arguing that our Western tradition of faith has a tremendous amount to say on the subject of the mind if we’ll just take a look. With the amount of new knowledge we are gathering about the brain, there is a pressing need for a faithful consideration of what this means about the mind.

An interesting example of how some of this is playing out revolves around the word mindfulness. Depending on your dictionary, mindfulness refers to awareness but it can also imply an intention to act. Dan Siegel, in his interesting work on mindfulness, emphasizes the great power of the aware mind. Individuals that embrace the present moment with curiosity, openness, acceptance and love (COAL) are much more effective at coping with life’s challenges and are more spiritually minded.

He shares the story of the author Diane Ackerman who, after suffering from a serious fall in Japan a number of years ago while looking for birds, practiced these awareness skills which ended up saving her life. Finding herself with several broken ribs and barely able to breathe, she managed to dissociate her pain and helplessness from her awareness and instead became mindful of the situation with Siegel’s COAL virtues. Because she was able to do so, she not only survived but thrived.

This kind of awareness has great potential for enriching our lives. It should also fall neatly within the purview of mind research. Unfortunately, it only seems to get an audience among modern spiritualists and their ilk. Part of this is due to the group’s Buddhist leanings. And I think this becomes apparent in the way the body is occasionally disregarded. Siegel’s awareness involves a kind of second person dissociation of the mind from the body - a sort of looking-in from the perspective of an out-of-body experience.

This legitimately comes from a long history of Buddhist understanding about human suffering and how it can be mitigated. We in the West have much we can learn from this tradition. Siegel and those few others that are looking into this area of the mind are to be congratulated.

But let me point out that this knowledge of focusing our attention, and the power that it can muster, is not a principle restricted to Eastern mystics like so many authors seem to suggest. The awareness that leads to moral decisions based on a confidence in Christ – in other words faith – is at the heart of what Christianity is all about. For every story like Ackerman’s there are hundreds of stories of others who have drawn upon their faith in Christ in extremis to achieve miraculous ends as well.

The cynic, who may accept the power of the mind in such circumstances, will argue that it is the psychology that is important, not the mental trick that is used. And in fact for Eastern mystics, controlling the mind and the body are certainly important. Our Christian heritage, however, is quite different. We haven’t paid much attention to meditative trances and extended periods of fasting since Christianity moved from the deserts of the Middle East. We have, however, paid a great deal of attention to the mystery of the atonement.

Both traditions deal with the strains of mortality very differently. The Eastern mystic turns to a practiced psychic state. The faithful Christian turns to prayer. The Eastern mystic will succeed to the extent that he mentally withdraws from the body. The Christian will succeed to the extent that she commits herself to God. This is not a passive acceptance of fate. It is an active decision. It is a magical moment of the mind. And there is a great deal of difference between this kind of faith and a mere escape from suffering. The man in Christ accepts that he may need to endure his own cross. In the end, mortality will be vanquished. Eternity is intended for glory, not for a disembodied dissolution.

One of the most obvious examples of this faithful focusing of the mind is the sacrament prayer of Latter-day Saints. I admit that we rarely consider it as such, but I believe it is meant to help us experience magical moments. Let me explain.

Every week in the sacrament prayers we acknowledge that we will always remember Christ. As a consequence, we are promised the constant companionship of the Holy Spirit. We don’t really think that we are expected to have Christ in mind at all times of our lives. We are mortal after all. We live in a world that requires our attention in a lot of different ways and during a lot of different times. But that perdurable word always can mean more than we think.

We normally think it means continuously. But it can also mean at every time. This is clear if I say, for example, that I always wake up at 5:00 a.m. I am not continuously waking up at 5:00 a.m., but every time it is 5:00 a.m., I do get up. In this sense the Sacrament Prayer promises that every time we remember Christ we will have His spirit to be with us. Here we begin to see how a mental exercise can be transformed into that all-powerful principle of faith. The promise is that anything we may be considering, if it is done in the light of Christ, can be transformed into a magical moment filled with Divine presence.

Every time we think of work or play, of spouse or child, of life or death we can have our inner compass directed by the Spirit of God. This can happen every time. In other words, it can happen always. When it does happen, those magical moments take on an entirely different significance. Our intention becomes a divinely directed intention. And it is this divinely directed intention that is the great unexplored region of true faith.

I say unexplored, but this is only true in a limited sense – in a scientific sense. The spiritual giants of our Judeo - Christian heritage have always known the power of a divinely inspired will. Perhaps our modern mind finds it algorithmically convenient to ignore. But the truth is obvious to those with the faith to see it. It is possible for a thought to be transformed – magically. It makes no Darwinian sense. It is hidden from the laboratory. And it cannot be measured with our most sophisticated tools. It can, however, transform the life of a sinner. And it can change the world if we will, magically.
References

Emerson’s essay Power is in The Conduct of Life (reprinted in the Library of America’s Emerson, Essays and Lectures, 1983). Carl Sagan’s The Dragons of Eden was published in 1977 by Random House. I quote from page 7. The Oxford Companion to the Mind (edited by Richard L. Gregory) was published by Oxford University Press in 1987. Dan Siegel’s essay Reflections on the Mindful Brain can be found in Measuring the Immeasurable published by Sounds True in 2008.

The Birds and I

The sea is turquoise
And the cliffs austere,
The plangent pounding
Of the waves

The gulls are glad
To heed themselves
When we are
Shadows far away

But we are just
As real as they
And need companions
In the world

Not to impose upon
A nesting shore
Our vagrant errantries
Of self

But to imagine
More than sand,
Our souls beyond the
Broken drift of sea

For we are here
The birds and I
In spite of all the
Things I thought to be