Approaching Zion: The Mystery of the Atonement

[Artwork in this post by Wassily Kandinsky]

Previously in the Approaching Zion Series:

Childlike Consecration
Polygamy
Beauty and the Beast
The Doctrine of Christ
The Pure in Heart
One Heart and One Mind
A Refuge from the Storm
Go Ye Out of Babylon
The Seventh Seal
Watchmen and Waste Places
The Seven Heavens
The Kingdom of God on Earth
The Destiny of America

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"Christianity is like quantum mechanics"

Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall

― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Rainy Day"

Who understands the atonement?

You'd think such an important doctrine would be something we could wrap our minds around. But after perusing the new book, Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Atonement (University of Illinois Press, 2024), I'm still baffled.

And the thing I am wrestling with is whether Christ's atonement should remain a mystery (a sacred secret), or should we try to unpack it and seek to comprehend the celestial mechanics behind God's redemptive work?

Confessing my befuddlement is not a promising start, I know. Whereas most people want to impress you with their knowledge, I merely show my ignorance.

But my intent was never to gain followers, but friends; I write with no ulterior motive other than to share this journey in good company.

I feel like Philip Goff who said, "Christianity is a little like quantum mechanics: nobody knows what on earth is going on."

Some say, "Tim, I don't need to look under the hood. It's enough for me to know that Jesus saved me."

I cannot argue with that; maybe experiencing the glow of divine love is half the answer. But I am like a little child who, standing beneath the Tree of Life and looking up at its fine branches, says to his friends, "Look! Let's climb it!"

Adults at some point stop climbing trees. (Why? Bad knees?) As adults we write treatises on trees from the park bench beneath the shade, away from the bugs and bark and bother of having to actually climb.

But do you remember what it felt like, as a child? The exhilaration of climbing a tree and reaching the top? Do you remember the view? It seemed as if we could see the whole world from our vaulted perch. And if you happened to discover a hidden nest, you felt like you were the richest person in the world.

The atonement of Jesus Christ is like the hidden nest protecting the precious eggs; if we wish to watch them hatch, we'll need to climb the Tree.

But let's not get carried away: jumping from limb to limb is not without peril; Satan fell from the branches and became spiritually paralyzed, the eggs he carried now cracked and spilt on the ground.

But since Christ told us to "become as a little child" (3 Nephi 11:38) ― and little children are, above all else, curious creatures ― let us dare to climb.

Let us ask the questions no one else asks.

The Stakes

   All houses wherein men have lived and died
   Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
   The harmless phantoms on their errands glide

​   ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Haunted Houses"

There is no rocket ship as worthy of exploration as the one made of cardboard and crayons.

The first thing we need for our grand adventure is better questions.  Because, let's be honest, our questions are lackluster.  They're unimaginative.  We're never going to slay any dragons (Rev. 12:7) with rote questions.

If our questions are poor, then so will be the answers we receive.

Philip Goff said:  "All Christians agree that Yeshua had some central role in the purpose of the universe.  But there is no officially agreed view on the mechanics of that." (Philip Goff, "My Leap Across the Chasm," Aeon, October 1, 2024.)

I am the sort of child who goes to God and asks where babies come from.  Please don't misunderstand: I love storks and the pageantry of Christmas reindeer who fly with glittery hoofs upon rooftops as much as the next fellow. 

For me, symbols and stories and fairytales become only more beautiful when we know the reality they're based on.

But this is a magicless world we find ourselves in, filled with doctrinal Scrooges "who are disposed to set up stakes for the Almighty. ... Men will set up stakes and say 'thus far we will go and no farther." (Joseph Smith, Discourse, 27 August 1843.)

Even the angels are stymied.  Is it any surprise we feel stuck? Darkened in our minds?  The angels don't progress further because they place limits on their faith.  "Why? Because of the tradition of them and their fathers in setting up stakes and not coming up to the mark."  Id.

That's the difference between God and angels ― God is always cutting the police tape and inviting us to walk all over the crime scene, seeing the blood and guts with our own eyes.

Angels have sensitive stomachs and can't tolerate such messiness (which is why God carries smelling salts, Eph. 5:2). 

Gethsemane is not for the spiritually faint-of-heart.

The Bloodletting of Faith

   Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
   Being too full of sleep to understand
   How far the unknown transcends the what we know

​   ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "Nature"

​Strange to say, I have observed a general lack of spiritual curiosity among my peers.  (But in Elders Quorum if someone brings up sports ― well, then the room lights up.)

But Zion is dead-in-the-water without curiosity.  How else will learn to become Saviors on Mount Zion?

The heavenly curriculum is tailored for inquisitive minds; it remains "sealed" to those who display no curiosity.

Experimentation is the hallmark of a curious mind (Alma 32:27).

Christ is the great teacher who welcomes curious initiates into His Classroom.  If we desire divine instruction, then we shall have to ask the subject-matter Expert.

   For the Spirit searcheth
   ALL things,
   yea, the deep things
   of God.

(1 Cor. 2.:10)

Can anything be "deeper" than Christ's infinite and eternal sacrifice?

Experimenters say like Joseph Smith, "What I am after is the knowledge of God, and I take my own course to obtain it." (TPJS, 337).

What have I learned in my spiritual laboratory?  What results have my experiments produced?

Well, for starters, I have learned that the atonement was the greatest working of faith this world has ever seen.

Let me explain.  Here on earth, there are quarantine restrictions.  These restrictions can only be unlocked from the inside.  Meaning, divine law prevents higher-dimensional intervention except in response to the faith shown below.

   By faith
   ALL things
   are fulfilled.

(Ether 12:3)

In other words, "if there be no faith among the children of men, God can do no miracle among them" (Ether 12:12).

I do not think we have grasped the idea of what faith truly is, or what it can do.  Or what Christ's accomplished.

Faith literally is to dream ("hope") the unseen into existence.

To seek what is beyond our knowing is the essence of our nature.  To gaze over the horizon is the beckoning of God, calling, "Come hither, child."

Faith does not have a perfect knowledge, but she dreams the impossible dream, and gives life to those who dare to dream with her.

And what was Christ's dream (His hope)?

   To draw all men unto the Father (2 Nephi 26:24).

Dream
a poem

​A wave is a web of water
Stars, a net of light
Atoms are all but empty―
So dive into the night

Stone is deceptively solid
Matter? Just dancing thought
All we deem impossible
Is to faith a thing of naught

See! mountains move like rivers 
Flooding o’er the plains of life―
You transmute this pale illusion
As creation's bold midwife

Every Thorn Has its Rose

A gentle face―the face of one long dead―
Looks at me from the wall, where round its head
The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light

​ ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Cross of Snow"
​
If I cut myself on a rose bush and shout, "Darn thorn!" ― now that rose knows itself a little better, through this interaction (and I am reminded of my short temper).

You see, one of the ways we come to know ourselves is through our interaction with the world outside of us. How does the world around us respond to our presence?

For, how can we truly know ourselves unless we can perceive the impact (negative and positive) our actions have upon the world?

The atonement is the blossoming of awareness to the point of infinite knowing. And what do we find at the edge of infinity? What mystery lies beyond its shore? What are the secrets held within endlessness?

To know ourself is to comprehend infinity itself: to know every thorn that has drawn blood; every heart that has bled sorrow; every hurt that has held hope.

In other words, to know ourselves means to know all others: for we are One.

In this way we see that the Law of Redemption is the knowing of oneself through other selves.

This "knowing" is predicated upon:

- The law of Relationality
- The law of Resonance
- The law of Reciprocity

Wherever there is agency, there is expanding awareness. They are flipsides of the same eternal coin: one to choose, and the other to experience fully the multi-incarnational consequences of those choices, worlds without end.

Agency is the spiritual womb in which we incubate universes unborn; Atonement is reconciliation of the ensuing individuation and adaptation that occurs.

One becomes a Creator through redemption, for creation is the act of making One from the many, and the Many from the One.

Who can show us the way? We have latent potential that needs kindling. Who bears the flame? The Christos (the Greek word for 'anointed one' or 'messiah') is the light that shines in the darkness. The Christos is what lies within each of us.

Who among us has experienced the Seven Dispensations of the Soul? When we have joined the infinite stream of consciousness we call the Logos, we shall realize that there was never "we" at all, but only I AM.

And the mystery? That I AM (what the Jewish mystics call "Ein Sof") is shed abroad in infinite forms: it shines in a plurality of gods which the mystics call the "Sefirot," or vessels of God.

Apply these words to Christ:

And the vessel
that he made of clay
was marred
in the hand of the potter:
so he made it again
another vessel,
as seemeth good
to the potter
to make it.

(Jeremiah 18:4)

Nephi calls this "the doctrine of Christ" (2 Nephi 31:21).

What is the Doctrine of Christ? Is it baptism? Repentance? Endure to the end? Those are aspects of it, but not its heart.

The only and true
doctrine of the Father . . .

There is only one doctrine? What is it?

[There] is one God.

(2 Nephi 31:21)

Now, please don't misunderstand: there are many Personages (whom we may consider Gods), but they all of them make but One God.

There are many aspects to behold; I should not be content until I had seen God in all His parts, in all His ways.

But my favorite face of God is the one I find at the break of day, just before the sunrise, when the world holds its breath in anticipation, and I sense that same Christos ― that shines in the sun and moon and stars ― even the Spirit that shone in Jesus like a supernova ― shining within myself as well (D&C 88:49-50).

David's Star

Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend

― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Ladder of St. Augustine"​

​Physicist Fred Wolf said, "God (or whatever name you want to call it) transforms consciousness into matter. Once this happens, matter inherently acts as a kind of reflection or mirror of the intelligence from which it sprung.

"As matter modifies itself over time, new information and intelligence is reflected in an ever-evolving universe."

(Fred Wolf, The Soul and Quantum Physics, 1998.)

That's my favorite explanation for "the glory of God" that I have found.

But this leaves the question open, "Why? Why was the atonement necessary?"

I think we have all been taught that we cannot be exalted alone, separate. Not even Christ could, alone. He needs us as much as we need Him.

But why? Why this focus on family? On kindred? On "my people" (2 Nephi 29:14)?

As I understand things, in order to be exalted, it requires a form of collective consciousness, a soul-group-consciousness that transcends our current carnal nature. This is hinted at in the scriptures with the promise that we shall "see as we are seen, and know as we are known."

The spiritual energy (intelligence or glory) that emerges from this type of group-soul generates a divine reaction, if you will, a creative expression that pierces into higher dimensions.

Christ serves as a kind of nuclear reactor in which we are made to burn as One, producing the spiritual energy needed for emergence (a form of exaltation that I have never heard described in the Church).

Christ is the Prime Meridian that binds our past and future selves together into a cohesive whole as we transition into a greater reality, preventing our spiritual dissolution as we are recreated into a new heaven in a state that might seem strange to us: a celestial unity consciousness.

Think of the symbolism of the Star of David, the two triangles joined together, one pointing up and the other pointing downward.

"[The Star of David] represents, among things, the descent of spirit into matter, and the ascension of matter to spirit, which is continually taking place within the circle of eternity.

"Six points are seen in the star, but the seventh cannot be seen; nevertheless the seventh point must exist unmanifested, it not having become manifest; because without a center there could be no star, nor any other figure existing."

(Frank Hartmann, 1888)

In a way, we are each the Star of David. We each possess an Invisible Center. There is within us the hidden Seventh center point around which the entire Star is balanced.

Following Christ means following that invisible center point. People think God is "up" as if higher dimensions are contained in the celestial north, as though the heavens were above the earth.

But that's not quite right: for the further out into outer space we climb, the farther apart things become as they spread through the cosmos.

Eden is eastward, which is to say, the higher dimensions are located inward: they are found in the subatomic planes which are more expansive, and greater, than anything we see manifested outwardly in the physical plane.

I personally take Christ literally at His word when He said the Kingdom is within us.

It is a Kingdom we share.

Not Born
a poem

We were not born
(neither created)
 
one cheek lambskin
the other crumbled quartz
 
we smell of distant eras
living in made-up names
 
like Paleoproterozoic
and inorganic pasts

written in chronostratigraphy:
eternal / gnolaum / endless
 
(what constitutes an epoch?)
Epipaleolithic paths preserved
 
in Pleistocene stardust
lassitude smelling of gingerbread

and pterodactyl breath―
two things seemingly out-of-place
 
unable to journey
side-by-side but do

   as fire
   sounds to flame