In addition, the belief that everyone may one day be reconciled with God does not necessarily mean at the same time. LDS doctrine teaches that whatever knowledge we obtain in this life will be to our advantage in the next. Just because someone we perceive as less valiant “makes it” doesn’t mean they will be at the same level we are (assuming we have a right to determine what makes someone less valiant or less worthy!). In addition, if we have developed Christ-like love, we won’t feel bitter or jealous, we will feel joy, because it will not please us to see someone lost or suffering, and because we will measure ourselves against our own selves, and not against others. Our job is not to be more righteous than others. It’s to be more righteous than we we were last year.

Another concern sometimes arises in discussions of universalism. It is this: what if I work incredibly hard to make the Celestial Kingdom, and get there–only to discover that that my slacking off, sinning neighbors somehow made it in as well?

After many online encounters with evangelicals who think Mormons are going to hell it became apparent to me that everyone needs to measure themselves against some standard. Mormons have rules based on the necessity of obedience and “doing” as a measure of where they are. The dedicated “I’m saved and yer not” people seemed to need the “yer not” as their standard. In other words, they had no way to assure themselves they were saved unless there was a hell bent group that they could assure themselves they were not part of. As for universalism, I liked Dennis Potter’s ideas on group salvation. I think the scriptures and prophets teach universalism…we just don’t teach it. If there are family members depending on us I think that does away with the problem of complacency.

It is not uncommon for responsible parents to lose one of their children, for a time, to influences over which they have no control. They agonize over rebellious sons or daughters. They are puzzled over why they are so helpless when they have tried so hard to do what they should.
It is my conviction that those wicked influences one day will be overruled.
“The Prophet Joseph Smith declared—and he never taught a more comforting doctrine—that the eternal sealings of faithful parents and the divine promises made to them for valiant service in the Cause of Truth, would save not only themselves, but likewise their posterity. Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father’s heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain. Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the salvation of God.” (Orson F. Whitney, in Conference Report, Apr. 1929, p. 110.)
We cannot overemphasize the value of temple marriage, the binding ties of the sealing ordinance, and the standards of worthiness required of them. When parents keep the covenants they have made at the altar of the temple, their children will be forever bound to them. President Brigham Young said:
“Let the father and mother, who are members of this Church and Kingdom, take a righteous course, and strive with all their might never to do a wrong, but to do good all their lives; if they have one child or one hundred children, if they conduct themselves towards them as they should, binding them to the Lord by their faith and prayers, I care not where those children go, they are bound up to their parents by an everlasting tie, and no power of earth or hell can separate them from their parents in eternity; they will return again to the fountain from whence they sprang.” (Joseph Fielding Smith, Doctrines of Salvation, comp. Bruce R. McConkie, 3 vols., 2:90-91.)
Boyd K. Packer, “Our Moral Environment,” Ensign, May 1992, 66

I believe (naively?) that there is good and potential in every human being.

On a bit of a tangent, reading this made me realize something strange about my own views. In a lot of ways, I really like the Mormon perspective on humans, with all of its positive elements–humans as the literal children of God, with divine potential, and all of that. And yet, for some reason, I tend to be on the cynical side. I totally believe in original sin. So what am I of all people doing arguing for the possibility of universalism? One would think that I would be playing instead with the possibility of universal dangnation. Perhaps it goes back to an observation I really like from Karl Barth, that you can have as strong a doctrine as sin as you want, as long as your doctrine of grace is stronger.

The possibility or hope for universal salvation makes me feel far more motivated to be good or virtuous, to grow and reach my potential (whatever that may be) and to help others do the same than does one based strictly on reward for good behavior or avoidance of bad behavior.

Well said. I think there’s a lot to that.

Recently I have been perceiving heaven and hell less as destinations and more as states, states which we create for ourselves and others in the here and now, and maybe states we sometimes do not choose, existences in which we sometimes just find ourselves anyway, for better or for worse. And maybe both are necessary for our purification. Heaven/hell as eternal punishment or reward do not motivate my behavior really. I think maybe if I felt more certain of their reality as eternal destinations, they might influence my behavior more. I just have no faith right now in anything after we die.

As for the eternal perspective, I have to confess that any salvation except for universal salvation has very little appeal to me. I believe (naively?) that there is good and potential in every human being. A salvation that does not acknowledge this is not really one in which I’m interested. The possibility or hope for universal salvation makes me feel far more motivated to be good or virtuous, to grow and reach my potential (whatever that may be) and to help others do the same than does one based strictly on reward for good behavior or avoidance of bad behavior.

So I think, even in the eternal sense, salvation in my ideal universe – universal salvation – would be a process. Universal, in that everyone would have access, but specific in its application to each person.

Maybe I don’t even know what salvation is.

Sure, I think so. At worst we become insufferable or even dangerous zealots who think most any means justifies the end of saving souls from eternal torture. I think many of the so-called Christians who head up anti-Mormon ministries are fine examples of this. We have plenty of (too many) insufferable zealots in our ranks as well.

Your point is well taken that this is really a Christian problem and not just a Mormon Christian problem though.

Hehe. It is a bit absurd isn’t it? I’m mildly surprised that this messy section 19 thing doesn’t cause more consternation in more people. It is a potentially massive destabilizing scripture (as I mentioned in that post).

So I guess what I’m saying is that if guaranteed universalism were true, but God lied about it because it would turn us into slackers, I would have some real ethical concerns about that. Not to mention the trust issues—as the Lectures on Faith say, we can’t have faith in God without a correct knowledge of his attributes, and if one of those attributes is a willingness to deceive when necessary — hmmm . . . However, I’m not really sure what to make of the D&C 19 thing, because it seems to me that it’s not actually a very useful deception, given that God lets the cat out of the bag. I mean, now that we know that everlasting punishment is somewhat less everlasting than we’d assumed, what’s to motivate us?

I’m also a bit uncomfortable with a sense that sometimes comes out of these discussions (I’m thinking of theological discussions generally, by the way, not this one in particular), in which the masses can’t know about universalism because they couldn’t handle it–they would all fall into wickedness before you could say “everlasting punishment.” But the few, elite theologians who’d manage to deduce the doctrine through sophisticated use of hermeneutics could handle the truth, because they were on a higher plane of morality and would be able to do good anyway. Much as I might like to think that those of us with universalist inclinations are more naturally righteous than those poor benighted souls who disagree, I can’t say that I see any evidence of it.

But I’m getting sidetracked. This is the question I really wanted to get at. I think we’re all pretty sensitive to the dangers of preaching universalism. The procrastination issue is obviously a big one. But are there dangers in not preaching it? Or at least, in preaching with certainty the notion that not everyone will make it? Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple of possibilities: hopelessness (for those anti-Calvinists, who rather than assume they’re elect, immediately jump to the conclusion that they’re among the damned); self-righteousness, Rameuptom-style, as mentioned earlier; constant anxiety about being “good enough” which makes it difficult to get much out of life here.

I guess none of this is anything new—it’s the basic problem in Christianity. If you preach grace, will that cause everyone to sin more? But how can you not preach grace, given that it’s what the gospel is all about?

Nice thoughts, Kaimi, especially about not excluding anyone from dessert if at all possible. (Because that’s just cruel—especially if your siblings are smugly eating their ice cream in front of you.) The Prodigal Son movie resonated with me a lot as well. I guess it’s a bit easier to see ourselves as in need of repentance when we’ve been living in the muck with the pigs. An acquaintance of mine once gave a talk in sacrament meeting in which he made what I thought was a really interesting point. He talked about the ninety-and-nine parable, and the tendency to resent the one, who seems to get all the attention at the expense of everyone else. I related a lot to that. But then he asked something like, “but who am I to assume that I’m one of the ninety-and-nine?” Which is a great question. I suspect that there are ways and times in our lives in which all of us are the one—and maybe it’s that experience of being rescued ourselves that allows us to respond with concern instead of resentment when others stray.

Thinking about this, I note that I can have a tendency to see God as acting in a kind of zero-sum fashion. In other words, if other people are getting blessings and attention and forgiveness, that means there’s less for me. So then I’m bitter, and like the devil, I want everyone to be miserable like unto myself. I do better, I think, when I operate from a mentality of abundance rather than one of scarcity, at least when it comes to God’s love.

Thanks, Seraphine. That danger—that I’ll give up on God, rather than vice versa—seems like a more pressing one to me as well.

Ziff, nice point about Nephi. Almost thou persuades me to have a better attitude about him (my views, admittedly, are doubtless tainted by Arnold Friberg depictions). And I very much agree that these kinds of debates play out in the temporal sphere as well.

And as for your speculation about God’s “afterknowledge”—that’s a great twist on this whole discussion. I’d never heard of the “fundamental problem of causal inference”, but it sounds like one of the ideas articulated by Karl Rahner, who says that we can’t ever really know if our orientation is toward God because we don’t have the ability to trace the roots of our own decisions. (Okay, I really just said that because I wanted to write a sentence that managed to contain both “the fundamental problem of causal inference” and “Karl Rahner.”)

But back to the topic of the value of preaching universalism (or not), which is my real interest in this post, I like your focus on justice being served, that we can’t escape the consequences of our actions (repent now or suffer later). And I agree that that seems a useful motivation, regardless of your beliefs about where everyone will end up. This is maybe somewhat related to a tension I’ve often thought about regarding LDS missionary work—namely, what’s the urgency in preaching the gospel to the world, if people can get baptized after they’re dead? One might think that unique LDS doctrines would make us less inclined to proselytize. But I think our missionary impulse is grounded not just on the desire to bring people eternal salvation, but also on the premise that church membership has something valuable to offer in the here-and-now. In other words, the desire for salvation isn’t the only motivating factor.

Jacob, I’m glad to hear that you managed to convince Geoff to see the error of his ways in an epic battle. Unless, of course, his previous position was one with which I agreed, in which case I’m sorry you misled him.