The Gum Tree for 2007 October 11

My comment to a post over at Times and Seasons. I like how you use the foundation of Joy--very C.S. Lewis-ish. That foundation of Joy, which defies reason and even works against evidence, helps us cling to the hope of the uncertain future that we may inherit if we remain faithful. I do, however, take issue with the phrase "muddle in the middle" which to me seems too much like the Aristotelian "middle way," or may allude to a kind of epicurean life of settling into comfortable acceptance of difficult answers; which, I acknowledge you have rejected:

”and it never settles into one tidy spot from which I can buy a rocking chair, kick back, relax and - perhaps - sleep.”

But, the comfort that there is no easy answer when there very well may be (many have fallen into forbidden paths because of the EASINESS of the way) can lull the patient intellectual into his/her own false sense of security in muddled sophistry (or philosophy and commandments of men, mingled with scripture—having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof). The restored gospel, however, paints a somewhat different picture of the path that the disciple takes. The ideas found in the Sermon on the Mount, e.g., were NOT the Aristotelian middle-way; rather, they are truly radical in their nature, at least to any passive observer. The Lord’s extreme commandments require a life of total devotion to the ideas and truths which have brought that foundation of joy, i.e. joy cannot exist in absence of hard adherence to certain gospel truths to the exclusion of all others—a very extreme intellectualism indeed. Latter-day Saints are the ultimate thought police, but not in the way the world sees it, since they are blind to the joy and faith we hold. It shouldn’t be any wonder, then, when the world labels the Church as an anti-intellectual body; they see not, therefore they dismiss hard gospel truths as visions and dreams. That is what really annoyed the Savior; people who claim to know truth and who claim to live by that truth which their actions and even reasoning denies a priori (e.g. Atheist, Elitists, Sophists, and other forms of hypocrisy, including trial lawyers--just kidding;-). The smart disciple will pick up some truths along the way which were exposed via the world outside the structure of the Church, but these are like grains of sand on the beach of our understanding, and often they don’t add to the foundation of joy. Thus they are qualitatively and quantitatively different than the radical gospel which we live. I know an elderly woman named Rosa who lives next to an LDS church in Masatepe, Nicaragua. She is a radical, who has so little, but yet gives so much in service with her arthritic hands. As I left her home, last time I visited, she enjoined me to “be good, keep the faith.” She knew the truth of the gospel, and lived it as an extremist in this world where self-interest, even enlightened self-interest, is the prevailing moral philosophy.

My Writer's Room/Study Central The inspiration for this post was an article in The Guardian which posted a bunch of photos of writers rooms.