The Snowflake Arizona Temple (LDS.org). \u00a0Among other important things, temples \u2014 each denominated \u201cthe House of the Lord\u201d or even \u201cthe mountain of the Lord\u201d \u2014 are places where Latter-day Saints enter into very solemn covenants with each other and with and before God, angels, and human witnesses.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I continue to read\u00a0David Brooks,\u00a0The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Random House, 2019), I\u2019m struck by how much of his discussion about \u201ccommitments\u201d seems to mirror Latter-day Saint thinking about \u201ccovenants,\u201d and by how well a committed Latter-day Saint life matches the kind of life (on his \u201cSecond Mountain\u201d) that he is commending to his readers:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
A commitment isn\u2019t just love and a promise, of course. \u00a0It is love and promise put under law. \u00a0In living out a commitment, each party understands the fickleness of feelings, so they bind their future selves to specific obligations. \u00a0Spouses love each other, but they bind themselves down with a legal, public, and often religious marriage commitment, to limit their future choices for those times when they get on each other\u2019s nerves. \u00a0Curious people may read books, but they also enroll in universities to make sure they follow a supervised course of study for at least a few years into the future. \u00a0Spiritual people may experience transcendence, but understand that for most people spirituality lasts and deepens only if it is lived out within that maddening community called institutionalized religion. \u00a0Religions embed the love of God in holidays, stories, practices, and rituals, and make them solid and enduring. \u00a0(56)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our commitments give us our identity. \u00a0They are how we introduce ourselves to strangers. \u00a0They are the subjects that make our eyes shine in conversation. \u00a0They are what give our lives constancy and coherence. \u00a0As Hannah Arendt put it, \u201cWithout being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to achieve the amount of identity and continuity which together produce a \u2018person\u2019 about whom a story can be told; each of us would be condemned to wander helplessly and without direction in the darkness of his own lonely heart, caught in its ever-changing moods, contradictions, and equivocalities.\u201d \u00a0Identity is not formed alone. \u00a0Identity is always formed by joining a dyad with something else. \u00a0(57)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our commitments give us a sense of purpose. \u00a0(57)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our commitments allow us to move to a higher level of freedom. . . . \u00a0You have to chain yourself to the piano and practice for year after year if you want to have the freedom to really play. \u00a0You have to chain yourself \u00a0to a certain set of virtuous habits so you don\u2019t become slave to your destructive desires \u2014 the desire for alcohol, the desire for approval, the desire to lie in bed all day.<\/span><\/p>\nAs the theologian Tim Keller puts it, real freedom \u201cis not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones.\u201d \u00a0(58)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Our commitments build our moral character. . . .<\/span><\/p>\nCharacter is not something you build sitting in a room thinking about the difference between right and wrong and about your own willpower. \u00a0Character emerges from our commitments. \u00a0If you want to inculcate character in someone else, teach them how to form commitments \u2014 temporary ones in childhood, provisional ones in youth, permanent ones in adulthood. \u00a0Commitments are the school for moral formation. \u00a0(59)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
These passages from David Brooks and his sources remind me of still other passages from other writers:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Martin Luther, for instance, having spent his early years as a monk and a celibate priest before he married the former nun Katherine Von Bora, viewed marriage as a school of character, in which God uses the challenges of daily family life and childrearing to sanctify us. \u00a0Luther\u2019s famous biographer Roland Bainton put it this way:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this sense it displaces the monastery, which had been regarded by the Church as the training ground of virtue and the surest way to heaven. Luther in rejecting all earning of salvation did not exclude exercise in fortitude, patience, charity, and humility. \u00a0Family life is exacting.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s a passage from\u00a0Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that has long stuck in my mind:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201eEs\u00a0bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, ein Charakter in dem Strom der Welt.\u201c<\/span><\/p>\nTalent is nurtured in solitude, but character is formed in the currents of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
And, finally, a thought from the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u1f26\u03b8\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f00\u03bd\u03b8\u03c1\u03ce\u03c0\u1ff3 \u03b4\u03b1\u03af\u03bc\u03c9\u03bd<\/span><\/p>\nCharacter is destiny.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from Phoenix, Arizona<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 As I continue to read\u00a0David Brooks,\u00a0The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life\u00a0(New York: Random House, 2019), I\u2019m struck by how much of his discussion about \u201ccommitments\u201d seems to mirror Latter-day Saint thinking about \u201ccovenants,\u201d and by how well a committed Latter-day Saint life matches the kind of life (on his \u201cSecond […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1809,8600,2325,8597,8609,2905,8603,8606,641,1676],"class_list":["post-82974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-commitment","tag-covenant","tag-covenants","tag-david-brooks","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-promise","tag-promises","tag-temple","tag-temples"],"yoast_head":"\n
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