Not A Mind Without a Soul

In Chaim Potok’s book The Chosen, Danny—the boy who became the best friend of Reuven, the main character—had a very strange relationship with his father.  His father would not talk at all to Danny except for when they studied the Torah.  At the very end of the book as Danny and Reuven were preparing for college, this father explained to Reuven the reason for his seemingly cruel relationship with his son.  Danny had a brilliant mind from very early on; his father said, “I looked at my Daniel when he was four years old, and I said to myself, How will I teach this mind what it is to have a soul?.... ‘Why do you cry, Father?’ he asked me once under the tallis.  ‘Because people are suffering,’ I told him.  He could not understand.  Ah, what it is to be a mind without a soul” (p. 265-266). 

The father’s silence with his son was meant to help him learn to suffer and to find answers in his soul.  I’ve thought about this phrase a lot over the years: “a mind without a soul.”  I spend a lot of time trying to improve my mind through various means and I can look back on years of education and experience and I think I can say that I know more now than I did several years ago; my mind has improved.  But what about the progress of my soul?  Am I kinder or more patient or more empathetic or more charitable?  As Christ said, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26)  We are certainly encouraged by the scriptures to seek after knowledge; for example we are told to “Seek learning even by study and also by faith” and also that “whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection” (D&C 109:7, 130:18).  But learning alone certainly will not save us.  As Paul put it, “Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge…  and have not charity, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2).  Paul would know—he was brilliant and an expert in the law of Moses, and yet he stood by the death of Stephen and actively participated in the persecutions of the early Saints before his own conversion.  He was at that point in his life “a mind without a soul.”  Mormon put it this way: “If ye have not charity, ye are nothing” (Moroni 7:46).  The Savior taught the Nephites what the ultimate goal of our lives should be (and it wasn’t the acquisition of knowledge): “Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be?  Verily I say unto you, even as I am” (3 Nephi 27:27).  That is the true metric for measuring success in this life: how much we have become like the Savior.  The Savior taught that it was good to keep the fine points of the law (and I think we could substitute here to gain knowledge), but we should not omit “the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith” (Matt. 23:23).  In other words, Christ is most interested in us developing the attributes that change our soul.  This father’s words about his own son Danny reflect the essence of God’s desires for us as His children:  “A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul” (p. 264, see also John Tanner’s 2007 talk at BYU).