Maps and Models

Note: I wrote this on Facebook and needed to publish it somewhere. Probably going to edit it a good bit. Originally written July 18, 2018

I shared this with the youth today and I'm wondering what people think about it. 

The video is six minutes and it'll take 5-10 to read through my ramblings. These are rough-draft ideas, so feel free to pick it apart. I'm a fan of intelligent disagreement.

First, we watched the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIID5FDi2JQ (It's pretty fun if you're into history/cartography/learning stuff in general. This post will make much more sense if you watch it.)

Then, I recapped the video. Since it's impossible to render anything in three dimensions perfectly in two-dimensional space, all maps are models. They are simplifications that don't completely portray all the facets of something. What a mapmaker wants to accomplish will determine the form a map takes and determine its weaknesses/strengths. Every map will imperfectly show a 3d object in 2d space, and some aspect of a map must, therefore, be wrong. 

For example, the Mercator projection is great for finding a navigational angle if you're sailing from point A to point B. However, it's pretty terrible if you don't sail any more and you're trying to figure out how big countries are. Looking at the Mercator projection, you'd think Greenland and Africa are roughly the same in size when Africa is roughly 14 times larger. So, Mercator is a good map for navigation (which we don't really use any more thanks to GPS) but terrible for country size. 

So, how does this apply to Mormonism? 

A lot (most?) of what we learn in the church is a model. When we talk about the atonement as a bridge over a gulf of misery (Helaman 3:27-30) or as death and hell as a monster that Jesus helps us escape from (2 Nephi 9:10) or as Jesus standing between us and justice, making intercession... these are three different ways to model the atonement. Modeling the atonement is akin to trying to model a 3-dimensional object in two-dimensional space. 

As such, our models of spiritual truth will have limitations similar to the limitations of map-making. Our attempts to describe truth will be simplifications that are unable to capture the whole, and in some applications may be wildly inaccurate. 

Also, the usefulness of our religious models will change over time. In Old Testament times, the chief conflict of the day were war and death. God is seen as a Lord of Hosts (literally Lord of Armies). Today, most of us are unfamiliar with war. We struggle instead with loving our neighbor, with being forgiving but holding to our principles, with mental health issues, and making enough money to support a family, etc. As such, the model of God as the Lord of Armies isn't as useful to us. We see him as a personal God, the God who weeps, Jesus who turned over tables at the temple and also said: "forgive them for they know not what they do." Just like the Mercator projection, the usefulness of this model has changed since the world has changed. 

When we grow up and find that something doesn't fit the model we were taught of the gospel/church/history/scriptures when we were in primary, are we to discard the whole thing? Do we stop using maps altogether because every map is, of necessity, inaccurate? Or do we recognize that models have different purposes and different problems? When we learn Greenland isn't the size of Africa, do we reject all maps? 

Obviously, we don't. 

We adapt our models. 

When we find that "God answers prayers" doesn't mean the same thing it did when we were five, should we reject prayer altogether, or should our knowledge of prayer mature and adapt to new information? When we learn Joseph Smith was a prophet as children and then learn about polygamy, do we reject him altogether as a prophet or do we take a closer look at our model of him and adapt it? 

In short, we learn a very simplified model of the church as children in the church. Some never grow out of this model. Some come into contact with information that seems to contradict the model. When we run into that contradiction, some reject the model altogether, and others adapt their models. In an ideal world, our knowledge of spiritual things should change as we grow and learn new things.

However, no matter how much we learn, our knowledge is based on models that fail to capture the whole. We should always be open to adapting our spiritual knowledge to new things that we learn.

The Completeness Assumption

I recently came across a post by Ben Spackman (someone who excels at being my older brother, among other things) about seer stones, and noticed something new. 

"While on my mission in France, I learned about Joseph’s use of the seerstone, along with the Urim and Thummim/ Nephite “interpreters,” and eventually nothing at all, in translating the Book of Mormon. I suspect my source was something from FARMS (now the Maxwell Institute), since many of their books and papers referred to it. I had learned some intellectual humility early on in my mission and assumed I knew little, so I naturally took it in stride along with all the other  new things I was learning." (Link)

Ben's reaction to potentially strange information (translating via rocks and then nothing at all) was affected by how much he assumed he already knew about the topic. I had never thought about this before, and it led me to a hypothesis:  when we assume we know little and embrace intellectual humility, our ability to digest information about murkier church issues improves. 

The opposite also holds. When we assume we know everything and haven't been taught intellectual humility, we struggle to digest information about murky church issues. 

[Now, before I say anymore, I want to point out two things about assumptions. First, most of our assumptions are subconscious-- we don't see them until something challenges them, like getting married (you load the dishwasher like that?) or traveling to a foreign country (that's not how you're supposed to line up). Second, we inherit our religious assumptions from our environment (parents, congregations, local leadership, etc.) 

This combination means that, when it comes to issues about church history and doctrine, those who struggle are not to blame for the subconscious assumptions they've inherited.]

I think we have inherited a subconscious assumption that checking off the "good Mormon" boxes (going to seminary, temple attendance, serving a mission, church attendance) teaches us all we need to know about a topic. This is one of the big reasons church members get rocked by new information: we think we know it already. 

Once we're aware that this Completeness Assumption exists, we can process it, examine it, and evaluate it. 

In my evaluation, it's a faulty assumption born of mismatched purposes. 

The bulk of the typical Latter-day Saint's knowledge comes through church-established vehicles: Sunday school lessons,  manuals, seminary classes, general conference talks, missionary discussions,  church art, etc. Historically, there have been two purposes to these mediums: to teach about Jesus Christ and to be "uplifting." Until recently, historical completeness or examination of tricky issues has not been a priority. (The Joseph Smith papers, the gospel topics essays, and Wayment's translation of the NT are evidence that the church is striving to create resources that do make those things a priority.) 

This inherited Completeness Assumption explains the reaction of many members when they hear about historically tricky issues: "I've been a member my whole life, served a mission, I listen at every general conference and I've never ONCE heard about [issue X]." We struggle to process the information, or worse, we discard anything new as anti-Mormon propaganda. Why? Because nothing has ever challenged the Completeness Assumption before.

If you don't deal with your demons

“If you don’t deal with your demons, they go into the cellars of your soul and lift weights.”

This is one of the best podcasts / interviews I’ve ever heard. 

Topics range from watching a friend die, to delivering her own stillborn child ALONE, to pain and the power it can bring, to the different types of pain. 

Some profanities and some ideas I don’t agree with, but I really, really liked this. 

https://overcast.fm/+KebuDkIxw

Spiritual Experiences are Subjective

Maybe this is obvious. Maybe it’s not.

The spirituality of an experience is subjective (dependent on the observer), not objective (dependent on the experience or object being observed). 

This is seen in a number of different places. 

Sometimes hear people say “I really felt the spirit” in a meeting / lesson that I have found particularly lackluster. Other times, I’ll have a deep, intense experience in a sacrament meeting and look around to see that everyone else is staring at phones and not really paying attention. 

Another example is Mark Twain's reaction to the Book of Mormon. He found it such a “slow... sleepy... mess of inspiration” that he called it “chloroform in print.” (Taken from Roughing It, Ch. 16). Others find inspiration, joy, and a connection to Jesus Christ that changes their life. 

The Day of Pentecost is another illustration. For context, it’s 50 days since Passover (around the time of the crucifixion). Christ has been spending 40 days teaching his disciples. Peter, who seems to have gone from Christ denier to powerful witness in that period of time, stands up in front of a crowd from 13 different regions to preach repentance and baptism. Miraculously, everyone here's him in their own language. 

But some mock and say “Dudes, Peter’s just drunk!” (Acts 2:13, Hugh Spackman Translation). 

And sometime when others mock, I question my own experiences. Could it really have been that special if someone else didn't experience the same thing? If others read the Book of Mormon and get nothing out of it, can it be what it says it is? 

Yes. 

Because the spirituality of an experience is subjective. Not objective. 

"A Young Father's Fear"

Having trouble converting ideas from brain to blinking cursor, I shall forego any commentary and simply quote the following, from Jeffrey R. Holland: 

Thirty years ago last month, a little family set out to cross the United States to attend graduate school—no money, an old car, every earthly possession they owned packed into less than half the space of the smallest U-Haul trailer available. Bidding their apprehensive parents farewell, they drove exactly 34 miles up the highway, at which point their beleaguered car erupted.

Pulling off the freeway onto a frontage road, the young father surveyed the steam, matched it with his own, then left his trusting wife and two innocent children—the youngest just three months old—to wait in the car while he walked the three miles or so to the southern Utah metropolis of Kanarraville, population then, I suppose, 65. Some water was secured at the edge of town, and a very kind citizen offered a drive back to the stranded family. The car was attended to and slowly—very slowly—driven back to St. George for inspection—U-Haul trailer and all.

After more than two hours of checking and rechecking, no immediate problem could be detected, so once again the journey was begun. In exactly the same amount of elapsed time at exactly the same location on that highway with exactly the same pyrotechnics from under the hood, the car exploded again. It could not have been 15 feet from the earlier collapse, probably not 5 feet from it! Obviously the most precise laws of automotive physics were at work.

Now feeling more foolish than angry, the chagrined young father once more left his trusting loved ones and started the long walk for help once again. This time the man providing the water said, “Either you or that fellow who looks just like you ought to get a new radiator for that car.” For the second time a kind neighbor offered a lift back to the same automobile and its anxious little occupants. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry at the plight of this young family.

“How far have you come?” he said. “Thirty-four miles,” I answered. “How much farther do you have to go?” “Twenty-six hundred miles,” I said. “Well, you might make that trip, and your wife and those two little kiddies might make that trip, butnone of you are going to make it in that car.” He proved to be prophetic on all counts.

Just two weeks ago this weekend, I drove by that exact spot where the freeway turnoff leads to a frontage road, just three miles or so west of Kanarraville, Utah. That same beautiful and loyal wife, my dearest friend and greatest supporter for all these years, was curled up asleep in the seat beside me. The two children in the story, and the little brother who later joined them, have long since grown up and served missions, married perfectly, and are now raising children of their own. The automobile we were driving this time was modest but very pleasant and very safe. In fact, except for me and my lovely Pat situated so peacefully at my side, nothing of that moment two weeks ago was even remotely like the distressing circumstances of three decades earlier.

Yet in my mind’s eye, for just an instant, I thought perhaps I saw on that side road an old car with a devoted young wife and two little children making the best of a bad situation there. Just ahead of them I imagined that I saw a young fellow walking toward Kanarraville, with plenty of distance still ahead of him. His shoulders seemed to be slumping a little, the weight of a young father’s fear evident in his pace. In the scriptural phrase his hands did seem to “hang down.” In that imaginary instant, I couldn’t help calling out to him: “Don’t give up, boy. Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead—a lot of it—30 years of it now, and still counting. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”