Initial Impressions
As I read the first part of this chapter, I feel like this chapter needs to address ambiguity, or situations that are so nuanced that there is no clear right or wrong answer. Mormon seems to simply say there are only good and bad things with no room for grey areas. I am concerned that there should be something addressed on ambiguity, because I know that sometimes religious things aren’t so clear. For example, if God is all-knowing, does that mean free will exists? This could be a prime spot to give some religious insight. I’ll keep reading and see if I am impressed by anything else.
Philosophical Connections
I guess it could be argued that everything is either good or bad, and the “grey areas” only come by the impression of the individual’s maturity level. When I say “impression” I am referring to Epictetus’ use of the word in Enchiridion. Epictetus teaches many things about impressions, so, from my current understanding, impressions are what an individual takes from an event or thing. For example, if a trader loses all their belongings in a storm at sea, would that trader be impressed to despair or to hope? I would hope that someone is impressed to be mature, resilient, and hopeful in the face of disaster.
At one point, Moroni cautions against judging a good thing to be a bad thing. So if there is risk for something to be misinterpreted, then there is room for an impression to occur! Why would there be a caution against misinterpretation? This seems like an obvious answer; it’s so that people don’t fool themselves by their own impression. It’s not the good thing’s fault that there was a bad interpretation if it’s the person doing the interpreting. From a religious perspective, if someone has a bad interpretation then repentance may be called for and that person would course correct. So impressions of good and bad things could evolve over time.
Verses 20 to 26 points towards the impression of good and bad things by showing how a person acts on a message they’ve received. Mormon asks rhetorically “How can someone lay hold upon every good thing?” He answers that God sends messengers to teach mankind about the good things. Men would just need to decide to follow those messages and exercise faith in Christ. So the impression being made is what the messenger says to the recipient and how the recipient receives it.
This does point out something interesting for me. A messenger could implement their own impressions in the message, so how could the original message be made known clearly? Faith calls the recipient to work out meanings in the message over time. That recipient could exercise an understanding of where the messenger is coming from, and further add that to their own personal impression. Having read the scriptures multiple times, I often catch different viewpoints that I haven’t considered before! So I have found it valuable to examine the messenger and their story in a merciful understanding way, so that I may get the message in it’s deepest meaning possible.
This is where faith becomes essential. Faith invites the recipient to trust that the messenger (in any form) is still attempting to point to Christ if the message is ambiguous. In this case, humility and a desire to learn would help the recipient to investigate the meaning of an ambiguous message. As such, the recipient has the opportunity to exercise faith by working on the ambiguous meaning. Has some message or prompting ever felt so ambiguous that it wasn’t clear on what impression is to be made? If a message is still unclear, that is where the recipient would need to have faith and work on the message received.
Alma would teach that faith is a recurringexercise to improve upon by teaching how faith is like a seed that needs to be nurtured. And seeing as faith is something that is continually built upon, that is where humankind receives most messages from God. A person that can receive is someone that is teachable, and I believe God loves to see people improve by teaching them. So the existence of good and bad things can very well be based upon the interpretation of an individual and what the individual decides to do with that information.
Concluding Thoughts
I still think there needs to be an explanation on how to handle ambiguity in a religious context, but understanding impressions philosophically helps me discern this religious argument of determining the difference between good and bad. It is by a weak or a strong impression that someone can determine if something is good for them or not. A strong impression could indicate repulsion or adherence to the thing. Whereas a weak impression would indicate a need to work on the thing to reveal if it’s good or not. This insight encourages me to approach ambiguous religious texts with patience, humility, and faith, trusting that deeper meanings will unfold through study and reflection.