{"id":28296,"date":"2024-04-02T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/speeches.byu.edu\/?post_type=speech&p=28296"},"modified":"2024-05-15T15:32:51","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T21:32:51","slug":"the-tree-the-fruit-and-the-building","status":"publish","type":"speech","link":"https:\/\/speeches.byu.edu\/talks\/rick-anderson\/the-tree-the-fruit-and-the-building\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tree, the Fruit, and the Building"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My brothers and sisters, I have thought carefully and prayed intensely for guidance in preparing for this very unusual opportunity. I am deeply conscious of the privileged access I am being given to your time and attention, and because you are precious to me, and infinitely more so to your Heavenly Father, I have been anxious to say all the things and only the things that will be most helpful to you during our few moments together.

In my professional writing and speaking, my goal is always to determine and to convey effectively things that are both true and useful. I am trying to do that here today as well\u2014but with a big difference. In my professional speaking I try to focus on things that are contingently true<\/em> and professionally useful.<\/em> Today my hope is to share things that are radically true<\/em> and eternally significant.<\/em> As we visit together, my prayer is that I will share things that can be ratified in all of our hearts by the witness of the Holy Ghost and that, as a result, we will all be edified\u00a0together.1<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three Symbols in Lehi\u2019s Vision<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As we all know, the book of 1\u00a0Nephi in the Book of Mormon contains an account of a visionary dream given to the prophet Lehi in which he saw multitudes of people, a great and spacious building, a river, a path shrouded in a mist of darkness, and, along the path, an iron rod that led through the mist to a\u00a0tree.2<\/sup>

Let\u2019s remind ourselves briefly what the tree, the fruit, and the building represent in Lehi\u2019s vision. According to the interpretation provided to Lehi\u2019s son Nephi by an angelic guide, the great and spacious building represents \u201cthe world and the wisdom thereof,\u201d3<\/sup> \u201cthe pride of the world,\u201d4<\/sup> and the \u201cvain imaginations and the pride of the children of men.\u201d5<\/sup> Interestingly, Nephi needed no explanation of the symbolism of the tree; he immediately understood it to represent \u201cthe love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men.\u201d6<\/sup> Representing as it did the love of God, the tree yielded a fruit that \u201cwas desirable to make one happy\u201d7<\/sup> and that, when Lehi partook of it, was \u201csweet, above all that [he] ever before tasted,\u201d8<\/sup> and \u201cfilled [his] soul with exceedingly great\u00a0joy.\u201d9<\/sup>

In Lehi\u2019s vision, what is the relationship between the great and spacious building and the tree and its joy-giving fruit? It is that the building, representing the pride and wisdom of the world, provided a platform to those who chose to enter it from which they could mock and scoff at those who \u201cwere partaking of the fruit,\u201d10<\/sup> with the result that many of those partaking \u201cwere ashamed .\u00a0.\u00a0. ; and they fell away into forbidden paths and were\u00a0lost.\u201d11<\/sup>

There are a couple of important things to notice here about the message of Lehi\u2019s vision. First, those who abandoned the tree and its delicious fruit didn\u2019t do so because they were disappointed by the fruit. From the information we have, we can assume that it was delicious to them and that it filled their souls with great joy. They seem to have dropped the fruit and walked away from it because they were embarrassed. They were embarrassed\u2014and this is the second important thing\u2014because they were being made fun of for eating the fruit by people who had never tasted it themselves but who were certain of one thing: partaking of the fruit of the love of God is\u00a0stupid.

Why would they think that? And thinking that, why would it bother them that other people might eat of the fruit and enjoy the rewards of doing\u00a0so?

One possible answer to that question lies in the angel\u2019s explanation of the nature of the great and spacious building. Again, the building represents \u201cthe world and the wisdom thereof\u201d and the \u201cvain imaginations and the pride of the children of men.\u201d The tree\u2014representing the love of God\u2014and its joy-giving fruit are offered as an alternative to the world\u2019s pride, vanity, and wisdom. Those who choose to remain outside of the building and partake of the fruit are, by doing so, rejecting the world\u2019s pride and vanity in favor of the gospel, which\u2014centered as it is in the Atonement of Christ\u2014is the fruit of our Heavenly Father\u2019s love for\u00a0us.

Rejecting pride and vanity is one thing; even in the world, many would agree that both pride and vanity are problematic. But why would the people eating the fruit of the tree reject the world\u2019s wisdom? (I think it is worth noting here, by the way, that there is nothing in the scriptures to suggest that the building represents the world\u2019s knowledge<\/em>\u2014only its\u00a0wisdom.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bipartite Nature of Reality<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To answer that question, we have to take a step back\u2014a very significant step back\u2014and look at a much bigger picture. One of the most fundamental facts upon which the restored gospel is based is that despite all appearances to the contrary, this world\u2014in fact, what we can perceive and measure of our physical universe\u2014is not all there is. It doesn\u2019t even represent most of what there is. Eternity, it turns out, is not just a word that denotes an endless and impersonal stretch of time. It refers to a world\u2014to an order of things\u2014that exists on the other side of a real but flimsy veil through which a personal God who is our literal Father in Heaven regularly reaches to reveal His will to us as individuals as well as to prophets and other true messengers charged with administering His church and building His kingdom on\u00a0earth.

He does so primarily through the ministrations of the Holy Ghost, a member of the Godhead who, unlike God the Father and Jesus Christ, is not physically embodied but is a personage of spirit. This allows the Holy Ghost to work upon our hearts and minds, sometimes in a directive and propositional way (revealing truth and prompting us to specific action) and sometimes to gift us with comfort, peace, and confirmation of truths both temporal and, especially,\u00a0eternal.

This bipartite structure of temporal and eternal reality stands in direct opposition to the wisdom of the world, which denies that eternity exists and holds that there is nothing beyond the physical and natural. To affirm the existence of an eternal order is to commit an act of heresy against the orthodoxy of the world\u2019s\u00a0wisdom.

Christian religions do generally affirm the existence of a spiritual order, of course. So in 1820 when the young Joseph Smith emerged from the woods near his home having been visited, spoken to, and instructed by God the Father and Jesus Christ, he might reasonably have expected support from religionists who shared his conviction of the reality of eternal things\u2014a conviction now significantly strengthened by direct experience. Unfortunately, however, in sharing his experience he committed a different kind of heresy\u2014this one against the common sectarian<\/em> orthodoxy holding that while the spiritual order exists, the veil separating it from the natural order is neither flimsy nor permeable but rather solid and unbreachable and that prophecy has ended and God no longer speaks to\u00a0mankind.

In other words, for both secularists and religious sectarians, Joseph Smith\u2019s doctrinal offense was that he claimed, as one contemporary commentator put it, \u201ccommunion with angels and with the Divinity Himself\u201d and \u201cvisions in the age of railways.\u201d12<\/sup> The secularists were appalled that Joseph Smith said God was real; the sectarians were offended that he said God could speak. As night follows day, persecution followed those claims, and of course Joseph Smith ultimately paid the price that the world has so often exacted of\u00a0prophets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Message of Lehi\u2019s Vision for Us<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But going back to Lehi\u2019s vision: How might we liken these scriptures unto\u00a0ourselves?13<\/sup> Much has changed in the two hundred years that have passed since Joseph Smith\u2019s audience with God the Father and Jesus Christ, and in many ways Latter-day Saints have become\u00a0much more accepted\u2014and in some quarters even admired. But the actual truth claims of the Restoration continue to be \u201ca stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence\u201d14<\/sup> to many in the world and maybe even to a few in the Church. The great and spacious building of Lehi\u2019s vision is a symbol, but the cultural dynamic it represents is very real\u2014and that dynamic shouldn\u2019t surprise us. How easy should we expect covenant discipleship to be? How beloved of the world should disciples hope to be? To what degree should we expect revealed truth to harmonize with the philosophies of\u00a0men?

Such questions go to a fundamental tension at the heart of academic life for Latter-day Saint students and scholars. In academia, standing conspicuously and unequivocally for the Restoration will always be risky. We risk looking foolish, and we risk being seen as out of step with the current best thinking. We risk standing alone\u2014sometimes, maybe, entirely alone. To stand for these particular truths in the world at large, but especially in an academic context, is to make ourselves countercultural\u2014and not in a cool, edgy, punk-rock way but in what looks to the world like an unhip, earnest, naive way. Desperation for hipness is and has always been one of the defining characteristics of academic culture, and it is a powerful force\u2014one that can, if we aren\u2019t careful and strong, gradually nudge us off the covenant path. Because unfortunately it is the nature and disposition of almost all of us that as soon as we get a little of the world\u2019s acceptance, we crave it more and more and become sorely tempted to sacrifice things that actually matter in order to\u00a0retain\u00a0it.

Think of a starving Esau sitting before a bowl of stew, contemplating whether he should trade his birthright for it to satisfy his very real hunger.15<\/sup> Now imagine that he is always hungry and that he sits in front of that stew all day every day and that it follows him to every classroom, every meeting, every conference, and every social media platform. That is our situation. We constantly face the powerful and corrosive temptation to trade away our covenantal birthright in order to satisfy our appetite for delicious\u2014but never really satisfying\u2014worldly\u00a0approval.

Unlike Esau, however, when we make that bargain, we tend to do it incrementally. While Esau handed over his whole birthright in a single moment of hunger, our temptation is usually to do it more gradually, one small choice at a time. We might do it with a wink or a roll of the eyes intended to show our skeptical peers that while we may be in the Church, we are not fully of<\/em> the Church. We might do it when someone makes derisive comments about the proclamation on the family16<\/sup> and we look at our shoes. Or when we receive prophetic encouragement to \u201croot out racism\u201d in the Church17<\/sup> and we murmur along with our like-minded friends about Church leaders getting too \u201cwoke.\u201d Or when someone asks, \u201cHang on. You don\u2019t actually believe the Book of Mormon is an ancient scriptural record, do you?\u201d and we mutter something equivocal about different ways of defining the word scripture<\/em> and quickly try to change the\u00a0subject.

Now let me take a moment to say, parenthetically, that I know what you are thinking. You\u2019re thinking, \u201cBut Rick, it\u2019s easy for you to say this\u2014you\u2019re already a nerd. You\u2019re a professional<\/em> nerd. Socially, you\u2019ve got nothing to lose by standing up for the gospel!\u201d

And, honestly, I have to concede the point: I am a middle-aged, bow-tie-wearing, banjo-playing librarian; for me, the Ship of Coolness<\/em> sailed a very long time ago. With no real hipness to safeguard, maybe I have less skin in this game than most of you.

But even if I am the wrong messenger, the message is still true. We can\u2019t keep our covenants with a wink, and cool, ironic discipleship simply is not a\u00a0thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Real Choices and False Choices<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to the restored gospel, the chasm between what is true and what it is socially and academically acceptable to believe is just too wide for us to be able to stand with one foot on each side. Whatever our attempts at mental and social gymnastics, reality is intractable, and we will ultimately end up unable to avoid a binary choice between mutually exclusive propositions, one of which is true but socially difficult and the other of which is false but socially easy: Christ was either physically resurrected or He wasn\u2019t; the Book of Mormon can\u2019t simultaneously be a genuine record of God\u2019s dealings with real, ancient people and<\/em> a nineteenth-century invention, however sincerely fabricated, of Joseph Smith; Russell M. Nelson can\u2019t simultaneously be a true prophet called of God and<\/em> someone who is merely revered as a moral and organizational leader by members of the Church of Jesus\u00a0Christ.

Please don\u2019t misunderstand me here. Not all choices in life are binary: You can like both dogs and cats; you can love both classical music and K-pop; you can even\u2014believe it or not\u2014hold a mix of conservative, progressive, and moderate social views. Other false choices include research or<\/em> teaching, intellectual or<\/em> spiritual, rigorous or<\/em> faithful\u2014these things are not actually in conflict with each other. In fact, temporal or<\/em> eternal is itself a false choice! Joseph Smith understood better than anyone that a recognition of the eternal elevates and ennobles the mundane and gives it holy significance by putting it in its true\u00a0context.

For students and scholars, acknowledging and embracing the divine brings new and deeper meaning to every sonnet and sutra, every proof and theorem, every chemical structure, every line of philosophical or social inquiry, every language, and every art form. Our testimony of the eternal leads us to engage more<\/em> deeply and more<\/em> fully and more<\/em> effectively with temporal learning and human society. But making and keeping sacred covenants with God does involve acknowledging some propositions as true and rejecting some others as false\u2014and it does involve making and keeping commitments that necessarily entail the rejection of\u00a0others.

In this context, fidelity to the Restoration and to our covenant commitments acts, among other things, as a check on our intellectual vanity, because to testify of restored truth in a professional and scholarly context is to place ourselves outside the intellectual mainstream\u2014effectively outside the club of the academy\u2019s secular religion. Let me put it another way: If you want to overcome intellectual vanity, few things will help you do so quite as effectively as standing up in front of your academic peers and saying, \u201cAs a matter of fact, I believe that you can<\/em> \u2018get books from angels and translate them by\u00a0miracles.\u2019\u201d18<\/sup>

If our first principles\u2014those that are most foundationally important to us and that shape most deeply the way we think and the way we look at reality and our place in it\u2014if our real<\/em> first principles are the philosophies of men, then, unsurprisingly, we will find that we are most comfortable with the parts of our religion that align most snugly with those philosophies. And there are significant parts of the restored gospel that do that: service to others, caring for the poor, education. None of these important gospel priorities is going to get us into trouble with the world. No one gets mad at us for going to college and being nice to each other.

Problems arise for us socially when our first principles are eternal principles. Now, in addition\u2014not instead of, but in addition\u2014to teaching that we need to serve each other and care for the poor and gain an education, we find ourselves testifying that God is a real, physically embodied person who is our actual Father, that Jesus was and is the resurrected Christ, that He speaks to living prophets in our day, and that eternal life requires entering into a covenantal relationship with God. Even more dangerously, we find ourselves testifying not only that God is real but that the veil dividing us from Him is permeable and that He can and does infringe on our space. These truths challenge the world\u2019s furious and jealous claim to be all there is, and when we stand in defense of these truths, we have to expect pushback. We\u00a0must be prepared, if necessary, to stand\u00a0alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecoming BYU\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In his magisterial address titled \u201cThe Second Century of Brigham Young University,\u201d President Spencer\u00a0W. Kimball made a profoundly true observation: while we are engaged in the work of gospel-centered higher education, he said, \u201cgospel methodology, concepts, and insights can help us to do what the world cannot do in its own frame of reference.\u201d19<\/sup> Here at BYU we are currently engaged in searching conversations about what \u201cgospel methodology\u201d can and should mean in the varying contexts of our work as students and faculty and staff. I hope we will also consider the implications of gospel concepts<\/em> and insights<\/em> for\u00a0our work and our lives as disciple-scholars\u2014a term that, in this context, characterizes all of us in this room, whatever our role on campus. All<\/em> of us are engaged in the work of a university whose mission \u201cis to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life.\u201d20<\/sup>

President Reese titled his inaugural response \u201cBecoming BYU\u201d and characterized that endeavor as the central challenge for his administration: \u201cbecoming the BYU of prophecy,\u201d21<\/sup> or what President Kimball called \u201cthe fully anointed university of the Lord.\u201d22<\/sup> That kind of phraseology will ring jarringly in the ears of those operating from the world\u2019s frame of reference, but it will sing to any whose ears are tuned by covenant commitment and\u00a0consecration.

It is also worth noting that the phrase \u201cbecoming BYU\u201d contains an admonition as gentle in its formation as it is clear and direct in its implication: we can\u2019t become what we already are. If\u00a0today we need to \u201cbecome BYU,\u201d that means we are not yet, or at least not yet fully, \u201cthe Christ-centered, prophetically directed university of destiny and promise.\u201d23<\/sup> We will become that university, I believe, as we stand conspicuously and unambiguously for the truths of the restored gospel, and, in doing so, assist each other<\/em> in our shared quest for perfection and eternal\u00a0life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Testimony<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

And now, as we come to the end of our time together, please let me make a very important statement of testimony, one that bears directly on these most fundamental truths. I bear all and each of you my witness that God the Father lives and is the Father of each of us in the most literal and meaningful sense. I bear testimony that Jesus Christ was and is God\u2019s Only Begotten Son in the flesh and that He not only lived and ministered on earth, teaching His gospel of salvation and redemption, but also wrought an infinite Atonement on our behalf: First, both in Gethsemane and on the cross, by taking upon Himself the guilt for all of our sins and transgressions, thereby giving us the opportunity\u2014if we so choose\u2014to be delivered and cleansed of that guilt through repentance, baptism, and enduring fidelity to sacred covenants with God. I also testify that three days after dying on the cross, He rose as \u201cthe firstfruits of them that slept,\u201d24<\/sup> and by so doing vicariously overcame all of our injuries, illnesses, traumas, grief, and loss, ensuring that every one of us will be raised in resurrection as well, with perfected and glorified bodies joined permanently and irrevocably with our spirits. I don\u2019t pretend for a moment to understand the process that allowed Him to do these things, but in the words of Peter, I \u201cbelieve and [am] sure that [He is the] Christ, the Son of the living God,\u201d25<\/sup> and that His atoning sacrifice on our behalf was and continues to be real and eternally\u00a0efficacious.

I also bear testimony that the Church is true, and I want to be very clear about what I mean by that: I \u201cbelieve and [am] sure\u201d that actual heavenly messengers, including God the Father and Jesus Christ, did, in fact, appear to Joseph Smith and that one of those messengers guided him to a physical book made out of metal plates; that the book contained an actual record of real people who lived in the Americas both before and after Christ; and that Joseph translated that record by the gift and power of God. I bear testimony of the subsequent restoration of priesthood authority in the latter days\u2014authority that, when exercised in righteousness, yields genuine power both to serve and to lead in life-changing ways. With joy and without reservation, I sustain Joseph Smith as the first prophet called of God in the dispensation of the fulness of times and Russell\u00a0M. Nelson as a prophet, seer, and revelator\u00a0today.

Importantly, I can also bear testimony of the temple and of the covenants we make there. I can\u2019t fully explain why<\/em> I can do so, because there are a depth and a density to temple worship that defy my ability fully to comprehend it. But the depth and density of the temple impose a gravitational pull on both my soul and my intellect, drawing my mind to its teachings and my heart to the covenants we make there. That pull, in itself, constitutes evidence of the temple\u2019s divinity\u2014not proof, but meaningful\u00a0evidence.

I have no expectation that I will ever be provided external evidence sufficient to relieve me of the responsibility of choice or the burden of faith. And let\u2019s be clear: faith is a burden as well as a joy. It is an ongoing commitment that requires us to hold our belief up above the floodwaters of doubt and opposition as we move forward through life and to hold fast to the iron rod of God\u2019s word as we make our way through mists of darkness and confusion in this world. It also requires us to ignore the pointing fingers and the mockery of those who, having never tasted of the fruit of the tree themselves, think we are fools for partaking of\u00a0it.

Let me bear testimony of one last thing: the restored gospel of Jesus Christ will reward every intellectual effort you invest in it. As you engage it with your brain, you will find yourself unable to reach the bottom or to trace its edges; as you approach its boundaries, you will find them constantly, thrillingly receding ahead of you. But as rewarding as intellectual engagement with the gospel is, engaging the gospel on a more experiential level through consecrated commitment yields something even better: faint but clear intimations of what eternity actually means and of your potential for eternal growth and development and deepening. I am grateful to be able to testify that intellectual or<\/em> covenantal engagement is yet another false choice; in reality, we can and must engage in both ways.

In this context I can bear testimony that the Book of Mormon is not just a strange and beautiful literary document that rewards close and critical reading, though it is that, and that it is not just a container of true and saving doctrine, though it is that too. Perhaps even more importantly, the Book of Mormon is direct evidence of the reality of an eternal order and of the fact that Deity can and does breach the veil that separates that order from our temporal one. The real metal plates on which the record was engraved and that were handled and attested to by multiple witnesses were and are still a gauntlet thrown in the face of a prideful secular world, the wisdom of which is too thin, too brittle, and too shallow to accommodate the reality of eternity and prophecy. I testify that as we put both our minds and our hearts to work in studying and applying the truths of eternity, miracles will happen for us and, through us, for\u00a0others.

If you are struggling, if you are in despair or confusion, please turn to Him who has promised not to leave you comfortless.26<\/sup> I invite you also to turn to the many of us arrayed around you here who stand ready to help in any way we can. Please understand that our mission at BYU is not to sell you knowledge. Discovering, sharing, synthesizing, and creating knowledge with you are the primary means we use as we assist each other in our shared quest for perfection and eternal\u00a0life.

The gospel is true. The Restoration is ongoing. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God\u2019s kingdom on earth. We\u2014every one of us\u2014are His children, and our exaltation is His work and His\u00a0glory.27<\/sup>

Understanding only imperfectly the depth of what it means to do so, I nevertheless bear this witness in the name of Jesus Christ,\u00a0amen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a9 Brigham Young University. 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