"We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly. It is only when we raise our voices that the sparks fly and tiny molehills become great mountains of contention."
That’s
what we refer to as the doctrine of the Fortunate Fall, and we
Latter-day Saints embrace it completely.
The
Fall of Adam did not bring calamity upon souls that would otherwise
have lived in paradise for eternity; on the contrary, it set us all
upon a road whose ultimate aim is to bring us joy.
But
what in the world do we mean by “joy”?
We
know a great deal more nowadays about the transient physical states
of our bodies and brains that we call “emotions.”
We
know that rage, for instance, does not “vent” when we
express our anger — on the contrary, expressing our anger
increases it,
while those who “stifle” their anger feel far less of it
— and less stress — than those who “let it out.”
“Expressing”
our sexual desires — especially our harmful or selfish ones —
does not dissipate them, but rather numbs us so that it takes
ever-stronger stimulation to satisfy them.
In
other words, emotions are a condition of the body, and the body’s
response to emotions is often the opposite of what we expect —
or what philosophers and psychologists of earlier eras thought was
true.
So
this thing called “joy,” which is supposed to be the
purpose of the existence of mankind, is surely not a mere transient
emotional state.
If
we think of joy as referring to stimulation of the pleasure centers
of the brain, that is certainly pleasure;
but if that were the purpose of life, then there is no shortage of
drugs — not to mention hypothetical electrical-stimulus
implants — that could leave us in a state of such perfect
euphoria that we might easily die of starvation or even thirst
because we had no notion that we needed anything.
I
have heard some say that “joy,” in the scriptural sense,
is more of a spiritual phenomenon. We don’t feel it in the
body, except when in the grip of flesh-transcending rapture.
Others
even claim that real joy is postponed until the next life. But it is
my personal opinion that this is not so. Men are that they might
have joy — not eventual joy, but joy.
Nor
do I accept the neo-platonic ideal of joy as eternal contemplation of
perfect truth and beauty — i.e., the apprehension of God.
First, I don’t think God is an abstraction, but a person; and
second, I can’t imagine anything joyful about spending eternity
in a spiritual state identical to the drug-induced ecstasy available
to drug users already.
Addicts
have reported believing that
they were contemplating God during their hallucinatory state. I
don’t think they really did.
Nor
do I think that a condition of perpetual spectatorship sounds like an
interesting way to spend eternity. Is that really what God created
all of this for — so that he could have a bunch of admirers?
J.R.R.
Tolkien and C.S. Lewis conferred about an idea of joy that came from
the excitement of a compelling idea or milieu. Lewis called it
“northernness” when he first made the acquaintance of
ancient epics in the Germanic or Celtic tradition.
But
gradually he came to realize that the joy he experienced then was the
strong emotion that resulted from the discovery of something powerful
and new and Good. And it passed, as all emotions pass.
And
yet some residual remained. In fact, as Lewis’s wife, Joy,
entered and brightened his life, then died of cancer, he found that
joy (the coincidence of name and word was serendipitous) persisted in
the midst of grief.
Joy,
as the purpose of human life, is not a transient emotional state. It
is a condition that one achieves in which, despite the emotions that
come and go, you know that the way you have lived and are living and
will live your life is productive. It is Worth Doing.
I
don’t mean mere “self-esteem.” Sociopaths have
self-esteem by the bushel. Nor does joy come from what one
possesses. Obviously not from material goods — they do not
rise with us in the resurrection, no matter how many grave goods are
interred beside us.
But
I speak also of things we’ve created, or things we’ve
learned. Our creations — including our families, but also
institutions, companies, works of art and literature, reputation,
ideas, even humble acts of service — may be good, but we do not
own them.
Whatever
we create, we set loose in the world to be used by others as they
choose. The children we create soon make their own decisions;
anything else may stand or crumble by mere chance, or may be
distorted by the actions of others, or may never be noticed at all.
Nothing that we make can stay as we made it. Neither, then, can the
joy derived from making it.
But
isn’t God himself joyful in the midst of the same condition?
His whole work and glory are to bring to pass the immortality and
eternal life of man — in other words, to give us the
opportunity to learn how to be co-creators. Yet how many of his
children disappoint him? How often does he see those he loves
degrade themselves and miss their chance for the greatest joy?
God’s
creations wax and wane, but he does not have less joy because not
every outcome is good. The very fact that we have the freedom to
choose whether our outcome will be good or not is part of the
Goodness of God’s creation; he succeeds even in the moment of
our
failure, because he has given us the opportunity to demonstrate what
our deepest desires are, and what degree of joy we are willing to
receive.
I
think of Joy as being tied to florescence. (No, I did not misspell
that.) All the sub-creations that I listed above, though we cannot
possess them and they do not stay as we made them, are nevertheless
reasons for us to feel joy.
Instead
of an eternity of static contemplation of an unchanging God, the
joyful future is an eternity of active participation in the
continuing creation of an ever-growing, ever-learning God.
(Take
no offense at the notion of a God who learns. When he draws
intelligences out of darkness into light, and gives them Law whereby
to show their will toward good or evil, their capacity, and their
courage, then he is learning who they are even as they themselves
learn it, though he apprehends their nature sooner than they do
themselves. A God who already knows all is a God who can change
nothing; a God who creates is also a God who learns.)
The
life of God is a florescent life — a life of constant bloom, of
setting seed that then grows of itself. This great heaven in which
our little globe spins and orbits is not the constant result of a
minute creation in detail at every moment, always under the active
control of God.
Rather
it is a universe of law, in which God’s creations act by their
own volition. He is not a puppetmaster or watchmaker, but a
gardener, at least metaphorically.
He
is in continuous bloom, and the blooms set seed and the seeds take
root. He forces nothing; they grow of themselves; they — we —
grow into ourselves.
And some of us floresce in our own turn, bringing forth blossoms
great and small.
It
is in that florescence that I think we can find the joy that man was
made for. We are meant to be gardeners ourselves, and whatever
creations we are able to bring about — including our service to
others, as we help make the community around us a better place, one
blossom at a time — are
joy.
Even
when, in our ignorance, we make or serve imperfectly (and we always
do), he judges us by what we intended our works to be, and learns
(that word again) which of us can be trusted always to act for the
good of the garden.
Joy
comes not from what we own, but from what we create and set free in
the world around us. Joy is the flowering, fruiting, planting life,
each of us in whatever way we can find, but contributing always to
God’s own garden, so that we, by our flowering, are also his
flowering; our seeds are his seeds; and thus the project of joy goes
on and all, all of us rejoicing in the flowering of others as much as
in the things that we ourselves set to seed.
In
this joy, we are not erased as individuals, but are ourselves,
individually, both samples and co-makers of the mighty works of God.
We add to him, and to each other, and we are also added upon.
That is
joy; and in the midst of sorrow and loss, grief and disappointment,
that joy of good Making, of making Good, continues unbroken. That is
joy, and we do not wait for death in order to partake of it.
Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender's Game, Ender's
Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and
younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools.
Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary
fantasy (Magic Street,Enchantment,Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables,Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker
(beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and
scripts.
Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and
Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s.
Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs
plays. He also teaches writing and literature at Southern Virginia University.
Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife,
Kristine Allen Card, and their youngest child, Zina Margaret.