Note: I found this essay while surfing the Internet this past week. I took it from the mormon_anarchy Yahoo group. Wake_Up posted it there on Sun Oct 8, 2000, as the first message and now I’m re-posting it here in a slightly edited fashion (I tried to correct some typos). I have also re-posted three more of his essays. (See What the Priesthood Is, Congruence vs. Obedience, and Agency: The Single Principle for a Continuous War.)
Please keep in mind that I did not write this article. I tried to contact the author, (whose real name, according to Stirling D. Allen, is Jahnihah Wrede), but my email was returned as “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender.” If you want more information about him or his views, I suggest you visit his (now defunct) web site, which you can view by using the Way Back Machine.
Why Father is an Anarchist
I was once accused of being an ‘anarchist’. Because of the negative meaning attached to it, I rejected it. Most people perceive of anarchy as being total chaos, when in fact, in it’s purest form, it is the simple absence of compulsion or a system of enFORCEment.
From Bovier’s 6th Edition (1856):
“ANARCHY. The absence of all political government; by extension, it signifies confusion in government.”
I do not espouse ‘confusion’ or ‘chaos’, and it is ONLY by extension that government is presumed to EXIST so as to have confusion within it in the first place. As the definition states, “The ABSENCE of ALL political goverment” is anarchy; which is a far cry from the definition of ‘confusion’ or ‘chaos’ itself.
Anarchy is therefore JUST AS VIABLE as an orderly and sane existence WITHOUT political government, regardless of what anyone would like to assert, just as the word itself testifies to.
This does not mean there are no consequences for one’s behavors, in fact chaos is the result of the reactive infliction of consequence as a response to an unfavorable choice.
When everyone reacts to reactions, the resulting environment is comparable to the 3 Stooges. At some point, people develop a method of ‘order’ to curb the resulting chaos because everyone knows that we are terribly undisciplined as a society that we need compulsion to prevent all these knee-jerk reactions from causing a domino effect. Instead of learning to be self-disciplined in a manner absent of excessive, artificial pain, we develop a compulsive artificial system to inflict a consequence upon people for not behaving like we want them to behave. Usually the artificial consequence is made so unpleasant, it curtails the ACTION but not the desire that leads to the action itself. Fear is the motivating force in this system. Compulsion is equally applied to everyone. Infliction of force against the will of a minority is mandated by the majority, even if the majority is completely incongruent to God – and that is where we begin to see the futility in developing and maintaining artificial systems of ‘order’.
Let us look at the very nature of ‘law’. It isn’t too difficult to define ‘law’ into two separate categories: God’s law, and men’s law.
God’s law is unchangable; men’s law consistently changes.
God’s law is Eternal – meaning it never had a beginning or will it have an end; men’s law is merely ink on paper and has a beginning at it’s writing, and has an end whenever it suits them.
God’s law allows complete freedom of choice and the consequences are applied by nature – be it blessings or condemnation; men’s laws asserts against free choice an artificial consequence of condemnation above and beyond that of God’s law, and provides no blessing whatsoever.
God’s law is merciful or just based upon the intent of one’s heart; men’s law denies the existence of intent and of truth for ‘facts’ alone.
God’s law is enduring reaping what you sow; men’s law is enduring whatever un-natural pains contrived beyond that of nature, and the only relief is an absence of pain – and an absence of pain does NOT equal happiness.
That is enough evidence to justify a separation between the two.
It is a matter of common sence that any law that has no consequence attached to it is of no effect – it is as though it didn’t exist at all. Nothing would happen if a law was violated if that law had no consequence attached to it. Scripturally we find this very principle espoused – that a law without a punishment is of no effect.
The dilema occurs when we look at the parameters of the methods of operation of PH power in relation to free choice. God’s ‘law’ is thus: When any violation of freedom of choice occurs, the powers of heaven, and the inseparably connected rights of PH authority are immediately withdrawn and are ineffectual. Thus, if God wishes to enFORCE a punishment upon you against your will, He falls from Godhood for violations of your own will. Seems like a catch 22 for God, right? If He makes a law, then He MUST enFORCE that law, yet the enFORCEment of that law violates your free agency, so God is no longer congruent, and ceases to be God.
Sounds like either God has laws, but better not attempt to enFORCE them for fear of falling from Godhood; or, God has no laws and is an anarchist in the purest sence. So, which is it?
If God has laws, then He better have a way to enFORCE them else they become of no effect. Problem is that even the attempt to compel people by law is the intention that violates the natural congruence of who God is. If His heart is to inflict force against other’s will, then He isn’t true to what He espouses, and makes
Himself to be a Liar. Is God then a Liar? No, so we must conclude that something else is the reality of things.
Let me take another tact for just a moment so that things should begin to come into focus here.
What law does God require Himself to adhere to if He is already naturally congruent to it? What purpose would a law serve if God is already the type of person who wouldn’t break it? Don’t laws exist to curb the behaviors of those who otherwise WOULD violate it? If God already knows how to behave, why would any law be of use? Besides, who would enFORCE a law against an all powerful God? Why should He even regard it as it would be impossible for Him to suffer the consequence of it’s violation?
Could it be that God needs no law to be compelled into behaving any particular way, and that His perfection is in that He is wholly congruent and above the law? Would this status of being ‘above the law’ seem logical for a God who is the Greatest Sovereign? If so, then He is absolutely chaotic by standard paradigms because in this type of existence there can be no ‘authority’ to curb His behaviors, and no ‘order’ for God because the standard paradigm believes a system of authority is required in order to have ‘order’ and eliminate chaos. Perhaps it’s we that have it backwards.
God is a God of Order, but not of compulsion. His order derives from pure intents which leads to proper action, not punishment which curb actions out of fear but do nothing to change the intents of men. Man’s law’s only desire is to obtain feigned peace by the heavy hand of force and compulsion to ‘eliminate chaos’ without any consideration for the eternal progression of each soul that REQUIRES becoming the type of BEing (within and without) that God is in order to return back home to Him. Man’s law ignores the heart and intent that must eventually become congruent to the very powers of Heaven for a counterfeit ‘order’ that requires only strict obedience without regard to what type of people we are inwardly.
Do you think God will allow unrepentant liars to exist in Heaven with Him? The scriptures say He won’t allow ANY unclean thing to abide His presence. The liar couldn’t anyway. To abide in the same existence with God requires us to be as He is. It requires being congruent to all that He Himself is congruent to. It would be like a non-smoker living amid an entire population who smoked constantly. It would be Hell to live with God if you are not that type of person.
Either you are the type of person who can live in true peace without being forced to do it, or compelled by fear to ‘behave’, or you are the type of person who requires law in order to live in a feigned peace. Jesus said,
“In me is the law of Moses fulfilled.”
That meant simply that He didn’t need the law of Moses to dictate how He was to live because He had already internalized the true intent behind it. We have further evidence that this is the case be cause of His enlightened Sermon on the Mount of Olives, a.k.a. The Be-attitudes.
If you love God sincerely, you naturally gravitate to becoming just as He is. Who He is is the reason you love Him, not because of what He can do for you, or what you hope to be rewarded with. To be obedient to God because you want the rewards promised, or because eternal salvation is offered is the same as marriage to a weathy person merely to obtain riches. It is to make love a lie. How many of you want a spouse or children that behave as you want just for what they can obtain from you, and not because they want anything to do with you as a person? What is ironic is that people believe that if they merely believe that God will save them, and/or if they do all sorts of ‘good works’, then He will save them regardless of what they are truly like inwardly. They believe that as a person, as long as you can behave outwardly according to God’s law, then it doesn’t matter that inwardly that someone is a house divided against itself. The spirit of the law has no life in them because they believe that ‘obedience is greater than sacrifice’, but are obedient liars instead of being congruently true to themselves, and hopefully to God.
Why should God have laws among those who already know how to behave as perfectly as He does out of a matter of true desire and BEing? Why should we lie to ourselves about what we really feel and desire as long as God knows the truth about it already? To succeed at such an attempted denial prevents us from changing because we refuse to even acknowledge our true state of being, or to feign justify our mere obedience thinking that God will accept us as we are. When we reach Heaven and realize that all those artificial, compulsive laws no longer exist, out true nature will surface and we will alienate ourselves from a God we are nothing like having never learned the lessons of congruence and thought only of obtaining reward by obedience.
God is an anarchist that already knows how to BE. He knows laws are a curse for the disobedient, and that they serve no purpose for those who already have the true principles written upon the tablets of their hearts. He allows mankind to choose freely in self-discovery of what they truly desire to BE, but that no one can live as a God, or with Him, as long as they can not become congruent and that the natural charater of a person is in harmony with the powers of Heaven and the rights of the Priesthood.
Wake_Up
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4 Comments
LDS Anarchy 
The Father is not an anarchist. The order of the priesthood is an “archy”, so by definition he could not possibly be an anarchist (“an”: without, “archy”: order, rule).
Derek, here is KJV Mark 10: 42-45
The emphasis is mine.
Now, look at this same scripture, re-worded a little different:
Emphasis mine.
(a) “-arch” and “arch” defined: -arch Function: noun combining form. Etymology: Middle English -arche, from Anglo-French & Late Latin & Latin; Anglo-French -arche, from Late Latin -archa, from Latin -arches, -archus, from Greek -arches, -archos, from archein, to begin, rule. : ruler : leader (Taken from Merriam-Webster’s Online Collegiate Dictionary.) -arch [Gr. archos chief, commander, archein to rule. See ARCH, a.] A suffix meaning a ruler, as in monarch (a sole ruler). arch, a. 1. Chief; eminent; greatest; principal. (Taken from Webster’s 3rd Unabridged International Dictionary.)
(b) anarchy Etymology: Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek, from anarchos having no ruler, from an- + archos ruler. (Taken from Merriam-Webster’s Online Collegiate Dictionary.)
So, whoever wanted to be great, was not be be great (they were to be the least) and whoever wanted to be first (chief, principal), was to be last (servant of all). The priesthood, then, is not an archy, but an anarchy. The order is reversed: whoever wants to be first must be last. There are to be no rulers, only servants.
This is only semantics, my friend. By the order of the priesthood there is a hierarchy of obedience & command, which is rule & rod. I get your point, and I know the etymologies… I just prefer not to employ doublethink & newspeak. The priesthood of servants is an Aristarchy, not an anarchy.
The scriptures you cite are talking about unrighteous dominion, not right submission to the order of the priesthood.
The rule is the line or the rod. “But the word of the Lord was unto them precept upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little, and there a little; that they might go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. … Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.”
Not sure which side of the fence I fall on here. I, for one, do not think that those scriptures in Mark are speaking solely to the topic of unrighteous dominion. Certainly, if that’s the case, then it has much more applicability to our lives than the previous comment would have us believe (see D&C 121:36-39). Unrighteous dominion, using D&C 121 as a ruler (pun intended), would seem to be all about us. Rare it is, indeed, to find someone that doesn’t have that “nature and disposition,” at least if we take the scriptures at their word (“almost all men”).
I think one of the tripwires we face in analyzing this is the fact that most of us (if not all) have grown up with a Priesthood body that requires “submission [to] the priesthood.” The priesthood, intended as a way to instruct through love, is used much more to control behavior and induce submission then was ever intended. Instead of letting men govern themselves as they see fit, the priesthood is used as a weapon to control behavior. For example, if you want to do anything that goes against the mainstream odds are you’ll be called into your bishop’s office and spoken with and counseled on “proper” behavior. If you grow a beard and fail to wear a tie, as LDSA suggested a little while back, you’ll likely find yourself without a calling in short order and marginalized to some extent. Speak out about problems in the Church, and you’ll be ‘labeled’ and that “unwritten order” of the priesthood will find ways to teach and instruct you the true way to act, think and talk.
A good scripture on this topic – at least in my skewed opinion – is Jeremiah 31:31-34. In there it talks about doing away with teachers. Instead of having teachers and preachers tell us about Christ, our goal is to know him on a personal level.
Jeremiah 31:34 – And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.