The Importance of the Law of Consecration

The Law of Consecration points to our future economic life, and a spiritual task of America. That the Law’s realization within 19th Century USA was a failure, should not mean that the law itself is not important. This community (the LDS Church) was the seed-bed, the planting box, for the seed to grow into a mature, healthy, impulse for the economic life. Its fruit would spread beyond its incubator, into the wider community, region, nation, and into the global economy. At least, that was the ideal, the potential. As we know, the LDS Church failed as an incubator, and it no longer considers the deeper spiritual meaning and potential of the Law to be relevant. Living the Law of Consecration today merely means gifting your ‘time, talents, money’ etc to the Church, in other words, it has become what we would otherwise call ‘charity’.

Regardless of what it has become, what it is in reality is a living, breathing, spiritual impulse. And it continues to seek out fertile soil to grow. The spiritual impulse of the Law of Consecration will not be cut off by the reigning forces of this world, regardless of how much the LDS Church have themselves succumbed to them. It is America’s destiny to work with economic forces in a spiritual way. Modern capitalism, which the Church has embraced, is a caricature of a truly sacramental approach to economics.

Modern capitalism is an entirely logical outcome of our historical spiritual development. It was/is our destiny to develop a strong I-consciousness, which gives rise to our ego-centric view. That capitalism is based upon the ‘virtue of egotism’ can thus be understood, when we place it in developmental context. Capitalism is all about ‘me’ and making profit often purely for for the sake of making profit (greed, i.e. feeding the ego). Profit is necessary, but when it becomes a goal in itself we succumb to it, we become captured by it. That ‘it’ is a real spiritual being, the bible calls Mammon. Mammon thrives in our modern economic life; he has captured many.

However, America’s spiritual heritage is rich with guidance on these matters. As one example, it was John F Kennedy who said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. In other words, what does my community really need? What is the real economic need that I can meet? How can I, in concert with others who also recognize this need, work together to address this? The other persons real need thus becomes the motive. I know that my own economic needs can only be met by others, so I too must meet there economic needs. Marketing of course distorts this, creates false markets, creates false needs. But we can rise above that, develop insight to the real economy, the living economic life.

The Law of Consecration (to be honest, an outdated term today) points to the spiritual destiny of America. As the Global Financial Crisis shows, these issues are pertinent. Do we have ears to hear?

Spiritual Self-Reliance

Those of us who are only able to rely upon the witness or teachings of people who have spiritual experiences face the problem of spiritual discernment. In his October 2010 conference talk, Elder Oaks states that while we ourselves can receive revelation, if we do receive revelation and it contradicts what the Brethren themselves have received, then we are told that we are wrong; that our revelation is of the devil!  Respectfully, I disagree with his position.  Firstly, the individuals who comprise the Quorum of the Twelve and the First Presidency are not infallible. Ergo, they – like the rest of us – are not perfect, and can quite possibly be wrong!   And on this occasion Elder Oaks is in error, and a dangerous one at that too [1].

Elder Christofferson in his April 2010 conference talk stated that the scriptures ought to be used as the standard for distinguishing truth from error.  In my last post I mentioned some of the considerations we ought to keep in mind in relying upon any revelation (in fact, even our own revelations will be colored in some way).  Therefore, we ought not use the scriptures as a ‘standard’ per se.  If  we have our own spiritual experiences, or gain an audience with Christ, then we no longer need the scriptures to validate what we experience as truth, we have received direct validation ourselves.

This leaves us then with one thing: our own self.  We can only ever rely upon our own self, or I.  Everything else either facilitates or hinders our relationship with the divine.  We have to remind ourselves: what is the purpose for taking part in a religious community? What am I aiming for? Some of us are trying to follow Christ, to enter into His presence, and through Him, to our Heavenly Father.  Therefore, anything that comes between you and the Lord is a hindrance or an obstacle to be overcome.

The Lord has asked us to take steps toward Him.  Entering His presence is an arduous task, and the spirits of hindrance do their best to divert us from this.

We need to discern these spirits, as they influence us via our own soul, and via others (no one is immune, but they thrive on not being noticed).  Despite my comments above, Elder Christofferson does have a good point: if we study the scriptures, we are given insight into how things unfold in our time.  If we take heed to the lessons, we are armed with knowledge about the tactics of the spirits of hindrance.

[1] Elder Oaks states that while we ourselves can receive revelation, if we do receive revelation and it contradicts what the Brethren themselves have received, then we are told that we are wrong; that our revelation is of the devil.  What this means is that the standard by which we assess the truthfulness of revelation is no longer the Holy Spirit, or the fact of Christ’s appearance to us and His words. No, it is the Brethren. It is a small group of men – fallen, fallible human beings who on the one hand deny their infallibility (via anonymous press release), while expecting us to take everything they say as the truth. What is wrong with this picture?

The challenge of the written word

There are several ways we can learn about matters of the spiritual life, such as the being of man, the Mystery of the Atonement, the creation of the world, or even mundane things such as the spiritual properties of plants.  We can develop the spiritual capacities to enter into spiritual realms and thereby uncover certain truths for oneself; secondly, we can receive revelations from spiritual beings as an act of Grace; thirdly, we can accept the witness or teachings of people belonging to either category above.  

We have to accept the possibility that the revelation, either in the way it was received or in the way it was understood by the receiver and then communicated, has come to us coloured by the disposition of the person who received it.  It may be coloured by that persons vocabulary, their temperament, their worldview, their thought system, their psychology.  There are many factors that influence how we view and understand the world that we live in, and the spiritual is no different. 

We therefore ought to view scripture for what it is: communications through revelators or seers, that are coloured by the person who received them.  Moreover, people of different times do not have the same soul-spiritual faculties.  Our relationship with the divine changes over time.  Just think how different we were as children, compared to adults. Similarly, humanity’s relationship with the divine changes through time. Revelations written down a thousand years ago were written by someone with a different relationship to the divine than what we have today.  In regard to the Old and New Testaments, we must also factor in the translators – for their translations too are coloured in one way or another by their own selves.  Even those in authoritative positions making interpretations that we are expected to take with some weight, are coloured by their own personality, schooling, environment etc.

This is not to down play the importance of scripture.  Far from it, scripture contains a wealth of wisdom that humanity has yet to uncover.  But we ought not confuse the spiritual experience, the spiritual process of being enlightened, the revelatory process with the fixed written words that we have. The written word is the result of the experience, but is not the experience itself.  The revelatory process is a living spiritual event; the written word is a fixed residue.  We should not idolise a book, but seek a living spiritual relationship as real as the ones we have in this world.

The written word challenges the reader to revitalise the fixed, dead word, and to lift their thinking up back into the spiritual realm – to behold the truth for themselves.  A seer is one who sees into the realm of the divine. We ought to seek to develop such capacities for ourselves, then we too can uncover the truths that the written revelations point too.  When we rely unduly upon the written word, we run the risk of distancing ourselves from the divine world, which is always living, fresh, vibrant.  The scriptures are a medium, and not the end.  We have to uncover the spiritual truths, we have to take the steps into the divine spiritual worlds.  We do this through developing our thinking; studying the results of spiritual research is the first step on this path.