One lower light shining

In less than 24 hours, I will be leaving Provo…permanently.  I graduate in April, but I’ll be spending winter semester in DC for the Washington Seminar, so when I leave town tomorrow morning for winter break, I won’t be coming back.

It feels so weird to be leaving.

This past week, when I wasn’t taking exams, grading exams/papers, packing, cleaning, shipping / giving away my books, I spent a lot of time reflecting.  Only a year ago, the thought of graduating and entering the “real world” terrified me.  I didn’t want college life to end.  Now, I have the complete opposite view.  Even though I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do after I graduate, I’m more than ready to get out and experience the “real world.”

I’ve also been reflecting a lot on how much I’ve changed in the past four years.  I don’t know how it happened, but I feel like I’m completely different from the person I was when I first came to BYU.  It’s hard to quantify what I mean by that, but I think I’m a lot more mature, a lot more diplomatic and understanding, than I was when I first started college.  If I were to go back in time and hang out with my past self, I’d probably find him so irritating and self-absorbed that I probably wouldn’t enjoy his company very much.  And I used to think I was mature back then!

I’ve been thinking about how God looks at us, with His unlimited perspective.  We must seem so completely immature from where He sees us–so self-centered, so callous and uncaring, so petty and blind.  To God, even the world’s most powerful, influential, and respected people must seem like little children, childishly throwing sand into the other children’s eyes and throwing a temper tantrum when others do the same to them.

If we, as imperfect, mortal beings, were granted God’s omniscience, would it drive us to hate our fellow men?  To see everyone’s imperfections in perfect clarity, and be privy to all their evil thoughts?  How could we possibly love each other when we know such things?  When absolutely nothing is hidden, and we can see just how depraved, perverse, and fallen we all are?

And yet God still loves us.  He loves all of us–enough to suffer and die that we might have a chance to live with Him in glory forever.  Even the pedophiles, the murderers, the tyrants and rapists and terrorists–even the people in our lives who we consider our very worst enemies–He loves them all, despite the fact that He fully knows the depths of their evil.  That is a miracle.

I am convinced that maturity is a function of one’s capacity to love.  The more we love others, the more we listen to and care about them.  The greater our capacity to love, the more willing we are to seek out and understand others, even those with beliefs and values completely different from our own.  The greater our capacity to love, the more likely we are to turn the other cheek and forgive those who hurt us–to reconcile with others and stop the cycle of provocation and violence.

I’m going to be interning with a major think tank in Washington DC, one that has a lot of influence on US foreign policy in the Middle East.  Few parts of the world have seen more conflict, violence, and hatred; few parts of the world have a greater need for reconciliation and forgiveness.  I’m under no illusion concerning my own imperfections, but as I pursue career opportunities in this field, I hope that I can bring a degree of maturity that will allow me to work to build bridges, dispel ignorance, and bring peace to God’s children.

I have no idea what will happen in my internship, or what I will do after I graduate, but I’m confident that as I seek to do God’s will and serve my fellow men, He will continue to pour out His blessings in my life, and everything will fall into place in the best possible way.  That has been my experience in the past, and I have no reason to doubt it now.

Here’s a thought I had while reading Nephi’s version of Lehi’s dream.

1 Nephi 11:25:

25 And it came to pass that I beheld that the rod of iron, which my father had seen, was the word of God, which led to the fountain of living waters, or to the tree of life; which waters are a representation of the love of God; and I also beheld that the tree of life was a representation of the love of God.

The prevalent view in our contemporary culture seems to be that churches and organized religions are dark, stodgy, impersonal, puritanical, and hypocritical. Our modern culture also portrays religious, church-going individuals as self-righteous, power-hungry, hyper-critical, anti-social, and closed-minded. This is the sense I get from the way the mass media portrays religious life.

Not according to Nephi and Lehi’s vision of the tree of life, however. According to that vision, true religion leads to the deepest, purest, and most fulfilling love that any of us can find. The rod of iron, a representation of the word of God as found in His church, leads us to the fruit of the tree of life, which “fills [our] souls with exceedingly great joy” (1 Nephi 8:12).

In other words, through religion–true religion–we become a loving, gentle, kind, patient, merciful, accepting, listening, and optimistic people. None of this stodgy, puritanical stereotype that our culture sometimes projects upon us. Through Christ’s church–his true church–we are filled with the “love of God and of all men” (2 Nephi 31:20).

I was reading through my missionary journals today and read something interesting:

(Tuesday May 11th, 2004) The longer I’m out, the more embarrassed I am with how I acted a week or month before. I guess it’s a sign of positive growth.

It was interesting to read that, because I’ve been feeling a lot like that recently. In fact, I’ve been feeling this way since midway through the Jordan study abroad this past summer. Here’s what I said about a particularly life changing conversation with one of my friends:

If I had any pride keeping me from being honest with myself about what I needed to change (and, let’s face it, I did), it was completely shattered in the first ten minutes of this conversation. About an hour later, I came away with my perspective completely changed. It took me a few weeks to get over the desire to repeatedly flagellate myself for being such an idiot for all this time, but when I did, I started picking up the pieces and putting myself together again.

(link to full post)

Have you ever felt like the Emperor with his new clothes when the kid pointed out that he was really naked all that time? I suppose it’s easy to feel that way when you’re going through a period of intense personal reflection and growth. You feel embarrassed for all of the stupid, selfish, shortsighted things you did (or all the thoughtful, charitable, outgoing things you failed to do). You wonder how you could have done those things and, in extreme circumstances, feel ashamed to even show your face again to certain people.

When I got back from Jordan, however, I noticed something funny: all of the people around me were unknowingly doing all of the embarrassing things I was trying not to do. I won’t give any specific examples, since I don’t want to upset any of my friends, but basically it has to do with acting thoughtlessly and not caring enough about people on a personal level.

I read a really awesome novel over the summer that has a quote that I think is pertinent to this. The novel is Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, and I think it is one of the best science fiction novels I have ever read. The quote is this:

Don’t be upset. The world is full of surprises. We’re all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we’re seldom formally introduced.

I don’t know for sure, but I think it all comes down to this ultimately. We sometimes operate under this illusion that we really know people–our friends, our enemies, even members of our family–when really, there is so much more that we don’t know and that may in fact be unknowable.

But we think that we know each other, and because of this we start to judge each other. From there, it’s easy to start to put a value on our associations, to determine whom is worth listening to, whom is worth our time; whom we want to pursue, whom we want to avoid.

But isn’t that a form of objectification? Doesn’t that run counter to the gospel? Jesus walked with sinners and taught us to look beneath the surface and see the value in other people. He saw enough value in all of us, even the most evil among us, to suffer infinitely on our behalf.

If we are to be like Jesus, should we not do likewise? Of course, we cannot suffer the way Jesus suffered, but we can step outside of ourselves and genuinely value all of the people around us, can’t we?

At least we can work on it. And if we are to work on it, doesn’t that mean that we must learn to recognize that everyone is ultimately unknowable? When we think that we completely know someone, that we have them “figured out,” that’s when we fall into the trap. Socrates was the wisest man in Athens because he admitted that he knew nothing. When it comes to our relationships with others, wouldn’t it be wise of us to do the same?

Of course, for a long time, I didn’t act this way. I thought I had everyone figured out, and from time to time I acted like quite a jerk. When I think about it now, it sometimes makes me squirm.

I guess it’s a sign of personal growth, though. My mom’s mission president had a saying that she posted on our refrigerator growing up, and that said “don’t let the ten things you did wrong keep you from seeing the one thing you did right.” That’s how I felt rereading that little piece of wisdom in my missionary journals. It’s not worth beating yourself up over it. If you feel like an idiot, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. At least you know you’re growing.