Lately I've been thinking a lot about veils, gulfs, and laws. I've tried to see with fresh eyes these things that we so often gloss over. It sure seems to me that good is so rare and so precious because it is based upon elements that one can never find in a world subject to entropy and decay.
I was promoted anew to think about this by a little article that came across my desk this morning. It's about a small housing development in Colchester in the UK, which found its entryway full of drug dealers, thugs, and vandals. With the developer's encouragement, the little enclave built a 6 foot by 6 foot wooden wall that blocked off the entryway. Here's some background:
"City and county councillor Dave Harris, who has taken up the case for the residents, said: 'I have had many complaints about anti-social behaviour and abuse as well as damage to cars and property.
'This is a lovely little estate but it had become a nightmare for people living here. The path was used by the dealers and their customers and there was a lot of associated problems such as damage to cars, windows being smashed and shouting and screaming. 'I had many complaints from residents and asked the land-owners to consider taking steps to curb the problems. The management company suggested putting up a fence to block the path and the residents were happy with that.
Resident Sarah Crace, 37, said: 'Things have been getting worse and worse – it was not a safe place to let your children play but since the gate has been built it is a lovely to live here again. 'I was one of the first to move in and until, a couple of years ago it was lovely to live here. But the cut-through soon became a handy route for the dealers and their customers. 'The wall has been very effective and we hope it can stay. Life has been much quieter since it went up and people just feel safer these days.'
"Another young mother living in the square said: 'The situation was just getting worse and worse - these people were even sitting on my car and openly doing drugs – smoking pipes and things. 'It was going on for most of the day and at night until we all decided to do do something about it. 'We all agreed that a fence was the answer so we talked to the agents who manage the place and they used £2,500 to put up the barrier. 'And it's been wonderful ever since. The problem literally stopped overnight – and it means we have got our lovely little community back – it's like heaven.'
Of course, the local council now wants it torn down; an appeal is ongoing.
And another article today . . . in Sweden, for many decades now, tax information was freely available to all citizens, and eventually put online. You could discover where anybody in the country lived. But this freedom of the press act, dating back to the 1700s, has now become a problem: with the influx of refugees has come a deadly crime wave. Criminals use the online tax information to stalk and bomb or otherwise assassinate civilians who have crossed them. There are calls to change the law so that this information becomes, for the first time, private. The original law was made for a very different Sweden than exists today. Perhaps the old Sweden will never exist again.
Thinking about all of this has led me to ponder how God has organized the universe. We are told in the D&C that there are many kingdoms in the universe, and that each is predicated upon a certain law. Fulfill that law and you get to stay; repudiate that law and you must go to another kingdom whose law you are willing to obey. There are "gulfs," as they are termed in the Book of Mormon, which separate these kingdoms. Those in kingdoms obeying lesser versions of the full law of good cannot access higher kingdoms. At all. Ever. And this is so that higher law kingdoms can exist. Without those gulfs, those walls, there is no heaven. Just like that little Colchester village.
We here on earth are in a special place--a place of testing, and not a final kingdom. In this special place, everyone is allowed to choose for themselves which law they wish to abide, and then we all must live together until the end of our lives. The purpose of this, of course, is to allow repentance and redemption, so that individuals in mortality can move from abiding a lesser law to abiding a higher law while alive. While this period of testing is happening, this world must be shielded to protect it and its purpose--and hence we have the veil that covers this earth. Yes, our minds encounter this veil, so that we cannot reach beyond this earth, but it is also true that the veil over this earth protects it from other kingdoms which may interfere with it against the interests of the inhabitants of earth.
To me, this suggests that God wants us all to live as we wish to live, but that God will not permit us to destroy the good that could be if it was protected from evil. Agency must be respected, or else good and evil mean nothing. At the same time, the law is given so that even in the context of agency, the good, the true, and the virtuous may flourish.
Without law, there cannot be good. Without agency, there cannot be good, either; there would be only tyranny. Both full agency and law MUST exist. In fact, I believe in some way this is how God began. The first entity/entities that figured this twin necessity out held the original key to divinity, to lives without end. The beauty and the wisdom of it all is enough to make one weep with gratitude. That some entity/entities chose to stand in the breach, to create the law, the gulfs, the veils, and to guard them forever and ever is a thought that will bring one to one's knees in thanksgiving. Surely that is Love! Nothing could be greater or more powerful than that Love.
And so on this sabbath evening, I leave you with that vision of gratitude for those who guard the veils and gulfs . . .