Tweet
I have posted about this before, so forgive me for doing it again. During college and law school I struggled mightily with some aspects of Church membership and culture. (Don't be too shocked to read that.) I wasn't much of an Ensign reader then but was the EQ instructor in my student ward, and somehow - I don't recall how - came across On Dealing With Uncertainty, a talk by Bruce Hafen, then President of Ricks. It was BYU devotional, and if you knew more about what I was like at that time in my life and how I felt about BYU, you'd understand how remarkable it is that I would pay attention to such a talk.
Oddly enough, that talk changed my life. It helped me make sense of the occasional excesses and weirdnesses of Mormondom. To this day I use it to remind myself how to deal with others and it has been a resource for many a priesthood and Sunday School lesson. I commend the entire talk, but here's a taste of the core message:
Anyway, I love those ideas and they have helped me. Maybe they'll help some here as well.
Oddly enough, that talk changed my life. It helped me make sense of the occasional excesses and weirdnesses of Mormondom. To this day I use it to remind myself how to deal with others and it has been a resource for many a priesthood and Sunday School lesson. I commend the entire talk, but here's a taste of the core message:
The English writer G. K. Chesterton once addressed questions similar to those I have raised today. He distinguished among “optimists,” “pessimists,” and “improvers,” which roughly correspond to my three levels of dealing with ambiguity. He concluded that both the optimists and the pessimists looked too much at only one side of things. He observed that neither the extreme optimist nor the extreme pessimist would ever be of much help in improving the human condition, because people can’t solve problems unless they are willing to acknowledge that a problem exists and yet also retain enough genuine loyalty to do something about it. More specifically, Chesterton wrote that the evil of the excessive optimist (level one) is that he will “defend the indefensible. He is the jingo of the universe; he will say, ‘My cosmos, right or wrong.’ He will be less inclined to the reform of things; more inclined to a sort of front-bench official answer to all attacks, soothing everyone with assurances. He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world.”
On the other hand, the evil of the pessimist (level two), wrote Chesterton, is “not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises.” In being the so-called “candid friend,” the pessimist is not really candid. Chesterton continued: “He is keeping something back—his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. … He is using the ugly knowledge which was allowed him [in order] to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it.” (Gilbert K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Garden City, N.Y.: Image Book, 1959, pp. 69–70).
In going on to describe the “improvers,” or level three, Chesterton illustrates by referring to women, who tend to be so loyal to those who need them. “Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin … are almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. … Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 71.) [Emphasis LA Ute's.]
Perhaps President Harold B. Lee was thinking of Chesterton’s point about women when he used to say, “Behind every great man, there is an amazed woman.”
Chesterton’s arranging of these categories makes me think of one other way to compare the differing levels of perspective that people bring to the way they cope with ambiguity. Consider the metaphorical image of “lead, kindly light.” At level one, people either do not or cannot see that there are both a kindly light and an encircling gloom, or that if there are both, that there is no real difference between the two. At level two, the difference is acutely apparent, but one’s acceptance of the ambiguity may be so wholeheartedly pessimistic as to say, “Remember that the hour is darkest just before everything goes completely black.”
How different are these responses from that calm but honest prayer at level three,
“Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom;
lead thou me on. …
I do not ask to see
the distant scene—one step enough for me.”
(Hymns, no. 112.)
All I ask, then, is that we may be honest enough and courageous enough to face whatever uncertainties we may encounter, try to understand them, and then do something about them. Perhaps then we will not be living on borrowed light. “Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
On the other hand, the evil of the pessimist (level two), wrote Chesterton, is “not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises.” In being the so-called “candid friend,” the pessimist is not really candid. Chesterton continued: “He is keeping something back—his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. … He is using the ugly knowledge which was allowed him [in order] to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it.” (Gilbert K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, Garden City, N.Y.: Image Book, 1959, pp. 69–70).
In going on to describe the “improvers,” or level three, Chesterton illustrates by referring to women, who tend to be so loyal to those who need them. “Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin … are almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. … Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.” (Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 71.) [Emphasis LA Ute's.]
Perhaps President Harold B. Lee was thinking of Chesterton’s point about women when he used to say, “Behind every great man, there is an amazed woman.”
Chesterton’s arranging of these categories makes me think of one other way to compare the differing levels of perspective that people bring to the way they cope with ambiguity. Consider the metaphorical image of “lead, kindly light.” At level one, people either do not or cannot see that there are both a kindly light and an encircling gloom, or that if there are both, that there is no real difference between the two. At level two, the difference is acutely apparent, but one’s acceptance of the ambiguity may be so wholeheartedly pessimistic as to say, “Remember that the hour is darkest just before everything goes completely black.”
How different are these responses from that calm but honest prayer at level three,
“Lead, kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom;
lead thou me on. …
I do not ask to see
the distant scene—one step enough for me.”
(Hymns, no. 112.)
All I ask, then, is that we may be honest enough and courageous enough to face whatever uncertainties we may encounter, try to understand them, and then do something about them. Perhaps then we will not be living on borrowed light. “Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.” In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Comment