• 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).

 

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