Unto What Shall I Liken?

Speaker 1

Caleb Jones lives in the Pacific Northwest, is a husband, father, engineer, and a practicing member of the LDS Church. He has a computer science degree from BYU and works as a systems architect at Disney, focussing on large scale data. I’ve seen some of the stuff he does at Disney, and it looks like so much fun. I just kind of wish sometimes that I could do what he does every day. He is passionate about science and religion, particularly in areas such as astronomy, network science, emergentism, religious cosmology, and transhumanism. His introduction to transhumanism came from the writings of Freeman Dyson and have developed through associations with the MTA. In addition to blogging on the MTA blog transfigurism. org. Caleb also blogs about network science analysis and visualization on allthingsgraft. com and co-authors the blog Navigating Discipleship. com with his wife. Thanks, Caleb.

Caleb Jones

Thank you for that introduction. So Carl Youngblood, you spoke about earlier about breaking myths and if myth and that myth is the language of religion If that’s the case, then semiotics really is the study of that language. And I am not a semiotician, so I’ll put that out there. But what I really wanted to showcase was with even just a 101 level understanding of what semiotics is, that can transform and improve A view of faith, and particularly when it has to deal with revelation.

Caleb Jones

So, as a show of hands, how many people here are familiar with what semiotics is? So, I can know how quickly I can skip through different sections. Okay, about half and half. All right, so we’ll go through it.

Caleb Jones

So, as we’ve developed as a species, we’ve really crossed this planet. geographically and carried our symbols with us. We’ve carried our signatures, our portraits, and our projections. So we share an evolutionary history of semiotics as evident in this survey of early common symbols found in Stone Age artifacts across different regions. They follow patterns of migration as well, which I find fascinating.

Caleb Jones

We see this pattern as well in how religion has evolved over time, influenced by culture, language, music. And interaction with the divine as they find semiological expression.

Caleb Jones

One of my favorite quotes is from William James. I think it gets to the crux of this. He said, Religious language clothes itself in such poor symbols as our life affords. I think there’s great insight in this perspective that religion is limited to the semiological domain of those it finds expression in. And as our knowledge, aesthetics, culture, etc. , change, our religious expression will change too as we find new ways to express those religious longings.

Caleb Jones

In Mormonism, our scriptures, much like Christianity, make reference to likening, comparing, typifying. We have models, maxims, parables, allegories, metaphors, etc. All of these are semiological expressions in our scriptures and teachings.

Caleb Jones

The reason I absolutely love this scripture, which I used to borrow from my title. Is that the instance where the word is lichen is used here? It’s because it breaks the fourth wall and reveals the author’s hand and intention in the process of revelation, which I think is really important. Breaking the Fourth Wall is a literary device. It evokes a conversation between author, messenger, and audience. It ties all parties together and invites them to consider each other’s realities. It brings a sense of self-awareness and agency that otherwise can be missed. And it’s this self-awareness that I think is so important for religious expression and faith today.

Caleb Jones

In order to illustrate this, I’ll look at each word in this phrase from a semiological perspective. First is that word unto. It’s a functional word indicating reference or directionality. A common Buddhist teaching highlights the difference between the subject and the object that it points at. For instance, it says towards the end there: a person who only looks at a finger pointing at the moon and mistakes it for the moon will never see the real moon.

Caleb Jones

Joseph Fielding Smith Jr. highlights how scriptures are replete with allegorical stories, faith-building parables, and artistic speech. All of this points to some fundamentals of semiotics, which I think are important to cover briefly. I’ll do here shortly.

Caleb Jones

So I thought of a way to illustrate this. I have a lot of slides here, and I tried to just build this picture as we go along. Hopefully it’ll make sense.

Caleb Jones

At the base of this of semi-oxis is communication, particularly communication between two self-aware individuals. The difficulty is how do you communicate something from an unfathomably complex mind to a different, independent, and likewise unfathomably complex mind?

Caleb Jones

The person communicating has in her mind an object to communicate. This object is what is being signified. It can be a picture, a concept, sound, truth, smell, taste, aesthetic, experience, fiction, model, anything, as long as it can be communicated via some chosen medium of communication.

Caleb Jones

In order to communicate this, she must encode this into abstract symbols or signifiers. In this case, she chooses the concepts of mountains, colors, and ruins. She then must select symbols within the medium of communication. Here in this example, she’s using the spoken English words, mountains, colors, and ruins. This is the process of semiological encoding.

Caleb Jones

The other party then must understand those communicated symbols and then construct abstract symbols. then form an object to try to understand the original idea that the other had. And I think we’ve all had experiences where this process didn’t quite work the way we had hoped. As was the case when I failed to decode a text message from my wife recently that reminded me not to leave our son at school during the science fair. Issues in decoding.

Caleb Jones

So when the communi so it also breaks down when there’s no longer a shared medium of communication. Right, language, we see that. Differences in how ideas don’t transfer across cultures as easily. Those can be difficulties. In particular,

Caleb Jones

In decoding, the process can break down in issues of comprehension, relevancy, engagement, value judgments. and the non-neutrality of communication medium itself. I think we’re all probably have an acute awareness of the non-neutrality of Facebook communication.

Caleb Jones

Furthermore, even before communicating, the task of encoding can break down on ideas of accurate sign selection, biases, lack of trust with audience. Compensating for audience, and again, that non-neutrality of the communication medium.

Caleb Jones

I think that this is what Paul was referring to when he was Maybe not by name, but that conceptually, when he talked about knowing or prophesying in part, and that we see through the glass but darkly, with the hope and faith towards a greater time of clarity.

Caleb Jones

This all comes back to the topic of religion. We see visions of greatness as we commune with the divine. then we seek to find ways to express it, that greatness, using the crude symbols our life can afford.

Caleb Jones

The word what references the thing or things in question. So James E. Talmadge observed that God is often treated merely as a projection of our own traits. And Greek and Roman mythologies were very much projections of human nature, the embodiments of our different natures. As a tool for exploring those natures, there are benefits here.

Caleb Jones

But as New Testament scholar N. T. Wright points out, there are problems when our own human nature becomes an object of worship. In regards to modern society’s obsession with eroticism, he noted, the goddess Aphrodite, even though unnamed, is believed in and served by millions. In the wake of global financial crisis and scandals, he points out, we still assume that even though something has gone horribly wrong, that the only thing to do is to shore up this idol and get it going again. And critiquing our modern machines of war, he said, No matter how many body bags are brought home, we still assume that that’s how the world ought to work.

Caleb Jones

Now, he does clarify and say that he’s not a killjoy. a communist or nor a pacifist, but that we must seek to challenge these idols that can be set up at times. This kind of idolatry has a long history with religions, we’re probably all familiar with.

Caleb Jones

I absolutely love Isaiah in this regard. Isaiah brings an iconoclastic perspective. Here, Isaiah, in this opening chapter in Isaiah, Isaiah critiques the uselessness of religious symbols at the time. Whenever I read this scripture, I like to liken it to our own set of religious symbols so I can see how I could use this to likewise critique whether or not I’m treating symbols available to me correctly.

Caleb Jones

So let’s flip the language a little bit there. How are our tithes and fast offerings used? Does the Lord delight in our casseroles and home teaching, visiting teaching? Do we remember who we worship? What do our hymns provoke us to do or be? What effects do our Sabbaths and general conferences have on us? Is our use of sacred spaces in our temples worthy of God? Would the Lord hate our meetings and family home evenings?

Caleb Jones

Of course, my selection of LES symbols here is somewhat arbitrary. Regardless, however, these are intentionally provocative questions, but I think that’s the point Isaiah is making here. Our religious symbols, when detached from how they relate to the larger picture of what they signify in God, become ineffectual and worthless. They become idols, and we become idol worshippers, mistaking pointing hands for the moon they point to.

Caleb Jones

Now, Isaiah nor I are merely iconoclasts. Isaiah is Was truly prophetic in the purpose and meaning of those symbolics, those symbols, and reattached them to their intended use to become clean. to put away evil doings, to learn to do well, to seek discernment, to relieve the oppressed, to plead for the widow. All this in the framework of forgiveness with God.

Caleb Jones

Returning to the scripture, next is the word shall. This denotes choice or freedom of the author, is what really draws me to this scripture. Anyone bring their seer stone with them? There you go. There you go.

Caleb Jones

So I challenged my son last year to take notes. There you go. I challenged my son last year to take notes during a general conference talk, but I challenged him to try to use symbols as he did so. And this is what he came up with. Any guesses of who the author of that conference talk? There’s a clue in there if you can find it. There you go, you got it. So this was by talking Uchdorf, who was last April conference, a gift of grace. So you can decode that meaning there.

Caleb Jones

So I’ve gone through and done this exercise a few times with Elias Sacrament meetings. I try to draw what the hymns mean to me. So here are some examples. This is while of these emblems we partake, and you have to excuse, I’m obviously not an artist, in humility our Savior. Upon the cross of Calvary and Jesus of Nazareth, Savior and King

Caleb Jones

Freeman Dyson makes a point that’s relevant here. In his book, Infinite All Directions, he reflects back on science at the beginning of the 20th century. when there were great mountain peaks of which dominated scientific visions and attitudes that the landscape of physics was almost fully mapped with only a few unimportant valleys to be surveyed. But he also noticed, in his time in the and when he wrote this in the 1980s, that we are beginning to understand that the jungles, both literal and figurative, are the richest and most vibrant parts of God’s creation. And then the richness and diverse and unexpected flora and fauna, we’ve come back to the rainforest, so to speak.

Caleb Jones

I had the opportunity to ask him about this analogy, how it could also work for religion. And he agreed, and he mentioned that this is especially true in the context of Mormon religion, was his comment there.

Caleb Jones

So what are some of the transformative results this kind of semiological approach can provide? Instead of divining God’s one will, we can see that God’s will is infinite in diversity. but within a domain. Doctrine and policies can be treated less as edicts and instead be approached as milestones. Fixed religious symbols are instead used as aesthetic tools for finding meaning. Devotional or reductive interpretations are expanded by literary analysis. Singular, idealized interpretations instead follow the pattern of mana and are reintegrated, reapplied. Instead of there only being one possible right way or outcome, we see many, even infinite possible outcomes within that domain of God’s will that we may choose from. Rites and rituals, rather than being treated as final or instead as expressions of evolving faith, passive acceptance is abandoned for the self-awareness that comes from active choosing. As we take responsibility for our own beliefs rather than advocate them to another.

Caleb Jones

I’ll skip through here, and since I’m running lower on time, the word I here obviously reveals about authorship. And I wanted to get to some of the meat here. This is a huge debate within Mormonism. When is a prophet acting as a man or acting as a woman? This has a couple problems. First, why isn’t asking anyone asking when a prophetess is speaking as a woman or speaking as a prophetess? So technical authority definitions aside, we have functioning prophetesses today, even if unordained. I watched the most recent General Women’s broadcast and their leadership and efforts to focus our faith more on refugee outreach. Is nothing short of prophetic.

Caleb Jones

Second, it proposes a false dichotomy. It forces us to pull apart the agency and person from the divine calling. It dehumanizes religion. This is a mistake and often leads to implied or explicit infallibility of leaders. Fundamentally, the man or woman is always present in the limitations of their knowledge to decode what they feel from God. And then, in turn, encode that in a way which others can then decode. So, I’m going to skip forward here a bit and

Caleb Jones

Briefly mention there are four ways that we as individuals can understand prophetic vision and judge it. First, Christ mentions the two great commandments. We have Paul, who mentions that prophecy will fail as it’s detached from charity. We have Moroni mentioning how anything that provokes us to do good and to believe Christ comes from that Spirit of Christ. And Joseph Smith powerfully taught about the origins and limits of authority that must be exercised within a context of virtue. These filters let’s just skip through a little bit here. So

Caleb Jones

A landmine in this ground of debate around Mormonism is that, well, God won’t allow prophets to lead the church astray. The immediate arguments and interpretations surrounding this are almost always escapist in nature and provoke bolts of lightning, sudden diseases inflicted on prophets, etc. , but all advocate responsibility to discern away from individuals. This kind of hermeneutic filter approach has a provocative, but I think much more robust way forward. And I’ll make this my final point. We’ll have to cut that last part out. Okay.

Caleb Jones

So if or when, as history indicates, prophecy advocates something that fails these tests of prophecy. What are we to do? I think this kind of approach, where we look at the way of hermeneutically understanding these ways to understand prophecy and apply it. Leads to ideas of how these prophecies will fail not because God magically comes down with a bolt of lightning. That they fail precisely because the disciples of Christ simply say no.

Caleb Jones

But conversely, and this is important, when prophecy advocates something that passes these tests, And which might go against commonly held opinions and practices, disciples of Christ will repent and turn towards Christ. When we remove Christ from this and place any other object there, we become those idol worshipers that Isaiah was talking about. This gives prophecy the power to call to repentance. As that repentance leads towards Christ, but it also gives power to disciples of Christ to be a balancing force against imperfections of process and partnership of prophecy. As we work together towards Christ with mutual forgiveness.

Caleb Jones

Finally, Lichen, and I just want to skip down to a final point here. Richard Bushman paints a picture of expanded scripture. It takes us back to this evolutionary trade of religion. He mentions that scripture comes from all people and that God gives all people scripture in their myths and their visions. Canon, however, can be selective. Whereas scripture spans creeds and religions, canon becomes whatsoever a group feels inspired. to use to judge or hold themselves accountable to.

Caleb Jones

N. T. Wright makes a similar connection when he sums up the three biblical coordinates of Christian wisdom. That we are called to reflect the Creator’s wisdom and care into the world. We contextualize our wisdom as part of a much bigger world full of interlocking connections and mutual relationships. That our knowledge is never in isolation, that we can be bold and humble in stating what we have seen and know, but will always covet other angles of vision.

Caleb Jones

This is why I love this phrase, unto what shall I liken? The breaking of the fourth wall of Revelation evokes a much needed conversation between author, messenger, and audience. It ties all parties together and invites them to consider each other’s realities. It is a gift of grace from God, and it is a gift that we can extend to each other. And I believe as we do so with self-awareness and agency that otherwise is sometimes absent, our religious discussions will be elevated and a sense of authenticity and Christ-centered faith can better grow. Thank you.