Come Follow Me: The Instrumental Atonement

Well, I’m super delighted to be here and super I’m kind of a fanboy of both Lincoln and Carl, so I feel all the more delighted to follow two of the most sane and steady voices on the Internet. So thank you.

All right, um our favorite atonement descriptors go. Let’s hear infinite, inexplicable, incomprehensible, um, inconceivable. And a couple references, so you know I’m not just making this up

And rather than getting caught up in these abstract descriptors, I want to talk about the Atonement as an instrumental cause. Actually, sorry, before I get to there. So with these hearing these descriptors over and over, we may be tempted to conclude, so it’s like an Escher painting? And rather than getting caught up in these descriptors, I want to talk about the atonement as an instrumental cause.

And to talk about it as an instrumental cause is to talk about How the atonement or if we talk about a baseball bat as an instrumental cause, we’re interested in what an outcome it brings outside of itself. So we could be we could look at a baseball bat as an instrumental cause for hitting a home run. We’re not looking at how beautiful the wood on this baseball bat is, or how fine the craftsmanship of this baseball bat is. We’re looking at an outcome it can come it can bring about outside of itself.

And when we talk about the Atonement, I’m interested in what kinds of human behaviors the Atonement can promote.

Another idea I want to get out in front of is communicable. Communicable goods are goods that can be communicated to those outside of our little group. So if I’m talking about communicable religious goods, I can’t say, I really enjoy my religion because it allows me to perform religious ordinances. Because People outside of my religion aren’t going to appreciate that as good. It’s mostly going to be appreciated by those inside my community.

But I can say something like I really enjoy the opportunities to do local community service that I get through my religion because that can be appreciated as a good by those outside of my Community, my religious community.

So I want to talk about communicable goods in terms of what we’re aiming for. And a way to set up a kind of rough framework for my presentation, I thought it’d be fun to look at this dichotomy.

On the one hand we have hymns like How great Thou art, I stand all amazed, Sing His great name alone and on the other side we have lines like With hands now pledged to do thy work Carl Jungblood’s translation, We Are His Thousand Hands for the Norwegian, Oh, come all ye faithful, is that right? And then let us in his footsteps tread.

Where on the left hand, we’re talking about this special and removed being And on the right hand, we’re talking about something that is a model and an instigator for action.

Um okay, enough kind of throat clearing. I’d love to start with this poem. Since I heard it, it’s been one of my favorites. It’s by Rilke, and it gestures toward the fights and victories that matter. And I’ll return to some of the lines of it at the end of this presentation, and hopefully we can read our experience in response to the Atonement better for it.

What we choose to fight is so tiny What fights with us is so great When we win it’s with small things And the triumph itself makes us small What is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent by us. I mean the angel who appeared to the wrestlers of the Old Testament, when the wrestler’s sinews grew long like metal strings. He felt them under his fingers like chords of deep music. Whoever was beaten by this angel, who often simply declined the fight went away proud and strengthened and great from that harsh hand, that kneaded him as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows by being defeated decisively by successively greater beings.

If we approach religion as a tool for promoting the best forms of human activity, which I think is an appropriate approach, we can look at humanity as a trajectory and view the appropriate work of religion as building a bridge between current human activity and God. which God can conceive of as the full and highest flowering of human potential, morally, creatively, and physically. We can cast this work of bridge building as another religious term, atonement, or bringing humanity at one with God. Through this lens becoming more like God is the aim of our activity, and the work, any work, by anyone, of bridging the gap between humanity and God, is the work of atonement. Or, in other words, is practicing atonement, which is a term I got from one of Lincoln’s great talks.

In this presentation, I look at the atonement of Jesus Christ as an instrumental cause. I demonstrate that seen in this light It can inform and elevate moral behavior in ways that resonate with both religious and non-religious people. I argue that Jesus’ atonement is a call for us to follow his example and take responsibility for evil and death in the world.

The atonement of Jesus Christ is constituted by the acts through which Jesus accounted for and overcame the consequences of death and evil. It’s the central doctrine of Mormonism and Christianity in general.

In exploring the atonement of Jesus Christ as an instrumental cause for human behavior Means asking what behaviors the Atonement prompts, promotes, and provokes in humans.

A basic premise of my presentation is that religious teaching should promote communicable goods, or behaviors that can be appreciated as good by people outside that religious community. This is not to say that there can’t also be internal goods. In this case, as the central teaching of Mormonism, we should be able to see how the atonement of Jesus Christ promotes behaviors in Mormons that can be appreciated as good by non Mormons.

So a quick test for this would be to ask, so what behaviors does the Atonement prompt, promote, or provoke in Mormons? But here we’re pulled up short. The conventional ways we think about the Atonement promote attitudes and responses that vary from passive to merely self-centered activity.

For example, we point to the Atonement as the abstract means through which injustices in the world are resolved. We might say something like Though the world may seem unjust, a loving God has provided a solution. The answer is the Atonement. Through the Atonement All sins through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, all sins, all disappointment, all suffering, all pain, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, all evil is accounted for, and justice will be meted out with perfection.

We also point to the Atonement as a singular act that demands gratitude and awe. We might say, though we can never fully comprehend it, we can begin to appreciate the Infinite. Incomparable eternal atonement. It is the critical element in the plan of salvation. Through the atonement, Jesus not only experienced each individual’s griefs and pains across time, culture, place, and age. He carried the full weight of all sin, suffering, turmoil, and death from all ages, and how grateful we must be for that

Theologically speaking, this may be the case, but in terms of the human behavior we’re promoting, it’s troubling. Because not only is the Atonement used as an important sounding abstract idea that we can understand, it could conceivably be and has been invoked as a rationale to not address current evils that we could. Moreover, it burdens Jesus with the entire weight of evil and death, and turns his acts into an object of mystery and worship. which tends to turn us off from doing what we can to counter evils, and prompts us to only be grateful and odd.

mister Davis might think it’s okay to not do anything to help people who are starving even though I can, because the Atonement will make things better for these people in the end, and how grateful and how wonderful the Atonement is because of that. I don’t think this is an appropriate response and not a good attitude, but it can be a well meaning attitude and a mechanism to cope with seemingly intractable evils in the world.

These responses frequently invoke the horrific suffering of Jesus and the adjectives that we talked about, infinite, incomprehensible, that underscore the mysterious and singular quality Of his suffering, of his atoning work. And I’m not arguing that Jesus’ atoning work wasn’t mysterious or wasn’t singular or that his suffering wasn’t horrific or worthy of worship. I’m arguing that emphasizing those, instead of acknowledging those, tends to weaken its instrumental value for improving our behavior.

What we tend to lose in our emphasis on the mystery, the singular quality of Jesus’ atonement, is a vibrant here and now response. That follows his example by taking on evil and working to heal the current world. And in terms of its instrumental value for provoking improved behavior, it’s not clear what we gain.

As an instrumental cause, the closest we get is to celebrate that the atonement makes repentance possible. This is probably better than the previous examples because at least we’re talking about what activities, what actions we can take. And we’re not just talking about passively receiving blessings or a mostly non-physical exercise. But I still find this too self-centered.

This response puts the focus On personal change for the better. I need to stop swearing. I need to stop having bad thoughts. I need to be nicer to others. I need to forgive that jerk who cut me off. I need to fix any way that I may fall short. Moreover, this response has more fundamental shortcomings, as I discuss next.

In short, there are bigger fish to fry.

In general, the way we teach the atonement, it’s a weak instrumental cause, or more accurately, the responses we encourage are weak or unfit the atonement due to fixations on personal sin rather than evil, a future life after death, and the singular role of Jesus to solve death and evil.

A fixation on personal sin rather than evil in the world feels like a privileged perspective. Analogously, it feels like being inspired by someone who tirelessly fought for homeless people. and responding by making sure you’re not homeless. Or perhaps responding by cleaning your home.

Instead of continuing his fight for them, a fixation on a future life after death is essentially abstract and tends to devalue actions we can take to improve conditions in the present.

And a fixation on the singular role of Jesus to solve death and evil may unduly relinquish burdens that belong to us. To resolve what portion of evil we can. By continually referencing the singular role of Jesus’ atonement work, we discount delay and diminish our own. We build it up as an idol that tends to weaken us. and we shift the burden of justifying evil wholly on to His shoulders, or push that justification off to some future day when God will take care of everything.

If we are to reference it and grant it the appropriate weight, but not get fixed on it, we could say something like this: Because of the atonement of Jesus Christ The responsibility is now clearly and squarely on us to heal the world.

Not because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, we can rest assured that any evils and injustices will be perfectly addressed by God. That’s not very far from because of the atonement of Jesus Christ, we can be justified in not addressing evil, and rest assured that the injustices and evil we recognize will be addressed somehow in a future day by God. That’s a weak, or more precisely, an evil complicit response.

And I can imagine God responding to such an attitude with words like these You thought I was going to take care of all the evil and injustices. Whose test did you think this was?

The turn from a conception of atonement reflected in these fixations to one that is focussed on promoting better responses can be designated as a turn from worshiping to practicing atonement. Though we can do both, when we shift our focus to practice, the atonement of Jesus Christ can become an instrumental cause that provides a model for improving our behavior and our outlook on the gap between humanity and God.

In terms of the behavior it should prompt in us, I’d argue that the central characteristics of Jesus’ atonement is that, and this shouldn’t come as a surprise, he took responsibility for evil and death. He didn’t actually admit that he was to blame for these, but he suffered or went through the process of making amends for them. And part of this was an acknowledgment that this is what God wanted and expected him to do. even if he didn’t necessarily feel inclined to, or feel like, or intuitively feel like he was obligated to pay this price.

As an instrumental cause The atonement of Jesus Christ should motivate us to follow his example by taking responsibility for evil and death in the world. to the degree that we can, and recognize that our ability to take more responsibility is continually increasing as our physical, moral, and technological horizons expand.

To clarify this interpretation, consider an example on the opposite end of the spectrum. Hannah Rondtt writes the troubling case of this in Eichmann in Jerusalem. The case is a trial of Adolph Eichmann, who was a leader in the Nazi German army, who directed mass killings during the Holocaust. But he didn’t see himself as responsible for the evil and death carried out under his orders. He was just following higher orders, doing his job in the context of a bureaucracy. So we have two opposing examples.

On the one Jesus, not responsible for evil or death, but takes full responsibility for it and Eichmann, directly responsible for death and evil, yet stubbornly resisting accepting responsibility. My interpretation is that the central message of the Atonement as an instrumental cause is that we should follow the example of Jesus, not Eichmann.

As humans, we are at least complicit on much more evil than we might typically imagine. What might it look like for us to take responsibility? For starters, consider some examples that we are, by virtue of being adults, to some degree resp complicit. It is evil that genocide has been conducted even in recent years. It’s evil that people are trafficked and enslaved. It’s evil that we do activities that facilitate these, or don’t do activities that would thwart them.

When I think of these situations, I feel the burden of some of the most poignant verses in all of Scripture, calling us from any person or people whom we kill or make suffer, even unknowingly, or through our inaction allow to be killed or suffer to day. And as I read these, I hope you can have this image in your mind that this is a call from people that we are killing or allowing to be killed or make suffer.

The first is from the pearl of great price. The prophet Enoch is surprised to witness the LORD weeping. And Enoch said unto the LORD, How is it that thou canst weep? The LORD said unto Enoch, Behold these thy brethren I gave unto them their knowledge and in the Garden of Eden gave I unto man his agency. And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another but behold they are without affection, and they hate their own blood.

The second is the famous exchange with Cain upon killing his brother Abel. And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.

In these verses I read a God chastising the standpoint of not taking responsibility for evil. His chastising takes the form of bewilderment that humans somehow miss that we all belong to each other and have a claim on each other’s love and affection

Beyond these passages this interpretation of the Atonement consummates Jesus’ response to evil and death as having the moral high ground. even to his teachings from the Sermon on the Mount. The full renunciation of the violence and evil condoned in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is not turn the other cheek. but take responsibility for evil. Make a world with fewer lost eyes and teeth.

Even for Mormons or even non-religious people, this reading of the Atonement of Jesus Christ offers a behavioral model with a moral high ground to any competing models I can conceive of.

Typical religious responses to the Atonement of Jesus Christ tend to be shallow. Rather than taking up in a serious way Jesus’ work to overcome evil and death, we comfort ourselves by pointing to the progress we’ve made with our bad mouth, addictions, or selfishness, or we call upon Jesus to help. Because we’re not progressing well enough on these fronts.

Indeed, as Rilke writes, what we fight is so tiny. When we win, the triumph itself makes us small.

An initial portrait of practicing atonement could take many faces, but possible starting points could be to do whatever work we can against human trafficking, starvation, etc. These aren’t new issues, but we haven’t been good at seeing a religious obligation to take these on. Our starting point could take a local or global tack, but in any case our responsibility for evil and death extends at least as far

As all of humanity, we won’t resolve evil and death in a week or a year. These are big, awful monsters that will defeat our efforts decisively for some time to come. but taking on such monsters is how we grow, and we can take inspiration from Jesus and accept responsibility for them and trust that our ability to take on great monsters is our heritage and destiny and will improve and expand as we practice atonement.

Thank you.