So I've been trying to think more about the atonement lately. I know that thinking about it isn't the most productive way, necessarily, to increase its power in my life, but I don't think it can/will hurt, and I'm much more comfortable on my intellectual feet than anywhere else really.
Today I was reading in Alma 7. I was trying to pick apart verses 11&12, trying to get what it's saying really, what the promises there are. What does it mean, anyway, to loose the bands of death? There are the obvious answers: the atonement lead to the resurrection, and the atonement reconciles us with God (so we overcome physical and spiritual death), but the problem with the atonement to me is its abstract distance. I don't feel like I'm bound by those bands of death necessarily (the burden of sin, which I am familiar with, as well as relief through repentance notwithstanding) at least not every day. What, then, are the bands of death?
I started to think about things that the Savior did while in mortality. I've always wondered why most of his miracles (at least the ones we hear about) are healings. I tried to think about other things that I've heard/felt that the atonement can do. Bound up broken hearts, right injustices, and got really excited thinking about its alleviation of shame...and what is shame? The feeling that you've done something and can't tell anyone. A feeling of loneliness.
Which brought me to an entirely new train of thought I've been riding: human inability to connect. I'm not so concerned about it now as I have been, but there's still a gnawing sort of (mild) desperation--I live in my head and no matter how hard I try I can't understand or be understood completely.
And where these come together for me is here: loneliness is a uniquely mortal emotion. When we sin, particularly when we try to hide it, we are alienating ourselves from God. Many (most?) sins are sins of alienation: when we lie, we hide our true selves/deeds from others; when we're unkind, we're alienating people; pride is essentially a sin of distance.
Zion, on the other hand, is a state where all is in common. Where hearts are knit together in unity. We know that God doesn't disclose everything all the time, but if, when we're exalted, we become omnipotent, it seems that secrecy--loneliness--is not going to factor into our lives in the same way.
Which brings this out of the theoretical and back to the personal. When I feel the atonement's power most strongly and reassuringly it feels a lot like the opposite of loneliness. It feels a lot like opening long-shut windows on dank rooms that need cleaning (and sunshine). When we come to Heavenly Father and offer him (the secrets of) our broken hearts, our spirits become contrite.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
I don't know why solitude would be a balm for loneliness.
Posted by Kjerstin Evans Ballard at 4:25 PM
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4 comments:
I think Gilead is the most properly named book ever. Balm in Gilead... the atonement... what a wonderful post Kjerstin. Would you mind if I copied it and used it in a lesson sometime?
Thanks, Kjerstin, for giving me something to think about, an insight into my own state, and a reminder of where I should be turning with that.
I feel you on this. I don't really have anything elegant to add. I want to think more about it, but I agree.
When Christ atoned for us he ensured that no one would ever be truly alone because he could perfectly understand and empathize with any of us. But maybe the flip side of that is that he placed himself (temporarily?) beyond the reach of our empathizing, since none of us can really say to him "I've been there."
In a way he made himself the loneliest of all.
So it seems to me that we shortchange the gospel, that we miss the full import of it, when we leave it at 'Jesus is the perfect empathizer' (or 'healer' or whatever). It's not enough to recognize his power; we have to take the extra step and see that now it is our job to empathize. With others, with God.
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the point of it all—of life, of literature, of art, of everything—is to help us understand not ourselves, not humanity, but to understand God. For who is Jesus but the manliest man, the humanest human? He is the Platonic form of whatever it could ever mean to be human, to be alone.
I'm having more and more trouble distinguishing the words "understanding," "love," "empathy," and "charity" when placed in this context.
But this still leaves us with the problem that we can't empathize with Christ, at least not in the sense of being able to understand from common experience. What you said about Zion speaks to this: perhaps Zion is when we have all things in common with God—when we finally understand him somehow. Perhaps this is what they mean when they say we can't fully understand the Atonement: not (as I usually imagine, at least) that there is some cosmic equation that balances guilt and redemption and eternity and justice and mercy in some way ungraspable by the mortal intellect, but that somehow we'll be able to really know Christ, to totally get him, without actually being him or being there in the garden. Some cosmic transitive property of experience. Maybe that's the real miracle.
Apologies for the long comment, but I'm committed to figuring this out and that means saying it aloud as often as possible.
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