United Nations meets Harvard Professor Christensen

In truly one of the most delightful evenings of my life, I had the pleasure of joining the Sri Lankan and former Iraqi UN Ambassadors for a banquet with Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen. Dr. Christensen received a M.Phil at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and was a mentor of mine during my Rhodes candidacy at Hopkins. Ambassador Kohona was also a Rhodes candidate in college. We were honored to join the good professor at the table for this occasion. Clayton gave an astounding keynote presentation about religion, business, and domestic and international politics. He discussed how the LDS faith is one that never stops asking questions.

 One Marxist Economist Clay knew who had come to America on a Fulbright once mentioned, "I never knew how critical religion was to the establishment of democracy. You probably don't see it because you're right in the middle of it." Clayton said that most Americans voluntarily choose to obey the laws. The reason why democracy works is because people of faith believe that if the police don't catch him, God will catch him. Around the world, when Americans try to install democracy, if they don't have this fundamental belief, it doesn't work very well. Democracy exists best in countries that are accompanied by some form of religion. At least the theism religions have institutions where they voluntarily try to teach next generations to obey the laws. If we take theistic religions & stick them in the back seat, what remains in our government is the religion of atheism. What are atheist institutions that try to teach citizens to voluntarily obey the law? That's the big question: would we like to have our country linked to theism or atheism? What are the atheist institutions that try to teach to uphold the law? The Fulbright scholar couldn't answer the question. Too often, he stated, countries try to separate church and state, when they really function best together.

Clayton also had the opportunity to be a White House Fellow in the early years of the Reagan Administration. One day he had lunch with Richard Nixon, for about 4 hours, 10 years after the Watergate Problems that took him out of office. They decided not to talk to him about that, but rather about the decision to have a diplomatic relationship with China. "Now those of you who have grey hair may remember that that decision was really sleeping with the enemy." To open that relationship with China was a very unexpected event. So he asked Nixon why he had done that. Nixon answered that he had studied our history of foreign affairs and it seemed to him that whenever a despot took charge of a nation, when they tried to topple a despot by isolating them, it always strengthened the dictator. It enabled them to control what their people heard, it enabled them to blame Americans for the problem the mismanagement created, and ultimately strengthened the dictator. He noted that whenever we open up relationships with a country, first diplomatic interaction, then educational and cultural, and ultimately economic interaction, always the despot crumbles and went away. "I realized we had to eliminate Mao as an enemy." Then over the next 20 years, what had been a horrible enemy to us has became a close friend. Nobody had to be killed by doing this. Now you look around and where we continually try to isolate despots, as in North Korea and Cuba and Iran, each time the dictator has become stronger and stronger. The question we should ask that we don't is that shouldn't we always do what Jesus taught? To love our enemies and do good to people who despitefully use us? Does the Savior's teachings apply not just to individuals, but to nations? I think that's the question that would give us a good answer. 

Ambassador Al-Bayati from Iraq asked a question which warranted a round of applause from the audience. Only once in my life have I seen this, and it was at the United Nations. Ambassador Al-Bayati stated that he was born into a Muslim family, but attended a Christian school since the age of 4. He has been to Salt Lake City, has had lunch with two LDS apostles, and has lectured at University of Utah. He said he has read all the holy books and that all of them say that we are descendants from two parents: Adam and Eve. His question was, "If we are one big family, brothers and sisters as you say in your church, why is it that so many wars have been fought in the name of religion? Shouldn't we all get along if we are one big family?" Dr. Christensen smiled and responded that it is largely because religious people are actually not living their own religions fully, or there is a complete absence of religion. He said that there is one civilization in the ancient Americas that fully lived up to their religious beliefs for 300 years. However, there are only 6 verses in the Book of Mormon that talk about how they did that. He said that when he meets God face to face after he dies, God will ask him a bunch of questions but he will sit down and say, "I have one question for you first!" He would ask God how they managed to live righteously for such a long period of time. Clayton Christensen received a standing ovation after his remarkable presentation.

Professor Clayton Christensen with Ambassador Kohona from Sri Lanka and Ambassador Al-Bayati from Iraq.
"We are just sad we didn't get you at Harvard." -Anne Christensen to Hamid Al-Bayati