August 1992 Commencement Remarks
As we celebrate the accomplishments today of those who have graduated it is appropriate that we also celebrate the greatness of ideas, for it is ideas that make a university a meaningful institution. For a moment I would like to draw our attention to a famous and momentous pair of ideas and dwell upon their significance. These ideas are fact and value.
First, the nature of facts. Facts relate to truth. They are concerned with states of affairs in the universe. States of affairs are things that exist and how they are related: as they were, as they are and as they are to come.
Some facts are easily obtained. We are not in doubt at this moment that we are in the Marriot Center, that the present season of the year is summer, that gasoline explodes, and that not all of our politicians can be telling the truth. The facts that are easily obtained are mostly items we can observe, here and now, and each man for himself.
But the large majority of facts are not thus easily accessible. The whole of the past, the whole of the future and well over 99% of the present are not available to our individual observation. But notwithstanding the difficulty of knowing this majority of facts, it is most important that we nevertheless gain true ideas about some things in the past, in the future and in the unseen present, and it is desirable and useful to know as much as possible.
The difficulty of our gaining most facts for ourselves plus the desirability of having many facts difficult to obtain have caused us human beings to create a division of labor. We commission historians to tell us about the past, scientists to tell us about the large and the small and the existence and processes of our physical surroundings. We hope for prophets to tell us of the future, and there are many candidates for the calling of prophet, but few who are found to speak truly.
This division of labor creates then what we call experts. Experts are persons of training and judgment who attempt to wrest the truth from the universe and who relay that truth for the benefit of non-experts. One of the reasons that each of you graduates are here today is because you have become an expert in some field. You know things the majority of us do not know, and more importantly, you have learned how to obtain and use this esoteric information. Thus armed you are prepared to make significant contributions to knowledge and understanding as you go out into the world. Though there are many kinds of experts in the world, experts in facts have a primary role because we cannot solve our problems effectively and efficiently unless we have a command of the facts of situations as they really are.
To say that we understand things “as they really are” reminds us that sometimes there is no human way to gain needed facts and that sometimes the experts are wrong. Notwithstanding these important limitations, it is satisfying to know that men are making impressive inroads into the unknown as our body of facts doubles now about every ten years.
Let us turn then to the realm of value. Whereas facts have an objectivity to them, values do not. Values are personal reactions of individuals to things. Values relate to desire. Whatever a man desires, that thing is valuable to him. Thus we choose and reject food according to one’s taste, which is part of our desire. We act politically according to that which we think will fulfill our desires. We plan for the future according to the desires we have for a thing to come to pass or not to come to pass.
Nothing has value in and of itself. Value, positive or negative, accrues to something only as an agent has feelings about it. When we use the words “good”, “beautiful”, “appropriate,” “boring”, etc., we are not saying anything factual, but rather are we speaking about our desires, about whether the thing in question pleases us or not.
Historically speaking, many persons have assumed that value is as objective as fact, that there is a “good” and a “beautiful” which is as objective as is the “true”. The obvious falsehood of that assumption is shown in that men have made significant progress in achieving progressive and more inclusive agreement as to facts or truths, but have made not a shred of progress in recorded history in agreeing on what is good or beautiful. Admittedly, some romantic souls yet cling to the idea of an objective “good” and “beauty”, but all they really assert is the desire that all men might have the same “noble” perceptions as they do. Such temerity and arrogance we can do nicely without.
One possible source of confusion that has led some to consider value to be objective is the failure to distinguish the good and the beautiful from that which is right or righteous. Righteous is the activity of blessing others. To make a long story short, righteousness relates to the fact side of the universe, not to the value side. It is objective, not subjective. This confusion of good with right has been natural since most men, I suppose, have desired that their desires be also righteous. The great honor and distinction accorded to the honest in heart is because of their rare ability to perceive and admit that their desires have not hitherto been righteous.
But now to come to the point of all this. Recognizing that value is subjective, as distinguished from fact, we can see immediately that there is no such thing as an expert in the realm of values. Each man, because he is an agent, is sovereign and supreme as to what is good and beautiful. Any person who pretends to say for others what is or should be good or beautiful for those others is strictly a charlatan or a monster. To pretend to expertise in the realm of value is absolute intellectual dishonesty, for there is no process other than tyranny which makes one man’s desires more desirable than another man’s desires.
Yet the world abounds in tyranny. In self-appointed experts who pretend to lead the masses to what is good and beautiful. This indeed out Herod’s Herod, and on every hand we see this intellectual knavery. Almost everywhere men say to others, “You should do this,” “X is beautiful,” “Y is desirable,” “We ought to believe Z”. This type of monstrosity is called by the scriptures, priestcraft. It is men setting themselves up before the world as a light unto the world for praise and for gain. It is the tyranny of Satan translated into this world. It is a temerity that even God himself cannot and will not partake of, for He, God, lets men choose for themselves their own good. If God Himself is content to honor each man with choice in relation to value, how much more ought men to respect and honor the personal desires of other men. But no: self-appointed Saviors abound in religion, politics, medicine, education, business, in every field of human endeavor. Thus we see that Satan’s plan, which was rejected in the council in heaven, is implemented far and wide here on earth.
But some of these self-appointed Saviors say, “We only speak that which is right. We have the absolute, the objective, so all men of intelligence will do our bidding and those who are not intelligent must be forced to do our bidding for their own good.” The pretension to be an expert in righteousness is of course worse than the pretension to be experts in the realm of the good and the beautiful. It can quickly be shown that only an omniscient being can have any hold on knowing what is righteous. Any man who claims to know what is right of himself is thus pretending to be God. And when he then enforces his opinion upon others, he is admitting to be an accomplice of Satan.
Oh, how great and glorious it is to live in a day when there are among us true prophets of God. For true prophets are never found practicing priestcraft. They are not self-appointed. The do not pretend to tell any man what is good for him, let alone enforce that supposed “good” on him. They do state to all men that which is right, but they do not pretend to say it of their own knowledge. Rather do they speak humbly for God, and they invite all men to inquire of God, directly, for attestation of the correctness of what they say.
We as mortals have a simple choice. We may follow the prophets of God in pursuing righteousness and heaven, or we will be subject to priestcraft and its varieties of hell. For God is the fountain of all righteousness. Only through acceptance of him and his prophets can we gain righteousness. But if men will not accept God as their leader, they are inevitably doomed to suffer under some man who thinks he knows what is good or right and is willing to use power to promote and enforce his ideas.
The application of all this is simple. As you go out into the world to be experts in facts, be wary of either practicing or being subject to priestcraft. Recognize that every man is honorable before God and esteem his desires for himself as being as valuable as yours are to you. Recognize that the only real expert in government is God, and that if we do not choose to be governed by God, the only other reasonable alternative is to do business by the voice of the people, for the majority of the people will seldom desire that which is evil. And above all, avoid giving power to any many or group of men whereby they can enforce on others what they think is “good” or “right”. Let us cherish persuasion, long-suffering, pure knowledge and love unfeigned so that we labor to assist and to honor one another.
If our education has done us some real service, may we ever cherish the distinction between fact and value, remembering that there are not and cannot be human experts in the realm of value. And perhaps that solemn realization will help us always to remember Him who is the fountain of all righteousness and through whom we may lay hold upon every good thing, even Jesus Christ, the Savior of Mankind. Of Him I bear witness, of His holiness and of the greatness of His holy prophets. I believe that the most intelligent thing any man, educated or not, can do, is to accept the true prophets of God and to be led by them to know the Master. With all my love and devotion I bear witness of them and especially of Him. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.