![\"Eine](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2015\/02\/800px-Galilee_from_Beatitudes_Mt_0872_507825169.jpg\")
<\/a>(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are the pure in heart,\u201d says Matthew 5:8 in the King James Version of the Bible, \u201cfor they shall see God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whenever I think of this particular beatitude, I always think of the title of a devotional essay or sermon by the great Danish philosopher S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855):\u00a0 Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing.<\/em><\/p>\n And, of course, I recall the famous words of James 1:5-8 \u2014 the first verse of which was of such pivotal importance at the very beginning of the Restoration:<\/p>\n If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.\u00a0 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.\u00a0 For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.\u00a0 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.\u00a0 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I like a passage from the ancient apocryphal Gospel of Thomas:<\/p>\n Jesus said: It is impossible for a man to mount two horses and to stretch two bows, and it is impossible for a servant to serve two masters . . .\u201d[iv]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n C. S. Lewis used to ask this<\/em> question:\u00a0 How will we ever be able to speak with the Lord face to face until we have decided which face to present to him?\u00a0 That\u2019s the background, in fact, to the title of his 1956 novel Till We Have Faces<\/em>, which is relatively little known among his works but which was one of his own personal favorites.<\/p>\n We find it extraordinarily difficult to be single-minded.\u00a0 Our motives are very often mixed.\u00a0 The speaker in a Young Single Adult ward may sincerely want to deliver a talk that will honor God and inspire the congregation, but he may also wish to impress the attractive girl who generally sits about five rows back on the right.<\/p>\n And, of course, sometimes our internal conflicts are a little less innocent.\u00a0 A famous passage from Augustine\u2019s Confessions<\/em> illustrates this well, as he addresses God:<\/p>\n But I wretched, most wretched, in the very commencement of my early youth, had begged chastity of Thee, and said, \u201cGive me chastity and continency, only not yet.\u201d\u00a0 For I feared lest Thou shouldest hear me soon, and soon cure me of the disease of concupiscence, which I wished to have satisfied, rather than extinguished.[ii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n And a more innocent but still rather amusing anecdote comes to mind from my own personal experience many, many years ago:\u00a0 When I had just entered the old Mission Home in Salt Lake City, before transferring down to the Language Training Mission in Provo, we went one Sunday morning over to the Tabernacle on Temple Square for a performance by the Tabernacle Choir.\u00a0 As we stood in line waiting to enter, several very attractive young women walked by.\u00a0 One of the new missionaries turned around and stared at them with obvious and lingering interest.\u00a0 Another missionary good naturedly chided him: \u201cEyes right, elder!\u201d\u00a0 The embarrassed missionary responded instantly with a witty (and sexist) comeback that I\u2019ve often thought about in the years since.\u00a0 \u201cI may be fasting,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I can still look at the menu!\u201d\u00a0 And he was precisely right.\u00a0 There is no law against reading menus during a fast.\u00a0 But how stupid it is to do so!\u00a0 How much more difficult it makes fasting!\u00a0 How self-defeating! If you\u2019ve decided to fast, you probably shouldn\u2019t be lingering around Big Bob\u2019s Famous Grill to take in the savory aromas.<\/p>\n Purity of heart may well require some very difficult choices.\u00a0 Here is an ancient though non-scriptural Christian passage that poses a real challenge and that merits future analysis and \u201cunpacking\u201d:<\/p>\n Jesus said:\u00a0 Whoever does not hate his father and his mother in My way will not be able to be a [disciple] to me.\u00a0 And whoever does [not] love [his father] and his mother in My way will not be able to be a [disciple] to me . . .\u201d[v]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Of course, Latter-day Saints would probably want to clarify that true purity of heart involves willing one right<\/em> thing, or perhaps even the one most right and most important<\/em> thing.\u00a0 It certainly is conceivable that one could be perfectly focused on evil, and this would be, after a fashion, a sort of purity of heart.\u00a0 But it\u2019s not what the Lord wants from us.\u00a0 I think, in this connection, of Bertrand Russell\u2019s description of Vladimir Lenin \u2014 which I\u2019ll share in a future entry.[i]<\/a><\/p>\n As to the idea of seeing God\u2019s face, we Latter-day Saints take this very literally.\u00a0 We are unashamed anthropomorphists.\u00a0 It is true that God is, in a very real sense, omnipresent via his Spirit:<\/p>\n Cleave a (piece of) wood, I am there; lift up the stone and you will find Me there.\u201d[iii]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But God really has a real face, and modern scripture makes the same promise that Matthew 5:8 makes:<\/p>\n Verily, thus saith the Lord: It shall come to pass that every soul who forsaketh his sins and cometh unto me, and calleth on my name, and obeyeth my voice, and keepeth my commandments, shall see my face and know that I am.\u00a0 (Doctrine and Covenants 93:1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But what does it mean to be \u201cpure in heart\u201d?\u00a0 Here are a few preliminary clues:<\/p>\n Zion is defined as \u201cthe pure in heart\u201d (Doctrine and Covenants 97:21).<\/p>\n And the Lord called his people ZION, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.\u00a0 (Moses 7:18.)<\/p>\n And again I say unto you, let every man esteem his brother as himself.<\/p>\n For what man among you having twelve sons, and is no respecter of them, and they serve him obediently, and he saith unto the one: Be thou clothed in robes and sit thou here; and to the other: Be thou clothed in rags and sit thou there \u2014 and looketh upon his sons and saith I am just?<\/p>\n Behold, this I have given unto you as a parable, and it is even as I am.\u00a0 I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine.\u00a0 (Doctrine and Covenants 38:25-27)<\/p>\n [I]n your temporal things you shall be equal, and this not grudgingly, otherwise the abundance of the manifestations of the Spirit shall be withheld.\u00a0 (Doctrine and Covenants 70:14)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For future reference, look at the concepts of atonement\/purgation\/purification, and re-read\u00a0Dallin H. Oaks, Purity of Heart<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [i]<\/a>\u00a0 Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays<\/em>?<\/p>\n [ii]<\/a>\u00a0 Augustine, Confessions<\/em>, 8:7.<\/p>\n [iii]<\/a>\u00a0 A. Guillaumont, H.-Ch. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till, and Yassah \u2018Abd Al Mas\u00ac\u03a9, trans., The Gospel according to Thomas<\/em> (Leiden: E. J. Brill and New York: Harper and Brothers, 1959), 43.<\/p>\n