Thanks for the opportunity to guest-blog here during April. I love what Segullah is doing and expect many more positive encounters.
As a contrast with my post last week that was heavily weighted toward an (overly) cynical view of human art, I’ll take a different tack this time.
Premortality is one of the aspects of Mormon theology that most appeals to my imagination, and whenever I encounter a writer who touches on premortality ideas, that writer shoots way up high in my estimation and I can’t help but assume they were somehow inspired.
I recently read Humboldt’s Gift by the Nobel-winning Jewish novelist Saul Bellow, and it’s shot through not only with human foibles but also with meditations on premortality, such as the following:
“People who have been on earth for only ten years or so are suddenly beginning to compose fugues and prove subtle theorems in mathematics. It may be that we may bring a great many powers here with us, Miss Volsted. The chronicles say that before Napoleon was born his mother enjoyed visiting battlefields. But isn’t it possible that the little hoodlum, years before his birth, was already looking for a carnage-loving mother? So with the Bach family and the Mozart family and the Bernoulli family. Such family groups may have attracted musical or mathematical souls.”
And here’s another passage I quite liked:
“Renata’s little boy and I walked, holding hands. He was a remarkably composed and handsome little boy. When we wandered in the Retiro together and all the lawns were a dark and chill Atlantic green, this little Roger could very nearly convince me that up to a point the soul was the artist of its own body and I thought I could feel him at work within himself. Now and then you almost sense that you are with a person who was conceived by some wonderful means before he was physically conceived. In early childhood this invisible work of the conceiving spirit may still be going on. Pretty soon little Roger’s master-building would stop and this extraordinary creature would begin to behave in the most ordinary or dull manner or perniciously, like his mother and grandma. Humboldt was forever talking about something he called “the home-world,” Wordsworthian, Platonic, before the shades of the prison house fell.”
Regarding the line “the soul was the artist of its own body,” I’ve long wondered if we took an active hand in deciding how our mortal bodies would look. I suspect our own spirit got to choose a few DNA keys to plink while the fetus was growing. I wonder if we each had a certain number of attribute points to apply as we wished; some people put most of their points into their looks, others into intellect, etc. (sort of reminds me of the character attribute points in role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons).
Another thing I’ve wondered is if we knew we would have to go through a certain number of trials in life, and we were given the opportunity to choose some of those trials in advance. Thus, some of our trials almost seem to have a certain familiarity and inevitability, and when we weather them well, it may be because of specific premortal preparation for them.
Anyway, this stuff is all quite thrilling to me from a Mormon point of view. It’s a great novel, by the way, fairly dense but also quite funny and engaging. I’d love to see more Mormon authors interweave our theology with human stories in such an effective way.
I’ve heard some suggest in Sunday School that we were able to choose our families before we were born. I have a very hard time believing this. If you come from a generally nice family, sure, it would be nice to think that you had a hand in that. If your trials have generally been manageable, then it would be nice to think that you had a hand in that too. But there are many people who don’t come from nice families and have trials that are unbearable. Did they choose these things? I really don’t think so.
With two mentally ill parents - one of whom committed suicide when I was a teenager - I am certain that I did not choose my family or my trials. If I had any real understanding of what my trials would have been like, I would not have chosen them. But I believe that God chose them for me. He has a much better understanding of what I could bear and what I could become despite those trials. In premortality, we would not have had God’s omniscience and it seems like that would be an important skill in putting people into family groups and assigning trials. We wouldn’t have had the foresight to get all of that right.
Nancy, surely neither Bellow nor I believe that these things happen in all cases or even in most, just that they’re possible.
I’m sure God makes many decisions about our families and trials without having consulted us in premortality, and I’m sure he let us make some of our own premortal choices without full knowledge of all the implications, just as we do in mortality. On the other hand, I’m sure these things are sometimes simply determined by the random chance that I believe God allows to operate to a degree in human affairs. Besides, maybe you affiliated yourself in premortality with your future earthly family before there was any indication of the earthly trials that awaited them (and thus you). Or maybe you didn’t—at this point, only God knows.
In other words, I’m sure the circumstances and events of our lives arise from a mixture of premortal and mortal self-determination, God’s will, and mortal chance. Each person undoubtedly is affected by a different proportion of those three forces; it will be interesting to see the full picture in the afterlife.
It will indeed be interesting to see things play out. I tend to agree with Nancy R. though. It’s probably an easier proposition to consider here in the wealthy western world than it would be, say, in Uganda. Considering the tremendous physical and mental suffering by so many people throughout this world, are we to suppose that we chose it? I wonder if that would require a level of self-realization that we did not have at that time and, in fact, came to this earth to develop.
When I come across that paradox — the great Why of suffering, I think of two lines. One from the Bible and one from Toni Morrison:
Genesis 50:20
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (e.g. earthly evil and pain can be transformed to work for our good in the end — that’s the point of the atonement, right?)
From The Bluest Eye
“There is really nothing more to say- except why. But since why is difficult to handle one must take refuge in how.”
I’ve enjoyed your posts, Chris!
Did I choose my trials? I don’t know. But I think I was prepared for them, maybe without knowing what they were, which is a very different thing. You can prepare for something without knowing exactly what will happen in the moment it does. Right now, though, I see through a glass darkly: I’m never quite sure, when in a trial, the source of any extra strength–is it from premortal preparation? Or just lots of current prayers on my behalf? Or the angels I imagine around me? Or a combination of them all, and something else? One of the things I am most looking forward to about eternity is seeing how all these pieces fit together.
I too have enjoyed your posts, Chris. Great food for thought.
As for today’s (yesterday’s really) question, I’m still thinking. My initial response was, “I want more points!”