LeGrand L. Baker

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  • Persuasion, 1991

    November 1991

    Part I. The Place of Argument.

    1. What is an argument?

    Argument-1: A conclusion accompanied by supporting ideas.

    Argument-2: An antagonistic conversation between two people.

    This work will deal only with Argument-1 and will use the word “argument” to refer to Argument-1.

    2. Why would anyone want to produce an argument?

    The purpose of argument is the attempt of one person to persuade another person (or persons) to believe or to do something.

    3. What is there about this world that makes arguments important?

    Human beings are often in doubt as to what to believe or what to do. Arguments are the attempts of one person to persuade someone (including oneself) as to what to believe or what to do.

    4. Why is this world that way?

    Father designed the world and his children so that they could come to truth (knowing what to believe) and wisdom (knowing what to do) on their own only with difficulty. He has prepared means by which each of His children may gain a fullness of truth and wisdom through our Savior. But many humans would rather stumble in the dark rather than to go to Father through His Son to learn truth and wisdom.

    5. When we try to find truth and wisdom using only human resources, we find that some matters are easy, some are very difficult.

    Learning what to believe about what is immediately and physically around us is truth that is fairly easy to come by. Learning how to deal wisely with the physical things around us is also at the easy end of the scale. But even at this easy end of the scale, human beings make mistakes which can cost them their physical and spiritual lives when they rely on human means to gain truth and wisdom.

    Learning what to believe and what to do to satisfy our immediate needs for nourishment and protection is also at the easy end of the scale.

    Learning what to believe and what to do to be successful and happy in this life is mid-range in difficulty.

    Learning what to believe and what to do to claim our full eternal inheritance as children of God is at the very difficult end of the scale of learning truth and wisdom.

    6. What are the options human beings have for learning what to believe and what to do?

    Human beings have two basic options:

    • a.   Accept the opinions of other human beings, or
    • b.   Make contact with God and learn from Him.

    7. Why do most human beings learn mostly from human beings?

    Because:

    • a.   God asks men to be obedient when He teaches them. Some men do not want to be moral (obedient to God), so they do not seek to learn from God.
    • b.   There are always plenty of human beings ready to tell others what to believe. And to communicate with human beings is easier, at first, than communicating with God. But communicating with human beings is not a hundredth part as profitable as is communicating with God if one is willing to be moral.

    8. Where does argument fit into this picture?

    Human beings have noticed that some human beings are better sources of ideas about things to do and to believe than others are. The ones who are better sources usually can explain why they say what they say. These explanations are arguments.

    The human being who says to others, “You believe and do what I say without questioning!” are pretending to be gods, but following any of them around for a day proves they aren’t up to much as gods.

    Human beings who try to persuade others to believe and do as they say by argumentation are honoring the intelligence and the agency of their hearers.

    Argument appeals to the minds of men and is meaningful to those who try to approach life using their minds to help themselves.

    9. How does argumentation fit in with being skeptical?

    To demand and argument (support for an idea) is the essence of skepticism. Skepticism is the unwillingness to believe or do anything where there is insufficient evidence to support the correctness of the belief or the action.

    We are under instruction from the Lord to be skeptical of the sayings of every human being. But we are also under instruction to pay special attention to those whom we know are called of God and preside over us in His priesthood authority, but to believe and do only that which the Holy Spirit confirms to us is the mind and will of the Lord.

    If we do not know the Holy Spirit (cannot tell when it is speaking to us), then we are trapped in the opinions of men.

    10. Does God also present arguments to human beings?

    God does honor men with arguments. He sends His missionaries out armed with arguments such as the continuity of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ with the Biblical account of that gospel, as opposed to other current “Christian” versions of the gospel. The purpose of such arguments is to provide an occasion for the missionary to commend the hearer to pray to Father in the name of Jesus Christ in the attempt to establish a personal communication relationship with God. When one has come to know that he is truly communicating with God, the human being must then be willing on some occasions to accept what God says for him or her to believe and to do without demanding proof (argument) that what God says is correct. To act on the word of God which results from having prayed earnestly in the name of Jesus Christ, without demanding antecedent proof of truth or wisdom from God is what constitutes faith in Jesus Christ. Only in faith in Jesus Christ can any human being be saved (brought back into Father’s presence to share with Father and our Savior all that they have).

    11. What is Father’s purpose in this freedom of choice which men have?

    Father wishes to prove who can be trusted with great knowledge and power and who cannot. Thus He leaves His children free to choose between His truth and wisdom and the so-called truth and wisdom of men.

    When human beings accept Father’s truth and wisdom, they also accept His righteousness. When a human being has become fully righteous, then Father can then bestow a fullness of light (wisdom) and truth (correct belief) upon that person.

    But if men do not desire Father’s righteousness, He leaves them the option to accept whatever they can get by way of beliefs and wisdom from other human beings and from Satan.

    12. Are there other alternatives for getting things done with human beings other than those of accepting the arguments of men or having faith in Jesus Christ?

    A favorite human alternative for “getting things done” is brute force. War, police, law and personal assault are force alternatives to persuasion.

    13. Is there a counterfeit to persuasion?

    Genuine persuasion (presenting of an argument) is done in love, kindness, and pure knowledge of the truth. The counterfeit to this honorable persuasion is to use lies, half-truths and threats of brute force to get people to agree.

    14. What is the best use to which human arguments can be put?

    The best use of human arguments is to persuade all men to come to Christ. For in Christ come all good things: all light, all truth, and the only way back to Father. For a person who is full of light and truth from Christ has no further need to receive the arguments of men except to counter such arguments with better arguments from Christ by which to lead his hearers also to put their faith in Jesus Christ.

    The goal of all honorable presentation of arguments is to bring other human beings to light and truth. But the best way to bring human beings to light and truth is to encourage them to come unto Christ, the earthly source of all light and truth.

    15. Should all human arguments which do not persuade men to come to Christ be rejected by those who are servants of Christ?

    The scriptures bear plain witness: Whatsoever does not promote good (Father’s righteousness) and testify of Christ is not of Christ (and therefore is not good).

    Any servant of Christ who wishes not to be misled will take every idea to Father, in the name of Christ, to find our whether to believe and to do it or not. This is part of the strait and narrow path of which the scriptures speak.

    The arguments of men are mixtures of truth and error, good and evil. To accept any human argument at face value without going to Father to discern the true worth of that message is folly. For thus the blind lead the blind.

    Through the power of Christ His servants may select what is true and righteous from every human message and leave that which is dross (false and evil) behind.

    16. Why then learn to argue?

    Argument is the “coin of the realm” in the academic world. The academic measure of any contribution is judged by the arguments which men produce to persuade their fellowmen.

    If you wish to succeed in the academic world, you must learn to judge well the arguments of others and to argue well yourself.

    The greatest single help to learn to judge the arguments of others and to learn to argue well is to have the Holy Spirit to be one’s guide, which can only come to covenant (baptized) servants of Christ.

    And if you learn to argue well, you can use that power to persuade other human beings to come to Christ. But one must remember that no human argument can “prove” Christ. What our human arguments do is catch the attention of other persons and get them to pray to Father in the name of Christ to see if He has any message for them. It is Father, and our Savior, and the Holy Ghost who are the ultimate persuaders. Their persuasion will eventually win the assent and love of all humans, even if not so right now.

    17. How does Satan work upon human beings?

    Satan’s only direct access to human beings is to persuade them. But his persuasion is never honorable. For though he teaches some truth, he also uses lies whenever it suits his purpose, and thus is an unreliable witness; and he never encourages good, but strictly and carefully pursues an undeviating course to persuade men to do evil.

    Satan’s only real leverage is to whisper to men encouragement to believe what is pleasing to them and to do what pleases them. Satan can only tempt or try to persuade us through our own lusts.

    Any human being who tries to persuade others to believe something which is not true or to do something which is not righteous is in the service of Satan, whether he or she knows it or not.

    The only way to avoid being a servant to Satan is to come unto Christ. One cannot serve two masters. The only way to completely stop serving Satan is to come unto Christ through the New and Everlasting Covenant and through it to be perfected in Him. Then one’s faith and one’s arguments of persuasion will be pure and holy, even as the person is holy, even as Christ is holy.

    18. What then is to conclusion of this conversation?

    The conclusion is that argumentation is a very important human academic skill which all persons in academia must master. All of the technical professions employ this methodology. Using this skill one can either do evil or righteously apply it to eternal purposes.

    Part II: The Kinds of Argumentation

    1. There are five kinds of arguments (to use one taxonomy):

    Arguments are used to:

    • a.   Clarify (interpret)
    • b.   Verify (establish the truth or probability of truth)
    • c.   Understand (tell how something works)
    • d.   Evaluate (establish the worth of some belief or action)
    • e.   Apply (this is how you do X)

    2. Example of an argument of clarification:

    Question: What does it mean to be “pure in heart?”

    Argument:

                Conclusion: To be pure in heart means to have the pure love of Christ in our hearts for all others.

    Premises:

    1. To be “pure” means to be unmixed.
    2. The business of hearts is choosing.
    3. To be “pure in heart” means that with our hearts we choose only one kind of thing (choosing is unmixed).
    4. Hearts choose between good and evil.
    5. Pure hearts choose only good.
    6. The only good thing is to love Father and our neighbor with all of our heart, might, mind and strength.
    7. To love Father and our neighbor with all of our heart, might, mind and strength is to have the gift of charity, which is the pure love of Christ.
    8. To love Father and our neighbor is to love all others.

    Therefore: To be pure in heart means to have the pure love of Christ in our hearts for all others.

    3. Example of an argument of verification:

    Question: Is it true that this earth is the most wicked of all the earths Father has created?

    Clarification: Earths are not wicked. Only children of God on His earths can be wicked.

    Conclusion: The most wicked of all of God’s children who had ever been given mortality up to the time of the life of Enoch upon this earth were human beings living on this earth at that time.

    Premises:

    • a.   Moses 7:35–36 says: Behold, I am God; Man of Holiness is my name; Man of Counsel is my name; and Endless and Eternal is my name, also. Wherefore, I can stretch forth mind hands and hold all the creations which I have made; and mine eye can pierce them also, and among all the workmanship of mine hands there has not been such great wickedness as among thy brethren.
    • b.   The scriptures of the Pearl of Great Price reveal the truth.

    Therefore: It is the truth that the most wicked of all of God’s children who had ever been given morality up to the time of the life of Enoch upon this earth were human beings living upon this earth at that time.

    4. Example of an argument of understanding:

    Question: How does one become a son or daughter of Jesus Christ?

    Conclusion: One becomes a son or daughter of Jesus Christ by obeying His instruction to believe in Him and His gospel, to repent of one’s sins, and to be born again of water and Spirit through authorized servants of Christ.

    Premises:

    • a.   To become a son or daughter of Jesus Christ is to become an authorized inheritor of what Christ is and has.
    • b.   To become an authorized inheritor of what Christ is and has, one must hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ taught by the power of the Holy Ghost, and one must believe that divine witness.
    • c.   If one believes that divine witness, he or she will repent of sinning (which is to say, one will confess one’s sins and forsake them).
    • d.   If one believes in Christ as explained in the gospel of Christ, and has repented, one is prepared to take the covenant of baptism.
    • e.   If one is prepared to take the covenant of baptism, an authorized servant of Jesus Christ (bearing the Holy Priesthood) will interview the person to ascertain the fulness of that preparation, and when satisfied that one is prepared, will administer the ordinance of baptism by water.
    • f.    In accepting baptism by water under the power of an authorized servant of Christ one promises to: 1) Be willing to take upon them the name of Christ; 2) To always remember Him; and 3) Keep every commandment which He (Christ) gives unto them.
    • g.   Baptized persons who have actually made the promises specified above are ready to be confirmed members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
    • h.   An authorized servant lays his hands upon the head of the one who is ready to be confirmed and commands them in the name of Christ to receive the Holy Ghost and announces that they are now members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
    • i.    If the person confirmed does not receive the companionship of the Holy Ghost at the moment of confirmation, they should pray and seek for it until they receive it.
    • j.    When the person actually receives the companionship of the Holy Ghost after confirmation they have then been baptized with fire.
    • k.   Every person who is truly born of the water and of the Spirit has kept the commandment of God and is now a son or daughter of Jesus Christ and will remain so as long as they keep the promises they made in receiving the covenant of baptism.

    Conclusion: One becomes a son or daughter of Jesus Christ by obeying his instruction to believe in Him and His gospel, to repent of one’s sins, and to be born again of water and Spirit through authorized servants of Christ.

    Note that this argument of understanding does not consist of proofs of the correctness of individual steps: that would make argument one of verification. An argument of understanding is a careful explanation as to how to do something. If one applies the formula and gains the desired result, then the explanation has worked. In this example, one knows that one has become a son or daughter of Jesus Christ if he or she fulfills the understanding given and thereafter enjoys the companionship of the Holy Spirit.

    5. Example of an argument of evaluation:

    Question: What is the worth of a human soul?

    Conclusion: A saved human soul is worth more that the life time of labor of an ordinary human being.

    Premises:

    • a.   The lifetime labor of an ordinary human being is not worth a great deal, because of themselves, no human being can do any fully good thing. If human beings do fully good things, it is because they have come unto Christ and do His good (righteousness).
    • b.   No human soul can be saved by a lifetime of unaided human labor, because that labor is not good (not worth saving).
    • c.   A saved human soul will do the work of Christ. This work is eternally worthwhile, and the fruits of this work will last into all eternity. And this soul will go on in eternity doing good to all eternity.
    • d.   A single mortal work of a saved soul which will have eternal good consequences is worth more than a whole mortal lifetime of human work which will be destroyed at death and not be remembered any more.

    Therefore: A saved human soul is worth more than the life time labor of an ordinary human being.

    Note that arguments of evaluation are all comparative. Something is established as a standard or as better, and a judgment is then made about value or worth.

    6. Example of an argument of application:

    Question: What should one do with love?

    Conclusion: One should learn to love better and better until that love is pure and complete, as is Father’s love. Then one can help wayward souls.

    Premises:

    • a.   Every person on earth once did what was right because they felt Father’s love for them.
    • b.   Some persons on earth now do not do what is right because they no longer feel Father’s love for them.
    • c.   The best thing one can do for a neighbor is to gain Father’s kind of love and then love our neighbor.

    Therefore: One should learn to love better and better until that love is pure and complete, as is Father’s love. Then one can help wayward souls.

    Part III. What Makes a Quality Argument?

    1. A quality argument is complete.

    All must be explicit. There should be no suppressed premises.

    2. A quality argument must be valid.

    The argument must be formally correct. The premises must make the conclusion to be warranted.

    3. A quality argument must be based in truth.

    The premises must be true, and known to be true. Plausible premises only allow plausible conclusions.

    4. A quality argument is audience centered.

    The language, figures of speech, clarity and tone must be appropriate to the intended hearers of the argument.

    5. A quality argument must be delivered in suitable rhetorical device.

    If delivered by an essay, a poem, or a play, they must be well written lest they mask their message. If delivered by the actions of a person, they must be consistent and competent.

    Connotations are also important. A hymn loses its spiritual force when sung in nightclub style. The vehicle must not be too long (to lose the audience) nor too short (to fail to convey the full weight of the message).

  • Conversation and Sanity, 1991

    October 1991

    1.   Human being consists of doing: Be-ing.

    2.   Human beings assert themselves to fulfill desire.
          Assertion: Any deliberate action (doing: Be-ing)

    3.   Assertion results in conversations.
          Conversation: A series of interactive assertions and receiving of assertions with a partner.

    4.   The more and better conversations one has, the more be-ing one has.

    5.   Human beings have four different kinds of partners in conversation:

    • a.   Other human beings (who tend to be unpredictable).
    • b.   Nature: Everything physical which is not human. (Tend to be predictable.)
    • c.   God: Predictable, the source of all good and all truth.
                  Good is that which increases the long-term happiness of any individual.
    • d.   Satan: Source of all evil, many lies and some truth. (Tends to be unpredictable.)
                  Evil is anything which is not as good as it could and should be.

    6.   No human being can escape conversing with all four kinds of partners.

    7.   Conversational competence: Ability to converse with a partner to satisfy one’s desires.

    • One must converse competently with other humans to satisfy social desires.
    • One must converse competently with nature to satisfy desires for food, clothing, shelter, location, etc.
    • One must converse competently with God to satisfy desires for truth and good.
    • One must converse competently with Satan to avoid doing evil.

    8.   Sanity is conversing to increase one’s quotient of be-ing.

    • Insanity is self-destruction: conversing to reduce one’s quotient of be-ing.
    • Quotient of being =     One’s present ability to converse
      One’s potential ability to converse.

    9.   Good conversation is sane conversation because in doing so, one advantages one’s partner, enhancing the being of one’s partner. But as the be-ing of one’s partner is enhanced, the opportunity for one to converse is enhanced. So as one enhances one’s partner, one enhances one’s own being as well.

    10. Evil conversation is insane conversation because in doing so, one disadvantages one’s partner in conversation, thus diminishing the be-ing of one’s partner and their conversational ability. So as one diminishes one’s partner in conversation, one diminishes oneself, because one has diminished the conversations one may have with that partner.

    11. Fostering conversation with God is the best way to foster conversational competence and sanity, for all good comes from God.

    Lack of sufficient competent conversation with God automatically forces one to be incompetent and insane in conversing in with other people, nature and Satan.

    12. Conclusions:

    • a.   Those who wish to be fully sane and fulfilled will do all in their power to foster more and more conversation with God, which will enable them to grow in conversational competence and good. Then they can converse with every kind of partner correctly and competently to fulfill every desire, which is to have a fullness of Be-ing. (Which is Eternal Life.)
    • b.   Goodness is conversational competence which advantages and enlarges one’s partners.
    • c.   Evil is built on the insane untruth that disadvantaging one’s partners in conversation will somehow enhance and enlarge one’s self.

  • Thinking, 1991

    September 1991

    1.   What human beings do: They

    • a.   Choose. They prefer one thing over another in order to fulfill their desires according to their understanding and ability.
    • b.   Understand. They taxonomize a mental universe to represent the “real” universe.
    • c.   Act. Using whatever skills and abilities they have, human beings do things. This is conversation with other beings.
    • d.   Enjoy. The universe causes in human beings sensations and emotions which we call experience. These are sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain, satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

    These four things constitute the bulk of what human beings do.

    But there is one more important activity. Human beings also:

    • e.   Argue. To argue is to present a case that:
    •            1)   One choice is better than another (ethics), or that
    •            2)   One taxonomizing is better than another (science, common sense, and metaphysics), or that
    •            3)   One skill development or application is better than another (strategy and tactics, “how to”), or that
    •            4)   One enjoyment is better than another (persuasion, advertising).

    2.   Thinking is done by human beings in all of the things which they do. But thinking focuses in argument.

    3.   Every argument has at least four elements:

    • a.   A conclusion. What it is you are trying to assert, to establish, to prove. (A choice.)
    • b.   A support structure. This is the evidence or basis for your thinking that the conclusion you foster is preferable to some other position. (A representation.)
    • c.   A rhetoric. This is the delivery vehicle in which the argument is communicated to others. (A doing.)
    • d.   An effect. This is what happens when your argument is communicated to some target. (An enjoyment.)

    4.   An example of an argument.

    • a.   Conclusion: You cannot make the world safe for human beings, but you can make human beings safe for the world.
    • b.   Support structure: Evil is endemic in the world; it cannot be eradicated. Therefore, the world cannot be transformed into a safe place for human beings.
                  Support structure: Human beings can be taught to defend themselves against the evils of the world. When they are taught and if they use what they are taught, they can defend themselves against the evils of this world, and therefore become safe for the world.
    • c.   Rhetoric: (Not given here: this would be a paper, or a poem, or a play, or some other vehicle by which to communicate this thought structure.)
    • d.   Effect: (Can only be hypothesized: If the target person(s) accept the argument you might enjoy that.)

    5.   Factors which affect thinking:

    • a.   Desires: If persons want to think, they will. If they want to think better, they will learn how to do so. If their thinking is good rather than evil, they will do prosper in thinking.
    • b.   Knowledge: The greater conceptual development and the greater the knowledge of the person, the better they can think.
    • c.   Skills: The more things a person can do well, the greater their ability to think about doing well.
    • d.   Effort: Time and energy are essential to sustained production in thinking.
    • e.   Wiring: Some persons are genetically constituted to be able to think faster and better than others.
    • f.    Environment: Some environments are rich in stimulation to think, whereas others are not.

  • Language of the Spirit

    Chauncey C. Riddle

    We talked yesterday about language. The topic today is how this applies to our living our lives in the world, in the gospel. I would like to pose a problem for you, something to investigate. That is, the very interesting story we have of the fall.

    Language before the fall very possibly was different. I’ve tried to understand exactly how they communicated before the fall and what difference the fall made. It’s possible that before the fall communication was simply concept communication the way it will be in the Celestial Kingdom. Adam and Eve were Celestial people, they had Celestial bodies, they had their spiritual eyes opened and they could see the Father and the Son and very possibly they simply communicated by thought.

    And that Satan was given the privilege of coming and speaking to them in the same way, I don’t know. The thing I think that is the key to the puzzle is three things that we learn in the story of the fall. When we understand what it means when it says their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked and they were ashamed. I think those pieces were put in there as clues to the puzzle to help us understand something about communication.

    Now my understanding further is that before they fell they did not know good and evil except in one particular that the Father had told them of. The evil was to partake of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, they knew they shouldn’t do that but everything else was just neutral. It was neither a good nor evil because they didn’t know an evil to correspond with it. Now, I think that we have to concede that part of that was the fact that they were very perceptive. That they simply looked around and saw things and took them for what they were without having anything with which to contrast that.

    It’s possible that what the fall was, was giving them the kind of language that we now have. And the kind of language we now have enables us to conceive and hold in our minds varies possibilities about things. Which enables us then to contrast a good with an evil. And it is just possible that the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the giving of language. The kind of language we have as opposed to the concept language that they communicated with before.

    At least, I think we can say this much. Language is the great facilitator of our knowledge of good and evil. Because through language rather than showing us exactly what to do or being something, the Savior can say to us, be kind to your neighbor, Satan can say to us, take advantage of your neighbor. Because we have language we can conceive those two possibilities in our minds.

    Now, what I’m saying, I’ll try to make it a little clearer. I don’t think animals in their looking at the world can see good and evil the same way we can. They can see things that may be dangerous to them, they can see things they want to avoid but I don’t think they can see good and evil and have the same ability to choose between good and evil that we do. Because we can suit whatever is good or evil to our own desires.

    We have this interesting ability because we get presented with good and evil alternatives but they don’t come labeled. No voice, no label, no power says to us, this is the good and this is the evil, we just get these two opposing things. We have to put the label on them. And we have to, we do choose which is the good and which is the evil according to our own desires. And so you find people in the world going around pasting the label good on all kinds of evil and what are they doing? They’re simply carrying out their agency. This is part of why they were put down here and on the day of judgment what will they be rewarded with?  They’ll simply will be given over to those things that they wanted. As they judged so shall they be judged. If they judged these things to be good to them so they will get them for eternity. Now, that isn’t to say that they will get all of their desires but if they wish to be selfish and they call selfishness good then they can be selfish for as long as they want to be selfish. If they like to be carnal, fleshly, they will be carnal and fleshly forever. If they wish to be kind or honor the truth do good for others this will be rewarded unto them forever. Because the judgment simply fixes upon us that which we have chosen.

    But language is the great facilitator of that choosing. It is the thing that exposes us to all kinds of opportunities the range of variables that make great freedom possible.

    Now, when Adam was put in the garden we know that God gave him a language both oral and written. Language is a gift of God and a great and wonderful blessing. As I said yesterday, no greater technology has ever been given to man. And by this we receive the commandments of God. He speaks to us in our own language in our own concepts so that there is no confusion. We will not be able to say I didn’t understand when he speaks to us. When men speak to us there is a real possibility that we won’t be able to understand. But when God speaks to us he always gives us at least two witnesses. Sometimes there are two persons, sometimes there’s one person and the Holy Ghost, sometimes there is a written message in the scripture and then a spiritual message through the Holy Spirit directed to our concepts.

    My guess is that the Holy Ghost always communicates to us in our own concepts and if we want to put that into a language we have to translate it. I’ve often asked one who knows two languages which one they pray in? They tell me one or the other and I say which one does the answer come in? How many of you know two languages? You know which one you pray in, which one does the answer come in? It doesn’t come in a language, you have to put it in the language of your choice. And that’s the answer that almost everyone gives. Which I think is a good indication that the language of the spirit is a concept language not a verbal language. And that’s why the Holy Ghost can communicate with us perfectly because it uses our concepts. He touches our mind, our heart in the way that we will understand exactly what he wants us to say. Which we human beings don’t have the power to do as we talk to each other.

    So when the angel came and commanded Adam to offer sacrifice Adam knew exactly what he meant. I would guess that when the Father gave commandment to Adam to offer sacrifice Satan also said don’t bother to do that, that’s a waste of time or some such. Because now that Adam was fallen Satan had full access to Adam to communicate with him. Apparently in that same concept language. And thus here’s Adam, he has these two forces working upon him now in everything that he does and he has to decide where does his heart lie? Does his heart lie with this the voice of God? Or this with the voice of Satan?

    Adam did have an advantage, he had known God and Satan before he fell and it was probably easier to recognize their voices. But his children, you see, never had that advantage, perhaps that is why so many of them fell away and worshiped Satan and called him the good instead of God. The angel came and asked Adam why he was offering sacrifice. Without language of course he wouldn’t have understood the question nor would have been able to answer. But, he gave an answer, and the answer was because he had faith. He believed the commandment of God and then the angel explained why he had given that commandment to him. To teach him that in all things he must look to Christ who’s the author of all good things and the beginning and end, the author and finisher of his faith.

    Now, what does righteousness consist of? If someone chooses to serve Jesus Christ to keep the new and everlasting covenant, the facilitation of the keeping of that covenant is through language: Through the reading of the scriptures, through listening in church meetings, by receiving instruction of priesthood authorities, by bearing our witness to non- members, by teaching the gospel, hearing the gospel.

    Now we do all of those things but we have to remember that in doing all of those things that there is a good and there is an evil. The fall made it so that in every choice that every human being has there is, we must always choose between a good and an evil. So whenever we open our mouths to speak we have the choice. The important thing to know is how do you find the good and what is the evil? In general, in my understanding, the evil is what we want to say (selfishness) choosing our own desires over those of God. If we wish to do the good we are going to have to inquire of God and find out what he would have us say. Now you have to have the gospel of Jesus Christ before this is a meaningful thing to say. To those outside the church they aren’t going to have that possibility but we who have accepted the new and everlasting covenant know something more.

    We know that we shall be held accountable for every idle word that we speak. An idle word is a word that we speak having chosen to do it evilly. Whereas a non-idle word is a word given to us having chosen to speak the good, meaning the right thing to say, the righteous thing to say. So I conceive that the Father has devised for us a program, a plan, whereby he will teach us how to speak truly, how to speak righteously. He speaks only light and truth, he never lies, he never gives bad advice.

    I take it in our apprenticeship to become as he is that’s probably one of the most important things we need to do is to learn to speak only light, his light and only truth, his truth. So how do we do that? I think the key to it is prayer. Now, there is a correct way to pray and there’s a false way to pray. The false way to pray is to say whatever we want to say. But the scriptures are plain, when we pray correctly it is given to us what we shall ask. And so if you have learned about how to pray correctly you come to realize, prayer is a thing that must be done by revelation. That is to say, our use and abuse of language is what condemns or saves us for one thing.

    And there’s probably no more important thing that we do than to use language. If we use it for evil then we cannot be saved and one of the greatest things we can do is to learn to speak only light and truth through Jesus Christ. Which we do by first learning to pray, how do you do that? Well, we have to first ask the Father to help us to pray, that has to come from us. But he has commanded us to do it so it is a good thing to do. And then we wait and we think and we try to open our hearts, to be as humble, as pliable, as susceptible as we can to the enticings of the spirit.

    And then sooner or later something comes to us and we have to discern whether that is a good spirit or an evil spirit. Whenever we invite the good spirit in the evil spirit also comes around and has it’s say and that because of the fall. We’re subject to Satan in that respect and so God does not speak to us except there is an evil counterpart to that so that we always have a choice. So if we will choose the good then our prayers begin to be holy prayers, prayers of light and truth. Now should we ever get so good at this that we can say a whole prayer simply by saying what we are prompted to say by the Holy Spirit we’ll be beginning to be in good shape.

    Imagine what it would be then, if each of us took that clue and then used it in our daily conversations with each other. And we did not say anything to anybody except that it was good in the spirit of the Lord to say so. So that we only spoke light and truth to each other. Wouldn’t that be a marvelous change in our society. We would never again get angry and tell somebody off. We would never again say something to hurt someone deliberately. We might say something that would hurt someone but it would only be because the Lord prompted us to and we say it in love with the intention of helping them. And then show forth an increase of love after so they will know we did not say it in anger, did not say it to hurt them.

    Now, if you get a great big sliver, if it’s deep somebody may have to cut your flesh to get it out, that’s going to hurt. And that’s what the Lord has to sometimes do with us, he has to hurt to help us get rid of the evil that’s in us. But the hurt is always beneficial in the long run when it comes by the Holy Spirit. If it’s light and truth the hurt is but a short hurt and brings great blessings in its consequence. But we have to judge these things by their fruits. We have to tell the difference between good and evil by seeing what the results are.

    So it’s given to us to judge and if we don’t like the way our life is going, that’s a clue to us that we are not listening to the right spirit, we’re not getting the clues that we want and need. If our hearts are evil, of course, then it’s very difficult for us to tell. The great key is to get a pure heart so that we will be able to tell the difference between good fruits and evil fruits.

    Which leads us to tell the difference between good spirits and evil spirits, which enables us then to choose the good and never to choose the evil. If we learn to speak righteously to one another, that is the key to learning to use the priesthood.

    What is the priesthood? The priesthood is the power of God, but it is not given to any man to say of his own mind and desires what he will do with that priesthood. I learned that one the hard way. Years ago I was an Elders quorum president in Manhattan, we were visiting members of our quorum on Statten Island. We came to the home of one brother, he had just had a heart attack and they had taken him to the hospital. His wife asked us to go to the hospital and give him a blessing. So we went, we slipped through the oxygen tent and gave him a blessing and told him that he would be all right, that he soon would be well. Ten minutes later he died. That’s a bit disconcerting if you’re a young elder quorum president. And so, we went to the high counselor over our quorum and said, tell us what happened? He was also the stake patriarch and understood this problem very well. He said, did the spirit tell you to say that? We said, no. We just thought that would be a nice thing to say.

    That’s not how the priesthood of god works. Man does not know what is good or righteous. Righteousness is of Christ and many times the things we ask for in our prayers are simply evil. The scriptures says, if you ask for evil it will be accounted unto you for evil. We have to learn to speak correctly. And so, we get this opportunity to practice and we’re promised that the Holy Ghost will be our constant companion and will communicate with us through this concept language exactly what it is we should pray for. And then what we should say to one another and then what we should say when we’re hoping to represent him, using the priesthood. Now there is two sides to that, sometimes when you’re laying your hands on someone’s head and the Holy Ghost is speaking through you, what the Holy Ghost tells you to say is so scary that you don’t dare say it. We have to be brave enough to say it and humble enough to get what to say.

    What are we supposed to do, we lay our hands upon somebody’s head and nothing comes? We’re not to say anything by way of blessing. We’re simply supposed to pray for the person. We admit defeat at that point and say, I’m sorry I can’t give you a blessing but I will pray for you. And I’ll pray for you the best I can but I don’t really know how to bless you. I had the experience a few years ago of laying my hands on a sister’s head. And I was told that there was a blessing for her, she was to be healed but because I hadn’t repented of my sins I couldn’t do it. It’s called a come up’ins. The Lord brings you up short once in a while, he lets you know where you stand. Twenty- four hours later another man laid his hands on her head, she was healed instantly. Because he had lived for that opportunity, he was able to heal her she was able to go on with her work. It’s the Lord’s desire that all of us be able to heal, by being righteous. I’ll tell you the man’s name, his name is Nathan Eldon Tanner.

    But you see, how much good can we do if we would repent of our sins and learn to speak nothing but light and truth. Oh, then we would have power in the priesthood. Which does not come from man, it comes from God. But it’s learning to use language, use this great technology that the Lord has given us correctly. So that we can use the greater technology. Priesthood is greater than language. But learning to use language correctly is the key to using the priesthood correctly. So he gives us a lesser power to see if we can learn to do well with it so then we can see if we can use the greater power.

    Now, if we can, not only do we have to speak by the power of the Holy Ghost we have to read and understand by the power of the Holy Ghost. And so he gives us the scriptures. The scriptures were not written to be understood, they were written to be a puzzle. They were written to help those who have the spirit and to blind those who don’t have the spirit, lest they be condemned. Here again, we get to practice. We have these beautiful words and if we are faithful we will sit and look at those black marks on the white pages and try to hold back our own interpretation which is private interpretation, until we get the Holy Spirit coming to us in our minds and telling us what the Lord wants us to think in connection with those black marks. Thus we have a chance to learn to interpret by the Spirit of the Lord.

    We get to sit in conference, we get to listen to the prophet of God and the question is: Are we in tune? If, as he is speaking, the spirit rings and our hearts swell within us and our minds are enlarged and enlightened and we know this is light and truth then we know we are on the beam. If we’re faithful the Lord is rewarding us with that resonance that comes when we are in tune. Should we find that we are beginning to wonder, is President Benson getting a little old? Is he saying things that really aren’t quite square? Has one of his helpers put this into his mind? He really wouldn’t say that if he were about to be — These are things that people say. And they are the temptations of Satan as it were. But, if you and I will go to the conference humbly in the attitude of prayer and fasting, ready to receive the word of the Lord. Having done what we were instructed to do the last conference. That’s our key to getting the Holy Spirit to understand this next conference and then the Holy spirit will just flood our minds with this beautiful feeling, will fill our heart with this warmth and we won’t have to ask further if this is the will of the Lord we will just know it, with every sentence he says, will just march into our heart and fill our being with light and truth. We will know that he is the prophet of God, that he loves us as the Savior loves us. And that he’s trying to do the thing that we need.

    What does he want us to do? He wants us to read the Book Of Mormon. The Church has neglected the Book of Mormon and he knows the church is suffering under a curse because of that. The curse was pronounced way back in 1832. It’s never come out of the curse because we as a people have never paid enough attention to the book yet. He’s trying to lift that curse, he loves us, so he’s gone to the Lord to find what we need to do to start being Zion. The first thing we need to do to start being Zion is to get ourselves wrapped around that book. It’s concepts, it’s ideas, it’s a chance for us to have the most perfect instrument in the world perhaps, to teach us how to live by the spirit that there is. There’s no better way to do that than to read the Book of Mormon.

    Maybe prayer is the only other thing that comes close to it. Now reading the Book of Mormon is probably the best help there is to learn how to pray. They go hand in hand. But if we learn to interpret by the spirit so that we interpret the scriptures, then we interpret the words of the brethren in conference, then we interpret the words of our Stake President, we interpret the words of our Bishop, we interpret the words of our Father. And then we begin to interpret every word we read and hear everywhere it comes. Discerning whether it’s good or evil, treasuring, collecting, remembering, living by all the good that we meet from any source. Putting on the shelf holding in abeyance everything we hear that’s evil.

    Now, if we can do those two things, learn to speak and interpret by the power of the Holy Ghost then we’re really benefiting from this marvelous thing of language which God has given us to raise us up. Why does he give us language? Because only through language can he give us the freedom to choose both good and evil. This freedom is the whole key to our salvation. If by our own free will and choice we will choose the good when it comes to us, then he can give us every good thing. We have to make that basic choice. So, what is our mission in life? It is to perfect our relationships with one another by first perfecting our relationship with God. If we can love him and hear his voice and interpret him without error then we can learn to love one another.

    We transact most of our business with one another through language. If we have learned to interpret language to separate the good from the evil then our language transactions with each other will begin to be holy. We will not speak anything that is evil and we will not allow ourselves to believe anything that is evil and thus we begin to bring our relationships to perfection. One place I think this needs to be focused, can be focused is in the relationships between husband and wife. The place to practice good communication is in prayer, that’s the first place, the second place is between husband and wife. Because husband and wife love each other they will want to communicate and my thought is, where is a better place to learn to communicate through spiritual means than between husband and wife?

    To use the physical words of the English language that we usually use as a key to begin to communicate by feeling and by ideas through the spirit of the Lord. If you have been married a while and your marriage is good you probably have experienced some of that. What a beautiful thing to have, that’s really wonderful when you begin to see eye to eye and you begin to know exactly how your spouse will react to something. That’s great communication and if they both choose the good, you see, there’s no limit to how close they can become, because each will become enclosed to the Savior all the time. Becoming closer and closer to the Savior enables them to become closer and closer to each other. Till finally they come to have one mind and one heart. How is Zion established? I think Zion is established by getting husbands and wives to love each other, so they come to have one mind and one heart. We’re surely not going to have one heart and one mind with anyone else if we can’t do it with our own wife or husband.

    Charity begins at home. If we can’t love the person we’re closest to, our closest neighbor in all this world which is our spouse, we’re surely not going to do much for anyone else. There’s the place to perfect our language. To work with one another, talk with one another, think, pray, hope, compare notes until we can do this just the right way. Now what do we do with language? With language then we participate in our own creation. Our creation is not over, it’s on going every day. Our Savior has given us a body but the body is changing constantly, it’s being recreated every day. Our minds are being recreated every day, as our hearts also and our might. Every time some new influence comes into our life, and we react to it we are a different person.

    So by making these choices that come to us through language we are choosing either the good or the evil; thus building ourselves into a better person or an evil person. Thus by the end of our lives we will have created a god through the help of God or a devil through the help of Satan, according to our own desires. We can’t do either without help from those sources. But with the help of those sources we can do either. Thus our final blessings then come by the pronouncement of either God of Satan. God has certain words which he says which seal us to him. Satan has certain words which he says which seal us to him. Thus we become the eternal child of either God or Satan, depending on which one we choose including what we do with language.

    So, as we learn to use language it’s important to recognize that there are four components to all language. There’s a heart portion, a mind portion, a strength portion, and a might portion. We have to perfect each one of these. Might is our fruit, it is given unto those who are not very spiritual yet to judge others by their fruits by the effects of their language. If their language produces good we know that they are good. If their language produces evil we know that they are evil.

    As we learn to communicate better and better then we begin to communicate by concepts by feelings of the heart directly. Finally by communicating as God does by looking upon the heart of other people. We have to be a little careful we don’t presume we can do that before we actually can. Well, we have said essentially what needs to be said about the use of language in our lives and applying it to the gospel.

    I think that as Latter-day Saints we would do well to try to be rich in the languages of this world. Languages are the keys for bearing testimony. The more languages we know the more people we can help. I think it ought to be our constant study to be working on another language other than the one which is our mother tongue. We need to be learning child language so we can speak to children. Some people can’t talk to children. We need to be learning technical language so that we can speak to people who want to speak technical language. We need to be learning the language of whoever it is that we love. Because if we do love them we will want to speak to them in their own language, in their own frame. Father has promised that every person will hear the gospel in his own tongue. And that may be a certain variety of English, it may be French, it may be scientific language, it may be statistical language, it may be the language of music, it may be the language of painting, it may be the language of dancing. All of these are languages, they speak, they express. And whatever it is we need to know to speak to someone we need to learn that language. The measure of our love for them is our willingness to sacrifice enough to learn their language so that we can bear witness of light and truth to them in terms that they will understand.

    Well, are their questions?

    (unheard)

    God says that in the mouth of two or more witnesses he will establish every word. So, he usually sends out missionaries two by two, so that there will be two witnesses. Whenever he gives a scripture, we see something written here in a book, he always sends his Holy Spirit, if we will receive it, to accompany that. So that we get the witness of the black and white and also of the Spirit. The Father and the Son are two witnesses, the Son and the Holy Ghost are two witnesses. In everything he tries to make sure we get two witnesses so that we will never have to depend on a single source. Two points make a line, he’s trying to give us lines or direction. Does that help?

    I was thinking of prayer when the Holy Spirit speaks to us, where if …

    The other witness will be the fruits of the prayer, the consequences of our prayer. If we don’t learn any other way, we will learn by what happens after we pray. If the prayer is answered, if we get what we asked for or pray for, that’s a pretty good sign. If it isn’t answered we’ll know that maybe something is probably wrong with that prayer and we can ask, why wasn’t it answered? And we’ll probably get an answer as to what we should then do to make amends or reparations. If we do that and it works, then we then know that we’re on the right track. We should always look for the second witness. My experience is that if we are in tune we always get an immediate answer of some kind. It’s true that sometimes I might pray for a million dollars and not get an answer for a long long time, I may never get it, but I can ask, why not? I’ll get an immediate answer to that. I find that sometimes my prayers are not answered but there’s one kind of question I’ll always get an immediate answer to and that is, what should I do next?

    Is there a difference between the language that Satan speaks and Christ speaks?

    Yes. The Savior always speaks in light and truth. Satan always speaks in darkness and warped truth or wrong, untruth. I have to be careful with that, sometimes he speaks truth, he never speaks light but sometimes he speaks truth so that we will buy what he has to say. And so yes, there’s a difference, and that’s why the whole study of our lives that the basic skill of being a Latter-day Saint consists in being able to detect the difference between the voice of God and the voice of Satan. Now we need to study that and try out different cases and try experiments until we become absolutely perfect at making that distinction.

    Satan can never speak to your heart.

    I don’t know about that. I think he can. But that’s my guess don’t believe that.

    The question is, he asked me how I read the scriptures, as the prophet has told us to read the Book of Mormon.

    I try to read it lots of different ways. I find that I have to just read it through occasionally. Start from the beginning and go to the end because that way I sweep out things I hadn’t seen before. Sometimes I read it topically, I look for a certain word or subject and just trace that though all the scriptures. I find it very useful to try a different medium, I’m currently listening to the Book of Mormon on tape for the first time and I hear things I’ve never seen before at looking at the printed page. I read it in Spanish last year. And the Spanish showed me certain things that I’d never seen in the English. I insisted sometimes to myself, that’s not in the English and I’d go back and look in the English and there it was. One difference was ever since I began to read I’ve been a fast reader. So I read the Book of Mormon just as fast as I can read, which is somewhere between 800 and a 1000 words a minute. There’s a lot you miss when you read that fast. I can’t read Spanish nearly that fast and slowing down taught me a great many things. So I would commend to you, slow down sometime, just read it very carefully word for word and piece it together. You have to do that on the tough passages. But read it slowly, read it fast, read it with other people. As you share with other people sometimes their insights are just what you need to put the pieces all together from what you’ve been studying. You’ve got the rest of it, they’ve got the one piece. That’s why the Lord wants us to teach one another, he doesn’t give everything to everybody. He wants us to need each other and to converse and teach each other about these things so that we will learn. So those are some thoughts.

    Question – (unheard) – something about choosing between good and good and between good and evil.

    But the real evil is always a good and the most tempting evil is always a good. That we could do, it is a good thing to do under ordinary circumstances, but it just happens in this case there something better to do so the good becomes an evil.

    Question – (unheard)

    My understanding is it’s always good and evil even though the two things in general terms are good. I use this technique. If there’s some job I’ve been putting off for a long time and I know I should do it. There comes a day I’m prompted to do something that’s much better than this and I say well I’ll go and do that job I’ve been putting off because I don’t want to do the good I’d rather do evil in this case, isn’t that terrible. But I find that I’m able to get some things done that way. The Lord has to try hard to save some of us.

    Question – Why is the devil able to duplicate the gifts of the Holy Spirit?

    Well, what he can duplicate is the results and not the holiness of the spirit. Therefore we know that the two spirits will never be confused. But for instance the devil can heal. And if all you can do is live by signs you have no sense of gifts then you can be taken in by Satan. Those that seek for signs are always evil in their hearts, cause if they had good hearts they wouldn’t seek for signs they would seek for the gifts. And they would seek to know the difference between the good spirit and the evil spirit.

    That’s the basic gift of the Spirit. But if you’re just looking for signs or the guy who’s got the power or to be healed or to speak in tongues or can do mighty miracles, Satan can do all of those things. If that’s the only thing that convinces you, there’s no hope.

    Question – Can Satan hear a silent prayer?

    I don’t know the answer. My belief is, that if we’re under the influence of the Holy Ghost he can’t.

    Question – (unheard)

    May I read you a scripture? I’ll give you my understanding on that. It’s Section 58 of the Doctrine and Covenants.

    “It’s not meet that I should command in all things.”

    Is that the one you’re talking about?  Let’s deal with both of them then. We’re supposed to the Savior says, “work it out in your own mind”. Don’t ask until you put some effort into it. That’s the instruction to Oliver Cowdery as to how he should translate. Now not every problem is a problem of translation. Is that the formula that applies to everything? I don’t think so. If the Lord tells you to do that in some particular problem, study it out in your own mind and present it to him, that’s what we must do. But my experience is this. Sometimes I go to him without having put any investment into trying to finding the answer. I just ask the question and I get the answer before the question is half out. Other times He makes me wait and do research on it for years. So I can’t find that that’s a general formula. That’s a specific instruction and a valuable thing to do when we’re supposed to do it. That takes care of Section Nine.

    Now Section Fifty Eight. This is a Section that was given that many people use that many people say, “we shouldn’t seek the revelations of God, we don’t want to bother Him with anything that’s not awfully important.” But I don’t think that is what He was saying. Beginning with verse 24, the revelation was given to Edward Partridge. He had been told in a previous revelation to take his counselors and move to Missouri where he was to be the presiding bishop of the church. He went to Joseph and said, “ask the Lord how we shall go”? This is the answer, “now as I spake concerning my servant Edward Partridge. This land, meaning Missouri is the land of his residence and those who he has appointed his counselors and also the land and residence of whom I have appointed to keep my store house. Wherefore let them bring their families as they shall counsel between themselves and me. In other words, don’t ask Joseph, ask me! For it is not meet that I shall command in all things. What does he mean by command? He has to mean. He has to mean getting a commandment through flesh and blood. For he that is compelled in all things the same is a slothful and not a wise servant, wherefore he receiveth no reward. Men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause and do many things of their own free will and bring to pass much righteousness. Because the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves.”

    What makes us agents? We are an agent when we can choose either good or evil in a situation. If we don’t have both those possibilities we are not agents. And the Holy Spirit is that which makes use an agent to know what is right to do. The evil spirit makes us an agent in knowing what is wrong to do. The power is within us, the power of the Holy Ghost to bring to pass much righteousness. We don’t have to ask flesh and blood what to do. We can find out by asking the Lord himself directly. That’s what makes a Latter-day Saint, is someone who has the Holy Ghost with him and asks and gets answers and doesn’t have to be commanded in all things.

    Question – What are alms of prayer?

    My understanding that an alm of prayer, that an alm is something that we give to the poor. That’s the basic meaning of the word. But we do it in the intent of doing an act of righteousness, an act of good to the Lord. We’re trying to love our neighbor as he loves us when we give alms to the poor. Now, when we pray we’re trying to learn to pray in the same kind of token and sacrifice as we do when we give alms to the poor. We’re trying to pray correctly. So an alm is an offering or a sacrifice we make. And we offer up our prayers as offerings to the Lord in the same sense we do the offerings of sheep or goats on the alter or the offering of something we give to the poor. That’s my sense of it if that helps.

    Question – Something about gods and lords.

    My understanding is yes, gods are only created for exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom. But some create themselves into terrestrial beings by waiting a long long time to finally decide to choose good and not evil. The ones that choose good early and anxiously are the celestial spirits that become exalted. Those who want to do good but not all of it become ministering angels in the Celestial Kingdom. Those who want to do good but not too soon become terrestrial. And those who finally admit at the last ditch that it’s better to do good than evil they apparently become telestial. But they all choose the good and every one of them does nothing but good ever after. There’s no evil committed by anybody in the Telestial Kingdom. They don’t sin, they don’t do very much but everything they do is good.

    Question – Does that imply that the progression of people in the Terrestrial and Telestial Kingdoms will sometime lead to Godhood?

    My understanding is no. It says, worlds without end they will not pass the barriers. This is the time to prepare to meet God. Now is the day of our probation and after this life it’s over.

    Question – Do we have the same development in our language as we grow spiritually as we do as we grow physically?

    And I think so yes. As we become acquainted with the words and concepts of the scriptures we are growing in our linguistic ability which is also a growth in our spiritual ability. That’s why we study the scriptures and figure out what all these things mean. That’s a growth in language ability which sets us free then to do more perfectly the will of the Lord.

  • The Language of Heart, Might, Mind, and Strength

    Chauncey C. Riddle

    Education Week, 1991

    The title of these series of discussions is Language and Philosophy of Language, and their connection with religion. Yesterday we talked about communication, pointing out that everything we do is a communication. And our communication, or what we do, is the sum of our existence. We are what we do. In other words, we are how we communicate.

    Today I would like to talk about languages. Each of us is adept at many languages, and it is important to understand these languages. This changed from the schedule, I hope you don’t mind. I had to put this one first to make sense of the one that comes up tomorrow, which is the one that is scheduled for today. I hope you will forgive me if this upsets your plans. But anyway, we are talking about languages of heart, might, mind and strength.

    We assume this paradigm, which is fundamental in the scriptures. That human beings are composed of four aspects, that is to say that there are four parts of us that we control. And we are accountable for each of these four. Our heart and our mind are the spirit, that is to say they belong to our spirit body. We are talking about the heart of the spirit body.

    Apparently the heart is the thing that makes decisions. It is that thing in us that is the real us. That’s the personality we bring from eternity.

    The mind is what thinks, what understands, what plans, what executes the desires of the heart. Executes in the sense of giving signals to the body. The mind is the thinker, the place where ideas and representations are made.

    The strength is the body, the physical tabernacle. Into which we are placed at birth, and which we are relieved of at death, and which we again have at the resurrection.

    Our might is the trail of effects we leave in the world and the universe. Our might is the wake of our ship. It’s the swath we leave as we go through life, in other words, it’s the effects we have on the world. Now there are two aspects to might. One is our potential, which is sometimes spoken of as might. But the more real might is the actual thing we have accomplished.

    So we will talk about language in each of these four aspects. Because there are languages of heart, languages of mind, strength and might. So, what is a language? A language is a patterned and socially normed set of assertions by which one being communicates with another. Now, let’s take that apart a little bit. It’s patterned, that’s to say there are repeated sequences. There is a discernable pattern.

    If you were to record my voice you would find that I go through a repetition; certain phonemes, certain words, certain phrases, and these come up again and again as I speak. Every language has these patterns. We pick up on the patterns, the human brain is so constructed to pick patterns very readily. And things don’t have to be exactly the same. Our mind functions by analog, or by metaphor, which means it doesn’t have to be exactly alike to see a similarity. We are good at seeing similarities, at seeing patterns, Even though the details may not be exactly the same. Otherwise we couldn’t recognize each other from day to day.

    We all look a little different; wear different clothes, wear our hair a little different, appear in different circumstances. And if we couldn’t see the patterns apart from some particulars, of course we wouldn’t do very well.

    So languages are patterned, they are socially normed, in the sense that in a community (a community needs to be no larger than two people) the pattern begins to take a significant meaning which both the sender of the pattern and the receiver of the pattern understand to be associated with some idea or intention. And so to learn a language is to learn the social norms of a community. It is to acquire the culture of that community. There are no private languages in the technical sense. All languages are public, they are socially normed.

    Now a set of assertion codes is simply a way of manifesting ourselves. The assertion codes that we use as human beings are almost all of our body. Some our not, some are our might. But they come through our body. The body reveals the things that go on in the heart and in the mind. And if you become very good at it, you can read a person’s body and detect things that are going on in their heart and mind. There is also a spiritual power of discernment. Whereby one may read a person’s heart. Or read a person’s ideas and mind. And if a person is gifted spiritually and has that power then there is a direct, (you don’t have to guess that way.) You can look at a person’s body, or the results of their efforts and infer what is going on in their heart and mind. That is guess work, but if you have the gift of discernment, you simply read directly what is in the heart and the mind.

    Well, these assertion codes then, are the signals. Assertion codes for instance I am sending you a series of assertion codes which are noises I make with my vocal chords. And these are socially normed. You know approximately what I mean. By uttering each noise, and the sequence makes a difference to you and out of that you fabricate a meaning from these noises and attach some kind of set of ideas to this whole series of nonsense.

    Well, now let’s talk about the different languages:
    HEART
    Heart language is patterned expression of the human heart. There are many dimensions, I am not sure how many dimensions there are of the heart language. Let me mention a few to you that you will recognize. Some people (these come in pairs) and we recognize different personality types, as different people have different heart language. For instance, some people are strong personalities, and some people are weak personalities. That is a function of the heart. That is to say the strength of the person. The heart is what determines that.

    Some people are very sure of themselves, and move ahead. Other people are deterred by every wind that blows in their purposes. One is strong, the other is weak. To have courage (the word courage of course, cour is the french word for heart) courage is simply heart. Courage is being strong in heart, and to be afraid is to be weak in heart. And part of the gospel is to help us to have courage. And we are told that if the language we express is the language of fear that means we do not yet have faith, and if we do not have faith we cannot be saved. So those who fear are not saved. To be saved for one thing means to acquire something in which we can put our trust so that we don’t need to be afraid. So the heart speaks a language dependent on what it’s capabilities are internally and externally. If a person doesn’t know anything that is stable or good in the world, he can trust nothing, then the heart is automatically weak. If the heart can trust something, and as it trust in that, and it finds that trust vindicated, then the person grows strong.

    Some people are steady, other people are pragmatic, or variable, Some people are constant in the sense that you can always depend that when you see them they will always have a certain attitude and stance. Other people you will never know if they will be up or down. Now that again is part of the language of the heart. This I think is closely related to the strength and weakness part of the language.

    Now the person who is steady is the person again has something in which they can trust, they have an anchor for their soul. The gospel provides such an anchor in the Savior. Those who have come to know the Savior, know his work, and know his spirit, and find that he is eminently trustworthy, they are simply different people. They speak a different language. They speak differently because of the knowledge that they have.

    Some people are sober, that is to say they are serious about serious things. That doesn’t mean they are always long-faced. But the opposite of being sober is to be light-minded. To be light-minded is to be flippant about sacred things. And some people find that the only way they can pursue life is to treat everything as if it were a joke, nothing is sacred to them. Again, you see, that is closely related to faith. And the heart expresses itself, and shows it’s faith or lack of faith in whether a person is sober or light- minded.

    When Mormon was about ten years of age, Ammoron came to him and said “I perceive thou art a sober child” I presume what he meant by that was, `You take spiritual things seriously’. Therefore, I can trust you. That is the thing, of course, that we need to engender in ourselves, in our children. We can’t engender it directly, but we can encourage faith in the Savior. And faith in the Savior makes possible every good thing. Another attitude of the heart, is some person’s are proud or self-sufficient. That is to say, they are a law unto themselves, they have no trouble passing judgement on anything, anytime, anywhere. On setting the standard saying whether something is true or false, or right or wrong. They simply know of themselves, it is so because they say so. That is to say they are very self- sufficient.

    Other people are humble. These people who are humble do not pretend to know all things. Sometimes you can be humble and strong for instance some people are humble and they don’t know very much, but what they do know they feel very strong about. They don’t know very much. But some people (there are all kinds of variations) You see, as talk all these kinds of characteristics, and get them in different kinds of combinations, you begin to weave personality. You find a personality pattern. And interestingly enough, it is easier to read the heart of a person than it is the mind. Because the heart really comes through. You can see it in a person’s demeanor. In what they do, in how they speak, how they act, what they do, and so forth. You can read that.

    The final dimension of heart language is the person’s attitude toward good and evil. I say final dimension, I suppose there are many other dimensions of heart language. These are the ones that I have been able to identify surely to my own satisfaction. But I suppose there are others. But perhaps the most fundamental of all is simple the orientation toward good of evil. So a person either love’s righteousness, and seeks for equity and truth and justice and kindness and love, or they don’t. If they are casual about such things, and they don’t mind being good, if it suits their purpose, and they don’t mind being evil, if it suits their purpose; that is a special expression of the heart.

    And so the heart expresses itself in everything we do, in everything we say. We can’t do anything without the heart, because the heart is the basic aspect of the human personality; the most fundamental thing of any person.

    MIND
    Let’s move on to mind language then. Mind language is the patterned expressions of the human mind. We say these are harder to read. Father has given us the ability to hide our minds better than the ability to hide our hearts. The ability to hide is in a sense our agency. If everything were absolutely public and there were no place to hide, there would be no space for repentance.

    It is my understanding that in the celestial kingdom, every inhabitant of the celestial kingdom reads hearts and minds directly. That is to say the discernment is so great everybody knows exactly what everybody else is thinking and feeling inside. They don’t have to say a word. I presume there is no verbal communication in the celestial kingdom. Simply people read each other, read each other’s intentions and thoughts and feelings directly. Well now, if you’ve had a chance to repent and get yourself in shape that’s wonderful. But here in this world we get to hide that a little bit. We don’t hide it from Heavenly Father, or from spiritually gifted persons, but most people aren’t awfully spiritual, and most people have to guess what is going on in our minds. It is easier as I say to guess what’s going on in the heart, because there is so many evidences of that.

    But mind language is simply our ideas; what we think. And so we express our mind language in our concepts. We take concepts and put them together, for instance, if you’ve successfully navigated the various locations of these Education Week lectures the last few days that means you have some sense of a map in your mind about the BYU campus. And if it were not for that map in your mind, you couldn’t navigate the system. And so if you have a certain belief about the BYU campus, that belief doesn’t have to be exactly accurate. It can be skewed in various ways and you can still get to your destination on time as long as certain essential relationships are right. You might have the distances all wrong but the directions might be right etc. And so you eventually get there. But nevertheless, you’re mind language is simply the ideas in which you think about the universe.

    Now mind language has several dimensions. We have in our mind what we call the truth, but we also have in our minds other variations of that which for the past would be “what might have been” and for the future it is “What could be”. So, we have in our minds what was, what is, and what will be. That’s one set of beliefs, but we have another set of beliefs: what might have been, in the past, what might have been right now, and what could be in the future. And so we do a great deal of thinking about what could be.

    Now if we’re the recriminating type, we really like to lay it on people, and we go back and harbor in our minds all these “what might have beens”. When somebody challenges us and finds fault we lay on them “what might have been” had they done something different. That’s a way of counterattacking; defending ourselves. It isn’t especially effective, but it seems to be a rather popular way of acting.

    But we spend a great deal of time thinking about what might be. We had this sense of what will be if nothing changes. But then if we do something maybe something else will happen. And so we have to have this in mind and this and this is our ability to plan and to project the future and shape the future according to our own desires. So if we don’t want to be hungry tonight, we make some kind of thought as to what to do to prepare for that contingency. There are fifty different ways to solve the problem. So we find some solution that happens to be attractive to us. And begin to set in motion those thoughts and feelings that will lead us to do the things that will produce the satisfaction we want. So our mind language is connected both with truth “what is” and with possibilities of things.

    And so we express ourselves constantly. A little child, as soon as they come into the world, they begin to build an image of the universe. They are very good at it. Little children are extremely bright and quickly begin to construct a world to figure out what is going on, who’s good, who’s bad, what you can to depend on, can’t depend on, and so forth. Very soon, they have world all built in their mind. Now the interesting thing is when we actually think and act we don’t think and act in the real world, we think and act in our minds. That’s all our consciousness can get around.

    Our consciousness is limited to our brains, apparently to a small portion of the brain. And so in our brains we live and move and have our being. Now this body is and extension of that brain, but we know we don’t touch with our hands when I reach out and touch this podium. I’m feeling it back here, I’m really sensing it back here. In my mind I’m projecting it out to here. But where I’m actually feeling it is right here as if it were out here. And similarly with everything we experience. It is actually taking back here in the back of our heads. And so in this we represent the world in our heads, it is where we live and think and move and judge.

    Now it is true that our body is in the real world, but our body sends us sensations, some of which we can interpret, some of which we can’t. We make the best of these sensations, some noises we can’t interpret, some noises we can. Some sights we see we can get a significance for them and fit them into our pattern. Some we can’t. For different persons there is a different percentage of things they look at around them that they can understand. Some understand a lot some don’t understand very much. But everybody has to understand something to be able to survive as a human being.

    So, we need to be able to have a mind that is adequate to our environment. There are then, languages of mind. And these languages are the ideas that we build in our minds to represent the universe so that we can live and make what we think are wise decisions. Consisting basically of beliefs, of strategies for achieving our desires, and for readings of other people and their intentions.

    Now we build an image of each person we meet, and we interpret them in terms of that image. That image is our mind language expression or our caricature of that person somewhat like a cartoonist. Instead of drawing on paper we draw on our minds. We draw an image of the face, we draw an image of personality, we construct a heart with some of its variables that we talked about. We type the person as being smart or not so smart, linguistic or not very linguistic, and so forth. All kinds of things we characterize them as. Not that we are putting them down, we just have to know those things to know who it is we are talking to. Those are things we have to do to have a picture of one another. I say it is a caricature, because it is never exactly right. We are not given the ability to get the real absolute truth of things, we only approximate things. The more experience we have with people, the more our image of them comes in relationship to the truth. Each day it gets closer and closer. But we can be badly fooled. So we always have to be careful that’s why it pays to be humble. When we begin to suppose we know everything, that we’ve go everything figured out, that is when the roof is about to fall in.

    So we have these different mind languages in which we express ourselves. All mind language is simply an expression of the desires of the heart. We build the kind of world which we think exists, which we want to believe in. We build the kind of possible world that includes the things we would like to achieve. We build the kind of people the caricatures of people around us into the kinds of persons we’d like them to be.

    Again, we have to have a dose of reality with that and recognize we may be wrong. Well, anyway, that’s mind language. We use mind language constantly when we think. Some people have a rather narrowly developed mind language, others have widely developed. Vocabulary is a pretty good measure of mind language. It’s not the sole measure, because sometimes people are very good at thinking about things about which they have no words.

    Now reading is a form of mind language. When you pick up a book, you normally see black marks on a white piece of paper. The marks have to be. But what you do is you sit there and study the marks, and see patterns in the marks. And you take the normal meanings of those patterns and begin to build an imaginative world out of them. And your ability to read is usually just a function of the development of your mind language.

    The best way to teach somebody to read books is to talk to them a great deal. To expose them to a lot of verbal language so that they get used to building images in their mind. And then when they pick up a book and start looking at the black marks on the white page they use that same facility they’ve used with heard words to do it with the black marks and away they go.

    Children that are read to, normally have a very good vocabulary, and have a very well developed imagination by the time they go to school. The ones that are not read to do not have as well-developed imagination because they have not been exposed to as wide a vocabulary nor as varied a scenery as people who have been read to have.

    And so people who do a lot of traveling have a bigger mind vocabulary because they have all kinds of ideas in their mind about things and places other people just don’t have. To be parochial is to have a narrow mind language. To be broad means to have many experiences and to be able to interpret in many ways and variations.

    STRENGTH
    Now we come to strength language. Strength language is what we do with our body. Expressions of the human physical body. The strength language of itself does not have meaning. It is only a signal, and the signal is always indeterminate. The meaning of the signal is what is going on in the heart and mind of the sender. Since most people can’t read the heart and mind of the sender they simply “invent” or “guess” the meaning of the signal. And they build a projection on the basis of that guess. So we hear each other’s noises, see each other’s faces, see each other’s hand gestures and we create and imaginative scenario as to what they might be saying in that process.

    It’s amazing that we do well with language as we do. I’m convinced that in college classes the communication seldom rises above seventy-five percent. And the first day of class it is always about ten to twenty percent. As time goes on, things get better. But sometimes you read a book, or hear a talk in church, and the person is just talking way over your head and almost nothing gets through. We just don’t have the ability to imagine anything that fits with those words. So part of speaking, projecting language, is to size up what language your audience understands and speak in that language. It’s typical at times for people who don’t care about others for people not to do that. People who care, watch their audience, and try to read their attitudes by their reactions. As you sit there, you are reacting, every one of you to me as I speak. If I’m good at reading you, I can tell your positive input or negative input, and so forth. And if I’m wise I will use that to adjust what I say when I say it.

    So there are different physical languages. There is first of all body language. Body language is simply how we control our body to indicate certain things. All of our verbal language exists in the context of body language. Verbal language cannot be understood except you put it in the matrix or context of a physical surrounding and a body language. It is the only way we can make verbal language mean anything is by ostensive definition, that is to say, some fundamental definitions you have to point, show, and then the person begins to figure out what the norms are. And the meanings for those symbols. Now, with that we build up our entire repertoire of language. But strength language is the basic fulcrum of our communication with each other through which we build up our understanding. Now spiritual language is there also, and that’s very important. In speaking after the human — our strength is the fulcrum on which everything turns when we communicate with each other.

    So, there are different kinds of body languages. Dancing is a body language. Playing soccer is a body language. Carpentry is a body language. In each of these enterprises what we are doing is we are going through patterned expressions or motions of the human body by which to accomplish something in the physical world. And so, just about everything we do, we do by the way of the languages we have learned. It’s all patterns and norms and we express ourselves to achieve our desires. Not in a random haphazard way, that would not be a language. But in a specialized patterned way are our languages.

    So there are all kinds of these languages, anything we do regularly, all forms of acting, are simply languages. Then there are colloquial human languages. These are the mother tongues of the human race. Strictly speaking, there is a mother tongue for each individual family. No mother teaches her children exactly the same language as any other mother. Because no two mothers speak exactly the same language. There is no such thing as `the’ English language. There are several hundred english languages that have something in common. But the one on this end is totally incomprehensible to the one on this end. Even though they’re both english. Bill Meyers has demonstrated this very well if you’ve seen his series on the english language.

    So there is a family of languages. Languages are always familial. The same mother tongue is no accident. Mothers are the purveyors of language. It is the mothers that teach children language. The first language children learn from their mother is heart language. They learn whether the mother is afraid or confident, steady or not steady, and so forth. And the child picks up on that emotional pattern and begins to be like that from the moment of birth. The child picks up on body language, very quickly the child picks up on spoken language and begins to form ideas. And begins to build a mind world. A world where he can speak his own mind language. And by the time the child is two or three, it is well adapted into the human languages, doing very well with expressing itself in heart, mind and strength.

    Then there is another kind of language, there are artificial human languages. Most artificial human languages are `technical’ languages, or `specialized’ languages which people use to communicate with each other for particular purposes. Colloquial language, or the mother tongue language are always deliberately vague, ambiguous. That’s one of the glories of language. That is both deliberate and not deliberate. That is to say, we do it sometimes deliberately so that we can’t be pinned down as to what we are saying. Sometimes we would like to express ourselves more particularly, but don’t have the vocabulary.

    When human beings find themselves wanting to speak very precisely and do not want to be misunderstood, so that there can be absolute communication they always go to a technical language. And a technical language, there is only one meaning. And if the technical language allows two or more you haven’t got a good technical language. So you refine and refine and refine until the signals are all unambiguous. You can communicate exactly and know what your wants and needs of the situation are. So if you are a carpenter, and you go on the job, you have to speak the carpenters language. English will not do. If you are a basketball player, you go on the court, (Say you are a pro basketball player) you don’t speak english. The language of pro basketball is black english, and if you are white, you have to speak black english or you don’t play basketball. That’s all there is to it. And so forth.

    There are specialized languages, the language of science over the whole world is the same…bad english. Broken english is the standard scientific language anywhere you go in the world. Anyone who pretends to be a scientist will speak to you about scientific things in broken english. Now your english might be better than that, but that is the standard scientific language. And it works, that is the beautiful part of it. That there is sufficient communication plus it is a technical language because the person is expressing himself very carefully in specialized terms. And the communication succeeds. The grammar doesn’t have to right. It’s the meaning that you get that you formulate in connection with what you say that has to be right. The grammar can be terrible.

    Grammar is all artificial and invented anyway. There is no such thing as `correct grammar’. Grammar is always a matter of norms. Now that doesn’t mean to say I am against grammar. I am very much for good grammar. Because when you use a standard grammar you tend to stabilize a language. When you break the grammar patterns. You cause a change in the language. And change puts you out of touch with certain groups. Now some people do this deliberately. When you wish to have a clique of people that you control, what you do is you form a private language for that group. You invent new words for some common meanings, common terms, and speak in that language with the people in that group who know what you mean. And pretty soon you find that there are `insiders’ and `outsiders’ and that gives you a group identity. Because you have a language now.

    Now, language is the vehicle for group identification. If you wish to join a group, the only way you can usually do it is first of all to master language. You may have to do some other things to but if you don’t master the language, you’re never in. So, if you are in a group of college graduates, if you don’t speak college language, they will not count you as one of their number. It doesn’t matter how many degrees you have. If you can’t handle the language, you don’t count. If you can handle the language, (there are people who have never been to medical school who fake being MD’s.) they’ve been around enough that they can handle the language. They get by with other doctors and do beautifully. Because they know the language. That is the main thing you learn when you go to medical school is the language. In any profession, that is what you learn.

    I am a philosopher, what do we teach students in philosophy? The language of philosophy. And to become philosophical is simply to be able to express yourself in the normal historic philosophic patterns. Simply to learn the specialized jargon of philosophy. That is what constitutes being a philosopher. And so it is with almost every discipline in the world. These are artificial languages that people learn to accomplish specific tasks. The more languages a person knows, usually the more powerful they are. You can take any colloquial language and render it a technical language simply by being careful how you use it. So, if the need demands, you become careful. There are different ways of being careful. If you’re trying to meet somebody on campus that you’ve missed the last few times, you pretty soon get pretty good at doing it so that you don’t miss them. You have them say where they’re going to be and you say where you’re going to be and you repeat it about three times, you have a backup for where you’ll be if that fails, and so forth. Eventually you get to the point, if succeeding is important to you, you figure out a way to succeed. And the way to succeed is to be so technical about language that you cannot be misunderstood. So there are these strength languages.

    MIGHT
    Lets go to might languages. Might language then, is the result of all that we do from the heart, mind, and strength languages. So if you were to go to my home and look at it you would see my trail, and my wife’s trail, and our children’s trail. It is a collective trail, but nevertheless, certain features of it are mine, certain features of it are my wife’s, certain features of it are my children’s. But you can read us in the trail that we have left in our home. The way the furniture is arranged, the kind of art-work that what we have on the walls, the kind of dishes that we collect, the kind of layout of the house, the way the grounds are kept, the way the automobiles look. (Just don’t look in the garage, that’s my territory).

    But anyway, like it or not, all those things beray us, that is to say, they are our linguistic expression. And a person can look at those things and read us by looking at what we have left. So, to can read a person you see what is interesting to them, what is valuable to them, what isn’t interesting to them. Some people don’t care about clothing at all. They wear the craziest getup that don’t match at all. Other people are very conscious of clothing, and they leave a very different impression on us. The result on other people is the might language. Some people are orderly, and wish to be precise and careful about all things. Others are orderly about some things and not about others. And again, that is an expression of the self.

    So, our might is the trail that we leave. Again, like it or not, the happiness of our spouse is one way you can read your own might language. If your spouse is happy, that means you are expressing yourself well to your spouse. If you’re happy, they’re expressing themselves well. Our children are might language. Children have their own individual identities, we cannot control them. Nevertheless, a great can be read about parents simply by looking at the children. You can’t read everything, but you can read a lot. Some people use priesthood as their might, they perform lots of ordinances and do lots of things in the power of God. And the trail that they leave is a language trail which can be read and linked back to the nature of the person that left the trail.

    Now, the Savior tells us that we must assess people. He tells us to be careful about judging them. We must judge righteous judgement. If we have to judge the goodness or the badness we better do it by his power and his authority. We nevertheless have to assess what they are. And he tells us, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” Now the words people speak are not their fruits. The words people speak are their strength language. But the results of their deeds are their fruits. That’s their might language. The real way for us to read each other is the might language. And the Savior commends that to us.

    Now again, he doesn’t read us that way alone, he reads that, he judges according to our deeds, but he also judges us according to the thoughts and intents of our heart. Which means our heart and our mind. They are visible to him, he reads them directly. And thus knows us completely, and makes no mistakes in judging us. He knows exactly what we are and therefore can succor us in our need exactly as we need it.

    Well, these are the languages in which human beings express themselves. Repentance, to speak linguistically, is to change the way we express ourselves. Is to change our language so that our fruits are meet. That is to say so that they are more like those that Christ would produce.

    Repentance is changing our expression so that achieve different might results in the world. To do that we normally have to change our heart language. That is to say, to assess our own hearts. To size ourselves up and to find where we are weak and where we are strong. And to be very candid about that. And then pray for those aspect of heart that will enable us to do better. If we are vacillating, we need to pray for steadiness. If we are weak, we need to pray for strength. Those are all spiritual gifts we can have if we will pray for them in the right way. When we get the heart language correct then we pray for the correct mind language.

    The correct mind language means to really understand what is going on, to know the truth about things. And to see the real possibilities of things. Some of the possibilities are not real, that is to say we think that might happen but it really can’t. It isn’t in the cards we might say. But some things are possible that we don’t even dream of. More things can be done through the priesthood I think than most people ever suppose. Usually we have a rather limited view of what you can and can’t do with the priesthood. The possibilities, I think, are almost endless. And the time will come, when virtually all that we do, if not all, will be done through priesthood. As an expression of the language of God. It may turn out that the Adamic language is simply the priesthood language. I don’t know. Maybe just the language of God expressed in the pattern of God. To control things and accomplish results that are good using the principles of righteousness.

    So, as we correct our heart language and our mind language then we make more precise our strength language. What we actually do. And that makes better fruit. That is to say, our might language will then improve. We can’t say we have repented until the fruits change. But when the fruits are good then we know that we have repented.

    So, this is the message about languages. How many languages do you speak? Well, you speak many. And my understanding is it pays for us to be very good at language. We ought to study the expressions we make. We ought to study our own hearts, and correct our expression. We ought to study our own minds, and correct our minds as much as possible. We ought to study our own bodies, how we express ourselves, how well we communicate to others.

    Study our might, take a candid assessment. What am I? looking at my achievements, my accomplishments, what am I really? Where do I need to repent, what’s the next thing I need to do. What’s the thing that hurts most in my kingdom that needs to be fixed. And since it depends on me, it has to be fixed in here in my heart and mind first. And I will fix me, and then it can be fixed. Well, that’s what repentance is.

    Now we have a minute or two for questions:

    Q: The question is, what was the Adamic language like?
    A: I don’t know, I suppose with you that with the Adamic language, expression is quite precise. We know that when we go back to the old languages, the further back we get, the more complicated the grammar is. That is to say, the more precise the expression is. As we come forward, the vocabularies increase, the number of words we have increases, but the grammar collapses. And so we aren’t quite sure what’s being said. Even though we know what we’re talking about. So, there are these variables in language that I don’t know.

    Q: I a have heard that English has something like seven hundred thousand words, French has like two hundred thousand. I always assumed that English was there for (I can’t think of a better word right now) but a superior language. That there is more variation and that you can get more precise in your definitions.

    A: The comment is that English has many more words than French and therefore English is a better language. That doesn’t necessarily follow. The reason English has so many words in it, (the number I had in mind was 450,000 but the difference is not important) the reason English has so many words is because it is a smash of so many languages. It has all of French essentially, all of Anglo-Saxon, which is the Germanic background. Plus a lot of other things tucked in there. And therefore it has a big vocabulary. That doesn’t mean you can say more things with it. The French pride themselves on expressing themselves rather exactly. They believe that is something important to them. They want to be very clear and precise when they speak. That’s why the language of diplomacy for a long time was French. Because that was cultivated in that language. The French are very careful not to let their language shift. They are very conservative about language. They have their national board that tries to hold things down, and not let all these foreign words creep in and adulterate the language and so forth. So they specifically hold it.

    Now, the acting vocabulary of a normal American is about ten thousand words. That isn’t very many compared with the 250,000 say in French. The passive vocabulary of the normal American is about fifteen thousand words. Somebody who is really educated might have a passive vocabulary of about 30,000 words. But you see, none of us tap the language. We don’t use the power of the language. To be quite blunt about it, most of us don’t need to. The kinds of endeavors that we are engaged in from day to day don’t require a great vocabulary. Because you can make millions of combinations out of five hundred characters and that suffices for most things.

    So, the power of language is not in the extent of it’s vocabulary. Usually in the extent in which you can be precise in expressing yourself. That is to say, to be understood very exactly. And that’s something again, that’s hard to come by.

    Q: Sister Nello points out that in a dealing with people of foreign nationalities, when you are trying to teach them English, you have to begin with going on feelings and on emotions using body language.
    A: I think that’s very common. When two cultures meet there is always this inability to communicate. The people want to communicate, so when two cultures meet there is always an adaptation. That’s what is called pidgin. Pidgin language is where part of one language and part of another starts to be used by both of them so that they can begin to communicate. Pidgin is almost always all physically oriented. It is full of nouns, very few verbs, almost no adjectives at all, no adverbs and only one tense. People find that that doesn’t do very well. And so they develop it further. And you get the next stage of language which is creole. Creole language is the next stage. It is a language that has adjectives and adverbs and tenses. And then the full- blown language has all the cases.

    So, we find that it takes a good many parameters to trust what we wish to express. But, sometimes we don’t wish to express. English, for instance, is losing the subjunctive. It’s virtually gone for all intents and purposes as a grammatical form. Now the function is maintained and people still can understand when we mean a subjunctive. But we have lost the ability to express it clearly. And so the language has degenerated in that sense, though the function we were still able to save.

    Q: What is the relation of ordination in the priesthood to the expression of the priesthood as a language.

    A: What is the explanation of ordination to the expression of the priesthood as a language. Well, my understanding is that ordination is simply an expression, one of the expressions of priesthood language. And that blessing is another. Sometimes they happen in the same speech, by the same laying on of hands. But that ordination is a specific transfer of some kind of power or authority.

    Q: ?

    A: The language, the occasion of the ordination as I understand it is the occasion by which the power is transmitted to the person by God. But the language itself does not transmit the power. It is simply the signal by which the power is being transmitted. If that makes sense.

    One more and we have to quit. Brother.

    Q: Here on this earth, can we be perfected in any of the languages.

    A: Can we be perfected in any of the languages on this earth. Well, I think, yes, the important language to become perfected in is heart language. If we will study what the heart of the Savior is, and then work and work until we get that down. There are just a few parameters there. It is not a complex language. And if we go out of this life with that language learned everything else good will follow. But apparently if we fail on that, we have kind of missed the boat as a human being.

    Q: In your opinion, would God’s language have a very limited vocabulary?

    A: Does God’s language have a limited vocabulary. My answer is no. I take it that his language is different from ours. Our language is all generalizations. I use the word `chair’ and it covers fifty kinds of pieces of furniture. When he uses a word it always means a precise thing. Now he probably has the ability to use general words to. But he expresses himself, I take it the language is actually mind language, ideas. He shapes an idea in his mind and communicates it as an idea. It does not need to go through a symbolic vehicle. And therefore his communication is always precise and sure. When he gives a message he speaks to us in our heart and mind in our language. So that we cannot misunderstand. We don’t have to interpret, we know what he says. Does that make sense?

    Q: That makes sense, but what that is saying to be is that he always speaks in generalities.

    A: No.

    Q: Because what you are saying is that if he has one word for `chair’ and we have one word for `chair’ we need to create a specific brown chair.

    A: He tells us to build a chair, he will show us a specific chair to build, I think. Like he did Nephi with the boat. He showed him the boat he was to build. And it wasn’t a generic boat, it was a specific boat. And he built it and it worked beautifully. For whatever that’s worth.

    Q: Well, he showed the brother of Jared to build a barge. And that barge was different from a boat, he used a different word there.

    A: I agree, what’s your point?

    Q: So you’re saying there is only one kind of boat.

    A: No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m sorry, we’re over time, thank you very much.

    END

  • Faith and Repentance

    Chauncey Riddle

    The time has come for us to begin.

    This series has to do with the principles of the restored gospel. It may seem a little peculiar to talk about faith and repentance since that’s the main theme of everything that is talked about in the Church. Still, I find for myself there is a certain refreshment in going back over the basic things. I don’t listen to music because I have never listened to it before. I listen to it because I have heard it before, and I like it. And I find the same thing with the gospel.

    One of the beautiful things about the gospel is that it never gets old. In fact, it continually grows, and sharpens, and refines. So I would like to talk about the principles of the gospel.

    The principles by themselves are not enough. That is to say, this is a complicated discussion, because the principles have to be put into a context. The context is what we call theology, our situation. When you put the theology, or our situation, and the reality which we find ourselves together with the principles then we have the gospel. The Savior outlines the two of them together very wonderfully in 3rd Nephi 27, if I could review that with you. This is setting the stage for what I have to say.

    He says in verse thirteen, (3rd Nephi 27:13)

    “I have given you my gospel, This is the gospel, that I came into the world to do the will of my Father. Because my Father sent me.”

    The most fundamental thing to know. Is that the Savior came for one purpose only, to do his Father’s will. That is to say, to keep His covenant with Father.

    “And my Father sent me that I might be lifted up on the cross.”

    The main thing the Father wanted him to do, besides obey him, was to die for us, that the New and Everlasting Covenant might be made possible.

    “And after that I had been lifted up on the cross, that I might draw all men unto me. That as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father to stand before me. To be judged of their works, whether they be good, or whether they be evil.”

    And so, here we come into the scene. We also are children of God. Also having the opportunity to do the will of the Father. But because the Savior came and was perfect, and atoned for our sins, He will draw us unto Himself. He will judge us. And we will see how many times we chose for God, and how many times we chose for self, for selfishness or evil.

    “For this cause I have been lifted up, therefore, according to the power of the father, I will draw all men unto me, that they may be judged according to their works. And it shall come to pass that whoso repenteth, and is baptized in my name, shall be filled. and if he endure to end behold him will I hold guiltless before my Father at the day when I shall stand to judge the world.”

    Enduring to the end, as I understand it is to fulfill the purpose of repentance. Repentance begins before baptism, but ends long after.

    “He that endureth not to the end, the same is he that is hewn down and cast into the fire.”

    From whence they can no more return, because of the justice of the Father. Justice is Father’s law. And they cannot return to Him if they have broken the law. And there is no way to mend it. We mend it, of course, through Christ.

    “This is the word which He hath given unto the children of men, For this cause he fulfilleth the words which he hath given. And he lieth not, but fulfilleth all his words.”

    He fulfills his own law. He is exact and precise in doing so.

    “And no unclean thing can enter into His Kingdom. Therefore nothing entereth into His rest save it be those who have washed their garments in my blood because of their faith and the repentance of all their sins, and their faithfullness unto the end.”

    “Now this is the commandment, repent all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name. That ye may be sancitified by the reception of the Holy Ghost. That ye may stand spotless before me at the last day. Verily, Verily, I say unto you, this is my gospel.”

    Now, with that as a background, let us focus on faith and repentance. Let us begin with repentance. Repentance is a “what.” Whereas faith is a “how”. Repentance is what we are supposed to become. What we are supposed to leave, and what we are supposed to come to. And faith is how we do it. So, as I understand it, very simply, what we are to repent from is our old self. That is to say, our old habits, our old ideas, our old feelings. In other words, our sins. We repent from our sins. And we turn to Christ. To come into the measure of the fullness of his stature. To think his thoughts, to have his feelings. To do his acts. And thus to fulfill what he is.

    Now, that Latin root for repentance, is to turn. The Greek root means to change one’s mind. The Hebrew root means to return to God. But the important thing about repentance is that you have taken all of those things into account. No one of them captures fully what repentance is. Repentance is simply turning from wherever we are, from whatever we are, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. We have to change our minds in that process. Not only our minds, but our hearts, We have to return to God. We have all gone out of the way, that is to say we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Therefore, we must return to God, and that return is repentance.

    Now the scriptures give us a very careful account of what it means to repent. Let’s read from Alma chapter 5.

    “And now, if ye are not the sheep of the good shepherd, of what fold are ye? Behold I say unto you,” This is Alma 5:33. “Behold I say unto you that that the Devil is your shepherd, and ye are of his fold. And now who can deny this? Behold, whosoever denieth this is a lier and a child of the Devil.”

    We have two alternatives, and two only. Do we serve God, or do we serve ourselves. In other words, righteousness or selfishness. Good and evil. There are many degrees of evil. There are some who mix a little good into their evil, there are some who mix a lot of good into their evil. But the question is, will we turn to good. My understanding is, that before we entered into eternity, that is to say, before the judgement, everyone of us will have made the decision to turn to Christ. We will finally see that selfishness will not do it for us. Even we don’t want the selfishness. The only ones that doesn’t apply to, of course, are the Sons of Perdition. They accept Christ, and then turn back to selfishness, preferring selfishness to Him. But everyone else, will eventually see that only in Christ is their good.

  • Agency Isn’t Free, 1991

    May 1991

    Like freedom, agency isn’t free; it is preserved and enhanced only by very intelligent use. He who takes if for granted soon finds himself in narrow straits.

    Agency is power to choose how to act, then to carry out the chosen act. The more power we have, the more agency we have. The more choices for action we have, the more agency we have. Knowledge is what makes choice possible.

    To have a lot of knowledge does not mean that one should do all of the things one knows to do. A good person probably does less than 1% of the things he could choose to do.

    Our Father in Heaven gives each of us our agency. He stimulates our minds to understand our environment and gives us power to act. His purpose is to see how well we use this agency. For He has also given us a knowledge of good and evil, and He wants to see which of His offspring will only do good with their agency.

    Our heritage as children of a kind and powerful Father in Heaven is to be heirs all of the knowledge and power which Father enjoys. But he can share with us only as we very carefully use the little bit of agency we now have for good: to bless the lives of others through sacrifice. But we are also free to use our agency selfishly, to feather our own nest at the expense of others. The scriptures testify that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor has entered into the heart of man the greatness of the blessings Father purposes to share with us if we will use our present bit of agency for good. (D&C 133:45)

    One of the false notions about our agency is the idea that even God can’t take it away. While it is true that Father will ultimately let us choose our own destiny, that does not mean He will tolerate whatever we choose. As we choose evil, he shortens our agency; that is why he drowned the world in a flood and will yet burn it with fire. As any individual sins, he or she limits his or her future access to knowledge and power. Were it not for repentance, most of us would not be very free.

    Though we have sinned, our eternal agency is vouchsafed to us through the atoning blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Only in Him can we qualify for more knowledge and power, and only through His forgiveness can we have any hope of inheriting all that the Father has.

    The Gospel of Jesus Christ was restored in these latter days so that you and I, and all others whom our Father calls may enjoy a mind and heart expanded through spiritual gifts and power beyond that of natural man to do the good works of godliness. As our minds are filled with the truths of eternity through prayer, study of the scriptures, and meditation in the Lord, our understanding begins to grasp eternity and the purposes and the goodness of our God. As we use the natural power we have as mortals to guide our actions in light of those eternal spiritual gifts, Father sees that we are responsible children and gives us more power, specifically in receiving the Holy Priesthood. If we use both the knowledge and the priesthood power well, He will eventually give us the key to the greatest freedom and agency possible: the gift of a new heart, which never again will choose evil.

    With the new, pure heart, there is no limit to the knowledge and power Father can bestow upon us. He will remake us, in combination with our own efforts, until we have attained the measure of the stature of the fullness of His son, Jesus Christ. Then we are free indeed.

    If we are intelligent, we will seek to know good from evil unerringly, then to apply all of the knowledge and power, all of the agency we have, in the doing of good. This is the price we must pay to gain an increase of that precious agency which is Father’s gift.

    May we say with Joshua: “Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and truth: …And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:14–15)

  • Language, Reality and Sanity, 1991

    March 1991

    1. Communication: One thing affecting another. Two-way communication is conversation (action-reaction cycle). Some conversation is language facilitated. A language is a patterned and socially normed set of items used to converse. All language conversation is based in non-language conversation.

    2. For humans there are four important kinds of conversation:

    1. Conversation with other humans.
    2. Conversation with nature.
    3. Conversation with God (good).
    4. Conversation with Satan (evil).

    Each of these conversations is important because each is inescapable.

    But humans vary greatly in their conversational (language) competence. Mastery of languages makes possible cooperative (mutually beneficial) conversation, which is competent conversation.

    • Cooperative conversation with humans: E.g. exchange of goods and services.
    • Cooperative conversation with nature: E.g. growing a garden which is very productive.
    • Cooperative conversation with God: Hearkening to His guidance as to how to help His other children.
    • Cooperative conversation with Satan: Impossible. Satan acts only to disadvantage those with whom he communicates. But he teaches those who say “yes” to him how to disadvantage other humans and nature to their own temporary advantage; so these persons think they are wise because of the temporary advantage. But it is necessary to master Satan’s Language (temptations) to be able to say “no” to him.

    Humans who have not mastered the respective necessary languages are incompetent communicators. A person may be competent in one kind of conversation (e.g., with humans) and quite incompetent in another kind of conversation (e.g., with nature).

    3. Ability to carry on a competent conversation is sanity. A person who should have become able to be language/conversation competent but has not is unsane/insane (unhealthy).

    Insanity relative to humans: Inability to carry on a cooperative conversation.

    Insanity relative to nature: Inability to get nature to give one what one needs without destroying it.

    Insanity relative to God: Inability to recognize that conversation with Him leads to cooperative conversation with humans and nature, and to have that conversation.

    Insanity relative to Satan: Inability to say “no” to him, to believe that the temporary self-     advantage he promotes are possible long run.

    4. Reality consists of conversations. Be-ing is conversing. To be able to converse competently with humans, nature and God and to say “no” to Satan is to gain a firm grasp on reality and sanity.

    5. The principal barrier to grasping reality and sanity is to learn to converse competently with God and to reject Satan. If one only recognizes the horizontal dimensions of human experience, neglecting the vertical, they cannot grasp reality and sanity.

    God teaches and enables competent conversation (mutually beneficial conversation) with humans and nature, and how to reject Satan and evil.

    Satan promotes evil, which is conversing to benefit self only by disadvantaging the partner in the conversation, which is how to reject God.

    Why do not all humans immediately recognize the presence and difference between God and Satan (good and evil)? This is to ask, Why do not all humans immediately grasp reality and sanity? Some humans grasp reality and sanity immediately, and all will in the end. Meanwhile, some are blinded to reality and sanity because they simply don’t care about anyone but themselves.

    What the long run will bring to them is that they will eventually recognize that as they destroy others, they are actually destroying themselves, for we all exist and prosper only in our conversations with and in the welfare of others. That realization will eventually bring them to reality and sanity.

    1. It is impossible to make sense of reality and sanity without learning to converse correctly with God (good) and Satan (evil).

    The purpose of mortality is not to see who is smart (able to grasp reality and sanity immediately), but rather who cares about others, who can and will carry on cooperative conversations. Those who do not care about others but only about themselves buy and practice Satan’s lies (insanity), that to do evil is advantageous. Thus they temporarily deny reality and revel in insanity.

  • Language, Conversation, Sanity and Reality

    DLLS PROCEEDINGS 1991

    PROCEEDINGS OF THE DESERET LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS SOCIETY 1991 SYMPOSIUM

    BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY MARCH 7-8, 1991

    Language, Conversation, Sanity and Reality

    Chauncey C. Riddle

    Brigham Young University

    PROCEEDINGS OF THE DESERET LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS SOCIETY 1991 SYMPOSIUM BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY MARCH 7-8, 1991 Language, Conversation, Sanity and Reality Chauncey Riddle
    PROCEEDINGS OF THE DESERET LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS SOCIETY 1991 SYMPOSIUM
    BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY MARCH 7-8, 1991
    Language, Conversation, Sanity and Reality
    Chauncey Riddle

    The thesis of this paper is that human being consists of conversations, and that the ability of a person to converse with other beings to the advantage of the other beings is the measure of the person’s sanity.

    1. Human Being is here taken as a verb form, not a noun form.

    While it is possible to understand human beings as entities, as essences with accidents, another way of understanding human beings is to see each of them as what each one does. This does two things. It changes the emphasis from the kind or type, the universal, to the individual. And it also puts the focus on accomplishment rather than on potential. A human being, taken as an essence, is a being of a certain material nature, seen as a standard anatomy with a standard physiology and as a being with special capacity to communicate and to reason. But a human being seen as a doer of deeds is individual­ized into just where and when the individual lives, with what environment that person must cope, and the particular effect that person has on his or her total environment While both analyses are useful, the latter understanding is more pertinent for purposes of this paper.

    2. Communication is one being affecting another being.

    The word communication etymologically means to be within the walls together. Beings which com­municate are not walled off from each other. They are able to affect one another. The affect may be reciprocal or not. Communicative affect may be received as sensory effect, as kinetic effect or as chemical effect Sensory effects are hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, etc. Kinetic effects are such as being moved, as when one person shoves another, or being shot by a bullet or an arrow, etc. Chemical effects are such as being burned by an acid or inhaling carbon monoxide. One special case of sensory affect/effect is using symbols to communicate.

    Everything which happens to a person is communication from some other being. Everything a person does communicates with other beings.

    3. Language is patterned and normed affect/effect. Pattern is configurations of affect and effect which are repeated. Normed patterns are patterns to which some receiver/reader of patterns reacts in some typical manner. To send communications in a patterned and normed manner is to use a language. To react to the patterned and normed affect of another being in a typical and understanding way is to “read” the other being. There are natural languages and artificial lan­guages. Natural languages are seen to operate when a candle flame exhibits a characteristic pattern; a moth reacts in a typical manner by veering into the flame as it flies. Or a pistil reacts chemically to one type of pollen while ignoring others. Or DNA recombines in various ways to form an organism. Artificial languages are human languages which use symbols, the combinations of which are patterned and normed to facilitate human sensory communica­tion. The special case of language communication is a standard human language such as English.

    4. Conversation is continuing language communication between two or more beings.

    Bees converse when transmitting data about nectar sources by dancing. A bird converses with a nest using twigs and grass until the nest satisfies it for nesting. All deliberate human action is a form of conversation with something or someone. Growing a garden is a conversation with a plot of ground and living plants. Playing flute is a conversation with a musical instrument, and the music is a conversation with an audience if the audience responds. The special case of conversation is when two human beings speak back and forth with each other in a language such as English.

    5. There are four special kinds of conversations which human beings participate in, each being differentiated by the different kinds of partners in conversation.

    The basic partner in human conversations is nature and physical objects. Learning to observe, read, and react in conversation with one’s physical surroundings is the initial human task. This task is to develop a language ability to relate to other natural and physical objects so that one may converse with them. Such basic conversation is seen in a baby crying and being comforted, in the baby tasting everything, or in reaching for everything.

    The second partner in human conversations is other humans now acting as symbolic communicators rather than as physical, natural beings. As the child begins to associate sounds and actions with each other, consciousness of spoken language is formed. Then other persons are no longer just physical objects, but physical objects with whom the child can converse, say in English.

    The third partner in human conversations is God. Little children have an awareness of communi­cating with a spiritual being who teaches them of good. If they are taught to honor this opportunity, it grows and increases in importance in their lives as they mature. If they are taught to disavow this opportunity, they turn from it and the opportunity atrophies while it is no longer part of the person’s conscious conversations.

    The fourth partner in human conversations is Satan. Satan is the spiritual person of evil who promotes lies and selfishness. When humans do not acknowledge the existence of Saran they attribute his influence to themselves or as the residua] effect of some other person upon them; this causes misinterpretation of the conversations with Satan. But if Satan is recognized as a conversational partner, his influence can be dealt with directly and more effectively.

    Conversing with natural and physical objects and with human beings as symbolic communicators serves as a horizontal axis of human conversation, or communication within the physical realm.

    Conversing with God and Satan serves as a vertical axis of conversation, or communication within the spiritual realm. It is popular to pretend that only horizontal communication exists or can exist. But to ignore the spiritual is to ignore the inner feelings and idea development which human beings experience. To attribute all of our inner experience to natural, horizontal sources is to deny the existence of the spiritual realm. Part of the thesis of this paper is that such denial is an important source of insanity in the human population. To be sane one must deal with all of one’s experience and conversations, not with just a selective part of it.

    6. Some regularities which pertain to human conversations:

    Law 1. Conversations with all four partners, with natural/physical things, with other humans as symbolic communicators, with God, and with Satan. are necessary for normal human life. (Not to deal with one or more of these partners in a deliber­ate conscious way is to abdicate agency or steward­ship in !lull area. To do so is to be less than fully human by not conversing with a potential partner, only receiving communication, not responding in deliberate conversation. That is like owning a piece of property but not paying any attention to it, letting it go wild and letting whoever and whatever to dwell and act thereon.)

    Law 2. If human beings converse only with natural physical things, they never develop normal human language capacity and are limited to conver­sations with natural/physical things. (They do not gain human language, nor agency. Having a devel­oped human language is what makes it possible to converse normally with other humans, with God, and with Satan. Without a language we can receive influence, but cannot converse as an agent may.)

    Law 3. God communicates with human beings in many ways (in God men live, move, have mentality, etc.), but he converses with them princi­pally to enable them to advantage other humans and natural/physical things in their communications with other beings.

    Law 4. The ability to advantage other beings has its ultimate source in God, and he is the sole ultimate source of such conversational ability. This is to say that God is the sole source of good. But human beings also help each other and help natural beings through the influence which derives from God.

    Law 5. Satan converses with human beings only to teach them to disadvantage other beings (other humans. natural/physical things, and God) in their conversations.

    7. Conversational competence is being able to converse well enough with a partner in conversation to have the option either to advantage or to disadvantage that partner.

    To advantage a partner is to give the partner more being (conversational attainment) by sharing with the partner truth. kindness, power, etc. To disadvantage a partner in conversation is to converse so as to disable the partner through lies, insults, wounds. etc. Thus conversational competence is the measure to which one is able to do both good and evil to a partner in conversation. One may be minimally competent to converse with one human partner, but be able to have a hundred times the competence to communicate with another human partner. To be a minimum normal human being is to have minimal conversational competence with all four kinds of partners, physical and spiritual. Which is to say that most human beings can and do converse with all four kinds of partners. Some are very good at such conversing, and some are not. Some have conversations with many kinds of natu­ral things and many human beings, while others have few such conversational partners. To be a god is to have maximal conversational competence with every other being. Agency begins with minimal human conversational competence and maximizes in the power of a god.

    8. Sanity is the use of human agency (conversational competence) to advantage natural, human and godly partners in conversation.

    Since the power to advantage partners in conversation comes only in conversations with God, humans are sane only when they are able [0 converse with God and then use that conversation with God as a basis for advantaging natural and human partners in conversation. When one advan­tages natural or human partners in conversation one automatically advantages God. When one uses conversation with Satan to disadvantage humans, or nature, or God, one is not sane.

    The reason for me connection between sanity and advantaging partners in conversation has to do with the nature of reality. The reality of a being is not what it is but what it does. (What it is an artificial attempt to capture the being apart from what it does, bur this is always a caricature of the being.) What every being does is communicate. Most of the communications of every being are conversations. Most of what a being is, its reality, is its conversa­tions with other beings. Thus every being has a career, which is the history of its conversations with other beings. Few beings are static entities, but are also being advantaged and disadvantaged (enlarged and diminished) in every conversation (hey have, and are advantaging and disadvantaging others in every conversation, each being using its agency. When humans converse with God, he only advantages them. When human beings converse with Satan, he only converses to disadvantage the human beings, thus to advantage himself at the expense of others as his kingdom and dominion increase. Human beings are agents, which means they may choose either to advantage those with whom they converse (deriving from their conversa­tions with God) or to disadvantage them (deriving from their conversations with Satan).

    When a being disadvantages another being, that disadvantaging of the other being results in reduced conversational competence for that other being. But if one being reduces the conversational competence of another being, the one being thus reduces the opportunity to converse with that disadvantaged being. Since the amount of being a being has is the sum of its conversations with others, when one reduces the conversational competence of another being one reduces the being of that being and also reduces the being of the self because one can no longer converse as much with that being. A classic case of this kind of disadvantaging is found in Cain killing Abel. Cain disadvantaged Abel in slaying him, hoping thereby to gain his brother’s goods. But the goods soon perish, and Cain is diminished because he no longer has a brother Abel with whom he can converse and rejoice. To disadvantage another being results in the reduction of one’s own being. Pursued far enough. disadvantaging others results in the attainment of the narrowed being and diminished stature of Satan, as do the Sons of Perdition.

    Sanity is wholeness. The ultimate of wholeness is God, who advantages all beings and thus enjoys greater being by conversing more and more with all those beings. Whenever a person learns from God how to advantage another being and does so, that person enlarges the being of the other person, also enlarges the being of God, and also enlarges his or her own being. This is sanity, or a reaching towards wholeness. To disadvantage another being is to diminish that being, to diminish God and to diminish self; which is insanity, that which detracts from wholeness.

    Satan is the advocate of insanity or unwhole­ness. His basic ploy is: If you disadvantage your partner, that will advantage you. That lie is answered in the paragraph preceding. But Satan has another ploy: If you disadvantage others, I (Satan) will give you special advantages. And he sometimes does: short-run, physical advantages. To accept a short run advantage from Satan in order to disadvan­tage another being is selling that other being. The question every person should then ask is: Can a being who tempts you to disadvantage others and who pays you to disadvantage others in the short run be likely [0 give you any advantage 1n the long run? To accept a temporary advantage from one who promotes disadvantage is also insanity.

    One of Satan’s lies is that the amount of goods and happiness in the world is a finite sum. In such a zero-sum situation, the less my neighbor has, the more J can have. So part of the human reaction is based on whether one believes Satan’s lie that this is a zero-sum game or whether one believes God’s promise that his riches are infinite. Those who believe in advantaging others have little trouble believing in God, and those who truly believe in God have little trouble believing that it is good to advantage others. Those who don’t mind disadvan­taging others are fearful for their own welfare (selfish). do not believe in nor trust God, and are willing to believe the zero-sum idea. So they go on disadvantaging others. Eventually (the long run) they will understand that disadvantaging others also disadvantages themselves, and they will stop acting insanely.

    9. The cure for insanity is conversing with God. Those who will not learn to communicate com­petently with God are doomed to some measure of insanity until they learn to have such competent con­versation with God. The more competent one becomes in conversing with God, the more one can advantage one’s partners and the more sane one can be.

    10. Happiness is being sane. Happiness is increasing the being of one’s partners in conversation by continually advantaging them. It is a rejoicing in helping others to grow in helping others to grow in helping others to grow. .. ad infinitum. Man was created by God to be happy. Satan was given to man by God to provide an opposition so that the choice to advantage one’s neighbors or to disadvantage them would be a real and live option. Only when people converse compe­tently with God can they chose to be like God in advantaging others. But only as they also converse competently with Satan by saying an explicit “No” to his influence does conversation with God and chosen obedience to God become meritorious. Thus one can freely choose advantaging others over disadvantaging others only if one is conversationally competent and makes a deliberate, explicit choice to favor the affect of God over the affect of Satan.

    11. The conclusion of the matter. The more competent one is to converse with nature, people, God and Satan, the more agency one· has. If one uses that agency to serve God, one’s ability to converse with nature, humans and God will increase to the maximum possible, because God advantages those who advantage others. This increase of agency and advantaging tends to maximize the agency and advantaging of the person who does so, which is the process of becoming as God is.

    Conversing with nature is a key to this process of learning to be conversationally competent. Nature never lies, Nature is always regular, constant, dependable, Nature is always available and will always converse. Conversations with nature help us to be concerned about reverencing and advantaging natural things as we are influenced by God, or they help us to harm and destroy as we are influenced by Satan. The help or the harm always has an imme­diate reaction (though some reactions may be delayed), and thus one learns to read the influence of God and Satan in nature as one pays attention. Learning to read nature is a better index to differen­tiating between God and Satan than learning to read humans, because humans listen to both God and Satan and thus the spiritual influence of persons varies from person to person and from time to time in the same person. To have better conversations with nature is to order and beautify the earth and to respect and honor all natural things as God’s handiwork. To have better conversations with humans is to see in each of them the face of Christ and to honor and advantage each one of them as God inspires one to do so. To have better conversations with God is to learn to love him with our heart, might, mind and strength. To have better conversations with Satan is to recognize him whenever he approaches, then firmly to say “No” to him, But conversation with Satan must not be engaged in to bring railing accusation against him, for he, too, is a son of God. The maximum of reality, which is conversing, and of sanity, which is ‘advantaging in conversation, is found for human beings only in inheriting all good things from Father by learning to be conversationally competent with God, then to use that competence to advantage both him and our neighbor (nature and other human beings.

    To learn better conversational competence with any partner is to be attentive and to learn from experience how to do better. God gives guidance, but that guidance must be sought in competent conversation with God. How better to converse with God? By trying. To converse with him is the most advantageous of all conversations, for he is the great advantager who advantages everyone as much as possible, teaching them how to be more competent in conversation with any partner including Satan.

    12. The moral of the matter. Humans who wish to be sane would do well especially to concentrate on improving their conversations with God, with natural/ physical things, with other people, and with Satan. From natural/physical things we learn to be exact. From God one will learn to be true and to advantage others, as well as how to converse more competently. In conversing with Satan to deny his influence, one will learn to overcome selfishness, the insanity of disadvantaging others. Some humans serve God and some serve Satan and some serve both; thus conversing with humans in general does not promote exactness, or fidelity, or advantaging, nor does it quell selfish­ness. But a human who is greatly sane in conversing with nature, God and Satan is well prepared to converse sanely with other humans, and will become able to advantage each partner (except Satan) in a pure manner, which is charity, the pure love of Christ.

    Biographical material: Born Salt Lake City, Utah; graduated from high school in Las Vegas, Nevada. Attended Brigham Young University majoring in mathematics and d physics, graduating in 1947. Married Bertha Allred of Fountain Green. Utah and McGill. Nevada. Attended Columbia University in New York City, receiving the MA degree in 1951 and the PhD degree in 1958. Joined the BYU faculty in 1952. Served as department chairman (Graduate Religion), Dean of the Graduate School, Assistant Academic Vice President, and Professor of Philosophy.

  • Take Up Your Cross

    Chauncey C. Riddle
    Nov. 1990

    One of the strong teachings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the injunction of the Savior to each person to take up his or her cross. This is clearly made a condition of salvation. This teaching is given in the Bible, in the Book of Mormon, and in the Doctrine and Covenants.

    In Matthew 10:38 the Savior says:

    “He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.”

    The idea is even more emphatic in Matthew 16:24:

    “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.”

    In the Book of Mormon Jacob tells us: “But behold, the righteous, the saints of the Holy One of Israel, they who have believed in the Holy One of Israel, they who have endured the crosses of the world, and despised the shame of it, they shall inherit the kingdom of God, which was prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and their joy shall be full forever.” (2 Nephi 9:15–23) In the Doctrine and Covenants, it is revealed to Thomas B. Marsh:

    “Now, I say unto you, and what I say unto you, I say unto all the twelve: Arise and gird up your loins, take up your cross, follow me, and feed my sheep.” (D&C 112:14)

    It is plain from these quotations that the Savior is our pattern. To take up our cross we must do as he did. The Savior’s cross was given to him of his father. It was something he had to endure to complete his mission on this earth. He bore it faithfully and in so doing he completed his mission to bring salvation to all mankind.

    The cross the savior bore was to atone for the sins of each and all mankind. His mission of bringing salvation included the necessity of satisfying the law of justice, to suffer for each infraction of Father’s law which ever had been or ever would be committed on this earth. In one twenty-four hour period he suffered for these sins, finishing the suffering on the cross. The cross upon which he was crucified was not his cross; but it was the symbolic representation of his cross. Thus the symbol of the cross becomes the symbol of the suffering each human being must do to follow in the footsteps of our Master, Jesus Christ.

    And suffer we must, even as did our Savior. He tells us that we must bring a sacrifice to him to be saved, that of a broken heart and a contrite spirit. The broken heart is doing away with all pride, to come down in the depths of humility, because of our sins. To be contrite means to suffer with—to suffer with our Master. As he suffered for the sin of all mankind, so we must be willing to suffer. Sometimes we must suffer for sins, our own or the sins of others. But some human suffering has no obvious good cause or reason. Some of it simply happens as the result of Father’s omniscient benevolence, and we discover that benevolence only after the suffering is completed. Thus we have crosses.

    It seems that every accountable human being who wishes to be saved must suffer. Not every human being suffers his or her assigned cross; sometimes it is possible to avoid it, and thereby avoid salvation. Sometimes the cross cannot be avoided; then the question is, is the cross borne in humility before Father’s will or in angry rejection of him. But it is clear that if we are to be saved we must take up our cross and bear it well. The Savior did not enjoy his cross. He asked that it be taken from him. But when it could not be, he manfully shouldered it and bore it off triumphantly. In this each of us must follow him.

    Let us now turn to ten examples of human beings bearing crosses well in Christ.

    Friend No. 1 was born with a clubfoot. He was born before orthopedic surgery could cure this problem. So his only course was to suffer it. He suffered it well, through his faith in Christ. He earned a living as a woodworker, raised a fine family, and triumphed. The really hard part was not being crippled all of his life. The worst part was enduring the taunts and the shame his fellows heaped upon him, and especially the many persons who considered him to be demented, as humans are wont to do with crippled persons.

    Friend No. 2 was widowed at age twenty-six with four small children in the depths of the Great Depression. She had no money, poor health, no family to help. But she had faith in Christ. She bowed her head and struggled against all the odds to raise those children in righteousness. In abject poverty she eked out a sustenance, bearing the shame of poor clothing and having little but life itself. When her children were raised things were a bit easier, but her health was no better. Still she pursued genealogy, was faithful in all church assignments, was the most dependable person in her ward. She bore her cross well.

    Friend No. 3 had a mother who took Thalidomide when she was in the womb. She was born without arms. But she was the soul of cheerfulness and determination. She learned to swim to paint to do virtually everything a normal person would do in school. Though she required help every day of her life, she tried to give something to others every day of her life. And give she did, being an inspiration to all who knew her.

    Friend No. 4 was a prosperous professional. Having come from a background of poverty, he was generous withall, enjoying giving his wealth to others that they also might be well off. Then one of his business partners embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars and left him in virtual ruin. He picked up the pieces, held his firm together with sheer grit and a good name, and gradually brought things back from the brink of disaster. The irony of it was that the man who wounded him so badly had done the same thing once before. But the embezzler had asked forgiveness and proclaimed repentance in the first instance. So he was trusted again and became a cross to be borne.

    Friend No. 5 was a superb academician and a top university administrator with a national reputation. A faithful Latter-day Saint, he was a kindly mentor to budding professors and anxious leaders. As he approached the climax of his career, he was an obvious choice for the position of chancellor in the university system of which he was a part. But he was passed over and a man with but a fraction of his ability was selected for the position. Patiently he watched the new man struggle, and patiently he tended to his own professional labors, not complaining once. For his trust was in the Savior, not in the honors of men.

    Friend No. 6 was the soul of friendliness—outgoing, warm generous in every way. He married a beautiful young woman and they were blessed with four handsome, intelligent children. Oh how he loved his family. But his wife was frigid. After the birth of the last child she refused to let him touch her ever again. He could have divorced her. He felt it was not right to do so. So he suffered his cross, year after year of complete denial of physical affection. He felt it was right simply to bear the cross, to give all the love he could both to his wife and to his children.

    Friend No. 7 discovered in his childhood that he was not like other boys. He did not know why, and did not want it to be so, but he could only like and love men. As he became a teenager and it came time to date, he was horrified at the prospect. He was homosexual and dating a girl was equivalent to hell for him. So he did not date. But he knew he was in trouble. He went to his priesthood leaders for help, but very little was forthcoming: they simply did not know what to do to help him. Eventually he came into contact with one of the General Authorities of the Church. This kind man spent hours and hours with him helping and encouraging him. In all of his wild twisting and turnings to shake off this malady, he did not give in to his sexual desires to have physical sexual relations a man. Determined to fulfill the Savior’s pattern, he married and he and his wife raised a fine family. He held many church positions, helped many people, and sought valiantly to proclaim the testimony of Christ.

    Friend No. 8 was born to goodly parents, and she was a bright precocious youngster, head of her class all through school, fine athlete, devout Latter-day Saint. Her great goal in life was to have twelve children and to teach every one of them the love of the Savior. But she was six foot three inches tall and very intelligent. Though she longed to marry, she was never once courted. So she lived her life in loneliness, taking her students in school and church as her children, hoping in the savior that in some other world she might be fulfilled.

    Friend No. 9 was abandoned by his parents when he was ten years old. They were poor and he was told to go out on his own. With only the clothing on his back, he left home, never to see his parents again. He ate out of garbage cans, slept on rooftops in the mild climate of his hometown. And he went to school every day! He studied hard, though that was hard on an empty stomach. He finally found work and someone who would let him sleep on their floor in the winter. He worked his way through high school, then through college, and became a top government engineer. He married, had a fine family, and how he loved those children. He forgave his parents, found and helped his brothers and sisters, and did great good with his life.

    Friend No. 10 had a fine professional career and a model family. Then his wife became ill. The illness was diagnosed as multiple sclerosis. She progressively was debilitated, first losing her strength, then her sight, then the ability to move. For seven years she lay bedridden, and her husband personally cared for her when he was home. He had to turn her in bed often to avoid bedsores and muscle spasms for every night of those seven years. But he did not complain, nor let on that he had lost any sleep. He was attentive and loving, loved his children, and did what was right, bearing his cross in Christ.

    Our Savior is trying to exalt each of us, to make us equal with himself in purity, wisdom, knowledge and power. But before he can bestow these blessings upon us we must show that we can be trusted. The way, the only way which we can demonstrated that is to do what he did: to take the cross which Father gives to each of us and bear it, at the same time keeping all of Father’s commandments, our lives are not given to us for pleasure. There is pleasure in living, but to live for the pleasure is to show that we cannot be trusted with the riches of eternity. But if we can be as little children, meek, submissive, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all that which Father sees fit to inflict upon us, then we prove ourselves trustworthy.

    There is a plan of salvation. The plan provides the opportunity for each child of Father to prove that he or she is trustworthy. The plan is that each person must deny himself or herself, that is, each must not seek first to please himself or herself, but each must sacrifice personal desires to do Father’s will, to bring to pass his righteousness. This sacrifice involves taking up our personal cross, and while bearing it, do everything within our powerto keep every commandment of God. This means for each of us to be an exemplary Latter-day Saint no matter what troubles or problems we might be called upon to bear.

    This is not to say that a Latter-day Saint is masochistic. We do not self-inflict pain and suffering to show our devotion. It is not that easy. What we must do is take the cross assigned to us and bear it with faith in Christ. Sometimes the cross will be lifted by Father: the disease may go into remission, fortunes may change, love might come to the forlorn. But these reprieves are Father’s doing. We do not bear our cross just because Father will soon lift it from us, for he might not. We do not assign our own cross and we should not reject our own cross, just as in the Church we do not seek callings from the Lord nor do we reject them. If a cross is not assigned by Father, we need not bear it. But if it does come from him, and we can know this through the Holy Spirit, then bear it we must or we cannot be saved.

    There are two kinds of burdens we humans bear. One kind is a cross: a handicap in life assigned to us by Father which we must bear while keeping the commandments to demonstrate that we love God with all of our heart, might, mind and strength. The other kind of burden is suffering for our own sins, the just consequences of our own choice to sin. Part of being intelligent is not to mix these two, not to confuse crosses with consequences.

    To repent is to deny ourselves (to deny the lusts of the flesh). That helps to stem consequences, but does not remove crosses. The Savior’s atonement can remove the eternal suffering of the consequences of sin, but only after repentance. (Even after repentance, we sometimes must continue to suffer in mortality for the consequences of our sins.) To be really intelligent is to bear both patiently and humbly, letting both crosses and consequences be constant reminders to remember the Savior and to repent, thus to put ourselves firmly in the narrow way of total obedience to his commandments until we have endured to the end.

    Mortal life is a handicap race. We do not race against each other. Indeed, we can greatly help one another. We race against time, to see if we can learn to keep every one of Father’s commandments while carrying our individual crosses and the burdens of our own sinning before our mortal probation expires. This race is not to the swift. Victory comes only to the humble children of God who are willing to bear all things Father sees fit to inflict upon them.

    For any who are tempted to think that this race is too much to bear, the voice of the Master is heard:

    “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

    And again:

    “He that will not take up his cross and follow me, and keep my commandments, the same shall not be saved.” (D&C 56:2)