“There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessing are predicated – And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.”  Doctrine & Covenants 130:20-21.

If ever a person mistook God for a vending machine, I think she could be found looking through a lens made of this scripture.

It troubles me.

It makes our relationship to God sound like a transaction, like we can cash in our obedience for blessings.  And where is grace?  When we obtain any blessing from God it is because we were obedient???  I have too many blessings I don’t deserve for that to be true.

For example, I recently took a trip to visit family, alone.  As I was leaving our hotel I dropped my wallet, but didn’t notice until we got to my Grandma’s house, two hours away.  Amazingly, someone had taken my wallet to the lost and found, nothing missing.  He also thoughtfully called my office and left a message telling me it was safe.  Without my wallet I don’t know how I would have flown home the next day, and my family really needed me home because without me there the day would have been a scheduling disaster (Uh, hello dear daycare provider, can you keep my kids till 10:30 pm?  Yeah, I know the 2 year old has been there since 8:30 this morning…)

Getting my wallet back safe was a blessing, but I did nothing to deserve it.  I didn’t pray it safe (by the time I noticed it was missing it was already locked up in the hotel safe), and I felt the light touch of the spirit telling me this wasn’t a reward for any past honesty.  It was pure grace.  Undeserved and freely given, as so many blessings are.

I think other scripture, particularly King Benjamin’s address (Mosiah 2:18-24),  establishes that blessings are not necessarily the result of obedience.  So why is this scripture saying they’re connected?

I can accept that good things come from obedience.  I think the critical issue is causality.  If blessings as a result of obedience require divine thought and action, for example God choosing and bestowing particular blessings in response to particular acts of obedience by us, then that feels transactional, and potentially capricious.  But what if there is a law (existing from before the foundations of this world) which dictates that natural consequences will flow from obedience (or disobedience) to moral principles?

For example living honestly brings the reward of having people trust you and not needing to live with anxieties created by lying.  Being faithful to a spouse means getting to enjoy intimacy and trust.  Not coveting leaves mental space that can be filled by better thoughts.  Or for a Mormon-specific kind of obedience, keeping the Word of Wisdom might mean you don’t tempt fate with your predisposition to addiction.  All of these blessings are inherent to the behavior, not an external reward layered onto it.

This to me is consistent with the logic of natural laws.  When you multiply mass and acceleration you inherently get force.  The universe doesn’t wait for God to make the force when a mass is accelerated, it simply exists.  Maybe this odd scripture in the Doctrine & Covenants is explaining a natural law.  Maybe God’s goodness and wisdom is in giving us commandments or principles that when lived lead naturally to happiness.

I’ve never liked the word obedience.  To me it connotes manipulation and control — a person more powerful than me offering a carrot if I’ll comply with his wishes and a sick if I don’t.  I can be motivated by carrots and sticks, but I’d like to think I’m more motivated by love.  I’d rather use the word allegiance.  I’d like to give my allegiance to principles (or commandments, if we must) that are part of equations that naturally yield good things.

Allegiance also leaves room for agency.  To be sure some level of agency is exercised when we comply with commandments received from authority.  This may be what God has in mind for us, at least initially, as a way of getting us started on right paths.  But surely this kind of because-I-said-so obedience is not where we are meant to stay.  We are meant to have changed hearts (Alma 5:14), loving good for goodness’ sake.  Choosing good because we love God and our neighbors.  I think allegiance is obedience with agency fully engaged.

What’s your comfort level with the word obedience?  Are you bugged by it, or of all the things to be bugged by, maybe this really doesn’t rise above the noise?

How was your weekend?  Did you watch General Conference?  Let us know what moved you (in any direction!) in the comments.

Is seeing something that just happens to you when light hits your retina, or is it a mental process?  In two books I’ve read recently scientists describe what it’s like to see things, and they describe it more as a skill than a simple sensory function.

William Herschel was a self-taught astronomer from the late eighteenth century.  He made his own telescopes and became the most skillful astronomer of his generation.  Working together with his sister Caroline, he discovered the planet Uranus and lots of other things.

He described his “art of seeing” like this:

“The eye is one of the most extraordinary Organs…I remember a time when I could not see with a power beyond 200, with the same instrument which now gives me 460 so distinct that in fine weather I can wish for nothing more.”  So visual images didn’t simply fall on the eye like an exposure on film, the eye interpreted what it saw.  He had to learn to see, and over time became more skillful at it [1].

His son, John Herschel also became an eminent astronomer, and after trying to show something to one of his friends commented, “An object is frequently not seen from not knowing how to see it, rather than from any deficit in the organ of vision…I will instruct you how to seem them” [2].

Another example of learning to see is Barbara McClintock, a geneticist whose career spanned the 1930s to the 1980s.  She made a name for herself very early in her career for being able to see corn chromosomes under the microscope better than anyone else, and by connecting genetic studies of corn with cytological studies.  Her work clarified the fact that the way traits are inherited is determined by what physically happens to chromosomes.

After her success with corn, a fellow scientist asked for help with the organism he was working on – Neurospora, or bread mold.  His group had success in studying the genetics of Neurospora, but their work was hindered by the fact that no one could see its chromosomes under the microscope.  So they asked McClintock to help.  She spent three days looking, but got nowhere.  So she realized she had to “do something” with herself, and went for a walk.  She sat on a bench under some eucalyptus trees at Stanford for a while, then, “Suddenly I jumped up, I couldn’t wait to get back to the laboratory.  I knew I was going to solve it – everything was going to be all right.”

And within 5 days she’d identified all seven Neurospora chromosomes and followed them through cell divisions.  How did she do it?  She said, “I found that the more I worked with [the chromosomes] the bigger and bigger they got, and when I was really working with them I wasn’t outside, I was down there.  I was part of the system.   I was right down there with parts of the chromosomes – actually everything was there.  It surprised me because I actually felt as if I were right down there and these were my friends” [3].

I never had an epiphany quite like that while I was doing biology research.  I never acquired exceptional skills as a microscopist, although I spent a lot of time looking through microscopes – enough to know there is a certain amount of skill needed before you can look through an eyepiece and get any work done on a microscope.  So I appreciate what the Herschels and McClintock said.

I can think of other examples where knowing what you are looking for helps you see more than someone with an inexperienced eye – seeing camouflaged animals, cracking secret codes, or detecting fake pieces of art, for instance.  But people also sometimes see things that aren’t really there.  For example Herschel was convinced he saw inhabitants on the moon, and McClintock observed that certain kinds of genes in corn are inherited in an unconventional way (they were transposable, or “jumping” genes), and became convinced that corn used these genes to control gene expression.  She was wrong about that, but believed it to the end, even when she was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering transposable genes and everyone else in the field at the time had totally rejected her interpretation of them.  The Nobel Prize was in a way a repudiation of her ideas, and she knew it [4].

I guess there’s a bit of a cautionary tale here.  We have to be able use our experience and skills to interpret what we see, but it’s possible to become so confident in our abilities to perceive things correctly that we can’t tell when we’re wrong.  Something to be aware of, I think.

1.The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes, page 116.

2.Ibid, page 440.

3.A Feeling for the Organism: the Life and Work of Barbara McClintock by Evelyn Fox Keller, page 117.

4.The Tangled Field by Nathaniel Comfort, page 11.

Guest post by Bethany

Bethany is a community activist in Richmond, Virginia, focusing on creating a healthy food culture in public schools.  In her spare time she works to create a healthier gender culture at church.  She’s finding that getting adult Mormons to say “Heavenly Parents” is a lot harder than getting kids to eat kale.  She mothers three young girls, loves to cycle with her husband, and digs cooking spicy vegetarian food to share with neighbors. 

I don’t know anyone who anticipates the unveiling of the General Primary theme for Sharing Time for the year.  I know I certainly never have.  This year, I happened to stumble upon it and was pleasantly surprised.  No, I was more than surprised. Elated–that’s a better description.  Have any of you seen it?  It certainly doesn’t get a lot of coverage.  I mean, who even thinks about the Sharing Time theme until early October when you’re trying to help your child memorize her part for the Primary sacrament meeting?  Well this year, I suggest we start thinking about it earlier, because it contains a gem.

For 2013, Primary children throughout the world will be celebrating the theme I Am a Child of God.  But the theme doesn’t stop with that typical Mormon mantra…it continues on with a phrase from the Proclamation on the Family, ““All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents”.  Did you catch that?  Heavenly Parents in the Primary theme?  Is it just me, or is that pretty remarkable?  I mean women in the Relief Society are studying Lorenzo Snow, but the kiddos in Primary get to focus on Heavenly Parents…I know where I want to hang out on Sundays.  But whether you’re serving in Primary or not, I think this is something all Mormon Feminists should jump on.

To me, the theme gently opens up the door to speak about our Heavenly Parents and/or Heavenly Mother whenever we feel inspired to do so…in sharing time, in Primary lessons, in talks, in fast and testimony meetings. So let’s raise our hands in Sharing Time and declare that Heavenly Mother was certainly involved in creating everything that is lovely in our world.  Let’s ask the Primary chorister if we can use the term Heavenly Parents as we sing some of our songs.  Let’s show the I am a daughter of God Mormon Message video in our classes and discuss specific qualities we have inherited from our Heavenly Mother.  And let’s initiate conversations with our ward and stake Primary presidencies on how to fully take advantage of this inspired theme.  Surely our children need to hear more about our Heavenly Parents…there is no better way for them to understand the importance of marriage and families and the ideal of equal partnership.  If we let this unique theme go by unnoticed, it will be a tragically missed opportunity.

Earlier this month, I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting about the Primary theme and how awesome it is that the restored gospel enables me to teach the 10 and 11 year old Valiant girls in our ward that they have a Heavenly Mother, that they have a divine role model and an example of their infinite potential.  It’s powerful stuff.  And my testimony was even well received by my rather conservative ward.  So go for it!…let’s get Heavenly Mother out of the Primary closet and into our Sabbath conversations and beyond.  If anyone gives you any trouble, just refer them to President Wixom, the General Primary President.