What is Freedom?

There are many different definitions of freedom floating around. They contradict each other, and they all have their limits. Worse, there are some actual experiences of freedom that don’t fit any of the definitions and at least on their face contradict each other.

So I am going to propose a new definition.

A Mexican-American kid on a temporary work assignment in our ward spoke about freedom last Sunday. He apparently had some real interest in the subject of free agency and freedom on his mission to the Midwest and talked with various Saints there about it, and gleamed some interesting insights. He concluded that for him freedom was freedom to become (like Christ).

That struck me profoundly and instead of listening to the remainder of his talk as he moved on to other subjects, I mulled over freedom.

Let’s talk about the experience first.  Freedom is first and foremost something we know from the inside.   I have had real felt experiences of freedom and so have you.

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A modern day parable of the refiner’s fire:

If you treat wood so that it partially destroys the inner structure, then subject it to heat, and pressure, it ends up stronger than steel.

Can literally stop bullets.

The greatest sculptor who ever lived began where Michelangelo left off.  He made statues that changed their meaning a hundred times as you walked around it.  He made great, towering works that shifted their content as you walked towards them–the work was not just one sculpture of genius but several, depending on your angle.  He made outdoor pieces whose meaning and beauty shifted with the sun.

That was the first phase of his work. (more…)

No unclean thing can enter the kingdom of heaven.

Christ cleans every repentant thing.

WARNING: Political musings follow. (more…)

This is an incomplete thought that has been percolating in my mind for a long time. Tear it apart as you see fit.

I think Enoch could not have done what he did without Adam and Abel having died first.

I think that the Tribes of Ephraim & Manassah prospered to such a degree, because of their father, Joseph. Likewise, for Abraham’s children VS Lot’s, Isaac’s children VS Ishmael’s, Jacob’s VS Easu’s.

I think that the early church after the Savior, never had a chance to keep the fulness of the Gospel, not because of their spirituality, because they lacked the spiritual foundation of ancestors supporting them.

The church in our day, was given a chance to establish Zion, but failed, at least a bit partly because of their roots. We will have no excuse not to establish Zion, because even if we are first generation members, the roots of the Church members go back 200 years.

Those roots are important. We, without them, can not be saved.

There are two frames I’ve found for understanding the Mosiah-Alma transition in the Book of Mormon and all the political and social change that comes fast and heavy until Christ appears to them.

1. Nephite modernity
2. Nephite cultural conquest —  the Nephites effectively brought the Lamanites into their cultural sphere at this time. With a little help from the priests of King Noah, the Amalekites, and other Nephite dissenters.

It’s striking that Ammon and the 4 Sons of King Mosiah were able to convert Lamanites at this point which had never really happened before.   This is less an act of cultural conquest and more a result of it already happening.  It’s interesting that in Alma 22 Mormon stops describing all the Lamanites as idle nomads and only describes “the more idle part” that way.  In contrast, there is a newly urbanizing population that is also Nephitizing that seems more susceptible to conversion.

Which brings us to

3.  Partly as a result of 1 and 2, the Lamanites are also going through some kind of state formation transition around this time.

The Book of Mormon is for our day.

Modernity and cultural conquest are defining elements of our own era.

Ammon et al’s mission to the Lamanites reveals a unique state structure that we never see again in the Book of Mormon.  There is a Lamanite high king who is acknowledged by subsidiary kings as their overlord.  King Lamoni calls him father, he calls King Lamoni son.

It is very possible that they weren’t father and son.  There are numerous examples of ancient monarchies where the ranking monarch calls himself the father of his tributary kings, and they call him son.

On the other hand, Lamoni refers to another tributary king as his friend, not as his brother.  I also think it would be unusual for an overlord king to be travelling without retinue to visit a tributary king but less unusual for an irascible dad to just take off on his own to visit his young upstart puppy of a son for some much needed words of remonstrance.

(It is possible that there were retinue there, just not mentioned.  In the early stages of state/empire formation–which is where I think the Lamanites were at–the king is still a warrior and expected to maintain challenges to his authority himself.)

(Speaking of the early stages of state/empire formation, the kind of political arrangement you see with a main king and tributary kings is typical of that stage)

(It is also extremely common to appoint trusted sons and brothers as important subrulers and viceroys at any stage in monarchy, not just at the formation stage.  See Edward III, Edward IV, or Charles II)

Charles II’s Admiral of the Fleet–his brother James.

There isn’t one.  Goodness is a thing, not an abstraction.  You have to experience it from the inside to know it.  So much flows from this truth.

One of the original appeals of looking for chiasmus is that it is a form of poetry that would survive translation, even arguably if the translator didn’t know there was a poetic structure there.

And obviously that is true or we wouldn’t know about it.

That said, we sh0uldn’t overrate our ability to always discern a chiasmus.  A lot of the poetic art is going to lie in taking an established form where people *expect* what’s going to be coming next, but then replacing it with something unexpected.  In other words, the chiastic form allows for metaphors (equating two dissimilar things) without explicitly saying so.

There would likely also be a repertoire of established metaphors, things we don’t consider to be in the same category but that the ancient writer would have, which we know nothing about.

Some of this we might be able to figure out, using judgment and intuition (both alas fallible).  Some not.

Anciently, letters were numbers and it was a bit of sacred numeralogy to see what the numbers add up to. And numbers had certain meanings.

That said, it is interesting that

1776 (Declaration of Independence) = 777

1788 (Constitution radified) = 888

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

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There is a very interesting shift from the kings to the judges that  involves a shift in religious authority and an outbreak of religious entrepreneurialism.  Grant hardy’s ethnic breakdown thesis may be correct but I think it obscures more than it reveals.

Nephite modernity; Lessons from Nephite history ; Nephite civilization cycles

Let’s take a look at some more of the interesting questions and insights from this period.

• Did Abinadi have authority?

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There’s a saying among us that you can’t beat a positive with a negative.  In other words, you can’t beat a vision just by telling people no, you have to supply them with some actual replacement for it.

While I generally agree, I’m not so sure that’s true for the sabbath.  I have found that if I supply the negatives–if I refrain from doing stuff–God supplies the positives.

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