Episode #249 - Mortality and the Anti-Christ Within Us

The mortal natural man within our body chemistry is a powerful force that is necessary but can be turned against our spiritual nature.  It can act as a powerful Anti-Christ force if we allow for it to occur.  However, seeing these philosophies in their true light can help us avoid our mortal failings especially when we suffer with mental illness.

Transcript

Welcome to Episode #249 – Mortality and the Anti-Christ Within Us.  One might think that a story such as Korihor the Anti-Christ would have little to do with mental illness. Afterall his story is far more about perspective rather than emotional difficulties.  However, it is not the story of Korihor that I want to discuss today in the sense of mental health.  It is the philosophical teachings and the emotional connection to those teachings that I want to explore.  We as human beings in a fallen world have tendencies to drift towards certain philosophies that align better with our fallen nature rather than our spiritual nature.  We tend to follow the physical/mental chemistry and the emotions that come with it rather than what might be termed our spiritual chemistry and nature.  When we struggle to access the spiritual, the fallen mortal chemistry presses upon us with even greater determination.  We tend to drift to ideas that match our weakened faith.  And so Korihor’s ideas and philosophies become enticing to the mind and heart.  The difficulty with these philosophies and teachings is that they also tend to deny the Christ, making them anti-Christ. Many of our core mortal desires emphasize a me first attitude and a more selfish perspective.  This makes sense when you encounter a bear on your trail.  Your first priority is to avoid the conflict that may ensue.  However, the same instincts can also be used in a far more tragic manner where we believe that our needs and wants are far more important than others.  Today we are going to look at Korihor’s anti-Christ ideas from the perspective of mental health and how they so easily influence our lives.

Korihor lived in the days of Alma the younger, who was the prophet.  However, Alma is a prophet that rebelled for a time.  Don’t forget that Alma probably preached similar if not identical ideas when he fought against the church in his youth.  Alma was very familiar with Korihor and those enticing ideas he espoused.  Korihor brought about three main philosophies contrary to the doctrine of the gospel we teach today but tend to be enticing to mortal emotions and chemistry.  Actually, these ideas have always been around as long as the gospel has, especially in mortal fallen worlds.  They entice emotionally and logically rather than spiritually and this leans into one of the main reasons they are so easy for our mortal minds to believe.  They lean into our mortal fallen desires and insecurities.  They also tend to be easy to believe and live, requiring no real effort.  The gospel requires effort mentally, spiritually and physically.  The gospel requires 24 hours, 7 days a week attention to detail.  It simply requires work.  However, our mortal bodies are masters at energy conservation, mentally, emotionally and physically.  Our body genuinely seeks out the road of least resistance, lest, effort, especially when difficulties and weaknesses arise and so these philosophies also cause our minds to engage with them more easily.  So let’s take a look at the three main philosophies of Korihor and why they are so tempting to our mortal bodies.

Philosophy #1 – You cannot trust what you cannot see.  Prophecy is no more than educated guess or simply made-up stories to make us feel better.

13 O ye that are bound down under a foolish and a vain hope, why do ye yoke yourselves with such foolish things? Why do ye look for a Christ? For no man can know of anything which is to come.

14 Behold, these things which ye call prophecies, which ye say are handed down by holy prophets, behold, they are foolish traditions of your fathers.

15 How do ye know of their surety? Behold, ye cannot know of things which ye do not see; therefore ye cannot know that there shall be a Christ.

This particular idea is very pleasing to the mind of mental illness.  We know that emotions can be manipulated by our bodies.  We experience that everyday or our lives.  We also tend to rely more upon the logical and visual because we don’t trust our emotions.  And so when someone says “Have you seen Christ?”  “Have you seen the gold plates?”  “Did you hear Jospeh translate them?”  “Did the Savior really exist?”  If he did, how would we know that he did and that he completed the atonement.  No one was really there except sleeping apostles.  These questions can go on and on about what really occurred.  The Bible and Book of Mormon events have been disputed since they were written and translated.  We weren’t there and we didn’t see it.  Our desire to see things for ourself stems directly from our own mistrust of mortal emotions and often life experiences.  The mind is a pre-structured, predetermined muscle.  It is where our spiritual and mortal minds interact.  It loathes not knowing or understanding stories, information or topics.  So much so that our mind will automatically fill in the blanks so that the mind doesn’t have to deal with the unknown.  For instance, if I tell you to picture a mother and her child.  What do you see?  Most of your probably pictured a mother holding a child, although I didn’t state that.  The mother will be similar to you or someone familiar to you.  The child will likely be hers, again I didn’t state that.  They would also be human, comfortable, dressed similar to your culture.  The mother I pictured was a gorilla with her child I had seen earlier this morning.  The problem with our minds is that it adds the details automatically from our experiences.  What this attests is simply that our brain and mind does not like the unknown.  And that leads to this problem of sight.  If I haven’t seen God how do I know that he exists.  This is a pleasing idea to the mind until you dig into the substance of our life here in mortality.  Most of what we believe actually comes from trusting our sources of information. 

Almost everything we believe scientifically, historically we have not seen personally.  We simply believe because we assume that someone smarter than us has figured it out and witnessed it in some form.  Most of what we believe has come to us this way.  It is far rarer for us to witness something in person than to believe another who has experienced it.  Even if we could only believe what we saw, we would not have enough time in our lives or even the ability to begin to see every historical event, person, and place that occurs in our environment or in history.  Meaning seeing to believe cannot be absolute because we cannot accomplish it and we would have very limited beliefs.  So limited we would not likely function.  We have to trust the written word of others often what we call experts, professionals or witnesses.

The second problem with this idea goes a little deeper.  What essentially Korihor is saying is if I don’t have a visual witness of God and every aspect of his plan, I won’t believe.  Korihor is not asking what is true.  He is saying that all truth must be visible and plain to him.  He doesn’t want to rely on someone else for truth.  He also doesn’t want God to send a deeply personal emotional message.  He wants God to appear to him to declare that he is real.  He leaves no room for truth that might live outside the visible spectrum of light.  He is essentially denying the existence of God because he cannot prove through visible light that he is real.  He takes the stance that because he has not seen God then he must not be real.  This same idea and foundational philosophy breaks down fairly quickly when you begin to consider the reality of it.  Under his philosophy only the world he sees exists.  Other countries, people, animals, trees, all of creation would not exist until he sees it.  All of history would not exist unless he saw it.  

Even if you assume he could visit every part of the world and see every animal, the idea that God does not exist is actually a form of belief or type of faith.  Certainly not the type that provides for salvation.  But his belief that god does not exist actually motivates his actions.  He has no proof that God exists or does not exist.  Holding all things equal both theories could be correct.  The only proof he has that god doesn’t exist is that he hasn’t seen him.  That doesn’t trump the idea that God does exist.  Alma points out that the complexity of creation and the planets actually provides some evidence of a supreme intelligence. All Korihor has is I haven’t seen him.  Alma says we have evidence everywhere.

So why is this idea so enticing to use with mental health problems.  The idea that we don’t trust our emotions is first but for some reason our mortal bodies also tend to be individualistic and prideful in nature.  And to say that a god does not exist provides for what many term, greater freedoms.  This is another issue with Korihor’s point of reference.  Freedom to act itself has become the focus rather than the action and its consequences.  If god does not exist then I have no restrictions to my behavior.  When we focus on freedom to act rather than the resulting consequences of those actions, we see only ourselves not the harm we do to others, our society, country and trust.  We also do not see freedom from the correct perspective.  I may be free to use illicit drugs but I cannot remove the catastrophic consequences to my family, my life and my personal relationships. Freedom to act cannot be divorced from the action itself and the consequences.  To do so or say so is to ignore the truth of all things.  Because truth does not just define the freedom to act but defines itself by core principles and action according to those principles.  You cannot separate the principle from the action. You cannot separate the choice from the consequences.  And yet Korihor tends to teach this idea because our mortal, prideful, independent minds like its pleasing idea action without consequences.

Philosophy #2 – Forgiveness is not real.  Just an emotional figment of your imagination.  The atonement isn’t real.  Just a frenzied mind.  No such thing as sin. God will save all people.

16 Ye look forward and say that ye see a remission of your sins. But behold, it is the effect of a frenzied mind; and this derangement of your minds comes because of the traditions of your fathers, which lead you away into a belief of things which are not so.

17 And many more such things did he say unto them, telling them that there could be no atonement made for the sins of men, but every man fared in this life according to the management of the creature; therefore every man prospered according to his genius, and that every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime.

This is perhaps the most dangerous of all Korihor’s teachings when you consider the mortal mind.  And unfortunately, it is far more dangerous to those of us who deal with emotional illness.  Korihor states it plainly, you can’t trust your emotions.  What you feel as repentance, comfort and salvation is nothing more than your emotions making you feel someone that isn’t real.  And it comes only because you have been taught that it will come if you pray, repent and seek forgiveness.  Meaning what you feel is simply something you were taught as a child and learned to feel.  Emotions are not real in the sense of truth or faith.  You can’t trust them.  We shouldn’t be worried about guilt or doubt or revelation as they don’t really exist.  They are mechanisms your mind has created to help you with the uncertainties of life and the unknowns but they are not telling you what is true.  I don’t think that I need to go very far here with the idea of emotional trust.  I admit that I tend not to trust my emotions because they have deceived me many times.  I am very cautious about emotional experiences that I feel are true.  I scrutinize them and run them over and over again in my mind.  And yes I will probably always have some distrust in my emotions.  Korihor uses this idea to nullify the the Atonement of the Savior and our trust in the promises.  He wants us to believe that all emotions relating to god, church and keeping the commandments and even truth are not real.  He also insinuates that all emotion is not real and that even guilt is just a frenzied mind.  Yes this can and is very enticing to those of us who suffer with emotional illness and all the problems that come with it.  However, Korihor makes a couple of serious errors in his philosophy.  The first is that he is simply emphasizing one set of emotions over another and saying that what he feels trumps what anyone else feels.  We all run on emotions as much as Korihor would like to say otherwise.  We who suffer know that well.  When your depression and anxiety cause you to have little to no desire to act, you firmly understand that you are run by our motivating desires not by logic.  I know that I need to get up and work, shower and eat and I understand the consequences if I don’t.  So if logic prevailed I would do those things as emotion would not be a factor.  However, emotion is a factor in everything we do.  So Korihor is simply saying, seeking and satisfying our mortal desires is what is true, nothing else.  I would agree with him if those were the only emotions we felt and if we were as science states an accident in the cosmos.  However, they are not and you can’t just throw away a particular set of emotions because they are not convenient to your story.  Spiritual feelings, mortal feelings are often more real and lasting in the sense of experience and memory than any logical thought.  We tend to remember strong emotional experiences but forget facts and figures.  Yes we have to sort out what feelings pertain to truth and what pertain to false ideas.  And that sorting can be difficult when you don’t trust your emotions.  What I can say from my experiences with this problem of personal revelation and the sorting of emotions is that the Lord is very merciful.  He tends to send emotions we will recognize as from him and then reinforce those moments of revelation with other sources of confirmation.  He also is far more merciful when it comes to decisions that are confusing and difficult.  Finally I have observed that he fully understands my difficulties and knows how to work within my illness to guide me.  

Philosophy #3 – Church leadership is just seeking power.  Church leadership issues instructions and messages to keep people under their reign and coming to them for answers.  They don’t answer to a God.  They just use cultural and social traditions to keep individuals under their purview.  They take from them their rights and money that they should be enjoying.  It is all about money and power.

23 Because I do not teach the foolish traditions of your fathers, and because I do not teach this people to bind themselves down under the foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests, to usurp power and authority over them, to keep them in ignorance, that they may not lift up their heads, but be brought down according to thy words.

24 Ye say that this people is a free people. Behold, I say they are in bondage. Ye say that those ancient prophecies are true. Behold, I say that ye do not know that they are true.

25 Ye say that this people is a guilty and a fallen people, because of the transgression of a parent. Behold, I say that a child is not guilty because of its parents.

26 And ye also say that Christ shall come. But behold, I say that ye do not know that there shall be a Christ. And ye say also that he shall be slain for the sins of the world—

27 And thus ye lead away this people after the foolish traditions of your fathers, and according to your own desires; and ye keep them down, even as it were in bondage, that ye may glut yourselves with the labors of their hands, that they durst not look up with boldness, and that they durst not enjoy their rights and privileges.

28 Yea, they durst not make use of that which is their own lest they should offend their priests, who do yoke them according to their desires, and have brought them to believe, by their traditions and their dreams and their whims and their visions and their pretended mysteries, that they should, if they did not do according to their words, offend some unknown being, who they say is God—a being who never has been seen or known, who never was nor ever will be.

This next idea of Korihor brings us full circle.  It leans upon the idea of doubt and fear.  It leans into the idea that our minds do not like the unknown.  It also leans into the idea that everyone thinks like I do.  It also tackles a very real problem we know about but struggle to address.  We don’t know what others are feeling.  And because we don’t, we don’t know their real intentions. Korihor leans into this idea to state that he believes the leaders of the church don’t have good intentions, that they are seeking power and money.  This is probably true for Korihor because he seeks out these things.  We also tend to do something called transferal.  When an individual accuses us of a sin or a crime, that is because they often have similar intentions.  Meaning we tend to transfer our weaknesses, emotions and beliefs unto others and then expect them to act as we do.  Korihor assigns evil intent for two reasons.  It causes doubt in the mind of the believer and Korihor himself had such evil intentions.  Doubt is very problematic for the mortal brain.  If used in the right context, the emotion of doubt can be helpful.  We need to ask questions to learn and doubt can certainly provide that opportunity.  However, it can also be terribly destructive in its nature.  And that is especially true when mental illness troubles our mind.  Doubt causes questions, and questions demand answers in our mind.  When we struggle to feel those answers, doubt can become a deep canyon far too wide to cross.  When answers don’t come or we do not feel them as true or right, we begin to lean upon the anti-Christ mortality.  That chemistry is as Korihor describes it.  You cannot trust your emotions.  They are figments of your imagination or your illness. While those ideas are pleasing to a normal mortal mind, they tend to ring even truer when you know that your own emotions can be manipulated by your mortal body.  We have reasons not to trust our emotions or the emotions of others.  And yet that is exactly what the Lord asks of us.  It is almost contradictory and feels unfair to expect someone to feel truth and then to alter their emotions so that feeling that truth is very difficult.  In fact, I would venture to say that it would be an injustice if not for the Atonement of the Savior.  Because the Savior paid the price for mercy and grace, he can place us into any position he deems necessary for our salvation and then apply mercy and grace liberally to guide us through the teaching moment.  We can be placed in what might be termed unjust experiences where we are weak and limited in our capacity and where it appears that justice will never be served.  We can be placed in a condition where it is difficult to sort through what is true and what is not by our emotions.  That is because the Savior can make up any difference.  The weakness will never be a hinderance because the Savior can apply mercy to our mistakes and grace to increase our capacity.  When he takes us from this world and we look back upon our experiences and consider them through the Savior’s eyes of grace and mercy, we will not see injustice but divine love and attention to spiritual detail.  We will see the Savior’s vision of ourself, whole perfect and ready for exaltation because he was willing to allow us to suffer and learn.  May he bless you with a portion of that vision that you may see him in your life.  Until next week do you part so that the Lord can do his.