Failing is How a Body Grows

A follow up to the post about the Reflection Index, with all its valuable comment, and Friday’s post suggesting that if we are complaining, we should be complaining that the Church doesn’t fail enough or spectacularly enough.  And lo, Laman and Lemuel murmured because Nephi wasn’t lost sometimes.

A good start

Let the stream of consciousness and half-formed thoughts begin.

The parable of the talents. Being safe is failure. Try to do great things in His name, with love and with all your ability, and when you fail he will beat you with a few stripes and all will be well.

A certain lord went on a journey to a far country. He called in three servants, to one he gave one talent, to the second five, and to the third ten talents.

When he returned he called in his servants. The one-talent servant gave him a hard talent. “I preserved it carefully because you are a hard man,” the servant said. “I am a hard man,” his master said, and threw him into a dungeon.

The second servant had invested his talents wisely and well. Instead of 5 talents, he gave his lord many. “Well done,” the master said, “I will make you ruler over many of my cities.”

The ten-talent servant only had a ship of peculiar design, not yet finished–there had been difficulties. “What is that?” the master said. “A ship to sail to the western isles, if such there be, so that you may have immortal fame and the wealth of an emperor!”

The master cast off his robe and leapt into the ship to lend a hand. “Let’s finish it together.  You will sail it with me,” he said, “you are a man after my own heart.”

The safe servant recieved bars and crusts of bread. The second servant became about as highly ranked as it is possible for a servant to be. The third servant became a partner.

Elder Holland’s parable about the Spirit telling him and his grandson to go down the wrong road has profoundly affected me. I think about it often. The best thing about the parable is it actually happened!  They really were lost at a split in the way, and the Spirit really did tell them to go down the wrong road, because the wrong road petered out in 200 yards so going down it was the fastest way for their faith to become knowledge.

Recently the Church had decided to get rid of old pioneer fixtures and art work in the Manti temple (which has already been much sadly abused in the guise of modernization).  There was an outcry. The Church put out a statement that the decision had been made by inspiration by the the authorities of the church. Then the decision was reversed.  Was the original decision a bad decision and the outcry was the way of revealing that it was a bad decision?  Or was it the right decision but because of our lack of faith we were denied the blessings of not having heritage features in the Manti temple?  You can decide either way.

I believe the Church errs. I believe the prophet errs. I also believe the church is true and the prophet is God’s prophet. I believe I err.

Failure teaches the body. That’s why we have bodies. To experience things and feel things. Telling us thing teaches the mind. Experiencing things teaches all of you. Trying things and failing is how we gain light and knowledge–this is why the fall was inherent in the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If we treat God and the Church as a cheat code around the necessary bodily learning of morality, we are much deceived.  We might think that Elder Holland and his grandson *should* have had enough faith that if the Spirit told them to go the right way they would know that they were going the right way.  But that is not what it means to have a body.  Things we experience in the body we know in a way that we simply cannot know the same way without it.  See Alma 32.

Think of the Church as the body of the gospel. It is the church that implements the gospel and learns through doing. Not getting it right sometimes is part of the process.  Would we also say that the church is the body of christ in this context? Maybe not, still worth thinking about.