The Great Inquisitor

Perhaps some of you have taken the time to read "The Brothers Karamozov." I have not, however this past week I did read the great tale of Book Five known as "The Grand Inquisitor." The book, as many of you may know, is about two brothers--one preparing to be a monk, the other agnostic. In this chapter the agnostic brother, Ivan, tells a story in attempt to paint an ugly picture of the Catholic church. The story poses the question "What if Christ came to earth to during the times of the Spanish Inquisition?" From reading this along with my other knowledge of the inquisition, fostered by Monty Python, among other things, freedom in the Catholic church during the inquisition is actually quite comparable to some of the problems children encounter in the classroom.

The passage that brought this thought to me came from the Inquisitor’s statement about Jesus’ living bread. “They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them.” And while the Inquisitor might be talking about the difficulty of mortal men administering an eternal gospel to their people, we can understand it in an educational context as well. We can allow students to have many freedoms and school, but giving them those freedoms will not allow us to educate all the children. Obviously some students will make choices that will hinder their ability to learn and progress in their studies. The Inquisitor’s answer was to deny freedom, for the benefit of the whole, whereas Christ’s plan (as we who understand the Plan of Salvation understand) gives us freedom to choose, and experience the consequences of sin and error. “Nothing is more seductive for man,” argued the Inquisitor, “than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.”
And yet we still send our children to these schools of compulsory learning, where we as well were sent, and where we chose to attend after high school. The Inquisitor tells his prisoner that “man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find some one quickly to whom he can hand over that gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.” It is because we often make bad decisions, and when we’re sick of feeling those bad decisions we decide that it will feel better if others made those decisions for us. The gospel isn’t as easy as this, for even though we are depicted by anti-Mormon media as conforming self-righteous drones, the truth is that making these decisions is incredibly hard. I haven’t met one member of the church who thinks it’s easy making righteous choices every second of every day, nor one member whose heart doesn’t fill with guilt the moment they do sin.
And that’s why compulsory school works so well for people. We would hate for our children to make poor educational decisions, and we would hate to be made responsible for their poor achievement, so we found a way that everyone is given the same path, and is forced to follow it until they crave it--until “it will save them from the great anxiety and terrible agony the endure at present in making a free decision for themselves,” as the Inquisitor said. Even if we really aren’t sure why we’re doing what we are, why the hoops have been held in certain places, or how we get good grades without learning or putting forth effort (which no one ever really second guesses, but should), we continue to go show up, go through the hoops, fail to learn and put forth minimal effort. “And if it is a mystery, we too have a right to preach a mystery,” said the Inquisitor, “and to teach them that it’s not the free judgment of their hearts, not love that matters, but a mystery which they must follow blindly, even against their own conscience.”
I’m not really sure who the Inquisitor represents in these present days. I want to say Rod Paige, but I won’t. Our system needs a fix, but to give freedom is too much, I believe. Even if it’s against the principles of the gospel, even if spiritual answers are the answers to all--even temporal--problems, even if I don’t like the idea and can criticize it to death, what have we that’s any better? And how do you implement change in an institution so set in its ways? (Like introducing universal health care to the United States--not even worth the work.) Freedom is a good concept, but not as practical as we might wish it were.