I'm deeply inspired by the life of Jesus: his admonition to diligently seek after truth, and his promise that all those who seek shall find; his introduction of a higher moral code, the golden rule, teaching us to boldly respond to our enemies with love; his courage to publicly oppose religious arrogance and abuse of power at great personal cost; his willingness to bless and heal all those who came to him, especially the marginalized and the downtrodden.

I've tried to look to his life for inspiration and guidance on how to respond faithfully and righteously when I face challenges like we are experiencing today. A man I greatly admire shared some thoughts about this that I found helpful:

He explained that whenever new revelation breaks in upon the world, through messengers such as Jesus and Joseph Smith, it is necessary for this revelation to be organized into some kind of process for it to be carried through history. Without this process it can’t endure. The challenge is that it is never possible to take the brilliant message and perfectly codify it into a routine, so the same process that gives it ongoing life also weakens it. And to make matters worse, we who supervise the routine are often more interested in the process than in the purpose or vision it was originally meant to serve. We become fascinated by the process itself, and end up with the Church for Church’s sake. The institution becomes primarily focused on its own maintenance and preservation.

Many traditional religious narratives are failing to resonate with and inspire people as they used to, and are being rejected in favor of more virulent forms of fundamentalism and extremism. Crumbling social structures are failing to sustain and support displaced workers at their time of greatest need.

Evolving narratives, and the changing needs of every era have fueled a constant demand for prophets, and the accelerating pace of change in this, the dispensation of the fulness of times, has made the need for prophetic inspiration even more urgent. In the words of Emerson, “the need was never greater for new revelation than now.”

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:31–40, NRSV)

A lot of remarkable things are happening in this passage. One thing that strikes me is how Christ becomes a stand-in for humanity in its humblest forms. As taught here and in other scriptural passages, Christ is not just an individual, but also a body or community composed of many members who become both the objects and the subjects of a trial that is ongoing to this day. Will we, the subjects of this trial, take his name upon us by seeing Christ in even his most humble relatives, or will we fail to recognize him and pass by?

Jesus seemed to have a knack for maximizing every teaching opportunity, for striking at the heart of an issue and reaching his audience where they were most vulnerable. As I read his words carefully, he seems to be asking us to do pretty hard things, things that take us well out of our comfort zone. When was the last time you visited someone in prison, for example? I’m reminded of the words of Rainer Maria Rilke: “…What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights with us is so great… When we win it’s with small things, and the triumph itself makes us small.” I speak to you today as a fellow struggler. I’m not doing that well at this, but like you, I am at least convicted by Jesus’s words and I want to try harder.

In the course of his interactions with Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt was once said to have proclaimed that after the practice of polygamy was made public, he had assumed that the “cat” had finally been let out of the proverbial “bag.” Brigham Young, however, let him know that he had another thing coming: “Allow me to tell you, Elders of Israel, and delegates to Congress, you may expect an eternity of cats, that have not yet escaped from the bag.”

Lately, widespread access to information, vastly accelerated by the Internet, seems to have caused the number of cats and bags to multiply inordinately, much to the consternation of Brigham Young’s successors. The arcane and sometimes disturbing details of a tight-knit provincial faith community on the western frontier and its uncomfortable transition out of obscurity have been documented in excruciating detail, and this information is now widely available to lay audiences. While Mormon history enthusiasts and apologists sometimes complain to those who are surprised by this information that it has been available all along, few dispute that its accessibility has increased dramatically, and that this accessibility has presented new challenges. It has made it difficult for the LDS Church to control its narrative as tightly as it used to be able to.

Although most religious people anticipate some kind of eventual salvation and victory over death, it’s not uncommon for many of them to hesitate when the prospect is actually within reach. When grand overarching redemption narratives remain in the distant future, they are safe; they provide comfort in trials without interfering too much with our daily lives. The surprising near-term apocalyptic predictions of transhumanists, however, can be disturbing. They threaten the tidily sewn-up redemption narratives, perhaps especially for some Mormons, whose non-metaphysical universe is compatible enough with transhumanist visions of the future to give them pause. Many people react to these visions with both awe and disappointment, sometimes at the same time. There’s a feeling of “whoa, that’s crazy,” and “wait, is that all there is?”, sort of like the red-headed man who is at first astounded at Sherlock Holmes’ ability to divine intimate details of his personal history but who, after having it all explained to him says, “I thought at first that you had done something clever, but I see that there was nothing in it after all” (“The Red-Headed League,” Arthur Conan Doyle).

At our 2014 MTA conference, our Mormon guest speaker, Adam Miller, shared his reservations about transhumanism with a vivid metaphor. Outing himself as perhaps the most reluctant resurrectionist in all Mormondom, Miller used the pop culture vampire as a metaphor for radical life extension. “For the vampire, the extension of life itself inevitably becomes something to be suffered. Every cable TV vampire worth their salt, finds their existential crisis heightened, rather than ameliorated by their quasi-immortality.” Miller made the important point that physical renewal without a corresponding spiritual transformation (which is what, presumably, Miller assumes transhumanist salvation to be) would only serve to increase our boredom and brokenness. Like many religious people, Miller seems reluctant to accept transhumanist salvation as legitimate, for perhaps good reasons, depending on which transhumanists one is listening to.

I’d like to address these kinds of concerns today. They arise, I believe, both from lack of imagination on the part of many religionists and from lack of ethical awareness on the part of many transhumanists. This is also an area where I feel the Mormon Transhumanist Association can provide some much-needed thought leadership.