“God would not have commanded us to forgive seventy times seven if he were not prepared to extend the same mathematical generosity.”
Terryl and Fiona Givens
Quotes by authors Terryl and Fiona Givens
“Any joy we savor in the absence of our loved ones is a partial joy, a fractured joy. Heaven apart from those we love is just hell by another name. Joseph said as much: ‘Let me be resurrected with the Saints,’ he said to his people in Nuavoo, ‘whether I ascend to heaven to descend to hell, or go to any other place.'”
“Satan, in fact, is the Hebrew word for accuser. Accusatory judgment is Satan’s role, not Christ’s. We do not know the inmost depths of the human heart; it is only revealed by love. But those who condemn have generally little love, and therefore the mystery of the heart which they judge is closed to them. It is impossible to know another completely and not love that person deeply.”
“The Book of Mormon affirms more simply: ‘Men are, that they might have joy.’ Plato was closer to the gospel on this point than the larger portion of Christian theologians: ‘He who framed this whole universe was good, and one who is good can never become jealous of anything. And so, being free of jealousy, he wanted everything to become as much like himself as was possible.’ Not for his glory or happiness, but for theirs.”
“To be open to truth, we must invest in the effort to free ourselves from our own conditioning and expectations. This means we have to pursue any earnest investigation by asking what the philosopher Hans Georg Ger calls the ‘genuine question. And that is a question that involves openness and risk. As he explains, ‘our own prejudice is properly brought into play by being put at risk.”
“The Restoration scriptures encourage us as individuals and as a Church community to seek after good everywhere and make it a part of our religion. ‘The grand fundamental principle of Mormonism is to receive truth let it come from where it may.’ As the prophet Joseph Smith stated: If the Methodists, Presbyterians, or others have any truth, then we should embrace it. One must ‘get all the good in the world’ if one wants to ‘come our a pure Mormon.'”
“Heaven is not a reward for merit or a repair of an Adamic catastrophe; it is an eternal sociality of celestial beings, existing, striving, and creatively engaging in loving relation…As the image and likeness of the Creator, man is a creator too, and is called to creative co-operation in the work of God.”
“We feel innately there should be a correlation between our worth and our reward. Before we can even put language to the intuitive concepts we feel, we sense a value we learn to call ‘fairness’…If we resent it when others receive more than their just desserts, it may be because we feel that our happiness is somehow compromised, cheapened, diluted, if our reward isn’t greater than the other, undeserving, person’s. This is in fact selfishness masquerading as high-minded virtue.”
“Our task on earth is to resist the conforming of our spirit to our natural environment with its allures and distractions, and to shape our affections, inclinations, and desires in the mold shown us by the Savior. This is repentance: a conscious choice, born out of contraries, to be shaped and directed into a genuine spiritual begetting after the image of God, in accordance with the seed of divine potential in all of us.”
“The experience of sin is not an unalterable state we inhabit; it is a felt disharmony. The unhappiness of sin is nothing more than our spirit rebelling against a condition alien to its true nature. We have fallen out of alignment with God. The separation from God is not punishment inflicted by God, but the consequence of an existential reality of our own making.”
“We want a script, and we find we stand before a blank canvas. We expect a road map, and we find we have only a compass. We have yet to learn, as the poet John Ciardi wrote, that ‘clean white paper, waiting under a pen, is a gift beyond human history and hurt and heaven.”
“A counselor in the First Presidency, J. Reuben Clark Jr. testified of his belief that we do not ‘seal our eternal progress by what we do here. It is my belief that God will save all of His children that he can: and while, if we live unrighteously here, we shall not go to the other side in the same status, so to speak, as those who lived righteously; nevertheless, the unrighteous will have their chance, and in the eons of the eternities that are to follow, they, too, may climb to the destinies to which they who are righteous and serve God have climbed.'”
Nikolai Berdyaev taught the same principle:
“A false interpretation of ‘good works’ leads to a complete perversion of Christianity. ‘Good works’ are regarded not as an expression of love for God and man, not as a manifestation of the gracious source that gives life to others, but as a means of salvation and justification for oneself, as a way of realizing the abstract idea of the Good and receiving a reward in the future life. ‘Good works,’ done not for the good of others, but for the good of one’s own soul, are not good at all. Where there is no love, there is no goodness. Love does not require or expect any reward, it is reward in itself, it is a ray of paradise illuminating and transfiguring reality.”
“Healing seldom comes in an instant, with one decisive choice or one divine ministration. That is a function of our mortal limitations, not the Healer’s. Divine mercy, like the Sun, ‘must dazzle gradually or every man be blind.’
“The novelist Marilynne Robinson also saw judgment in more compassionate terms. She wrote: ‘The reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental.’ God wants us to live beautiful lives.”
“As Joseph reminded his followers, ‘I believe that God foreknew everything, but did not foreordain everything.’ Exaltation, is within the reach of all, even if the journey toward that divine end is fraught with suffering. If we had insurance against a painful journey, one-third of the heavenly hosts would not have abandoned the enterprise. The risks are real. Or, in the language of the Book of Mormon, we cannot assume that our afflictions come from God, but we can know that ‘God shall consecrate [our] afflictions for [our] gain.'”
“The pain associated with sin is the natural consequence of our choices; it is not God’s retribution upon the wicked.”
“God’s work is therefore first and foremost educative and constructive, not reparative. Life is pain, but it is not punishment.”
“Like children, we adults also want our most pressing questions answered, not multiplied. So it is not surprising that we look to religion, the great comforter, to ‘resolve us of all ambiguities,’ in the words of Dr. Faustus. But perhaps providing conclusive answers to all of our questions is not the point of true religion.”
“Elder James E. Talmage wrote in the first edition of the Church-published Articles of Faith, ‘Advancement from grade to grade within any kingdom, and from kingdom to kingdom, will be provided for. Eternity is progression.’ He later elaborated, no man will be detained in the lower regions ‘longer than is necessary to bring him to a fitness for something better. When he reaches that stage the doors will open and there will be rejoicing among the hosts who welcome him into a better state.'”
“A zero-sum game is one in which there is a fixed number of resources, and one can only acquire more if someone else receives less. Any benefit won by me can only come at a cost to you…
“Happiness is not a zero-sum game, but our telestial instincts lead us to act and think as if it were. Human psychology seems indelibly conditioned to measure our well-being by comparison with our neighbor. To a disappointing degree, we assess our own happiness by measuring our conditions and circumstances against those of others. What makes me feel rich or fortunate or successful is not an absolute quantity; it is more often the sense that I am richer or more fortunate or more successful than my neighbor or colleague.”
“A supreme deity would no more gift us with intellect and expect us to forsake it in moments of bafflement, than He would fashion us eyes to see and bid us shut them to the stars”
“A problem related to perceptions of Mormonism’s monopoly on truth is the impression that Mormons claim a monopoly on salvation. It grows increasingly difficult to imagine that a body of a few million, in a world of seven billion, can really be God’s only chosen people and heirs of salvation. That is because they aren’t. One of the most unfortunate misperceptions about Mormonism is in this tragic irony: Joseph Smith’s view is one of the most generous, liberal and universalist conceptions of salvation in all Christendom.”
“Even recognizing the extent of our unexamined assumptions can be the hardest thing of all. It is like asking a fish what it is like to be wet. ‘What is wet?’ even a miraculously verbal fish would reply. Our assumptions, like the ocean in which a fish swims, are the invisible background to our thinking, waking existence.”
“We have become accustomed to equating testimony with certainty and knowledge, and we use the language of certainty–I know the church is true, I know this, I know that–and it may be that in fact the silent majority as members of the congregation may very well feel unqualified or unable to affirm that they know the church to be true. We are simply trying to add our voices to those of the brethren like Elder Holland, to the effect that we need to be more accommodating and embracing of those in our midst who feel that they want to express the desire to believe without being able to express the certainty.”
“No man woman can remain in this church on borrowed light. However, in 1945, a Church magazine urged upon its readers the exact opposite, that ‘When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done.’ Many are familiar with that expression; fewer are aware that when President George Albert Smith learned of it, he immediately and indignantly repudiated the statement. ‘Even to imply that members of the Church are not to do their own thinking,’ he wrote, ‘is grossly to misrepresent the true ideal of the Church.”
“‘Repentance will be possible even after death,’ wrote James E. Talmage. To some, he continued, ‘it may appear that to teach the possibility of repentance beyond the grave may tend to weaken belief in the absolute necessity of repentance and reformation in this life. There is no reason for such objection,’ he explains, when we consider that willful neglect here and now will render the process that much more lengthy and difficult in the future…Our error here, once again, may be in adopting a language of salvation as either/or, as an event that transpires rather than a process that unfolds.”
“Our deepest healing seldom comes in the ways or modes that we envision. What we think we need to be happy and whole is not always what the Healer knows we need to be happy and whole. Solutions that seem obvious to us may be distractions from where the deepest pain lies…
“A loving Savior does all he can to help us choose the most fulfilling and most healing pathway; the precepts with which he provides us are for our liberation and not our confinement. It all comes down to trust. ‘The servant knoweth not what his lord doeth,’ he tells his disciples, ‘but I have called you friends.’ Friends trust each other.”
“Section 10 of the Doctrine and Covenants contains a rather remarkable reassurance. The date is April 1829, a year before the Church was restored. In this revelation, the Lord refers consistently to his Church as something that already exists. The Restoration, he says, will not ‘destroy that which my people have already received.’ ‘Therefore,’ he continues, ‘whosoever belongeth to my church [in 1829] need not fear, for such shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.’ Those who belong to his church, he tells us, will receive more light. In his words, ‘a part of my gospel’ will be theirs. But this will not, he repeats reassuringly, ‘destroy my church, but I say this to build up my church.'”
“‘Hearken unto my voice. Listen to him who is the advocate with the Father, who is pleading your cause before him…that [you] may come unto me and have everlasting life.’
“What, exactly, is meant by this verse? We are happy to know we have an advocate, but we would hope our Father is not in need of heart softening. It may be that we misunderstand the term advocate the way it is being used here…We see that Christ as the atoning one — the mediator — is not our defender from God’s justice, but the collaborator in and minister of our Heavenly Father’s plan.”
“That is why true religion is inseparable from suffering. It tells us the truth about our condition without flinching, offers no cheap solutions, and consoles none of the costly price.”
“We humans have a lamentable tendency to spend more time theorizing reasons behind human suffering, than working to alleviate human suffering, and in imagining a heaven above, than creating a heaven in our homes and communities.”
“Life is assumed to be about the fundamental, clear-cut choice between good and evil. Mormonism sees no such simple dichotomy in the primeval options. Yes, obedience and safety and security in God’s presence are presented as one of the choices, But Mormonism is more sympathetic to Eve’s perception of the alternative; the beauty of the fruit, its goodness as food, its desirability ‘to make one wise.’ Not coincidentally, ancient philosophers like Plato considered the triad of ideas – Beauty, Goodness, Truth – to be the highest manifestation of divine virtue. In the Mormon narrative, therefore, the circumstances that define the reality of the human predicament are not a blatant choice between Good and Evil but a wrenching decision to be made between competing sets of Good. The philosopher Hegel believed that this scenario, replicated in myriad artistic narratives, expressed the inescapably tragic nature of the universe. There are very few simple choices. No blueprint gives us easy answers. Life’s most wrenching choices are not between right and wrong but between competing demands on our time, our resources, our love and loyalty.”
“As Latter-day Saints, we know we do not earn heaven; we co-create heaven, and we do so by participating in the celestial relationships that are its essence (and which temple ordinances eternalize).”
“Zion-building is not preparation for heaven. It is heaven, in embryo. The process of sanctifying disciples of Christ, constituting them into a community of love and harmony, does not qualify individuals for heaven; sanctification and celestial relationality are the essence of heaven. Zion, in this conception, is both an ideal and a transitional stage into the salvation toward which all Christians strive.”
“In an 1831 revelation, the Lord told Joseph Smith that most of the world was under sin, ‘except those which I have reserved unto myself, holy men that ye know not of.'”
“I think the greatest benefit that can be derived from an honest doubt is the recognition that in the final analysis, we choose to believe. For somebody who has seen that there are reasons to doubt and reasons to believe, and yet make a free choice to affirm their belief, you can see that that is a wonderful position to be in, to recognize that this is something I chose, it’s not something I was compelled by the evidence to accept. It’s something that out of a free heart I choose to embrace. Now, I think that that’s an advantage known only to those who have passed through the crucible of doubt.”
“The most terrifying specter that haunts the modern psyche is not death or disease or nuclear annihilation. It is loneliness.”
| The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life
“Granting opportunity only to those who accept Christ in the flesh seems patently unfair and inefficient. Giving amnesty to all the rest of humankind makes of Christ’s life and sacrifice a magnificent gesture but a superfluous or redundant one. A reasonable conception of God and His plan for us demands a third option.”
“It is about failing to see the family structure as a divine mode of eternal association that is at the very heart of heaven itself. In sum, the ‘Restoration’ is not about correcting particular doctrines or practices as much as it is about restoring their cosmic context.”
“Berdyaev wrote that ‘one must help others and do good works, not for saving one’s own soul, but for love, for the union of men, for the bringing of their souls together in the kingdom of God. Love for men is a value in itself, the quality of goodness is imminent in it.'”
“Some members of the Church believe that wayward children unconditionally receive the blessings of salvation because of and through the faithfulness of parents. However, ‘The tentacles of Divine Providence’ described by Elder Orson F. Whitney may be considered a type of spiritual power, a heavenly pull or tug that entices a wandering child to return to the fold eventually. Such an influence cannot override the moral agency of a child but nonetheless can invite and beckon. Ultimately, a child must exercise his or her moral agency and respond in faith, report with full purpose of heart, and act in accordance with the teachings of Christ.’ A pull, a tug, an enticement, invite, beckon. In there words, we hear an echo of the original promise, ‘I will draw all men unto me.'”
“We would have been inexpressibly more miserable, if we had retained the memory of our former glory, and past actions.”
“God and Christ are omniscient, and yet the promise is: ‘He who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.’ Our Lord is like the mother of Wendell Berry’s poem, whose forgiveness is ‘so complete that I wonder sometimes if it did not precede my wrong.’ He purposely forgives our sins, to extirpate our shame. The act is sublime.”
“The pressure to conform to what we see as a dominant cultural orthodoxy is often more imagined than real. A silent majority may be more receptive than we realize to our yearnings for greater authenticity, honesty, originality, and individualism. Brigham Young was. ‘I am not a stereotyped Latter Day Saint,’ he said, ‘and do not believe in the doctrine. Away with stereotyped ‘Mormons!'”
“In Salt Lake’s old Thirteenth Ward, Bishop Edwin D. Woolley frequently found himself at odds with President Brigham Young. On a certain occasion, as they ended one such fractious encounter, Young had a final parting remark: ‘Now, Bishop Woolley, I guess that you will go off and apostatize.’ To which the bishop rejoined, ‘If this were your church, President Young, I would be tempted to do so. But this is just as much my church as it is yours, and why should I apostatize from my own church?’ That sense of ownership, or, better, of full and equal membership in the body of Christ, was Bishop Woolley’s salvation.”
“The vocabulary of sin and guilt and damnation has too often overwhelmed the restored gospel’s message of absolute love and powerfully grounded hopefulness. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell said, summarizing the almost universal misapprehension of overanxious Saints among us, we must learn to ‘distinguish more clearly between divine discontent and the devil’s dissonance, between dissatisfaction with self and disdain for self. We need the first and must shun the second. When conscience calls to us from the next ridge,’ he wrote, her purpose is to beckon not to scold.
“Rather than continuing to frame our lives in terms of deficiency and inadequacy, we would benefit from the perspective of Irenaeus, who emphasized the forward-looking process in which we should be engaged: becoming ‘perfected after the image and likeness of God.'”
“The story is told of a church official who returned from installing a new stake presidency. ‘Dad, do you Brethren feel confident when you call a man as the stake president that he is the Lord’s man?’ the official’s son asked upon his father’s return home. ‘No, not always,’ he replied. ‘But once we call him, he becomes the Lord’s man.'”
“For most of us, there is neither a choir of heavenly heralds proving God exists nor a laboratory of science equipment proving he doesn’t. Rather, we find a persuasive body of evidence on both sides.
“Sin and death are not the beginning of the human saga; divine parentage and a planned destiny are. Christ’s central purpose from the beginning was not to correct an Adamic misstep, but to draw us further into a world of joyful sociality. His voluntary mission was not to take us back to an original condition, but to move us forward — from primeval wholeness (‘whole from the foundation of the world’) to a more abundant existence (‘added upon’).”
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