Summer in this pandemic has been chaotic. The laws of entropy are in full force, and the evidence can be found in my kitchen, in the awful sleeping schedules of my children, in my failing routines of family prayer and scripture study, and in myself in general. Uncertainty has reigned supreme in our family’s minds for months. After so many of our plans have been interrupted by something as microscopic as a virus, I ponder whether it is even worthwhile to make another plan and set goals for back-to-school time or not. For better or for worse, pandemics can leave one wondering what normal means, and if it would be worthwhile to go back to whatever normal was. However, slowly, deliberately, I am gathering myself together to face September again, hoping for some kind of reorganization and routine after the messy freedoms that summer in a pandemic brings.
Order and Chaos
As I gather myself for the upcoming week, my thoughts turn to the wild doctrine Latter-day Saints have, that we can become like God in eternity. This doctrine has gotten some backlash by critics who claim we debase God by saying we are actually his children with potential to actually become like Him, but to me it is a crazy, beautiful, and inspiring teaching: that we can become co-creators with our Heavenly Parents, that I am a disciple in training trying to practice divine principles, and that my everyday actions do make a difference in eternity.
One latter-day Saint thinker says it this way:
“Several prophets have taught that we are “gods in embryo,” and in Mormon theology the work of Godhood is a work of creation and order—of organizing intelligences, or of bringing order to disordered or chaotic elements in the universe to form new worlds. The call of authentic, imaginative, and generative spirituality is to identify opportunities to actively engage in this creative work of godhood every day, whether through managing emotions, ordering distorted thought patterns, bridling passions, educating desires, growing souls or organizing families. Godhood isn’t about seeking to live according to what is natural but to take natural element and shape it, organize it, build it, channel it, bridle it, and nurture it toward something transcendent—whether that be the element of our bodies or the element of the cosmos.”[1]
I love this idea.
Creatio ex Materia
Latter-day Saints put a unique twist on the creation story. We claim that God did not create heaven and earth ex nihilo, but that God in fact took pre-existing materials and formed them into an earth, creating life through an unknown but definite process of organization, rather than magical conjuring from nothing.[2]
In the beginning, God said, “Look, yonder is matter unorganized.” In the book of Abraham, we learn that God said to those that were with him, “We will go down, for there is space there, and we will take of these materials, and we will make an earth whereon these may dwell.”[3] For God, creation is a process of organization of raw materials that seems to involve time, space, patience, knowledge of natural laws and science, power, and lots and lots of work. Interestingly, we have the suggestion that God used helpers to assist him in his work of creation.
Today, we are called as helpers to assist God in his perpetual work of creation, “to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”[4] In our own lives, there are many opportunities to participate in this work of creation because it is obvious that “matter unorganized” abounds in this fallen world. Mortal life is the perfect testing ground for learning how to be co-creators with God.
Yonder are Dishes Unorganized
What are some examples of “matter unorganized” that we encounter?
I can stand in my pyjamas in the kitchen on any given day and point out to myself the piles of dishes in a sink, the rice Krispies dried on the floor, the milk spilled on the table, and say to myself dryly, “Look, yonder is matter unorganized.” In the evening, there is unmade food in the fridge that I am expected to “create” into a meal for my picky children, and I can mutter under my breath, “Still more matter unorganized.” While raising my children, when I see my son biting his brother’s arm, I can say yet again, “Yonder is matter unorganized” and teach him (hopefully with great love and patience, but not usually) to channel his energies, passions, and desire of justice in appropriate ways.
Often our work of organizing is done in “ways that look small to the understanding of men” [5] Family life is a great place to create order by both teaching and learning simultaneously about the organizing attributes of love, kindness, forgiveness, obedience, and discipline; to take those chaotic, painful, raw, and frustrating parts of life and exalt them into a heavenly state. To some it may sound almost sacrilege to use God’s mighty words of earth’s creation in such banal ways, and to me there is some humor in comparing the grandeur of earth’s creation to doing dishes, but I believe that in a very real way the drudgery of everyday life, especially home life, is the same work.
As mortal beings with all the messy mortal baggage we carry, we are each of us “matter unorganized.” In my own life, this is painfully apparent. In our doctrine, we are taught that we are to be “agents to act, not be acted upon.”[6] God once took of the unorganized elements of this earth to form a body for me so I could come down from heaven into mortality, but to organize me spiritually, God requires my will. He will not interfere with my agency, because that is not how the process works. I cannot passively be formed to become like God. I must act in order to become. In a process parallel to the creation story, sometimes this process of becoming like God involves separating the light from the darkness in my life. Sometimes it is planting seeds of faith to spring up into a later harvest. Sometimes it is causing dry land to appear in an ocean of the impossible. For some, it involves the process of creating and raising miniature men and women in the image of God before sending them out into the lone and dreary world. But always the organizing process takes no small time and effort.
Family history and temple work is another way we participate in the work of creation—we take matter unorganized, like names on a parish register, and organize them into family units and seal them together in the temple as families. Developing talents is another example. We take ideas and the chaotic creative thoughts of the mind and make them into organized music, poetry, art, carpentry, baking, storytelling, or any other variety of abilities. Controlling words, thoughts, and behaviors to more closely follow Christ’s example is another. Each of us in our own sphere has opportunities to take matter unorganized and bridle it, develop it, change it, mold it, love it, serve it, or any other action word we can think of that will take that specific “matter unorganized” and help it “fulfill the measure of its creation.”
Love Creates Anew
As usual, the greatest organizing power this world knows is charity, the pure love of Christ. When we work with that influence, we are creators. We are invited to use our time and energies to cultivate diligence, faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity so that we can be fruitful creators with Christ.[7] Daily we come in contact with a spouse, a child, a friend, a co-worker, perfect strangers—someone—that is a definite piece of “matter unorganized.” With love, we know what to do. Agency is always a part of the process, but when we are working together with the master creator and organizer, Jesus Christ, miracles happen and the laws of entropy are reversed, people change, including ourselves, and order in the universe is restored. Sometimes we have to be broken down in painful ways in order to reorganize ourselves into something better, but always we can be reorganized. This is possible because Jesus Christ not only created this earth and all things in it but through the Atonement has the power to heal us all and put us back together when His creation—us—inevitably breaks down.
As I renew myself in the midst of a pandemic which has sparked chaos and no small amount of “matter unorganized” in our families, wards, communities, and nations, I am making goals to be an organizer—a creator in the Latter-day Saint definition of the term. I am working to take matter unorganized, both in myself and in the world around me, and help shape it into something better. From the broken pieces of this year, we can still work to build Zion, to create a “new world,” that is patterned after our heavenly home.
I don’t expect to do anything grand or worthy of worldly recognition, and I know I will fail often because I am also a work in progress, another prime example of “matter unorganized.” But I will keep on trying. As disciples of Christ all around the world, with persistence and love, we can collectively create beauty and order out of the broken and unfinished around us, and with our help, the day will come when God will once again look upon creation and call it “very good.”
[1] Ty Mansfield, “A Reason for Faith: Homosexuality and the Gospel.” Deseret Book.
[2] Parley P. Pratt said, “Man, moulded from the earth, as a brick! A Woman, manufactured from a rib! …O man! When wilt thou cease to be a child in knowledge. Man, as we have said, is the offspring of Deity.” And Brigham Young said, “When you tell me that father Adam was made as we make adobes from the earth, you tell me what I deem an idle tale. When you tell me that the beasts of the field were produced in that manner, you are speaking idle worlds devoid of meaning. There is no such thing in all the eternities where the Gods dwell.”
[3] Abraham 3:24
[4] Moses 1:39
[5] Ether 3:5
[6] 2 Nephi 2
[7]2 Peter 1:5-8
Christopher grew up in Raymond, Alberta and loves plants and big skies. His childhood was an ongoing nature walk, and very little has changed since then. His faith is heavily influenced by the diversity he finds in the natural world. The more he learns about creation, the more he believes that God must be somebody totally cool. He majored in English at Brigham Young University, with a minor in Women’s Studies. Christopher then went on to graduate as a registered nurse from the University of Lethbridge and currently works with seniors as a home care case manager. He is married to his high school crush and will gush to anyone who listens about his 5 children. He likes them even more than plants. Besides plants and poetry, Christopher also has a lifelong obsession with molluscs.
