Angina Monologue 14

I’ve discovered this week just how much His Majesty can be a pain in the

Assistant. Personal assistant. That would be me.

I’ve also been described as his lieutenant, his right-hand man, his hatchet man, his chief minion, and his apprentice. And even once as his Sith’s Sith. (I believe that last description was delivered in a polished British public school accent.)

I mentioned previously that he would be going in for surgery for an anal fistula, and I think I subsequently posted a brief comment that the surgery went reasonably well, except for not actually finding a fistula. Just a lot of deep-seated infection requiring debriding. This left a sizable crater in the royal tush that was sutured closed, has mostly healed over, but is still decidedly tender.

I was startled to receive a number of expressions of best wishes and condolences for His Majesty. I’m not sure His Majesty is capable of acknowledging anything hinting at affection, but, for my part, I can tell you that I was as touched as I was surprised. Thank you all for your kind thoughts.

Alas, His Majesty is not one to suffer in silence.

Hand me that pillow, Vader. For an overstuffer recliner, this  [expletive] piece of furniture has got one tough hide. Certainly tougher than my sorry [Equus africanus asinus] in its present state.

The worst part is that I’m running out of ways to sit. If I sit on my right cheek in order to take the pressure off the incision on my left cheek, eventually my right cheek gets sore and I get a crick in my back. If I roll way over on my left side, I can still feeeel the sutures tug. I can stand, but only for so long. If I try to lie prone, I have the [expletive] rug in my face, and I get a worse crick in my neck trying to watch the television.

Yes. The language has been colorful around here for the last few days. I encouraged His Majesty to just take the hydrocodone already, and he did — for the first two days. It helped, a little. Thereafter he refused any painkillers; he seems to think pain is a useful reminder not to overdo it yet. I suppose he may have a point.

God’s respect for free will may explain the problem of willful evil, as you claim; but I’ll be damned if I can see how a loving, omniscient, omnipotent God can justify inflicting me with perianal abscesses.

That, of course, is what worries me about His Majesty. That he will be damned rather than submit to God’s will.

You sound like a [expletive] Muslim. Complete submission to God, my [eye].

He’s in pain. One should make allowances. Still: “So went Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes.”

The Satan of the book of Job is presented as practically a servant of God. God isn’t going to get off the hook with the lame excuse that it’s tough to find good minions any more. …. Blast it. I think I’m oozing blood again.

I think His Majesty is a bit of a hypochondriac. The incision is quite closed at this point and in no danger of further bleeding. But if His Majesty insists on sitting in a leather chair, even an overstuffed one, in thin pajamas, under a heavy quilt, he’s going to tend to accumulate sweat; and one kind of moisture is going to feel much like any other.

Of course, as painful as this is for me personally, one can certainly come up with better examples of the Universe’s uncaring cruelty. Just as the Holocaust is a convenient shorthand for the enormity of willful evil, I propose that the Tambora eruption, whose 200th anniversary we have just celebrated, is a convenient shorthand for the tragedy of unwilled or circumstantial evil.

Hmm. It would not have occurred to me to describe the 200th anniversary of the Tambora eruption as a celebration.

Come, Lord Vader. You know about the statistics showing that viewership of weather reporting channels goes up when there is an active hurricane in the Atlantic basin. This is true even in parts of the country far from the threatened cost. All those people aren’t tuning in out of sympathy for those impacted by the storm; the truth is, they’re rooting for the hurricane.

His Majesty rocked back in his overstuffed recliner, grimaced, squirmed around a little, seemed more comfortable, and pulled up a quilt. Truth is, when he lies flat, he’s reasonably comfortable; and when he dozes off, he looks just a little like a dogue de Bordeaux puppy. Almost endearing.

How is it possible that I feel affection for such a monster?

But then, God seems to feel considerable affection for me. Though I confess I wish He’s fix my temporomandibular joint. Flared up a couple of days ago, and at times it’s been agonizing. I have not mentioned it to His Majesty; it would only burden the old rogue, and besides, there’s not really anything you can do about it but hope the description as “self-limiting” is accurate. We’re a couple of sorry old Sith, aren’t we?

I miss Padme.

Just as Mormonism offers some unique solutions to the problem of willful evil, I think it offers some unique solutions to the problem of unwilled evil.

I’d guess that the most common solution among rank-and-file Mormons is what I will call the “loving Parent vaccinating His children” model. This is encapsulated in the chestnut, put in the mouth of Christ: “I never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it.” Like many cliches, this one contains a fair amount of truth, even if it may not be complete. For some reason, most of us need to experience tribulation, sometimes very severe tribulation, to realize our divine potential. It’s like a parent putting a very young child through vaccination: The child is being given resistance to a serious evil at the cost of a relatively brief and much milder evil, inflicted at the bidding of a loving parent.

This concept actually has echoes in the New Testament. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. There is genuine comfort in that verse. Christ’s words of comfort to the despairing Joseph Smith are a uniquely Mormon contribution:

.. know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

The rhetorical question adds the important thought that God has not asked anything of us that He was not willing to suffer Himself.

Mormon scripture adds some other insights not clear in the Old or New Testaments. The dying Lehi told his young son Jacob,

For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.

Lehi knew a thing or two about tribulation, but Jacob had known little else. I sense a particularly tender relationship between Lehi and Jacob in these chapters, wheres Lehi describes Jacob as his first-born, in a figurative rather than literal sense (“in the wilderness”) and praises him for his childlike faith in Christ. This adds a poignancy to this discourse.

There are some interesting metaphysical assumptions here. Mormons seem more comfortable than many other Christians with the notion that there is truth that is coeval with God, in which He abides by as a God of truth. This truth constrains God; He cannot act in a manner contrary to eternal truth. He is not arbitrarily and capriciously omnipotent. Most other Christian thinkers recognize that God cannot do what is logically contradictory (“make a stone so heavy He cannot lift it”) or otherwise answer an ill-posed question, but Mormons seem more comfortable with it. There is evil because good without evil is ill-posed.

I find myself wondering whether the boundary I’ve just drawn between eternal truth and God is an artificial one.

While I think what I’ve just outlined is deeply embedded in the Mormon consciousness, it does not entirely dispose of the problem of unwilled evil. If we must learn by our own experience to distinguish good from evil, there remains the question of why the experience of evil seems so unequal. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of this remaining problem is the problem of little children.

 Moroni was crystal clear that little children have no sin, and those that die before the age of accountability need neither repentance nor saving ordinances to inherit the kingdom of God. Most Mormons are entirely comfortable with Coleridge’s Epitaph on an Infant:

ERE Sin could blight or Sorrow fade,

Death came with friendly care;

The opening bud to Heaven conveyed,

And bade it blossom there.

So … why do they get off so easy? And doesn’t this mean that a parent who smothers all his children at birth is doing them a favor by ensuring them a place in heaven?

I’ll speak to the second question first. Obviously, mass infanticide works against God’s will, so He has given both strict laws and planted strong instincts against it. I hope I am not saying too much if I point out that, in a certain place, we receive many commandments by covenant, but only one without covenant — to be fruitful and multiply. It’s built into our genes instead.

But, in addition, it is not just our children who die if we commit infanticide. We murder God as well. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And that is a burden that will damn the infanticide at the final judgment. I think it is my dear friend G., who carries a heavy burden of wisdom regarding the death of little children, who first pointed me at this solution.

There remains the question of why little children receive a get-out-of-Hell-free card.* I think there is a widespread folk belief among Mormons that it is because they were particularly valiant in the preexistence and were rewarded by being so placed in this life that they would not have to endure temptation; only tribulation. I cannot say this solution is wrong; the foreknowledge of God makes it plausible. But it makes me uncomfortable. It is unsatisfying.

His Majesty opened one eye and regarded me with wicked amusement:

That’s because the implication, given infant mortality statistics over human history, is that you are at best in about the 50% percentile of preexistent valor. And you don’t like to be so mediocre.

Go back to sleep, Your Majesty.

C.S. Lewis actually addressed this issue, but only to acknowledge he didn’t have a solution, either.  It’s late; I’ll leave the precise reference as an exercise for the Padawan.

There also remains the problem of why a few humans who survive to adulthood live comfortable lives as rich Americans, while most others live lives that have been aptly described as nasty, short, solitary, and brutal.

I find myself thinking of Monte Carlo simulations, which I sometimes perform in my work. And of the concept of phase trajectories in quantum mechanics. When  you do a Monte Carlo simulation, you model a system with a vast number of realizations, each with its own unique trajectory. Between them, they map out the phase space of the problem and return an approximation to its solution.

Maybe the great variety and inequality in human life is a vast mapping of the space of all possible human experience. And, when it is over, all those who have partaken of the grace in Christ will join in a great Reunion, in which we will hearken reverently as each in turn tells the story of his particular trajectory, and what it taught him about the human experience.

His Majesty opened both eyes at this point, with a wicked grin.

And perhaps you’re just trying to excuse your unconscionable lifestyle, instead of giving away to the poor everything that makes you better off than a Papuan pig farmer.

To paraphrase Paul: God forbid that my concept should justify gross inequality.

I don’t know all the answers. I don’t think I was meant to know all the answers. But I believe there are answers, whose ultimate revelation will compel all of us to bow the knee and confess Jesus is the Christ.

Well, now you’re just using poetry to fill the gaps in your knowledge.

True.

So?

*For our British cousins: A popular American board game, Monopoly, includes a “get out of jail free” card as one of its gimmicks.