In this series I attempt to describe a sensation I’ve had for ever that most of the “facts” of our lives in the second estate aren’t really “Real”.  Being born black, white, rich, poor, beautiful, less so, Mormon, or in the Amazon Jungle, are all just the props and stage setting, something akin to Ken and Barbie’s plastic world.  Too many get caught up thinking this is all that there is.  They relish in worldly fame and fortune.  They love to be seen as having the girl and riding around in the plastic, pink Corvette.  What does it take to get beyond the “plastic world”?  To be the Real Person who sees the plastic for what it is, and who sees and obtains the glory that it is to experience Real love and Real life?  What things are Real with a Capital R!  What things are not Real?  That is the essence of this series.

 If you’ve read some of the series, please feel free to post snippets and comment on them, or just post your own original thoughts.

 

• Real things have a Capital R. Like Pinocchio, our quest is to become Real.
• The Great I AM is Chief among all entities that can say ‘I am’.
• Possible source or mechanism for God’s Power.
• The role of Christ: Saved by Grace? By Works? By Both!

Preface: This is an essay on what I believe is Real vs. what is just real (trivial pursuits with little lasting benefit), and what are Really big lies designed to distract us from what is Real to what is just plastic. I use a capital R to signify that in this work Real is not defined as simple facts, or even as activities that may even be good, but they are not Great. Real things cut beyond the haze to solid, beyond this world Realities. Things that have true value are Real. Experience (good and bad) is Real. Acts that comfort others, or bless their lives are Real. The facts regarding God and His purposes are Real.

This essay has a lot of speculation in it, some of which is me searching for an understanding of potential mechanisms that are the source of God’s power.  

A popular Latter-Day Saint asks, What is Real?

Glenn Beck (AM 570 from 4-7 pm in Utah) is a popular conservative talk radio host who is on a quest for truth (which must be in part how he recently arrived as a Latter-Day Saint, I suppose). He has correctly observed that the earth is awash in propaganda, lies, unknowns, incorrect “conventional wisdom”, knowing enablers of evil, and unwitting enablers of evil. He also has expressed my own feelings when he admits he is mostly just a regular guy and doesn’t know how to find his way out of the mess completely. I count myself as a seeker of truth, but the truth is I probably buy into a lot of junk that simply isn’t true. I just haven’t yet figured that out. I like to think that if all humans were placed on the scale of “how much of what you think is correct actually is correct”, I would rate well above average. Our 7-billion collective knowledge is astonishing, but individually even Einstein didn’t really know very much (though I believe the prophets know the most about the things that matter most). And even our collective knowledge is still nothing relative to all knowledge (or God’s knowledge).

I mention Glenn Beck because he often ponders out loud on “What is Real?” It struck me when he first asked that because I’ve been pondering that for as long as I can remember. He is bugged by a world where so many things seem pointless or of little lasting value, and mentioned that once in church he saw a sister scratching her brother’s back with a casual comfort that could only come from years of familiarity, respect, and love, and he said to himself “now that is Real.”

Pinocchio wasn’t Real, but he became Real

Pinocchio exclaimed to his fairy godmother, “I want to be a Real boy”. As a puppet, he walked and talked, but couldn’t feel, couldn’t understand, couldn’t love. The story shows in his “Pursuit of Happiness”, he was tempted to Pleasure Island, where he nearly lost even his wooden life. It then goes on to show his efforts to save his maker Japetto, and through these heroics he learned to feel and love. All of the experience, good and bad, taught valuable lessons and opened his heart and mind. In the end he was Real. I believe we likewise live unwittingly almost as wooden puppets, or what I like to call “plastic lives”. Like Pinocchio, our challenge is to discover the key to becoming Real boys and girls.

“I think, therefore I am.”

Let’s start at one of the longest known undeniable Realities. Rene Descartes was one of the greatest philosophers of all time, and was a believer in God. In his quest to find what is Real, he went into a frame of mind where he attempted to devise alternative explanations for everything, even God and matter itself, in an attempt to identify what few things were truly undeniable. Such mind games as “if I touched a hot stove, it would seem as though I touched matter, but what if there is a Being out there who observes me thinking I’m about to touch a stove, and feeds my mind a sensation of touching a solid object and resulting pain, even though I have touched nothing”. If you’ve ever seen “The Matrix”, it is that concept.

So in these games, he is able to deny matter, God, everything. I should say, while he still believed in these things firmly, he had to admit that his mind constructed a potential alternative explanation held a remote possibility of being correct from a purely logical point of view. After years of struggle, he finally struck on a single, undeniable “Reality” that he could see no other way to explain. He had denied his very flesh as possibly just an image that some unknown being was casting before his mind, but then he concluded “I think, therefore, I am!” He could deny that his flesh existed, the world existed, that his contemporaries existed, and while he always believed in God, he accepted that it was not difficult to devise a conceptual reality in which God was not necessary.  However, after years of thought experiments, he realized there was one single thing he could find no possible way around. Even if matter itself were only a perception of his mind, something down deep, something with self awareness, something with intelligence, something known to himself as “I”, was still thinking and therefore he MUST exist even if there nothing else in the universe existed.

The Great “I AM”

I have found it very interesting that God refers to Himself as The Great I AM. It’s as if He knows this undeniable truth also, and is telling us that it is true not only for Him, but for each of us, and also for any other entity or intelligence capable of self awareness (dolphins, snails, corn, possibly matter itself?). Of all things that are able to say “I am”, HE is the Greatest of all of these. LDS scholar Cleon Skousen once wrote an essay on this subject. His thoughts are rarely part of a Sunday School lesson, in part because they are pretty speculative (though backed by extensive research of existing scripture and statements of the prophets), but also because they are “pretty meaty”, and is the kind of stuff that only a few among many active Saints would be able to hear without a lot of obsession or unnecessary confusion, possibly driving them away from what is most important.I am very reluctant to continue on this thread because I am nervous to put “pearls before swine”, but I also want to help honest truth seekers discover what I’ve found to be one of the most prized pearls! I’ll continue carefully and will gladly pull this or tone it down if ever requested by those in authority.

When The Father names Himself “I AM”, He is placing Himself at the head of all things that can say I am, which is more than just mankind. Man is the only order of intelligence that is fully capable of exercising free will, or in other words, the only entity capable of acting against the will of God. This gets at the very heart of why God is all powerful, or rather it explains the mechanics of how God’s power exists. It is because as an “I am” of the highest order (capable of exercising agency, or in other words, theoretically capable of breaking His word), He has not broken His word, and the Universe of intelligences or “I ams”, whatever that means, respects and trusts Him completely for that. Thus when God speaks and a mountain moves, there is no magic involved, but rather the very mountain itself is aware of and has perfect respect for God. It is capable of acting, but not capable of choosing to act against God – unless – God were to violate His own word and lose the trust of all “I ams”. Clues to this truth lie in scriptural statements such as “If it were not so, God would cease to be God”. This is implying there is a theoretical mechanism by which God Himself would no longer be God if He went against His word.

Possible source of God’s Power

So what is that mechanism? God is King, so maybe we can discover it by looking at the structure of a kingdom. In a kingdom, where does the king’s power come from? The king has power because the majority chooses to obey him. If he acts wickedly against his people, he will insight a rebellion by those who would have willingly supported him if he had treated them with respect. This happened to King Noah in the Book of Mormon. After much wickedness against his people, they finally rose up against him and burned him at the stake when he ordered the men to abandon their families to the Lamanites in order to “save the king”.  At this point, he had no stature, and was no longer the king because he had no one who would obey him.

God is the all powerful King because He has the respect and admiration of all creation. He is always on display before the Universe, and if He were to violate His word, they would instantly know it and would no longer lend Him their support. In this vein, it is almost natural to view God the Father as who He really is – a glorified man. It is perhaps easier to see Christ in this light, since we know He is a glorified and resurrected man. But He is also a God. He is the Creator, and all of His Creation loves Him and respects Him for never having violated His word nor any of the commandments (i.e. His sinless state). When the Universe watched their sinless Creator suffer unjustly on behalf of sinners, they endowed Him with the redeeming power. In other words, the Universe of “I ams” who have obeyed their commandments (animals that were commanded only to multiply, matter that was commanded only to “form an earth”, etc.), stands against us for even the slightest sin. God the Father has stated that every sin must be paid for, and the Universe stands guard at the gate making sure the unclean cannot get in. If God were to make an exception even for the slightest thing, He would instantly become a fallen man not all that different from ourselves. Having lost respect for God, the Universe would no longer hold Him as King, and would cease to obey His command. So where the earth’s present command is simply “exist as a habitat for man”, it is conceivable that the earth may simply disintegrate into space dust in rebellion against its former King. Hence the Priesthood really does hold our very planet together minute by minute.

The Role of Christ

This is where Christ’s role is so vital. We have sinned and cannot work our way out of our sins. We cannot be “extra good from now on” and still take away the fact that a law was broken and a consequence is attached to that by the word of God. We could try to repent and live a Mother Theresa life, and there would still be no salvation for us because once fallen we cannot lift ourselves up. Here is where Lutherans and others are correct in noting that we are not saved by our works, but by the grace of God.

Thus a dilemma: our sins must be paid for, and we cannot pay for them ourselves. It requires a scapegoat (after the original Old Testament meaning) – a sacrificial lamb (which is why the Jews did sacrifices, but sadly they didn’t understand the sacrifices were all aimed at helping them recognize the Real sacrifice). When the Universe watched their creator suffer unjustly though He had not sinned, the Universe offered to accept this unjust suffering in trade for what should have been just suffering. Society requires that a law breaker make whatever payment is required for a given broken law. Killers often claim they’ve “found Jesus” in their 10th year, and hope we’ll let them out. Society rightly says, “Good for you. I hope it’s true. You must still pay your price.”

The Courtroom

In the Final Judgment, I think the Universe plays the roll of society, or think of the Universe as both witness to our sins, and expecting enactment of God’s word stating there is a punishment required for sin – namely that unclean things cannot be in Heaven. Therefore, “society” will not allow fallen man in Heaven without the right payment, which payment we are not capable of making on our own behalf (hence the need for Grace). It’s as if we killed someone, and the only acceptable payment is to bring the dead back to life. We can pay a billion dollars and give our own life, but society says, “No thanks, God has written that only life restored is acceptable, and if God takes your billion dollars even for a good cause, He will cease to be God because He will have broken His word, and we will not obey Him. And if the King’s subjects will not obey Him, then there is no King and no Kingdom”. I think of the court dialog as something like this:

Christ: “Before the Bar of Judgment we have the man Michael Brown. I know Michael, like Adam before him, has partaken of the tree which We told him not to partake and deserves the affixed punishment, which is to be removed from God’s presence forever. However, since then, Michael has made great effort to repent, and to obey My commandments. I recognize that this alone does not change the fact that He is accountable before the Law, and that the Law must be satisfied. As your Creator, you have seen my infinite and unjust suffering which I endured just for the likes of Michael. Since his knee first bowed down confessing me as his Savior, he has consistently made great effort to do what I have asked. Therefore, I ask you to accept my unjust suffering as payment for his just suffering.”

The Jury: “It pained us greatly to see your infinite and unjust suffering. You have certainly suffered sufficient to pay Michael’s debt. Therefore, we judge that you may own him and do with him as You will – even to set him free in the Kingdom of Heaven if You will. This Court is satisfied with your argument and payment in his behalf.”

Grace satisfies the Universe, Works satisfy Him from Whom we must obtain Grace

So indeed all the good works in the world cannot of themselves save us – we do need the Grace of God. But the Grace of God is not as easy to obtain as some would have us think. A wise man once said, “What we obtain too easily we esteem to lightly”. This is why paying for freedom with blood makes us value freedom all the more. Christ is now the “the richest man in the world” in the sense that only He can pay our debts to Society. Still, He is a wise investor and doesn’t pay off our debts without getting something He wants more in return. He will not pay for us until we work for Him – until we give our hearts to Him.  

Here is where the “Saved by Gracers” don’t quite have it right. They claim all you need to do is “state that you accept Christ”, and then you’re saved. It doesn’t matter what happened before or what happens afterwards. I know they’d say it’s not quite like that, but close enough for illustration. Thus the Atonement takes something that was unattainable (Society’s strict rules of justice), and makes them still not easy, but attainable (Christ’s rules for obtaining Grace and mercy).

So thus far we have a few things that are Real:

God is the Great Governor of the Universe, and the Universe obeys His command because of their great respect for his proven reliability.  We exist also, and we are of the same order of intelligence that God is (i.e. capable of agency). However, we are unproven, without wisdom, and fallen. God created the earth as a setting in which we could prove ourselves and gain wisdom. Christ, having suffered unjustly, is now vested with power from those intelligences that have broken no laws. They accept Christ’s payment on our behalf, and release their just claims on us if He requests it. They give Him ownership of us if He will have us. While we still often suffer the earthly consequences of sin, we are at least free from the eternal consequences if we will but do as He who bought us with His blood requires (repent).

 

• What is the purpose of Earth? Gain experience and demonstrate before the Heavens which side we’re on.
• Why the veil between heaven and earth makes for a perfect proving ground.
• There are only “two churches”, and every soul will be judged as having been in one or the other.
• Are democrats “evil”, and are republicans “righteous”?

What is Earth for? It’s the “School of Hard Knocks” for critical knowledge that comes in no other way.

Latter-Day Saints believe that the “I am” inside each of us has always existed and always will. We believe that we are spirit children of God, and that we lived with him before this earth. While we existed as “highest order” intelligences (literally the same type of intelligence that God is), we had a lot of “growing up to do” before we could be like God. This is hard for many outside our religion to accept, in part because they’ve grown up with a much different concept of who God is and who we are relative to Him. It is so simple to see – we all call Him our Father, and who ever saw a son that did not have the potential to become a Father himself? Children are clearly far from adults, but with time and experience they become adults. Likewise as the “children” of God, we are far from Godlike, and many of us will never become Godlike, but we all have that potential.

So what was it we were lacking that compelled God to create the Earth and send us here knowing full well that many would not “spiritually survive?” A word I think sums it up well is EXPERIENCE. If you have children or observe children, they exist in a wonderfully blissful state of unawareness. Their lives are Real, their problems are Real to them, their joy is Real. But their understanding is limited by inexperience. We know they will grow and learn, and a good parent is eager to help them learn to react positively to life’s lessons and help them desire to choose for themselves the better parts. God is the same way. He knew there was critical knowledge that could never be had unless we were to be isolated away from Him and set on a stage in which we could be pushed, tempted, pained, pleasured, proven. He and we needed to see what kind of metal we were made of. There was no way to reach our full potential without passing through Experience.

• The facts of our birth, and what others do TO us, is not Real.
• Our “Ken and Barbie” plastic pleasures and lives are not Real.
• Moses discovered that “Man is Nothing, AND Man is Everything”
• Can you see the dolphins?
• Our choices in “the pursuit of happiness” can be both Real and not real.

Our “costume and setting” – or circumstances at birth and what happens to us – is not Real

There are many things that are Real within the sunrises and sunsets that make up our time here.  Let me start however with what is NOT Real.  The circumstances of our lives, or the stage, costumes, and props, and setting, are not real.  They are second estate factual, but if we get caught in the trees we will never see the forest.  It is virtually irrelevant if we are born rich or poor, black or white, American or Iranian, Nephite or Lamanite, far from the truth (as a “confused-but-swear-I-see-the-light” Ivy League liberal), or very near the most valuable truths (such as in a solid LDS family).  These are only the props we were handed and the scene we are acting in.  However, our reaction to them is Real.  Our reaction to others is Real.  The Experience we gain from our setting is Real.  If much is given, much is required to get the same reward as someone of whom little is required because little was given.  This is made plain in the Parable of the Talents. 

Suppose our stage sees us born into a war torn environment where rape, murder, torture, starvation, are the lot of many in your circle and maybe even you.  Whatever evil, momentary gratification the perpetrators obtain seems real, but it is not. The pain we experience ourselves or vicariously as we see the suffering of others is Real, but there are greater Real and valuable opportunities here.  Any time we relieve suffering, stand against evil, or maintain our faith when faith is all we have and it’s hard to hold on to, that is all REAL and demonstrates to the Heavens that we are becoming Christ-like!

Our “Ken and Barbie” plastic lives

More on what is not Real.  “Stuff” is not real.  Earthly kingdoms and power are not Real.  Consider for a moment “Ken and Barbie” of doll-house fame.  From our vantage point, they are NOT real, and they are missing out on a lot of the wonders that it is to be human.  However, imagine for a minute that Ken and Barbie were actually alive, but that they had a veil drawn over them that made them completely unaware that there may be any type of existence beyond their plastic world.  They would sit in their plastic world doing what plastic world people do.  They would eat plastic hamburgers (just like us – when buying from the dollar menu).  They would watch the little TV with nothing on it and marvel at how nice it is.  They would drive around forever in a plastic pink Corvette that never runs out of gas. 

They may hear stories from crazy “prophets” who say there is a life beyond their world which is wonderful, and that they may even have a chance to experience it if they will simply believe it is there, stop the infatuation with a TV that won’t turn on, and live as if they really belong in the better place.  However, Ken just can’t get over driving the plastic car around the house, and further, he is desperate to have the biggest plastic house there is.  Barbie just can’t get over her infatuation with clothes.  And it never seems to rain in their world, so what could be much better than what they’ve got?

It would be hard for them to imagine what our world is like, but it is easy for us to comprehend not only our world, but theirs also.  We can judge that the plastic house, the Velcro clothes, and everything that is their world is nothing to brag about. 

From God’s perspective, our world is pretty much plastic, and just not that cool.  Because we cannot see God’s world, it is hard to value it or even to trust that it exists.  To us, this is an exciting enough place, and many work really hard to gain whatever they can from this life.  Our plastic pleasure seems real.  Our plastic pain seems real.  They are Real in the sense that WE ARE REAL, and how WE react to them can have a Real outcome either positive or negative. 

The Plan of Salvation brings structure and meaning to our lives.  It puts our plastic world into context, and reminds us that the plastic and the Pinocchio are necessary steps to obtain something Real.

The Plan of Salvation, with its first estate, second estate, and third estate is the all-encompassing Reality that helps place the experiences of this place into proper context.  Inherent in believing in this plan is an admission that there are other places, perhaps best described almost as other dimensions to use a sci-fi description, that have a definite X,Y,Z coordinate in space, and that are inhabited by beings who have a reality different than that which we wake up to every day.  For those yet in the first estate, our reality is a step beyond theirs, even though they may be more aware of our reality than we are of theirs.  For those who have passed beyond this state, they are a step beyond us, and may have an awareness not only of their new place, but perhaps a remembrance of this place and the first estate also.  Our challenge now is to just trust that there is something greater than simply acquiring a billion dollars or marrying a sexy spouse “as seen with the eyes of the world”.

How cool is Mankind…really?

Moses was one of the few earth dwellers whose mind was opened to an awareness of the greater Realities.   As a Prince of Egypt, and party to the most impressive works of mankind to that date, he stated after he was privileged to see the works of God, “Now I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1, verse 10).

The works of man are arguably more impressive these days, but how impressive are they really?  An awareness of the greater Realities still dwarfs anything we will ever do.  You know how kids come running to show you something they’re so proud of?  You are in fact proud of them, but what ever it is they did is cool in relative terms (relative to them as children), but just really isn’t that cool in absolute terms (compared to the space shuttle or something).  I imagine God is like that with us.  We work for untold years, spend billions of dollars, and figure out what?  Lasik surgery, hearing aids, and the like.  God is proud of us, no doubt, but knows that what is “cool” for us is really amateurish in the grand scheme of things.  “Oh yeah Lasik surgery?  Watch me cure that blind man, and it won’t take even 10 seconds or require an army of PhD’s.”

Man is nothing, Man is everything

So man is nothing, and yet man is everything!  God says, “This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man”.  We understand this when we look at small children.  We know their works amount to nothing, that their problems are minor, and that they have an awful lot of progress to make, but to a loving parent that progress means everything!  It becomes the reason we get up and head out into the plastic world.  Sometimes we misjudge and think that loving our kids means giving them free, plastic stuff that we always wanted, when actually loving our kids means helping them see the greater vision beyond the plastic.  It means enabling them mentally, physically, and spiritually to achieve the most good they can with whatever talents they obtain.  It means helping them find God, and then them helping others to find God.

The plastic world and what is Real can be well understood with one of my favorite analogies, that I call “3-D dolphins”. 

3-D dolphin picture analogy:  A fascinating world of spiritual knowledge is available if only you “have eyes to see”

You know those 3-D pictures made of randomly-sized circles all of varying shades of say green and blue?  Someone may tell you there’s a dolphin in there, and you stare at it for awhile, but can’t see it immediately so you give up and move on.  They seem trustworthy, but you ultimately don’t believe them or consider them well-meaning but senile.   But then someone comes along and you ask, “Can you see anything in there?” They respond, “Oh yeah, it’s a dolphin”.  You find many people think they see a dolphin, but you never can, and decide it isn’t really worth the effort to keep trying.

They tell you to look cross-eyed, peripherally, and anything they can think of until you finally have to move on with your day.  Many give up there, but others will try again on a different day and finally begin to “see the dolphins” – an entire world that was right before your eyes, but to which you were previously blinded.  That is the world that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has opened to my eyes.  I don’t see that spiritual world all that clearly yet, but I have “seen some dolphins” and I can tell there is probably a lot more that I can yet see if I look long enough and correctly (prayer, faith, diligence, etc.). 

The Pursuit of Happiness

Real and unreal things can also be found when contemplating that unalienable right that Thomas Jefferson well labeled “The Pursuit of Happiness”.   His insightful choice of words reveals one of God’s major purposes for life.  He has placed us here with an instinct to seek for things that will bring us happiness, but with a host of competing voices trying to define for us exactly what happiness means.  Yet He does not define happiness for us, and leaves us completely free to “pursue” what ever we think happiness might be. 

Many are born as “Lamanites” and hear few voices advocating from God’s camp on actions and lifestyles that bring Real and lasting happiness.  They are tempted into a life of “sex, drugs, and rock and roll”, and the tainted pleasures that these bring counterfeit for a short time as happiness.  Others end up so low that they think happiness is being rid of those who have claim on them, so they leave their families or may even murder.  Many born as “Nephites” are raised to understand things that really do bring Real happiness, but they don’t see the dolphins, and they seek out the easy way of short term gratification.  Then there are Lamanites to find Real happiness, and Nephites also.  Real happiness has so many facets, and you can find none, find a few and miss most, and find most but miss a few.  I doubt anyone has ever found all facets of happiness.  Key is that we all have the same freedom to chase our dreams, and to seek out what we believe will make us Happy. 

I can say with confidence that I have been at the Tree of Life, tasted some of the fruit, and found it to be very desirable and truly brings Real Happiness.  I am grateful to live in a free society that places high value on our right to seek after happiness.  I can also say that it is clear that though everyone is seeking, few are really finding Real Happiness.  Sadly, I have also spent some time window shopping in the Great and Spacious Building.  I can report that whatever measures of short-term pleasure are available there, you come away in the end more hollow, shallow, and disillusioned.  There is nothing Real in the Great and Spacious Building, except the fact that we Really will lose our shot at becoming a Real Boy if we dwell there too long.

Some things I know are not Real:

Keeping up with the Jones; trading or devaluing your family for a roll in the world – even if that roll is significantly beneficial to the world; the world’s obsession with sexual sensations (Real in the right setting, but very plastic otherwise); exploiting other people for wealth or selfish purposes (not the same as employing people respectfully, ending up wealthy in the process, and using your wealth to achieve things that are Real); Our costume and stage play is not real (black, white, American, Iranian, middle ages, vegetable IQ, PhD, endless pain, or seemingly endless luxury). 

Are Corvettes Real?

I’ve always wanted to believe that great automobiles are Real.  I’ve hunted around and I believe the creative genius behind them is Real, but our trading valuable assets for vanity instead of for things God would condone is what makes them not real.  Somebody Real had to make Barbie’s plastic Corvette, but the ‘Vette is still plastic.  In other words, there is nothing wrong with the process that seeks to improve upon something – either in its physical quality, utility, or beauty.  The “wrong” comes in our motive for improving or in our purposes for having the improvement.  The makers of Ferraris go wrong when they build into their designs features whose sole purpose is to tempt our vanity into setting ourselves above our brothers and sisters.  We go wrong when we want a Ferrari, not because of its quality and beauty, but because we can then look down on others.

All of these thoughts have helped me immensely to comprehend the larger Realities.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this exploration of “What is Real.”