The Gospel of Jesus Christ
Trying to understand where we came from and where we're going
Today is Thanksgiving. I think of Thanksgiving as an American holiday, but in doing a bit of research on it, I see that it probably has ancient roots in harvest festivals stretching back thousands of years.
In my opinion Thanksgiving can be whatever you want it to be, but since my American roots are Christian, I thought that I would write about Jesus Christ and his missionary purpose. Some of my nearest Christian ancestors were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), a religion that emerged from the burned-over district of New York State in the early 19th century.
The day before lockdown, we moved from Silicon Valley to Meridian, Idaho. We choose Meridian because it seemed better than Salt Lake City, and has a Challenger School location, the same school my children were attending in Silicon Valley.1 We purchased a home two-miles from the Meridian Challenger School campus, which is nearby the Meridian Temple.
Our neighborhood in Meridian had many members of the LDS faith. In fact, half of the families on our street were members, and most of the children in our neighborhood were LDS.
After about two years of living there, my kids still hadn’t made many friends in the neighborhood. (We did a lot of hiking on the weekends). So, in order nurture new friendships I started conversations with some of our LDS neighbors, invited them over for dinner, and even started attending church. The primary reason for this, at least initially was to open a door for my children to play with their children, which as I’ve said, made up most of the kids in the neighborhood.
And it worked. Over the next two years we became good friends with them.
My conversations with them, and my curiosity also lead me to meet with the sister missionaries. In my first conversation with the sisters, they asked, “What questions do you have for us?” And so, I said, “What is special about Jesus Christ?” And they responded with, “The Atonement.” And I said, “What’s the atonement?” If my memory serves me correctly they said, “It’s the: 1) suffering, 2) crucifixion and 3) resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
Okay. I thought, and probably said something like, “What’s so important about that?”
And so this began an extended conversation with the sisters, meeting every week for months. Not believing in their god, this was an interesting conversation. Each week they would prepare and present a lesson for me, always in the presence of other adult members of the Church (according to missionary rules) and I would respond — usually by saying something like, “Thank you. That was a beautiful story. I don’t believe it literally, but I find it helpful as a metaphor.”
Today I won’t go into details on my many conversations with the sisters, other than to share with you one of their most important lessons. In this lesson they taught me The Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This meant drawing a diagram per their instructions. I’ve re-created the diagram below showing in black font approximately what they asked me to draw and how to label it. This diagram depicts The Gospel of Jesus Christ and his Missionary Purpose. Gospel equals doctrine.
At the center of the diagram is a drop of blood symbolizing the Atonement which as I’ve stated consists of three parts: 1) suffering, 2) crucifixion, and 3) resurrection.
Surrounding the atonement is a circle that has associated with it a circular cycle. First in the cycle is Faith, then going clockwise is Repentance, then Baptism, and then his promise, the Holy Ghost. Additionally there is a note between Faith and Repentance about Enos and prayer.
Typical in my meeting with the missionaries is them giving a lesson and me translating that lesson into belief system. My translation of this lesson is shown in green font. Let’s go through the cycle giving their words and then translating to mine. Since I can’t do green font here in Substack, I’ll do italics instead. Let’s start at the center and then circle around.
Atonement
Suffering
Suffering happens as you live your life.
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is symbolic death of your old ways, habits or identity
Resurrection
Resurrection is symbolic birth of your new ways, habits, or identity
Faith (access to atonement)
Faith is at least a willingness to believe in something or at least a willingness to try something. It is a creative and optimistic attitude. It is entrepreneurial. It is a can-do attitude. It often relies on faith and trust in others. To have faith in the Gospel is to believe in a process of improvement. Faith is like hope for something better.
In Book of Mormon the role model for prayer is Enos. Enos does lots of praying.
What is prayer? This is a work in progress for me. Prayer can be many things. It can be appreciation of good things that have come your way. Those good things arose at least in part through something or someone other than yourself. Prayer can also be admissions of one’s shortcomings and desire to improve. Prayer may also include a dialogue with others or yourself. Prayer can be thought of as thinking, introspection and problem solving. It may involve writing things down or creating something.
Repentance
To become more like Christ
Change
Action
Repentance means change. But, “Change how?” The answer is not always clear. To figure this out you should be humble, honest and face your problems. Get in touch with and listen to the pain caused by your problem. This pain serves a purpose. It’s trying to tell you something. What is it telling you? Maybe to listen to others? What are they trying to tell you?
Baptism or covenant. Be bound to Jesus.
Baptism is like a marriage, commitment or promise made publicly. You’re promising to: 1) “marry” a doctrine of self-improvement as you understand it; and 2) to surround yourself with people who have made a similar commitment. These are people who want to learn, who practice the Golden Rule, who believe in liberty and justice for everyone. You’re promising to be a lifelong learner.
His promise to us is the Holy Ghost.
You can think of this as an inner Socratic dialogue that forms your judgment. Or you can think of it as Adam Smith’s Impartial Spectator, a role model, an exemplar, your conscience, the moral judgement of your community or the voice of God.
This is like a moral guide inside of us that we can improve over time through work. This is an important part of our inner dialogue and thought process. With more “prayer,” honesty and humility; and by surrounding yourself with good people, you can improve this dialogue and improve your judgement.
Spiral: enduring to the end
Spiral upward represents life-long learning, literally until death.
At the end of their lesson the missionaries asked me if I had any questions. I looked at this circular spiral diagram and noticed that it didn’t have an input for new information, so I asked about than and they added another spot, Learn Knowledge, but that was not part of their planned presentation.
Learn. Knowledge.
Inject new information into process. Be open to new information, look for clues and be aware.
At some point during the meeting or afterward I realize that the diagram looked like an active spiral galaxy. There are many galaxies in the universe, and apparently at the center of each one is a blackhole. It was once thought that no light escapes a black hole, until that is, when astronomers observed “light” (a form of electromagnetic energy) emerging from one. These are know as active galaxies. You can do a web search for active galaxies and read about them. Here are some of the first few hits using DuckDuckGo. 1. 2. 3.
What does an active galaxy have to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Maybe nothing. But this is something you might want to ponder. It seems that galaxies have cycles. In fact the this article, “Milky Way Had a Blowout Bash 6 Million Years Ago” says:
The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen gas. But it wasn't always this way. A new study shows that 6 million years ago, when the first human ancestors known as hominins walked the Earth, our galaxy's core blazed forth furiously. The evidence for this active phase came from a search for the galaxy's missing mass.
Some basic thoughts about what is going on with these active galaxies. We know that
This means that matter can be converted to energy, and energy can be converted to matter. Think atomic bomb. Though different than an atom bomb, it seems that this conversion is happening in the black holes at the center of active galaxies. We can think of this conversion as a rebirth or a resurrection.
So, might there be some truth to the resurrection of Jesus Christ? Probably not in the way told in the Bible. I would say that the matter that makes up our bodies may one day, billions of years from now, be converted into electromagnetic energy in the blackhole at the center of the Milky Way, and then ejected as electromagnetic energy and finally (cooled?) converted into matter again, to form new stars.
We know that most of the matter in our bodies comes from stars that went supernova.
So, where did we come from? Where are we going?
And I’ll leave it there for today. Happy Thanksgiving.
Challenger School was founded in Silicon Valley by Barbara Baker in 1963. I believe she was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Just noticing your posts, Scott. Thanks for writing! I’m LDS. While I also believe in the spiritual / supernatural aspects of faith, it is also true that the gospel of Christ has a profound psychological and personal / interpersonal betterment aspect in the way you describe. In my opinion this is the secret sauce of the success of Christendom (the West) relative to other societies.
Very interesting. The diagram clearly represents what can be called a self-improvement process. You can translate the language of this book/version of religion into that of the discipline of psychology and repeat much of the same proposals for how to create a more healthy human existence. "How to be" is something that we should all constantly focus on in this all too short phase of life.
We people are so ungrounded today... lacking any real binding cultural behavior traditions and ceremony... the things that used to be based down as tribal mythology to subsequent generations teach them how to be.
My perspective of religion is either that it is really a historical account of miracles that provide the lessons for life, or a natural evolution of the tribal mythology method after written language was invented. I really don't care too much to debate the piety two views, because I believe the book of lessons and metaphors has similar value. Religion not corrupted into wielding power and judgment over others... only for the internal consideration of the practitioner... in my view, is not only powerful in terms of helping the individual to lead a more satisfying life... but I think spirituality is a need that will be filled with something regardless, and if not the light of benevolent religious theology, it risks being filled with darkness and evil. I think we see much evidence of this today.
Happy Thanksgiving Scott!