Ham, Noah, The Curse, and Canaan

In the first part of Genesis 9, we see some discussion of Noah and God talking over what's going to happen now that the flood is done. In Joseph Smith's commentary that we call the Joseph Smith Translation, more detail is given about this, in the form of covenants God made with Noah and his children.

Then, in v. 18, the topic shifts, and the sons of Noah who "went forth of the ark" are listed: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And, for some reason not specified in the verse, it notes that Ham is the father of Canaan.

I'm pretty sure that Noah had other children, both before and after the flood, but these were the three who went into the ark with him and the three who, came out of the ark with him and rebooted the human race -- and the covenants of God with members of the human race.

V. 19 asserts that descendants of Noah's three sons spread throughout the earth.

Then in v. 20 we read that Noah got started on cultivating the ground again, in v. 21, he made wine from some of the grapes.

And, uncharacteristicly, in v.  21, we read that he drank too much and "was uncovered" in his tent. One might ask why it is worth noting.

And we often interpret v. 22 to talk about Ham being a peeping Tom and a gossip. 

V. 23 is generally taken up as demonstrating the respect which Shem and Japheth had for their father, where v. 22 is often taken as Ham not having had respect for Noah.

In v. 24, we have Noah recovering from his drunkenness, but perhaps not the overhang because he got upset at his younger son for having, we assume, seen him in his disgraceful condition, and, in v. 25, cursing, not Ham, not all of Ham's children, but Ham's son Canaan.

But a lot of things are left out of the story. I'm going to try to tie loose threads together and see if it reveals a little more. I may end up tying the wrong threads together, so I hope nobody takes this as gospel truth. 

I've pointed at the main loose threads I'm interested in, above:

1. Why does Canaan get so much press in here? He is the only one of Noah's grandchildren mentioned in this chapter, but it doesn't really say what he did other than that he bore the brunt of Noah's disapproval.
2. Why did Ham happen to see his father in his embarrassing state, and why did Ham himself not simply get something to cover his father with?
3. Noah is elsewhere recommended as a righteous man, on much the same level with Enoch, Seth, and Adam. Why is he then so arbitrarily angry with his son Ham, and why does he then vent his anger against is grandson, Canaan? Where is the patience of the righteous here?

It would have been helpful to us if Joseph Smith had been allowed or instructed to tell us more about this, but there is a lot of the Bible that Joseph Smith didn't seem to have the time to deal with. And this chapter already gets quite a bit of treatment for the covenants God made with Noah, which are definitely more important.

So, say Canaan had more to do with the story. Say he was something of a practical joker, and had spiked this batch of punch, and was thus the reason Noah had overheated and passed out. And say he had something of a grievance against his grandfather because Noah had not allowed Ham to teach him certain mysteries that Noah thought he wasn't ready for yet.

Yeah, pure speculation. 

(I'll note that others have followed this path of reasoning, and acknowledge the influence of one Ronald L. Dart on my interpretation here.)

But, all too often, youngsters, young men in particular, confuse certain mysteries of Godliness with talismans of power to be arbitrary -- not power to be kind or righteous, but power to be arbitrary. We see that to a certain degree in others of Ham's descendants, particularly when the first Pharoah attempts to imitate the patterns of government Ham had learned from Noah, and then later Pharoahs turn to idolatry. Reference Abraham 1, particularly noting around vs. 25-27 or so for this.

So, say Canaan had slipped his grandfather a Micky Finn, and then had snuck in and stolen Noah's priestly vestments.

Ham became aware of this and consulted with his brothers, and Shem and Japheth felt that it was at least advisable to give Noah something to cover himself with. 

(And those who pass on the story feel that it's important to assert that the elder brethren were more careful to observe forms of respect than the youngest. Note that Ham is listed in Moses 8 as being the youngest, even though the Bible tends to list him second everywhere.)

And when Noah woke up, we look carefully at v. 24 for the antecedent to "his" whose younger son had done something, and maybe the antecedent isn't Noah, but Ham. And that would explain why Noah then explains to the grandson, not Ham, that before he can access the real power of God's Priesthood, he's going to have to learn that it is not in talismans. 

And Canaan refuses to listen to anything other than Noah's displeasure, interpreting this as having been cursed.

Yes, I'm interpolating details here. The specifics don't matter much, but I'm guessing the missing details are something like my above interpolations. 

One thing I am certain of is that we rely way too much on pre-existing short-circuits in our understanding.

Ham himself is nowhere that I know of listed as being under a curse. In many places, his righteousness is noted. Only certain, and not all, of his descendents are noted as being under a curse. 

Canaan is specified in this chapter as being placed under a curse concerning the Priesthood of God, and I'm inclined to believe the reason was more related to Canaan himself than to Ham's indelicate handling of his father's embarrassment.

(And this is as far as I should go with the topic in this post.)

The Choice in the Garden

It's easy to focus on the dilemma and ask why God would place Adam and Eve in such a situation.

Multiply and replenish the Earth. 

But they can't do that in their perfect state in the Garden. Not only that, but have dominion over the earth -- dominion in the sense of the responsibility to take care of it and the plants and animals in it wisely.

Do not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. 

But if they are going to multiply and replenish the Earth, and especially if they are going to take responsibility for it, they need that knowledge. How can they behave responsibly if they do not know good and evil?

It's just as easy to look at situations where we face a choice and think we should be able to take both paths, and ask why God would make us choose.

As a computer programmer, I have designed many programs and functions that parse a problem until the computer gets to a point where it can not proceed further without backing up. Similarly, we do our best working through problems in our lives and often find ourselves blocked from proceeding further without backing up.

Sometimes we get to a solution that seems perfect, and we get used to that solution. And then something new gets thrown at us and we discover that we have to leave that perfect solution behind, back up and out, and try a new, different path.

This isn't to say the solution was not perfect in the context in which we found the solution. We just have a new context to deal with, in which the previous perfect solution isn't enough any more. 

Sometimes, giving that perfect solution up feels like, well, dying.

This is where Adam and Eve were. They were in the perfect Garden, immortal, no sin. Innocent. Lacking knowledge. And God warned them that gaining the knowledge they needed to proceed would require them to subject themselves to death.

What God didn't explain until later, what our children (and we, ourselves) find so hard to understand without experiencing it, is that there is a point we really can't progress any further than -- if we refuse to give up really some things, including some things that were once really important things, so important that it feels like dying to give them up.

We ourselves. In a sense, we are Adam and Eve. Even though I believe the Garden story is literal enough, even though perhaps not completely recorded in the Bible, I also believe that the reason it is recorded in the Bible is that it is a metaphor for us.

Giving up is not the end of everything.

Now, we can't do it without help. This is true. But the plan was already in place when the Earth was created, that Jesus would come in due time and do what was necessary so that we could live again and move forward. 

Because Jesus suffered for us in the Garden of Gethsemane and gave up His life on the cross for us, we can live again. And when we get stuck in our efforts to learn and progress, we can back up and start over again.

Of course, it helps if, when we start over again, we keep listening to God.

And that is the reason for the two commandments in the Garden of Eden, and in our own Gardens of Eden.

By the way, what is this listening to God thing?

We all have the seed of the Word of God in our hearts. We call it conscience. And I'll stop here, because I always say a few words too many.

Inbreeding among Adam's and Noah's Children

Most of what I write below is purely referential postulating. You'll need to find the scriptures I implicitly refer to yourself. I do limit the references to Genesis, in the Bible. Stronger clues can, however, be found in the books of Moses and Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price.

Assuming Adam and Eve were created by God, it's probably safe to assume that He would have created them genetically perfect.

Current understanding of the necessity of genetic diversity does not contemplate genetic perfection. We don't even yet know enough about genetics to be able to define, describe, or theorize genetic perfection.

I believe some geneticists theorize that (because we can't define it) genetic perfection is impossible, but, again, we simply don't know enough to say that.

Incidentally, the rib spoken of in scripture, I consider might be a chromosomal structure. Men are "missing" a "rib" in there. My sometimes interpretation, for your amusement.

Under such conditions of genetic perfection, we should at least consider the possibility that genetic diversity itself developed out of the initial condition of genetic perfection.

Near perfect bodies would mean that it would be possible for them to maintain health to a greater degree for them than for us, including genetic health for enough generations for inbreeding to become a problem.

Early death is not described in the first generations, except in the case of Cain deliberately killing Able. Although the Bible mentions the burden on women due to childbearing, death of the mother in childbirth is also not mentioned. 

Without some attrition due to early death and death in childbirth, the initial population growth is explosive, something on the order of 

p(n+1) = p(n)+((p(n)/2) x 12)

which is a pretty fast growth rate -- a steep exponential curve.

That's assuming ordinary fecundity. Twelve children from one mother is not imposible in our day, and we can consider it as a possible average for the early, near-perfect generations from Adam and Eve. As mentioned, for the first generation, we could even consider Eve capable of triple that number of children. But we don't need to.

The second generation might have been something like just twelve, but the third would have been something like 96 (plus or minus) new individuals. Even if attrition and reduced fecundity began at this point, that's plenty to ensure survival -- if they don't immediately go to war against each other. (That's the reason Cain is promised God's protection, as I understand it, so that what he did doesn't start a war.)

The other problems of sibling marriage -- power issues and such, are fairly clearly described in the Bible's description of the first several generations. (Cain and Able, also, see Lamech, in Cain's line.) 

We also see them recur in the descriptions of the first generations from Noah -- the need for Abraham to leave his father's country, for example.

Noah would be a problem in genetics, unless we assume that, among Adam's descendants, those mentioned as heirs of Adam's instruction in each generation in Genesis deliberately chose a wife for maximum diversity. I have not found clear indication in scripture, but I have found hints, one of which I mention below.

This brings up something else, which I can mention here. We have somewhat of a record of God intervening fairly actively among some of the descendants of both Adam and Noah. Assuming God exists, we do not have any reason to assume He would not intervene as necessary, including the possibility of adjusting the genetic pool by what we would call supernatural means. 

If necessary -- I mention above a way in which in would not have been necessary, but we do not have to discount the possibility.

The beginnings of race really ought to be considered as the result of continued close inbreeding that occurred after the third generation, both from Adam and from Noah. 

Indeed, we might consider the wife that Ham took with him on the ship to have been a deliberate choice to preserve diversity, partially undone in the next generation after Ham, and somewhat carelessly recorded in negative light because of what occurred in the generation after Ham.

Now, even though I can hypothesize the above, I am not going to say that I know that this is the absolute truth, or that I know that other interpretations are wrong, such as that Adam was the first human to be willing to accept God's teachings, and thus the first son of God in that sense. 

I just offer this for those who prefer keep fairly close to the Biblical text, specifically considering Genesis 3: 20, and Genesis 5: 3 and 4. 

Damage Done to/by the Church or the "church"

Someone on Twitter posted a complaint about a quote from the then-president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Ezra Taft Benson, in the October session of the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Specifically, he said the talk did him and his a lot of damage -- misguided advice kind of damage, the kind that can be very hard to quantify and thus very insidious.

(Ezra Taft Benson was later the President of the Church. Wikipedia has an article on him.)

The talk in question was at the end of the Relief Society session of Conference.

Here's the quote, 21st paragraph if I counted it right:

It is a misguided idea that a woman should leave the home, where there is a husband and children, to prepare educationally and financially for an unforeseen eventuality. Too often, I fear, even women in the Church use the world as their standard for success and basis for self-worth.

Here's my response to the tweet, a little more carefully stated than originally tweeted, and without the artificial length limit on tweets:

I would say far more damage was done by leaders and teachers who failed to read the whole talk, who failed to pray while preparing and giving lessons – who would basically grab this one quote, present it to the class, and then spend the rest of the time talking about other things -- shooting the breeze about sports, cars, work, fashion, academics, laundry, cooking, ..., anything but the Gospel, all sorts of things that would lead the unsuspecting member to apply the standards of the world when interpreting even this one quote -- instead of hearing the voice of the Holy Spirit teach what it means.

Yeah, if you pass over the first part where Elder Benson acknowledges that many members have non-ideal situations, and then take the rest according to the standards of the world instead of God's standards, the quoted part will do damage. 

Any single part of the whole thing will do damage. It should be taken as a whole and read/listened to/parsed carefully according the Holy Spirit.

Truth is like that. Half-truths can do far more damage than outright lies. 

Follow-up thoughts, also a bit more carefully stated, and without the tweet length limits that make it impossible to converse coherently (I'm pretty sure that these follow-up thoughts will not be more palatable to some, for being more coherent):

1. The president of the Quorum of the Twelve is not the prophet as long as there is a living president of the First Presidency -- different callings, different blessings. The prophet has some specific blessings and restrictions about what he should say, especially at conference. Others, even the next guy in line, do not have the same blessings and restrictions, and may well speak to specific contexts. That is the case here.
   
   
2. You've heard it before, and you've heard that people use it as an excuse to quit listening at all and therefore say it must not be correct, but from Joseph Smith to the present, every prophet has reminded us to study and follow faithfully and prayerfully, to get our own testimony, to get our own instructions from God.
   
   It is true that the counsel we receive from God will not contradict instruction from the prophet, but it may well contradict what appears to be instruction and counsel from others besides the prophet. It may even appear to contradict counsel from the prophet, when the prophet gives counsel to people in situations not our own.
   
   Borrowing from the language of mathematics, when we start implementing things, context is very important. That's why we need that Holy Spirit to guide us in our implementation, and all the general counsel in the world is not enough to tell us every little thing about specific implementation. We need the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
   
   It remains true, and when the outward church – the social church – teases members for getting their own instructions because, oh my goodness, we can't be THAT different, the social church partakes of the spirit of the great and abominable.


3. What Elder Benson said was not exactly wrong. He mentioned, didn't he, that Adam and Eve labored together? Both labored. Together.
   
   Maybe he seems to have failed to emphasize enough that a man should not be leaving the home entirely to the woman, but at least he repeats and emphasizes the necessity for cooperation.
   
   In not just a metaphorical sense, neither one should be leaving the home.
   
   In a more literal sense, the woman will naturally and generally be the one to be more directly responsible in the home -- that is, in the statistically usual case. The general case is theoretical. Actual particular cases vary from the general case in different degrees, and variance from the hypothetical general case is not a sin in and of itself.
   
   But if either the man or the woman sets the responsibility for the home aside in trade for the things of the world, they are choosing the lesser thing. They are choosing the world over God.
   
   
4. So much of the semantic burden of the metalanguage Elder Benson uses here has since been turned backwards and/or upside-down by changes in common English usage.
   
   Specific to this case, interpreted according to current common usage, it may seem like he is advocating for self-forced subservience for women.
   
   But he says both parents should be sacrificing for the family. Not just one.
   
   And self-forced subservience is at total odds with the Gospel. God will forgive people who make this mistake concerning themselves, who try to force themselves into a subservient position, when they learn and accept the teaching that service is usually not really the best kind of service when it is subservient or forced.
   
   God will not easily forgive people who make the mistake of deliberating pushing others into subservience, especially into self-reinforced subservience. But if they sincerely turn back to Him, they can be forgiven, too.
   

Jesus explained something relative to this to the twelve when James and John asked to be allowed to sit on His right and left:


And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. (Mark 10: 44.)


I'm not making this up. It is repeated elsewhere in scripture.

If we understand this principle, it is easier to understand what Elder Benson is saying in this talk. If we don't understand that priesthood is not supposed to be about personal glory and pomp, it may well be easier to misread this talk, precisely because, in the meta-language of the world, priesthood is about aggrandizement and the trappings of power, not about service.


Too much of the outward social church accepts the metalanguage of the world, in spite of all the cautions we receive against that twice a year in conference talks.

Hey. Elder Benson cautioned about this very thing in at least two specific places in this talk.

I'm not saying anyone is to blame for misunderstanding this talk, although a man who uses it to try to put himself above his wife will be under condemnation from God for other reasons, if not for deliberately misunderstanding this talk. That may be why it was given in the Relief Society session instead of the general session, so that the men who wouldn't listen carefully would be less likely to be tempted to abuse themselves and their wives by it.

[Adding a bit after the initial post:] More to the point, it was in fact about this time that women in the Church began to be counseled specifically to prepare for the unforeseen. Not to "leave the home ... to prepare educationally and financially for an unforeseen eventuality", but to take advantage of opportunities to develop marketable skills in case something untoward happened. 

There is a reason for the timing here. The context of the "average Mormon" family during the sixties through mid-eighties was an unusually stable context. That stability started to crumble in the mid-eighties. [End of addition.] 

[It's after one in the morning here, I should be hitting the shower and getting to bed, but I think I need to add just a little bit more:] There have been several points of inflection in my life, where I could accuse myself of allowing outward/social church teachings to influence me to be lazy and take the easy way out, to the detriment of my (then-) future career, which have (theoretically) left me less able to be a "proper" bread-winner for my family.

One is when I let the understanding that rock concerts tend to be a type of idolatry, and the understanding that trying to be a non-idolatrous pop star would take more experience and wisdom than I had as a teenager in the 1970s, to influence me away from trying to learn an instrument and form a band. (Should I note the errors in logic in such thought processes? I'm sure they're fairly obvious.)

Another is when I chose physics over football in high school. (But, for the record, I think I learned much more important things -- for my own health -- by then filling the gap left by lack of football with modern dance. I'm still a fan of American football, but the things I learned from dance would not have been available to me in West Texas Football programs.)

Yet another is when I let my decision to serve a mission turn me away from attending MIT on scholarship in the late 1970s. My high school counselors were seriously frustrated with me on that point. (Again, what errors in logic are there in asserting that it was a mistake for me to go to Japan in 1979 instead of MIT in 1978?)

Many such inflection points.

The football decision may be a little easier to look at because it does not directly involve over-the-pulpit or by-the-book Church teachings. Each person makes trade-offs in the decisions we make on our way through life. Those trade-offs do us "damage", I suppose. But it would be more accurate to say that closing one door opens another. [End of second addition.]

Anyway, yes, if you want to be saved in the kingdom of God, your testimony of the Gospel has to go beyond your testimony of the truth of your fellow members' testimonies. 

Just because everyone in the Relief Society or Priesthood lesson seems to agree that a particular conference talk means X does not mean that any member of the Relief Society or Priesthood quorum should accept X without prayer, especially when it runs against conscience.

What if you have doubts? What if faith isn't enough?

(This riff was a response to someone who posted in a faith group on Facebook, the question 

What if you have doubts? What if faith isn't enough?)

Of course you have doubts. Doubts in yourself, doubts about whether what you learned before is really enough, etc. And of course what you have learned up until now has just been enough to get you here. It may be enough to get you to the next step, but is not enough to get you to the one after. 

Growth is natural. Growth is necessary. 

Thinking faith isn't enough is misunderstanding faith. Faith in what you learned before is not faith. It's static belief. It doesn't save you. 

Faith is what moves you to face your doubts. Faith moves you to the next step. Faith got you this far, it is what carries you to the next step, and then to the one beyond, in one eternal round. 

Faith in what? 

Jesus' name means God is your friend (and mine, and everyone else's). Jesus name means we accept Him as our Christ -- as our anointed Savior. We accept His teaching, which is to believe that Father is not our enemy, and to keep learning to live a godly life, to the best we understand the attributes of God. 

Nothing doubting means doubting nothing that God teaches you.

This is the ultimate truth: Life is hard and then you die. It's supposed to be that way so that the imperfect you can be put in the watery grave and a better you can be reborn -- every day. 

(Not literal suicide, even if it feels like it sometimes, but sacrificing things that sometimes feel like they are more important than life, so you can learn they weren't really as important as you thought they were.)

If you let the hardness of life soften your heart and keep turning you towards God, that's what repentance is all about. Your conscience is your connection to your heavenly Father, and, to extent you understand your conscience and clear away the weeds that this world tries to plant around your conscience, that's how well you understand God. 

Focus your faith on Jesus Christ, and live the repentant life, and everything else either falls into place or falls away. The stuff that falls away is stuff you don't need, at least not right now. If you do need it, you'll come back to it later when you are more prepared.

You. We. Me. I was preaching to myself as much as to the person who posted the question. Maybe more to myself. 

J. Golden Kimball and the Straight and Narrow Path

J. Golden Kimball is known to many as a rebel among the early general authorities of the Church. He is often quoted to have said things like 

I may not have always walked the straight and narrow, but I try to cross it as often as I can.

I suppose I could dig up more interesting quotes and stories. I could also spend some time verifying whether there is substance to the story or not. But this quote serves the purposes of my present rant well enough.

Some people who interpret the priesthood of God according the rules of the power structures of human society tend to think he only avoided excommunication, or at least being demoted out of the Quorum of the Seventy, because of his father's influence, or, perhaps, in deference to his popularity. Such interpretations are completely unnecessary, and, I think, possibly indicative of essential misunderstanding of the reason the Priesthood of God exists.

Many people who know me personally seem to think of me as a straight-laced, by-the-book kind of guy. Then I dig deep into some gospel principle in their presence, and they started raising their eyebrows and questioning whether I might be apostate. 

I am no J. Golden Kimball. Not even close. He did a much better job of staying in the strait and narrow than I do, as nearly as I can tell. But I can sympathize.

Even back as recent as the late 1970s (two or three generations removed from Elder Kimball's time), the Church labored under the burden of a particular editing mistake made when Egbert Bratt Grandin (voluntarily) undertook the monumental task of editing the original edition of the Book of Mormon (without the computer-aided tools we would use today, no less).

I do not disparage his work. It was a necessary job and there weren't many people willing to undertake it, especially because of the generally critical attitude towards the book and the restored Church at the time. And we thank him for it. Overall, he did a great job.

But he did make a few mistakes. These were one: In a few places, where the scribes (under Joseph Smith's direction) wrote "strait" or "strait and narrow", Grandin substituted "straight" for "strait". 

It's an understandable error. "The straight and narrow" is still an idiom for living "the correct lifestyle" in many cultural contexts, and was a well-known idiom at the time.

The other (proper) meaning of strait -- "confining" -- is not nearly as commonly found in vernacular English, and especially not commonly intended in the idiom, "the straight and narrow".

Humans have this bad habit of thinking that the straight and narrow path they have found for themselves is the one-and-only path. And when we combine a scriptural phrase including "straight" with the mathematical (human mathematics) concept of the shortest distance between two points, we tend to reinforce such misapprehensions. 

Just One Way!

(You must always be careful when mixing human philosophy with scripture. It is not a safe thing to do.)

Think, for reference, of the Straits of Gibraltar. They are definitely not straight. There is no safe straight path through at all, and the safest path through for one ship at one season of one year will not be the safest route for another, or at another season of another year, even though most safe routes will include certain areas of passage and avoid certain others.

Life is full of straits. We do not want to try to take them straight through, unless we want to end up shipwrecked. Yes, there are specific points in the straits of life that we should avoid and certain points we should head for when we can. But permanently straight-on, never with any flexibility, is almost guaranteed to have very undesirable results.

I suspect that, if J. Golden Kimball actually said that about the straight and narrow (and, I really don't doubt that he did), he understood the difference between the "straight and narrow" and the "strait and narrow", even if he did not have the advantage we now have of the modern edition's restored wording of 3rd Nephi 14: 14:

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life ...

Even with that rendered as "straight", it's talking about the gate, not the path. "Strait" is quite clearly the better grammatical fit in context. 

I recognized this while I was preparing for my mission. 

I had had a hard time with the common analogy of baptism and eternal marriage and the straight and narrow defining one single linear path to the Celestial Kingdom, and I had done a bit of moderately deep scriptural research on the subject. 

Even if the analogy is not taken to extremes, I considered Alma, son of Alma, and Paul to be proper counterexamples -- and I felt that the analogy itself was promoting the sort of self-righteousness typical of the Scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus regularly warned of results contrary to expectation in the New Testament.

There are several places in the Book of Mormon where "strait" is clearly correct and several where "straight" is clearly correct. And there are a few places where the current edition uses "strait", while certain scholars want to insist that "straight" works better.

You may expect me to join that argument, given the above. 

I won't actually join the argument, even if you think I am poisoning the well.

The path before us is strait. It is difficult. Life was not intended to be easy. We are distinguished from other animals by our trenchant for solving problems, and, if God designed us to be able to solve problems, He would have prepared a place for us where we would have plenty of very difficult problems to solve. And it appears that He has done exactly that.

A straight path in this sense is not a difficult path. That's why it is called straight. No twists, no sudden curves, no rough spots, no tests. Just gun those engines and go, go, go. Only interesting if you have high-octane fuel, high-acceleration drive train, high brake-horsepower engine, and a limited distance course: Quarter-milers.

That is not life for most of us.

However, we are to make the paths of the Lord straight. 

He is able to save us no matter how hard our case is, but there is no particular reason to make it more difficult than it needs to be, no need to give Him more twists than necessary. 

No need to feel so much guilt that we refuse to accept His help, but also no need to deliberately make it harder than necessary for Him to help us.

This is not the question we should be focusing on, especially because it's easy to listen to people tell us what is the socially acceptable straight path, and others simply can't see from our point of view, even when they think they are trying to.

There is a word in Japanese, 「本人」 (hon-nin), that means the person in question, or the person actually doing the job, him/herself. This is the only person who can ever see the path ahead, the person who must actually travel that path. (And you can only really see it if you open your eyes to what the Holy Spirit will show you.)

The socially acceptable straight path, if you missed it, is the wide, easy way that Jesus warns us leads to hell.

But Alma son of Alma, in Alma 37, talks with his son Helaman about the Liahona, the compass. He talks about the miracles that guided Lehi and his children as the journeyed through the wilderness and crossed the ocean. He says the way was easy and the course was straight.

In retrospect, it was easier to follow the compass than to ignore it. Ignoring it led to much more difficult paths, paths that led away from the destination, paths that required God's help to get out of. 

In retrospect, it was easier to listen to the Holy Spirit than to ignore conscience. Ignoring our conscience leads us to difficulties, to tangled paths that lead away from our desired course, into ways where we got lost and, again, have to have help to get out of.

Not just in retrospect. 

With the eye of faith, the strait path is the one possible path for each individual, uniquely tuned to that individual's needs, to that individual's state at any particular time. It is the path that leads forward. It is the straight path that leads us back to God. With the eye of faith, we can see that it is straight, even though, to the faithless eye, it may look quite tortuous.

Without the eye of faith, only the wide path appears to be possible, even though it leads in directions that we know we really should not go.

Without the eye of faith, the only straight and narrow path we have is the socially acceptable straight and narrow -- which is neither strait nor actually narrow, nor does it lead to heaven.

When our eye of faith fails us, when it is not perfectly single to the glory of God, we may not be able to see very far down the true path. 

But, if we reach out, God will show us the next step from where we are. And then, the next -- one step extending the previous until we can again look back and see that our Savior has, indeed, straightened our path for us so that we can again look forward with the eye of faith.

And we won't be inclined to look around us and question why the other guy is not on our straight and narrow.

Now, put J. Golden Kimball's comment about having not always walked the straight and narrow into that context. 

And it's worth thinking about why he would try to cross it as often as he could. I'm thinking it would have something to do with service, but that is another rant.

Does God Exist? Defining God.

As with everything I write, I do not intend this to be accepted as authoritative, only as a (hopefully) reasoned opinion.

Ground work first:

Doctrine & Covenants 93: 10 God was in the beginning, all things were made by God.

 -- vs. 23, 24 We were also in the beginning, our spirits, the core of truth that is the individual.

 -- v. 26 The Spirit of Truth is the Spirit of God

 -- v. 29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

 -- v. 30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.

If I understand this correctly, we are of the same stuff as God. But so are the animals, plants, and rocks, and so are the atoms and subatomic particles.

In fact, so are our engineering constructs, scientific theories, and mathematical automata, to the extent they are functional. So are our thoughts and ideas themselves, to the extent they are true.

Borrowing, for a moment, from computer science theory, I will use automata as the basis of a model of complexity. (Bear with me, there is reason to this.) Thus:

• Simple levers are an example of your simplest, context-free class of automata. A given input always results in a given output.
  
  Machines that implement such automata are usually fairly easy to design and test, although, if they contain enough levers (or the electronic equivalent, transistors), a thorough brute-force test might require a really long time.
  
  
• Push-on, push-off switches kind of sit at the boundary of the simplest class and the next class. Also, those one-button controls which, by pressing the same button, sequence through a series of selections (for example, bright/dim/night-light/off) are at this boundary.
  
  These can be harder to design and test. A current 64-bit CPU register, for example, cannot be sequenced through every possible combination before we expect our sun to shift out of the main phase. Perhaps I don't need to point this out, but the register itself will fail first.
  
  We generally use some testing strategy other than brute-force in such cases.
  
  
• The next level of complexity is where one or more inputs interact with the current state and the previous state to produce the new state. A laundromat washer controller which allows selection based on the number and kinds of coins and bills inserted to present a set of allowed selections would be an example.
  
  Again, the difficulty of design and testing increases. Even though some of the simpler examples, like the washing machine, can be fairly straightforward, it can be easy to discover failure modes in such machines that prevent further operation and even prevent further testing -- or even cause the machine to self-destruct.
  
  
• The third level of complexity is where you have an ordered memory (memory stack) that allows a machine to try to determine the correct response state by recording input, trying candidate states in some order, comparing them to the input up to a certain point, and backing up to try another if the current candidate state fails. Recursive descent parsers such as those used by computer languages are arch-typical of this class of automaton, although they usually cross over into the next class of complexity because of the complexity of language itself.
  
  For what it's worth, this is the class of automata where testing begins to be really difficult. Thorough testing of these automata generally requires more time than we have -- more than we have time-to-market, longer than we can expect the machine to remain functional, longer than known life of the universe.
  
  So we use test strategies in our designs, and we expect to find failure modes during operation.
  
  
• The fourth level requires multiple ordered memories and other features that can easily become impossible to design correctly, much less test well.
  
  All natural human language is in this class.
  
  If we analyze animals from the point of view of automata, animals are at this level or beyond.
  
  
• We do not know if there are levels beyond the fourth level.
  
  Our mathematicians seem to have proven that two memory stacks should be sufficient for anything we can describe beyond the third level, and we are confident of the math in the proof, but we are not fully confident in the assumptions.
  
  Anyway, we know that we, ourselves, are at the fourth level or beyond.
  
  The solar system, if analyzed from this point of view, is also at the fourth level or beyond. If it's meaningful to analyze the universe as an automaton, for us inside the universe, it is definitely at the fourth level or beyond. I'm leaving out even the high-level description of why we can think this is so, but I am confident of it.
  
  Any God that could exist and be really God must also be capable of behavior beyond our level of complexity, thus at or above the fourth level. Some mathematicians assert, probably in jest, that God must be at a fifth level.
   
• And (drum-roll): laws. The laws which we make to run our society, and the rules we make to live by, tend to start at the lowest level of complexity, and then quickly escalate into the fourth.
  

 

All of that kind of glosses over the differences between ideal automata and real machines, but I think it is enough for the present discussion. 

** Except. I must note here that computers are essentially very large first-level complexity devices into which structures which mimic third- and fourth-level behavior -- within certain limits -- have been constructed. Specifically, they contain memory which can be accessed in an orderly way, allowing stacks and other lists to be constructed. 

They have limits on the sizes of those stacks and lists, but as long as those limits are not exceeded, they can behave at the higher levels.

** Well, I should also note here, that our behavior, human behavior, occurs at all four levels of complexity. What we call deep, multi-dimensional personality is fourth-level complexity.

Put another way, fourth-level complexity tends to express itself as personality. There is a sort-of-equivalence, which I will offer but not prove here -- too much philosophy in one sitting.

** And one more point: Computer languages tend to cross over into fourth-level complexity for a very good reason. Mathematically speaking, there is nothing within the third level of complexity to assign meaning (semantics) to either symbols or language. This is why we can define, if we so choose, a constant called BLACK in a computer program which, when passed to a specific function, paints a white dot on a computer screen.

There is some disagreement about how symbols and semantics get attached, even in the fourth level. Or, rather, we can talk about etymologies, traditions, databases and all sorts of mechanical stuff, but we ultimately are not able, within science or mathematics, to explain why and how words communicate meaning.

In our current milieu, for instance, the word "love" is variously given meanings that range from "lust" to "preference" to  "desire" to specific "desire for another person's happiness". What it means in any specific case is pretty much subject to both the intent of the speaker and the intent of the listener.

** And ,now, there is a question I must ask here:

The first two commandments of Mosaic law forbid the making of any god before God. What is that?

I'm going to leave out a lot more philosophical stuff here, but what we hold as our "gods" are the things we set at top priority in our lives -- the concepts, ideals, physical objects, people, etc., that we use to determine the rules which we choose to operate our lives by.

Hold that thought, okay?

The Devil

No one really likes to associate with habitual liars. Sure, they may be interesting for a while, but eventually you get tired of it.

But we need to know there is such a spirit, because not all spiritual influences are beneficial.

There is an influence that tries to convince us that deceiving others for fun and personal gain is a good thing. Talking about the devil too much is not productive, but it is important to note that that influence is real.

Among the common lies that the deceiver tries to get us to believe is that the devil is red of body, has horns and a tail, carries a pitchfork, and has all the fun. 

Now, professional magicians do not all follow the devil, nor do all accountants, lawyers, and burlesque performers. Some apparently do, but not all. Maybe not even most.

In fact, many self-professed devil worshipers only think they are following the devil, while they are, in fact, not. 

How does this happen?

The devil also has a particular habit of claiming that he is God. Then he might claim that God is like himself in some particular way. Then he might say, "But such a being is [fill-in-the-blank-negation]! It's stupid to believe in such a being. God does not exist!" 

Why would he do this? He is a habitual liar. Apparently, he thinks to make some gain by deceiving us.

I bring this up here because many of the traditional descriptions of God are from the deceiver. I see no need to defend those. Nor to worry about them, once we have accepted that they are wrong.

Why does the devil exist?

The devil does play an important role. Without opposite charge poles, electricity does not flow. Without the gravity well, water does not flow down, nor does evaporated water rise. 

Does that mean that we should pity the devil for taking that role and giving us necessary spiritual opposition? Not if it tempts us to follow the spirit of deception, at any rate.

With that background, here is my understanding of the identity of God:

The Progenitor: 

(Traditionally called The Father in English because of limits inherent in the language more than gender or any other reason I know of.)

This is the generative principle, the set of principles by which the natural universe around us operates -- the Grand Unifying Principles which many physicists and other scientists suspect is there, and some seek to discover. 

I don't know if there was a big bang, but, if there was, this set of principles would be the set of principles that formed the initial conditions at the moment of the big bang.

Does this set of principles have personality? Within the first few moments after the big bang, the universe developed enough structure to act as a collection of multi-stack automata, which puts the universe itself immediately right into that fourth level of complexity. 

So, yes, the universe itself must have a personality, of a sort.

Since we can say that the conditions at the time of the big bang are expressed in the current physical structure of the universe, we can suggest that the nature of the universe is an expression of the personality of God.

Our scientists now have evidence to assert that the universe is probably larger than even a very-long-lived human stuck on earth for as long as the earth exists could ever observe the limits of. And, in fact, if said near-immortal continued to live, but were confined to the remnants of our sun in that far future, tens and hundreds of billions of years forward, the speed limit of light prevents such a person from seeing beyond a certain limit.

If that is true, there is no way any human, nor any institution of man's making, will ever be able to fully comprehend the universe.

And, given the tendency we mortals have to die, and the tendencies of our societies to self-destruct, we must always expect our science to reveal things which we hadn't known before.

Therefore, God is far too great for us to comprehend, and, even if we can say that there is a God who exists as a personage, if we claim to own that God, we claim a false God.

This is very important in the argument about whether God exists, so I'll repeat it:

Any God that a particular mortal person or group of mortal people can claim is uniquely theirs alone is by definition false.

God must be far greater than anything we can imagine or even attempt to define, but that does not mean that God does not exist.

Now, if you are bothered that the idea that the great mean God that your preacher taught was breathing hell-fire at you every time you turned around might actually exist, remember, if your preacher claimed some unique ownership to that God, it was false. 

People get excited when they understand something new, and often forget that other things exists. That's part of the process of backing up on the memory stack and starting down another parse path. Preachers are no exception to this tendency, although some do try hard to remember that they are not yet perfect, as long as they are mortal.

We'll be kind to your preacher and assume it was your preacher's misunderstanding.

In mathematics, two functions which parse the same set of symbols and produce the same results can be considered identical within the context of the specified set of symbols. 

It does not follow in some logical causality, but it does help us understand that, if some immortal being were able to fully develop all of the personality and attributes of the Progenitor, that immortal being could stand in for the Progenitor in any interaction, and nothing would change.

That can't happen within a mortal lifetime, but the eternities are more than just a very long time.

Is there a specific Progenitor, with a personality and all? 

I know a couple of things: One, the universe itself has a personality. And, two, my understanding of the scriptures indicates that there is a specific being that fully has all the personality and attributes of the Progenitor, distinct from the pre-mortal Jesus, with oversight responsibilities for the creation of our solar system and life on this earth. Also, I think I have scriptural basis to identify Jehovah of the Old Testament with the pre-mortal Jesus. Thus, this other being would be, relative to our earth, the Father, the Progenitor.

(And I will point out that Greek and other myths seem to contain a perversion of these ideas. The Father and the Son would not fight each other, because they would be entirely unified in purpose. The Father is not the one in opposition to the Son when the Son is pleading for us before the Father.)

 

The Son:

If there is a progenitor, there is a child. Moreover, the child is able to grow to become like the progenitor, and, if the child does succeed in becoming like the progenitor, the child can fully represent the progenitor. 

Jesus asserted that He ascended to the Father after His death and resurrection. I won't get into the details of all of His teachings here, other than that I have scriptural reason to believe He did, and to believe He was therefore qualified and able to stand in for the set of principles by which this universe runs.

I will note this much of what He teaches -- repentance, or changing one's behavior to learn to be more like the Progenitor, falls rather neatly out of the understanding of the third and fourth levels of complexity. Part of the reason we have memory is so that we can back up and try other paths in our lives. Forgetting may be important, but so is remembering.

Oh, and I will refer you to the Beatitudes, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, or 3rd Nephi 11, 12, 13, and 14. These summarize much of His most important teachings, and are enough to give us confidence in the personality of God.

 

The Holy Spirit:

Remember that I mentioned that computer languages tend to cross over from the third level of complexity to the fourth, and that we still have trouble getting meaning into words.

In the Book of Mormon, 2nd Nephi 33: 1, we find this little morsel of wisdom:

... when a man speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of men.

Since we have Ghostbusters and other jests which abuse the word "ghost", I'll use the word "spirit" instead, here.

This third member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, is that which is the medium of communication. Without some spiritual influence, it quickly becomes difficult to communicate. If a negative spirit pervades in a conversation, it can be very difficult to communicate anything positive. 

Turning our own heart towards a positive spirit, towards, for example, a desire for the happiness and well-being of the other person, tends to make it much easier to communicate with positive result.

I'm not going to get too mystical here, but this Holy Spirit also functions at the fourth level of complexity or above, and also fully expresses the personality of the Progenitor principles.

This is what I mean by God, or these three are the Godhead that I worship. These define my intended priorities, and, to the extent that I am successful at implementing my intentions, my actual priorities. To the extent that I understand them, they define my behavior.

I do not own them. If I could, they would not be worth my worship. 

I am trying to learn to be like them, but I am fully aware that I will only see, at best, modest, small successes at that in this life. 

I have faith that, if I learn in this life to keep repenting when I find myself not following God, to keep learning more about God through studying the teachings of the Son, listening to the Holy Spirit, and to keep changing my life, behavior, and heart to conform to the attributes of Godliness to the best of my understanding, I will be able to continue in that path and stand with confidence before them after I die, and join in their work in the world to come. 

If I fail to do that, what I will be able to do after I leave this mortal world will be limited.

I should provide scripture references to each point in the above, but my time is limited. More importantly, I don't want people to think I'm any sort of expert in this philosophy. Everyone needs to develop their own understanding of God, or, if they need to, of cosmology and the purpose of the universe and themselves without a God who has personality.