I'm starting to look at the Schnittke Viola Concerto (1938), and wondering about what I would be able to perform it for, since it's a concerto and I probably won't be able to play it for recitals or in the park or subways. The only possibility is preparing it for the concerto competition at school a year from now and possibly auditioning with it for other things. I want to learn the piece with deeper intentions than that. How I'll find those intentions is a question at this point, but for now I'm directing my solution to be found through obscure thought processes that come about from day to day. Perhaps my obscurity will reflect the obscurity in Schnittke's style. Because this is a piece of music that I feel particularly moved by, even though it doesn't really fit into my life as easily as another Bach suite or viola sonata would.
Today I had one of those obscure thought tangents from reading Mosiah Chapter 4 in the Book of Mormon. It follows:
I'm curious about what the universe would be like without the atonement. If I were to paint an abstract painting right now, I would paint one themed about Earth without the atonement of Christ.
The atonement is like the Christian version of yin-yang, or karma. Everything that is evil will be paid justice by good and vice-versa. It's like science and gravity- anything that looses balance will indeed fall, and it will take something of equal or greater value to stand up again. Spiritual principles are equally true. I can't imagine not having a spiritual law, whether or not people actually believe it. Because without spiritual law, that would be just as abstract a world as it would be without mathematical and scientific law, right? People would be all confused about morals and ethics, which are actually laws that came from prophets of God.
In fact, we are living in a world that is constantly at war with itself around spiritual law, which is creating a lot of confusion and abstractions.
I guess the key distinction about the atonement is the fact that faults don't necessarily have to be met with negative consequence because God can make those faults moot with the atonement, as long as the laws of forgiveness and humility are also included. They are like cooking ingredients. Without the atonement, I bet the food wouldn't be edible.
Yin-yang and karma, as far as my knowledge goes, are both fixed outcomes that don't allow any other ingredients to be involved.
What would the world look like without the atonement, and if there weren't a constant tension between good and oppression? Would we still have our agency to choose? Probably not. I'm not sure what else there is to make of this.
