This Ignorant Peasant
The edges of faith and my personal reawakening.
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Several years ago I was experiencing a crisis of faith, after spending years of feeling absolutely disconnected from any spiritual reality. I was famished,1 but when I tried to search the scriptures, I found they had gone dark, there was no light. They no longer spoke to me the way they once had, now when I opened them they just laid there — dead, silent. I thirsted, but when I tried prayer, that avenue also seemed shut. When once the firmament had felt permeable, with my prayers, like incense, rising up unto the Most High — now the heavens had turned to brass. I felt cut off. It went on this way for so long that I began to wonder if the many spiritual experiences I had encountered in my life were nothing more than the product of a frenzied mind.2
As the crisis deepened, I wrestled and wrestled, and ultimately came to the moment of decision. For many years I had often spoken of faith as a choice. I had reasoned that since faith was a commandment, this meant that it could be obeyed or disobeyed, and that whatever else faith was, it was at least a matter of agency. These words came back to me, at this moment of decision. And what I recognise now as the still, small voice whispered to me: “So, what is your decision?”
I remember where I was standing in that moment, as I wrestled again with that question before ultimately deciding that I did believe in God, and I did believe in Jesus Christ, and — against all odds — I did in fact believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. That last point surprised me most of all in that moment. Whatever other unresolved issues still remained to be wrestled with, I actually did believe in the Book of Mormon. I believed in it because I believed in Christ, and to give up that book would mean giving up too much of Him.
… And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ, and he hath given them unto me; and they teach all men that they should do good.
A mighty change
Everything changed after that. As soon as I had settled that in my mind and heart, the Lord immediately went to work, proving all His words to me. The brassy barrier vanished, the heavens were open again. The scriptures sprung back to life, the light returned to them again. But it wasn’t as it was before my crisis, it returned with more, much more, than I had enjoyed prior. It began to change me in profound ways, I was seeing things in the scriptures I had never seen before, I was enjoying prayer in ways and to a degree I had not before experienced. I truly began to hunger and thirst.
I forget the precise proximity, but it followed somewhat soon after all this transpired, that I was seeking an answer to a particularly vexing civil matter. I soon received a definitive and unambiguous answer… but not to the question I was asking. It was then made clear to me that I was asking the wrong question. You see, I had just received an assignment to speak in sacrament meeting. I was assigned no topic, but I had one in mind. The Lord, however, was of a different mind.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
I now had my assignment, it was not the talk I had intended to give, but it was now abundantly clear that I must prepare to give it nonetheless. Now, I had not been in the habit of writing down talks. Since the days of my mission, where I had made a concerted effort to overcome the faithlessness and fear which I experienced in this regard, I had always prepared, but then stood and spoke without notes of any kind. But now, in addition to a subject not of my choosing, I felt directed toward an approach similarly non-discretionary. My family could attest to the extent to which this assignment harrowed me up. For three weeks I wrote and rewrote into the early hours of the morning, producing as many as five major draft revisions, even making edits the night before it was to be delivered. The result was this talk:
If you have read it, then it may come as no surprise to you that it landed somewhat controversially. Among the criticisms I received was that I had quoted old prophets, with no quotation more recent than twenty years ago. The suggestion — sometimes implicit and at others, explicit — was that I had had to go back that far to find anyone who agreed with my own outdated view on the subject.
I have to admit that this criticism caught me a little off guard. The decision to quote old prophets had been a deliberate one, but simply for the dual purpose of demonstrating both prophetic foresight and the lateness of the hour. But if Kimball’s remarks were considered to be alienating, then I am certain they would have found the scriptures the Lord used to convince me to speak on this subject, most disagreeable. Besides, I wasn’t quite sure what precisely the expiry date was on prophetic utterance. Nor what it was precisely that had changed in the utterances of our most modern prophets.
But my recent experiences had left me with a more ready humility than might have otherwise been the case, and so I determined to read through all of President Nelson’s General Conference talks given since he became president of the Church. I attempted to get at the core of each by distilling each down to as concise a single statement as I could. I then proceeded to merge these and distill them down to a single concise statement representative of his message for a given conference. And finally, merge and distill them again, until I had arrived at a single statement that approximated the essential theme of his entire presidency to date, or at least, what I had gleaned from it. This was the result:
We live in the days foretold. Israel is being gathered in preparation for the Lord’s return. Prepare our hearts to love God and Jesus Christ more than anyone or anything else. We must learn to hear Him, to part the veil and be taught by Him. Time in the temple will help more than any other thing. Make and keep covenants to be ready for His coming.
Another mighty change
If my previous experiences were transformative — and they certainly were — they were hardly to be compared to the transformation that began to take place in me as a result of this undertaking. For while I had changed a great deal in a very short time, there were some things which I had not yet come around on.
I had gained very little from General Conference for years, it was part of the difficulty I was facing. I had once anticipated Conference eagerly, particularly as I began to see many signs in the world. I wanted to know what the brethren would say. But was disappointed each time. Each time I found it numbingly mundane. With what seemed to me, a nauseatingly giddy optimism, at odds with the increasing tumult of the world and its celebration of wickedness. I began to feel that they just mustn’t be able to see and I became more disengaged and further disillusioned with each passing conference.
Of course, it was I who was blind. It was me who was both hard of hearing and hard of heart, that I could not understand. With freshly opened eyes, unstopped ears, and a softer heart, I now saw and heard and felt many things I had not before. President Nelson had actually been amazingly direct and plain about what time we were in and what it was that we would soon be called upon to face, and was urgent in his pleas:
I plead with you… [do] the spiritual work to find out for yourselves, and please do it now. Time is running out.
—President Russell M. Nelson, Come, Follow Me, Apr 2019
But there was also a great deal of optimism, I hadn’t imagined that. He was certainly aware of the state of the world and was under no delusion that the world was somehow going to get easier and lovelier all of a sudden, by any earthly efforts. His optimism was not drawn from any delusion. No, President Nelson’s optimism came from his faith in Jesus Christ, He who overcame all things and who will put all enemies under His feet. His optimism came because of His confidence in the Lord and his actual knowledge of the Lord’s will for His people. He knew that if we, as a people, could become willing to let God prevail, then the Lord’s will, will work for us. And if the Lord be for us, who can stand against us.
President Nelson also knew what would be of most benefit to us in preparing ourselves for the time ahead, how it is that we align ourselves to the will of God, and how we obtain power with Him, to overcome the world. As I read talk after talk, one theme came to the fore quickly, and was repeated more often and more emphatically than any other single principle I observed:
My dear brothers and sisters, here is my promise. Nothing will help you more to hold fast to the iron rod than worshipping in the temple as regularly as your circumstances permit. Nothing will protect you more as you encounter the world’s mists of darkness. Nothing will bolster your testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement or help you understand God’s magnificent plan more. Nothing will soothe your spirit more during times of pain. Nothing will open the heavens more. Nothing!
—President Russell M. Nelson, Rejoice in the Gift of Priesthood Keys, Apr 2024
Not surprisingly, during my time of crisis I had not been attending the temple either. I possessed a recommend, but I had let the two years of its validity pass with nearly no use at all. I stood convicted and ashamed. I repented and immediately began going to the temple as often as my circumstances would permit.
Once again, everything I had ever enjoyed about the temple, the peace and stillness, the sacredness and the symbols, all came flooding back. But once again, it wasn’t as it was before my crisis, it returned with more, much more, than I had enjoyed prior. Once again, it began to change me in profound ways, I was seeing things in the ceremony I had never seen before, I was enjoying a greater degree of light and understanding than I had before experienced. The hunger and thirst increased further still. My old burdens, the grievances I had collected, they all began to fall away, and everything about the gospel of our Lord became delicious to me. Now, I was all in. Now, I wanted to come to Him with my whole soul.3 And now, I began to share President Nelson’s giddy optimism.
Being put in order
Previous to this, I had struggled to reconcile the temple and its ordinances with the idea that the Book of Mormon contained the fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. By struggle, I do not mean to say that it troubled my testimony in any — put it on my shelf — type of way. I simply didn’t understand. If the Book of Mormon contained the fulness of the gospel, and the temple was part of that fulness, I thought that I should expect to see more temple within its pages. It turns out that my blindness knew no bounds.
For one of the most significant realisations I’ve come to as a result of my time in the temple, is that the temple is in fact, all over the scriptures, including the Book of Mormon. So much so, that I see it as a very real possibility that every page of scripture might be profitably read within a temple context. The complexity and the beauty with which this tapestry is woven across scripture, language, culture, and cosmology, the way it traverses symbols and ordinances and covenants and temple liturgy, is absolutely breathtaking. It is beyond the skill of man to devise, and unless my eyes had been opened, I could never have discovered it by searching alone. The temple truely is a place of eternal order, I saw it now. And the more I viewed the scriptures and the temple as extensions of one another, or as one cohesive whole, the better I came to understand both.
Participation in the instruction and ordinances of the temple enables ‘one to get one’s bearings from the universe.’ The temple is the link between the seeming chaos … and the beautiful configuration (cosmos) and permanence of the eternal order. ‘The mystique of the temple lies in its extension to other worlds; it is the reflection on earth of the heavenly order, and the power that fills it comes from above.’
—Don Norton, Foreword to Temple and Cosmos: Beyond this Ignorant Present by Hugh Nibley
Not only could I see the order better than ever before, I now felt myself stepping into that order — being put in order.4 I was being oriented, not just ritually, but actually. The temple was following me out into the natural world, the scriptures were making their abode in the fleshy tables of my heart, and the power that fills the house of the Lord felt as though it was starting to fill me also. I felt I was coming to know Jesus Christ and the Father who sent Him.
To paraphrase President Nelson: Nothing was helping me more to hold fast to the iron rod than worshipping in the temple as regularly as my circumstances permitted. Nothing was protecting me more as I encountered the world’s mists of darkness. Nothing was bolstering my testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement or helping me understand God’s magnificent plan more. Nothing was soothing my spirit more during times of pain. Nothing was opening the heavens more. Nothing!
I have learned more about the temple, have been changed more through my worship therein, in the past few years, than I have in the twenty years of attendance prior. This is all the more remarkable considering that for most of that time, my local temple had been closed for renovations and I had had very limited ability to travel to worship in other temples. The Lord’s mercy and grace are great indeed, and His hand is not shortened, least of all in bringing to pass His work and His glory — even for this ignorant peasant.5
For the foreseeable future, all my writings here will be a reflection of what I have learned, am learning, and am seeking to learn about the Lord of glory, as He reveals Himself through the covenants, ordinances, and rituals of His Holy House.
Your brother in Christ,
The Quiet Dissident
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Amos 8:11 — Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord:
Alma 30:16 — Ye look forward and say that ye see a remission of your sins. But behold, it is the effect of a frenzied mind; and this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so.
Omni 1: 26 — And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should come unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him, and continue in fasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved.
Doctrine & Covenants 88:119–120 — Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God; That your incomings may be in the name of the Lord; that your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord; that all your salutations may be in the name of the Lord, with uplifted hands unto the Most High.
I am aware that Hugh Nibley’s work is titled Ignorant Present, I have adapted this to peasant for my own purposes, as a way of representing the increasing humility I have experienced throughout my process of cosmological reorientation.