I have been thinking about The Federalist Papers, the historic collection of eighty-five essays penned and published by three of our nation’s founders—Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay—between October 1787 and April 1788.

I must confess that although I have read a few of them, I have not read all of them. And the reason I have not, honestly, is because they are not easy to read. Getting through just one of them requires a great deal of concentration and focus. Here’s a short sample from The Federalist No. 10 by Madison:

“… As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests …”

Did you follow that? Me neither.

You may be asking yourself what any of this has to do with “eye gates” and “ear gates.” In Part I, I decried the decline of the written word and the rise of communication by visual imagery in our day and time. I lamented upon the dangerous path down which our nation is traveling, the treacherous trail of substituting pictures for words.

Do you know what The Federalist Papers are? In case you forgot, allow me to refresh your memory.

After our nation won its independence from Great Britain in 1783, some of our nation’s founders expressed concern about the strength of our Articles of Confederation, the document which bound the thirteen original states together during the American Revolution—the document which preceded the U.S. Constitution. The Continental Congress met in May of 1787 for the purpose of strengthening the Articles of Confederation. Instead, they came up with a whole new form of government—the U.S. Constitution.

Many throughout the states voiced alarm. “This is not the reason we sent you to Congress,” they cried. So, in order to persuade the general populace of the superiority of this new and improved system of government, Alexander Hamilton wrote Federalist No. 1. Three New York papers published it. Soon, James Madison and John Jay joined Hamilton, and together they wrote eighty-five expositions on the new constitution.

The trio’s articles found readers in newspapers up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Everyday people, just like you and me, carved time out of their busy day to read them. As they pondered and considered upon the writers' words, they grew to embrace their arguments for a new system of government. State legislators also became persuaded that this new constitution was indeed worth supporting. In brief, that is the story of how our nation got its constitution.

Our forebears' “ear gates” were active and healthy. They read the written word, heard its message, understood its meaning, weighed the new ideas against the old, and chose wisely.

Could we everyday Americans do the same today?

What’s Next?

While part 1 focused on the survival of “the church”, and part 2 on the pressures associated when one contemplates leaving “the church”, Part 3 will focus on “What’s Next”, is there life after leaving “the church”?

When I finally made the decision to accept Gods free gift of Grace through Christ, and stopped believing LDS doctrine, I still had Mormonism tugging on me while not fully understanding what Gods Grace freed me from. I knew I was different, I knew I finally had a peace from the guilt that the legalism of Mormonism had put on me; I know I was Born Again. But I still had something that was hanging on to my heart that is very hard to explain unless you have been deeply involved in the LDS lifestyle. It is for a lack of an easier explanation “being Mormon”, the very thing inside me ,that I wrote about in part 1, that demands “the church to survive”.

After being a Christian for a few months I heard of an ex-Mormon support group that was meeting. I attended this with my wife and the leader of this group was a woman by the name of Carma Naylor, she could have been my sister or cousin, she looked and acted LDS in every way, but as she spoke of Christ and explained the problems of the LDS church in doctrine and history, it was as if a light went off, not so much of what she was saying, I had already studied and knew these things, it was because I finally understood there was life after Mormonism. I was looking at a person that was like me, a Mormon, who had actually left the church and put it behind them. I believe for the most part I finally put “Mormonism” behind me.

This is so important to understand, because many, if not most, Mormons who realize that Mormonism is wrong, do not know there is life after Mormonism. They never shake that feeling of guilt, or the false sense of security that “the church” offers. Many get bitter and become atheists, even more become agnostic, and some just live a false life in a “good club”, but even fewer find the peace that Gods Grace can give.

When we witness to our Mormon friends we need to saturate them in the teachings of Gods free gift of Grace. That they do not have to be perfect, that they can let Him do all the work of salvation. We need to let them know who Jesus is and that He is God and that they can never do anything beyond what He did on the cross for their own salvation. Let them know...there is life after Mormonism!

Mark Green

I have been thinking about eye gates and ear gates. Specifically, I have been thinking about how eye gates are rapidly replacing ear gates in our culture.

In his classic work, Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan presents the allegorical tale of “Christian,” an everyman sort of character who travels from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Along his journey, Christian encounters the town of Mansoul, an allegorical picture of the human heart. Bunyan writes,

“This famous town of Mansoul had five gates … the names of the gates were these: Ear-gate, Eye-gate, Mouth-gate, Nose-gate, and Feel-gate."

Bunyan’s “gates” are clearly the five human senses: hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, and feeling. These are the human receptors, the “gates” through which we are able to experience the world around us.

The eye gate and the ear gate are the two most prominent of the five human senses. Every waking moment, the organs we call eyes and ears are gathering in information and passing that information on to our brain for processing and analysis.

When Johannes Gutenberg assembled the first printing press in 1440, he blew a huge hole in the wall that separated the educated elite from the everyday person. Gutenberg’s invention catapulted the western world into the modern age, opening up the human mind to the exchange of ideas on a mass scale. For five centuries, the printed word served as our chief means of mass communication.

Then In the 1950’s, television began its rapid climb, quickly replacing the written word as our primary source of information. The daily newspaper slid slowly from the scene, and its once-prominent role in our culture. Now our “eye gates’ can barely escape the onslaught of the visual message. Video imagery assaults us in restaurants and airports and other public places. Our downtown business districts display large screens, thrusting their images at us as we walk by. Today, with cell phones, iPods, portable DVD players, and other hand-held devices capable of playing video, the written word has all but disappeared from our daily lives.

What will be the cost of this unprecedented, extraordinary shift? Neil Postman in his classic work, Amusing Ourselves To Death, offered these thoughts:

“When a culture becomes overloaded with … picture[s] … when … politics, history, education, religion, public information and commerce are expressed largely in visual imagery rather than in words; their culture is in serious jeopardy.”

Neil Postman, Conscientious Objections (Vintage Books, p. 173) see Appendix 1, a chart of Postman's book.

Think about it. Whence come your ideas?