Owing to the many reports which have been put in circulation by evil disposed and designing Vikings in relation to the rise and progress of the dragon trainers, all of which have been designed by the authors thereof to militate against its character as a guild. I have been induced to write this history to disabuse the public mind and put all inquirers after truth in possession of the facts as they have transpired in relation to myself and
the dragon training guild so far as I have such facts in my possession. Sometime after my people’s arrival on the island there was an unusual excitement on the subject of dragons. Indeed the whole island seemed affected by it. Some people crying lo here and others lo there. They were all trying to slay the various dragons, some were trying to slay the gronckle, and others the green death, and still others the hideous zippleback.
I was that time in my fifteenth year, and my father assigned me to work in the blacksmith shop. During this time of great excitement my mind was often called up to serious reflection and great uneasiness. For this assignment to the blacksmith shop was because I was too small to slay dragons. Although I attended the several trainings
as often as occasion would permit, I felt some desire to unite myself with the dragonslayers, so great was the confusion and strife among the dragonslayers that they never could see the value of what I had to contribute. My mind at times was greatly excited, the cry and tumult were so great and incessant. The Vikings were most decided against the dragons, and on the other hand the dragons used all the powers of both flight and fire to plunder the Vikings. In the midst of all these battles, I often said to myself; what is to be done? If any of us would win, who would it be, and how would I know it? Meanwhile none of the adults on the island respected me, and none of the girls my age paid any attention to me because I wasn’t an active dragonslayer. While I was laboring under the extreme difficulties caused by the contests between the Vikings and the dragons I was one day reading an engineering textbook in my loca
l library which reads: ‘If any of you lack capability, see if you can build a device to assist you. Devices can often be engineered to get the job done when muscle power alone will fail you.’ Never did any passage of writing come with more power to the heart of a Viking than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again. For if any Viking needed a device to assist in slaying a dragon, I did, and unless I could use my brainpower to supplement my muscle power I would never slay a dragon, and none of the girls on the island would ever go out with me. Past experience had destroyed all my confidence of an appeal to my good disposition and sense of humor. At length I came to the conclusion that I must do as the engineering book directs, that is build a device. I built a device to shoot down a dragon and on a dark night during a dragon raid I m
ade the attempt. It worked. It was the first time in my life that I shot down a dragon. But nobody believed me. I tracked it down and came face to face with the most terrible dragon ever - the night fury. My object in tracking down the night fury was to kill it. But coming face to face with the dragon I could not kill it. At this time it had not entered into my heart that I should kill none of them. I soon realized that the dragons were easy to make friends with. Getting to know the dragons, and understand them was far, far better than trying to kill them. After a time my father noticed that something was different about me, and inquired what the matter was. I replied, “Never mind, all is well. I am well enough off.”
The Law of Moses
As a missionary you’re in the perfect position to invest some time getting familiar with the Law of Moses. It serves as the backdrop for so much of the scriptures that it’s a shame not to have a working understanding of this fundamental text of civilization. If you spend a little time up front, you’ll find that the New Testament and the Book of Mormon are both more interesting because you’ll see the mechanics of the law of Moses at work beneath the surface of the stories. You’ll also be a better teacher, and that’s kind of what you’re going for as a missionary.
You can think of the law of Moses as split into 3 parts. There are the commandments. You’re probably familiar with those already. Thou shalt not kill, steal, commit adultery etc… Then there are the statutes. The statutes of the law of Moses are the individual laws, and you can think of them as growing out of the 10 commandments, so if you’ve got the co
mmandment thou shalt not steal, then you have several individual laws, or statutes, that give scenarios as to what stealing looks like. If you steal your neighbor’s cow that’s one kind of stealing, so there is a statute for that. But if you organize several friends to go to a neighboring town and steal the entire herd of cattle, that is a different kind of stealing and there is a separate statute for that. The third component is the judgments. So if somebody steals his neighbor’s cow there is a specific range of judgments that a judge would be able to hand out during sentencing. If a different person is guilty of cattle rustling (stealing a herd of cattle from the neighboring town) there is a different range of punishments available. The statutes go hand in hand with the judgments like two sides to a coin.
You really should organize this somehow on your own. Make it a personal project. Get a spiral notebook and a pen, or maybe make a spreadsheet. Just organize it. Here’s a possible example.
| Commandment | Statute -- | --Judgment | Reference |
| 8 - Don't steal | A man steals something from his neighbor, or cheats him, or finds lost property and lies about it, but later regrets it and wants to make it right. | Pay it back to the owner + 20%. Also pay court fees of 1 ra m to the priest. | Leviticus 6:1-7 |
| 8 - Don't steal | A man steals an ox or a sheep, then slaughters it, or sells it. (In other words there is no way he intended to return the stolen animal) | He must pay back 5 cattle to make restitution for the ox. Or if he stole a sheep, he must pay back 4 sheep for every 1 sheep that got stolen. | Exodus 22:1 |
| 8 - Don't steal | A man steals an ox or a sheep, but the animal is found alive in his possession. (maybe he intended to give it back) | He must pay bac k double to the person he stole from. | Exodus 22:4 |
Take your time, and go slowly but start to put it together. And here’s a bit of advice. Spend a few bucks and buy yourself a copy of the NIV translation of the bible. You may be hesitant to do this at first because the official mormon bible is the KJV. If it makes you feel any better, if you take Isaiah, or the 2nd half of the New Testament as a class at BYU your professor will likely tell you the same thing. The content of the Pauline epistles, and much of the old testament will be hard to understand using the older translation, but if you read it with the NIV you’ll understand the material much better. Don’t ignore this suggestion, just go buy an NIV bible, or get a copy from some pushy evangelical Christian you run into while doing missionary work.
Don’t get overwhelmed. You don’t need to organize it all at first, just start gathering the data and put it in your notebook. Notice how there is a degree of elegance to how the law of Moses works. Imagine a society where rules like this are in place. Notice that there are still vestiges of these rules in our society today.
Let me walk you through some examples.
It’s a commandment that we honor the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Every 7th day is a day of rest. If you’re an employer you’re required to give your employees a day off on the 7th day. If you own slaves it’s the same thing. Every 7 days you’ve got to gi
ve them a day of rest. No exceptions. There are laws like that today. If you’re an employer you’re not allowed to schedule an employee to work more than a certain number of days in a row. They need a day off, after all even the man upstairs takes one day out of seven right?
The law of Moses requires that every 7th year is a sabbatical year. You’re not allowed to plant crops, or harvest any crops. The land is required to lay fallow. Very poor people are allowed to harvest crops off of anybody’s land during the sabbatical year, otherwise they would go hungry. Creditors are required to forgive debts on the sabbatical year. In modern society we understand the logic behind letting the land lay fallow. It allows the topsoil to recuperate and regenerate its nutrients so it doesn’t get depleted. These days we understand how to make chemical fertilizers, and regenerate topsoil, but we can still look back and understand the wisdom of making a rule to leave the fields fallow during Moses’ time at their level of technologi
cal sophistication. It’s a good rule.
As for the rule to forgive all debts every 7 years, we have laws on the books today that derive directly back to this rule; bankruptcy laws. You’re allowed to file for bankruptcy every 7 years.
And every 7th, 7th year (every 50 years) was called the year of jubilee. It was like a super charged sabbatical where the land was fallow for 2 years, all debts were cancelled, all slaves were allowed to go free, and all land was given back to the original owners. So no matter how tough things had gotten for your family, if you lost your house because things got bad, and your family had a string of bad luck, you’re your family wouldn’t be forever landless and without inheritance. The idea was to break the cycle of poverty that can perpetuate itself for generations.
This cycle of sabbatical and jubilee also had another side effect. It limited the size and scope of government because tax revenues would sharply drop off every 7 years, limiting the amount of empire building that could take place from an entrenched government bureaucracy.
Read this passage from Leviticus chapter 14 where it explains what happens when you get mildew on the inside of your house:
“The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as your possession, and I put a spreading mildew in a house in that land, the owner of the house must go and tell the priest, 'I have seen something that looks like mildew in my house.' The priest is to order the house to
be emptied before he goes in to examine the mildew, so that nothing in the house will be pronounced unclean. After this the priest is to go in and inspect the house. He is to examine the mildew on the walls, and if it has greenish or reddish depressions that appear to be deeper than the surface of the wall, the priest shall go out the doorway of the house and close it up for seven days. On the seventh day the priest shall return to inspect the house. If the mildew has spread on the walls, he is to order that the contaminated stones be torn out and thrown into an unclean place outside the town. He must have all the inside walls of the house scraped and the material that is scraped off dumped into an unclean place outside the town. Then they are to take other stones to replace these and take new clay and plaster the house. "If the mildew reappears in the house after the stones have been torn out and the house scraped and plastered, the priest is to go and examine it and, if the mildew has spread in the house, it is a
destructive mildew; the house is unclean. It must be torn down-its stones, timbers and all the plaster-and taken out of the town to an unclean place.” Leviticus 14:33-45
Okay that’s pretty interesting. There are similar rules for things today. But today you wouldn’t call up your bishop to come and check out your house. That would be a role for the health inspector.
Let’s try this one. This is what the law of Moses says to do if you get a rash.
“ The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “When anyone has a swelling or a rash or a shiny spot on their skin that may be a defiling skin disease, they m
ust be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons who is a priest. The priest is to examine the sore on the skin, and if the hair in the sore has turned white and the sore appears to be more than skin deep, it is a defiling skin disease. When the priest examines that person, he shall pronounce them ceremonially unclean. If the shiny spot on the skin is white but does not appear to be more than skin deep and the hair in it has not turned white, the priest is to isolate the affected person for seven days. On the seventh day the priest is to examine them, and if he sees that the sore is unchanged and has not spread in the skin, he is to isolate them for another seven days. On the seventh day the priest is to examine them again, and if the sore has faded and has not spread in the skin, the priest shall pronounce them clean; it is only a rash. They must wash their clothes, and they will be clean. But if the rash does spread in their skin
after they have shown themselves to the priest to be pronounced clean, they must appear before the priest again. The priest is to examine that person, and if the rash has spread in the skin, he shall pronounce them unclean; it is a defiling skin disease. “When anyone has a defiling skin disease, they must be brought to the priest. The priest is to examine them, and if there is a white swelling in the skin that has turned the hair white and if there is raw flesh in the swelling, it is a chronic skin disease and the priest shall pronounce them unclean. He is not to isolate them, because they are already unclean. “If the disease breaks out all over their skin and, so far as the priest can see, it covers all the skin of the affected person from head to foot, the priest is to examine them, and if the disease has covered their whole body, he shall pronounce them clean. Since it has all turned white, they are clean. But whenever raw flesh app
ears on them, they will be unclean.” Leviticus 13:1-15
Today if you get a rash you’re probably not going to go see your ecclesiastical leader, you’re going to go see a doctor. Maybe you’re starting to get the idea that the priests of ancient Israel weren’t simply religious leaders. They performed functions within society that are still important today. They were the doctors, the lawyers, the civic leaders, the health inspectors, and more.
As a kid, I always wondered what the deal was with all the different offerings in the Old Testament. If you pay attention, you’ll see that a lot of these offerings are simply payment for services rendered.
“This is always to be the perpetual share from the Isra
elites for Aaron and his sons. It is the contribution the Israelites are to make to the BETAS from their fellowship offerings.” – Exodus 29:28
Sure, there is a ceremony involved but at the end of the day, a lot of these sacrifices are a quid pro quo exchange for a service, other times it was more like paying taxes.
Embedded in the law of Moses is the marriage contract. Thou shalt not commit adultery. But also if a man died, his brother was required to marry the widow and help to raise the children. Hopefully the smallest possible number of children in society would have to grow up without the benefit of the surplus labor of a man and a woman there to help take care of them.
Here’s part of the Law of Moses discussing the marriage contract.
If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin. Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, and the elders shall take the man and punish him. They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives. If, however, the charge is
true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you. – Deuteronomy 22:13-21
There are a couple of familiar spots in the New Testament where this shows up. The most familiar is probably when Joseph decides to end the marriage with Mary quietly rather than make a big scene when he finds out that she is pregnant with the baby Jesus. Under the law of Moses, Mary could have been stoned to death. But Joseph was kind, and luckily the angel intervened and told Joseph that the baby Jesus was legit.
The other example is the parable of the 10 virgins. Have you ever wondered why the Bridegroom couldn’t come to the door to let the 5 foolish virgins in? What a jerk right? Well, under the surface of the story is the Law of Moses, and the customs of the time. The bridegroom and his friends would come to the wedding party at the Bride’s house. Once he arrived, in what has to be the most embarrassing custom ever, everyone would nudge the happy couple into the bedroom where they would consummate the marriage. Later the Bride’s mother would save the sheets, and the small amount of blood on the sheet as a token of the Bride’s virginity. Later on if the husband wanted to divorce his wife, he could do so, but if the woman’s parents could produce the tokens of her virginity the groom would have to pay back the dowry. In the parable of the 10 virgins, the bridegroom can’t come to the door because he’s ‘busy’. That sort of gives the parable a different flavor doesn’t it?
Judgments
You’ll notice that some of the judgments appear to be overly harsh. For example the penalty for not honoring your father and mother is death by stoning. No kidding. But embedded in the penalty is the fact that the parents have to be willing to cast the first stone. It’s one thing to have a harsh penalty, but another thing to be the one actually carrying it out. It seems unthinkable that a parent would be willing to carry out that punishment. And if the parents were willing to do such a thing… maybe the kid really deserves it. I can’t imagine any instance of such a thing actually happening, more likely the parents would want to work something out with a lesser punishment. That’s how it is for all the other statutes as well. It wasn’t a simple matter of executing people all the time. The example of Joseph and Mary illustrates the point. Joseph could have technically gotten Mary executed under the Law
of Moses. But who really wants to go there when you’ve got to look the accused in the eye and decide what to do?
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Alpha/Beta Revisited
In the ‘Book of Lester’ we talked a bit about alpha traits, and beta traits. Alpha traits are what trigger the dopamine, or attraction response. Looking at a beautiful person in a swimsuit often can trigger your attraction. Other things play into this as well. For guys, social dominance often factors into the mix. Women are more attracted to
the dominant, or high status guy.
Beta traits are about comfort. But also, out of necessity, beta skills involve innovation. If you imagine our stone age ancestors trying to hunt for food, it isn’t too difficult to imagine that the bigger, stronger (more alpha) cave men having the natural advantage in the hunt for food. But you can imagine a cave man, off to the side, having trouble with the day’s hunt inventing a spear to make it easier. Later on maybe a different cave man invents the bow and arrow. These technological advantages keep these wimpier cave men alive. These wimpier cave men share their technological advantages to even the playing field for the wimpier cave men, allowing the primitive (but comparatively advanced) cave dweller to get as much food as his larger competitor.
It is the beta traits and skills that allow for civilization to exist. Also recall that due to one of the cruel ironies of evolution we tend to overvalue alpha traits, and undervalue, or outright take for granted the beta traits and skills. This irony of evolution is one of the fundamental challenges of civilization. As you systematically try to understand the Law of Moses, if you look for it, you will see a pattern emerge that I am going to call ‘Beta Rules’. Here are rules for society written by the betas to make room for comfort and civilization. But with a clever sleight of hand, at the bottom of the list of rules the betas wrote that the biggest alpha of them all is the author of these rules.
[Insert picture of Moses holding up the 10 commandments and saying: “I didn’t make up these rules. GOD wrote these rules. And He can kick all of your oxen so you better take heed. That’s all I’m saying.”]
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Not to belabor the point. But as you sift through the law of Moses, try to imagine something. Keep in mind this is a totally imaginary scene.
Picture Moses and Zipporah, both of whom have a high beta score, sitting down and writing up the rules for the Israelites. These rules need to make space for civility and innovation. These rules need to punish bad behavior, and create a sustainable organization to propagate society into the future. These rules need to take into account human nature and maximize the positives while discouraging the negatives.
The Law of Moses is one example of what I call ‘Beta Rules’[1]. These are rules for society that allow the betas to do their thing in peace. It’s natural for the alphas in society to reap the majority of the benefits at the expense of everyone else, but that doesn’t work very well. When the betas run the show, the group is better off.
Robert Sapolsky, professor of biology at Stanford University is probably best known for field research he has performed year after year on a troop of baboons in Africa. Every year he goes out, and gets a blood sample from each baboon in the same group and later does sophisticated analysis of the blood samples. He found that levels of stress hormones varied based on the baboon’s spot in the hierarchy within the group. The behavior of the baboons was also interesting. Which baboon was willing to risk its life for which child? Which baboons mated with other baboons the most? It’s worth reading ‘A Primates Memoir’ but the part of the story for purposes of this chapter is what happened when one day the group came across some rotten meat. The alpha males of the group ate all the meat for themselves, then got sick and died. When this happened the other baboons took over. The remaining male baboons were the nice guy baboons, and operated by different rules. No more terrorizing smaller baboons. And they collectively enforced the new rules. When teenage male baboons migrated in and joined the
group and exhibited alpha-jerk behavior, the rest of the group would team up and beat down the new baboon. This isn’t how we do things here. Long story short the stress hormones for the whole group of baboons all lowered dramatically.
Back to the Law of Moses
Inevitably as you go through this project you will notice things in the Law of Moses that you will have no trouble discarding as not coming from God. Here are some examples.
A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear
women’s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this. (That’s why women shouldn’t wear blue jeans. Wait, no.)
Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together. (Your 500 horsepower John Deere tractor will do just fine.)
Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together. (No cotton/poly blend garments for you.)
Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you wear. (Only if it’s a cloak of many colors, and you’re a pimp.)
A huge part of the message that Jesus taught was not to take these beta rules to the extreme like some people in His day were doing. The point of these rules is to take property and use it for the benefit of conscious creatures, not to take human beings and turn them into property. If you take any of the rules in the Law of Moses, and come to some conclusion other than ‘love one another’ you’re doing it wrong.
A beta rule that should penetrate your consciousness is best embodied in the scientific method. In the scientific method there are several steps, which are summarized below:
· You use your experience to make sense of a problem. You look at previous explanations.
· You form a conjecture or a hypothesis, or if previous answers are out there you use previous explanations.
· You deduce a prediction from that explanation. Assuming x is true, what consequences follow?
· Test the explanation. Look for the opposite of each consequence in order to disprove the hypothesis. If the hypothesis is false the test will disprove it. If the test fails to disprove the hypothesis it is a mistake to conclude that the hypothesis is true. This is a common logical fallacy called ‘affirming the consequent’. To use a sports analogy (football) you’ve moved the ball down the field a certain distance. But there are still 99 yards to go before you make a touchdown.
The killer app in the beta rules is this self correction mechanism. To continue the football
analogy, the Law of Moses moved the ball down the field to a certain yard line, but it would be a mistake to assume that that’s all there is. Try going anywhere in the modern world and honestly trying to convince anybody that God’s will is for people not to wear clothes made of blended fabrics. You’ll see what I mean.
That isn’t to say that the Old Testament has no value. It does. It’s a fantastic case study of beta rules from thousands of years ago. It’s worth your time to ponder the beauty of it, and like it to our day. Latter day Saints often completely dismiss the Old Testament with the quick turn of a phrase. “Jesus fulfilled the Law of Moses.” That’s just laziness.
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Beta Rules Today
“God does watch over us and does notice us, but it usually through the work of a beta that he meets our needs.” - Spencer W. Kimball
I have said it before, but one of the hallmarks of the betas is that they are taken completely for granted. They bring miracles into our lives and are forgotten almost immediately.
Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy[a] met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When he
saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” –Luke 17:11-19
Because of the many modern advances made over the last 200 years, you and I get to live twice as long as our ancestors. That’s twice as long to enjoy the company of your parents, your wife, and your children. You get to live a life today that would be the envy of kings 300 years ago.
Think about… almost anything in your life and the miracles will be evident as if the great Beta Himself (or Herself) opened the windows of heaven and poured you out a blessing that you have not room enough to receive it.
Look in your refrigerator at that gallon of milk. Do you realize the complexity involved in getting that gallon of milk into your refrigerator so you can drink it and not get sick? Practically anywhere in America you can go down the road and eat Chinese food. How did you get there?
By driving your car. A car made with steel halfway around the world, fueled by oil pumped halfway around the world, with special glass windows that won’t shatter if someone throws a rock through them. Or you can order a pizza. With your cellular phone made from special materials that nobody had even thought of 50 years ago.
Do you realize how complicated it is to get electricity to your house or apartment on demand the way we enjoy? How much work did it take to set that all up? Your power company likely delivers electricity to your residence with 99.99 percent reliability. Today it’s weird to NOT have electricity. That would have been unthinkable 200 years ago.
Added Upon
In 1898 Nephi Anderson published the first distinctly Mormon novel called ‘Added Upon’. The characters start out in the pre-existence, come down to mortality, then the last part of the book takes place in the millennium. How does Nephi describe life during the millennium? There are all these houses with labor saving devices that run on energy from the ether (electricity). The houses are climate controlled. People can talk to one another from long distances. Oh, and there are 100 temples.
It’s safe to say that the world we live in is beyond the wildest
imagination of people a few generations back. The Doctrine and Covenants describes how everyone in heaven gets a special stone, and you can ask this stone any question and get the answer. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Steve Jobs was called home prior to the millennium. He’s working on the technology now. It’s going to be called the istone.
Gratitude
A lesson from the story of Jesus and the 10 lepers is that we ought to be more grateful to people in our lives. This is a good lesson. But I want to draw a distinction. We ought to be more grateful for the blessings we receive from the betas in our lives.
Imagine that a luscious hot-babe unexpectedly comes up to you on the beach. She’s wearing a bikini, hands you an icy slushy, and flashes you a smile. She asks you to rub sunblock on her back. Your dopamine response will likely trigger and you won’t have any trouble being grateful. In fact you’ll probably remember it several times over the next few days.
Now imagine somebody in your family doing your laundry, folding the clothes up and putting them away for you. Chances are you’re not as grateful right? In fact, you probably reflexively say ‘thanks’ and don’t think of it again.
Spouses do this to each other. A guy can work hard at his job, and always be there for his wife, help out with the dishes, and do homework with the kids, only to be (rightly) shocked that his wife has been having an affair with the loser muscly laid-off construction worker bad-boy down the street, because he’s exciting, and her husband is boring. A woman can work her husband through school, stay home and manage the household, volunteer at PTA and make sure that the entire family has their comfort needs met and (rightly) feel betrayed when her husband has an affair with a woman he met at the gym.
As you go through life, and your mission is a great place to make this a habit, you should work to value the beta, the boring things that people do to add value to the world. If you have a beautiful friend of the opposite sex, don’t compliment that person on their gorgeous flat tummy or the sparkling smile, or the beautiful eyes. They get that all the time. Frankly they’re kind of tired of it. Notice something unique about them. Notice the beta traits and skills. Don’t be someone who doesn’t value the valuable. It’s all around you. The person who put all the proper signage on the roadway, the person who de-ices the wings on the jumbo jet you’re flying on, the team of food scientists who came up with Dr. Pepper.
One of the 10 commandments is to honor your Father, and Mother. Think about what a thankless job it is to be a parent. Your Mom and Dad did a million things for you that you never noticed. There are people out there who have bad parents who would be grateful to go back in time and trade parents with you. There are people who are missing one or both of their parents for whatever reason. They didn’t get the advantage of having 2 parents like you probably did. Take a minute and think about it. Parenting is a beta skill. Its thankless. Don’t be like that. Be grateful.
Evaluating Other Religions
Historically, Mormons haven’t done a very good job learning and understanding other religions.
We’ve got the whole truth, why bother learning about others? This is a mistake. Other religions do valuable things as well. You should learn about them. If you run across somebody who is devout in another religion, you’re probably not going to have much luck converting that person to Mormonism. But you can probably build a bridge. [Think of yourself as Gandalf the White, trudging around middle earth, getting to know people in all the different realms.] If the other person has time to talk, you should get very curious about them, and what their church believes. And as you learn about their church, and their customs etc… you should non-judgmentally evaluate how their church stacks up against the beta rules.
Example. I’ve personally never met a Lutheran who wasn’t a very good person. Lutherans are kind to everyone. They take care of people. They go to college. They stay married, and are committed to their families. I’ve never met a Lutheran I don’t like. Now, some of my friends who have served their missions in Europe tell me they could introduce me to a few. But so far… Lutherans top my list.
I’ve never met a Jew I don’t like either. Mormons have this strange one sided affinity for Jews because Joseph Smith sort of co-opted their tradition. We think we know all about them, but we don’t. But in my experience Jewish people are on board with what I’ve been trying to articulate as the beta rules, and people are way off base to criticize them as a group.
From a beta-rules perspective, modern Mormonism does a good job. The prophet tells us that we should get all the education we can, and parents usually encourage their kids to go to college. It’s not weird to find out that somebody in your local congregation is a doctor, or a lawyer, or CEO of a nearby corporation. The family is emphasized. It’s not considered okay for the boys to have premarital sex but not-okay for girls to have premarital sex, its emphasized for both genders. You’re supposed to be kind to other people etc…
Here's one possible way to think about it. Mormons, Baptists, Jews, Lutherans, Hindus, Humanists and all other groups that support the beta rules can come together like the 'Fellowship of the Beta'. Sure, there will be disagreements on some things, just like there is tension between dwarves, and elves. But just like hobbits, dwarves, humans, elves, and wizards had a seat in the fellowship of the ring, you can give a seat at your table of people with religious views different than yours.
And when you evaluate other religions, its good practice to understand the good as well as the bad. A friend of mine growing up was a Jehovah’s Witness. Good guy. Kind, well behaved etc… But Witnesses don’t encourage their kids to go to college. It’s considered more honest work to do construction or something. This is still respectable, but from a beta-rules perspective not as good as getting all the education you can. It isn’t as normal in a congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses to have doctors and lawyers (although they are out there). From a beta-rules perspective you can still respect the good things about the Jehovah’s Witnesses but encourage a JW acquaintance to go to college after high school[2].Some religions don't stack up in the beta rules very well at all. My intention is not to go through and evaluate all religions as to how well they follow this vague, undefined idea of beta rules. But I’ll give one negative example. The Children of God founded by David Berg is an example of a religion that doesn’t follow the beta rules by anyone's definition. It’s worth going on youtube and viewing some of the clips about this religion. Secrecy, evasion of the law, wife swapping, pedophilia, and prostitution for Jesus are a few of the more scandalous practices of this so-called religion. Its surprising that the Children of God has even survived as a religion.
Mormon History
It’s worth examining the history of our own church and evaluating the conduct of individual members and examining church history through the lens of beta rules. In fact, some of the most interesting threads of church history are the stories of the betas making things work in spite of the leadership. Read church history with any sort of thoroughness and you’ll find things that you reject with as much certainty as you reject the rule in the Old Testament about women wearing pants.
Let’s look at an example of the evolution of Mormon practice and doctrine from a ‘beta-rules’ perspective.
As you read the Doctrine and Covenants, the language outlining the word of wisdom doesn’t frame it as a commandment. But today the word of wisdom is one of the defining things about our church. If you drink coffee or beer, or smoke cigarettes you’ve already framed yourself as wicked. But Joseph Smith drank wine in the Carthage Jail. For a time the Nauvoo Mansion House had a bar operated by Porter Rockwell until Emma put a stop to it. How did the word of wisdom evolve into a commandment?
Once the Mormons got to Utah, there was a big challenge to settle the territory. Every year there were more people coming into town so they had to plan ahead, and plant more crops than they would normally need, and otherwise plan ahead for new jobs, and other provisions for the territory. At the same time they were trying to build the Salt Lake Temple. You’ve heard about how people would work one day in 10 on the temple.
One day a memo went out that said if you’re going to work on the temple; the church won’t supply chewing tobacco anymore. If you want to chew tobacco, bring your own. Okay, reasonable policy change there.
About 10 years later another memo went out. We just added it up, and $20,000 worth of cash went out of the territory last year buying alcohol and tobacco. So if you want to drink or smoke, please just grow your own. Twenty thousand dollars could have bought a bunch of machinery or something which we really need in the territory.
Fast forward another ten years. Now the railroad is just about to be completed. Brigham Young is worried that fine inexpensive goods manufactured back east will kill off the local economy. The relief society is reconstituted (Joseph Smith had disbanded it when he got tired of the Relief Society agitating against polygamy) and everybody in the church has to promise that they won’t buy the goods coming in off the railroad, and instead they will buy local goods (ironically Eliza R. Snow totally ignored this and bought the nice clothes from back east) and by the way, the word of wisdom is a commandment and everybody has to get re-baptized to covenant to live up to these new promises. Ever since then the word of wisdom has technically been a commandment but with varying levels of enforcement and compliance.
Today who can really argue with the word of wisdom as a rule? Not drinking alcohol and not smoking are good ideas. And from a beta-rule perspective you can make other rules having to do with this as well. Nobody is going to argue that smoking is a good idea, but people enjoy drinking alcohol. If you do imbibe, don’t drive your car, and don’t drink too much or you’ll get alcohol poisoning. If you talk to a Lutheran for example, and ask them what guidelines they would give their 25 year old child about drinking alcohol you’ll probably get a good summary of the beta rules for drinking alcohol.
Hiccup
Hiccup was an unappreciated Beta on his imaginary island. He couldn’t get a date. Everyone rejected him for who he was. But inside his mind were the ideas to change his island from a pretty crappy place to live, into the coolest place ever. Hiccup wouldn’t have been able to do it without cooperation from other betas.
Ideas for Study and Application
- Watch ‘How To Train Your Dragon’
- As you go about your day, think about the amazing things you enjoy and how they got to be in your life.
- Think about how great it is that there are so many good people in your life.
- Practice giving thoughtful compliments.
- Go ahead and watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy. You know you want to.
- Get curious when you meet a devout member of another religion. Try to build a bridge if you can.
[1] Nietzsche calls the Law of Moses a slave morality. You’ll notice several times in the narrative that Moses reminds the children of Israel to remember that they were slaves in Egypt. Nietzsche said that the way the slave morality propagated onto the masters was by teaching the slave morality (in a subversive way) to the children of the masters. Hitler co-opted Nietzsche’s line of reasoning (among others) as justification for killing millions of Jews. I’m asserting that the Law of Moses ‘Beta Rules’ are a foundation for civilization in a good way.
[2] And by the way, I don’t think I should have to bring it up, but if you ever run into some JW’s on the street, don’t be an idiot. Don’t get into some amateur childish doctrinal battle with them. Find some kind of beta compliment for them, and go somewhere else peacefully.
