Testimonies

Belief in God

I have often thought that the question of belief or non-belief in God is not so much a question of argumentation as it is a question of choice, owing to the unfathomed complexity of the universe. I have also thought that once the choice is made, that choice should at least be intellectually and, for me, spiritually satisfying. I would like to lay out some of the reasons behind my choice to believe in God.

Such reasons necessarily impinge on certain beliefs of those who have chosen not to believe in God. For example, I have heard the bald statement that “all things have a natural explanation, that all phenomena are caused by impersonal laws of physics, not by any expression of sentient will.” The implication here is apparently that laws of physics are all encompassing in their capacity to explain “all things”; that there is nothing of intelligence in laws of nature because they are impersonal and certainly not sentient. Thus, belief based on the laws of physics provides uniquely natural explanations, which necessarily obviate any old-fashioned, superstitious explanations based on belief in God because, obviously, “God” can only be imagined to be goal oriented, as well as personal and sentient.

This simple approach to explanation is satisfying if one can swallow the claim that its scope really does account for (or even potentially accounts for) the cause of “all things.” Hidden in this view is a tacit assumption that demands a clarification of the scope of “cause.” Most objectionable is the restriction of cause to the impersonal and the non-sentient. Obviously, the law of gravity does not care what is falling off a cliff, be it a rock or the most important person in the world. It is impersonal and non-sentient in doing its duty either way. On the other hand, the impersonal, non-sentient computer that responds to the very personal, deliberate, sentient, goal-oriented touch of my fingers is surely something whose existence is not the product of some mechanical “law of nature”—although such laws are certainly at the heart of the physicality of its function. Mechanical laws, which purport to explain all things, do not now nor can they ever account for the human artifacts found all over the face of the earth. These are the product of personal, purposeful, sentient behavior. The nature of human cognition and subsequent human invention cannot be ignored if one insists on explaining “all things.” It does not make sense to consider the vicissitudes of the human condition outside of what counts as reality.

But much more importantly, even the suggestion that any mechanical law of nature has no connection with thought in its rational power and influence is unfounded, because such laws are not only rational in their predictability and behavior, they are themselves a species of thought. Evidence that they really are a species of thought is that they yield to cognition and understanding; and with that understanding, we use them for our comfort and benefit. We have even used them to devise and execute a trip to the moon and back.

Sadly, the material world is too much with us, prompting such fierce but mistaken focus on the material effects of “laws of physics” that the nature of the laws themselves is ignored. Such material emphasis blinds even capable thinkers to the cause behind the effects so overwhelmingly manifest in the physical, tangible world we experience. It is the mode of being of governing laws that deserves our attention—not just the predictable effect of such laws. Formulae that predict physical effects must never be confused with the laws that cause such effects.

The monumental failure of such mesmerizing focus on material effects is the failure to see the positive connection between causal laws and the remarkable faculty of ratiocination. In this regard, consider C.S. Peirce’s (CP 5.604) assessment of “pervasive laws of the universe” and the faculties of mind: “[I]f the universe conforms . . . to certain highly pervasive laws, and if man’s mind has been developed under the influence of those laws, it is to be expected that he should have a natural light, or light of nature, or instinctive insight, or genius, tending to make him guess those laws aright, or nearly aright.” In short, “the reasoning mind is [it]self a product of this universe. These same laws are thus, by logical necessity, incorporated in his own being” (CP 5.603).

Someone once told me that he did not believe in Aristotle’s final cause because it was teleological—it had to be purposeful and therefore a product of thought. He could only believe in the unconscious nature of mechanical, natural laws because it was impossible to see purpose in their expression. What he did not understand is that thought is not necessarily something that is only in us: “One must not take a nominalistic view of thought as if it were something that a man had in his consciousness. . . . Thought is more without us than within. It is we that are in it, rather than it in any of us” (Peirce 8.256). Therefore, what he did not understand is that causation is only sometimes an expression of sentient, conscious will. The effects of the law of gravity are not the effects of conscious planning, but they are teleological in the sense that such effects are informed by the final causation attributable to that law.

One would be intellectually blind not to see that intelligence, structure, and lawful organization—conscious or unconscious—infuses every particle of the universe, from the beautiful organization and structure of the subatomic world of particles, to the structure and intelligence manifest in the material world, to the intellectual nature of life, to the solar system, and even to the universe itself. “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psalms 19:1). “Therefore, whoever cannot look at the starry heaven without thinking that all this universe must have had an adequate cause, can in my opinion not otherwise think of that cause half so justly than by thinking it is God” (Peirce 5.536).

More explicitly, Peirce (1:316) argues for an anthropomorphic God:

I hear you say: “This smacks too much of an anthropomorphic conception.” I reply that every scientific explanation of a natural phenomenon is a hypothesis that there is something in nature to which the human reason is analogous; and that it really is so all the successes of science in its applications to human convenience are witnesses. They proclaim that truth over the length and breadth of the modern world. In the light of the successes of science to my mind there is a degree of baseness in denying our birthright as children of God and in shamefacedly slinking away from anthropomorphic conceptions of the universe.

It is truly remarkable that our transcendent nature allows us to represent with ever increasing accuracy the realities the govern us and our universe. What must be acknowledged is the faculty that allows for our growth, be it intellectual, physical, or moral. In the broadest sense, our intellect is less than, but analogous with, the lawful realities we discover, whose effects we represent. Our capacity to understand is in a real sense the same as the lawful realities that we have capacity to represent in our language and even in our conscious and unconscious behavior.

If we think about—really think about—the intimate details of how any of us come to understand a previously opaque phenomenon, the scales will fall from our eyes, and we will see that all genuine understanding has at least this element: what characterizes our mind is analogous to what characterizes the phenomenon we have rationalized. We are neither more nor less than the governing laws that we come to understand. Propositions that truly represent any significant reality are shibboleths of, as Peirce put it, “our birthright as children of God.”

From here I will be more specific by identifying those attributes that would prompt me to fall down and worship a being who is a God. For many reasons, including those outlined above, I would worship an anthropomorphic God.

First, I would worship a God whose glory is intelligence. By intelligence, I mean the etymological core of intelligence, which is inter leg-ere. Latin inter means ‘among,’ and the first definition of legere is ‘to choose.’ As a first approximation, intelligence, for me, amounts to an intrinsic, original faculty of a creative, organizing potential. Because the highest expression of “creation” and “organization” presupposes freedom to choose among alternatives, it follows that the highest expression of intelligence comes full circle, back to its etymological core: ‘to choose among.’

Second, I would worship a God who, through supernal intelligence, has chosen wisely among both physical and moral laws, which have produced in him the power and the means to offer to others at least the opportunity to rise to similar wise choices, with similar effects. I would worship a God of love, as identified by Plato:

Let us declare the cause which led the Supreme Ordainer to produce and compose the universe. He was good; and he who is good has no kind of envy. Exempt from envy, he wished that all things should be as much as possible like himself. Whosoever, taught by wise men, shall admit this as the prime cause of the origin and foundation of the world, will be in the truth.

Third, I would worship an evolutionary God—a God who has progressed to his godly state. I would worship a God, who, through his creative and organizing genius, would give reason for my very being, and for the being of all my earthly brothers and sisters. I would worship a God who would respect the freedom of all to choose, while supplying us the means of “being as much as possible like himself.”

Finally, I do worship a revelatory God—a God with all the properties and characteristics revealed by and through the prophet Joseph Smith that resulted in the restoration of the Church of Jesus. The beauty, the grace, and the goodness of the totality of ideas that came through Joseph have given me a wholly satisfying life, spiritually, physically, and intellectually.

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John S. Robertson (Ph.D., Harvard University) is a professor emeritus of linguistics at Brigham Young University.

Dr. Robertson is the author or co-author of several books, among them: as principal author, with John Hawkins and Andrés Maldonado, Mam Basic Course (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1969); with Robert W. Blair, et al., Cakchiquel Basic Course (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1969); with Julio Salazar, Cakchiquel: A Basic Course for Language Learning (Provo: Language Training Mission, 1977); with Hugh Biesinger and Randy Ellsworth, Quiché: A Basic Course for Language Learning (Provo: Language Training Mission, 1977); The Structure of Pronoun Incorporation in the Mayan Verbal Complex (New York: Garland Press, 1980); with Robert Blair, et al., Diccionario Español-Cakchiquel-Inglés (New York: Garland Press, 1981); The History of Tense/Aspect/Mood/Voice in the Mayan Verbal Complex (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992); and, with Danny Law and Robbie A. Haertel, Colonial Ch’olti’: The Seventeenth-Century Moran Manuscript (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010).

He is also the author or co-author of numerous academic articles including, in the International Journal of American Linguistics, “A Syntactic Example of Kurylowicz’s Fourth Law of Analogy in Mayan” (1975); “A Phonological Reconstruction of the Ergative Third-Person Singular of Common Mayan” (1977); “The History of the Absolutive Second Person Pronoun from Common Mayan to Modern Tzotzil,” (1982); “Colonial Evidence for a Pre-Quiché, Ergative 3sg *ru-” (1984); “A Re-Construction of the Ergative 1SG for Common Tzeltal-Tzotzil based on Colonial Documents” (1985); “A Reconstruction and Evolutionary Statement of the Mayan Numerals from 20 to 400” (1986); “The Origins of the Mamean Pronominals: A Mayan/Indo-European Typological Comparison” (1987); “The Common Beginning and Evolution of the Tense-Aspect System of Tzotzil and Tzeltal Mayan” (1987); and “The Origins and Development of the Huastec Pronouns” (1993).

With Stephen Houston and David Stuart, Dr. Robertson is the co-author of, among other things, “Disharmony in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: Linguistic Change and Continuity in the Classic Society.” Anatomía de una civilizatión. Aproximaciones interdisciplinarias a la cultura Maya, ed. by Ciudad-Ruiz, Andrés Yolanda Fernández Marquínez, José Miguel García Campillo, M.a Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León, Alfonsos Lacadena García-Gallo, Luis T. Sanz Castro (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Estudios Mayas, 1998), 275-296; “A Ch’olti’an Explanation for Ch’orti’an Grammar: A Postlude to the Language of the Classic Maya” Mayab 11 (1998): 5-11; “Recovering the Past: Classic Maya Language and Classic Maya Gods,” in Notebook for the XXIIIrd Mayan Hieroglyphic Forum at Texas. (Austin: Department of Art and Art History, the College of Fine Arts, and the Institute of Latin American Studies of the University of Texas at Austin, 1999; “The History of First Person Singular in the Mayan Languages,” International Journal of American Linguistics 65 (1999): 449-465; “The Language of the Classic Mayan Inscriptions.” Current Anthropology 41:321-356 (2000); “Quality and Quantity in Glyphic Nouns and Adjectives,” Research Reports on Ancient Mayan Writing (Washington DC: Center for Maya Research, 2001); and “More on the Language of Classic Maya Inscriptions,” Current Anthropology 42 (2001): 558-559. With Stephen Houston, he is the co-author of “El problema del Wasteko: Una perspectiva lingüística y arqueológica,” in XVI simposio de investigaciones arqueológicas en Guatemala, ed. Juan Pedro Laporte, Bárbara Arroyo, Héctor Escobedo, and Héctor Mejía (Guatemala: Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, 2003). With Stephen Houston and Danny Law, he is the co-author of “Split Ergativity in the History of the Ch’olan Branch of the Mayan Language Family,” International Journal of American Linguistics 72.

Professor Robertson has also published on the historical linguistics of Mayan in such places as Language, Anthropos, Quaderni di Semantica, Anthropological Linguistics, Journal of Mayan Linguistics, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Linguistics, Grammar: Invariance and Variation (Amsterdam, 1991); and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures: Civilizations of Mexico and Central America (2001); and, with Zachary Hruby, published “The Verbal Morphology of the Classic Mayan Word tzutz” (Washington DC: Center for Maya Research, 2001). He wrote about more general linguistic topics for Computing in the Humanities (1982), Semiotics (1983), and Semiotica, and, on the thought of C. S. Peirce, for Semiotica, Lingüística, and From Time and Chance to Consciousness: Studies in the Metaphysics of Charles Peirce (Oxford, 1994).

Posted October 2011

Note to the reader: The “letter” which follows is fictitious. It is merely a device which I have used to facilitate my writing about myself—something which I find very difficult to do. However, the things which I have written as my testimony of the Divinity of Christ as our only Savior and Redeemer, God as the Father of us all, and the Holy Ghost as the universal testifier of truth; of the restoration of the Gospel of Christ and of its priesthood, covenants, and associated ordinances as Joseph Smith said it was; of the Holy Scriptures; and of the unbroken continuity of the Restored Gospel and Church of Jesus Christ, are not fictitious. They are facts.

Dear Douglas,

I was very happy to receive your welcome letter last week. Since you and Kathleen moved to Ontario it has seemed as though I have lost a brother. The last time I heard from you, you had two children; how wonderful it is that you have added two more. Kathleen was a born mother; and no children could have a better father. I am also very glad to know that your career as an optometrist is flourishing. As sad as I was about your decision to move east, it is now obvious that the professional opportunity with which you were presented was indeed too good to pass up. Congratulations!

I admire you so much that I am not surprised to learn that, when two young Mormon missionaries (bright eyed and shining with cleanliness) rang your door bell, you and Kathleen invited them in. You wrote that you did it out of curiosity—that although you and I had spoken about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints you were not interested in religion at the time. But now, you write, with four children to raise in the midst of social and personal confusion, you wanted to know something about what we spoke of years ago. I know that you and Kathleen follow things through to their conclusion, so I wasn’t surprised either when you wrote “things quickly moved from our being merely curious” to your being intrigued by what you were hearing and reading. You have mentioned that the missionaries tell you they have “testimonies” and that you and your family have attended church, including two “testimonial meetings”. Not surprisingly, you have found the gospel to be unified and consistent, that it “stands up to life’s tough questions”, and that, as far as you can tell, Latter-day Saints are decent and happy people. Your assessment is, I assure you, correct. Then you add:

However, the claims of Joseph Smith appear so fantastic—seeing God, gold plates out of the ground “coincidentally” near to where he was living, translating the plates using a stone in his hat, angels appearing to him to give him God’s priesthood, and on and on—that as a thinking man I don’t know how one can believe in such things. But I know you do. As a scholar of experience how can you swallow all this?

That’s a fair question, Douglas, and it deserves a fair answer.

Let me first of all thank you for believing that a lawyer can be a scholar. In my profession we are short of compliments, and I do appreciate that one. I concede that not all lawyers qualify as scholars—the car crash lawyers, those who spend their days filling out mortgages and other instruments of oppression, and also the flood of young people who enter the profession with nothing in mind but “to make a killing”. However, high court judges are indeed scholars. Further, when one is as fortunate as I have been to qualify as an advocate before the courts, literally in every kind of law suit (other than tax and patents), for clients ranging from government, to multi-national corporations in the Fortune 500, to indigent who have no money and have lost their rights, one does become, and needs to be come, a scholar. I have been required to master where laws have come from, how they got here and why, whether they are fair and just or in need of change, and then to write the equivalent of a master’s thesis giving and justifying my conclusions. I must then give it to another scholar who is determined to find flaws in my work, and then I have to defend it before a panel of judges whose questions make the defense of a thesis seem like a pleasant chat. And, as a scholar, I am expected to present the law fully, whether for me or against me, because my duty is not “to win” but to make sure that my client’s case has had the best possible presentation before an impartial judiciary. My obligation with respect to my testimony of the gospel is no different.

First, let me clear our minds about something. You wrote asking how I, “as a scholar”, could believe that which I most certainly do, and asking if I really “have a testimony”. Douglas, there is only one thing more remarkable about a Mormon scholar testifying as compared to the humblest Latter-day Saint who does the same, and that thing is the very high improbability that a scholar will approach God and the subject at hand with as much humility, faith, and innocence as the poor and needy generally possess in abundance. In short: it would be an error to say “well, that or the other renowned scholar knows ‘The Church is true’; and if a smart man or woman knows it, everyone should listen up and have a testimony, too.” Were one to mention it all, the accurate statement would be “well, even that renowned scholar has been able to find out it’s true. If even he can muster the humility, desire, and faith to set all he knows about (physics, Elizabethan poetry, anthropology—even law) on the shelf for a minute, and ask God to tell him if he has been missing ultimate truth for many years, and be told he has, then I should be able to do it, too.”

Douglas, I know that what was written by the humble writers of the Gospels constitutes things as they really were. It is impossible, by any process known or knowable to mankind, for a dead body to rise and live again. Nevertheless, either the Gospel writers or their close associates saw it happen. It galvanized their lives and led them to martyrdom. I have read, many times, the account in the Gospel of John of John and Peter running to the tomb, John arriving first but standing aside as Peter looked in, and the description of what they saw. Had I become a passably decent but irreligious man, knowing what I know scholastically, and were I now reading those verses for the first time, I would be deeply troubled because, in ways that have taken me decades to learn and for which there is not space here to describe, I know that is eyewitness testimony. And the implications are staggering. Jesus Christ rose from the dead; he was the Son of God; he told the truth about his ministry, doctrine, and atonement; and were I to have had a spark of integrity I would have been impelled to find out where Jesus is now and what he is doing.

To testify is to declare what one knows to be things as they really are. When one testifies, whether in court or in church, he assumes an unqualified obligation to know about that which he is saying. In the hypothesis I have given, I would have been able to testify, based solely upon reading those passages, that what is written in John happened.

My testimony is that when Joseph Smith told about the restoration of the Gospel, authority, the church, covenants, ordinances, and doctrines of Christ, he told us things as they really are. How do I know that? Because, starting from that small place, I have experienced it all.

When I was seventeen and knew everything, including that there was no god, my father, unusually, had to be out of town for work on a Sunday. Before he left he told me that if I would take my mother, who didn’t drive, to stake conference, I could have use of the car for the rest of the day. It was an “offer I couldn’t refuse”.

I know precisely where we sat during that conference. I clearly remember (then) Elder Spencer W. Kimball speaking. But most of all I remember Art McMullin, a counselor in the stake presidency and a man widely known for his honesty, acumen, integrity, and ability. He said that he knew that the restored gospel was true. After he concluded I had one of the few logical thoughts of my youth: “Art McMullin would not lie; and he says he knows. If that man says he knows, he knows; and if I have any sense I ought to look into this.” I did. I returned to activity; and to the extent I have been privileged to so do, I have given my life to that knowledge. In the course of it, as a student, a young husband, an unprepared but willing father, and a lawyer, and in forty years of uninterrupted service, I have experienced the truth. Joseph Smith’s declarations, the angels, the miracles, the operation of the Holy Ghost, the Bible and the Book of Mormon and other scripture, are not fantastic nor fantasy. They have played themselves out in my life, and in the lives of every member of my family, and in the lives of countless others whom I know intimately. They have proven themselves to be things as they really are.

Douglas, I have also seen the consequences to themselves and their fellow man of engaging in the pseudo-sophisticated dismissal of the divine and the prideful and preposterous improvisations of the willfully ignorant or scholastically challenged who will believe anything but God, to an extreme which defies even the myths of the enigmatic Enlightenment and its miasma of misery. They may shave with Occam’s Razor, but it is foreign to their philosophy. A gifted writer and academic who actually read the Book of Mormon and concluded that it was at home in the ancient Middle East, prefers the phantasmagoria that in some unexplained way Joseph Smith was able to tap into the minds and cultures of ancient and foreign peoples of the 3rd to 1st millennia rather than accept the obvious: God did it.

There are, Douglas, an abundance of pioneers of thought who dispose of the faith of otherwise apparently functional people who believe in the Restored Gospel by attributing it to the willful suspension of disbelief—the stuff of magic shows—or the much more authoritative-sounding cognitive dissonance. What do these speculators make of physicists who insist upon the existence of electro-magnetically invisible dark matter, and of black energy, and the inexplicable but observable phenomena of quantum physics—in which, for example, something, somehow, seems to travel faster than light. The current counter-hypothesis is that the reality of these things exists only in one’s mind, thus enabling an individual to live in several universes almost at the same time. And all of this is a flight from an unvarnished, intellectually and spiritually convincing truth: God did what Joseph Smith said he did.

Just after dawn, in the Enlightenment, the Royal Society was founded with the motto: Nullius in verba, roughly, “take no one’s word for it”. It has been proven bad advice, and wrong in fact. It mandates, of course, that no one should learn from a teacher, pay any attention to a Michelin map of France or the Tax Acts, and it ultimately requires that one accept nothing that one hasn’t proven to one’s self—becoming a sort of Enlightenment Aristotle, knowing all there is to be known because nothing one doesn’t know is knowable.

The injunction doesn’t work in practice, either. Even the founders of the Royal Society will have had to face that when, told they were about to die, they did. What right does it leave me to know about God? Ipso facto, I shouldn’t even believe him; and no one should believe anything said about or for him or of him unless or until one sees God himself—and then, when one does, no one should believe it. Nullius in verba. This dismal view of the accumulation of cultural, scholastic, and scientific knowledge is nothing, Douglas, but a license to believe whatever one chooses and to ignore that which is inconvenient (that smoking causes cancer, for example, until one is about to die from it, and then believe it only provisionally.) The Royal Society would have been better off with: “in matters of consequence, trust only the trustworthy”.

But whom can you trust? Easy. You can trust God, he who has been shoved under the carpet and willfully ignored or expunged. It is He who is the life and mind of man: he who created us and the minds many use to shut him out. Douglas, I am very grateful for my life. It is more than I ever expected. Through the last forty years of it I have offered many prayers, exerted much faith, repented of many sins, and surrendered much stubbornness. For the last twenty years, that accumulated experience is now my testimony, my telling of things as they really are and as I know them to be. But, Douglas, it all began for me with a single hope, a little faith, and one prayer at my bedside when I was seventeen—and my actual or reputed scholarship hasn’t been able to alter the result.

So, dear friend, trust anyone who through experience knows what you can know through experience. For when you know as much about the Restored Gospel, or the Book of Mormon, for example, as you could know, you will know it is as impossible for a scholar as it is for an unemployed assembly-line worker to deny what he has experienced.

Philip was one of the first to experience who Jesus was. He ran to Nathaniel, who may have been a brother, but certainly a friend, and told him they had found the Lord. The Royal Society would have been proud of Nathaniel’s answer: “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” They would not have liked the answer: [“Well”] said Philip. “Come and see.”

Please give my expressions of love and fond memories to Kathleen, and may you both now “come and see”. You will be eternally glad you did.

All the best;

Bob

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Robert B. White, Q.C. (Queen’s Counsel), earned a B.Comm. in Finance, with Distinction, and then graduated with an LL.B., with Distinction/Silver Medal, receiving both degrees from the University of Alberta.

He has been engaged as counsel in litigation for his entire career, having represented clients and cases including the government of Alberta; Canada’s largest integrated oil company; one of the world’s largest car manufacturers; the largest oil sands company in Canada; a family without funds (in the first case in which a Canadian court ordered a school board to make accommodation for a physically challenged child); one of Canada’s largest chartered banks; one of Canada’s largest life insurance companies; a group of neighbors who had been seriously let down by their municipal government; Canada’s largest communications group; the Alberta Human Rights Commission; a school board; a bio-technology company; an indigent hospital orderly charged with the murder of two patients; and lawyers, doctors, accountants, and engineers before professional disciplinary tribunals.

He has been lead counsel in major criminal cases involving murder, arson, conspiracy, and fraud; medical and legal malpractice litigation; municipal property taxation appeals; complex estate litigation; cases concerning the meaning of the Constitution; cases in numerous aspects of environmental law; international child custody disputes; construction law cases; public inquiries and inquiries under the CCAA; shareholders’ disputes; utility arbitrations; royalty arbitrations; and the negotiation of specialist fees for medical doctors.

His practice has taken him to many administrative tribunals, municipal councils, professional discipline boards, and arbitration panels; the Provincial Court of Alberta; the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta; the Alberta Court of Appeal; the Supreme Court of The Yukon Territory; the Supreme Court of Saskatchewan; the Federal Court Trial Division; the Federal Court Appeal Division; and the Supreme Court of Canada.

The author of several journal articles and of six volumes from Canada Law Book (The Art of Discovery, The Art of Trial, The Art of Using Expert Evidence, The Appeal Book, How to Be an Effective Trial Witness: DVD and Workbook, and Effective Corporate Witness at Discovery: DVD and Workbook), he taught as a sessional lecturer in the University of Alberta Faculty of Law for eighteen years, in the Bar Admission Course, and in a head-start program for First Nation students, and has lectured at legal education society seminars in Alberta and British Columbia.

Widely recognized as one of the leading lawyers in Canada, Robert B. White was appointed Queen’s Counsel in 1986.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he has served as a missionary, a bishop, a stake president, and a member of the quorums of the Seventy. Currently, he’s serving yet again as a bishop.

Posted October 2011

[Click to read English version.]

ジェーン・バーチ

このような場で自分の証を伝える機会が与えられ、預言者ジョセフ・スミスが伝えたイエス・キリストの福音をなぜ私が信じているのかについて、深く考えるように仕向けてくれたことを感謝しています。私は教会員の家庭に生まれ、育てられ、これまでに一度も、一時たりとも、教会を離れることなど考えたことはありません。でもなぜなんでしょう。なぜ末日聖徒の説く福音が私をしっかりと捉えて離さないのでしょうか。これらの真理にどうして共鳴するのでしょうか。どうしてこの大儀のために私の一生を喜んで捧げようと思うのでしょうか。私の永遠の救いがかかっているという時に、なぜこの道に身を捧げることに疑念やためらいはないのでしょうか。これまでのところ、答えを求めて深く調べなければならない理由は何もありませんでした。これが疑いもなく真実であると硬く信じています。

このような疑問について考えながら、私が信仰を持っている数々の理由について深く吟味してみました。そのすべてが良きものであり、正当であると思います。この福音は揺るぎないもの、道理にかなったもの、すばらしく、奥深いものです。良き実を結ぶものであり、その真実性を御霊が証しているのを感じます。これらすべて、そしてさらにもっと多くが信じる理由ですが、これほど熱烈に信じる理由は何でしょうか。なぜこんなに熱意をもって信じるのでしょうか。一番率直な答えは、計り知れない喜びで満たしてくれるから、でしょう。

若いときから教えられてきたイエス・キリストの福音は、私に計り知れない喜びを与えてくれ、今でも与え続けています。完全に快い、魂を満足させる感覚や思い、願望で私を満たしてくれます。これらの真理は私の魂に喜びと感謝の気持ちを与えてくれます。記憶にある限り、私はこの喜びを感じ、それが真理の証をしているのだと確信しています。

私は幼い子供の頃から神が生きておられ、私を愛していてくださること、私の祈りにはいつも答えてはくださらなくても、神は祈りに答えてくださることを知っていました。昔、私が１年か２年生だったとき、南カリフォルニアである街角に立って、神に祈りました。神には何でもできるのだということを知るために、実際に可能なよりもはるかに高くジャンプできるように助けてくださいと。一生懸命に心から祈りました。祈りながらも、こんなことは祈るべきではないと承知しながら祈っていました。はたして、この試みは失敗に終わりました。いつもと同じ高さにジャンプできただけでした。しかしこのことで、あのようなことを神に求めるべきではないと自分にはわかっていたのだと確信できたのです。あんなに幼いときから、私は気まぐれな願望を満たすだけのためにしるしを現すことをなされない神に感謝していたのだと思います。私の祈りは望んでいたとおりの「答え」は得られなかったものの、この経験によって、本当に大切なことを心にかけておられる生ける神、愛にあふれた神についての知識を強めることができたのでした。

子供のころ、家族はよく引越しをしました。私はモルモンとして、まわりの人々とは違うのだということを強く自覚していました。自分は他の人々が知らない大切なことを知っているのだと感じていました。自分が神について、またその回復された福音について知っている事柄によって、ある一定の生き方をし、救い主に従って、もっと主のようにならなければならないと信じていました。もちろん私の生活はキリストのようではありませんでしたが、そうではないときには（しばしばそうではなかったのですが）、私にはもっと分別がある、より主に近い生き方ができるはずだと強く感じたものです。

私は学問が好きでしたし、学校が好きでした。が、霊的な学びがもたらす喜びは俗世の学問とは違うことを承知していました。学校で学ぶ事柄は、多くの場合有益で重要ではあっても、神が生きておられること、ましてや神が森の中でジョセフ・スミスに姿を現されたことを前提とはしていませんでした。強烈な喜びにあふれたあの生活の基盤を差し引くと、学校で学んだことのいくつかは教会で学んだことほど大切でないだけではなく、間違っているかもしれないし、少なくとも真実ではないかもしれないと感じました。このことを頭の奥にしまっていた私は、そのために何でも学びたかったにもかかわず、俗世の知識に対して多少の懐疑心をもっていました。

高校を卒業したとき、大学一年生としてブリガム・ヤング大学への入学を期待に胸をふくらませて待っていました。それまでほとんどユタ州外で生活してきた私は、BYU または末日聖徒の学者とはほとんど接点がなかったので、大学でどんな体験をするのか全く予想もできませんでした。とは言え、BYUの教授陣はキリストの弟子であると同時に有能な学者でもあることを知っていたので、大きな希望を抱いていました。そして教授全員は私が霊的なことを学ぶ喜びと世俗的な学問をする喜びを融合できるように熱心に助けてくれるのではないかと、単純にも憶測していました。この二種の喜びは根本的にはそれほど異質なものではなく、両方を結合して一つの美しいものを作り出すことができるはずだと思いました。

BYUでも様々な異なった意見があることに少々驚きを覚えました。「非会員」の中では様々な異なった意見があることには慣れていました（なにしろ彼らは「真理」を知らないのですから）。でもなぜ信仰深い末日聖徒の教授陣が互いに異なる意見を持っているのでしょう。また彼らの多くが、神の存在が何の影響もないかのようにその専門分野を教えるているのでしょうか。 なぜ神が生きておられ、私たちを愛しておられるという中心となるで喜ばしい事実が すべてを変えないのでしょうか。しかし、なぜBYUの教授陣全員が真理を探求するための主要な局面として福音をとらえていないのかと首を傾げる一方、この失望感は私の期待や夢を超越した大勢の忠実な末日聖徒の学者の模範によってくつがえされました。これらの先生方は私の人格構成に、また私がどう考え、信じ、行動するかに深く、重大で、永久的な影響を与えたのです。そして若い時に福音を通して経験した喜びは、天の御父が私のために用意しておいてくださったあらゆる喜びのほんの始まりにすぎなかったのだと悟らせてくれました。

私は新入生であっても、世の中のことを少しは知っていたつもりでしたが、間もなく学ぶべきことがたくさんあること、そして「研究によって、また信仰によって」（教義と聖約88：118）学ぶことが、想像もしなかった新しい展望や知識の世界につながることを知りました。つまり、若いころにはすばらしいと思えた福音から得る喜びは、福音やまわりの世界を理解するための研究や学問を続けて成長するにつれ、高まりを感じてきた喜びに比べると、比較的小さいものであったと感じています。BYUの信仰深い教授陣の指導は、私の成長にとって中心的な存在だったのです。

福音とこの教会は言葉では表せないような喜びと満足感を与えてくれます。福音は主として霊的ですが、しかし知的、感情的、社会的にも、様々なレベルで多くの満足感を与えます。長年にわたる学術的研究によって、末日聖徒の信仰は学問的な課題や年月を超えた重荷に耐えられるものであると知ることができました。この福音を通して限りない疑問を追求し、それに対する答えを得、学び成長し、最大の喜びを発見することができます。この気分を浮き立たせるような学び、新しく開ける視野は永久に続くことがわかります。これは私の心をさらに喜びで満たしてくれます。

このように、私が預言者ジョセフ・スミスを通して啓示されたイエス・キリストの福音を信じる根拠は数多くありますが、これから得られる喜びは、私が求めていることはこれまで費やしてきた、またこれからも費やすであろうすべての時間、労力、努力に値するものであるという確信を与えてくれます。と言っても、この喜びは私があらゆる真理を知り尽くしたり、今理解していることがすべて正しいことを保証するものではありません。全く違います。むしろ、神は人を裏切ることをなさらず信頼に足るお方であり、私が神に従うなら、私の考え違い、無知、弱点、欠点を正してくださり、その恵みによって「教訓に教訓、ここにも少し、そこにも少し」（イザヤ28:10）ずつ神から私を遠ざけるものすべてから私を償ってくださるのです。

おもしろいことに、福音の中で私が成長すればするほど、私はこの地上に住んでいる、または過去に住んだことのある人すべてと、その人の宗教が何であれ、宗教がない人であっても、あまり違わないのだと感じます。末日聖徒の教会とこの福音には比類なく豊かで美しいものが多くあります。これは神の御業であることを知っています。しかし私はずっと以前に、神の御業はこの教会だけには限られていないことを知りました。神はすべての子らを愛し、働きかけられます。そして他の人々が私からすばらしい真理を学ぶように、私も神が他の人々に示された真理を知りたいと願っています。

福音への証が貴重な知識や喜びを与えてくれた一方、神は、それがすべて「宗教的」とは言えないにしろ、様々な方法で神の子らに多くの知識と喜びを与えてくださったことを感謝しています。私とは別の宗教を信じている人々が持つ多くの奥深い真理をもっとよく認識するようになり、それらの真理を学びたいと思っています。すべての子らを愛し、喜んで受ける者には豊かに祝福を与えてくださる神に感謝しています。神は喜びや祝福を惜しむ方ではありません。自発的に学ぼうとしなかったり、一つの方法で学ぶ機会がない人には、別の方法で教えてくださることを感謝しています。とにかく学ぶことはたくさんあって、多くの方法で成長できるのです。

他の人々は、モルモンとして私が学んだ真理をいつかは学ぶ必要があるのは確かですが、私が自分の可能性を極めるためには、同じ宗教を信じていない人々が知っている事柄を私も学ぶ必要があることも同様に確かだと思います。私はすばらしい祝福を与えられていますが、罪や弱点、先祖の言い伝えなどによってそれが見えなくなり、神がその子らに用意してくださっているもっと多くの祝福を受けられないようにしてしまいます。人生や生活を変えるような洞察や理解は数多くの場から与えられますが、それらが良きものであり、真実であり、美しいものと立証されたならば、それらの究極的な原点は神であることを知るのです。私は「さらに大いなる幸福と平安と安息」（アブラハム1:2）があるのを知っているので、大きな期待をもって将来を待ち望んでいます。

最後に、救い主と私たちすべてに与えられる愛について証します。生活の中で毎日神の存在を感じます。それだからと言って、すべての恐れが消えるわけでも、すべての問題が解決されるわけではありません。しかしその事実は私が精神を健全に保つための支えであり、喜びの源です。この世で受けることのできる最大の喜びは、神の奥義、すなわち神はどのようなお方か、私たちは誰なのか、そして救い主の愛と贖いの犠牲によって私たちは何を達成できるのかなど、を理解して、それを心から受け入れることではないでしょうか。聖書に書いてあるとおり、「目がまだ見ず、耳がまだ聞かず、人の心に思い浮かびもしなかったことを、神は、ご自分を愛する者たちのために備えられた」１コリント2:9」のであり、「その喜びをあなたがたから取り去る者はいない」（ヨハネ16:22）のです。

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A.ジェーン・バーチはブリガム・ヤング大学教授センターで教授開発アシスタント・ディレクターである。BYUで歴史学士号を取得後、教授法で博士号を取得。これは新規採用の教授陣が高度な教授法や学識、市民意識の強い基盤を築くためのプログラム。このプログラムの中心となっているのは、BYUの独特な使命である「個人が完全と永遠の生命を探求するのを助ける」を教授陣に理解し受け入れてもらうこと。新教授陣を助けることに加えて、バーチ氏は宗教をそれぞれの専門分野にどのように融合させていくかについて教授陣を助けている。その研究の関心は宗教と知性との関係に軸を置いている。
　　　
Posted October 2011

In Search of a Meaningful Life

My journey of discovery searching for a life of meaning and purpose has blended two dimensions of life: one religious and one secular. My religion has taught me the importance of faith, hope, and charity; the eternal possibilities of family and friends; and a set of precious values and principles to guide my life. The secular dimension of my life reflects a career in university teaching, management consulting, and village development programming. For me the search for a meaningful life involved four types of experiences:

First, I experienced a sense of gratitude as I had the opportunity to travel throughout this world and gradually to comprehend how blessed I really was. In visiting over one hundred countries, I quickly noticed that a significant percentage of the world’s population did not have access to clean water or electricity, to adequate food or housing, and would never go to school as children or visit a hospital when they were sick. In my world of comfort and prosperity, I could not shake those images of poverty and suffering. When a deep sense of gratitude and a determination to do something for these poor was burned into my soul, I vowed I would consecrate my life to poverty alleviation.

Second, over time I have developed a sense of peace as I have come to terms with who I am, my strengthens and weaknesses, and the reality that we all have special skills and talents that are given that we might find joy and happiness in all aspects of our lives (mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual). This sense of peace comes only gradually as we realize we cannot change all things, but we can change some things, that life gives us challenges, not to tear us down, but to build us up.

Third, a meaningful life requires some sense of mission and purpose. Life becomes richer and more fulfilling to the extent we find some way to make a difference. Those of us with the resources to pursue meaningful goals have a responsibility to help make this world a better place to live, especially among the truly poor and disadvantaged. Finally when we see something that needs fixing, we must ask: “If not me, then who, and if not now, then when?”

Fourth, I have learned over the past many years that a life can be passive or active. People may be observers, acknowledging that there are problems but unwilling to act. Others become participants, seeing a problem and actually doing something about it. To share one’s gifts, talents, and resources with others can be one of the most profoundly fulfilling experiences we can have in this life.

Four key sets of events eventually shaped the quality of life I have enjoyed: through my family and my Church; then through my career and my approach towards other peoples, cultures, and religions; and ultimately via my comprehension of the purpose and meaning of life, as one seeks to improve the quality of life of those less fortunate.

My Early Years

While I was born in San Francisco, California, my parents moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, when I was five years old. My father was not an active member of the LDS Church. It was my angel mother who guided me in those early years. In retrospect, my life is a miracle, as I could have followed my father or my mother. My father was a heavy smoker, had little interest in religion, and had quit school in the ninth grade. He was a harsh disciplinarian, quick to criticize and find fault. My earliest memories reflected both a fear of my father and a sense that I was of little value, incompetent at best. If I had followed my father, my life would have been very different. For some miraculous reason, I chose to follow my mother, who taught me to trust in my Father in Heaven, to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ, to love and appreciate reading and scholarship, and to know I could accomplish anything with the help of the Lord.

My first serious spiritual experience happened after celebrating my East High School graduation in 1952. After dropping off our dates at their homes, my best friend, Roy Rasmussen, suggested we drive up Parley’s Canyon and watch the sun come up. We talked about the future, our dreams of career and marriage, and whether we should go on missions for the LDS Church. We both assumed we would go on missions, but we acknowledged some trepidation, some hesitancy. We decided to pray—first my friend, then I. It was a clear June morning and, as my friend began to pray, thoughts flooded through my mind: Should I finish college first? Could I learn a foreign language? Do I really have a testimony? Would my girlfriend wait for me? Then my turn came and it was my first private prayer with a close friend. I don’t remember what I said, but I had a distinct impression, a strange sensation, that we were not alone, that a Higher Power was listening. Into my mind came the unexpected thought: “You will go on a mission, but you are not yet ready!”

It was two years later, during the summer of 1954, that I worked as a service station attendant for Standard Oil on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. It was during this summer that I read four books: the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, the Articles of Faith by James E. Talmage, and A Marvelous Work and a Wonder by LeGrand Richards. I read the first three books mostly in the evenings in our bunkhouse. My mind marveled at the power of the New Testament, reading the words of the Savior and savoring His wisdom and His commitment to His Father. Although I had read the Book of Mormon before, mostly at the prodding of my mother, this time the connection between the Bible and the Book of Mormon became clear. Especially in Third Nephi (Chapter 15), which describes Jesus Christ appearing to people in the Western Hemisphere, declaring to them they were “the other sheep” (John 16:10) that must hear his voice. It settled in my mind that the Book of Mormon was definitely a “Second Testimony” that Jesus was the Christ/the Messiah, predicted in the Old Testament.

Yet, it was LeGrand Richards, in his book A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, where my testimony of Joseph Smith was seared into my soul. I left the bunkhouse and walked to the edge of the Grand Canyon, pausing to regard the splendor of that wonder of nature. Opening the book, I began to read. On page three, Elder Richards quotes a Catholic scholar who said: “You Mormons are all ignoramuses. You don’t even know the strength of your own position. It is so strong that there is only one other tenable in the whole Christian world, and that is the position of the Catholic Church. The issue is between Catholicism and Mormonism. . . . If we are right, you are wrong; if you are right, we are wrong; and that’s all there is to it. . . . For if we are wrong, Protestants are wrong with us, since they were part of us and went out from us, while if we are right, they are apostates whom we cut off long ago. If we have the apostolic succession from St. Peter, as we claim, there is no need of Joseph Smith and Mormonism; but if we have not that succession, then such a man as Joseph Smith was necessary. . . . It is either the perpetuation of the gospel from ancient time, or the restoration of the gospel in latter days” (Richards 1950, 3-4). Every chapter of that book rang true to me and I knew I was ready to be a missionary.

My Period of Preparation for Life

Between 1955 and 1958, I served as a missionary in Suomi (Finland), experiencing both the challenge of learning one of the world’s most difficult languages and the joy and excitement of watching Finnish people accept the restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. I saw families change in ways that were amazing, overcoming poverty, family dysfunction, and despair. From a form of hopelessness, husbands and wives and their children began to see the truth, and now their lives had new meaning and a clearer purpose. I remember visiting the US Embassy after I had been in Finland less than a year. As I was speaking to several Finns working in the Embassy, an American came up to me, expressing astonishment at my fluency in the Finnish language. He had been in Finland for four years, had tried his whole time to learn the language, but had given up in frustration. While he was amazed, I knew in my heart that I had not learned this language by myself, for I saw it as a “spiritual gift” from God.

Returning to the University of Utah in 1958-59 I finished my BA and MA degrees in Political Science and a minor in Economics, with a commission in Army Intelligence. One amazing coincidence happened while completing my training at Fort Holabird in counter-intelligence. I was asked to take a language aptitude test and, when I opened the test sheet, to my surprise they had created a language test based upon Finnish grammar. I passed the test easily and was sent to the Army Language School in Monterey, California, to study Iraqi Arabic for fifty-four weeks and French for sixteen weeks. Many years later, I came to realize this was no coincidence, as my whole career in Middle East studies and my research in local government reform in Muslim countries would probably never have happened if I had not gone to Finland as a Mormon missionary.

From the Army Language School, my wife, Merlene Jeppsen, and I and our six-week old son were sent to Paris, France. Now with some fluency in French and Arabic, I had the profound opportunity to work with French Intelligence during the three years when Algeria was seeking its independence. Early in my work in counter-intelligence, my commanding officer assigned me to be the chief liaison officer with French Intelligence Services. He strongly intimated that I should become good friends with my counterpart, that I should take him to dinner on a regular basis, eating and drinking as only the French can do. I was clearly uncertain how I could accomplish this assignment, since good Mormons do not drink alcohol of any kind. On our first meeting, the French officer asked what type of wine I would prefer. I indicated that I would prefer fruit juice. He looked at me startled: “You don’t drink wine?” “No,” I said. “It is against my religion.” To my surprise, he said: “You must be a Mormon.” And then another miracle. “How strange this is!” he continued: “When I was assigned to Vietnam ten years ago, I met an American advisor, a senior officer, who was a Mormon. He taught me the Gospel and I have been a practicing Mormon for over a decade.” We became fast friends and my work in France, because of this Frenchman, was both productive and enjoyable.

In 1964, with my wife and now our two sons, I moved to Austin, Texas, entering a PhD program in Government and Middle East Studies at the University of Texas. Finishing my course work and passing my comprehensives with high honors, I received a Fulbright Scholarship to study local government reform in Egypt. Because I would be working out in the rural areas most of the time, we decided that my wife and children would live in Provo, Utah, with her parents. With the motivation of our separation, I completed my research and wrote my dissertation in ten months. Being the only Mormon in Egypt at that time, I took the opportunity to visit various Coptic churches, meeting a group of Egyptian professionals who met every Sunday evening to discuss various religious topics. One evening I was asked to explain my religion. I bore a strong testimony of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and I spent nearly three hours responding to questions. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of doctrines, teachings, and beliefs that Mormons shared with the Coptic Christian faith. They believe that the evangelist Mark selected the first bishop of Alexandria, following a form of Christianity quite unique and certainly different from most Christian faiths in Europe and the United States. For me this was not a time for proselyting but a time to learn from others. In the spirit of broadening my perspective, I also took courses in Islamic theology at al-Azhar University, especially structured for foreign students. I was the only American. It was indeed a most enlightening experience. It was at this time that I began to appreciate the fact that very good people exist in all religions, not just members of my faith, that God loves all his children and seeks to bless them when they are trying to live good lives. Every religion I have studied reflects a set of universal core values: kindness, tolerance, service, justice, peace, and love. While I do believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, in its fullness, was restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith, all religions have some portion of God’s truths. I have a strong belief that every soul who has ever lived on this earth will have an opportunity (either in this life, in the spirit world when we die, or during Christ’s millennial reign) to hear and accept the “fullness of His Gospel,” before the Great Day of Judgment.

After My Faith, My Family is the Most Important Aspect of My Life

With my wife, Merlene Jeppsen, I raised four children: James Bruce Jr., Robert Daniel, Deborah, and Stephen Jeppsen. While I had many interests and activities, I always considered my greatest work was as a father and husband. I sought to treat my children in a way that would build their own self-esteem, which I believe is the key to a happy and successful life. I had three rules for my children: They must always tell the truth and be people of integrity, must be worthy members of the Church and serve whenever called, and must never show disrespect to their mother. I challenged my children to believe there were two kinds of people: those who blamed others for their failures and those who took responsibility for their own successes. One of the highlights of my life was when my family and I made a trip around the world, visiting Europe, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia. While my oldest two sons were serving in the mission field, my wife Merlene passed away of cancer. This was the greatest tragedy of my life, yet after a year of mourning and loneliness, I found and married a beautiful woman named Rosalind Ward Brockbank, a widow of several years. We brought my family of four children and her family of seven children into a loving and harmonious family. While it is never easy to bring two families together, I have come to love all of these eleven children and their spouses with great tenderness and affection, and to consider them, as well as our fifty plus grandchildren, as my own. Until my final breath, I will always see this experience of a blended family to be one of the greatest blessings of my life. The greatest lesson learned from this experience has been, first, to see beyond appearances, to seek to understand the other person’s heart, and, second, to understand that to love unconditionally is the key to a happy marriage.

My Formal Career

During my career as a professor of Political Science and Middle East Studies at the University of Utah (1967-1998), I taught courses in public administration and management, political statistics, Middle East studies, comparative politics, and rural development. My major professional work, however, was in the field of development management, where for the past forty years I have been a management consultant with the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, UNDP, UNICEF, and other international development agencies. I specialized in training local government officials in Egypt, the Sudan, Tunisia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. One special assignment was an opportunity to work in Iraq for a year (May 2003 to June 2004) as the South Central Regional Director in Iraq for the Local Governance Development Program, supervising some forty expats and over a hundred Iraqi staff. Our job was to establish local government systems in fifty seven cities, organizing local elections, training and working with governors, governorate councils, city mayors, and city councils in the principles of good governance and democratic procedures. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I trained Peace Corps volunteers for ten years, encouraged my own students to become involved in overseas development work, organized training programs for village development workers, and eventually helped found, with my friend Tim Evans, the Center for Humanitarian Outreach and Inter-Cultural Exchange (CHOICE Humanitarian). This private voluntary organization has sent humanitarian expeditions and student interns into various disadvantaged rural areas in twelve countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, building hundreds of schools, health clinics, and water systems, and establishing micro credit, adult literacy, and village health worker programs. CHOICE Humanitarian’s basic philosophy reflected my life-long experiences in village development programs around the world. My approach to poverty alleviation reflects verses in the Book Mormon that spoke to my heart: “Think of your brethren like unto yourselves, and be familiar with all and free with your substance, that they may be rich like unto you. But before ye seek for riches, seek ye the kingdom of God. And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and you will seek them for the intent to do good, to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted” (Jacob 2: 17-19).

Another significant influence in my life was Dr. James Yen, who brought literacy to some fifty million Chinese villagers between 1922 and 1937. He introduced me to the three basic dimensions of rural development analysis: 1. theoretical/intellectual, 2. practical/utilitarian, and 3. spiritual/core values. The first dimension tends to be dominated by academics, theoreticians, researchers, and high level officials, focusing on logic, reason, and sequential analysis. The second dimension tends to be dominated by practitioners, project managers, rural extension workers, and people in the field. Their work is mainly described in books and reports in anthropology, rural sociology, and community development. The third dimension is approached with some trepidation. The essence of the spiritual dimension is much more difficult to capture. This dimension springs from historically confirmed human values and from cultural and religious norms that challenge people to strive to fulfill their potential, and encourages a holistic ideal of humankind that exalts not just the economic but the artistic, not just the social but the philosophical, and not just the political but the humanistic. I use the word “spiritual” in a very special way to mean the search for purpose and meaning in one’s life. Rural development (poverty alleviation) is about people development; its sources are found within the cultural sinews, the religious traditions, and the sacred values of people. But most of all, these core values reflect the search for fulfillment of the human experience not just for the few but for the many. If theory and the intellect provide us with the logic and reason of rural development, and if the practical dimension suggests the appropriate strategies and procedures for its implementation, it will be the spiritual/core values or factors that generate the commitment and motivation to initiate and sustain such a process.

I have come to believe this third dimension is significant, perhaps even crucial, to understanding why and when rural development (poverty alleviation) may be successful in the lives of poor villagers. When one reviews the literature on poverty alleviation, one is struck by the scarcity of really successful and effective programs of rural development. Much money has been raised and spent, yet the scourge of extreme poverty is still with us. We are beginning to realize that poverty alleviation is not about spending money, nor implementing projects, nor even solving problems for people. It is true that money is needed, that projects do need to be implemented, and that problems obviously must be solved. However, social change is an amorphous process, generating some successes but often many unintended negative consequences, motivating people in the short run to achieve some goals, but such goals are often not sustainable. New circumstances, challenges, and constraints continually emerge, making former ideas, institutions, strategies, and approaches no longer valid and efficacious. So how does one deal with negative unintended consequences and how does one institutionalize processes that are sustainable or prepare people for the new challenges and problems that come into every society over time? Experience suggests that changes/improvements in one’s quality of life represent a cyclical process that expresses moments of success and moments of failure, programs that generate solutions which later stimulate new problems. These cycles of success and failure test one’s patience, one’s faith, and one’s hope for the future even in the most modern and wealthy of societies. It is not surprising that positive change is very difficult to achieve for people who face extreme poverty, illiteracy, sickness, and unemployment for much of their lives.

We learn new things from science (innovations and technologies) and gain understanding and confidence through the practical processes of experience in the field, but what is not so easy to understand is where the feelings of hope, resilience, cooperation, ingenuity, and motivation come from that allow people to continue through the unending cycles of unintended consequences and the ever emerging unexpected new challenges from the forces of nature (drought and famine), the tragedies of fate (death, unemployment, civil unrest), and the pain of unfulfilled dreams. Such strength does not come from logic nor even from experience, for they fail us in the face of these unintended, these unexpected, new challenges we all face.

This is why spirituality is so crucial, for the key words that reflect the core values found in every culture usually include the notions of dedication, perseverance, enthusiasm, belief and vision, unselfishness and service, a sense of mission and purpose. Such sentiments, such emotions and feelings, are seldom stimulated by logic or reason, and the inculcation of such sources of energy, initiative, and feelings of responsibility is rarely characteristic of a bureaucracy or an administrative system structured to implement rural development policy.

Over the past forty years I have been very fortunate in having wonderful teachers and mentors, stimulating students and collaborators, and finally dedicated co-workers and outstanding staff. My testimony of Mormonism is a reflection of lessons learned from the many whom I have worked with in the challenging but gratifying work of village development. The list would be endless, but let me mention the few that have played the greatest role in developing my understanding of the possibilities of rural development and what is needed if the disadvantaged and the poor of this planet are to be given a hand up: Mohandas K. Gandhi, Y.C. James Yen, Ahmad al-Naggar, Muhammad Yunus, Norman T. Uphoff, David C. Korten, Amartya Sen, Robert Chambers, and Ahangamane T. Ariyaratn.

Yet the real heroes for me are those who have been willing to spend an extended time out in the villages, often without potable water, electricity, and the basic amenities of life. There are thousands of examples of people who have made a difference, working without fanfare, plodding along day in and day out, in the smoldering sun and the drenching rain, addressing an injustice here, challenging an exploitative relationship there, but really just doing their work to help the truly poor of this world. The ones I know best and to whom I dedicate this testimony are those who have worked and many who still do work for CHOICE Humanitarian: Rita Lagogo in Kenya; Juan Alducin and Chris Johnson in Mexico; Mark and Andrea Austin and Javier Rabanales and now Jorge Chen in Guatemala; Steve Pierce, Wilma Johnson and Willy and Maxima Mendoza in Bolivia; Becky Bingham and John Samuel in India; and Nirmal Neupane, Bishnu H. Adhikari, and K. C. Arjun in Nepal. My testimony is dedicated to these people.

A New Paradigm for Village Development

My approach to poverty alleviation has evolved over the past thirty years, as I have tried to remain open to new ideas. Historically, development agencies have assumed that the key to development was the establishment of projects through which resources, technologies, and services could be distributed. This was a “service delivery” paradigm in which the poor were considered “beneficiaries” who needed to be taken care of, who needed to be given free food, clothing, medicine, and supplies, with little or nothing expected in return.

The CHOICE strategy is based upon a “resource mobilization” paradigm, in which the poor are encouraged to develop the skills, competencies, and attitudes of self-reliance needed as they learn to help themselves. The old paradigm of development assumed outsiders knew best what villagers needed, that, if you provided them with free services and resources, they would respond with gratitude and appreciation. Unfortunately, this paradigm has tended to spawn the opposite: increased dependency, increased frustration and animosity, and a kind of fatalism and welfarism that breeds apathy, disillusionment, and certainly a lack of pride and dignity.

The new paradigm argues that when people learn to mobilize their own resources, when they see themselves achieving results based upon their own efforts, there is a pride, a sense of self-esteem and dignity, that is infectious and self-perpetuating. The old paradigm emphasized people’s physical and material needs and entitlements, suggesting that people improve when someone takes care of them. The new paradigm emphasizes, first, that there is a motivating force from cultural and moral values and spiritual responsibilities. Second, there is a power unleashed when people are free to choose for themselves, suggesting that people improve when they are allowed to participate in their own processes of decision making and when they can align their lives to a set of values and moral principles that they find meaningful and significant. Mahatma Gandhi, in his work among the poor of India, argued that development devoid of human values and principles of spirituality that motivate people to a higher standard of ethics and morality will seldom generate the social energy (sometimes called social capital) and individual responsibility needed to implement a sustainable process of societal development. This new paradigm is not simply about funding projects; rather, this is about investing in people and their ability to help themselves through a process of their own networking and empowerment, which will motivate a significant majority of the whole community to participate in the achievement of their own goals and priorities. In essence, this approach creates a true partnership among citizens throughout the world.

My Church Callings

People outside the LDS Church often wonder how the Church functions with no paid ministry. From the time I can remember as a young boy, I was given opportunities to prepare simple two minute talks and learned to pass the sacrament as a young deacon, to go monthly with an adult companion to visit our assigned families to determine and help with their needs. I remember vividly one time, probably around 8pm in the evening, my companion called me and said he needed me to go with him to visit with a widow in our ward who wanted us to give her sick daughter a priesthood blessing. By the time I was eighteen, I had given at least a dozen talks before the whole congregation, had been a teacher in Sunday school, had worked on the Church farm, and been a counselor in the priests quorum. In every ward, all the major leadership positions (the bishop and his counselors, Sunday school teachers, women’s leaders, youth and children leaders) are performed by voluntary, nonsalaried members of the Ward. No paid ministry is needed. This is probably one of the most unique qualities of the LDS Church. It was expected that every member in our congregation would participate, giving talks in sacrament meeting, singing in the ward choir, working on the weekends on the Church farm, accepting callings to serve as a teacher or a quorum advisor, directing the youth program, and eventually going on a mission. By the time one is married, has children, and has a full job in one’s chosen profession, most adults expect to be called in some key position often requiring 10-20 hours each week, if not more.

In March 1990, I agreed to go to Egypt (July through September) on an assignment for USAID to conduct a workshop on Egyptian local government reform. In May, one of my daughters announced she was getting married in August. When I called USAID to cancel my assignment, my colleague in Washington asked if it were still possible to go to Egypt but simply fly home for the week of the wedding and then return to complete my assignment in Egypt. When I arrived home for the wedding, my stake president called me and said he wanted to talk to me. “Brother Mayfield, the Lord wants you to be the bishop of the Federal Heights Ward.” I was stunned. I thought to myself: There are many in this ward far more qualified than I am. If I had not come home from Egypt, they certainly would have found someone else to call. Nevertheless, I accepted the call, watched my daughter married for time and eternity in the temple, and returned to Egypt. I remember kneeling in my hotel room in Cairo, pleading with the Lord to help me in the new assignment. I knew Mormon bishops are usually called for five years and that they often work 20-30 hours a week above and beyond their regular jobs. How was I to fulfill my faculty, teaching, and research assignments, and especially the over twenty masters students and six PhD candidates that I was supervising at the University of Utah? As I prayed, I felt a very comforting spirit enter the room, my heart with filled with gratitude, and I knew this calling had come from God and that He would help me do this.

The Source of My Testimony: My Faith and Belief

Both of my grandparents listened to the missionaries, studied the Book of Mormon and teachings of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, and left family and friends to follow the dictates of their conscience. Many, accustomed to following the dictates of logic and reason, cannot comprehend how a person could leave his family and friends to follow a new religion. Trained in the methodologies of the social sciences, I completely understand the disbelief, the amazement, that a scholar, a professor, a widely traveled person, could accept the notions of Mormonism. The secular basis of my testimony rests upon a careful study of most of the major religions of this world—all of which have many good qualities of service, faith, and spirituality, all of which present moral and ethical codes of conduct related to kindness, compassion, tolerance, and service. What attracts me to Mormonism is not that all in my faith are perfect, for they are not, but that the doctrines, the scope and comprehensiveness of its teachings, are absolutely amazing.

What most people do not understand is that we do not call ourselves Mormons (a nickname invented by others who only know that we have a book called “The Book of Mormon”). For, within our community of faith, we acknowledge that Jesus Christ organized his church by calling apostles/prophets and sent them out into the world to preach the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. We believe that, by the end of the second century, all of these apostles/prophets and their close followers had been killed, and that, gradually, the purity of the Gospel in its fullness was replaced by literally hundreds of different churches, each teaching different doctrines and gospels, each claiming to be the true church and declaring all others heretical. While a form of Christianity has been preserved throughout the centuries, in this maze of confusion, a young boy, Joseph Smith, not much older than the prophet Samuel when he first received a revelation from God, wondered which of the many churches he should join, for all, in their squabbles and differences, could not have the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its perfect form. Joseph Smith read in the Bible (James 1:5) “If anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of God.” Following this admonition, Joseph went into the woods near his home, knelt down, and prayed sincerely for an answer to his troubling question. He testified, with a conviction that cost him his life, that God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared to him and announced that the Gospel of Christ in its pristine form was to be restored to the world through the ministrations of an Angel. (See Revelation 14:6: “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, to every nation, and kindred, and tongue and people.”) Such a story could be rejected out of hand except for the fact that Joseph Smith received a set of plates from this angel, which he translated into English through the power of God. That is his claim and this is what is at stake.

We see ourselves as members of the “restored” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to distinguish ourselves from the Church of Jesus Christ formed in the “Earlier Days.” We acknowledge that both Catholics and Protestants are Christians, that they teach a form of Christianity, which, if they follow the teachings of Christ, will be blessed by God, and that every human being, of all faiths, both believers and unbelievers, will have an opportunity to hear and accept His Gospel.

Many of my friends have rejected the Book of Mormon, without reading it and certainly without studying carefully what it has to say. We as a world are faced with a crisis of faith, with few having answers to life’s greatest challenges. If the Book of Mormon is truly the Word of God as Joseph Smith proclaimed, people of honest hearts should certainly at least read the book. I have seen many people out of curiosity willingly give it a careful look themselves, and not just rely on what opponents of the LDS Church might say.

Many wonder why we members of the LDS Church accept both the Bible and the Book of Mormon as scripture. First, the Old Testament (Ezkiel 37:14-25) testifies there will be two records: the Stick of Judah, today called the Bible, and the Stick of Joseph, today called the Book of Mormon. Both books testify that Jesus is the Christ and that God is the same “yesterday, today, and forever.” Jesus himself indicated he had “other sheep which are not of this fold [the Old World] and that they too must hear my voice [in the New World].” (See John 16:10, in the Bible, and 3 Nephi 15:12-24, in the Book of Mormon.)

As a final word, I must share my feelings and testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. No book that I have read, other than the Bible itself, has touched my heart, expanded my understanding of things spiritual and transcendental, like the Book of Mormon. The prophets writing in this book specifically outlined how and why this book was written for our day and generation. In a world where scholars and pundits are challenging the authenticity of the Bible, with many seeing it as a collection of myths and traditions not to be taken literally, the Book of Mormon is the only book of scripture that confirms that the Bible is the true word of God, that He has revealed His will to people in the Holy Land (Jerusalem) but also to people on the American Continent, and that references that other people in other parts of the world also received his words and that their scriptures will also someday be shown to the world. Yet, in the final analysis, one’s faith is a personal matter. As I have shared some of the personal aspects of my life, many will be skeptical, unconvinced, as to how my life has been shaped, directed, and guided by forces not seen nor understood by the senses. Science teaches us to think outside the box, to test and experiment with the new, the strange, and the different. Logic and the senses can show the truth of hypotheses, while experience and observation can demonstrate the efficaciousness and utility of the wonders of technology. What is more difficult to discern is the power and influence of the Spirit of God in our lives. It has been said that one can know the value and truth of specific religious teachings, doctrines, and institutions by their fruits. A tree is known by the fruits it produces. I guess in the final analysis my testimony can only be judged by the fruits of my life. You be the judge! It has been the Gospel of Jesus Christ revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith that has given my life its powerful meaning and purpose. For that, I will be eternally grateful.

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James B. Mayfield earned his BS (1958) and MA (1959) from the University of Utah, and his PhD (1967) from the University of Texas.

He is an internationally recognized expert in local government reform, including decentralization policy implementation, management effectiveness in rural development programming activities, and local capacity building at the village level through institutions of good governance. He has over forty years of professional experience, in Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Tunisia, Sudan, Kenya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and India.

Since 1966, first as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt and then a research consultant with USAID, Dr. Mayfield focused on local government development at the provincial, district, and village levels, and he was recently honored for his definitive book on Local Government in Egypt. In the early 1980s, Dr. Mayfield was a consultant with USAID in the Philippines, assigned to help design, implement, and evaluate the Charter City Program, which was eventually expanded into a full-fledged decentralized local government system, one of the first in Asia. In 2003-2004, Dr. Mayfield was hired by Chemonics International to be RTI’s South Central Regional Director in Iraq for the Local Governance Development Program, supervising some forty expatriates and over one hundred Iraqi staff. In 2005, he led a team to Amman, Jordan, to assess their local governance sector, and to design a strategic framework for programming and RFP for USAID/Jordan’s Democracy and Governance Office. During 2006, Dr Mayfield was recruited as a senior management consultant in Chemonics International’s headquarters in Washington DC, to help coordinate the USAID-funded “Building Reform and Recovery through Democratic Governance” (BRDG) program to assist USAID missions worldwide to promote democratic governance in a number of developing countries.

During 2007-2011, as a co-founder and former chairman of the board of CHOICE Humanitarian, Dr. Mayfield has devoted his full time to document the Self Developing Village Program used by CHOICE in Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, Kenya, and Nepal in a book entitled The Time Has Come. This model is based upon a “Rural District Networking and Empowerment strategy” and will be used to prepare villages to integrate the Concero Connect VSAT internet technology in ways that are sensitive to their local cultures and still provide needed telephony, health, education, and other e-government services, help expand their local economic development opportunities, and, thereby, enhance their quality of life. Dr. Mayfield has expressed his belief that thousands of villages throughout the world will be benefited by this new technology. He is scheduled to convene a workshop in Cairo, Egypt, on local Government Reform in January 2012, in which fifty international scholars will meet to review and suggests way that the new local government system in Egypt will be based upon principles of good governance and democracy. Dr. Mayfield is also a professor emeritus from the University of Utah, with over thirty years of teaching experience in the fields of Public Administration and Rural Development Management.

Dr. Mayfield has twenty years of experience as a specialist in survey research, questionnaire development, sample design, interviewer training and supervision, data coding and entry, statistical analysis of data, and report writing. He was owner and manager of Wasatch Opinion Research Corporation (1968-1980) and a summer intern with the Michigan Survey Research Center (1968-69). Wasatch Opinion Research Corporation was the largest survey research organization in the intermountain states area in the 1960s and 1970s, conducting data collection for a number of national firms and government organizations, including George Gallop, the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, HUD, the Peace Corps, and the National Drug Usage Survey.

He is co founder of CHOICE Humanitarian, a nonprofit NGO committed to improving the quality of life in rural villages in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. He has lived and/or worked in some 168 village communities over the past forty years, in Egypt, Tunisia, the Sudan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Kenya, Mali, Guatemala, Bolivia, Mexico, and Western Samoa.

Dr. Mayfield has at least some facility in Arabic, French, Finnish, Spanish, Swahili, Bahasa Indonesia, Tagalog, and Urdu. He has a wonderful wife (Rosalind), eleven children, fifty three grandchildren, and six great grandchildren. (Yes, he says, he knows all their names, but he uses a computer program to remember their birthdays.)

His hobbies and interests include writing, reading, scripture study, studies of early Christianity, snow and water skiing, shell collecting (he is an amateur malacologist), collecting first edition books, running and mountain climbing (he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 62, in August 1996), studying and understanding different cultures, and playing with his grandchildren.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Dr. Mayfield has served as a missionary in Finland, 1955-1958; a high councilman, 1972-78; a member of the LDS Church Correlation and Evaluation Committee, 1978-1990; bishop of the Federal Heights Ward, 1990-1995; and president of the Houston Texas Mission, 1999-2002. Currently, he is a Sunday School teacher for the Gospel Doctrine class in his Ward.

Mr. Satie Najm, former associate in the Iraqi Audit Bureau, Professor of Accounting at the University of Babel, and Regional Team leader, CPA, USAID, Local Governance Program (2004-2007), was Dr. Mayfield’s Executive Assistant (June 2003 to May 2004). In a letter of appreciation for Dr. Mayfield’s contribution during his work in Iraq, Mr. Najm stated: “James Mayfield left unforgettable memories in Iraqis’ minds. Jim helped Iraqis in the South Central Region of Iraq to understand their rights, and trained them on how to express their minds and thoughts openly, with no fear and with high confidence. He brought to the region a new set of ideals and programs about democracy and human rights, through a series of workshops, meetings, and seminars. Hundreds of senior politicians, officials, and tribal leaders were eager to sit with him and listen carefully to his wise thoughts, explanations, and advice. He used to talk to everyone no matter who they were: poor, rich, educated, simple people, men, women, young, and old. He had an amazing way of talking to people in their own language. He was so generous with providing advice to those who were in need. Despite his age, the stressful job, and the instability in Iraq, Jim used to travel to villages to meet with farmers and sit with them, talk to them, and encourage them to practice their rights in the new Iraq. Jim became part of Iraq’s history as he left his touch in all sides of life. He participated in building government systems, administrative structures, and he was the first one to bring the concepts of local council governance to the area. Words cannot describe Jim’s achievements in my country; we owe him, and will remember him always. God bless his heart. Sincerely, Satie Najm.”

Posted October 2011

Why do I go to church? Why do I believe? Probably not for any reasons that would convince the skeptic. It’s easy to find the illogic and inconsistency in professions of faith. And a Mormon’s testimony, with its references not only to Jesus Christ as our resurrected Savior but also to golden plates and prophets in recent times, offers much that sounds incredible to the modern ear. Nevertheless I do believe, and I’ll offer a few reasons in hopes that they’ll invite interest, or at least understanding.

First, I believe because they believed—my parents, my grandparents, my great-grandparents going back many generations. On my father’s side, George and Harriet Humphries were baptized in England in the 1850s. They and their six children sailed from Liverpool in 1856 to join others in the ill-fated Willie handcart company. For them, the Book of Mormon was proof enough that God had once again opened the heavens. They heeded a prophet’s call to join with the saints, pulling their handcart west from Iowa. They got as far as a rocky Wyoming ridge before they were met by an early snowfall. The story of their suffering and of the dramatic rescue Brigham Young orchestrated evokes in me a deep sense of purpose and belonging. They’re my people; it’s my history. On my mother’s side were German pioneers no less faithful and brave.

Second, I believe and practice my faith because I’ve found there to be an unusually high concentration of good people in the LDS church, and I love to be around them. My fellow Mormons are sincere in their discipleship of Jesus Christ. Their faith and sincerity are contagious. We help one another through pitfalls and temper each other’s mean impulses. When we’re together I feel a confirming witness that God is behind our efforts and approves of the whole, though each of us individually falls far short of perfection. My family and I pray every day, we read from the scriptures, we serve in the church, we get up early to teach seminary and go to bed late preparing lessons, we tithe and fast as a show of our devotion. Eventually, this routine has an effect on our character. Besides learning discipline and self-control, we’ve got a healthy sense of perspective: Christ’s good news is that the trials and setbacks of life are minor threads in an eternal tapestry. Of course there are other groups that offer a similar sense of community spirit and belonging. But as much as I enjoy attending Ham radio club meetings or being around my fellow academics at the University, these could never be a substitute for church.

Finally, I believe because I find the Book of Mormon to be marvelous and difficult to explain away. I don’t think God wants to be in the business of compelling our faith, and so he never gives universal and unequivocal proof of his existence (else everyone would believe). Accordingly, signs of his existence and his concern for us seem generally to have a low signal-to-noise ratio. But every once in a while something pops well above the noise floor and either has to be dealt with or explained away as a random fluke. The Book of Mormon is one such phenomenon. Here, the fact that the beginnings of Mormonism aren’t shrouded in the mists of history is an asset to believers. The history of how the Book of Mormon came to be is well-documented and fairly coherent. Otherwise trustworthy witnesses like David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdrey made incredible claims about its origins—the same claims Joseph Smith offered. And then there is the book itself. It can be read, studied, and cross-referenced. Even sincere detractors of the LDS Church admit that the Book of Mormon, with its intricate plots and varied but coherent themes, is not easily explained away. There is a special power in the book which, even in my most skeptical moments, I can’t deny.

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Todd E. Humphreys is an assistant professor in the department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin and Director of the UT Radionavigation Laboratory. He received a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Utah State University and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University. His research interests are in estimation and filtering, GNSS technology, GNSS-based study of the ionosphere and neutral atmosphere, and GNSS security and integrity.

Todd teaches the adult Sunday school class in his local LDS ward.

Posted October 2011

[Click to read English version.]

トーステン・リッツ

わたしは自然科学者として，これまで語られてきた多くの証に何が付け加えられるだろうかと思いめぐらしたとき，自分がどのような証を持っているかだけでなく，どのようにして証を得たかについて紹介することが役立つのではないかと考えました。わたしの信仰は，特定の事実や一連の事実というよりも，長年積み上げてきた過程を通して真理を受け入れるようになったと言えます。神から霊感と啓示を受けることが可能であって，それを継続できることを証します。この方法は真理を見いだしたいと思っているすべての人に有効であると確信しています。物理学と生物科学を研究する科学者として，わたしは自分が活発で，信仰厚いモルモンであり，いずれの分野にも妥協を必要としない生物物理学者であることに大きな満足感を覚えています。

祈りの答えを受ける

わたしにとってキリストへの信仰に至る旅路は科学実験のようにはいきませんでした。ドイツでルーテル派の信者として成長したので，キリストの教えが大切なものであると理解していましたが，復活が起きたことと，イエス・キリストが興味深い人物以上の存在として考えることはできませんでした。また，「あなたの敵を愛しなさい」という高い理想や山上の垂訓で麗しく教えられているその他の教えと，自分の日常生活で実行できることとの間に大きなギャップを感じていました。このため，倫理観に基づいた現実的な理想像に関心を寄せていました。

初めてモルモンの宣教師に会ったのはそれから15年後のことでした。イリノイ州中部の大学で博士課程に進んでいたわたしは，特に宗教を探し求めていたわけではありませんでした。研究室の同僚や親しい友人たちが興味本位から宣教師と会う約束をしていました。どのような話になるのか不安だった彼らはわたしにも出席を求めてきました（結局，全員がモルモンについて聞くことになりました。それは全員にとって初めての体験でした）。わたしはその集会で，キリストの神性と死後の生活についての疑問を宣教師にぶつけました。宣教師はこれらの概念について教えるのでも，信じるべきだと言うのでもなく，祈りによってそれらが真実であることを経験してみるようにと言いました。聖句をいくつか引用して，もし神に尋ねるなら，神はわたしの祈りに答えて，キリストがまことに復活されたことを確認してくださると約束しました。要するに彼らはわたしに実験するよう求めたのです。もし一定の条件を満たすならば，一定の結果が生じるという実験です。そこでわたしは祈りました。1週間後に宣教師と会ったとき，何も起きなかったと報告しました。結局，神は答えてくださらないのだと思いました。再び聖文を一緒に読み，約束が成就されるための具体的な前提条件について宣教師と話し合いました。その中に「ただ，疑わないで，信仰をもって願い求めなさい」という条件がありました。この聖句から，たとえわたしが望んでいるような答えでなくとも，答えを受けると信じて祈ることだと理解しました。それは自分の決める条件でなく，神の条件に従い，祈りによって神のもとへ行くという意味でもありました。そこで再び祈りました。そしてその週に，生涯で初めて，イエス・キリストがまことに死人の中からよみがえり，生きておられることを信じることができました。当時，そうだとはっきり知ったわけではありませんでしたが，疑いや心の動揺を覚えることなく，信じることができました。そのようなことは不可能だと確信していた以前のわたしには考えられないことでした。

この経験によって未知の部屋に通じる扉が開かれました。この扉が開かれるとは思っていませんでしたが，実際に開かれたとき，生来の好奇心に後押しされて，部屋の中を詳しく調べ始めたのです。祈り，そして祈りの答えを受けるという啓示の基本的な手順が証の源となっています。その霊的な経験は現実であり，一部の知覚経験と同じように再現できます。活発な教会員は皆，過去にそのような経験をしていると思います。祈りの答えとして啓示を受けた経験です。わたしを含め多くの人は，そのような経験をきっかけとしてその後多くの啓示を受けています。

教会の奉仕の業を考察する

信仰の中心に個人の啓示が据えられると，特定の質問に対してある人はある答えを受け，ほかの人は別の矛盾する答えを受けるのではないかと考えるかもしれません。答えを与える神がおられず，答えを受ける確かな方法がないとしたら，教義，社会，現実的な問題について見解の相違が生じ，やがて，よって立つべき信仰の共通の基礎が失われていきます。そうではなく，様々な人がそれぞれ同じ答えを見いだすとしたら，それは信仰を築き，強めることになります。わたしはこれを経験しました。人々に仕えるために求めて与えられる啓示は最も確かなものです。

長年にわたって，末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会の会員たちの奉仕の業を偏見なく観察し，該当する評議会に参加し，訪問を行ってきた人は，教会で働く人々に導きと指示を与える神の力が存在することに気づいています。わたしは，奉仕の業に関連した疑問について祈ったときに同じ答えを受けた人々，当初は自分の常識で考えられなかったような答えを受け，後になってそれが正しいことを知った人々の経験を目にしてきました。この業に携わっている人々の生活に力や熱意が増し加えられるのを見てきたのです。

人々の必要について考えるために会員たちが集まるとき，すばらしいことが起きます。さらに，教会の評議会ではそこに集まった人々の善意や能力を超える力がしばしば現れます。どこにでも見られることですが，教会員の間にも強く，対立する個性が存在します。けれども，評議会で話し合い祈った結果として見いだし，承認された結論は個人の見解に取って代わる答えであり，なすべきことについて霊感に基づいた理解となると思います。強い個性やときには自我を門口に残して出席し，妥協するのではなく啓発によって到達する一致は奇跡と言うほかありません。わたしはそのような小さな奇跡をたくさん目にする特権を得てきました。

山上の垂訓の理想からはまだ程遠い所にいますが，そこに到達する道があることに今，多少の希望を抱いています。自分の家族に対してあるいは教会で奉仕の業に携わっている最もすばらしい瞬間に，「恵みに恵み」を加えられて成長すること，キリストの純粋な愛に満たされることの意味を少し理解できます。憐れみや忍耐，理解を示され，あるいはわたしを助けてくれた人との結びつきを感じることが対人関係の改善につながることがあります。このような気持ちはほかの啓示と同じ源からもたされるものであって，内からわき出るものではありません。

最後に，それは最も大切なことですが，そのような行動と祈りによって奉仕を受けた人々の生活にきわめて明らかな，時には非常に実質的で具体的な祝福がもたらされることを証します。

神との交わり

アーバイン校の物理学部は中性微子の研究でその名を広く知られています。それは，調査研究をここで行ったフレデリック・ライネスから受け継がれているものです。中性微子は物理の法則から存在を推定されていた素粒子です。しかし，粒子の存在を推定することはそれを実験によって観察するほどの説得力がありません。フレデリック・ライネスは初めて素粒子の観察に成功したことによりノーベル賞を受賞しました。今日，ほかの素粒子を観察するために当時の技術，財政，人員をはるかにしのぐ規模での努力が重ねられています。あらゆる実験観察の鍵は，問題となる粒子の相互作用にあり，それに基づいて実験装置を組み立てます。粒子に作用を及ぼすために努力を傾けているとき，わたしは，推定できる範囲での神の存在に満足してしまって，神と交わるために少なくとも同じだけの努力をしていないのではないかと考えたのです。

わたしは聖書とモルモン書の神，父なる神とイエス・キリストを信じており，神はわたしたちと個人的に交わられることを信じています。わたしはこれらの交わりをとおして神を知っています。率直に言って，現在のわたしの生活とはほとんどつながりのない歴史的事実から推定して，その範囲で神の存在に気づくことはできたと思います。

信仰と科学

神は人と交わり，人に介入し，感情，感覚，体を持っておられると信じるとすれば，宇宙が独立して存在し，他に依存していないと唱えている科学の法則とどう折り合いをつけたらよいのでしょうか。しかし，科学者はどのような実験を行っても神を見いだすことはできません。

おそらくほとんどの教会員は，自分たちの知識が不完全であって，この一見矛盾することを積極的に解決しようとするのでなく，いずれ解決されるまで待つ姿勢をとっていると思います。自分の知識の程度を正直に評価する謙遜さを持ち，過去から引き継がれてきた問題を処理する方法を理解し，自分が答えを出す疑問の本質を理解することも助けになります。

わたしは毎日使っている科学的手法によって，動物の感覚能力は物理的限界まで使われていること，進化は起きていて，生物の世界を理解する鍵であること，わたしたちの世界は何百万，何億年を経ていることを知りました。現時点でこれらを真理として受け入れないとすれば，それは科学的手法を捨てることになります。わたしはそうするつもりはありません。なぜなら，この手法は信頼できるものであり，また論理，厳密な観察，あるいは考え抜かれた実験手法などの優れた基本原則に基づいていることを知っているからです。

同じように，霊的な手法があって，わたしはそれによって神がわたしたちの世界を創造されたこと，わたしたちを愛し，家族とわたしを個人的に助けておられることを知りました。以上の手法を説明しようとしたとき，わたしはこの手法もまた信頼できるものであり，また，再現性，論理と経験が霊的感覚との間に整合性を持ち，自分や他の人々の生活に見られる結果から，優れた基本原則に基づいていることに気づきました。

これらの真理が最終的にどのように一つとなるのか，あるいはより高度な真理によって押しやられるのかを見分けるだけの知的能力をわたしは持ち合わせていないため，これらのいずれも重要な手法を短絡的に結論づけることは賢明ではありません。科学的手法と霊的手法に従うとき，わたしたちは現時点での理解を超える究極の真理に導かれることを心から信じています。そこへ到達できないのはいずれかの手法を放棄してしまうからです。つまり科学による追求をやめてしまうか，霊感の追求をやめてしまうのです。そうすると，生活に豊かさを与えてくれる多くの基本的要素を失うことになります。

わたしは末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会に加わったことにより，非常に豊かな経験を得たことを証します。さらに大切なことは，様々な面でわたしを安全地帯から出て，ほかの方法では得られなかった経験をとおして喜びと力，平安を得るだけでなく，ある程度の知恵を得る助けになってきたことです。神は生きておられます。神はわたしたちが神のみもとへ帰るまでこの地上での生活の導きとなる福音を与えてくださいました。神を知り，福音に従うことによってどこへ導かれるかを知ることはどれほどの努力にも代えがたいものです。

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トーステン・リッツはカリフォルニア大学アーバイン校の物理学，天文学準教授の職にある。リッツ準教授はドイツのフランクフルト大学JWゲーテ校で物理学を学び，イリノイ大学アーバナ・シャンペーン校で修士課程を終え，2001年にドイツのウルム大学で物理学博士号を取得した。2003年4月からカリフォルニア大学アーバイン校の教員となった。主な研究は生物物理学であり，動物の磁気感覚に関する研究では国内外で評価を受けている。 Royal Institute of Navigation（イギリス），Institute of Physics（イギリス），Alfred P. Sloan Foundation， Cottrell Scholar of the Research Cooperationにおいて特別研究員，さらにカリフォルニア大学アーバイン校の特別準教授に指名されている。

リッツ兄弟は1997年にイリノイ州アーバナで末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会に加入し，同地で未来の妻となるブルークと出会った。現在，二人の子供とともにカリフォルニア州アーバインに住んでいる。リッツ兄弟は青少年の指導者を務め，教会内で教師，指導者として働き，教会広報，高等評議員を歴任し，現在はビショップならびにカリフォルニア大学アーバイン校Interfaith Foundation（異教徒財団）の理事を務めている。

2011年9月に寄稿

Loving the Water

I am a swimmer. I am a swimmer because my mother needed to maintain her sanity, and so sent us kids off to the YMCA. There, we swam and Mom got a little break.

I was lousy at first, but they put me on the swim team thinking I’d learn by immersion (naturally). A meet was scheduled just a week after I became part of the team. Dad told me to not worry about winning, to just concentrate on form. “Don’t fight the water,” he said. I came in last, which was no surprise. I asked Dad how my form was. He told me it wasn’t quite “there,” but that it would get better.

Actually, my form was terrible. I was slapping and flapping, gasping and gulping. Dad was being kind by directing my thoughts to the hopeful future rather than my just-beginning, flailing attempts.

I did get better. I eventually got a trophy for “Most Improved Swimmer,” and went on to enjoy swimming long after my competitive days were over.

Five decades later, I love doing butterfly. My body simply knows what to do, and I periodically give tips to new swimmers trying to move forward with strokes which resemble butterfly, but propel them nowhere. What they don’t realize is that you have to make some underwater moves in order to go forward. If you simply observe someone doing butterfly, you won’t realize what’s happening in the depths you don’t see. And if you imitate only the above-water motions, you won’t get far.

So it is with my faith in the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. I was raised in the Church and learned the standard Mormon clichés and customary phrases of a Mormon testimony. As a child, I could imitate the strokes and expressions of Mormonism well, though of course mine was an immature, inexperienced faith, filled with songs about flowers nodding in a leafy garden. I was instructed in the basics, and was one of the children who re-learned “I Am a Child of God” after Spencer W. Kimball suggested that its author (Naomi Randall) revise it. She had initially written “Teach me all that I must know / To live with Him someday.” Elder Kimball suggested that she change “know” to “do.” So we Primary children re-learned the song.

That little revision continues to be significant to me. As I have grown in knowledge, it has mattered that my actions—my underwater motions, if you will—propelled me further into my faith. It has mattered that my initial baptism be renewed purposefully and often, that I not “fight the water” with doubt (including self-doubt), cynicism, anger, or shame, but learn to love immersion and to move beyond the shallow, messy places, and into the sweet depths.

As it has happened, I have also become immersed in a controversial area of LDS history: race issues and the priesthood restriction keeping those of African lineage from receiving the priesthood or temple blessings for over a century. I wrote three books and made two documentaries on these subjects with Darius Gray, a black man who joined the Church in 1964, fourteen years before the restriction was lifted.

I remember a day when I had been reading statements of past Church leaders regarding blacks. They were appalling, and I grew more and more disturbed. In the midst of my troubled thoughts, my phone rang. It was Darius. “Margaret,” he said, “I felt that I needed to call you. You’ve been reading some difficult material. I want to bear you my testimony. I can never deny what the Lord told me the night before my baptism.” (He had learned on that night that he would not be able to hold the priesthood, and had decided to not be baptized. Then he entered into prayer.) “I was told that this is the restored gospel, and I was to join. I hold on to that revelation. You need to hold on to it, too. Don’t let those statements grind you down.”

Thirteen years have passed since Darius and I began our work. We have experienced miracles—or rather, we have learned to recognize miracles. Almost weekly, we would receive letters, phone calls, visits by people who happened to have the exact information we needed. We became intimately acquainted with the good works done by black pioneers, and we met modern pioneers who were holding faithful despite overwhelming obstacles—including overt prejudice by their fellow Latter-day Saints. We were moved to new heights of faith, uplifted by those whose lives we studied, and by those we met. We recognized that we were not being led point by point on a straight trajectory, developing a compelling thesis, but from light to light, where we could see and understand more and more, and from a broader perspective than we would find in academia. We learned lessons of forgiveness and devotion which constantly outshone the sad lessons of our racist history. Perhaps most important, we learned to recognize the hand of God.

Likewise in my marriage, my husband and I have traveled the difficult terrain of disappointment and even depression as we’ve dealt with our children’s choices, which have sometimes challenged our faith in ourselves and in our parenting. But we travel together, keeping our form exact, trusting in the Lord and acknowledging His mercies—which sometimes reveal themselves as suddenly as a crocus in the snow.

My husband once gave me a priesthood blessing during a particularly trying moment. He said these words: “I bless you that your memories will be sanctified as the larger picture unfolds, and you will view all of the difficulties and trials you’re enduring now with gratitude and love.”

This is the blessing of perspective. It illuminates not only my personal history, but the hard historical episodes of my religion. I acknowledge the errors of men in my church’s past, but look upon them with the kind of mercy I hope myself to find from God. I love the fact that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a dynamic faith; that we believe in eternal progression and in continuing revelation. We believe in change, repentance, growth—as individuals, families, communities, and as a church. We are not condemned to the limits of past traditions; we are not cursed because of our lineages; we are not permanently tainted by our own sins or those of others. Jesus Christ—the master of the seas and calmer of tempests—provides a bridge to eternal betterment. His atonement is the core of my faith and the promise of my future.

I am now a seasoned Latter-day Saint, and have seen my oldest granddaughter baptized. I have learned to love the temple, where I serve as an ordinance worker. I have received revelation, peace, and comfort there. I have learned not just the hymns of my religion, but the truth behind them, which resonates in my soul with increasing power, inviting me to learn more of Christ and to receive His supernal, incomprehensible offering. I am well versed in the difficult chapters of our communal history, but awed by the journeys we as a people have made and continue to make. Though all of us flail at some points, growth is imprinted in our immortal DNA. We are to progress—walking, running, swimming, and sometimes flying in realms we occasionally realize are utterly glorious.

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Margaret Blair Young is the president of the Association for Mormon Letters and has published eight books—novels and short stories. Three of these were co-authored with Darius Gray and give the history of Black Latter-day Saints. She and Gray also made the documentary Nobody Knows: The Untold Story of Black Mormons, which is currently under contract with the Documentary Channel and showing nationally. She has written six encyclopedia articles and other scholarly papers on Blacks in the western USA, and particularly on Black Mormons. She teaches creative writing at BYU.

Posted October 2011

In 1956 I was serving as a missionary in the Eastern States Mission. On a train ride from Pittsburgh to New York City to attend a mission conference I decided to do something productive (in addition to catching up on sleep) by memorizing scriptures. For some reason I chose the 121st Section of the Doctrine and Covenants. Although I was taking a break from my engineering studies at the University of California, I had always been a little curious about organizations and leadership. Also, while on my mission I was intrigued as I observed the strict conformity to or deviance from mission rules by different missionaries. I remember wondering about the impact of leadership on the behavior of individuals in the church and in other organizations. Of course, this section was an ideal text to address my questions and to provoke further inquiry.

As I reflect now, many decades later, I can still feel the power of those words as they literally defined my professional career. Let me quote at length the key verses from that section that, after a professional lifetime of leadership study, still provide the best description of leadership I have ever encountered.

34 Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen?

35 Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men, that they do not learn this one lesson—

36 That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.

37 That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.

38 Behold, ere he is aware, he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God.

39 We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.

40 Hence many are called, but few are chosen.

41 No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;

42 By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—

43 Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;

44 That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death.

45 Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven.

46 The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion, and thy scepter an unchanging scepter of righteousness and truth; and thy dominion shall be an everlasting dominion, and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever.

As I walked from Penn Station up Fifth Avenue to the Mission Home between 78th and 79th Streets (I was too cheap to take a taxi, or even the subway) I wondered how many leaders in all those corporations in New York City skyscrapers would satisfy the criteria stated in the Doctrine and Covenants. While the instructions and warnings are specifically directed at priesthood leaders in church callings, the larger issues of an attitude of loving service and the frequency and destructive effect of unrighteous dominion, have universal application. While it took a few years to translate that perspective into graduate studies in organizational behavior, I decided while in graduate school, and have maintained the commitment throughout my life, to teach and help people to protect themselves from organizational abuse. A more common focus for colleagues teaching in schools of management is to make managers more effective; while I do share that objective, it is secondary to my commitment to help all organizational members create a more moral and ethical organization.

A second important example of church influence on my career was my invitation to move to Jerusalem in 1989. President Howard W. Hunter (then serving as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles prior to his call as president of the Church) invited me to go to Jerusalem as a visiting scholar at the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies in order “to build bridges to the Palestinians.” This was an unexpected opportunity initiated by the Academic Vice President of BYU and reinforced by President Hunter. Like the message of the 121st Section of the Doctrine and Covenants, this assignment resulted in a major paradigm shift for me. President Hunter said that Arabs were also heirs to the covenant of Abraham and that we should work to build constructive relationships with them. (See Howard W. Hunter, “All are Alike unto God,” Ensign, June 1979, 72-74.) As a result of this experience I have had the opportunity to spend many years in the Middle East training leaders and trying to facilitate peacemaking.

These examples are an illustration of the symbiotic relationship between my religious and professional world. There are many other examples, and while the influence goes both ways, clearly the dominant impact is the effect of gospel principles on my academic perspectives.

I have never felt that any of my professional decisions or activities constituted a religious assignment or calling (although the invitation from President Hunter might come close); rather it was a gradual process of my understanding of gospel principles and my experience in church organization that along with my academic studies influenced my theoretical and value frameworks.

Actually, this influence and integration of gospel principles in everyday life was not a new experience for me. I had grown up in a home where theological discussion and debate, along with committed church activity, was the prevailing reality. I had an interesting mix of theory and application from my father and mother. Mother’s emphasis was as the theologian; scripture memorization, spirited discussions, and doctrinal debate were frequent evening activities for me. I distinctly remember staying up most of the night as a teenager arguing with my mother as to whether God’s absolute knowledge infringed on my free agency. On the other hand, my father was the quintessential loving “servant leader.” Whether as my deacon’s quorum advisor or my bishop or stake president, his primary concern was always the wellbeing of each individual. On more than one occasion I remember being awakened at night to accompany my father on a visit to a hospital, home, or police station to respond to an individual in need. However, it was important that, even with this high level of church commitment, discriminating or demeaning behavior toward others not of our faith was unacceptable. Part of this learning experience resulted from growing up in San Francisco where few of my friends were LDS and I worked hard to make sure that the practice of my faith was not offensive to them.

A strong questioning attitude has continued throughout my life. I recall one of my students commenting to another faculty member that “there was no question that Bonner Ritchie dare not ask.” (This was in contrast to comments about another faculty member that “there was no question he dare not answer.”) I have always felt that, to paraphrase Socrates, if “the unexamined life is not worth living,” then the unexamined faith is not worth believing. And, I feel strongly that the richness of Mormon theology and the brilliance and sophistication of the church organization provide a very compelling and satisfying subject of inquiry. While I acknowledge that a large number of my questions await further resolution, the questions that are asked and the answers that are given by the restored church ring true for me and are validated by experience, by logic, and by spiritual affirmation.

A special point of emphasis for me is the church organizational framework (a natural focus since my field is organizational behavior) and attention to the needs of each individual. While many leaders and members do not truly implement the spirit of the program, the concept and design are uniquely impressive. The balance of centralized organization and decentralized implementation provide for a strong level of organizational identity, shared doctrine, and worship, and, at the local level of the ward congregation, a community of support and attention to particular individual needs. My wife and I have been the recipient of this community help as we have gone through a series of health challenges. The physical (transportation, food, house cleaning, and yard work), emotional, and spiritual support from our ward members, and others, has sustained and inspired us.

In conclusion, I would suggest that the essence of my religious values and principles is the divine articulation of a quality criterion for each of the following relationships:

1. The relationship between the individual and deity. The first commandment is to love God and the principles of the gospel define the behavior that demonstrates that love. Included in this criterion would be an understanding and appreciation for the life and atonement of the Savior.
2. The relationship between the individual and all of God’s children. The second commandment is to love your neighbor. The criterion for treating all people with respect, understanding, and love implies that many of us need to modify our attitudes and behavior toward those who are different from us.
3. The relationship between the individual and the family. The importance of this principle in God’s eternal plan is central to our living the gospel. The two aspects of this principle are the relationships between men and women and between parents and children. The sacredness of these relationships means that any abuse or unrighteous dominion or violation of divine laws will have temporal and eternal consequences. My relationship with my wife, four children, and eight grandchildren is clearly my most important earthly responsibility and, also, the best opportunity for growth, service, and happiness.
4. The relationship between the individual and knowledge. We are told that the “glory of God is intelligence.” We have a responsibility to develop ourselves—to learn both by faith and study. In the final analysis, the only things we take with us to heaven are our relationships and our knowledge.
5. The relationship between the individual and the environment. Appreciation of the beauty and importance of God’s creations and our responsibility to be good stewards is an essential part of the divine plan.
6. The relationship between the individual and work. It is our responsibility to make a contribution to the world and be engaged in good causes.

These principles are for me the defining values of the restored gospel. My analysis of them and my experience in trying to achieve the standards they teach convinces me that they are true. I have tested them and am convinced they offer the best hope for happiness in this life and eternal life hereafter.

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J. Bonner Ritchie is Professor Emeritus of Organizational Behavior at the Brigham Young University Marriott School of Management and a Scholar in Residence at Utah Valley University.

After completing his B.S. and Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Ritchie was on the faculty of the University of Michigan from 1967-1973. He was a faculty member at the BYU Marriott School from 1973 until retirement in 2000. He has also had visiting appointments at Stanford University, the University of California, St. Mary’s College, Birzeit University (Palestine), the University of Jordan, the Jordan Institute of Diplomacy, and the International University of Monaco, and was a visiting scholar at the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center. During 2001-2002 he served as Interim Dean of the Utah Valley University Business School.

Teaching, research, and consulting activities have been in the areas of leadership development, organizational change, conflict resolution and peacemaking, organizational philosophy, and ethics. Professor Ritchie has conducted management development programs at multiple universities, public and private organizations. His recent efforts have focused on peacemaking, leadership development, and change in the Arab world. Publications include a popular textbook and over eighty book chapters and professional articles.

Bonner and his wife, Lois, have four children and eight grandchildren, and reside in Provo, Utah.

Posted October 2011

Basis of My Beliefs

“Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.” (1 Peter 3:15)

I have always admired those who are able to express their sincere beliefs with conviction but also with humility, particularly to skeptical audiences. It is in that spirit that I attempt to describe the basis of my beliefs. I have spent the past thirty years of my life learning how to be a biochemist—to explore the inner workings of the cell. This fascination with how living things work has been with me as long as I can remember. Other questions arose from this curiosity, such as how did living things come to be and how did I come to be and what was I doing here on this seemingly insignificant planet in an infinitely immense universe? There seem to be only two possible answers to the question of the origin of life—either it was a result of a series of very low probability, random chemical events over billions of years that eventually produced the first cells, which then became more and more sophisticated through a process of evolution by natural selection; or life was the result of the workings of a superior being that we call God. To me, this is the most important question one can pose because the answer determines the purpose of life—either we are here for a reason known to God or by chance.

A definitive answer to that question came to me in Strasbourg, France, in the summer of 1981. To provide a little context, let me tell you a briefly about my upbringing. I was raised in Richfield, Utah—a small rural town populated by the descendants of Mormon pioneers about fifty miles from where my father’s family had originally settled in the 1850s. These pioneers were heroes to me in every way. They had left everything—homes, farms, and families in the eastern United States and northern Europe—to answer the call of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, men they considered to be prophets of God, to build a place in the desert valleys of the Rocky Mountains for themselves and their descendants to live and worship God as they desired in the absence of persecution. I was raised in the faith of my fathers by a good family among good people. This environment was fertile soil for the seeds of faith, and though my inquisitive nature caused me to sometimes question my beliefs, many spiritual experiences led me to conclude that I was on the right track. This conclusion resulted in my departure at the age of nineteen on a Mormon mission to France and Belgium.

As a missionary, I very quickly realized that these people didn’t share my beliefs. In fact, a large percentage did not believe in God. This group would say things like, “my God is my wallet” and “as you gain some experience in life, you will lose your naive beliefs.” My fellow missionaries and I would try to endure these comments and explain to those who were willing to listen that God was there and that evidence of his existence could be obtained. Near the end of my mission, I was assigned to travel throughout the mission area, providing support and helping to train the other missionaries. This required my companion and me to be gone most of the week, visiting the missionaries in different cities. It was an adventure that I enjoyed, but it was exhausting. We would leave one city between 9-10 PM and drive 1-2 hours to the next city, arriving near midnight at the missionaries’ apartment. Then we would be up at 6:30 AM to prepare for another 10-12 hour day proselyting with the missionaries of that city. After several months of this routine, one week we found ourselves in Nancy, France. I had returned in the evening with the missionary I was working with and was waiting in the apartment for my companion to return. I was a little anxious to be on our way because we had a two-hour drive ahead of us to Strasbourg, on the German border. My companion and the missionary he had been working with finally arrived a little after 10 PM, apologizing for the late return and explaining that they had been in a spirited discussion with an atheist, who was trying to convince them of the error of their ways. We quickly packed our things and were on the road. While driving, my companion talked about the conversation with the atheist. The arguments were all too familiar to me. God may exist, but there is no way to know for sure; and if he does exist then he doesn’t care about us or he would have stopped the terrible events in the world, like the Nazis’ mass slaughter of the Jews. Furthermore, our belief in God was a deception that made us feel better about our lives, but the reality was that when we died there was “le néant” (nothingness). We talked about these issues and how difficult it is for such a person to even want to know the reality of God. For some reason, my companion’s encounter left me perturbed, not because I was shaken by the arguments, for I had heard them many times, but because I was wearied by the unbelief of these people among whom I had spent so much time and whom I had come to care about. I remember looking up into the night sky as we drove on and seeing it filled with stars. We almost never saw the stars because they were obscured by the city lights or by clouds. However, we were now far from the city traveling through the Vosges Mountains, and the skies were clear. As I gazed upon the night sky, I had this overwhelming impression that God was in his heaven and in control. I commented to my companion, wondering how anyone could look up into the night sky and not feel the same thing.

I was in this same state of mind when we arrived in Strasbourg around midnight. We apologized to our missionary hosts for the late arrival and laid out our bedding, which consisted of a foam pad and a sleeping bag on the floor for each of us, and I knelt on mine to pray as was my nightly routine. However, this prayer turned out to be anything but routine. As I prayed to myself, I thought of the events and emotions of that night and I pleaded, “Dear Father, I need to know if you are really there if I am going to continue in this work among such an unbelieving people.” As soon as that phrase left my mouth, I was enveloped by an intense spiritual energy which pulsed through my body from my head to my toes and settled upon me. It was a warm, comforting feeling that stayed with me for a long time. It was the witness of the Holy Spirit to me that God was there and that he had heard my prayer. I finished praying and lay down to sleep, but the feeling would not go away. I lay basking in this powerful yet sweet sensation for several minutes until it slowly dissipated and I drifted off to sleep. Since then, I have never doubted the existence of God. I know he answered me. As I recount this event some thirty years later, it is still vivid in my mind. I do not know how the Spirit of God interfaces with our mortal physiology, but it is powerful and unlike any other emotion. It can not be explained away.

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor. 2:14)

A few years later, I was in the middle of my graduate studies, having learned in some detail by then of the amazing process by which life on this planet evolved into the many marvelous species found here. The evidence for evolution was compelling (and is even more so today). However, this knowledge did little to shake my faith because I knew of God’s existence. I was also fortunate to have a wonderful mentor and friend in Dr. Philip S. Low (see his profile) as my Ph.D. advisor. Phil is one of the premier biochemists in the U.S., and is also a very faithful Mormon. I remember Phil was teaching my biochemistry course in graduate school when a student brought up the apparent incompatibility between a belief in God and the strength of evolutionary theory. Phil responded almost matter-of-factly, “I see no conflict between a belief in God and evolutionary theory,” and went on with his lecture. I loved it. Science is not a threat to God and God is not a threat to science. God is the greatest scientist and the unbeliever should be careful not to dismiss God as he scratches at the surface of God’s knowledge. Likewise, the believer should not dismiss the discoveries of science, because they may be revealing the handiwork of God. We need to understand that truth can be obtained by both scientific and spiritual inquiry.

This lesson was brought home to me by another experience in graduate school. I was out working with the local missionaries one evening, and we were knocking on doors in a neighborhood near the university. We came to a home with an interesting insignia above the door which read “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). As we knocked, I thought, “this might be interesting.” A kind, middle-aged woman came to the door and immediately recognized who we were. She initially said that she didn’t have time for us this evening because she had a visitor, but then she reconsidered and invited us in, saying “perhaps my visitor would be interested in talking to you.” It turned out that her guest was a visiting scholar at the university. He was a mathematician from Poland and a devout Catholic. It turned out that the lady was a good Protestant. So there we were: a Catholic, a Protestant, and two Mormons. We had a wonderful conversation. At one point the Polish mathematician made a statement that I have always remembered, “There are two ways to learn truth—by scientific inquiry and by spiritual awareness. If a person refuses to use the one or the other, it limits their opportunities to gain truth.” I have always remembered this statement because it expressed exactly my understanding. Here was a man whose background and circumstances were very different than mine, but he had arrived at the same conclusions that I had. There are universal truths that human reason may never achieve but that can be attained by simply asking God. However, just as is the case with scientific knowledge, spiritual knowledge often comes only after considerable effort and disciplined searching. Few are willing to pay that price, but most are quickly discouraged after a few attempts and end up abandoning spiritual inquiry. Sadly, in doing so they give up the opportunity to gain the most vital knowledge of who we really are and what our true purpose on this earth really is. The words of the apostle Paul to Timothy are truer today than they have ever been, that society shall be “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Albert Einstein was reported to have said, “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.” If we really want to understand ourselves, our planet and our universe, I am convinced that we must turn to God and learn from him. In one of the most sublime events ever recorded in scripture, Moses spoke with God face to face and “beheld the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created; of the same he greatly marveled and wondered” (Pearl of Great Price Moses 1:8). Viewing our planet and mankind from God’s eyes caused Moses to proclaim, “Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1:10). In one transcendent moment, Moses learned more about this earth, its creation and purposes, than all of mankind throughout all of human history has ever learned. He personally witnessed the contrast between the knowledge of man and the knowledge of God. Long before the Hubbell telescope, God told Moses “worlds without number have I created” (Moses 1:33) and “the heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine” (Moses 1:37). Then God revealed to Moses why he created all these things, “For behold, this is my work and my glory – to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39). I marvel at the weight of this statement. The vast expanse that we as scientists seek to understand, from the smallest subatomic particle to the farthest reaches of the universe, was made by God for what purpose? FOR US! And why would such a great God do such a thing? Here is perhaps the greatest truth that we can ever come to know—because we are His children (see Acts 17:29), and, as any loving Father would do, He wants the best for us! This is the great purpose of our existence—to learn God’s thoughts and become like him.

This truth is accessible to all who earnestly seek to know, just as I did that night in Strasbourg many years ago. I invite you to “ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things” (Book of Mormon, Moroni 10:4-5). Joseph Smith taught, “Could you gaze into heaven five minutes, you would know more than you would by reading all that ever was written on the subject” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 324). I believe that we can “gaze into heaven” and learn truth from God.

“Jesus answered them, and said, my doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” (John 7:16-17)

Compared with spiritual manifestations, the other important source of my beliefs is very practical, yet it is just as important. This concept is illustrated by a conversation I once had with a young man who was seeking to know of God. His family background was interesting. His parents were immigrants from Russia. His father was a physicist, a college professor and an atheist, while his mother was an accomplished pianist and a convert to the LDS church. This young man had lived with unbelief and belief in God his entire life. He said something that I found very profound: “I believe in God because I see that belief makes people better.” Now this is certainly a generalization, but I have found it to be true in my own personal life. As I have truly applied the principles that Jesus taught in the way I live, my life is better. I am better. The proof is in the doing. As an experimentalist, I understand that the only way to test a hypothesis is to design experiments and see what happens. If the hypothesis is good, the results of the experiments will be consistent with it. So it is with any correct principle; it leads to good results no matter the circumstances in which it is applied. I have found this to be the case with the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The church has taught me to treasure my family life, to go out of my way to help others, to take care of my body, to pray to God. All of these things have brought satisfaction and happiness to my life. They are correct principles and thus come from a true source. And what is that source? It is God, as he has revealed his way of life through his Son Jesus Christ and through inspired men and women, both ancient and modern day. Some say that Mormonism is great except for its history: Joseph Smith, angels, gold plates, revelations and so on. I say it is great because of its history—the hand of God working to teach us a better way through inspired prophets. Jesus said, “by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20). There is no question in my mind that the fruits of the LDS faith are good. Its teachings have expanded my mind and softened my heart.

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32)

Henry Eyring, perhaps the greatest Mormon scientist, was wont to tell the story of a conversation he had with his father as Henry was about to leave the family ranch in Northern Mexico for the University of Arizona. His father said, “Son, you don’t have to accept anything that isn’t true to believe the Gospel. Learn all you can. If you live clean and are not profane, you will stay close to the Gospel. If you do these things, I will be satisfied with the result” (Henry Erying, Faith of a Scientist, p. 66). I have embraced this counsel from this simple rancher. Truth is not an enemy to truth; thus, true science and true religion are not in conflict. The problem is that our science and our religion are often flawed. Paul, in the New Testament wrote, “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:9-12). As I have matured as a person and as a scientist, I have learned to be patient when faced with an apparent conflict between my deeply help beliefs and scientific theory, realizing that I am “seeing through a glass, darkly.” When it comes down to it, I don’t know much. But I look forward to the day when I shall “know even as also I am known.” May God hasten that day for all of us.

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Dr. Barry M. Willardson (www.chem.byu.edu/users/bmwillardson) received his Ph.D. from Purdue Univesity in 1990. He was a post-doctoral fellow and staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory until joining the faculty at Brigham Young University in 1996. He is currently Professor and Area Chair of Biochemistry at BYU.

Dr. Willardson is known for his work in G protein signaling, the means by which cells respond to hormones, neurotransmitters, and sensory signals. His current research investigates the way cells assemble G protein complexes and other important signaling complexes from their newly synthesized subunits. He has published numerous articles, and his work has been funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health for 15 years.

Posted October 20111

[Click to read English version.]

マリリン・アーノルド

全米でも有数な大学院で学術的な仕事につくための教育を受けた私が，不信者ではなく信者になったというのはどういうことなのでしょうか。学問に携わる人々の中には，学者というものは宗教的には懐疑論者であると考える人やそう皮肉る人もいます。しかしながら，末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会においては一風変わった現象が見られます。末日聖徒の中では，より高い教育を受けていればいるほど，その人は教会に活発であり献身的であるというのです。

数年前，ある国際文学ゼミに出席したときのこと，数人の同僚と夜遅くまで話をしていて，宗教のことが話題にのぼりました。大きなロッジのベランダに腰掛けて，夜空をながめながら，コオロギの鳴き声を聞いて，おしゃべりを楽しんでいました。そのときグループの中の一人の女性が私に向かって尋ねました，「あなたはモルモンよね。」そこで私は「そうよ，私は信者よ」と答えました。私のあからさまな，ためらいのない答えに驚いた様子で，とても強い印象を受けたと述べました。「大抵の人はあなたのように率直に正直には言わないから。特に学者はね。」そこで私は教会ではこれが普通で，高度な教育を受けた私でも，信じていると伝えました。

今度は別の人が尋ねました，たくさんの「規律」があるというのに，教会はどうして急成長を遂げているのかと言うのです。私は笑いながら答えました，むしろ数多くの規律があるゆえに成長しているのではと。活発な末日聖徒であることは容易なことではないけれどと付け加え，「犠牲を払わなければ得られない物事はむしろ大事にしませんか」と問いかけました。「週に一度とか，たまに教会へ行ってただ座って話を聞くだけよりも，もっと求められるものがあるほうに意義を感じるものではないですか。組織や大儀，または人に自分自身や資産をつぎ込めばつぎ込むほど，それは自分の一部となって貴重な存在になっていくと思います。親なら誰でもそれがよくわかっているはずです。」

ベランダで話しをした翌日，私の言ったことに感動したらしい女性が，再び私に話しかけてきました。「あなたが自分は信者だとはっきり言ったことが，どうしても理解できないのよ，しかも学術会議でよ。」そして一瞬ためらってから，さらに続けました。「あなたがああ言ってくれてよかったと思う。いろいろ考えさせられるから。」私が詳しく説明しなかったこと，それでも恐らく彼女は理解してくれたことは，自分は「信者」だと言ったことの意味なのです。

私はこう言うべきだったのかもしれません。私は三人の別々のお方，つまり御父と御子，そして聖霊からなる神会を信じています。そして死すべき体をもつ私たちが肉体の死と霊の死から贖われるのは，イエス・キリストを通してのみであること。さらに，キリストはジョセフ・スミスという敬虔な若い預言者を通してその完全な救いの福音を，聖なる神権と儀式と共に回復されたこと。天父は今日でも生ける預言者によって御心を知らしめることを信じていますと。外部の人々は教会員の人となりよりは，むしろしてはいけないと言われていることに関心を向けています。すべての信者がすべてのことに忠実であると言ったら，考えがあまいと言われるでしょう。でも，私たちはみな努力しているのだということは言えます。そして多くの人は悔改めの原則があることを日々，主に感謝しているのです。

私はさらに，聖書だけが神の御言葉ではないと信じています。モルモン書は莫大な数の書物の中でイエス・キリストについての最も力強い証人であり，聖書のもう一つの価値ある証であると信じています。これまで読んだ何千冊という本の中で，モルモン書ほど心に深く感銘を受けた書物はありません。手にした書物の中で最高のものであることは疑う余地もなく，何度読んでもあきることはありません。読むたびに高められ，霊感を受けます。詩と真理との完璧と言ってよい融和は，全く比類なきものだと思います。この書物を親しく読むことができるのは，私にとって最も重要で価値あることであり，それは私を永遠に変えてくれました。ある日私はモルモン書を最初から最後まで殆どぶっ続けで真剣に，そして複雑で優れた文学作品を読むときと同じ熱意をもって読もうと決意しました。

そうすると，御霊がモルモン書を研究している私の中に，私の生活の中にしっかりと入り込み，この経験を通して霊的に高められ，理解を得ることができました。そしてそれは今も私の中にとどまっています。私は心からこの書物を愛し，驚嘆と感謝の気持ちをもってこれを読み，研究し続けることでしょう。つまり私は改宗したのです。霊的な生まれ変わりという貴重な経験をし，今に至るまで言葉では言い尽くせない方法で私の人生を豊かにしてくれています。

モルモン書は，その一語一句が真実だと心の底から証します。もしこの記録が真実ではなかったなら，主はこれを保存されなかっただろうし，主が選ばれた者にこの書を渡し，主の教会を地上に回復するために末日にもたらすこともなさらなかっただろうと証します。末日聖徒イエス・キリスト教会とモルモン書を切り離して考えることはできないのです。

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マリリン・アーノルドはブリガム・ヤング大学の英語学名誉教授。米文学で博士号を取得，ウィラ・キャサーの著作の研究で知られ，その研究を認められて多くの賞を受賞。大学院学部長およびダリン・H・オークス元学長のアシスタントを務めた。定年退職した今は，他の活動に加えて霊的なルーツやユタ州南部の砂漠地帯を描いた小説を書くことに専念している。ハイキング，スキー，テニスなどのスポーツにも没頭し，今でも女性問題研究所を通してBYUと関係を保ち，ディキシー州立大学の理事会にも所属している。

Posted October 2011