Ezekiel 47

Another riff based on our recent stake conference. But first, a peek into my youth. As a high school student, I lived in a rural area of south-central Pennsylvania, where our ward was a strange mix of diasporic Mormons from the mountain west and local converts, some with several generations of membership in the Church, and others being the first in their families to be baptized. There were other elements of diversity, including education (from college professors to high-school dropouts), profession (a lot of blue-collar workers and some doctors and lawyers). Somehow it all worked, and great things happened in that ward.

But, as is the case with any ward, there were issues, especially when it came to gospel instruction. To put it plainly, I was presented with a lot of false and outdated doctrine in Sunday School, seminary, and priesthood quorums. And it has taken much of my adult life to sort through that and determine both what is true and why good, well-meaning Latter-day Saints would so adamantly believe things that are patently untrue.

I say this because on the Saturday of stake conference, our temple president (who I'm still trying to figure out—he is clearly a spiritual man with a deep testimony of the Savior and His church, but his tendency to name-drop and seem rather self-centered rubs me the wrong way, especially when I contrast him with the exceptionally humble temple president who preceded him) clarified a chapter from the Old Testament that had long bothered me. This will likely seem a simple insight, but for nearly two decades the false interpretation I got as a youth has deeply affected me, and the correct version presented at conference has been enlightening.

The chapter is Ezekiel 47, in which the great Old Testament prophet is shown in vision the holy temple. The first few verses of the chapter are beautiful, as we see, as the temple president put it, the healing and life-giving power of the temple represented by the flowing water. And the symbolic meaning of verses 1-5, that the farther we go, the deeper that healing becomes, is especially encouraging for me as I look for motivation to attend the temple more frequently and consistently.

But it's verses 7-9, where Ezekiel tells of the river flowing to the sea and healing it that we get to the false doctrine. Or rather, the shallow and overly-literal interpretation of scripture that we tend to sometimes in the church. I distinctly remember a class setting as a teenager in which our teacher—a good, honest, decent person who, unfortunately for the youth in the class, always read scripture on a very literal, simplistic, and conservative level—explained that this clearly meant that at the Second Coming, Christ would set foot on the Mount of Olives, which would then break asunder and bring fresh water to the Dead Sea.

Ignoring for the moment the science of it all (a highly salty body of water is not caused by what comes in, but by the fact that nothing comes out—itself a wonderful analogy), there's something in this reading of these verses that I find very troubling. For lack of a better term I”ll call it the CNN Syndrome, and I saw a lot of it in my growing up years. It goes something like this: members of the church who are highly focused on the impending Millenium see it as the solution to all their woes, both real and imagined. Combining this with the habit of watching too much TV, especially cable news (in the early '90s this meant CNN), and you get a worldview in which the end of the world is right around the corner (a lot of these folks were the Y2K crowd who expected the Second Coming in 2000) and will be heralded with live TV coverage.

What I find most disturbing about this approach to Mormon theology is not the political aspect of it (how many Mormons saw Bill Clinton as the anti-Christ and a sure sign of the end of the world?), but rather the way in which it blinds us to the profound and life-changing truths of the gospel. The healing of Ezekiel's vision is not about a body of water half a world away; it's about my own soul and the need I have to be refreshed, renewed, and reborn on a regular basis. It's about how striving to worship in sincerity and commitment leads me to deeper happiness and spiritual fulfillment. It's about how the Second Coming is less about the dramatic and spectacular version imagined by pop culture Christianity than it is about how I can—if I am worthy and faithful—both feel Christ's presence in my life and see Him, in this life or the next. (I have more to say on this topic another time.)

And so I am left at the end of this rant with two emotions. First, a sense of sadness for the tendency we have to miss the boat in our exegesis and to read things—especiaally the writings of Old Testament prophets—on an overly-literal level, sometimes completely misleading others (this same teacher once explained that Isaiah clearly meant that the moon would fall to the earth, creating a land bridge between Hawaii and the continental US). And second, immense joy for the truths of the gospel and the power of temple worship in particular in mending our broken lives. In particular, I am impressed by the power of temple worship, and reflecting on Ezekiel's words, I am committed to further tapping into that power in my life and in the lives of my children.