{"id":11264,"date":"2016-10-18T17:25:26","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T23:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/speeches-alpha.byu.edu\/?post_type=speech&p=11264"},"modified":"2023-07-18T11:55:22","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T17:55:22","slug":"audacious-faith-appreciating-unique-power-singular-appeal-lds-doctrine","status":"publish","type":"speech","link":"https:\/\/speeches.byu.edu\/talks\/brett-g-scharffs\/audacious-faith-appreciating-unique-power-singular-appeal-lds-doctrine\/","title":{"rendered":"Audacious Faith: Appreciating the Unique Power and Singular Appeal of LDS Doctrine"},"content":{"rendered":"
The International Center for Law and Religion Studies officially began on January 1, 2000. The choice of date was purposeful, coinciding with the beginning of a new millennium. It also makes it easy for us to remember the answer when we are asked how long the center has been operating.<\/p>\n
In my role as associate director and now director of the center, I interact on an almost daily basis with people from around the world of almost every imaginable religious background\u2014and with many who are not religious at all. Occasionally, usually at a reception or dinner toward the end of a conference, I am asked to explain something about what Mormons believe. Usually someone will want to know what is unique and distinctive about the Church or how it fits with other Christian denominations.<\/p>\n
I have come to welcome opportunities like these because they give me a chance to talk about not only similarities between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other faiths but also some of the things that make us different. It is these differences\u2014as well as a few of the \u00adsimilarities\u2014that I would like to speak of today.<\/p>\n
Audacious Faith<\/b><\/h2>\n
I have entitled my remarks \u201cAudacious Faith: Appreciating the Unique Power and Singular Appeal of LDS Doctrine.\u201d The Oxford English Dictionary<\/i> defines the word audacious<\/i> as \u201cdaring, bold, confident, intrepid.\u201d1<\/sup> I have come to believe that many basic LDS doctrines are audacious in this sense.<\/p>\n
A Peculiar People<\/b><\/h2>\n
I remember when I was a boy being taught to take pride in the things that make us different. We were taught that Mormons are and should be \u201ca peculiar people\u201d2<\/sup> and that we were to be in the world but not of it.3<\/sup><\/p>\n
But in the second half of my life, which coincides with the entire life of most in this room, it seems to me that we as a church have become better at explaining and are more inclined to emphasize our similarities with other Christian churches. This is an understandable part of an effort of the Church and its people to be viewed as less odd and more like others. As recently as Mitt Romney\u2019s presidential campaigns, the Church and its members were still expected to address the tired, old question of whether Mormons are Christians.<\/p>\n
We have sometimes found ourselves in exasperation repeating the name of the Church: The Church of Jesus Christ<\/i> of Latter-day Saints. The Church has even changed its logo to emphasize the centrality of Jesus Christ. I, for one, welcome this renewed emphasis on Jesus Christ and His Atonement.<\/p>\n
But it is also true that some of our understandings of even basic doctrines are quite distinctive.<\/p>\n
The Premortal Existence<\/b><\/h2>\n
I learned this fact as a freshman at Georgetown University. I was assigned to a dormitory called Darnall Hall and a roommate named Tom Warner, who was a good Catholic boy from Queens, New York. His father was a police officer, and Tom was the first person in his family to go to college. He and I became fast friends, and soon I felt that perhaps it was no accident that we had found ourselves as roommates.<\/p>\n
One night while we were lying on our cots, I asked him, \u201cTom, do you think we knew each other in the premortal existence?\u201d<\/p>\n
His bedside light snapped on, and he looked at me incredulously: \u201cThe premortal existence\u2014what\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n
I answered casually, \u201cYou know, the pre-earth life, where we lived as spirit children of our Heavenly Father.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now he was looking at me like I was from another planet or, perhaps more likely, as if I were a member of a strange religious cult, as others on our dormitory floor had already warned him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no such thing as a premortal existence,\u201d he said, \u201cand if there is, I wasn\u2019t there.\u201d His life, he explained, began at conception. Then the light snapped off.<\/p>\n
I was stunned. I thought of myself as a reasonably sophisticated and well-educated person, but I had no idea how unique and unusual the doctrine of the premortal existence is. I had thought it was a shared part of Christian heritage, and although I believe the doctrine has a power and appeal that is very strong, and although there is scriptural and other evidence that many early Christians embraced the doctrine of the premortal existence,4<\/sup> it is not a part of orthodox Christian or Protestant theology.5<\/sup><\/p>\n
My law school colleague Dean D. Gordon Smith joined the Church as a student here at BYU. The premortal existence, he says, is one of the doctrines that first gripped him. As he explained it:<\/p>\n
Even when I was a very young man, questions about cosmic justice occupied my mind, and the teachings about the plan of salvation made sense of a world that seemed unjust and inequitable. Equipped with even a basic understanding of the premortal existence, I can view the varied circumstances of the people in this world neither as a product of chance nor as a reward or punishment for prior behavior but instead as part of a grand plan of learning designed by a loving God. This understanding helps me to remain optimistic that even our deepest trials and most profound struggles have meaning and purpose.<\/i><\/p>\n
If you think about it, it is an audacious claim that we as human beings are coeternal with God,6<\/sup> that we existed with Him through the eternities, and that this earth life is but the middle act in a three-act play,7<\/sup> with premortal and postmortal life bookending and giving meaning to mortal life.<\/p>\n
The Godhead<\/b><\/h2>\n
Consider another very basic Mormon doctrine: the nature of the Godhead. A few years ago at the BYU Law School, we were hosting a conference on religious iconography. An orthodox Christian priest from Oxford University had been invited to participate. He was an imposing fellow who wore dark robes, had a long beard, and wore a heavy cross around his neck. He explained that as part of his preparation for coming to Provo, he had decided to do some homework about what Mormons believe. He didn\u2019t want a dry academic account, so he called the Mormon missionaries and invited them over. Can you imagine how nervous they must have been?<\/p>\n
He described them as earnest and polite and a little na\u00efve\u2014a description with which many of us can probably relate. He explained:<\/p>\n
I asked them to tell me what was unique and \u00addifferent about the Mormon Church, and they began to tell me about how Joseph Smith as a teenager was visited by God the Father and Jesus Christ. Then they showed me a truly remarkable piece of religious iconography. It was a picture of God and Jesus, depicted as two men in white robes and with white hair, standing in the air, with Joseph on the ground leaning back in astonishment.<\/i><\/p>\n
Like me, you can probably picture the exact illustration from the Gospel Art Kit. Then he projected it onto the screen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a remarkable piece of religious iconography,\u201d he said, \u201cdepicting God and Jesus Christ as two men with bodies.\u201d This, he explained, was a complete recalculation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.<\/p>\n
I have to admit I had never thought of this illustration as noteworthy religious iconography. But think about it: it depicts, in an illustration a child can understand, something profound about the nature of God and Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
God is not a distant, abstract being without body parts or passions; He is a perfect and exalted and embodied man. The implications of this doctrine are rather stunning. When Mormons quote from Genesis that man is created \u201cin the image of God,\u201d8<\/sup> that we are His children, it is not a metaphor; it is a rather audacious claim about the nature of God and the nature of man.<\/p>\n
The Nature of God<\/b><\/h2>\n
Joseph Smith often taught that the most important thing for us to understand is the true nature of God. Only then, he taught, can we understand the true nature of man. Doctrine and Covenants 130:22<\/a> states:<\/p>\n