Elijah and the Faith of Generations

Caleb Jones

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet. Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the parents to the children, and the heart of the children to their parents, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

Caleb Jones

So this passage of scripture from Malachi mandates much of the impetus for the ritual and covenant work done on behalf of deceased people in LDS temples. This temple work can create a connection forged in faith across generations. It can heal hearts, challenge minds to think bigger as we make room for all and invite them in.

Caleb Jones

I think this spirit of Elijah can go further, and not only heal the hearts and challenge the minds of generations separated by the grave, but also do so across the generations of the living. Especially as we consider how parents are called to turn their hearts to their children. And this may be especially important if we seek to resurrect and redeem the faith of rising generations.

Caleb Jones

In Mormonism, the arrow of salvation points in both directions of time.

Caleb Jones

G. K. Chesterton, in his 1908 book Orthodoxy, describes democracy as the project of reconciling ancient wisdom with modernity and identifies one way in which the hearts and minds of the dead live on today. He says, Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All Democrats object to men being disqualified by accident of birth. Tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones these shall vote by tombstones.

Caleb Jones

Joseph Smith spoke on the passage from Malachi, saying of the parents, that they without us cannot be made perfect, neither can we without our dead be made perfect. and that our dispensation should seek a whole and complete and perfect union and welding together dispensations.

Caleb Jones

Whether using the language of democracy or salvation, what’s being described here is a healthy balance and ongoing reconciliation of the hearts and minds of the dead and dying with the hearts and minds of the living.

Caleb Jones

To do this we must seek out our dead. Those spirits live on in this world in the artifacts left behind them their books, songs, poems, buildings, documents, laws, customs, traditions, religions worship, triumphs, failures, and even within us, in our own bodies, hearts, and minds.

Caleb Jones

Redeeming our dead from these artifacts takes the whole effort of the human race. Literary scholarship breathes life into their words. Musicians perform their music. Archaeologists build in their styles. Lawyers uphold their laws. Historians chronicle their lives, anthropologists revive their relics, religious clerics teach their faith and morality, etcetera, etcetera.

Caleb Jones

All of these disciplines can provide access to the hearts and minds of the dead in a very real way. These are democratizing the dead and prototyping a resurrection.

Caleb Jones

But this is, again, only one side of that spirit of Elijah. Focusing only on our dead can neglect the hearts of the living, like gerrymandering the districts of time.

Caleb Jones

Inherited literature, inherited literature, music, artifacts, laws, faith, culture, and so forth, each face new and sometimes unimagined realities today and into the future. And while the wisdom and hearts and minds of the dead can endure, tradition and norms are a bit like manna. They spoil after time, and we have to go back out and gather it up anew.

Caleb Jones

As Greg Prince noted in his about LDS norms in his Sterling McMurrin lecture, he says, not a single significant LDS doctrine has gone unchanged through the entire history of the church.

Caleb Jones

As a generation forges its own path, it can turn to the previous generations for wisdom in how they gathered their manna in their day. What sustained them? What dangers did they face as they gathered their own manna? What was the struggle like? How could they tell what they gathered was good? And how could these things have changed?

Caleb Jones

Some of what will be gathered today will be familiar to the past. but some will be foreign, especially if one’s palate has gotten used to stale and expiring manna.

Caleb Jones

A related concept attributed to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus It was brought to the West largely by Carl Jung, and is even applicable to mathematical models of chaos, is enantiodromia. which is a phenomenon that describes the tendency of systems, concepts, beliefs to transform into their opposites. Ascending a mountain eventually requires descending. Pendulums swing, righteous can fall, the fallen can be redeemed, ecosystems vacillate. Ideologies can transform into their own opposites, etcetera.

Caleb Jones

And Carl Jung described this concept as the principle which governs all cycles of natural life, physical or psychological. And this concept is visualized in models like here, like Lorenz attractors.

Caleb Jones

We can see this theme in the Book of Mormon. Not just with Lehi and his sermons on opposites, but repeated in the accounts given in the Book of Mormon. There’s a religious awakening. People rally around it, think Nephi and First Temple, King Benjamin, Alma the Elder, Fourth Nephi. It provides spiritual unity and strength, but generations later, the rising generation is described as wicked or hardened.

Caleb Jones

One way to read this, a common way indeed a way that some of the own Book of Mormon authors and voices do read, is that clearly it’s all about these youngsters. They just don’t get it. They’re lazy, wicked sinners. Certainly some of each generation are indeed lazy, wicked, or sinners. But to accept that as the whole explanation seems too much like the dead tyrannizing the living.

Caleb Jones

I think another side of the story is that past awakenings were largely oriented towards the problems and conditions faced in the past. As the conditions, needs, challenges, and contexts of younger generations change, merely sustaining frameworks exactly as they were not only loses its power in some ways, but can become problematic. turning the hearts of the parents away from the present needs of the children, and the hearts of the children away from an increasingly foreign world of their parents.

Caleb Jones

This is an example of an antiodromia. Overzealous unity creates disunity. Conformity, non-conformity.

Caleb Jones

Abraham Heschel, Joshua Heschel, in his book God in Search of Man, a Philosophy for Judaism, articulated this problem often as it presents itself today. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline love by habit, when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past, when faith becomes an heirloom rather than as a living fountain When religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with a voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.

Caleb Jones

So how might the hearts of the mothers and fathers turn to the children to establish faith as a loving, living fountain coming from within their own children? And how can this lead to the reciprocation of the hearts of the children turning to transfigure and redeem that which their parents cherished?

Caleb Jones

The start is to be aware of the challenges the rising generation is faced with. A 2015 Pew Research Center study finds that while spirituality is no less important to millennials than prior generations, religious affiliation rates Particularly across Christian affiliations, are declining. Meanwhile, religious non-affiliation is rising. In an independent study, 33% of millennials identified as religiously unaffiliated.

Caleb Jones

And recently, Angenerice’s Next Mormon survey has found growing cohorts of young Mormons for whom the pillars of Mormonism have instead become an anathema. For many, the comfort of correlation has multiplied into the crushing weight of conformity. Strict standards of safety have also birthed a culture of judgment. Truth claims have formed into a contentious wedge. The veneration of leaders can slide into idol worship. And the centrality of traditional family has defined a capricious periphery. For many, 64% of more millennials in that survey who have left, the manna has spoiled.

Caleb Jones

One temptation again is to simply blame it on millennials or whoever the rising generation is. They’re lazy, entitled, irresponsible, naive, and are sinners. This is not dissimilar from what the silent generation has said about the boomer generation who were spoiled, wore long hair, protested war, challenged racial or gender norms, all while listening to noisy music that rotted their brains. Much of this is the age-old pattern of generation wars.

Caleb Jones

There’s great wisdom in the preacher’s words in Ecclesiastes. Do not say, Why were the former days better than these? for it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

Caleb Jones

Generational friction is a regular part of humanity, and religion intentionally operates in this friction. Can we see friction in our own LDS culture, which can simultaneously praise rising generations as being righteously reserved for this age, while also writing them off as lazy, spoiled, or weak?

Caleb Jones

I believe this spirit of Elijah can point us at a better way as generations turn their hearts towards one another, see how God is speaking through generations old and new. Two examples from the Book of Mormon are informative here.

Caleb Jones

First is to see how Nephi navigated and affected generational change. Nephi seems to have navigated a balance of how to carry forward the old with the needs of the new. He said, I, Nephi, have not taught my children after the manner of the Jews, but behold, I myself have dwelt at Jerusalem. Wherefore I know concerning the regions round about. But behold, I proceed with my own prophecy, concerning according to my own plainness, handed down unto my seed from generation to generation, notwithstanding We believe in Christ. We keep the law of Moses and look forward to steadfastness in Christ until the law shall be fulfilled.

Caleb Jones

His use of the word notwithstanding Shows an understanding that there was a need to move from some of the inherited traditions towards something new, while also preserving the good of that inheritance. This was not an either-or choice. Nephi points to the enduring foundation he seeks to place his rising generations on in the society he’s leading. We’re all familiar with this, right? Talk of Christ, preach of Christ. Why? That our children may know what source they may look for remission of their sins.

Caleb Jones

Later in the Book of Mormon, Jesus promises that whoso buildeth on his doctrine, which he describes as faith, repentance, baptism, living by that Spirit. buildeth upon my rock. He then immediately warns that whoso shall declare more or less than this, and establish it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil, and is not built on my rock. But buildeth on a soundy foundation.

Caleb Jones

Perhaps each new generation needs to return to this foundation in order to repair and renovate what has been built before to adapt to changing needs. In doing so, each generation will need to carefully distinguish between the foundation of Christ and the traditions built upon that foundation. Later, being prepared themselves to allow others to further restore and renovate to new conditions. When we confuse our traditions for Christ’s gospel foundation, we fail to follow the words of Christ here.

Caleb Jones

Second example from the Book of Mormon is also from description of Jesus’ ministry to the Nephites. After announcing himself to them, delivering a sermon, he begins to heal their sick. After those things, he turns the people’s attention towards their children. He spake to the multitude, and said unto them, Behold your little ones. And as they looked, behold, they cast their eyes up toward heaven, and they saw in the heavens They saw the heavens open. They saw angels descending out of heaven, as it were in the midst of fire. And they came down and encircled those little ones about. And they were encircled about with fire. And the angels did minister to them.

Caleb Jones

The symbolism here asks powerful questions. What does it mean to behold our little ones? Do we trust them that they can adapt their faith to the unique issues they face today? How did our facing unique issues in our generation require trust and support from prior generations? Do we behold them and let them lead in their own religious awakenings as they gather fresh manna? Do we support them in the renovations, repairs, and restorations they seek to build on this same foundation of faith in Christ? Do we allow them to be encircled with the yearning and burning witness of the Spirit, even if it leads to things we never imagined? And are our attitudes towards and interactions with them worthy of this kind of ministering?

Caleb Jones

And before Jesus ascended into heaven from the Nephites, he gave authority to their children. It reads, It came to pass that he did teach and minister to the children of the multitude. whom he hath spo he had been spoken, and he did loose their tongues, and they did speak unto their fathers great and marvellous things, even greater than he had revealed unto them. The people, and he loosed their tongues that they could utter.

Caleb Jones

Are we cultivating environments where our children can loose their tongues? Are we willing to listen to what they have to say? What things might we be doing to bind their words and spirits? Is some of what our children say marvelous, even greater than what has been revealed? Could God be speaking through our children things which we have been unable to utter? Are we willing to listen?

Caleb Jones

To be sure, not everything novel in rising generations will be good, neither was it in past generations. Each generation faces, creates, and perpetuates their own demons. But atrophy and disillusion pose a threat too.

Caleb Jones

In the book Next Mormons, Jana Reese’s survey and interview data, largely corroborated by other independent researchers, shows over and over that insistence on traditional family norms increasingly poses a threat to the engagement of rising generations. She asks. The question ahead of the LDS Church as it moves further to the 21st century is how far is it willing to accommodate new social norms? If the risk of not doing so is that in the United States at least, a substantial percentage of its young people may exit the doors. Is that loss the cost the Church is willing to deem unacceptable changing its course to stem the tide? Or will those exiles be considered necessary collateral damage as the institution clings to its post-war brand identity? And a religion devoted to a particular configuration and nuclear family.

Caleb Jones

Pope Francis has been pondering the engagement with youth as well, He said, A church always on the defensive, which loses her humility and stops listening to others, which leaves no room for questions, loses her youth, turns into a museum. How then will she be prepared to respond to the dreams of young people?

Caleb Jones

Rather than see our religious duty as merely perpetuating what we’ve inherited, we can see how we can transfigure it and we can turn to the youth. To do so. How young was Joseph Smith when he had his first vision? How young was Samuel? How young was Jesus in the Temple? By turning our hearts to generations and their own awakenings, we may even be able to join them and redeem us in us the fire that encircles the human soul as it changes towards God.

Caleb Jones

I’ll maybe end with this quote. Adam Miller, in his book Future Mormon, describes this work. He says, so much of our world deserves to be left. So much of it deserves to be scrapped and recycled. But this, too, scares me. I worry that a lot of what has mattered most to me in this world, Mormonism in particular, may be largely unintelligible to them In theirs. This problem isn’t new, but it is perpetually urgent. Every generation must start again. Every generation must work out their own salvation. Every generation must live its own lives and think its own thoughts. and receive its own revelations, and if Mormonism continues to matter, it will be because they, rather than leaving, were willing to be Mormon all over again, like our grandparents, like our parents, and like us. They will have to rethink the whole tradition from top to bottom, right from the beginning, and make it their own in order to embody Christ anew in this passing world. To the degree that we can help, our job is to model that work in love and then offer them the tools, raw materials, and the room to do it themselves.

Caleb Jones

So just to close, how this will play out in the LDS Church, I don’t know. I have hope. I have loyalty. I also have pragmatism knowing the problems that we face.

Caleb Jones

I think transhumanism can provide a language to bridge this generational divide as it tries to combine the authority and independence of science with the traditions that can be redeemed. And I think religions that can do this and engage in this work in conversations like transhumanism may be able to be a moderating force from the dangers of both scientific and religious fundamentalism.

Caleb Jones

In my experience, the Mormon Transhumanist Association has been a model of this. Look around, we have male, female, we have progressive, we also have some conservative, we have Mormon, ex-Mormon, theists, atheists. Gay, straight. All these different personas come together. So much of one another’s world views deserves to be scrapped, but so much of one another’s world views are also redeemable. And I think that as we, it’s possible with this model of Elijah, which calls us to turn from the curse of cynicism and instead powerfully turn our generation’s hearts towards one another and trusted love that we can transfigure together.

Caleb Jones

Thank you.