MIPodcast #175: Divine Law (Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants) Featuring Justin Collings

Rosalynde Welch: Hello, Justin Collings, and welcome to the Maxwell Institute Podcast.

Justin Collings: Thank you, it's good to be here.

Welch: I am really looking forward to talking with you today about your volume, Divine Law, for the Institute's Themes in the Doctrine and Covenants series. Let's start by talking about how you approached this project. What drew you to the topic of law out of the many different directions you might have taken?

Collings: That's a great question. So, several years ago, it's probably, I think it was during the pandemic, so probably in 2020, Spencer Fluhman and Kate Holbrook reached out to me and said, we're doing this Maxwell Institute series, similar to the Book of Mormon series on, and we're to be focusing on the Doctrine and Covenants. And we'd like you to write a volume on law. And this was both exciting and it a little taken aback because I had been a law professor for several years and had not done anything like this before. This is the first time I've ever written a religious work for publication. And they just gave me one word, which was law. And there are different directions you could take that. And I think initially I was thinking in a secular sense, what does the Doctrine and Covenants have to say about law and the saints’ interaction with secular law and the Constitution? That was my professional field. So that's what I was thinking about every day. So that was initially where I started. And it turns out the Doctrine and Covenants says a lot more to say about divine law than it does about secular law. And what it says about secular laws within this broader context. And I really had a very unsophisticated approach to this. I just read the Doctrine and Covenants slowly.

Welch: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

Collings: And looked for everything that it had to say about law or even plausibly connected to law and took lots of notes and then tried to organize them into the themes that then emerged from a close reading of the text. I'm sure I would have come up with something more sophisticated if I a real scholar, but that's how I started.

Welch: No, I can't think of a better way to approach it. That's precisely how, yeah, that's precisely how I approached my volume on Ether for the brief theological introductions, is simply a slow and careful and exhaustive reading and letting the text guide what you find there, right? Letting the text be the guide here. So yeah, that's great. I hadn't realized that Spencer and Kate approached you with the topic. That might be unique among the volumes.

Collings: Yeah.

Welch: But I think it was a good fit between author and subject. Although I can imagine that it's pretty different to write for, in your professional life as a professor of constitutional law where you're writing to other lawyers who have a deep background, a kind of sophisticated understanding of the philosophy of law, versus writing to a broad audience of Latter-day Saints. So for everyday Latter-day Saint non-lawyers, what is the working definition of law that you landed on and that runs throughout this book?

Collings: Sure, maybe I'll just take a step back and say that one of the things in the process, and I felt like this was inspiration, but there was just one quote that came back to memory that I wanted to use to frame the whole book. And it's a quote from Joseph Smith's King Follett Discourse, where he says, speaking about a time even before the Council in Heaven, where says that “God himself, finding himself in the midst of spirit and glory and seeing he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws that the rest might have a privilege of advancing like himself.” And so even before defining law, it seemed important to establish what motivates law. And what motivates divine law is God's eagerness to lift all of his children.

And so law struck me in that context as a manifestation of love and as a manifestation of grace. And that seemed to be even more important than coming up with a concise definition, was to understand for myself, maybe help readers understand law as an emanation of grace rather than as the antithesis of grace.

I think the best I could do in terms of a working definition is actually in the Doctrine and Covenants. This is in section 82 and the Lord says, “and again I say unto you, I give unto you a new commandment that you may understand my will concerning you, or in other words, I give unto you directions how you may act before me that it may turn to you for your salvation.” So that was the Lord's definition of what he meant by saying I'm giving you a commandment, is I'm giving you direction that will turn to your salvation. So I think that the best definition I could come up with for law is that it's a redemptive direction, a redemptive directive.

Welch: Yeah. Yeah. You know, the first thing that you encounter in this volume when you open it, given that you skip through the series introduction, which I encourage readers to do, you come across a long page of epigraphs that you've appended to the beginning of the introduction. There's maybe 12 or more scriptures, and they're from the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants. And as you read through them, you start to see the theme that emerges, which is that each one of them connects law and grace. And so even before we read a word of that first introduction, we're seeing the direction that you're taking here, which is that law and grace are not opposites. In fact, they are one and the same. They are both the foundational gift and blessing, the greatest gift and blessing, of God.

And so if law is a gift for us, and if it is synonymous with His grace, it seems like that really changes how we relate to it, right? The commandments aren't now a game that we are trying to win, right, to win our salvation. Instead, what we're asked to do is use our agency to receive that blessing as fully as we can.

Collings: Yeah, you just said that more articulately than I do in the book, I wish I could quote you. I think that's absolutely right. That's the message that I'm trying to convey. We sometimes think about law as something that's scary, it's imposing. The iconography that we associate with law in a mortal setting is meant to...

Welch: Not at all. Not at all.

Collings: Create a sense of the majesty of the law and it's to impose fear, right? I think it stems from times when it was hard to keep society in order. And so the powers that be, being outnumbered, adopted rituals and icons and various things to try to impose order and to elicit fear and obedience. And I think many of us have just imbibed that, not consciously, but we've imbibed that and we've ascribed it to divine law as well. We've over-indexed maybe on some scriptures that talk about what Jacob calls the “consequences of sin.”

And so we can think of law as this elusive standard against which we're always falling short. Just when you've gotten down one commandment, you realize there's another that you've been neglecting, right? Just when you have gone to church and put together a great activity for the young women, you go home and realize you've neglected your own children and there's a chaos. There just is always something that is not happening and we're not doing.

And one of the things that Doctrine and Covenants teaches about the Savior himself is that he grew from grace to grace. And we know that he never sinned. We know that he never violated a law, but I don't imagine that as a two-year-old, he was performing all of the ordinances of the law of Moses, that he was ministering and magnifying a calling in the local synagogue. There are things that we have to do as we progress. And I think if we could shift the paradigm and think that...

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Collings: All of the laws are there as gifts of grace, and we need the guidance of the Spirit to know which ones to focus on at a given time, and we need teachings of living prophets to direct our attention. They're all gifts of grace, and if we read through the General Conference report and see we've been counseled to do 195 different things, I okay, well, that doesn't even, I can't even do one a day between now and the next general conference, so this is just hopeless. That's going to be a source of stress and anxiety and that's just not how the Lord is interacting with us. I think he's giving us wonderful counsel and we do the best we can and the Spirit will guide us and say, this talk, this message, that's what I want you to do right now.

Welch: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that approach, and I think readers will appreciate it as well. And that very much is the tone throughout the book, an encouraging and calming tone, that the commandments should not be a source of fear or stress or anxiety or failure, but instead we should look to them as in fact, God's hand lifting us up, right? It's the way that he lifts and guides us.

And I appreciate that approach, and I want to dig into it a little bit, if it's OK, if you're game. If this gets a little too into the weeds, we'll cut this out of the final version. But I think it really matters. And it's an open question to me, as I've been working myself on a project on 2 Nephi 2. And that is, so you cite a legal theorist who gives a concise definition of secular law, which is “a command backed by a threat,” right?

Collings: Yeah.

Welch: And you want to draw a clear line between that version of a secular law and the way that God interacts with us. But what really is the difference in the end between the threat of a sanction that's attached to a secular law and the warning of a consequence that's attached to a divine law? How are those different? Is the warning that's attached, the warning of, you know, unfortunate consequence that's attached to a divine law--is that intrinsic to the law itself or is it something that's “affixed” but really is quite separate from actually the law? How would you parse those questions?

Collings: Ah, that's a great question. And I obviously tried my best to dodge it in the book, and now you're pressing it. So I could concede that there's probably some functional similarity. But for me, the difference would be something like this. Max Weber said that he defined the state as being that entity that possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

Welch: Hahaha! Mm-hmm.

Collings: So there's some sense, whatever your definition of secular law is, there's an element of coercion.

And the Doctrine & Covenants talks about that for the sanctified, in the end, there will be this shared dominion that will flow without compulsory means. So one of my colleagues called it a “non-coercive kingdom.” And for me, the difference resides with our agency. And also, it goes back to the purpose that

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Collings: The purpose of laws, God's laws, is to help us have a privilege of advancing like himself, that's what Joseph Smith said, so really it's about becoming.

And one of the things I hope to convey in the book is that there's this idea that law is no fun. One of the words that nobody ever associates with law is fun. I once read a book.

Welch: Except for law professors, of course.

Collings: Well, I once read a book review by a law professor that it was about this book about environmental law. And the first sentence in the book review was, law is the boring underside of many interesting topics, including the environment. But I think there's a sense of abundance associated with law in the Doctrine & Covenants. And I love Brigham Young's statement that if you wish to enjoy exquisitely, become a saint and live the doctrine of Christ. So that's one thing that I hope to underscore.

And at the same time, if you choose not to accept the gift, you won't have the gift. And if you choose not to accept God's laws and become more like God, then you're choosing to move in a different direction. And God's nature is the nature of happiness. And if we turn away from that, we're turning away from happiness, turning away from joy. And as Samuel the Lamanite tells the people in the book of Helaman, you've sought all your lives for that which you cannot obtain. You've “sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that happiness, which is in our great and eternal head.” So there's a nature of happiness that's in God and he's offering it to us. And if we reject it, we won't have it.

I mean, it just seems like pretty basic logical proposition that we don't have what we choose to reject. And that can feel like punishment, and scriptures describe it as punishment. And there's this evocative language in section 19 about using language that has more of an effect. anyway, yeah.

Welch: A more “express” effect.

Collings: And I don't pretend to know, to plumb the depths of what's involved there. But I think what we're talking about is the absence of a blessing rather than the imposition of a penalty. And maybe it's helpful to use the language of penalty, but I think it's good to remember that that's, I think, a mortal term. And we're using it as an analogy. And like most analogies, they're helpful but limited.

So I don't know if that's a satisfying answer to your question, but I see God honoring our agency. Alma talks about how they are their own judges. We ultimately, since you're talking about 2 Nephi 2, we ultimately get to choose whether to receive the blessings or not. And there's a curious phrase there in 2 Nephi 2 where it says,

Welch: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Collings: Because of the Savior's redemption, “The Messiah cometh in the fullness of time that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they've been redeemed from the fall, they are free forever to choose for themselves to act and not to be acted upon, except by the punishment of the law at the great and last day.” And I don't know exactly what that means, but coming right after this verse that says, men are that they might have joy.

Welch: Yeah, it comes roaring back there in the end.

Collings: It seems to me that the great blessing of the atonement, one of the great blessings of the atonement, is that the consequences of our actions are not final. I was just reading a chapter in President Nelson's book about the body and its capacity to heal itself. And I don't know that our spirits have the same capacity.

We needed an infinite atonement and a redeemer to heal those wounds. And if we embrace that, then we'll have joy. And that's the goal. And his presence is fullness of joy. But if we finally turn away from it, then comes in something called the punishment of the law, which I think is just, OK, you've chosen to make the consequences of your choices enduring rather than allowing the Savior to heal those consequences.

Welch: Yeah, I'm persuaded that God exercises power in a fundamentally different way than something like a human state does or can. And so then I'm satisfied, I think, that there is something fundamentally different between the threat of punishment by a secular law and the warning of consequence from a divine law. I think I'm satisfied by your answer.

And I'll underscore that these themes of joy and enjoyment run prominently through the book. You take pains to show how law, compliance or obedience to law, a loving reception of law--that's probably a better term than compliance or maybe even obedience--receiving the law brings us ultimate joy and it also provides great enjoyment in this life as well.

And that raises another question, which is that, given this kind of optimistic view of law, now what's the role for our Savior? I think many of us have a scene, a courtroom scene, in fact, in our minds--and not for nothing, versions of this appear in our scriptures, where Christ is something like an attorney or an advocate who's arguing our case to God the Father and saying, please, you know, stay your wrath and don't punish these people because of my atonement. But that doesn't seem to work, really, with this new concept of law. So if that's the case, what's Christ's role in this theology of divine law?

Collings: Yeah, that's a great question. That's the fundamental question. And one of the things that I say in the conclusion is I ultimately don't want this to be a book about law. I want it to be a book about a lawgiver. The great power of the Doctrine and Covenants comes from the voice from the speaker. This is the Savior speaking in the first person.

And in section 45, he does describe his role as our advocate. And I want to say just a couple of things about that role. Obviously, lawyers are attuned when one of the, just as doctors think about Christ as a physician and maybe carpenters think about Christ as a carpenter, we all look for our, maybe as academics, we think of the 12-year-old in the temple and the doctors a lot. In fact, you can't see it, but right next to me here on my wall, I have

Welch: the house.

Collings: The painting, Max Zimmermann's painting of Christ as a 12-year-old in the temple. And it's my reminder that even doctors of the law need to look to the one source. And one thing that I think is really fundamental is to look at the language that gets used. Christ calls himself, he says, “I am your advocate with the Father,” not “I am your advocate

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Collings: against the Father.”

Welch: That preposition makes all the difference there.

Collings: It makes all the difference. And I think some of us, some of the time, have gotten the mistaken notion that God the Father somehow really didn't want us to get into heaven, or he's just really reluctant to open the gates. He looks at us askance with full knowledge of all of our flaws and our foibles, and just doesn't want to do it, but that Christ…

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Collings: Somehow wins him over or talks him into it or says, “They sure don't deserve it, but I do. So for my sake, please let them in.: And I think we just, if this is a courtroom drama, we've gotten the cast of characters wrong. There is an accuser--and his name is Satan, right? His name means the accuser. And in the account of the...

Welch: Yes, ha-satan.

Collings: The account of the war in heaven, when Satan's cast out, the song of rejoicing, and now has come salvation in the … praise to the Savior and it says, “for the accuser of our brethren is cast down which accused them before the throne of God night and day.” And I don't know what that means entirely, don't know what happened there. I think there's a lot that hasn't been revealed, given what we do know about the counsel in heaven and Satan's role in his proposal.

I wonder if part of the accusation was to say, these people, these spirits, are not to be trusted with agency. They will make a mess of it. They'll turn against each other. They'll turn against God. They'll sin. They'll be flawed. Put me in charge. We're told that Satan sought to destroy the agency of man. … entirely what that meant. But put me in charge. We can have a path to this that doesn't involve agency.

So back to the question, what is Christ's role in all of this? Christ's role in all of this is to extend grace so that our agency can work together with His grace to fulfill the Father's will. And I just think everything we know about the Savior is that He always, “I do always those things which please my Father.” The very first words out of His mouth that we have in cosmic history, “Father, thy will be done and the glory be thine forever.” So the idea that Christ wants something different to happen at judgment from what the Father wants to have happen just seems so fundamentally misguided. How could we get there when...

Welch: Yeah.

Collings: Everything we know about the Savior suggests that that's impossible, that they would be at odds here.

So another passage that talks about the Savior as an advocate is in Moroni chapter 7. And there's a phrase that we might miss because it's embedded in a dependent clause, because the rhetorical question is, has the day of miracles ceased?

But embedded within that, Moroni--no, Mormon, sorry-- Mormon says, “because Christ hath descended into heaven and hath sat down on the right hand of the Father to claim of the Father his rights of mercy.” And then he goes on.

I would love it if we took that from a form of a dependent prepositional clause and made it a declaration. “Christ had sat down on the right hand of the Father to claim of the Father his rights of mercy.”

That image, it's not Christ standing face to face with the Father saying, please change your mind about these people, but sitting on the right hand of the Father and having these rights of mercy. And what is a right? For lawyers, a right is a fundamental law. The Latin phrase is lex fundamentales. And it's a higher law. So it's more than ordinary law.

Legal theorist Ronald Dworkin wrote a famous article called “Rights as Trumps.” And the idea is that you assert a right and it doesn't matter what else the law says, this is the most fundamental law. And the most fundamental law is that Christ performed an atonement that was infinite. And I think that's an important phrase because even though the scriptures say that,

Welch: Hmm.

Collings: I think we still think of it as somehow finite. That I committed X number of sins for which the required price is $37.41 per cent. And you multiply, yeah, you know, adjusted for inflation over time from Adam and Eve down to the end of the world. And boy, that's a colossal number for me alone.

Welch: With inflation.

Collings: And then we think there are seven or eight billion people on the planet. So we multiply by seven or eight billion, and then we stretch it back through time. And I don't know how many people have lived on the planet, but I think it's about as populated as it's ever been. it's a big number, but that's still a number. And so we're still thinking about it as somehow finite. That somehow there was a price that was paid, and he somehow got to the end of that price.

Welch: Yeah.

Collings: But that's not what the scriptures teach. The scriptures teach that it's infinite. So it somehow touched infinity and gave him an infinite capacity, gave him an irrevocable right to be merciful, to heal, to lift, to succor, to save, to save us from the consequences of our choices, and not just to somehow cancel it as though this were a negative operation.

And every law that's given is an opportunity to come under the power of the Redeemer, to come within His orbit, within His influence. And that's His eternal role, this succoring, saving role. And maybe He's there as our advocate not to persuade the Father that we deserve to come in, but maybe to persuade us, you belong here. You belong with us.

Welch: Yeah. Mmm. Yes.

Collings: In our presence is fullness of joy. The loving, succoring, healing influence that you've felt from me is what you should be feeling from the Father. Elder Holland, now President Holland gave a talk in 2003 called “The Grandeur of God” and he highlighted what other prophets and apostles have highlighted, which is a major purpose of the Savior's earthly ministry is to show what the Father is like.

Welch: Yes. Yeah, I love that. I'm struck often by what Benjamin says in Mosiah 5 as he's just laid out for us the reality that we are unprofitable servants and we will actually never be able to obey with enough alacrity and precision to earn any credit with God.

And so the question naturally arises then, well, then why should I try? Why should I try? And his answer for me is the most persuasive and profound of any I've come across, which is in Mosiah 5.13, “what man knoweth the master that he hath not served?” We obey not to earn credit with God or earn our salvation, but to know God, to come into his orbit, as you said, to know who he is. And for me, there's nothing more motivating than the possibility that I might come to know who God is. And we know him through his son, the Savior.

I was so struck by your reading of this “rights of mercy.” And I find it very, very persuasive that a right is a deeper and more fundamental kind of law, which means that mercy is the most fundamental of God's laws. It's not a backup plan. It's not what kicks in when something has gone wrong.

And what that means, then, if that's the case, if grace is not God's side gig, then that means that his principal work is to forgive sin and extend mercy. That's not just what he does when he has to. That is the substance of his work. Anybody who reads a page in the book will know that you are quite the wordsmith and you coined an aphorism that I underlined. “As we keep God's commandments, His commandments keep us.”

Collings: Yeah, I thank you for underlining that. You have these moments, “that sounds nice.” But more than just sounding nice, I hope that underscores a principle that God's commandments are an invitation into a relationship, an ever-deepening relationship with him. The Savior says, if you love me, keep my commandments, not because he thinks you…

Welch: Yes.

Collings: You need to show me that you love me. But because that's where we can experience his love, right? That was the meaning of the tree of life, the iron rod, which we maybe think about as a law-like image. The whole point is to guide us under this tree that represents the love of God. It's deeper and deeper, closer and closer to the love of God. And if we think about our mortal relationships. Yesterday, two days ago, from this filming, our baby girl turned five months old. And she's our eighth child. And I don't know that early on I thought we were gonna make it to...

Welch: Yeah.

Collings: to eight. I sometimes tell people that I hope for five or six and Lia hoped for six to eight, so we compromised and had eight. But I honestly thought early on that, what is the required requirement here? And I know it's different and everybody's mortal journey looks a little bit different, but what do I have to do to have multiplied and replenished?

Welch: Hmm, what's the bare minimum when I can check that one off?

Collings: And not necessarily looking for a bare minimum, but looking for, you know, have I met the commandment? And I've been at Lia’s urging, working my way through the Joseph Smith sermons and the Joseph Smith papers. I'm trying to read all of his discourses and the letters that he wrote or dictated. And I noticed there's a period in Kirtland where there are lot of accounts of marriages that he performed. And in one of them, he tells the couple getting married that, “God blessed Adam and Eve and said multiply and replenish the earth.” And I thought, I always thought about that as a commandment. The Proclamation on the Family says it's the first commandment, but Joseph's characterizing it as a blessing: “I blessed them and said this.” I recently found out that's actually in the scriptures, the Pearl of Great Price, that's the language that it uses.

A few months before our little Miriam was born, I took our little boys on our father-son camp out. I'm not a camper, so they get one camp out a year. The ward father-son camping thing. I woke up before they did and took a little hike, knowing that they'd be safe in this little community of campers if they happen to wake up. Had a great revelatory experience in the mountains. Was thinking about actually our BYU University Conference and what I would say to the faculty. And on the way down, I thought about the theme which is--was--from Omni 1:26 about coming to Christ to offer your whole souls as an offering unto him. That's spoken by Amaleki who's an obscure prophet in the Book of Mormon, he gets a dozen verses or so, but we can tell he was remarkable just just based on this couple of verses. But a little bit earlier he says, “And having no children I'm passing this record on to King Benjamin.”

And it just kind of pierced my heart. I know that there are a lot of Saints who’d desperately love to have children who don't, and maybe Amaleki was one of them, or folks who wish that they had more children than they did. But just, I trust that all of this will be made up and figured out. And there's no one model, and Church leaders have been very clear that this is a path that we all figure out with guidance from the Lord.

But anyhow, the message to me from the Lord was “This little girl is my gift to you.” And Lia and I have sometimes talked about her as a bonus baby. We thought we completed our family and she really is. She's just light and joy and sweetness. And of course it's as hard as it always is having a new baby. There are times, just last night I was walking around with her and thinking.

I think I've spent enough time in my life walking a baby to sleep. But it just helped me to think about, there's so many commandments where we think, okay, what do I have to do? What's required of me to keep the Sabbath day holy, to honor the word of wisdom, or to be a good minister, whatever it is. Instead, I think if we ask, well, what blessing is the Lord trying to give me here? How can I receive this? How can it be an open receptacle for what he's trying to pour out?

Welch: Yeah. Yeah, and that those blessings come primarily in the form of relationships. This is a point that you make. Of course, the temporal blessings of our daily life are abundant, but beneath and beyond any of those temporal blessings are the blessings of relationships with the individuals, the other humans in our lives, our families, our covenant families, and then of course, that relationship with with our Heavenly Father and our Savior.

And it seems to me that this focus on relationships and relationality, a relational view of law, is one of the great kind of theological contributions of the Doctrine and Covenants. I wonder what else would you put in that category? What are the main contributions of the D&C to, as Latter-day Saints, our doctrine of divine law? Just a handful, of course. We could speak for hours on this.

Collings: Yeah, that's a great question. Well, first I want to just say something about relationships, if that's okay. I, again, working through the Joseph Smith papers, I find these just stunning gems. And I found one, it's just a short account of a sermon he gave in 1841. And he says, first of all, “God is good and everything he does is for the benefit of inferior intelligences.” Now we don't necessarily think of inferior intelligence as our primary identity. But everything he does is for the benefit of his children, because he doesn't want us to remain inferior intelligences. He wants us to lift us. So that was beautiful. And the Book of Mormon says that the same thing is true of the Savior. “He doeth not anything, save it be for the benefit of the world.”

But then he goes on to say that as a kind of protection, he made tabernacles for us.

Welch: Yeah.

Collings: As part of our spiritual protection, and that he brought their spirits and their tabernacles together in such a way that they would be formed to “sympathize with their fellows.” I thought, that is so beautiful, a beautiful part of our theology, that the spirit and the body are not only brought together to form the soul, but they're brought together in such a way.

Welch: Hmm.

Collings: To create the capacity for sympathy with each other. In other words, my paraphrase is we were made for relationships, we're formed to make relationships. Lia, who's wiser than I, reminds me that mortality is a construct for the forging of relationships. It's easy for me to get focused on, I gotta get this done, I got this administrative task, I wanna read this book. But no, take a step back, this is all about creating relationships.

Welch: Yes. I agree with that.

Collings: So even if you don't want to play games with the in-laws, even if you don't want to, this is a chance to make a relationship.

Welch: We all have our crosses to bear, Justin.

Collings: So contributions of the Doctrine and Covenants to our understanding of law. And some of these we've hit on already. I'd say that the purpose of law is a major contribution, right? This is God's effort to lift us. Together with that is the connection between law and becoming. Law is the way we become the kinds of people that God wants us to become.

Another is, I think, a more nuanced connection between law and blessings. I'm talking in the book a little bit about what I think are misreadings or at least insufficient readings of section 130, which if you asked a cross section of Saints to identify a verse about law, they'd probably come out with, they wouldn't hesitate, they might stumble over whether it's irrevocably or irrevocably, but “there's a law irrevocably decreed in heaven upon which all blessings are predicated. When we receive any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.”

I think we might have a tendency to think that, okay, so there's a one to one ratio. When I'm obedient, there's a blessing. And somehow then I've earned the blessing. And it can lead to what some thinkers have called a vending machine view of God, Elder Christopherson used that phrase in general conference. And Elder Maxwell, I quote in the book says that,

“There's a correlation, but the ratio is a very generous ratio.” The blessings far outstrip the level of our obedience.

Another, I think, misreading or insufficient reading would be to say, to focus too much on the external kinds of blessings, the kind of blessings that we want. I want to be healthy. I want to be fast. I want to be attractive. I want to be wealthy. so I'm going to…

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Collings: Be obedient to God's laws because I want these things. And there are principles upon which those blessings are predicated. When we eat healthier and exercise, we get healthier. Now that doesn't mean that we all look the same. And I remember Elder Uchtdorf talking in general conference about being in the military and getting outrun by all these guys who smoked and drank, and thinking, where's the...

Welch: Yeah.

Collings: Where's the promise of running and not being weary? I'm very weary. But the real blessings are blessings of relationship, drawing closer to God. And that's where the Book of Mormon uses this language of immediacy. Amulek says that “immediately the great plan of redemption will be brought about in your faith, in your behalf.” There's another phrase that talks about people thinking about the immediate goodness of God.

Welch: Yes.

Collings: That every time we take a step toward God, every time we obey, that is an act of repentance, of turning toward God, of changing our heart and mind. And those blessings are immediate. And those are the ones that are ultimately most important because that's what's shaping our soul. That's what's building our character of who we are and what we're intended to become.

And then the other mistake we might make is about timing, feeling like this is going to be automatic and I obey this law and then I can just start looking at my watch waiting for the blessing to come promptly. And we see in some ways the entire Doctrine and Covenants presents a narrative arc of blessings deferred. We gather to Zion--but then get driven out of Zion. We're commanded to build a temple--but the opportunity doesn't come. In fact, in my...

Welch: Yeah.

Collings: Current role at BYU. Just yesterday I encountered a statement where Joseph Smith and his counselors in Nauvoo were inviting all the Saints to gather to Nauvoo and they say, the temple must be raised, the university must be built. And I thought, they didn't get to build the university, but we at BYU do. And there's a certain responsibility and excitement that comes with that.

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Collings: These blessings get deferred. And in section 124, the Lord says, “when I give you a commandment and circumstances prevent its fulfillment, I no longer require this at your hand.” But for faith to be faith, there has to be some patience. The Lord says in the Book of Mormon, he sees a fit to try their patience and their faith. And we see that. So we know that the blessings will come. As President Holland once said, “Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don't come until heaven, but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come.” And I think helping us understand that is a major contribution of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Welch: Yeah. I really appreciated your careful reading of D&C 130 and the way that you, I think, wisely steered us away from some potential misunderstandings. I think the stakes are pretty high there with how we understand that verse, not only because we might be subject to disappointment or confusion or disillusionment, you know, if, as you say, you know, the blessings don't seem to follow in the way that we expect.

But maybe even more fundamentally than that, when we offer the gift of our obedience in a transactional way, right, because we expect to get this blessing. It seems to me that that fundamentally changes precisely that relationship between the Savior and us. It changes the quality of our obedience when we're doing it in order to get some reward afterwards. And I think that when we offer our obedience in that transactional way, we make it a lot harder to actually reap the primary benefit of obedience, which is what I suggested earlier, which is to know who God is, to know who is the master that we serve.

So I think it's really important for us both to understand the connection between blessings, obedience, and law--that is real--but to understand it rightly. Because I think it can really vitiate the quality of our obedience if we don't. So, so thank you for your very careful reading of, of that verse.

Collings: There are high stakes and there's some immediate practical impacts too. Some of our colleagues at BYU have just put together a special issue of BYU Studies about perfectionism. And I haven't read all the way through, I've just kind of dabbled, is my MO these days. But it's fascinating and insightful to see, one, that perfectionism is not a monolith. There are forms that are good for us and forms that are not, forms that lead us to try to strive and to improve and have high standards for ourselves are wonderful. The problem arises in how we react to the inevitable gap between those standards and what we actually do. What they found was that people who are, there's this notion out there that religion makes people more prone to toxic perfectionism and that maybe especially the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is problematic. It's focused on eternal progression and “be ye therefore perfect.” By definition, we're setting people up for an encounter with toxic perfectionism. What they found was that it's not the doctrine, it's the reaction to the doctrine or the misunderstanding of the doctrine. That you actually see better outcomes for people who who understand the doctrine and embrace it and are intrinsically motivated. Just to say if people want to follow God's commandments because they love God, and they want to do it as an act of devotion, then they have fewer problems.

Now, I have enough experience, I've seen enough to know that these are averages, right? The median's not the message and any of us can struggle with anything, even if we're doing everything right. But on the whole, better outcomes when people are viewing it as an intrinsic act of devotion, whereas you see worse outcomes when the motivation is extrinsic. Either I'm trying to meet a societal expectation in my ward or my community or my family or whatever, or I'm trying to get something out of this. I'm being obedient because I expect these kinds of blessings. Well, if that's your attitude, then if those blessings don't come, your response is likely to be, “I've been, the obedience quotient is insufficient and I'm falling short” and you start to be--

Welch: Mm-hmm. I need to up the ante. Yeah.

Collings: And so there are real consequences to this and there are real consequences to having a correct understanding of the character of God. God, President Holland well said, “God does not tantalize his children.” He doesn't move the goal posts on us. He reaches out to us in loving compassion. And like any good parent, helps us correct things that are going to be harmful for us, like any good friend. But it's a compassionate and eternally loving friend and not that critical voice that we too often use to speak to ourselves. Interestingly, psychologists have found that it's actually far more motivating toward higher performance and achievement to speak to yourself in a compassionate voice than in a critical voice. So we sometimes feel like, I'm a high achiever, so I gotta be hard on myself. I can't give myself space. That actually is counterproductive. compassionate voice doesn't mean everything's okay. Yeah, it's the voice of a compassionate friend. And if your best friend came to you in a trial,

Welch: Hmm. Yeah. It's not a permissive voice.

Collings: He or she wouldn't try to tell you that mistakes you're making don't matter, so go on making them, but they also wouldn't condemn you.

Welch: Yeah. Well, shifting gears just a little bit to something a little bit lighter, Justin, you and I share a love of poetry. And in particular, I gather, of the poet Tennyson, your book is just peppered throughout with lines of poetry. I would love to know how you came to love poetry and does it play a role in your spiritual life?

Collings: Yeah, absolutely. How did I come to love poetry?

It's interesting. was not a bookish kid at all. I was a sports nut. Whenever I had to write a book report, it was a biography of the sports hero, was usually year after year, the Ty Detmer story. And I came to reading later. I think my first encounter with poetry was of a lower order of poetry. Just when I listened, as a teenager listening to popular music, I paid attention to lyrics.

Welch: I would not have guessed that. Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Collings: Just something and as a kid singing, I paid attention to the lyrics of the hymns, right? So that was probably the first encounter.

I'd started reading in my late teenage years and just came to love language. I came to love just the wizardry of words and the sorcery of sound. And I majored in English at BYU and in Italian. I was introduced to Milton and to Dante and a couple great teachers that just taught me how to poetry slowly and to savor it. Interestingly, the Pope issued a letter in July of last year about the value of poetry and literature as preparation for the ministry. And one of the things he says is that poetry and literature require us to slow down, to form our judgments and perceptions.

Welch: Mm-hmm.

Collings: With more leisure and calm. And I think that's really insightful thing because we live in a fast-paced world and in a polarized world where our encounters with people tend to be kind of sorting encounters. Which side are you on? And whatever the spectrum is, where do you fit here? What team are you on? And if you read a great novel,

Welch: Yeah, friend or enemy. Yeah.

Collings: A great novelist doesn't allow you to do that because they show you a character in a rich and deep complexity and you see their foibles, you see their strengths, you see all these sorts of things. And the idea that this is a preparation for ministry was powerful to me. I thought all of us in this church are ministers and it's powerful both in the approach to literature and our choice of what to read. I should be looking for the things that will help me be a good minister.

In terms of my own devotion, I see poetry as a particularly powerful concentration of meaning.

I wrote a lot of poetry during the pandemic, mostly hymn texts. I'd write one a week for a stretch there. And it was often something that I'd read in the scriptures that I wanted to make my own. And it's really an audience of one. These are acts of devotion for the Lord. But trying to take an idea and concentrate it into...into verse, to capture it and package it and make it my own was important. And let me just give one example of what I'm talking about, because I don't think I can explain it very well, but I think you can feel it.

Welch: Right. Yeah, one and the same.

Collings: With one example. So one of the poets I quote in the book is GK Chesterton, who we don't usually think about as a poet, his prose is famous. He's not as highly regarded as a poet, but I think he's a brilliant poet, a powerful poet, and a poet of great faith. So poetry I maintain is a kind of sorcery. There's a real, there's an actual magic about it. There's a physical…

Welch: Hmm.

Collings: Impact. It actually touches the heart, I think, in a literal way as well as a metaphorical way. And so I found that poetry can take scripture and lift it to another plane. Not that it's replacing the scripture or improving the scripture, but just helping us experience it on a different way. And if I can be forgiven the phrase, for me, it's sometimes that poetry can provide the word made flesh.

Welch: An incarnation of scripture itself.

Collings: So here's, Chesterton has a poem called “To St Michael in the Time of Peace.” And there are two, I'll quote two passages if you'll forgive me for this. You can cut it later if you want, but one is about the war in heaven and one is about the Savior's redemption. And I just want listeners to just experience this, and just feel. You won't understand all the words. I don't understand all the words. There's some very, some recondite diction. But in the passage about the war in heaven, I just want everyone to experience the miracle of how Chesterton is able to set the hosts of heaven marching with words and to capture Satan's rebellion in words.

And then in the passage about the Savior's redemption, just the way that he, for me, captures and gives voice to the yearnings of my heart and the worship that I have for the Savior. So I'll quote the two passages.

So the first is, this is the beginning of the poem about the war in heaven. says,

Michael, Michael: Michael of the Morning,

Michael of the Army of the Lord,

Stiffen thou the hand upon the still sword, Michael,

Folded and shut upon the sheathed sword, Michael,

Under the fullness of the white robes falling,

Gird us with the secret of the sword.

When the world cracked because of a sneer in heaven,

Leaving out for all time a scar upon the sky,

Thou didst rise up against the Horror in the highest,

Dragging down the highest that looked down on the Most High:

Rending from the seventh heaven the hell of exaltation

Down the seven heavens till the dark seas burn:

Thou that in thunder threwest down the Dragon

Knowest in what silence the Serpent can return.

And there's just, yeah, and that conclusion about the dragon becoming the serpent, right? It just teaches something deep about the nature of evil, right?

Welch: The rhythm there, yes, this kind of driving energy, yeah.

Collings: Anyhow, then the other passage about the Savior's atonement and resurrection. It's still addressed to Michael. He says,

When from the deeps of dying God astounded

Angels and devils who do all but die

Seeing Him fallen where thou couldst not follow,

Seeing Him mounted where thou couldst not fly,

Hand on the hilt, thou hast halted all thy legions

Waiting the Tetelestai and the acclaim,

Swords that salute Him dead and everlasting

God beyond God and greater than His Name.

So for me, I can take a passage like section 88, which says that Christ descended below all things, that he could rise above all things. And for Chesterton to say to the archangel Michael, seeing him fallen where thou couldst not follow, Christ descended into a depth where we could not go, seeing him mounted where thou couldst not fly, and then rose to a height where we couldn't…

Welch: Yes. Mm-hmm.

Collings: Quite get to, and then that conclusion, that image of Michael holding the legions at bay, and the Savior saying, if I just ask, God could now presently send me more than 12 legions of angels; this is a voluntary thing. But the image of the angels waiting, watching, halting, and then raising their swords to salute him as he returns to the Father.

Welch: Yeah.

Collings: God beyond God and greater than his name. We worship the Savior with all these reverential titles, but none of them quite capture it. We keep trying, but we never quite get there. Anyhow, poetry, I think, helps me get a little bit closer.

Welch: Yeah, God beyond God and greater than his name. It takes something to lift us out of the everyday and into a place of worship. And it can be architecture, it can be sacred space. I think it can also be language. And I think that's what Chesterton has done there.

Collings: As people are in the bookstore and they look at this series and see Divine Law, probably not going to expect poetry, right? I think this sounds like a prosaic topic. And I think sometimes we read the whole Doctrine and Covenants that way. We've got it aligned in columns and divided in verses, but Professor Arthur Henry King, who is one of our legends here at BYU, was a great Shakespearean scholar and a convert to the church. He said about the revelations, I wish we could print them in a way that we could see how they sing. And I just would encourage listeners, readers of these volumes, but especially of the Doctrine and Covenants itself, to see how they sing.

Read some of these revelations out loud. I once took section 133 and versified it, not the way that we have it, but just laid it out like poetry. And it was really easy to do. It's really easy to do. And it was really moving to look at it in that format. The revelations are not only true, but they're beautiful. And one reason to use poetry in a book about the Doctrine and Covenants is because the Doctrine and Covenants is chock-full of divine, exalted, exalting poetry.

Poetry is not distinct from law, right? There's something, it's called, we will give Chesterton the final word. He said that we had to be, it's only literary education that allows us to see some things as not literary, right? Because the reality of law, of divine law, is glorious and it's beautiful and it's light and truth and our modern lack of imagination sets it off as distinct from…

Welch: Hmm.

Collings: From poetry, but there's truth and beauty in the Lord's law and in his plan and in his revelations.

Welch: Justin Collings, thank you so much for joining us today on the Maxwell Institute Podcast.

Collings: Well, thank you so much for having me.