I really enjoyed Patrick Kearon’s talk this last General Conference. His message was well summarized by his title: “God’s Intent Is to Bring You Home.” He told the story of a policeman he once watched from a hotel window whose job for the day was to turn people away from a closed street. Elder Kearon said that the policeman looked like he was very much enjoying turning people away: “he seemed to develop a spring in his step, as if he might start doing a little jig, as each car approached the barrier.” He contrasted this policeman with God, who he said is eager to bring us home.
I thought this was a lovely message. But it seems obvious. Why would he feel the need to say it? The linguist Paul Grice came up with four maxims that appear to govern our conversational interactions. The first of these, which I think is relevant for this talk, is to be informative. We generally say things that we expect the other person doesn’t know. We want to communicate something. A Monty Python sketch provides a handy illustration of how this maxim can be violated for comic effect. When the pilot tells the passengers “There is absolutely no cause for alarm,” he of course brings up the possibility that there is cause for alarm, because why would he be telling them that if he didn’t think they might be alarmed? That is, the passengers are expecting the pilot to follow the norm of being informative. All the same goes for assuring them that “the wings are not on fire.”