The Paradox of God: The bewilderbeast --or, power and love

One of my favorite moments of the film How to Train Your Dragon 2 occurs right after the hero Hiccup meets his mother. He is deep within a lush island nest surrounded by ice, and his mother takes him to the edge of a cliff, where, slumbering in the water, a giant dragon lies.

“The home of the great Bewilderbeast. The alpha species. One of the very few that still exist. Every nest has its queen, but this is the KING of all dragons. With his icy breath, this graceful giant built our nest, a safe haven for dragons everywhere. We all live under his care and his command.”

At that moment the gigantic dragon opens his eyes, turns and faces Hiccup. After a moment examining him, the Bewilderbeast gently puffs an icy breath onto Hiccup, engulfing him momentarily in a wave of frost; a gentle ribbing.

“He likes ye,” his mother laughs.

I firmly believe that the purpose of art and culture is to help us see hidden depths, facets and perspectives on the experience of life that we would never have found before. Stepping into this scene and examining its patterns helps illustrate an answer to one of the most frustrating paradoxes in existance:

The Paradox of God
Thousands of religions exist, each with their own view of God, some of which claim things about God that are completely antithetical to others. While I speak from a Mormon perspective, I sense that a great deal of what I have to say can apply to patterns found in almost all religious philosophies: the existance of good and evil, awe-inspiring love beyond all fathoming, the triumph of the love and the good over the evil. Feel free to apply these patterns as they may to your own belief system.

    What I love and hate about the Mormon concept of God in particular is its paradoxical nature. On one hand, there are verses, such as this touching passage from the book of Moses, chapter 7, that reveal a Father of incredible beauty and love:

“And it came to pass that the God of heaven looked upon the residue of the people, and he wept; and Enoch bore record of it, saying: How is it that the heavens weep, and shed forth their tears as the rain upon the mountains?...

“...And were it possible that man could number the particles of the earth, yea, millions of earths like this, it would not be a beginning to the number of thy creations; and thy curtains are stretched out still; and yet thou art there, and thy bosom is there; and also thou art just; thou art merciful and kind forever;”

“....naught but peace, justice, and truth is the habitation of thy throne...How is it thou canst weep?”

The Lord's awe inspiring response is recorded thus:

“The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands...”

“And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood;

“And the fire of mine indignation is kindled against them; and in my hot displeasure will I send in the floods upon them, for my fierce anger is kindled against them....”

“But behold, their sins shall be upon the heads of their fathers; Satan shall be their father, and misery shall be their doom; and the whole heavens shall weep over them, even all the workmanship of mine hands; wherefore should not the heavens weep, seeing these shall suffer1?”

In this story, the astonished Enoch watches as a loving and affectionate Father weeps over the judgments He must send upon a group who were more murderous and wicked than any other group that God had ever had amongst the breadth of His creation. He weeps for sadness that they shall suffer...this is not the God of the medieval ages, the judge itching to cast depraved humanity into the fiery pit of doom.
And yet, we espouse as scripture the ancient Bible, where God commanded the Israelites to do things such as kill all the inhabitants of the holy land, sparing none, not even children, a God who commanded Abraham to offer up his only, loved son Isaac, a God of inestimable power capable of great and terrible things, as expressed in this verse:

“O that he would show you that he can pierce you, and with one glance of his eye he can smite you to the dust!2“

God is wild and loving at heart
The experience with God mirrors what Hiccup must have felt as the giant Bewilderbeast awoke and gazed upon him. Here before him stood a giant dragon, its steps reverberating through the ice-nest like thunder, possessing the power to instantly destroy him. And yet, all the benevolent Bewilderbeast does is puff the slightest breath onto Hiccup, frosting his eyebrows; the equivalent of tousling his hair.
    Earlier scenes in the movie depict dragon hunters whose ships and equipment have been destroyed and comrades slain by this powerful Bewilderbeast. It has power, and it knows it. Hiccup also knows that it has the power to do whatever it desires to do with him; he has witnessed that power. And yet all it does is tousle his hair...it likes him, his experienced mother says. It likes him. The giant Bewilderbeast...likes him.
    It must have left him dazed. Confused. Awestruck. Inspired.

    Bewildered.

God's goodness and love are inseparable from His power
    I find an incredible insight into the nature of God by studying the roots of the English word danger. “Danger” means “liable to cause harm.” The word comes to us through the French word Dongier, which is itself derived from a string of words with their origination in the word Dominus, the Latin word for “lord” or “master.”
   
    In other words, our word “danger” is directly derived from the latin name for God3.

    Now, by “Danger,” I do not mean God is like an escaped murderer, a riptide just waiting to carry us out to sea, or a dictator; He is not dark. He is not ruled by shadows. He is not dangerous as in criminal, cruel or conniving; He is dangerous as in powerfully capable of fulfilling His own will, and that, at the destruction of anything and everything that stands in its way.

And His will is to love.
 
    The idea of a loving God may seem incompatible with this God, the lion of Judah, the God of judgment described in the Old Testament. But this is not so: it is God's danger that makes His love efficacious.
    The meaning of “power” is “effectiveness4.” In D&C 1:38 The Lord states “What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled...” God's power makes His word 100% effective.

The Lord of heaven loves us, but not just
    The scriptures speak frequently of the deep love God possesses unto all mankind. He is kind to the ungrateful and evil. In His life on Earth, He associated with the vilest of sinners and outcasts. He invited all men to take upon themselves His burden; His yoke is easy, He declared, His burden is light, and His commandments are not grievous.
    I had once heard at a fireside, that the Lord not just loves us, not just knows us personally, but that He likes us. Think of that, after what I have written above. This great and unfathomable Lord, on whose command the nest of this Earth and millions and millions and millions more like it have been strung in orbit around uncountable stars, all powered by His law and command. And yet He loves, knows and likes me, of all puny insignificant heaps of matter. It is His work and glory to bring to pass my immortality and eternal life5...this is His will, and His words and works serve to this end, not just for me peronally, but all now reading these words, all who have ever lived, who now live, or who ever will live.

The Paradox of God
    The same paradox that laughed frost into Hiccup's face confronts us also, when we kneel to pray at night. We are kneeling before a Being that is dangerous, capable of smiting us into dust. And yet...He doesn't. Because He loves. He loves with the sensitivity and the gentleness of a perfect Father. We are made in His image and countenance and can come unto Him without fear, expecting His love and power, not to destroy, but to nurture, caress and cherish us into the beings we are capable of becoming. He is dangerous in His power to fulfil His word, and His word is that He loves.
   
    May we ever allow the gaze of the great Bewilderbeast to fall on us without fear of it.

1) Moses 7:28, 30-34, 37

2)  Jacob 2:15

3)  http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/danger#English

4)  http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/power

5)  Moses 1:39

doubt-- A Poem

doubt

on a park bench

cold winter day

clouds and sun

both, beautiful and gray

snowflakes falling

gentle stings

melting to droplets

marvelous things

accumulating weight of a mother's anguish

a burden misplaced and unextinguished

my perceptions caught in the tension between

the breeze shivering body hands cold aching

And the snowflakes down from heaven

gentle drifting stinging whispering:

remember remember

Searching for Heaven-- A Poem

Searching for Heaven

Why cause me to look to the distant clouds

For angels and harps, and singing?

Why, in this lone and dreary world,

Is heaven a far-removed thing?

Heaven? No angels with wings is she,

Nor clouds oerlaid with gold.

Yet singing is something that heaven could be,

For singing is beauteous and bold.

Heaven? Tis bold. Tis beauty around.

It shines in the light and the breeze.

It is hidden like rays that strike the ground

Through the leaves of the blowing trees.

Heaven? Not clouds; for these are illusions,

Shadows crossing the thirsted land

that promise a higher and better place,

Yet dissolve in mist when in hand.

Heaven is flexible, enduring, broad,

Certain and scourging and sure.

It shreds illusions with its rod,

And claims all who willing endure.

Heaven is here, and heaven is now,

As salvation and Spirit are also.

Beauty and truth shine here, now,

When we our illusions forego.

Is free will an illusion?

Free will: an illusion?

Yesterday I read an article in the Scientific American that provoked a lot of thought for me. It struck at some of the questions I have been asking myself recently. The article was called Why We Have Free Will, by a Dr. Nahmias, a professor in philosophy and neuroscience at Georgia State University. His article argues for the existance of free will, and includes his refutations of a growing number of his peers' claims that “conscious decision and deliberation happen only after neural gears below the level of our conscious awareness have already determined what we will choose,” or, in other words, our brains make us do it.

Pervasive in scientific thought is the idea that we are merely biochemical puppets.

While the cited studies and scientists Nahmias refuted were clearly full of logical fallacies, the idea itself was something that lodged in my mind and stayed like a piece of grit in the eye. Is free will an illusion?

I work about 10 hours every week with an individual who has Williams syndrome, a genetic disorder with very specific physical and psychological manifestations. While we were together one day, I read a list of Williams syndrome symptoms and discovered that my client's personality and behavior matched every last one of those symptoms to a T. Most of the rest of his ideas and beliefs that couldn't be relegated to Williams Syndrome I could see arising from his environment and upbringing. It was rather shattering to my preconceived notions, especially in regards to agency; previously I'd always believed we were more or less a blank slate on which we had the power to write anything we wanted.

So it brought to my mind this question: if he is that determined by his nature/nurture, just how much am I determined by my own nature/nurture? How much is the whole of humanity determined by their nature/nurture?

This was a disturbing question to ponder. I realized that in a lot of ways my emotional and psychological makeup, and by extension my behaviors, habits and overall lifestyle, have been determined by outside factors. I look at my predispositions, from my homosexuality to my talents with music and writing, and realize that I can't claim much in regards to them. I never chose any of these gifts. They came without my volition. I did not choose where I was born, and to whom. (By I, I refer to my embodied self that currently knows; my pre-existant self may have had some direct choice in the matter, but I don't remember and there's no doctrinal claim to such a concept, so for all intents and purposes it does not matter.) I don't recall waking up and claiming for myself much, if any of the factors and circumstances I currently find myself in.

So...what is free will, then? Where does agency end and fate begin?

LDS.org defines agency as “the gift to choose for ourselves.[1]” I didn't even choose to gain agency, it was given to me, as was basically the rest of my life's circumstances as presently constituted. I discern a paradox. If I have been given the gift to choose for myself, then what did/do I choose? There is so much I cannot choose; there is so much that is outside my will. If my will were truly free, then that means I can claim whatever I want to claim and influence anything I desire to influence; that, logically, is the nature of “Free” will, no? (Free will, meaning do anything I want to do.)

I can't just “do” anything I want to do. I can't circumvent the law of gravity simply because I will it. I can't operate antagonistic to the law without drawing consequences; if I jump off a cliff expecting my will alone to carry me, I will die or seriously injure myself. There is so, so much in this universe that is determined and that I cannot choose.

Then doesn't that mean “free will” is an illusion?

Infinite and Eternal

I think that the answer lies in knowing somewhat the nature of God and our relationship to Him, as described by true doctrines.

Numerous scriptures (Alma 34:14, Psalms 147:5, D&C 20:17 and 28, and Moroni 8:3, for examples) describe Deity as “infinite,” or “eternal.” These words are also used to describe, as in John 6:68, Christ's reward to the faithful: “eternal” life.

Interestingly, Christ, in one of His prayers, refers to life eternal as “knowing Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. [2]” Knowing means, to me, means to be intimately acquainted with, learned about, and in continual communication with.

In other scriptures, Christ promises His followers that if they abide in His word, “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.[3]” 

 

There it is in scripture: by following Christ we know the infinite and eternal God. By following Christ we are set free. Knowing God is being set free.

"Free" will....

We are offspring of God

Church doctrine states that we are the literal offspring of God, made in His image, and being the offspring of God have the capacity to become like Him. Not only will following Christ lead us to God and to know Him, it will make us like Him, as stated in Romans 8:16-17: “...Heirs of God, and joint-heirs of Christ, if it so be that we suffer with Him..”

Because He is infinite, and we are His literal offspring; and because the offspring of something has the capacity to become like It. By accepting Life Eternal and knowing God, we are set free; in other words, we become “infinite and eternal.”

Because of this, in my mind, a possibly more appropriate term for “free” will, is “infinite” will, or “eternal” will.

Infinite Beings in a finite sphere: the paradox of man.

Joseph Smith taught that we are “Co-equal (co-eternal) with God himself [4].” Truly, as Stephen Chbosky's character from Perks of Being a Wallflower states in a moment where his reflections reveal it to him: “I swear we were infinite.” It is true. We were infinite. We are infinite. We always will be infinite. We existed for an eternity; the core of our beings is infinite. It existed for an eternity before this life and will exist for an eternity afterwards'

.

And if we accept Christ, then we accept Infinite and Eternal, and become as infinite as they are: completely and entirely untrammeled in our sphere of agency.

And yet, here we are, in a mortal sphere; and by mortal I mean finite. We are extremely limited in our capacities and abilities as mortal beings.

What does that limitation consist of? Oh, genetics, environmental factors, cultural blockages....our minds are bound down by sin and error, our bodies riddled by disease.

Do we currently have free will? Infinite will? Eternal will? Uh, I don't think so. Not so fast, Hubris.

So, does this mean that free will is an illusion, then?

It's not a current reality....

As the Lord states, He has sent us here in part “that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law, or no [5].” In other words, He has put us in a life where we are weak, finite and mortal, to help us understand how to use our agency so that we may one day live the infinite life He lives, as outlined by His laws.

...but a goal we are reaching for.

This is my personal opinion, but I believe we are limited because this life is a trial run. It is a training ground. We are bound to this mortality with limited agency, to train prepare us for free agency, a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory wherein we have infinitely increased capacities and abilities in comparison with our current state.

And at the end of it all, if we successfully complete our training and learn how to choose well within the limitations we currently experience, then God will say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord [6].”

In conclusion, in this life we do not experience free agency. There is so much that abrogates its use that to call it this is quite fallacious. Herein is the limitation of mankind in opposition to his eternal nature.

But because of our natures and our relationship with God, though we are currently limited, we will one day have the capacity to become like Him; Infinite and Eternal. Free agency is not a current gift we have; but it is something we have the capability of developing.

So, then, if it is true that there is much more in this life that is determined by outside factors than isn't....then what can we now choose? And what would the process of developing agency look like?

1: https://www.lds.org/topics/agency?lang=eng

2: John 17:3

3: John 8:32

4: https://www.lds.org/ensign/1971/05/the-king-follett-sermon?lang=eng

5: Exodus 16:4

6: Matthew 25:23

On the Eve of Mercy-- A Poem

On the Eve of Mercy

Before the coming of light

There must be a darkening.

I stand at the banks of twilight

And gaze at my new-starry reflection

While in the waters

The streaked reflection of what was

From red to gray departs, abandoning,
Leaving me stranded in stars.

The eve of mercy descends to a dark night,
Its shadows removing the wounded Earth

of its sins.

It is tonight, the coming night of mercy,

Wherein the cold shepherds shiver

Unknowing, watchful.

I sigh, repeating to myself,
I don't know, I don't know.

My visage cuts cold and straight a face

Out of twinkling reminders,

And especially, that...new star.

I a small shepherd boy, I say to reflected

Stars. What do I know? The cold

Shivers down my spine.

Then with a flash the light

As bright as nova

And the sound of a thousand voices

Of praise, explode my reflection

Into a thousand messy fractals of color and light.

Conversations with a hidden doubt

Conversations with a hidden doubt

With the release of a long-pent sob, I snap the door shut.

It is in the church. The meeting was a success. Outside, from the edges of the door beaming with light, comes the muffled sound of voices full of joy and laughter.

Here, in the dark, the only light is from the orange streetlamps like hellfire, beaming dimly in from curtained windows. All is dyed orange and drab and black shadow.

I kneel to pray, the chair in front of me known only by touch and by its support of my weight. I begin to cry.

How is it, being in the church of my sincere belief, the church of light and truth, that I feel so deep in shadow?

My prayers intensify. The weighted dark presses down with such force as to take the stability of my breath. I close my eyes, willing to shut out the darkness with more darkness, the darkness of my environment with the darkness of my choosing, to be blinded.

Outside, the murmurs of laughter float mocking into the room from the brilliant edges of the door, light and joy together intruding on the sacral dark.

I cannot stand it. I want to scream, but to whom? The God who rebukes for unrighteousness? Is this not unrighteousness, ungratitude, the spirit of backsliding and balking? To the ears of church members and leaders who know it not and need know it not? To the currents of unknowing time that know not and care not?

I heave myself to my feet and stumble to the door. Just outside it is light and hope, deeper burdens than anything darkness could possibly lash upon my back.

I pause, door on the handle. What's the point? I will stumble into the light carrying the darkness with me. Where would it go? It is stuck, jammed gears, clogged toilet, tidally locked planet about an M class star. Fear takes hold. What if they see it, my darkness, my doubt, of which even I have no clue of the origin or end? Worse, what if they ask? I am supposed to be an example of the believers, an active force in the work of salvation, a leader and participant in the great work of the great God. Supposed to be...supposed to be. They will see that I am not what I am supposed to be. Oh, what hell I have built up for myself! A reassuring metal plate about a shifting core of magma and feathers...it is an illusion, an assurance of solidity above supports that have melted in the heat and can no longer do the work of supporting. That damned shell. That damned concrete bubble, solidified by years of seeking approval and positive reinforcement.

I grip the handle, turning my knuckles white. I think of that White Current, the Light of Christ, ever flowing from somewhere, yearning for it to drip into the cracks and carry my pain away, yearning for the flood of proverbial neutrinos from that distant Daystar to interact, for once.

The light and joy intensify their knocking. I grit my teeth. The White Current is always there, it seems. It is a force that never leaves, always communicating the light of a love that lies beyond my comprehension despite my awareness of its presence. Oh, I wish it would step away, and I become a wound in it. To abandon to nihilism, to nothingness....what sweet relief.

But my imploring receives a gentle no. You have a work to do, it reminds me...it? He? Them? What am I speaking to? An Exalted Man? A river? A mirror?

I take a deep breath, polarize the hull plating, and step into my burdens. That offensive light enshrouds me.

It is okay, whispers the Current. I understand. I am with you. You are okay.

A lone neutrino vibrates a neuron.

Microcosm-- A Poem

Microcosm

Look at you, father.

Do you know how beautiful

And awful you are?

Do you know the

Impact your smile has?

Do you know the

Force your touch has?
Do you know how

Deafening your silence is?

Oh beautiful father, do you know

That your money is waste,

And your job is distance,

Your time is the essence

of the meaning of presence

And the heart of meaning?

Your child, she

Is an expanding universe.

She

Is a new world revolving.

A new world?

And you are her sun

The principle of her generation

The new light of heaven

in a new creation.

Father, beauty

Is your heart at one with kindness,

Beauty

Is your meaning become silence

Your love become touch

Your joy become smile

Oneness with God in spirit

And ugliness

Is your silence divided in emptiness,

Your touch of hatred and bruises,

Your smile disingenuous,

The duality of wickedness.