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Monday, September 1, 2014

Seeing the Good in the World

(This is a talk that I gave in Sacrament Meeting this past Sunday.)
          I have been asked to speak today about “protecting the family” and “being in the world, but not of the world.” As I considered how best to address this topic, I thought of Chaim Potok’s novel, The Chosen. The story is set in Brooklyn, New York toward the end of World War II, and it centers around two Jewish boys: a Hasidic Jew named Danny Saunders and a Modern Orthodox Jew named Reuven Malter.

          The boys’ fathers are strikingly different from one another. Danny’s father is the leader — the tzaddik — of a community of Hasidic Jews, who are committed to following strict religious rules and adhering to a unique dress code. They generally try to isolate themselves from the outside world, believing that their religious practices must be protected from secular influences.
          Reuven’s father is also a deeply spiritual man, but as a Modern Orthodox Jew, he actively participates in the world outside of his religious community in addition to practicing his faith. Reuven’s father does not see a necessary conflict between devotion to his faith and a commitment o the outside world. In fact, he seems to believe that his faith requires him to engage productively with the outside world.
          The contrast between the way Danny and Reuven are raised is fascinating to me. Early in their friendship, Danny confesses a secret to Reuven: “I read a lot,” he says. “I read about seven or eight books a week outside of my schoolwork. … I read anything good that I can get my hands on. … I just get so tired of studying only Talmud all the time. I know the stuff cold, and it gets a little boring after a while. So I read whatever I can get my hands on.” But Danny doesn’t feel comfortable reading at home. He says, “I read in the library so my father won’t know. He’s very strict about what I read.” (Potok, pp. 80–81)
          In contrast, Reuven is encouraged by his father to read voraciously, including non-religious material, and to pay close attention to world events. While Reuven is in the hospital recovering from an eye injury that has left him unable to read, his father brings him a radio, saying, “Just because you are in the hospital does not mean you should shut yourself off from the world. … You should not forget there is a world outside.” (Potok, p. 50)
          The Chosen illustrates the tension that many religious people feel as we attempt to raise our children in a world in which a majority of people do not share our beliefs. One possible approach is to be like Danny’s father. We can teach our children that God wants us to immerse ourselves in religious study and isolate ourselves from the outside world. We can teach our children that “the world” — or, in other words, anything beyond the boundaries of our religious community, including any literature outside the realm of the LDS tradition — is evil and to be strictly avoided.
          However, I don’t believe that such an approach is consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. As President Hinckley once said: “We cannot live a cloistered existence in this world. We are a part of the whole of humanity.” (Hinckley 1997) Similarly, President Monson has said: “I think we should not be sequestered in a little cage. I think we have a responsibility to be active in the communities where we live … and to work cooperatively with other churches and other organizations.” (Rees, loc. 1414–15)
          A modern revelation teaches us that we should “seek … out of the best books words of wisdom” (D&C 109:7), and I don’t believe that refers exclusively to the scriptures. President Hinckley said: “Children should be encouraged to read the great literature of the ages, as well as what is being said by the great minds of our day.” (Hinckley 2009, loc. 2638–39) Apostle Orson Pratt taught: “The study of science is the study of something eternal. If we study astronomy, we study the works of God. If we study chemistry, geology, optics, or any other branch of science, every new truth we come to the understanding of is eternal; it is a part of the great system of universal truth.” (Givens, loc. 1911–14)
          However, while these inspirational and uplifting quotations encourage us in the direction of Reuven’s father, I sometimes wonder if there are echoes of Danny’s father in comments about “the world” from LDS church members. Consider the following statements, which I have encountered on LDS-themed blogs and websites:
·       “I believe the world is becoming more evil and wicked and it is hard to stay faithful … when you are constantly surrounded by the evils of the world.” (link)
·       “[T]he world is getting more and more like Sodom and [Gomorrah] than it is the City of Enoch.” (link)
·       “The world will continue to become more evil — we know that from prophecy.” (link)
·       “Evil is escalating at an alarming pace … we are in the count down.” (link)
·        “The world is going to end in fire, blood, and smoke. … [W]e must be prepared for what is coming. … The less we rely on the world, the less its fall can affect us.” (link)
          I’d like you to think about the effect that these statements have on your attitudes. Do they make you want to “be active in the communities where we live,” as President Monson has encouraged us to do? Or do they make you want to “live a cloistered existence,” as President Hinckley warned us against?
          I’m not quite sure what some of these statements are supposed to mean. For example, what does it mean that “the world is becoming more evil and wicked”? Does it mean that everything — or at least most things — about the world are becoming more evil and wicked? Doesn’t that perspective ignore many of the significant ways in which life on Earth has improved over the course of human history?
          “[T]he vast majority of people [alive today] are much better fed, much better sheltered, … much better protected against disease and much more likely to live to old age than their ancestors have ever been.” (Ridley, p. 12) “Since 1800, … average life expectancy has more than doubled…” (Ridley, p. 14) Even if we take a shorter perspective, the progress is striking. Let’s compare the average human being living in 2005 with the average human being living in 1955. The person living in 2005 “buried one-third as many of her children and could expect to live one-third longer” than the person living in 1955. “She was less likely to die as a result of war, murder, childbirth, accidents, tornadoes, flooding, famine [or various diseases]. She was less likely, at any given age, to get cancer, heart disease or stroke. She was more likely to be literate and to have finished school.” (Ridley, p. 14)
          Those who see the world as mostly “becoming more evil and wicked” may acknowledge that humankind has made progress in medicine and technology. (It would be difficult to argue otherwise!) But, they may argue that we are predominantly in decline morally.
          I acknowledge that there may be some trends that are presently moving in the wrong direction, and we are wise to warn our children accordingly. I am certainly not advocating “head-in-the-sand” optimism. But there is also so much good in the world, morally speaking. Do we ever say that to our children? If all we do as parents is bombard our children with a steady stream of alarmist rhetoric about how evil the world is, and we never take the opportunity to discuss with them the good in the world, we are likely to induce feelings of anxiety and despair. Such an approach is highly unlikely to prepare our children to engage constructively with people outside of the LDS community.
          BYUtv has a slogan that I appreciate: “See the good in the world.” In the spirit of seeing the good in the world, I’d like to share with you a few examples of ways in which I believe the world is getting less evil and wicked:
·       “For most of the history of civilization, the practice of slavery [has been] the rule rather than the exception. It was … justified by Plato and Aristotle as a natural institution that was essential to civilized society. … Athens in the time of Pericles enslaved 35 percent of its population, as did the Roman Republic.” (Pinker, loc. 3523–26) In the United States, millions of blacks were enslaved in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Although slavery has not been completely eradicated from the face of the earth, today there is “a law against [slavery] in every country,” “no economy is dependent on slavery,” and “no one is trying to justify it any more.” (Pinker, loc. 3635–37) Whereas slavery used to be “an authorized practice everywhere in the world,” it is now “a clandestine practice in [just] a few parts of the world.” (Pinker, loc. 3621–22)
·       For about a century after slavery was abolished in the United States, “African American families were terrorized by organized thugs such as the Ku Klux Klan.” (Pinker, loc. 8524–25) Thousands of lynchings and night raids were carried out in black neighborhoods. Today, in our country and elsewhere in the developed world, “opposition to civil rights [is] moribund, antiblack riots [are] a distant memory, and terrorism against blacks no longer receive[s] support from any significant community.” (Pinker, loc. 8630–31)
·       In the 1950s and 60s, “ugly mobs hurled obscenities and death threats at black children for trying to enroll in all-white schools.” (Pinker, loc. 8607–08) “[I]n the 1940s and early 1950s a majority of Americans said they were opposed to black children attending white schools, and as late as the early 1960s almost half said they would move away if a black family moved in next door.” (Pinker, loc. 8683–84) Such attitudes are incomprehensible from the vantage point of today’s moral sensibilities.
·       There was a time in America when women did not have the right to vote, could not hold property in marriage, and could not serve as jurors. Today it is taken for granted that women can do all of these things.
·       In “[m]oral and legal systems all over the world” throughout human history, rape has been “seen as an offense not against the woman but against a man — the woman’s father, her husband, or in the case of a slave, her owner.” (Pinker, loc. 8759–60) It took a long time for this perspective to be eliminated from our criminal justice system. For example, as late as the 1970s, marital rape was not a crime anywhere in the United States. (Pinker, loc. 8828) Similarly, “[w]ell into the first decades of the 20th century, the man of the house was entitled by law to ‘chastise’ his wife.” (Pinker, loc. 9031–32). In some parts of the United States a “husband could … forcibly confine his wife or prevent her from leaving the house,” and “a woman’s family and friends were … guilty of the crime of ‘harboring’ if they gave sanctuary to a … wife” who was fleeing her abusive husband. (Pinker, loc. 9033–36) Today, every level of the criminal justice system in the United States has been mandated to aggressively prosecute violence against women, regardless of whether or not the perpetrator is the woman’s husband.
·       “If you understand the expressions to burn at the stake, to hold his feet to the fire, … to be racked with pain, [or] to be drawn and quartered, … you are familiar with a fraction of the ways that [people] were brutalized during the Middle Ages and early modern period.” (Pinker, loc. 655–59) While torture is, unfortunately, sometimes practiced today, even by our own government, it is almost universally condemned. In contrast, “[t]orture in the Middle Ages was not hidden [or] denied” — it was institutionally sanctioned and “woven into the fabric of public life.” (Pinker, loc. 3040–43) This would be unthinkable today.
·       “[F]rom the 13th century to the 20th, homicide in various parts of England plummeted.” (Pinker, loc. 1586) 20th-century England was about 95 percent less violent than 14th-century England. (Pinker, loc. 1590–91)
·       “The annual homicide rate in the United States at its recent worst — 10.2 per 100,000 in 1980 — was a quarter of the rate for Western Europe in 1450.” (Pinker, loc. 2717–18)
·       Since 1992, the homicide rate in the United States has dropped by more than half. (Pinker, loc. 2720–24) In addition, “the rates of every category of major crime [in the United States have] dropped by at least half, including rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and even auto theft.” (Pinker, loc. 2740–41)
·       Since 1945, no nuclear weapons have been used in any conflict. (Pinker, loc. 5561) No interstate wars have been fought between major developed countries since 1956, when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary. (Pinker, loc. 5595–96) “In fact, as of May 15, 1984, the major powers of the world had remained at peace with one another for the longest stretch of time since the Roman Empire.” (Pinker, loc. 5588–89) 
          These are just a few examples. In the interest of time I will stop there. But I could give many more.
          Now I want to be very clear about what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that everything is fine in the world. All is not well in Zion. We enjoy the significant moral advances that I have described because righteous “people in past generations were appalled by the [wickedness] in their time and worked to reduce it, and so we should work to reduce the [wickedness] that remains in our time.” (Pinker, loc. 271–73)
          But I return to the question that I posed a few minutes ago. Is it really accurate to say that everything — or even most things — about the world are becoming more evil? Isn’t a world in which slavery has nearly been eliminated less evil than a world in which the economy is dependent on slave labor? Isn’t a world in which women are legally protected against abusive husbands less evil than a world in which they are not? Isn’t a world in which violent crime is declining in developed nations less evil than a world in which the opposite is true?
          My patriarchal blessing begins by saying that I am blessed to “liv[e] in a marvelous age.” I wholeheartedly agree. If I could choose any period of time in the history of the world in which to live, I would unequivocally choose to live today. And I am even more optimistic about what the future holds. As the British historian Thomas Macaulay said back in 1830: “On what principle is it, that when we see [so much] improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?” (Ridley, p. 11)
          In closing, let me return to The Chosen. At the end of the book, Danny decides that he will not follow in his father’s footsteps and become a tzaddik. Instead, he will attend college and become a psychologist. Surprisingly, his father accepts this news. He says: “Let my Daniel become a psychologist. I do not see his books? I did not see the letters from the universities? … Of course I know. For a long time I have known. Let my Daniel become a psychologist. I have no more fear now. All his life he will be a tzaddik. He will be a tzaddik for the world. And the world needs a tzaddik.” (Potok, p. 287)
          When Danny’s father says that his son “will be a tzaddik for the world,” I think he means that Danny will be someone who helps to make the world a better place by combining knowledge of economic, political, legal, scientific and behavioral principles with spiritual ideals. This is the kind of attitude that I want my daughters to have. I don’t want my daughters to believe that everything or even most things about the world are becoming more evil and will continue to do so. I don’t believe that is true, and I see that perspective as unhealthy. I want my daughters to see the world as being filled with many good and sincere people, both Mormon and non-Mormon. I recognize that there is evil in the world, and I want my daughters to be aware of it — and to avoid it. But I also want them to have an optimistic outlook on the future. I want my daughters to say, as did President Hinckley, that “[t]he future will be essentially the same as the past, only much brighter and greatly enlarged.” (Hinckley 1997) I want my daughters to see the good in the world, and to join with other good people and try to make the world an even better place than it is right now. I want them to be tzaddiks for the world.

CITATIONS:
·       Givens, Terryl & Fiona; The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life (2012, Kindle ed.)
·       Hinckley, Gordon B.; “Look to the Future” (Oct. 1997 General Conference)
·       Hinckley, Gordon B.; Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes (2009, Kindle ed.)
·       Pinker, Steven; The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011, Kindle ed.)
·       Potok, Chaim; The Chosen (1987)
·       Rees, Robert A.; Why I Stay: The Challenges of Discipleship for Contemporary Mormons (2009, Kindle ed.)
·       Ridley, Matt, The Rational Optimist (2010)

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