From the Narrow Desert

And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses (Mark 11:25-26).

Discussions of the "unforgivable sin" usually focus on the sin against the Holy Ghost, but this passage from Mark (also Matt. 6:14-15) seems to indicate that being unforgiving is also unforgivable: If you don't forgive others, God will not forgive you.

Isn't that surprising? Failing to forgive is such a relatable sin, something that comes so naturally to just about everyone, that it is counterintuitive to say that it is less forgivable than other, seemingly more serious, sins. For example, if a rapist repents, he will be forgiven; but if his victim fails to forgive him, she will not be forgiven. Isn't that a bit shocking?

I suppose the most natural interpretation of this passage is that if you want God to forgive you, you have to forgive others, because it's only fair. I don't think that cuts it as an explanation, though. We're talking about forgiveness here, which is by definition not about being fair, but about extending mercy to those who deserve condemnation. "I can't forgive you, because it wouldn't be fair"? But it's never fair. If it were fair, it would be vindication, not forgiveness.

My best guess is that forgiveness is an absolute requirement because Heaven is not an individual state, like Buddhist enlightenment, but membership in the Family of God, and as such it inherently involves relationships with other former sinners. It's not that God views unforgiveness as "the worst sin" and insists on "punishing" it; it's that, as a matter of spiritual and psychological fact, one simply cannot participate in Heaven until one can freely and fully forgive.

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Sync note: Opening up BibleGateway to look up this post's text led to the syncs that resulted in the post "Many sparrows, again, and other sync links." That post prominently features figs and mentions my finding figs growing on the wall of the abandoned restaurant, as related in "Owl time, and cold noodles." In "Owl time," I said that the figs made me think of Mark 11:13. The passage I was looking for for this post also turns out to be from Mark 11.

Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part
That wonders what the part that isn't thinking, isn't thinking of

-- They Might Be Giants, "Where Your Eyes Don't Go"

If you make yourself small enough, you can externalize anything.

-- Daniel Dennett

Euryalus, is it
the gods who put this fire in our minds,
or is it that each man’s relentless longing
becomes a god to him?

-- Aeneid, Book IX, Mandelbaum trans.

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How the Glunk got thunk

In the 1969 Dr. Seuss story "The Glunk That Got Thunk," the young Cat in the Hat's sister has the hobby of thinking things up.

A thing my sister likes to do
Some evenings after supper,
Is sit upstairs in her small room
And use her Thinker-Upper.

She turns her Thinker-Upper on.
She lets it softly purr.
It thinks up friendly little things
With smiles and fuzzy fur.

One day, having decided that her friendly little things are "just not fun enough," she determines to "think up bigger things."

"Think! Think!" she cried.
Her Thinker-Upper gave a snorty snore.
It started thunk-thunk-thunking
As it never had before.
With all he might, her eyes shut tight,
She cried, "Thunk-thunk some more!"

Then, BLUNK! Her Thinker-Upper thunked
A double klunker-klunk.
My sister's eyes flew open
And she saw she'd thunked a Glunk!

The rest of the story deals with the problem of getting rid of this "Glunk" -- an uncouth, greenish creature that threatens the family with financial ruin by running up their phone bill -- but we are here concerned not with that, nor even with the question of how the imagined creature somehow became "real" (a tulpa), but rather with the description of how it was thunk up in the first place.

I think Seuss expresses very clearly and memorably the way in which thinking-up -- having ideas -- is under conscious control and the way in which it is not. At one level, the sister is clearly responsible for the thinking-up of the Glunk. It is she who decides to use her Thinker-Upper and turns it on, and it is she who, dissatisfied with the usual "fuzzy little stuff," commands it to think up something bigger. The Thinker-Upper itself, though, is referred to as something almost external to the sister, almost a machine. She turns it on, and it thinks up things for her. I say "almost," though, because of the closing lines of the passage I have quoted: "My sister's eyes flew open, and she saw she'd thunked a Glunk!" This is a recognition that the Thinker-Upper is not really external but is an aspect of the sister's Self -- one which is, somewhat paradoxically, capable of surprising her. She is amazed to discover that she herself (the Thinker-Upper part of herself) has thought up something so unexpected.

Could the sister have consciously decided to think up a Glunk? Could she have deliberated a bit, decided, "I shall now think of a furry, green, blond-headed, halitotic alligator who phones his mother every day," and then proceeded to think it up? No. Not unless the idea of the Glunk was already in her mind -- that is to say, not unless she had already thought it up. You cannot choose to think about a particular thing until you have already thought of it. Before it can be subject to your conscious will, it has to occur to you -- an English expression which is precisely apropos. Having a new idea is not something you do; it is something that happens to you. Thinking-up cannot be conscious -- and when I say cannot, I mean cannot. It is impossible in principle, impossible by its very nature, impossible even for God.

In my 2013 posts "Agency and motive" and "Syllogisms, free will, and the role of attention," I discuss the paradox of being able to act for ourselves but requiring motives in order to do so -- motives which are not directly and consciously chosen by us but are ultimately "given." I describe how attention is the vehicle of the conscious will: As we hold a dilemma or a possible course of action in our minds, more and more relevant considerations to come to mind; by selectively focusing attention on some of these considerations, we cause them to become "stronger" and elicit the appearance of new but related ideas; and in the end we choose when to act -- that is, we choose which moment, which snapshot of the flux of waxing and waning motives, will be realized in action.

I would now expand that model to include not only motives and possible actions, but all thought. Every idea, even one as far removed from action as thinking up a Glunk, necessarily arises unconsciously, and the only role of the conscious will in the process is to direct attention. There is the Thinker-Upper, and there is the Attention-Director, and only the latter is or can be conscious. Because only the Attention-Director is conscious, only it is unambiguously us. In the Glunk story, the Thinker-Upper is largely if imperfectly externalized -- mostly "it" thinks, but occasionally a "she" slips through. The Attention-Director, though -- the part of the sister that turns the Thinker-Upper on and commands it to think -- cannot be externalized; it is simply she who does those things.

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A sample train of thought

It will be convenient to have a more detailed example to refer to than the Glunk.

While I was writing this post, I received an email out of the blue from a stranger, sent to me and to a handful of public figures not known to me personally, consisting of nothing but the following Groucho Marx quip, quoted without context or comment.

"Behind that spaghetti is none other than Herman Gottlieb, director of The New York Opera Company. Do you follow me?"

"Yes."

"Well, stop following me or I’ll have you arrested!"

Where did the Thinker-Upper go with this? First, it served up another Groucho line, from Duck Soup: "Do you know you haven't stopped talking since I got here? You must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle!" And then it thought of an imaginary movie, a longtime fantasy of mine, in which that line figures.

The movie begins with a montage, with quiet guitar music in the background, as a voice explains how the Greek gods of antiquity became the Roman gods and then later incarnated as various mortals -- Mercury as Wordsworth, Cupid as Tchaikovsky, Apollo as James Joyce, and so on -- "until," says the voice, "in the the 20th century the gods of old had finally reached rock bottom." We then realize what the meandering guitar melody has been leading up to: There is a brass fanfare, and the drums and vocals kick in: "Roll up! Roll up for the Mystery Tour, roll up!" The montage cuts to the Beatles, in their Sergeant Pepper duds, playing that song. The camera pans to John Lennon, and a caption appears labeling him "Mercury." Then it moves to Paul McCartney, "Mars." Then, as "Magical Mystery Tour" continues to play in the background, we cut to Duck Soup and Groucho suggesting that Margaret Dumont must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle, with a caption labeling him "Zeus."

Next, the Thinker-Upper noticed that "Grouch O" suggests Oscar the Grouch, and the whole opening scene of the movie played again, only this time the voiceover was provided by Carroll Spinney as Oscar, and when the 20th century arrived and it was time for the music to kick in, we got not the Beatles but more Oscar, singing his trademark song, Jeff Moss's "I Love Trash." As various icons of 20th-century pop culture appear on the screen, Oscar belts out, "I have here a newspaper 13 months old / I wrapped fish inside it, it's smelly and cold / But I wouldn't trade it for a big pot of gold / I love it because it's tra-a-ash! . . ."

As I dismissed this movie and returned my attention to the original email, the Thinker-Upper informed me that opera is similar to Oprah, that Oprah Winfrey is famously named after a Marx Brother spelled backwards, and that opera is also famously spelled backwards in the Sator Square. I didn't pay much attention to that, so it offered instead that spaghetti suggests the Flying Spaghetti Monster, central figure of a joke-religion no less jokey than the one that sees Groucho Marx as the avatar of Zeus; and also Johnny Spaghetti, the legendary figure (invented by one of my young students) who walked across the country barefoot scattering not apple seeds but spaghetti noodles. It also noted in this connection that the late Charles Manson, likely the ultimate source of the Groucho-Zeus doctrine, once told my hippie uncle that he, Manson, was "Appleseed indeed."

Then, after these and a few other false starts, the Thinker-Upper informed me that the whole Groucho clip is actually a coded reference to a conspiracy theory. "Behind that spaghetti" -- that is, behind the superficially Roman trappings of political power -- "is none other than Herman Gottlieb" -- that is, a Jew -- "director of the New York Opera Company" -- that is, running the show. And who is delivering this line? Who but Julius "Groucho" Marx, a Jewish showman named after Caesar! And then the punchline: "Do you follow me? Well stop following me, or I'll have you arrested!" This is supposed to be an Elizabethan quibble on follow, which can mean either "understand" or "stalk," but the real joke is that it actually means "understand" both times. Do you understand what I've just told you? Well, you'd better stop understanding it, you anti-Semitic nutjob, if you know what's good for you! Pay no attention to the man behind the spaghetti.

And then I effectively turned the Thinker-Upper off -- or off this particular topic, anyway -- satisfied that it had come up with a pleasingly coherent (if fanciful) interpretation of the whole clip.

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The quasi-Darwinian nature of thought

The Darwinian process depends on three elements: variation, selection, and heredity. Things vary; some varieties are selected over others; and it is these selected ones that give rise to the next generation, allowing for cumulative change in the direction being selected for.

There is an imperfect but still useful analogy to be made between the Darwinian process and the process of thought as described and illustrated above. The Thinker-Upper is continually generating new ideas, which provides variation. The Attention-Director exerts a selective force by "feeding" some of these ideas with attention and starving others. Then there is a strong tendency for the Thinker-Upper's next "generation" of ideas is be "related" to the survivors of the selection process, providing an analogue to heredity.

(This is not to be confused with the much more strictly Darwinian analysis of ideas as memes. In the memetic model, an idea reproduces when it is successfully communicated, thus making a copy of the same idea in another person's mind; and a maximally successful meme would instantiate itself in many minds with little or no variation. In the model I am proposing, an idea "reproduces" when it stimulates in the same mind the occurrence of other, but related, ideas; and making high-fidelity copies of itself doesn't enter into the equation.)

In biological Darwinism, it is understood that selection does all the heavy lifting, so much so that variation can be modeled as "random," ignoring the question of what specifically causes variation. (Not that science does ignore that question, but it can ignore it when providing Darwinian explanations for things.) In thought, which proceeds on a scale of fractions of a second rather than millions of years, it is obvious that something many orders of magnitude more sophisticated than "random mutation" is called for. While something like a "mutation" -- that is, an imperfect or modified copy -- does sometimes occur (as when, in my example, a second version of the movie was played, adding Oscar the Grouch), the more usual mechanism is association. Given as a stimulus the word spaghetti, the Thinker-Upper didn't propose random typo-like variants (spsgherti, spafhetto, spaghetaghetti, etc.) but rather came up with associated concepts: the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Johnny Spaghetti, and stereotypical Italian-ness.

It seems obvious that different people's Thinker-Uppers will provide very different associations given the same stimulus, and that the Thinker-Upper shapes the stream of thought in a much more substantive way than mutations shape the course of evolution. This is, again, because of the incredible speed of thought. Conscious processes can obviously only do a tiny fraction of the work of thinking, and the rest of it must be relegated to the unconscious Thinker-Upper. The Thinker-Upper presents thoughts that are already the end-products of a complicated process, and it is only these that are subject to the Attention-Director's conscious control.

So what is the Thinker-Upper? This is an important question in a way that "What are mutations?" is not particularly important to biological Darwinism.

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The Thinker-Upper as machine

Dr. Seuss explicitly describes the Thinker-Upper as a machine. The sister turns it on and revs it up, and it makes the noises one would associate with an automobile engine. I have also tended to describe it in similar terms. Here, for example, in describing a particular step in my train of thought, I write, "And then the good old associative machinery threw up this."

In the information age, we would more naturally think of the Thinker-Upper as an algorithm than as a physical machine like an automobile. We might imagine it as something similar to the video recommendation algorithm on YouTube. When you watch a YouTube video, an algorithm generates a list of other videos you might be interested in and displays it in the sidebar; these are mostly "related" to the video you are currently watching, but the algorithm also takes into account your past search history and such, so that you and I might begin with the same video but get a rather different list of recommendations. If you click on one of the videos from the list, a new list appears, taking that video as its starting point. You could go to YouTube and, clicking only on recommended videos, still exercise a significant degree of control over your experience.

The analogy is severely flawed, though, because if videos are ideas, YouTube only connects one existing idea to another; it never generates anything new. Of course, one could argue that the same is largely true of the Thinker-Upper. In my sample train of thought, the Thinker-Upper didn't invent the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Johnny Spaghetti, or the idea of spaghetti as stereotypically Italian. Those ideas were all already there in my mind, and the Thinker-Upper selected them as relevant in much the same way a recommendation algorithm might do: "You may also like these other spaghetti-related ideas." Someone invented them, though, using their own Thinker-Uppers, and even my own sample train of thought isn't just a concatenation of existing ideas but includes moments of originality. That "behind that spaghetti" might mean that political power might not lie where it appears to lie -- I'm pretty sure that's an original idea.

Hypothetically, could there be a YouTube algorithm so advanced that, instead of recommending existing videos, it could actually create entirely new videos that you might be interested in? Well, yes in a way, but I think ultimately no. So-called "AI" algorithms have (somewhat) successfully created news articles, paintings, musical compositions, and so on, but this "creativity" is always derivative and parasitic on actual human creativity. You feed it a lot of Chopin music, and it composes new music superficially "in the style of Chopin," that kind of thing. An algorithm can only do what its inputs and instructions cause it to do. How could it ever create anything truly new? Only by accident -- by the introduction of mutation-like random variation. And as I have said, thought occurs much too quickly for random mutation to be viable as a driving force.

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Bruce Charlton's "Divine Self"

1. The creative power of the primordial Divine Self 

We are all Beings who have existed from eternity. And as Beings we have the capability to originate thought. Therefore, we are not merely passive and reactive - but can generate thought from our-selves. 

2. The directive power of the Conscious Self

For there to be free will - more is required; and that extra was provided by God when he 'created' us; that is, when he made us into Children of God ('Sons of God').  

What God provided was the Conscious Self, which has the ability to direct the attention of the Divine Self. 

The Conscious Self cannot 'control' what comes-out-of our Divine self. Because nothing can control the Divine Self - the Divine Self is the basis and reality of our ultimate freedom, autonomy; our capacity to create-from-ourselves. 

But we can consciously control the subject matter attended to by our Divine self - we can therefore choose what the Divine Self deploys-itself-upon.

So, conscious will can direct our Divine Self; and that is why we need to be conscious in order to be free. 

If the Conscious Self was not present, or not actually conscious; then the Divine Self only responds to whatever external circumstances present to it. But with consciousness, potentially we can voluntarily influence what we think about.

I point out these discrepancies not for the sake of caviling, but to demonstrate the need to think more clearly about what exactly this idea-generating aspect of the self (what Charlton is calling the "Divine Self") is and what role it plays in free will and creativity.

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The Homeric model

The attention-directing Conscious Self, precisely because it is conscious, is relatively clearly defined and knowable. That which generates ideas, by contrast, is a black box. Its nature, because it is not directly accessible to consciousness, is unclear, and neither of Charlton's assumptions about it -- that it is Divine, and that is an aspect of each person's individual Self -- can be taken as obviously true.

Ancient people seem to have accepted that new ideas came from the Divine but not that they came from the Self. Consider how a creative genius like Homer, for example, understood what he was doing when he composed his poems. 

Muse, tell me of the man of many wiles,
the man who wandered many paths of exile
after he sacked Troy's sacred citadel. . . .
Muse, tell us of these matters. Daughter of Zeus,
my starting point is any point you choose.

Homer clearly understood that his ideas came not from himself but from the Muse, the Daughter of Zeus, and that his own role as poet was to direct her attention -- to begin by commanding her to sing in him of the man of many wiles, or of the rage of Achilles, and then to continue to direct the unfolding of the rest of the poem by countless other attentional decisions. I think Homer would have recognized that another man, channeling the same Muse on the same topic, would have produced a very different poem.

Homer conceptualized not only his own creative work in this way, but also the actions of his characters. Everything his heroes do is -- explicitly in many cases and by implication, I think, always -- put into their hearts by one or another of the gods. And yet men like Achilles are not, one feels, mere marionettes of the Olympians but direct the unfolding of their own lives just as Homer directs his poem.

In my Mormon youth, a recurring topic of discussion was the question of how to distinguish one's own thoughts from the promptings of the Spirit, but for Homer such a question could never have arisen. All thoughts that occur to us come from outside -- obviously; we can see from introspection that we are not consciously creating them ourselves -- and the unity behind such sources-of-thought is not personal but divine. To the best of my recollection (and I may have to reread Homer to check this), there is no concept of the personal daimon ("Divine Self") in the Homeric writings. If I myself write a poem or fall in love, I am moved by the same Muse and the same Aphodite who moved Homer and his heroes, manifesting differently because it is a different Conscious Self that directs their attentions.

It is not clear the extent to which the Book of Mormon contains genuinely ancient material, but I quote this passage anyway because it seems a clear example of what we might call Homeric Psychology: "For if ye would hearken unto the Spirit which teacheth a man to pray, ye would know that ye must pray; for the evil spirit teacheth not a man to pray, but teacheth him that he must not pray" (2 Ne. 32:8). Whatever idea comes into our minds -- whether the idea of praying or the idea of not praying -- is put there by an external "spirit" analogous to the Homeric gods. But it is we who choose which of the spirits to "hearken unto."

One can also find a partial analogue in Plato's allegory of the chariot (Phaedrus), in which the Conscious Self is likened to a charioteer driving a pair of horses which would, if left to themselves, pull the chariot in very different directions. This differs from the Homeric model in that there are only two horses (perhaps a simplified, schematic version of Homer's many gods) and, more importantly, in that each person's horses are his own -- my chariot is pulled by my two horses, your chariot by yours, and so on. Lost is the concept of one Muse, one Ares, one Aphrodite, and so on.

If we were to develop Homeric Psychology in a monotheistic direction, we might find an apt metaphor not in the chariot but in the sailing ship. Every ship on the sea is driven by the same, external, Wind (a word which is synonymous with spirit in all ancient languages), but how exactly the wind will manifest itself in the motion of each ship is up to each captain. To invert a common proverb, "God proposes, man disposes." There are perhaps hints of this Monotheistic Homerism in the New Testament. "A man can receive nothing," says John the Baptist, "except it be given him from heaven" (John 3:27). The writer to the Hebrews says, in a passage we have discussed before, "For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God" (Heb. 3:4). Every ship is driven by some captain, but all ships are driven by the Wind.

This Monotheistic Homerism would be one possible approach to the paradoxical idea that, while everything that is done is done by God, we are also responsible for our own actions. It would also give an added meaning to Paul's execration of Elymas: "O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?" (Acts 13:10). Under Monotheistic Homerism, Elymas would quite literally be perverting (literally, "turning in the wrong direction") the right ways of the Lord -- doing evil by the power of the Lord himself, causing God to manifest as evil.

In Whitley Strieber's book The Key, which presents itself as a dialogue between Streiber and a mysterious stranger, Strieber asks the stranger,

What is God?

An elemental body is a mechanism filled with millions of nerve endings that direct the attention of God into the physical.

That didn't answer my question.

It did.

The implication is that God is knowable to us only as that mind whose attention is directed by our physical bodies. This is Monotheistic Homerism -- Charlton's "Divine Self" as a single Divine Self, God, rather than as an aspect of each person's individuality -- and it further reduces Charlton's "Conscious Self" to a physical "mechanism." The psychology of The Key, or at least that implied by this passage, eliminates individual agency entirely: Only God thinks and acts, and that which directs his attention is mechanistic.

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Know thyself

And he saith unto them, "Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him; because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?"

And he said, "That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man."

-- Mark 7:18-23

The Attention-Director is me, and it has free will. Because of its conscious nature, this is a matter of direct experience and necessary metaphysical assumption. Because the activities of the Thinker-Upper are opaque to consciousness, though, the extent to which they may or may not be "me" is uncertain. It is possible in theory to attribute all Thinking-Up to an external "machine" or Muse or God.

If the Thinker-Upper is all machine, then the Attention-Director is the whole self and the only thing that matters, and we should focus on conscious control of our thoughts, as that is the only way anything of value will come of them. This also raises the possibility that if (as seems likely) the mechanical Thinker-Upper is the brain, we will find ourselves without any Thinker-Upper at all upon physical death. (I have discussed the possibility of non-brain thinking, and how it might differ from the brain-mediated thinking we know, in "The twilight of the brain.") This would explain why "ghosts" seem to be demented and devoid of creativity (often observed to repeat the same actions again and again mindlessly) and why bodily resurrection is so essential. While we might imagine that a post-mortal ghost would still be capable of some limited "thought," since it might still have access to memories of ideas generated by the Thinker-Upper during mortality -- but even this is questionable since even calling up this or that specific memory seems to be a Thinker-Upper function. In any case, it is clear that an Attention-Director that had never had access to a Thinker-Upper would be absolutely incapable of thought. Therefore, conscious choice can have played no role in the origin of the first Thinker-Upper; it must have "evolved," primordial-soup style, rather than being created, and everything would fundamentally have its origin in chaos rather than in God. Taken to its logical conclusion, the thesis that the Thinker-Upper is a machine -- even if the Attention-Director is an immortal "spirit," and even if "gods" are assumed to exist -- leads directly to a metaphysics that can only be called Atheistic.

If the Thinker-Upper is God, nearly opposite conclusions follow. The true self is not my self or yours but the Self -- the universal Atman which is identical to Brahma. Rather than trying to control our thoughts or channel them in this or that direction, we should strive to surrender to the Thinker-Upper and become (to pinch a turn of phrase from Meister Eckhart) "a clear glass through which God can shine." (If the Thinker-Upper is just a meaningless machine, this would be a fantastically stupid thing to do, so it's pretty important to get it right!) This thesis leads to a metaphysics that might be called "Buddhist" in the same extended sense that the first model was called Atheistic. Under this model, it is not clear what the purpose of our existence might be or why God would have created us, since he would surely shine most clearly through no glass at all.

If the Thinker-Upper is a Homeric pantheon of disparate external influences -- well, I want to say that this leads to a "Homeric" metaphysics to set beside the Atheistic and Buddhist, but nothing very coherent emerges. I suppose the important thing would be to discern which influences were from which god, and which gods could be considered allies or enemies, and try to act accordingly.

If the Thinker-Upper is the True Self, though -- a self fundamentally different from God, the gods, and the material world -- well, then we are called to serve God not as a clear glass through which he can shine but as active participants in the ongoing work of Creation. This is, of course, the Romantic Christian metaphysics.

My own position is primarily the Romatic Christian one, but I think there is an element of truth in each of the other models as well. Some of the thoughts that present themselves to us really are mechanically generated by the brain, and we will lose access to that mode of thinking in the period between physical death and resurrection. Some thoughts come from other minds, including God himself, and may be termed inspiration, temptation, or telepathy depending on the individual nature and source of each. And some -- crucially -- come from an aspect of the True Self which, while it can necessarily never be conscious, is more our own than anything else can be.

How can the the thoughts that come from the True Self be identified as such? Asking that question sheds some light on a passage in William James's Principles of Psychology which really puzzled me when I first read it many years ago:

When Paul and Peter wake up in the same bed, and recognize that they have been asleep, each one of them mentally reaches back and makes connection with but one of the two streams of thought which were broken by the sleeping hours. As the current of an electrode buried in the ground unerringly finds its way to its own similarly buried mate, across no matter how much intervening earth; so Peter's present instantly finds out Peter's past, and never by mistake knits itself on to that of Paul. Paul's thought in turn is as little liable to go astray. The past thought of Peter is appropriated by the present Peter alone. He may have a knowledge, and a correct one too, of what Paul's last drowsy states of mind were as he sank into sleep, but it is an entirely different sort of knowledge from that which he has of his own last states. He remembers his own states, whilst he only conceives Paul's. Remembrance is like direct feeling; its object is suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object of mere conception ever attains. This quality of warmth and intimacy and immediacy is what Peter's present thought also possesses for itself. So sure as this present is me, is mine, it says, so sure is anything else that comes with the same warmth and intimacy and immediacy, me and mine.

I found this bizarre when I first read it. Of course Peter picks up his own train of thought, and never Paul's, because his own thoughts are the only ones he has access to. Any thought that comes to mind is Peter's thought, even if it is a thought about the probably content of Paul's train of thought. All James's talk of "warmth and intimacy and immediacy" seemed superfluous, solutions to a problem that could never arise. Now, though, this description of how we recognize our thought as our own seems to have some value.

More importantly, though, we are free agents who can choose which thoughts to embrace as our own and which to reject. I am reminded of the final sermon of Bruce R. McConkie, a great Mormon from a time when that word still meant something, delivered just 13 days before his death.

In speaking of these wondrous things I shall use my own words, though you may think they are the words of scripture, words spoken by other Apostles and prophets.

True it is they were first proclaimed by others, but they are now mine, for the Holy Spirit of God has borne witness to me that they are true, and it is now as though the Lord had revealed them to me in the first instance. I have thereby heard his voice and know his word.

Of any thought at all, we are free to say, "True it is it first came from another, but it is now mine" -- and this applies to the evil as well as to the Good. When evil thoughts present themselves, we are free to say, "This is who I am, and I need to be honest about it" -- or to say, "Get behind me, Satan!" It is not so much a question of asking whether it is my own thought as of declaring that it shall not be. Nothing can defile a man if it entereth not into his heart.

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This has been a messy first attempt at tackling this difficult but important question. I shall probably return to it again in the future.

But behold, your days of probation are past; ye have procrastinated the day of your salvation until it is everlastingly too late, and your destruction is made sure; yea, for ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head (Helaman 13:38).

In the Hindu tradition there is this story: The God of the Universe became curious about how it felt to be a pig. So he entered the body of one. He found it delightful beyond compare -- how good the sty smelled, how sweet were the slops, how desirable were the female pigs. But the universe needed tending. There was work to be done. So the helpers and handmaidens went and said, "God, you must come out of there. The universe needs you." God said, "Who are you talking to? I am just a pig! Leave me alone!" So they killed the pig, and God came out, and refused to believe he had ever refused to leave (Whitley Strieber, The Key).

For years and years I wandered this earth

Until I died and went to hell

But my despair had ascended to heaven

That's how I finally got rid of it

For it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.

For he said unto him that the Lord surely should come to redeem his people, but that he should not come to redeem them in their sins, but to redeem them from their sins.

Then cried they all again, saying, "Not this man, but Barabbas." Now Barabbas was a robber.

Well I do believe in miracles

And I want to save my soul

And I know that I'm a sinner

I'm gonna die here in the cold . . .

You'll never make a saint of me

Shortly after I posted "Repentance, forgiveness, and damnation in the Fourth Gospel," the synchronicity fairies saw to it that I read this passage in The Mystic Passion by the late Roger Hathaway.

This is a serious matter, and I tell you that there is no virtue or nobility in playing the sinner's role, of beating the chest and crying, "I am a sinner". That is not a display of humility; that is a brazen statement to God that you identify with your old human nature and don't accept the forgiveness, that Christ couldn't have included you in the redemptive plan because your sins are too great, that God isn't great enough to make the atonement include you, but that you are great enough to atone for yourself and this show of humility is your offering.

See what an affront such hypocrisy can be? After God accomplishes the plan and announces to you that you are forgiven and free, you respond by saying, "No, not me; I have my guilt and I am hanging on to it; I will cry and wail and beat my chest and lash my back and crawl on the ground and walk with shoulders stooped and confess every Sunday that I am a sinner, and I won't give up my guilt."

You might respond to the above by saying you have sinned since you last prayed for forgiveness, and that each week there are a few more that should be added to the list, that forgiveness is something you must beg for over and over again, that God didn't forgive YOU "once and for all."

Listen again. What you have done this past week or year does not count, does not show on any list, is not remembered by God AT ALL. Like the New Testament says, "A Christian can do no sin." You are a new creation, a new person, God's perfect child, clean, pure, forgiven, holy, righteous, a saint! That is the way God sees you, -- unless you reject Him and insist on identifying yourself with sin.

Sin has unconscionably become a chief tool of religion, by which the priest/businessmen manipulates and exploits Jesus' sheep in order to maintain financial solvency and exercise fearful authority over them. The church (religion) has not accepted the concept of God's forgiveness "once and for all", and each Sunday has you confessing your "sins" and pleading for forgiveness anew. It acts no different than did the Old Testament church, under the condemning law. It is as though Christ never brought his message of good news that you are free. The church still views man as sinner and teaches its followers to walk with shoulders stooped, head drooping, shuffling along in a kind of sickening sweet, self-righteous humility that makes an observer want to puke. Now, think, is that debased religious posture any way for a forgiven child to stand before his Father who wants to see a smile, joy, appreciation, exuberance?

This puts into words something that I have felt for a long time -- the fakeness, yes, even the pretentiousness, of begging for forgiveness again and again.

In my years as a Church-Mormon, my understanding of repentance and forgiveness was that expressed in Doctrine and Covenants 58:42-43. "Behold," it begins, "he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more." But then it continues, "By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins -- behold, he will confess them and forsake them."

In other words, you are forgiven if you repent -- but repentance means, in part, never doing it again. So when you do do it again, it means you didn't really repent the first time and therefore need to repent harder. I have many memories of trying to do just that, of kneeling down beside my bed, trying my hardest to work up the "godly sorrow" I had been taught was necessary, and then, well, wallowing in it -- and praying, "Please, please, please forgive me, and this time I really, really won't do it again." Please pretty please with sugar on top? In order to muster up an adequate amount of redemptive guilt, I would review in my mind the tortures inflicted on Jesus by his Roman executioners and tell myself that each was somehow my fault, that the scourge and the nails and the lance and all the rest had been because of my own petty misdeeds.

Did God reject these mawkishly juvenile prayers? No, I don't believe that he did. But they weren't what he wanted, and it was hoped that I would outgrow them. True repentance is not an emotion any more than the pure love of Christ is an emotion, and obviously repentance doesn't mean never doing anything bad ever again. God would have designed this world rather differently if that was what he expected!

What is repentance, then? My current understanding is that repentance is confession. No, not confession in the sense of saying, "Bless me, Father, for I have committed adultery in my heart 700 times this week." Confession doesn't mean rattling off an itemized list of one's recent misdeeds to God or a priest. It means acknowledging sin as sin. The unrepentant are those who make excuses for themselves, who deny that their sins are sins and are therefore unwilling to give them up. Willingness is all; the flesh is weak, but the spirit must be willing. Daily repentance does not mean daily groveling for forgiveness like a beaten dog; it means reminding oneself what is good and what is evil, what is of God and what is not, and then going on with life, confident in the knowledge that "he that believeth is not condemned."

And yes, of course we should try to be virtuous and to sin less, but in the end no such projects can really succeed in this present life. They are not what repentance is, and they are not that on which salvation depends.

Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled.

-- Titus 1:15 

Never been a sinner, I never sinned

I got a friend in Jesus

[5] For I remember the word of God which saith by their works ye shall know them; for if their works be good, then they are good also. [6] For behold, God hath said a man being evil cannot do that which is good.

For if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing. [7] For behold, it is not counted unto him for righteousness. [8] For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God. [9] And likewise also is it counted evil unto a man, if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such. [10] Wherefore, a man being evil cannot do that which is good; neither will he give a good gift.

[11] For behold, a bitter fountain cannot bring forth good water; neither can a good fountain bring forth bitter water; wherefore, a man being a servant of the devil cannot follow Christ.

And if he follow Christ he cannot be a servant of the devil.

Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be. Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter? Can the fig tree, my brethren, bear olive berries? either a vine, figs? so can no fountain both yield salt water and fresh.

For behold, God hath said a man being good cannot do that which is evil.

For if he telleth a lie, or committeth adultery, except he shall do it with real intent it hurteth him nothing. For behold, it is not counted unto him for wickedness. For behold, if a man being good telleth a lie, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had told the truth; wherefore he is counted good before God. And likewise also is it counted good unto a man, if he shall commit adultery and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it hurteth him nothing, for God receiveth all such. Wherefore, a man being good cannot do that which is evil; neither will he tell an evil lie.

[7] But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. 

[8] If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 

[9] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

[10] If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

[6] Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.

[7] Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous.

[8] He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

[9] Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

[10] In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.

[14] For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. [15] For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. [16] If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. [17] Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

[18] For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. [19] For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. [20] Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me.

. . .

[24] O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? [25] I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.

Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more. By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them.

And now, verily I say unto you, I, the Lord, will not lay any sin to your charge; go your ways and sin no more; but unto that soul who sinneth shall the former sins return, saith the Lord your God.

I know, I know, I said that I would quit

All right, I promise, no more after this

We should not even pretend that we 'will do better in future' and will strive to 'cease sinning' because this is not true. We will not do better, nor will we strive to do better; instead we will carry on sinning just as we do now. However, we acknowledge and repent this.