When the Means Becomes the End

Elder Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve has likened the fullness of the gospel to a piano keyboard. He has told us that a person could be “attracted by a single key,” such as a doctrine he or she wants to hear “played over and over again. … Some members of the Church who should know better pick out a hobby key or two and tap them incessantly, to the irritation of those around them. They can dull their own spiritual sensitivities. They lose track that there is a fullness of the gospel … [which they reject] in preference to a favorite note. This becomes exaggerated and distorted, leading them away into apostasy” (Ensign, December 1971, pages 41–42).  ...Beware of a hobby key. If you tap one key to the exclusion or serious detriment of the full harmony of the gospel keyboard, Satan can use your strength to bring you down.  (Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, BYU 18 Stake Fireside, June 1992)

Now, I'm going to get some flack for this, but I'm going to say it anyway.  I think Elder Packer and Elder Oaks, quoted above are right on in their assessment of a tendency that is quite common in the Kingdom.

My first real exposure to is was as a Scout Leader.  Typically, men go into Scouting reluctantly, if not kicking and screaming.  Getting them trained is like pulling teeth.  Still a goodly number do get trained, go to Wood Badge and catch the fire of the program.  It gets in their blood.  Round Table Meetings and return trips to leadership training as trainers add fuel to the fire.  For some Scouting becomes everything.  I was called to various Scouting positions much of my adult life.  What I've described happened to me to a large degree.  I still love Scouting, it is a good program, good for boys and good for men.  The problem becomes when Scouters play only that key on the gospel keyboard.  It is not only annoying to others it is spiritually dangerous to the person.  I knew one man who was seriously struggling over whether to be buried in his Temple clothes or his Scout uniform.  A clear case of the means becoming the end in one confused mind.  These brethren were often heard criticizing the Church for corrupting Scouting or not allowing it to function as it was designed.  They seem to have forgotten that the Church selected Scouting as a means to their own ends, not to become the end in and of itself.

When I was called away from Scouting, I was treated, by this type of Scouter, as traitor to the cause.  They repeatedly approached me with attempts at "guilt tripping" me back into the program.  "You're a Silver Beaver*, for crying out loud, how can you turn your back on Scouting?"  They never seemed to understand my explanation that while I gave 100% to Scouting when I was there, I am now giving 100% to my new calling, which is also an important facet of the true church.  It has been ten years now, since I last served in a Scouting position and I still detect bitterness among some of my brethren for abandoning my post.  I did not abandon it, I was called away from it.

What I learned in Scouting has enhanced my performance as a husband, father, grandfather and in my current church service.  I'm thankful for that experience.

Now, I've seen this same sort of single keyed focus among people who serve in other corners of the Kingdom.  Genealogy, Temple Work, Missionary Work, food storage, and Word of Wisdom, to name a few.

Last night I discovered it again at my LDS Addiction Recovery Meeting.  My regular group has become more and more disconcerting to me.  I couldn't put my finger on the problem.  I just have become uncomfortable there.  I haven't attended for a couple of months.  Not that I think I'm cured or anything.  I expect to need support in my recovery, for the balance of my life and perhaps beyond.  I've just been traveling and had other obligations so I haven't been as faithful as I ought to be in my attendance.  Anyway, I think my long absence made the changes more obvious and last night it became apparent to me why my heart has been unsettled at the meetings. For too many, especially the leaders, the program seems to have become the end rather than the means.  I can see why this might happen.  Anything that has made such a big difference in someone's life attracts a great deal of loyalty, even adoration.  Perhaps this is what blinds us to the danger of singling out that one thing and ignoring the rest of life.

Like too many Scouters became more loyal to BSA than to the Church, many at ARP appear to be more loyal to AA than to the Church.  Like the Scouters who concerned me; too often I hear ARP participants, complaining and criticizing the way the Church operates the program while praising Alcoholics Anonymous.  They too, seem to have forgotten that the Church chose the 12 Steps as a means, not as an end.  More and more meetings quote from the Big Book and less and less from the Scriptures.  It was not always thus.  Last night, for the first time in my recollection, the leaders didn't even get the scriptures out of the library.  For some, the program is becoming more important than recovery.  I can't help but wonder if they're not just switching addictions.

I said before that I expect to need support from a 12 Step group for the remainder of my life.  But, I don't expect to be defined by it.  I am an addict.  But, I am also a husband, father, grandfather, servant of the Lord, friend, employee, lover of life.  I am not about to let my addiction define my life.  I'm getting flack for this.  Warnings that bordered on threats were issued at last night's meeting.  That's only going to make me more reluctant to attend.  But worse, it makes me worry about my friends who've been doing so well.  With Elder Oaks, I pray our strengths don't become our downfall.

Now, let me say, that while these things worry and concern me.  I'm talking about people I love and admire, who've overcome enormous affliction.  I don't want to seem critical of them, just concerned for the direction they seem to be going.  I wish I knew how to call it to their attention without causing more harm than good.  Any advice?

*An award that was premature, undeserved and unsought

Growing Up in Himni Utah - Episode 12

Miss Cornelia Green and Ronnie Hulet

The Omner Valley Jr. High, had been the High School before the new one was built. Before it was the High School it had been the Omner Valley Stake Acadamy. It was built in about 1915 and showed it’s age. It was a three story brick structure. Holes had been drilled through the walls and long pipes installed with large plates on the outside of the brick. These were intended to bolt the whole place together. A large tube had been retrofitted to the northside third floor as a fire escape. The upper entrance was always locked to keep us from horsing around in it, so we’d climb up from the bottom and slide down anyway. We always wondered if the person with the key would be there if a fire ever occurred.
OVJH had a combination auditorium/gymnasium. The gym floor doubled as a stage. The auditorum seating, including a large balcony, accomodated the entire student body and half the town. If you sat too far to the left though, the curtains hid the basketball bankboard on that end. Same thing on the right. Butch Farley’s gang loved sitting in the balcony with pea shooters during basketball games.
It was in that auditorium that I saw the second most amazing athletic feat of my life. My pal Ronnie Hulet was probably the greatest, natural born athlete I ever met. He never went out for sports, to the dismay of all the coaches, but the things he could do were legendary. In Omner Valley Jr. High, he was fastest up the rope, impossible to hit with a dodge ball and could do triple the pull ups of anyone in the eighth grade. One day I walked into the auditorium just in time to see him standing on the rim of the basketball hoop. He dived, and I mean head first, on to the bare hardwood floor. I thought I was watching a suicide attempt! When he reached the floor though, he completed the slickest roll you ever saw and came up standing on his feet, a broad grin spread clear across his face. The coaches forbade Ronnie from ever doing it again; but secretly they bragged about him every chance they got. The funny thing is, he never played sports because his Mom didn’t want him to get hurt.
The school got a new English teacher that year. Her name was Miss Cornelia Green. She was reported to have been an accomplished journalist with the Chicago Tribune. No one could ever explain though, why an accomplished journalist would leave her career in Chicago to teach brats at Omner Valley Jr. High. She was a big boned, manly woman. She dyed her hair blonde. The dark roots of her coarse tangle of shoulder length mane were always showing. She had little cosmetic talent and her make up looked like it amounted to weeks of layers. It was often caked on so thick it cracked, as did her bright red lip stick. She had a black mole right on the tip of her nose which always managed to shine through by noon. Quite frankly, looking back, I honestly wonder if she wasn’t really George C. Scott hiding out in the Witness Protection Program.
Miss Green managed no degree of classroom discipline. This was not for lack of effort. One time she went to smite me on the back of the hand with a ruler. I managed to catch the ruler and we shook it between us for a few moments before she let her end go and retreated to her desk. She would storm from commotion to commotion feigning fury but wasn’t a good enough actress to pull it off. Her storming was amusing to watch though. You could see the frustration building up, then she’d rock way back on her heels as if winding up and would launch her enormous body forward in a thundering charge. More than once the teachers on the floor below had sent up delegations to plead for less commotion from our room. Their, biggest complaint? “It sounded like a herd of cattle stampeding across the floor.” We soon learned that there wasn’t a mean bone in her body and instead of loving her for it we took horrible advantage.
Finally, about half way through the year, she gave up on trying to teach us anything and resorted to reading stories and books to us. She hoped at least to pique our interest in literature. Mostly, she selected wonderful stuff and I for one, sat in wrapt attention as Sherlock Holmes or Robinson Crusoe or Jean Valjean’s adventures paraded across the stage of my imagination.
Ronnie Hulet, on the other hand, had a very hard time sitting still in any situation. To do nothing but listen to Cornelia Green read for an hour was torture for him. He’d have gladly taken P.E. seven periods a day, where he’d surely have received straight A’s. Sometimes he’d cope by drifting off to sleep. Along about the end of April though, when the weather was warming up nicely, the compulsion to be outside running overtook Ronnie. Right in the middle of Red Badge of Courage, he stood up and screamed, “I’ve had it, I can’t take this anymore!” Whereupon, he dashed across the room and dived out the second story window!
Miss Green staggered, her eyes rolled back and down she went. It was not a pretty sight. For one thing women and girls wore dresses to school in those days. When she came to, it was Ronnie who was fanning her face with a file folder. She thought she’d halucinated the whole thing. And I realized that this was the premier athletic accomplishment I’d ever witnessed.
Ronnie Hulet moved away the next Summer and I never heard of him again. Cornelia Green never returned to Himni after that year either. They say she went back to Chicago and journalism. I keep hoping someday she’ll write her version of the story. I’d like to close my eyes and listen to her read it.

Book Review - Breathless by Dean Koontz

What do you do when you're right in the middle of a good book, and Sweetie hands you Koontz's lastest novel?  I don't know about anyone else, but for me, it's drop everything and read!

This one, while not my favorite Koontz novel, by far, was pretty darn fun.  Four different stories don't come together until the last couple of chapters.  Four stories that seem utterly unrelated.  One story is a new twist on Koontz's nasty bad guy.  He's bad, too right, but he's also a bungling idiot.  Best laid plans gone completely wrong.  Of course the bad guy is a politician.  No surprise there, when did politician's best laid plans go any other way!  And, of course the politician has a tantrum when things come to their logical conclusion.

You're going to really love Dean's extensive treatise completely disproving evolution.  Careful though, I don't want any fundamentalist Christians getting too excited; there is logic involved.

Of course the central theme of the book is that things are not necessarily what they seem and that even science is evolving at such a rapid rate that we can hardly count on anything we think we know.

If you'd like to think outside the box for a few light breezy hours, pick up this book.

Why Not Me?

There are reports of so many strange unexplained phenomena.  Here and abroad unusual things transpire and are even witnessed by thousands sometimes.  How is it that I never get to see such stuff.

This week a spiral light appeared over arctic Norway.  It is pictured above.  Now, wouldn't that have been cool to see?  Back in the sixties several friends of mine, even some of worthy repute, saw UFO's in our valley.  I stayed up night after night watching and never saw a thing.  I've been to the Northwest, but never saw Sasquatch.  I've been on the Skinwalker Ranch but have never seen a skinwalker.  I've been in a haunted house but have never seen a ghost.

Do I somehow repel such things?  I've long wanted to attract strange occurrences, but the harder I try the worse I do.  I wonder if I had one front incisor removed if that would do the trick?

Now, in the interest of fairness, I have seen some pretty neat stuff.  I once saw a meteorite cross the sky that was seen from California to Colorado and from Mexico to Canada.  That was pretty neat.  Just not neat enough to be unexplainable.  Just a couple of weeks ago I watched the International Space Station cross the sky followed by the Space Shuttle.  I was moved by what that represents, but it made sense and was identified.  I'm interested in the stuff that can't be explained.  Mysterious stuff is a lot more fun and of course, mysterious.

Am I forever doomed to see swamp gas as just swamp gas?  Must I take peyote to see skinwalkers or be drunk to see UFO's?  It just doesn't seem fair that I have to miss out on all the fun.  Why am I relegated to a world that just makes sense?  Does that make sense?  I'm crazy too you know!  I want in on the action! 

Maybe I just don't have a well enough developed imagination.  I'm going to work on that.