“And is it true?”

“Church Issues Statement Following Tragedy in Australia”  For what it’s worth, my wife and I know the area just a bit.  I’ve been there a few times.  I believe that we’ve walked across the specific bridge from which the two gunmen were firing.

I was, sadly, not at all surprised to learn that the shooters at Bondi Beach bear Muslim names, but I was very pleased to discover that the heroic man who disarmed one of them is named Ahmed el-Ahmed.  The owner of a fruit shop and the father of two, Mr. el-Ahmed was evidently shot in the arm and in the hand, but he probably saved several lives.  “We saw the action of a brave person,” commented Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “and it turns out it was a brave Muslim, and I salute him for stopping one of the terrorists from killing innocent Jews.”  Here is my translation of Qur’an 5:32:

That is why We ordained for the children of Israel that whoever takes a life — unless as a punishment for murder or for spreading corruption in the earth — it is as if he had killed all of humankind, and whoever saves a life, it is as if he had saved all of humankind.

The headlines from Australia and from Providence, Rhode Island, have been discouraging, as so much of the news in this fallen world so often is.  But today is the first day of Hanukkah, and Hanukkah is about the triumph of light over darkness.  This is expressed (during the darkest time of the year) in the lighting of the menorah candles, symbolizing victory over oppression and the ultimate triumph of spirituality over materialism.  It is about spiritual resilience, about faith, about how the cumulative addition of small lights dispels great darkness, and about perseverance against overwhelming odds. 

I’m unaware of any Jewish readers of this blog, but I’ll say it to everybody:  Happy Hanukkah!  I was hoping to put our menorah up tonight in any case, but now I’m absolutely determined to do it.

There was great glee and guffawing in certain circles when, at the conclusion of October’s semi-annual General Conference, President Dallin H. Oaks announced no new temples.  Maybe, some hopefully said, this would be the end of Latter-day Saint temple-building, at least for a while.  However, the pause has turned out to be rather short-lived.  And the announcement suggests a new approach to announcing the construction of temples:  “Temple to Be Built in Portland, Maine: The temple will be the 383rd worldwide and the first in Maine”  I’m absolutely delighted.

The quotation from C. S. Lewis in the image above is a close paraphrase of similar statements that have often been neglected but that are widely distributed across ancient Christianity.  It is well known that Latter-day Saints teach a doctrine of “exaltation” or human deification.  And I want to suggest here, in line with Brother Lewis, that the doctrine of exaltation is intimately related to the event commemorated at Christmas — and also that it was present, if not yet articulated, from the earliest days of the Restoration.

For example, 2 Nephi 32:2-3 seems to suggest an implicit doctrine of human deification in the Book of Mormon — a text from which, critics have alleged, the supposedly Nauvoo-period teaching of human exaltation is wholly absent:

Do ye not remember that I said unto you that after ye had received the Holy Ghost ye could speak with the tongue of angels? And now, how could ye speak with the tongue of angels save it were by the Holy Ghost?

Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost; wherefore, they speak the words of Christ.

A far clearer passage in that respect,, though, is 3 Nephi 28:10, where the Nephite disciples are promised that “ye shall be even as I am, and I am even as the Father; and the Father and I are one.”

I see this as a close analogy to the transitive property of equivalence known from mathematics — according to which, if a = b and b = c, it necessarily follows that a = c.   Thus, if the disciples will be like the Son, and the Son is like the Father, the disciples will be like the Father.

And there can be no disputation about the fact that a doctrine of human deification is present in the written account of Joseph Smith’s and Sidney Rigdon’s vision of the three degrees of glory in February 1832, less than two years after the founding of the Church and more than twelve years prior to 7 April 1844, when Joseph gave his famous King Follet Discourse in Nauvoo:

They are they into whose hands the Father has given all things—They are they who are priests and kings, who have received of his fulness, and of his glory; and are priests of the Most High, after the order of Melchizedek, which was after the order of Enoch, which was after the order of the Only Begotten Son.

Wherefore, as it is written, they are gods, even the sons of God—Wherefore, all things are theirs, whether life or death, or things present, or things to come, all are theirs and they are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.  And they shall overcome all things.  (Doctrine and Covenants 76:55-60)

I think that it’s an appropriate time for me to share with you a favorite poem by Sir John Betjeman, who served as poet laureate of England from 1972 until his death in 1984.  It’s entitled “Christmas”:

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

And it’s time for another piece of favorite Christmas music:  I’ve always loved Miklos Rozsa’s score for the movie Ben Hur.  And his “Star of Bethlehem” is, in my opinion, one of its two highlights.  It’s just slight more than a minute and a half long: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0cFMotGzUs