Archive for the ‘Nibley’ Category
Nibley’s Place In My Life
The book sat on the toilet tank and looked rather foreboding. For one thing, it wasn’t necessarily approved reading. It was not by a general authority or published by the church, but I gave into temptation anyway, picked up the book, opened to a random page and read half a paragraph. I felt so smart having even made the attempt.
An uneducated, albeit high school graduate, missionary and his first experience with the illustrious Hugh W. Nibley. I’m pretty sure the book was one of the Book of Mormon compilations. At the time the only thing the name Nibley meant to me was Brilliant Apologetics, and I didn’t even know what that meant.
It took a few years for me to pick up another Nibley book and fortunately it wasn’t a book written by Nibley, but one written about Nibley. A Consecrated Life caught me completely off guard and demonstrated something about the man that I would have never expected.
Nibley wasn’t about spouting off academic hot air. He loved knowledge and spent his life in pursuit of understanding just about everything he could, but he didn’t write or lecture just to show how smart he was. His was a mission of the social critic, or as his son Tom called it as his funeral, as “academic prophet.” The real genius of Nibley’s writings is in the insight into humanity, such as this little nugget from “Zeal without Knowledge”:
“Sin is waste.”
He goes on (not having the paper in front of me, this will be paraphrasing) to say that sin is doing one thing when we should be doing something else, something better or more useful. That is why even the righteous need to repent daily.
Wastefulness is not making the most of the moments gifted to us by a loving Heavenly Father each and every day.
So, on the flip side, consecration is abundance. This is the thought that struck me while considering this axiom. And then this thought followed:
Consecration is lack of waste. It is continually making the best choice. It is what Jesus did. It is different than sacrifice in that sacrifice can be confined within temporal bounds in a single act. Consecration has no limit and is by its nature the consistent and persistent submission of our own desires to be in line with what is best.
There may be more to follow this, but this works as a good starting point.
