After listening, we hope you will join the discussion below!

I cut myself. I now recognize the desperation I was feeling. I needed a way to cope. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t hold myself together. Cutting made it better. I was not treated for depression until I was 18. I resent my parents for not getting me help sooner. They could clearly see my wounds.

I now resent my scars. I hate them. I feel well and truly happy, but they are a reminder to me. Like the Scarlet Letter of depression. They haunt me. I don’t spend any time thinking about them until I notice someone looking at them. A doctor, my friend or my biggest worry, my children. I can handle anyone’s questions or gawking other than my children. My oldest is five and the questions are bound to come. I know patterns are often repeated and I wanted to teach my daughter healthy ways to deal with her feelings. How do I answer the questions? Should I be honest and straightforward? Elusive? Make up a really clever lie? Thank you for your help.

I am grateful that you wrote in about such an important and increasingly prevalent topic. Self-mutilation through cutting has become a far too common way for adolescents in particular to deal with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, etc. In some circles it may even be seen as a fad. It is more prevalent with adolescent girls than boys. I am sorry to hear that you suffered greatly during this time of your life. It is not uncommon for parents to be in denial or overwhelmed when they see their daughters cutting. Since they don’t know what to do or what they’re up against, many do nothing hoping the behavior is just a phase and that it will stop. I am glad to hear that you persevered, got treatment and find yourself in such a healthy place today.

You are right that these scars are visible, and that they will attract attention throughout your life. I don’t know if you have discussed with your doctor the possibility of scar reduction through prescriptive creams, ointments and/or plastic surgery. I’m assuming, however, that none of these may work completely and that there may also be price constraints.

Seeing as how your scars may always be a part of your life, I would hope that you may come to see them as a badge of honor rather than a “scarlet letter.” Instead of reminding you of the many negatives they have come to represent regarding the depression and hopelessness you once felt, I wonder how you could recalibrate your thought process to have them represent the strength, resilience and courage it took for you to get where you are today. Once you make this mental shift, you can then be very straightforward and honest about their origins and your ultimate success. I can’t think of a better way to ensure that your daughter not follow in the negative patterns you fear. When we deal with our children in an honest and straightforward fashion, we earn their respect and trust. Especially when we tell them about things we struggled with. This can make us so much more human and approachable in their eyes. If you don’t tell them the truth, your children will eventually figure it out for themselves anyway – and adolescents in particular are very touchy about finding out their parents are “liars.” They will most likely use it against you.

A very simple explanation could go as follows:

“When I was a teenager I had a lot of problems that I didn’t know how to work out. The only thing I could think of to make me feel better would be to cut myself on my arms. See.. (let them touch and feel your scars). This was not a healthy way to deal with my feelings. Part of my job as your mom is to make sure you don’t ever feel like you have to do this. Working together as a team, we can figure out lots of better ways to deal with our feelings (like talking, crying, taking a time-out, praying, writing, etc.). That’s what I eventually learned how to do.”

When you tell a child a truth, even a difficult one, they usually take it much more calmly than we as adults would expect. Children are incredibly adaptable creatures. What causes children more anxiety than difficult truth, is the underlying tension and uncertainty secrets bring. And this underlying tension that many times well-meaning adults don’t realize they are causing by withholding information can cause havoc in later years. I would encourage you to answer your children honestly from the time they first ask you. If they’re capable enough to ask the question, they are capable enough to get a legitimate answer. As they grow older, you may fill in more of the details as you see fit and appropriate. You don’t have to share every sorted detail in order to offer a truthful reply.

I would also challenge you to begin to think about how your scars may act as a teaching tool. There are many adolescent girls who are struggling today just as you once did. You could be an incredible resource to the young women in your ward and stake as well as to your community junior high and high schools. I don’t know if you’ve given much thought to being a spokesperson, but you might find this a highly rewarding way to utilize your scars. And as more people in your community get to know you and your history, you would automatically find more acceptance and less stares from those who would now look at you with respect and as a survivor. The impact you could have would be far reaching.

My wish for you is that you may find the dignity behind what your scars represent – your ability and willingness to heal! And with that dignity, may you hold your head up high and be a beacon of truth and light for your children and quite possibly the children of others. I feel strongly the prompting to tell you that you are beautiful. I may never have laid eyes on you or your scars, but I know this is how our Father and Mother see you – arms and all. May you bask in your beauty and know that your children also see you as such.

I am including references to articles that may be of use to those who want to learn more about this subject and who may have adolescent children struggling with similar issues.

To take a line from Shakespeare — a pox upon both your houses. The Ex-Mos and TBMs continue to argue past each other and never the twain shall meet. While the thought of a kind, loving heavenly being comforts and then closes the ears of the believer, the list of inconsistencies, logical disconnects and “anti-Mormon” cliches assuages and then closes the ears of the non-believer.

Unless you frame your debate, it will continue to be unproductive, each side creating their own echo chamber of reinforcement until the cacophony makes it impossible for anyone to hear what is going on.

Here is where I would propose to take the discussion: How do you reconcile the conflicts? To quote this guy I once read, “By proving contraries, truth is made manifest.” Bonus points if you can tell me who said that. The discussion then moves from cliche and rote response to a value and factual discussion in an attempt to find common ground.

For example: Blacks and the priesthood. The Word of God is for all of God’s children. You are punished for your own sins, not Adam’s transgressions (or Cain’s.) Racism is a rampant cultural and historical phenomenon which prompted violent conflict between those who thought racism violated God’s law and those who believed their race was chosen by God to rule over the lesser beings (both sides used religion as the basis for their beliefs — one of those contraries Joseph was talking about.).

The argument came to a head in the spring of 1820 (bonus points if you know what else happened in the spring of 1820) in the United States with a Missouri Compromise. The Compromise held the Union together for about forty more years until war broke out, but the entire time temperatures were broiling on the race issue in the United States. Northern (upper state New York) abolitionist leaning religions moving south into Missouri and southern Illinois were not well received.

Not surprising that depending on your viewpoint the ban on blacks holding the priesthood came from:
a) false doctrine;
b) the human capacity for self-deception while striving for self-preservation;
c) individual racism of some church leaders;
d) conforming to the current societal norms; or
e) some other reason arising out of the factual scenario.

The anti- and the pro- both believe that the whole racism thing was a bad idea, they just get there different ways. Conflict resolved, sort of.

So who is right? How should we define, the capital T, “Truth”? I’m going to come clean right now — I’m in the Joseph Smith camp on this one, at least for how to determine Truth. The reason I’m in the Joseph Smith camp is that he is also in the historical philosophical tradition of the American Enlightenment and the scientific method and he made one of the first attempts to apply that philosophy to religious thought. Joseph Smith also had a strong sense of American individualism — study it out and figure it out for yourself. How he succeeded can be argued, but I love the empirical, scientific approach to religion. (To avoid numerous digressions into atheism, geology, cosmology and science, I’m only talking in this post about applying an empirical, scientific approach to internal subjective experience.)

The scientific method gives us a mechanism for creating hierarchal judgments on different hypotheses — the hypothesis that is the most consistent with all the data is the most correct, the most true hypothesis.

Another way of saying this is Truth is inclusive. If you draw lines that exclude, you don’t have the Truth, you’ve left something out.

Joseph Smith believed this and it shows in his theology, for example eternal progression and baptism for the dead. He wanted everything included and this is a huge comfort point for believers. It leads to a Mormon mother’s common belief that a non-believing child can eventually end up in the temple and end up included, despite the past. What a comfort that must be to her, based on her own world view.

So I am looking at TBM’s hypothesis which says “my view is right because it is more inclusive, God’s plan provides eternal salvation for all mankind, even Ex-Mos.”

The conflicting Ex-Mo hypothesis is “my view is right because the reality and data coming out of the religion is that the religion does exactly the opposite of include all mankind, it excludes everyone except the elect.”

So there are the two contraries, how do we manifest Truth. In the spirit of Johnathan Swift, let me make a modest proposal: Eat the children to stop the famine (sorry literary joke that I couldn’t resist).

Seriously, the TBM’s hypothesis fails because despite the efforts of the Church at inclusion theologically, the reality is countless people feel excluded and some are even forced to be excluded by a process known as excommunication. Just makes the whole “one heart, one mind” thing seem a little narrow and false.

The counter hypothesis and its proponents equally fail because it fails to include the large group who devoutly believes. This makes it equally weak and equally vulnerable to attack by those believers.

My proposed hypothesis, neither of you are correct. I’ve studied it out. Thought about it. Prayed about it. I came up with the answer that neither of you were true. (Told you I was in the Joseph Smith camp).

Our controversial guest post today is from Rock Waterman.  Check out the original unabridged post at his blog, Pure Mormonism, so titled from his observation that the organic religion founded by Joseph Smith was nondogmatic and libertarian.

A couple of weeks ago Jeff Riggenbach sent me his latest book, Why American History Is Not What They Say: An Introduction To Revisionism. I’ve had a passion for revisionist history for as long as I can remember, but something I read in Riggenbach’s informative volume caught me up short. It was an essential factor that I had never known or considered before, and which just so happens to have direct application to why the historical record about Joseph Smith and Polygamy is so confusing and contradictory.

While doing the research for her biography of Joseph Smith back in the 1940′s, Fawn Brodie wrote to a friend that “the more I work with the polygamy material, the more baffled I become.” She has not been alone. Every biographer since has struggled with the dichotomy of what Joseph Smith asserted and what the historical record appears to show.

I think Jeff Riggenbach may have uncovered the explanation for us.

Correcting The Past

If the study of history can be defined as “the science of discovering what happened,” then revisionism is the forensic science of methodically re-sifting through the evidence of the past to get at the truth of what really happened. According to Joseph R. Stromberg, “revisionism refers to any efforts to revise a faulty existing historical record or interpretation.”

Harry Elmer Barnes, the father of modern revisionist history, describes revisionism as “the effort to revise the historical record in the light of a more complete collection of historical facts, a more calm political atmosphere, and a more objective attitude.” As Riggenbach himself succinctly puts it, “We need to revise the historical record when we have new facts.”

What surprised me about Riggenbach’s book — and which is directly applicable to our discussion here — is his revelation that until quite recently there was no such thing as “history” as we usually think of it; that is, the kind of history that could actually be relied upon:

“It was the tail end of the 19th century before the calling of the historian had been professionalized and academicized to such an extent that a majority of practitioners in the field had come to hold the view of their discipline that we now take for granted -the historian as dispassionate seeker of truth, a scholar, much more like an anthropologist…Still, there were holdouts.” (Pg 27)

One “holdout” in the arena of Mormon historians may have been Joseph Fielding Smith, whose book Essentials in Church History was a book all missionaries were armed with in my day, and which turns out to have been of no more real use to the student of Mormon history than the 9/11 Commission Report is today for the person desiring to find out the complete truth about that particular event.  I relied upon Elder Smith’s book during my mission when I gave a presentation to a class of high school seniors in Milan, Missouri where I used it to refute “anti-Mormon lies” about Mormon complicity in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Elder Smith (an apostle at the time he wrote it) placed the blame for the massacre squarely on the local Indians and John D. Lee, who he painted as a renegade Mormon with only a tenuous connection to the church. At any rate, he strongly implied, the members of the Fancher party were asking for it and had it coming.  Even today I feel like a dupe and a fool when I remember how vehemently I defended the official church position against what was the real truth of that sordid affair.

But to give him his due, Joseph Fielding Smith was little different than any other compiler of American history a hundred years ago, including the most famous and reputable of all, George Bancroft, whose ten volume History of the United States, published in 1874, remained the unchallenged standard work for decades. But even Bancroft’s classic History was far from objective:

“Bancroft believed that his job was to write a chronicle that would make his readers proud of their country’s history, and when it suited his didactic purpose, he fabricated.” (Why American History Is Not What They Say, Pg 27)

It was not only Bancroft who was making up history to suit his agenda; Riggenbach demonstrates how this “style” was common among virtually all historians of the time. He shows how “most of them saw themselves in particular as the providers of an important kind of inspirational literature.” Facts were elastic. This practice of bending reality to fit the lesson plan was rampant in the 19th century. It was systemic. And it was considered normal. One can easily see the parallels between writers wishing to portray actions of the American government favorably, and those within the LDS church tasked with portraying Mormon history in the most positive light. According to Riggenbach:

“The American history taught in most schools during the past hundred years faithfully reflected received opinion, and received opinion sees the United States as a consistent, devoted partisan of the same spirit of individual liberty that once moved its founders -a peace-loving nation that wishes the rest of the world only the best, and never goes to war except in self-defense.”

“Apply this set of principles to what we know of the past and, at the end of the day, you’ll wind up with quite a pile of facts that didn’t meet the criteria and now litter the cutting room floor.”

“The facts about the gross violations of individual liberty that have been championed by U.S. presidents almost since the beginning, for example -John Adams’s Sedition Acts, Andrew Jackson’s genocidal treatment of the American Indians, Abraham Lincoln’s military conscription (to say nothing of his suspension of habeas corpus and his imprisonment of newspaper editors who dared to disagree with his prosecution of the Civil War), William McKinley’s brutal suppression of the independence movement in the Philippines after the Spanish American War, Franklin Roosevelt’s order to round up American citizens of Japanese ancestry and imprison them in concentration camps- are any of these inconvenient facts likely to be selected for inclusion in a textbook based on the “commonly shared principle” of the saintliness of the U.S. government?” (Pg. 24)

Similarly we Mormons may ask ourselves if we should really expect inconvenient facts that reflect poorly on the “saintliness” of our church leaders to find their way into books and Sunday School manuals published by the church.

History: It Ain’t What It Used To Be

In 1972 the church appointed LDS Professor Leonard J. Arrington as the official Church Historian. This was the first time a real historian, a trained academic, had been given that post. This important office had always been held by a general authority. Arrington opened up the massive church archives to other Mormon academics, and the era of The New Mormon History was born. Surprise, surprise! That magic era didn’t last long; just barely a decade.

The archives were a treasure house of information for the excited historians involved. They were soon discovering things that the even the current leadership of the church hadn’t known about. Paul Toscano reports that Hyrum L. Andrus was opening wooden crates full of church records that had been nailed shut since they left Nauvoo in 1846. All kinds of fascinating stuff was in there. Books and essays were written based on these newly found letters, diaries, journals, newspapers, and records. But not all of the information in these documents was seen as favorable to church leadership. Some of the revisions seemed to contradict elements of what had become the official church history.

A massively ambitious multi-volume church history was planned, utilizing the talents of the church’s most qualified scholars and historians. Then one day the order came down from on high to scrap the project, and the historian’s office was “reorganized.” Arrington, who had been introduced at general conference with great fanfare for a vote of approval ten years earlier, was quietly released in 1982 without even a mention in conference or any vote of thanks. The position of Church Historian was again placed into the hands of a trusted general authority. The archives were closed to all but a select few, and have remained closed to this day.

For a fascinating example of the work of a revisionist Mormon historian, and and insight as to why revisionism is such a volatile subject to some within the church, let’s look at Richard Van Wagoner’s reexamination of the famous transmogrification of Brigham Young.

Mighty Morphing Fact Arrangers

We all know the basic story. It goes something like this. After the death of Joseph and Hyrum, the church was left leaderless. So the million dollar question on everyone’s mind: Who was next in line to lead it? A meeting was called, and Sidney Rigdon was first to speak. As the story goes, Rigdon got up and campaigned for himself to be the new prophet. Then it was Brigham Young’s turn, and as he spoke, the gathered throng witnessed a miracle. It looked to them as if Brigham Young had been transformed into Joseph Smith before their very eyes. Brigham’s visage became Joseph’s visage, his voice was Joseph’s voice, his mannerisms were Joseph’s. Clearly the spirit of Joseph Smith himself had returned to witness to the membership that Brigham Young was his anointed successor.

That’s the way most of us have heard it, but virtually every element of that story is false. Nothing even remotely resembling the described supernatural transformation took place. How do we know? We have new facts. Using letters, diaries, journals, newspaper accounts, and church records, Van Wagoner walks us through the event. He revises the history. You can read his essay here: The Making of a Mormon Myth. (You can find another excellent analysis by Reid L. Harper in the Fall 1996 Journal of Mormon History.)

The simple but true facts are that on August 8th, 1844, Sidney Rigdon, as remaining member of the First Presidency, spoke to a large gathering of the Saints, advocating that the church continue to be led by a triumvirate with himself as President. The next day, Brigham Young gave a speech proposing that the church instead should be governed by the twelve apostles as a body. He was not campaigning to be the next leader himself, nor would anyone have accepted him if he had made such a proposal. The membership eventually voted in favor of Brigham’s plan because he made the better speech and it was considered wiser that church government be spread among the twelve rather than to continue with a new First Presidency under the ailing Sidney Rigdon.

And that was it. No image, no visions, no voice. Just a rip-roaring good sermon by Brigham Young. There was no transfiguration of Brigham Young into the form of Joseph Smith, no morphing, no eerie ghost noises, no nothing.

Again, how do we know? From primary sources; the letters, diaries, journals, and newspapers of the time. Brigham’s speech was reported on in detail in both Nauvoo newspapers and recorded by scribes for the official church records. Hundreds of members present wrote about Brigham’s persuasive argument in great detail in their private journals. Nowhere was there a mention of the miraculous or divine. Not a hint.

Until years later.

Van Wagoner takes us through the transformation; not the transformation of Brigham to Joseph, but the transformation from historical truth to historical legend.

You Really Had To Be There

After the saints were settled in Utah, church leadership began to shake out in the form of a hierarchy with certain apostles recognized as having seniority over others. Almost immediately Brigham Young forsook the plan he had proposed that church affairs should be administered by the Twelve equally, and quietly adopted the plan that had been proposed by Sidney Rigdon — with himself in Sidney Rigdon’s place.

Although in his famous speech in the grove at Nauvoo Brigham had insisted that “you can’t put anyone at the head of the Twelve,” in no time he managed to maneuver himself at the head of the Twelve and into the role of successor to the prophet Joseph Smith. This aggrandizement was not what the Saints had originally voted for, but Brigham had more than proven his leadership abilities by getting them across the plains and settled in, and who were they to question the senior member of the Quorum?

It was soon being spoken about that “the mantle of Joseph had fallen on Brigham.” What that meant exactly was anybody’s guess. “Mantle” is both a verb and a noun, and is a very abstract term in this sense. Nothing tangible or spiritual or visible had actually “fallen” on Brigham Young. It was meant as a metaphor. But in 1857, 13 years after the speech in the grove, Albert Carrington took the account one step further. In a speech before a huge gathering of Saints, he said that he couldn’t tell Brigham from Joseph that day when Brigham was speaking.

Someone else soon claimed that he had sensed the very spirit of Joseph Smith while Brigham had been speaking. Then another person declared that he saw the very personage of Joseph take over Brigham’s body.

That was all it took. Mark Twain has famously said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. Human nature being what it is, there was soon no shortage of pioneers declaring that they had seen the miraculous transformation too. It was a sign! It was a miracle! Brigham Young had been transformed by the spirit of Joseph Smith into the image of Joseph Smith himself!

Some of the most prominent church leaders got caught up in the illusion. “His words went through me like electricity,” testified apostle Orson Hyde in 1869, “It was not the voice of Joseph Smith but there were the features, the gestures, and even the stature of Joseph before us in the person of Brigham.”

Eight years later, a full thirty-three years after the original event, Hyde went even further. On second thought, it was the voice of Joseph Smith after all, and more:

“I heard the voice of Joseph through him, and it was as familiar to me as the voice of my wife, the voice of my child, or the voice of my father. And not only the voice of Joseph did I distinctly and unmistakably hear, but I saw the very gestures of his person, the very features of his countenance, and if I mistake not, the very size of his person appeared on the stand. And it went through me with the thrill of conviction that Brigham was the man to lead this people. And from that day to the present there has not been a query or a doubt upon my mind with regard to the divinity of his appointment; I know that he was the man selected of God to fill the position he now holds.”

There’s just one problem with Orson Hyde’s testimony. He wasn’t there. Orson Hyde did not arrive in Nauvoo until August 13th.

Other prominent Mormons who weren’t present added their testimonies too. John D. Lee’s personal diary, Van Wagoner tells us, “makes it clear that he did not return to Nauvoo until 20 August, nearly two weeks later.” But that didn’t stop Lee from later saying “I myself, at the time, imagined that I saw and heard a strong resemblance to the Prophet in him.” Wilford Woodruff told the story from the pulpit many times over the years, embellishing it more than any of the others with each retelling. Interestingly, Woodruff was present that day and had written the most detailed and complete contemporary account of Brigham’s speech on the day he gave it. But in that original account he failed to mention any of the supernatural sights and sounds he miraculously recalled years later.

If the church leadership were inclined to exaggerate, the rank and file were up to the challenge too. According to Van Wagoner:

“Retrospective retellings of a ‘transfiguration,’ in a variety of forms, can be found in dozens of sources, yet no two seem to agree on precise details. Elizabeth Haven Barlow, a cousin of Brigham Young, for example, wrote that her mother told her that ‘thousands in that assembly’ saw Young ‘take on the form of Joseph Smith and heard his voice change to that of the Prophet’s.’ Eliza Ann Perry Benson reminisced that the Saints arose ‘from their seats enmass’ exclaiming ‘Joseph has come! He is here!’”

Too bad the newspapers neglected to notice the crowd going wild. It would have made good copy.

Thankfully, not every member of the church got caught up in the collective delusion. According to Van Wagoner:

Bishop George Miller, present at the gathering, later recalled that nothing supernatural had occurred on that day. Young made a “long and loud harangue,” Miller later wrote, for which I “could not see any point in the course of his remarks than to overturn Sidney Rigdon’s pretensions.”

Why It Matters, And Why It Doesn’t

Just as 19th century historian George Bancroft believed there was nothing wrong with fabricating and reshaping the facts as long as the resulting stories “would make his readers proud of their country’s history”, so did 19th century Mormons profess to fudging the facts if it led to promoting the faith. But such Mormon urban legends have a way of backfiring. Rather than strengthening testimonies, once the deception is revealed, testimonies are often destroyed. Witness the hordes of good and faithful people leaving the church in droves every year after discovering their testimonies were dependent on deeply held beliefs that had been manipulated by those they trusted most.

Nearly a hundred years ago B.H. Roberts was already concerned about this trend:

“Suppose your youth receive their impressions of church history from ‘pictures and stories’ and build their faith upon these alleged miracles [and] shall someday come face to face with the fact that their belief rests on falsehoods; what then will be the result? Will they not say that since these things are myth and our Church has permitted them to be perpetuated …might not the other fundamentals to the actual story of the Church, the things in which it had its origin, might they not all be lies and nothing but lies?”

Whack-a-Mole Wives

Members and ex-members alike deserve to take an objective look at the women who started popping up in late nineteenth century Utah claiming to have once been secretly married to Joseph Smith. We deserve to carefully analyze their claims one by one, and that’s just the kind of research Richard and Pamela Price have been engaged in for over thirty years.

Are these tales of secret marriages not that much different from tales of miraculous transfigurations, thought to aid in affirming the glorious doctrines of The Lord’s True Church? If an apostle could claim to witness a miracle he did not see, is it not conceivable that a woman might claim a marriage she did not experience? Did any of these women come forward earlier than the late 1870′s? Do we have any contemporary accounts of their secret marriages written in their diaries at the time they supposedly took place? Why don’t we hear anything of this until these women were well past middle age and the practice of plural marriage was under attack? Anyone could have claimed to have been married to Joseph Smith, since the marriages were alleged to have been secret and no marriage certificates exist. One wife would not even have known about any of the others. “You were married to Joseph Smith? No kidding! I was married to Joseph Smith!

“Well, howdy-do and pleased ta meetcha!”

All of these dubious claims were made by women who were firm believers in The Principle, having lived their entire adult lives as plural wives, nearly all of them to men of prominence in Utah society. They were absolutely convinced that the doctrine was introduced by Joseph, so a little exaggeration to affirm the legitimacy of the practice couldn’t hurt. Doubtless some of these gals may have come to believe Joseph Smith actually would have married them for real if he had actually met them.

Let’s take a quick look at just a couple of cases of women who have been presented to me as proof positive, absolutely-airtight-smoking-gun-evidence that Joseph Smith was a sex-obsessed Lothario.

The Smoking Gun Is A Toy Cap Pistol

1. Nancy Rigdon

Nancy Rigdon was the pretty nineteen year old daughter of First Councilor Sidney Rigdon, and the way the story is often told, Joseph Smith made advances toward her in a letter and she rejected him.

In volume II of Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy, the Prices examine this story in depth and document all the juicy details. You can read the complete analysis on their website here . I’ll give you the short version.

A letter was delivered to Miss Rigdon which she was told was from Joseph Smith. The letter did not contain Joseph’s signature, and Miss Rigdon rejected it because she knew where it had come from. She suspected it was the work of John C. Bennett, who held incriminating knowledge about her seduction by Chauncey Higbee and hoped for her cooperation in entrapping Joseph. What ended up happening to the poor girl was that her affair with Higbee was made public, causing her no end of humiliation.

Wouldn’t you know it, Bennett somehow had a copy of that letter to Nancy Rigdon of his own, which he published in the Sangamo Journal, and later in his book, claiming it was written by Joseph Smith to Nancy Rigdon. Gee, I wonder how he got that copy?

Joseph Smith made affidavit denying authorship of the letter, and Nancy Rigdon herself affirmed it had not come from Smith, “nor in his hand writing, but by another person, and in another person’s hand writing.” Nancy’s father didn’t believe the letter was from Joseph either. Neither copy of the notorious letter has been found to this day. All we know of it is from what Bennett published.

Some smoking gun.

2. Helen Mar Kimball

I suppose if we came across the diary of an innocent fourteen year old girl expressing horrified apprehension about her upcoming wedding to Joseph Smith, a grown man in his mid thirties, that would be pretty damning evidence, wouldn’t it?

That’s how the journal of Helen Mar Kimball is often presented. But the journal was written by Helen when she was nearly fifty and had been one of the plural wives of Orson F. Whitney her entire adult life. Helen tells a retrospective tale of desiring to be obedient to her father who wished her to be given to the Prophet to wife. The actual purpose of her story was to bolster support for the practice of plural marriage, to which she was a devoted acolyte.

Far from being the private diary of a frightened underage girl, this was a story Helen composed in the late 1870′s which she wrote for publication. Her story has all the earmarks of the type of fabricated “history” created to build testimonies among those who may have come to question the doctrine of plural marriage. Her conclusion was that plural marriage was wonderful. She was in with both feet. Why, she even had the privilege of being married at one time to the living Prophet himself, that’s how super-duper the whole thing was.

“I learned that plural marriage is a celestial principle,” she testified, “and saw… the necessity of obedience to those who hold the priesthood, and the danger of rebelling against or speaking lightly of the Lord’s anointed.”

Helen makes it clear in an accompanying poem that her marriage to Joseph was for eternity only. That is, the marriage was never consummated. This is a typical caveat of the women who came forward with these claims. They seemed to enjoy the status of an eternal marriage to the famous founder of their faith, but most were careful to make the point that there was never any hanky-panky going on. Joseph would claim them as his celestial mates later in the hereafter. They even had themselves sealed “again” to Joseph in the Utah temple in case anybody didn’t believe them.

Those who insist that Joseph Smith was a sex-obsessed letch scoring dozens of clandestine conquests at Nauvoo will have to explain to me how the biggest celebrity in the city, during the busiest time of his life and with everyone’s eyes constantly watching his every move, would be able to woo, court, and wed two to three women every month. And then explain to me this unusual talent he had for constantly picking ladies who refused to put out.

Helen Mar Kimball’s purpose in writing her tract was to help bolster support for “The Principle” at a time when it was coming under attack from outside the church and generating questions inside. Like anyone else of her generation and in her position, when it suited her purpose, she fabricated. She didn’t write what she did because she was fishing for sympathy, she was trolling for converts.

Art or Science?

Today the study of history is a social science, no longer the malleable “art” that it was prior to the twentieth century. So perhaps it’s time Mormons as well as ex-Mormons applied the scientific process when trying to determine whether Joseph Smith was being honest in his denunciation of polygamy, or whether he was a flaming hypocrite.

“Occam’s Razor” is the scientific principle embodied in the statement that “the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.” Perhaps Fawn Brodie’s frustrated bewilderment at the conflicting evidence tying Joseph Smith to plural marriage was simply a result of her having been raised in the church (as were most subsequent Joseph Smith biographers) and accepted as a “given” that the doctrine of polygamy originated with Joseph Smith. Was she predisposed to ignore the simplest explanation?

How many of us have ever thought to check the provenance of D&C 132? Haven’t we always just assumed that it was written in Joseph’s hand? We unquestioningly accept as truth what has been handed down to us from people whose own recollections of key events changed radically depending upon the lesson they wished to convey, and who lived in a time when even the professional historians were no sticklers for accuracy.

After weighing all the evidence in any historical controversy, the best we can conclude about any given event is that it was more likely to have happened one way, and less likely to have happened another. Important factors to consider are primary and contemporary accounts (accounts written at the time), versus secondary accounts, hearsay, and later recollections.

So here’s what it comes down to. On the one hand we have countless contemporary accounts in Joseph’s own words testifying of his incessant crusade to root out polygamy in the church and his threats to prosecute its practitioners. On the other hand we have scribes as early as 1847 testifying to their complicity in tampering with the dead man’s journals, along with an entire gallery of pinch-faced dowagers appearing from out of nowhere with a claim to fame for their secret weddings to a long dead super-celebrity.

Taking Joseph Smith at his word and approaching the later claims as hyperbole typical of the zeitgeist is the only way to make sense of all the contradictions. It’s the only way the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. No one really knows the truth about what happened back then. I wouldn’t pretend to. I’ve only read half of the revisionist history on the topic, and I’m told there’s much more yet to be made available. But if I were to offer an early opinion based on the evidence I’ve seen so far, I would have to say that it seems more likely that Joseph Smith was sincere about eradicating polygamy in the church; and given what we know about the 19th century proclivity for embellishing reality without shame as long as it was for a good cause, I’d have to conclude that it’s less likely that we can rely on the claims of Joseph Smith’s several “wives”.

I don’t quite understand this reluctance some people have -both believing Mormons as well as others raised in the parochial Mormon culture- to automatically reject new information that might force a paradigm shift in their thinking. I like how B.H. Roberts looked at it: “I find my own heart strengthened in the truth by getting rid of the untruth, the spectacular, the bizarre, as soon as I learn that it is based upon worthless testimony.”

I actually like discovering I might have been wrong about something. It’s kind of exhilarating. It tells me I’m still learning.

Optimization

Optimization largely rules our world. Virtually all of management, engineering, politics, and much of science is about optimization. Optimization, in this sense, is the process of determining the optimal solution given all the objectives and constraints. In management, the process may not be that formal. Perhaps there is a board of directors who gather around a table to discuss the optimal set of policies, the direction to go, etc. In politics it is likely similar. The President of the U.S. surrounds himself with experts on a particular topic, they then engage in discussion, and hope to land on the optimal answer given the objectives and constraints.

For engineers the process is much more formal and precise. Usually optimization takes the form of a cost function – a function incorporating, mathematically, all the objectives and constraints. An algorithm (and there are many) is then employed to “solve” the function resulting in the optimal solution. To demonstrate, here’s an example:

Suppose you are designing an aircraft. There are numerous design possibilities, a canard style, V-tail empennages, aspect ratio of the wings, length of fuselage, coating of the surfaces, wingtips, where to place the turbines, height of vertical stabilizer (if having one at all), etc. etc. We would like to find the optimal answer amongst all these parameters such that we maximize lift, maximize cargo space, maximize safety, minimize energy consumption, etc. Of course we also have constraints. We cannot physically manufacture a flexible fixed wing that is 800 ft long and thin as a toothpick. To solve the problem, we can write down a big, long, nasty equation that would mathematically characterize the physics, constraints, and objectives and then pick our favorite optimization algorithm and wait for it to churn out the answer (which may take a long time).

Bayesian inference is one algorithm that can be applied to such an optimization problem. Typically one would choose this algorithm amidst a cost function that was stochastic in nature, having noise and/or error in the system, that expressed our confidence.

Finding the Truth, Optimization Style

In some sense, the Bayesian inference mechanism I discussed in previous posts could be seen as an optimization method for finding the truth. If we assume that all the new information we regularly encounter has some (even if very little) truth therein, and we apply that information in the regular Bayesian inference sense, we could then reliably conclude that we have found the “truth,” with some probability (level of confidence), given all the information.

This is highly related to a comment FireTag made on my previous post. He asked

So there are routes to evolve our beliefs toward truth no matter where we start or whatever the order of our search algorithm?

In the context of this question, Bayesian inference can easily be seen as a search algorithm. And, in fact, if we used a Sequential Monte Carlo method, it really does feel like a search algorithm.

In expanding this notion, my response, in part, was:

Absolutely (at least in my book)! Though certainly some search algorithms are definitely worse than others and some starting places better than others! Otherwise what prayer in the world do we have (unless you’re absolutely certain that YOU’VE got it right, but I sure don’t)? I view my religion/spirituality as a compass that (I hope) points me in a good direction. My hope is that if/when the absolute truth is made manifest to me I will be humble enough (and my definition of humble is “openness to the truth”) to recognize it because/in spite of my current confidence distribution.

From this perspective, we might view the church (or whatever church you belong to), the Gospel, this life, and all our associated experience as tools to help us optimize for, and draw nearer to the truth given the objectives and constraints of our personal limitations and the limitations of this mortal existence. While I have encountered a very few number of Mormons who claim that we have ALL the truth, this is not the claim of the LDS church. Most of us, I believe, accept there are things we don’t yet know and don’t yet understand. The real challenge is to have an appropriate confidence distribution such that you will accept that truth when it is made known to you.

However, I finished my response to FireTag with the following:

However, this really opens another can of worms – namely, what is truth? My explanation thus far has been about our perception of truth which may or may not correlate with objective or absolute truth. To argue over whether or not our perception of truth is objective truth is to argue over what forms of evidence are acceptable and what weight we should apply to that evidence (which is the conclusion of this post and is an argument with no victor).

Mormonism today runs a balancing act between its roots of free speculation and the need to create a cohesive religious and cultural organization.  The social bond of a church is based at some vital level on common belief and understanding among people practicing their religion.  Lacking firm creeds, we conduct this balancing act on a personal level.  Problems arise when we attempt to impose our speculation on others.  Conflict occurs when we need others to validate our individual interpretations.  There is a line between personal belief and the beliefs that all Mormons must share in common.  But where is it?

There has to be official Mormon doctrine.  There has to be something common that brings people together in the religion.  Don Ashton recently published a paper on this topic at http://www.staylds.com.  It is called “What is Official Church Doctrine?”  You can find it in the “Additional Support Resources” section of the website: http://www.staylds.com/?page_id=29

Don argues that the official and binding core of ideas, the cannon of doctrine that is fixed, is actually limited and abstract.  That abstract characteristic allows following generations to interpret and develop the core to suit the needs of their contemporary environment.  The same can be done by individuals to meet personal needs in their eternal journey of progress towards divine enlightenment.

Don summarizes this nicely in his opening section:

The 14 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are spread across 160 countries on 6 continents. Yet there is a remarkable consistency in beliefs, attitudes, teachings and practices among Mormons everywhere. A traveler visiting congregations throughout the world will find familiar curricula materials, beliefs, and attitudes on most every religious topic.

Yet Mormonism is not dogmatic. There is no creed or statement of core beliefs which adherents are obliged to accept. Both members and leaders alike hold varying opinions ranging from whether watching TV on Sunday is sinful, to whether every statement by a General Authority must be explicitly and unconditionally obeyed.

Such questions may be insignificant or disquieting. If a person is struggling with faith issues, it may become important to distinguish between Official Doctrine and less authoritative council. A clear understanding of Official Doctrine can reduce controversy, minimize anxiety and perhaps open up new options for resolving faith issues. This essay attempts to evaluate the authoritativeness of council ranging from canonized scripture to conventional wisdom.

The practical implications of this speak to a common encounter, which is a feeling of having to believe or practice things sometimes that do not make sense to us.  The first question should then be whether the problem stems from an unbending core of fundamental doctrine; or instead, is it actually our own incorrect expectations and assumptions, someone else’s personal speculation, or something that we can freely explore.

Many ideas and practices touted as “official” are not.  They are someone’s personal speculation and interpretation of the core doctrine.  That means we are free to agree or disagree.  It does not mean that person is wrong in their religious journey.  What they do and believe may be valuable to them.  But we should feel justified and even compelled to use our free agency and God-given intelligence to build what works for us.  That is the soul inherited from our Church founding, and it is a theme to be nurtured today.  We should expect our understanding to evolve over the course of our life.  We should also expect the larger and broader concept of Restoration in the Church to continue its course of evolution from the past to today, and on into the future.

What do you think?  Discuss.

In C.S. Lewis’ final Narnia book The Last Battle, there is a powerful scene of an encounter between the Christ-symbolizing lion Aslan and Emeth, a noble-minded worshipper of the false Calormene demon-god Tash:

“[The Lion] touched my forehead…and said, Son, thou art welcome.  But I said, Alas Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash.  He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.  Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true…that thou and Tash are one?  The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false.  Not because he and I aer one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him.  For he and I are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.  Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.  And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.”

Needless to say, a certain type of Christian evangelical is appalled by this.  I read an essay (by someone who evidently has reading-comprehension problems) arguing that by Lewis’s logic, Osama bin Laden’s diligence in pursuit of what he understands to be his religious duty must be credited as salvific worship of Christ.

And there is a danger, in seeking to be courteous to people who believe fundamentally different things from our own faith, to drift into seeming to say that there is no absolute truth — that all religious traditions are equally valid, that all religious roads lead to God, and the like.  And in fact, the varieties of religious experience are often used by folk-postmodernists to argue there is no absolute truth — that all truths are simply fronts for cultural biases, interests, or power relations.  However — although there is more of a common core of shared moral truth, across many diverse cultures, than often gets acknowledged – the truth claims of different religious traditions are often mutually exclusive.  In the case of Christianity and Islam, for example, Jesus Christ was either a prophet, or the incarnate God.  He can’t be both.  So the only way that “all religious teachings can be equally valid” is for none of them to be valid.  They obtain whatever fiction of validity they have, only from what they are given by their adherents.  Asking, like Joseph Smith, “Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together?”  (JS-H 1:10), the vernacular relativist concludes the answer must be “all wrong together.”  Otherwise, we’d have to privilege one faith claim above another — and in a pluralist society, we certainly can’t have that.  Wouldn’t be courteous.

But it does not follow, from the fact that finding the absolute truth is so difficult that different people, exercising the best of their imperfect judgment, reach different conclusions, that there is no absolute truth.  It is possible that, among all the “contests of these parties of religionists,” somebody is actually right — or more right than others.  Christians give the assent of faith to the proposition that Christ “is the way, the Truth, and the life; no man cometh to the Father except by [Him].”  (John 14:6.)  We are committed to believing that there is one absolute Truth, and that it includes the basic fact that the salvation of humanity rests on Christ crucified.

How can faith in an exclusive Truth be reconciled with religious pluralism, not to mention God’s justice, in a world where the accidents of birth are probably the greatest factor that determines what religion a person practices?

I think C.S. Lewis was on to something with his parable of Emeth — whose name is Hebrew for “Truth.”  I think of Matthew 26:32-46, where the sheep are divided from from the goats.  The scripture seems to indicate that at least some of the sheep are surprised at being sheep:  “Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?  or thirsty, and gave thee drink?  When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?  Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?  And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

The Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, who was one of the major influences in the restatement of Catholic doctrine at the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, articulated a concept he called “Anonymous Christianity”:

“Anonymous Christianity means that a person lives in the grace of God and attains salvation outside of explicitly constituted Christianity — Let us say, a Buddhist monk — who, because he follows his conscience, attains salvation and lives in the grace of God; of him I must say that he is an anonymous Christian; if not, I would have to presuppose that there is a genuine path to salvation that really attains that goal, but that simply has nothing to do with Jesus Christ. But I cannot do that. And so, if I hold if everyone depends upon Jesus Christ for salvation, and if at the same time I hold that many live in the world who have not expressly recognized Jesus Christ, then there remains in my opinion nothing else but to take up this postulate of an anonymous Christianity.”

The Catholic Church subsequently adopted the substance of Rahner’s thinking.  The Church’s Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium provides,

“Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and, moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience.”

The present Catechism now provides,

“Those who through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation.”

The declaration Dominus Iesus (criticized by some religious liberals for, evidently, not abandoning altogether the Catholic Church’s proclamation that it is the one true church), stated,

“Nevertheless, God, who desires to call all peoples to himself in Christ and to communicate to them the fullness of his revelation and love, “does not fail to make himself present in many ways, not only to individuals, but also to entire peoples through their spiritual riches, of which their religions are the main and essential expression even when they contain ‘gaps, insufficiencies and errors”. Therefore, the sacred books of other religions, which in actual fact direct and nourish the existence of their followers, receive from the mystery of Christ the elements of goodness and grace which they contain.”

Mormonism, of course, may have anticipated this doctrine (or a version of it) with the doctrine of proxy ordinance work for the dead.  Although there has been controversy on the point, many LDS authorities suggest that even those who have had the gospel presented to them in this life, but rejected it for good-faith reasons, may obtain to salvation.

Some consider the doctrine of “Anonymous Christianity” to be condescending:  Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, goes this argument, don’t want to be saved as “anonymous” or honorary Christians; they should insist on being saved qua Jews, Muslims, or Buddhists.  In my view, “Anonymous Christianity” is as far as a revealed religion can possibly go and remain anything like itself.

However, “Anonymous Christianity” has a potentially startling flip side:  Just as a noble-minded Muslim, who follows the truly holy aspects of his religion, may have his inherently holy actions counted as worship of Christ, isn’t it also at least conceivably possible that I — by practicing the noble truths contained in my Mormon variety of Christianity — could be an “anonymous Buddhist?”  We tend to view even entertaining the possibility that the things to which we give the assent of faith may not be in every respect exactly as we understand them as a kind of infidelity, but is it really so?  To have effective faith in something, do we really have to know it with every fiber of our being, or say that we do?

My faith is in Christ, exercised within the framework of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  I have reason to believe — or, more precisely, I choose to believe that certain experiences, whose actual import I may not be able to know with certainty, give me reason to believe — that God is pleased that I exercise faith in this way.  It may be that this is because the Gospel, as it it has been made known to me, is 100% true, to the exclusion of all contrary traditions — or it may be because my faith contains enough of the true God’s truth to suffice.

Some of you may have played this game before…or understand how it is played. If you do, then think back to the first time you played the game (when it was as unknown to you as it is to many), and don’t spoil it for the rest.

There will be prizes. Although, they will be the nonphysical kind.

OK. So, here’s the game.

There are three doors in front of you. What I can tell you is that one of the door contains within a fabulous, yet utterly nonphysical prize. The other doors contain cureloms (…which I think is a goat. Maybe). Your job is to pick the door with the fabulous prize in order to win it.

Here are your three doors

But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. When you’ve picked a door (but before you’ve opened it!), I will open another door that has one of the cureloms in it. I will then give you the chance to stay with your door, or switch to the final, still unopened door.

…ok…so, before we get started with the game, I’ll ask you a question. After I have revealed one of the curelom-containing doors, do you think you should stay with your door, switch to the other door, or do you think it doesn’t matter?

[poll id="176"]

More after the break, folks! (Including spoilers)

If you truly haven’t heard of this scenario, then please acquaint yourself with the Monty Hall Problem. Or, as some call it, the Monty Hall Paradox.

Why should this ever be considered a paradox? The truth…it is just so simple! It is so easy to comprehend! If I — the guy running the show — picks one of doors with the cureloms in it, then I have done you a tremendous favor. I have changed the odds from 1 in 3 to 1 in 2!

Of course…now that it is 50/50…it really doesn’t matter if you stay or if you switch your door. Each has an equal likelihood of containing the prize, and each has an equal likelihood of containing curelom-goat.

…wrong.

Statistically, if you switch doors, your probability of winning everything doubles from 1/3 to 2/3.

…did you see that coming? (To those of you who already saw this before, did you see the answer coming the first time you saw it?) Can you make sense of this truth? If you mosey back to the wikipedia page I linked you, you can see an explanation — several, actually — of the probabilities. In fact, there are freakin’ proofs.

I see the Monty Hall Problem as one clear instance where what is true isn’t what is immediately intuitive or easy to comprehend (for most.) Other examples? 0.999~ = 1. The plane will take off of the treadmill. All of quantum physics. (I imagine that when I’m old and dying and science has come up with new physics paradigms, I’ll be eating that last one…)

So, that brings me to my topical question: should truth be expected to be simple or easy to comprehend?

Especially in Mormonism (and especially if we’ve lost or doubted or questioned our faith), we often have a nascent belief that truth should be simple. Perhaps even easy to comprehend. At the very least, when we understand true concepts and principles, it should enlighten. Make everything understood. Make sense. Our doubts often come in the situations when we find an incongruency in these expectations — we either found out that what was easy to swallow, easy to comprehend is seeming more and more unlikely to be true, or that what we have found to definitely be true is nevertheless complex, nuanced, and extremely difficult to grasp.

And we may know people (perhaps even ourselves) who deal with such incongruencies in different ways. We have talked endlessly of “putting things on the shelf” (or, if you will, establishing cold cases.) And when we discuss such things, different sides often respond in different ways.

Why should we shelve things? Don’t our doubts say meaningful things to us? Why should we continue to believe things that seem unintuitive, unlikely, incredible (in the more mundane sense of lacking credibility), or, well, unbelievable? Shouldn’t we follow our noses?

…or is it the case that we never ought to have expected truth to be simple and easy to comprehend? And rather than live lives where our assumptions and understood storylines seem all to work without problem, we were supposed to live with — as many people have also begun discussing — with tension, paradox, uncertainty, and mystery?

…nevertheless, this also produces bad business advice. I think it is one thing to say that the truth may, in fact, not be simple or easy to comprehend. However, this does not necessarily mean we should accept things that seem to us unlikely…just because we are throwing out a sense of intuition for the likeliness of truthful things (…or the truthfulness of likely things..?). But then, how do we decide which unlikelies are keepers, despite their complexity or elusiveness to grasp?

We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

While these verses lay out the principles/ordinances, they do little to explicate what these terms actually mean. And indeed, the confusion over these principles is the subject of many theological debates in Christianity. In Mormonism, however, I think we have some fairly clear explanations for how these principles/ordinances are used in our theology. For example, to establish a definition of faith, most Mormons will refer to Hebrews 11:1, or perhaps Alma 32:21 (not quoted for sake of brevity).  Additionally, at least to me, I sense a kind of loose cultural consensus for what faith is, and is not.  For baptism we can look to D&C 20:73. As for the Gift of the Holy Ghost, modern revelation confirms the method of the “laying of hand by those who are in authority,” and we have a ready explanation of the difference between the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the influence of the Holy Ghost.

I confess, I find some of the typical Mormon explanations of these principles and ordinances somewhat (okay, at least for faith very) unsatisfying. Faith, when described as “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” leaves me wondering about the difference between God and electromagnetic waves or general relativity! In the case of Alma, it is worse because we bring a new term “knowledge” into the mix without an appropriate definition. After such standard definitions it is little wonder to me why we argue over semantics, and describe those who either fall away, or reject the church, as “faithless.” Faith often becomes the lynchpin for anyone who doesn’t see things our way!

Likewise, even the explanation for baptism in D&C 20 leaves me wanting. What is so magical about immersion in water? Is it entirely clear from the New Testament that Jesus was “completely submersed” in the water like we believe is necessary in LDS theology? It feels like there should be more to this ordinance than simply a bath!  Even coupling it with repentance (as it should be) just clouds the waters of my mind.

In “A Rational Theology,” Widstoe lays out a compelling alternative for these standard definitions. Not that he repudiates them, but he explicitly differentiates between the abstract meanings of the principles and ordinances, and the concrete implmentation on terra firma. I think his words are enlightening:

In God’s Plan for life on earth is a system of laws representing eternal realities, to which man must conform. Such a law, for instance, is faith, which, in its simple, universal meaning, is man’s certainty that in the universe is found everything he may desire for his upbuilding and advancement, and that the eternal relations of universal forces will prevail in the end for his good. Another such fundamental law, to which man must conform, is that of repentance, which in its larger sense is merely faith made active. Passive faith can do little for man’s advancement. Yet another such law is that of baptism, which is essentially obedience to existing laws. And still another such law is that of the gift of the Holy Ghost, which perhaps means that a man may place himself in touch with the whole of the universe, including the beings of superior intelligence that it contains, and draw knowledge from forces beyond the earth. – John A. Widstoe, “A Rational Theology” pp 42-43

Here, it is clear that the first four principles and ordinances of the Gospel are eternal laws, are independent of the LDS church, earth, priesthood, or any other convention, organization, or authority in the universe. I believe this offers us perspective on the larger context in which the specific LDS implementation resides. It also makes allowances for God’s other non-terrestrial children to experience different forms of these basic laws and principles.
Widstoe goes on to say:

Life on earth deals directly with gross matter and the forces pertaining to it. The laws formulated for the guidance of man are especially devised for earth conditions, and belong to the earth. For instance, water baptism, the symbol of obedience to God and acceptance of his love, is essentially an ordinance of and for this earth. It is not thinkable that water baptism is practiced in a future estate for water is an earth substance. If this be true, then all who enter upon the earth-career, and who desire the perfected joy derived from the Gospel, must have baptism on this earth. – John A. Widstoe, “A Rational Theology” pp 44-45

Then the all-encompassing explanation provided formerly, couched in the reality of earth life, offers a surprising explanation of vicarious ordinances, necessarily performed here, on behalf of those who did not receive them while “in the flesh.”

Should some of the spirits refuse, while on earth, to accept the Gospel, or fail to hear it, baptism, belonging to the earth, must be done for them, vicariously, on earth, so that they, having had the work done for them here, may accept or reject the ordinance in their life beyond the grave. This is the motive of the work for the dead. The earth ordinances must be done by or for every soul born upon the earth so that the earth-experience may not be in vain, should the Gospel be accepted in the remotest day of eternity. This view becomes more important when it is recalled that the ordinances of the earth, belonging primarily to the earth, stand for vast, eternal realities, indispensable to man’s progress. – John A. Widstoe, “A Rational Theology” p. 45

For me, I find the deeper theology here enriching, satisfying, and meaningful, particularly in my state of uncertainty with regard to the plenitude of truth claims in the LDS church.

So how do you view Widstoe’s rational “first four principles and ordinances”? Do his explanations provide you with more insight? Is he right? Or is this just another attempt by an “apologist” to justify his belief system? Is there scriptural backing for his claims? We do not emphasize such distinctions in the church today. Is this because we don’t really know, or is it just not important?

Seeing that ‘the importance of discerning correctly that which is figurative and that which is literal would be hard to overstate’ [p. 133] we might expect that the insights that Bro. McConkie will offer would reflect this seriousness. Yet his answers seem facile and ill-thought out. For example, his first insight into working through this dilemma is that often ‘the scriptures provide the answer’ [p. 134]. Following this he then explain that Adam was clearly born (literally) because of the scripture in Moses 6:59 (Adam is described as being ‘born’ in this verse).

His second insight is that sometimes ‘things spoken of in the scriptures are both figurative and literal’ [p. 134]. What is confusing here for me is that he argues that sometimes symbols are used in the middle of real stories, for example in the Garden of Eden. However, what those symbolic aspects are is less clear. Certainly Pres. Kimball’s declaration that the Eve-Adam-Rib story was figurative would be one example of what McConkie is discussing here. Yet, Pres. Kimball’s remark assumes a particular understanding of the Garden of Eden narrative to make that argument (i.e. that the story is literal and that they were born). Why is this reading any less literal than the born passage? Could the rib be literal and the reference to born be figurative?

His third insight is the most troubling for me. He writes that, ‘When scripture provides no clear answer by which we can discern what is figurative and what is literal, we are reduced to our own good sense and wisdom’. He continues ‘This… may well be quite deliberate, for it creates an opportunity for [God] to get a measure of our judgement, spiritual maturity and spiritual integrity’ [p. 135]. Really! ‘Figure it out for yourself’! That’s your key to discerning between what is literal and figurative. However, what is more perplexing is the implication of McConkie’s discourse.

By invoking issues that relate interpretation to spiritual maturity McConkie is creating an implicit ‘orthodoxy’ which places the reader in a position of spiritual uncertainty regarding their position with God. This is surely spiritually destructive. To encourage individuals to read the scriptures in a way that is reflective of their spiritual standing is to place them in a situation of tension of with God. For if their interpretation is wrong then they are not ‘saved’ and are in need of repentance. Moreover it allows those who are in authority to question worthiness upon the basis of differing interpretations. I believe that if we are to benefit from the scriptures, i.e. if they are to draw us God, then placing the individual into a spiritual uncertain situation while engaging with the texts is spiritually unproductive.

A recent post by SteveP, at BCC, argues that there is a temptation to approach the scriptures literally when they were not intended to be read in that particular way. I think this is fundamentally correct, however, I am convinced that there is a tendency within such arguments to find those who derive spirituality through a literalistic approach to the scriptures as incorrect or mis-informed. I am not arguing that SteveP would advocate this but rather that I have seen some who do. In one sense this form of argument can be used just like McConkie’s but instead to defend a non-literal orthodoxy.

Though SteveP frames his debate within the context of the literal/figurative binary, his position is rooted to the idea that the scriptures are intended to help us related to God and to ‘spiritual’ truth. My contention is that perhaps the literal/figurative dichotomy is part of the liahona/iron-rod split. Applying Richard Poll’s analogy here is useful because it helps us see that Liahona (figurative?) and Iron-Rod (literal?) readers of the scriptures are not in competition and should learn more empathy for the other position.

I am not convinced that literal readings of the scripture do violence to the depth the scriptures have to offer (though I am concerned about how they view more figurative readers). Yet, I am convinced that they do violence to the depth’s that SteveP sees in the scriptures (and I admit that feel the same). For another person that literal reading might derive other depths that (perhaps) non-literal readers might miss. Each paradigm has its failings and flaws, just like Liahonas and Iron-rods.

I think that a better way, a more complex and certainly less clear way, of approaching the scriptures is with different lens of literalism. If we rather see the scriptures literally in a way that both groups can accept, i.e. the scriptures can literally help us to come to God, then perhaps both sides could be more willing to apply these different lens of literalism to the same story and deal with the challenges that each will bring. Though a non-literal reader by inclination I have felt the challenge of trying to reconcile a literalistic reading of certain OT passages. Though I do not feel bound by such a paradigm, trying to read them in that literal way has proved a spiritually productive venture. Moreover, I hope that I am still able to plumb the depths that a non-literal paradigm has often provided for me.

I want to explore these myths using the office of Prophet/President.  The centrality of his position hierarchically, the significant role he plays in the faith of many members of the Church and also the infrequency of contact with the general membership make this an apt example.

These myths come in many varieties.  There are stories about the Holy of Holies, about paintings of the Saviour and about mantle experiences. Now all of these may well be true, in whole or in part, or they may be completely fabricated. I am not concerned with their truth claims, rather I think that what is essential in the dynamic of these stories is the way that they become transferable between Prophets.

It is possible to trace a number of these stories (or variants of them) through many leaders, especially prophets, of the Church. This does not add to their fallacious nature rather it serves to reinforce what Bushman noted, which is that the office is endowed with charismatic gifts and not the person. Therefore it is probable, even expected, that these charismatic gifts are manifest by diverse men who hold the same office.

For example, the ‘This is the Place’ myth is re-cycled in England regularly but in a context far removed from Utah. Instead this myth focuses on the construction of the Preston Temple. Simply stated, a number sites were discussed but one site had a number of people who always resisted building permission. Yet, President Hinckley had asked for a Temple to built in Preston and when he saw the different sites he said… Yes, you guessed it. Then, though there were problems, the Temple went ahead. I am sure other similar stories abound.

My point is this, the process of re-cycling and repeating these mythic stories is one mechanism for maintaining the dynamism of a charismatic office, specifically the Prophet, in a Church where the general membership is so far removed from the individual. This is not to say that miraculous things do not happen, but these stories play an important sociological role in reinforcing this key notion that is rooted so firmly to the earliest days of the Church. These Mormon myths serve as a form of transferable charisma for an otherwise distant office.

Social Networks Are How Humanity Works

As a community, the church is like all other social networks; there are people you like, people you dismiss, people you trust, people who irritate you, and so forth.  Ideas pass from person to person, both good ideas (healthy habits, positive attitudes) and bad ideas (unhealthy habits, negative attitudes).  The benefits of belonging have a lot to do with the people who surround you.  If the social contacts are beneficial, membership is valuable.  If the social contacts are not beneficial, membership can be detrimental (this is one reason prisons are bad social networks if we hope to rehabilitate criminals).

Dirty Little Secret:  Not every social network is beneficial to every person.

Rule #1:  Recognize that it’s a social network.  Choose to be in it.

Weak vs. Strong Connections

Social networks include strong connections (in Facebook, your “friends”) and weak connections (“your friends’ friends” and their friends).  Strong connections create your social norms – they tend to be most influential on your idealogies, views and habits.  But weak connections are also valuable – it’s how we typically meet our spouses or find a new job.  Also, as information flows through our social network (via influential people), we can become susceptible to ideas and habits that originated through weak connections.

Dirty Little Secret:  People often take a passive stance with their relationships.  They may not scrutinize the sources of information (norms) that come to them.  Or they may not make good choices about strong vs. weak connections.

Rule #2:  Choose your strong relationships carefully (and be mindful of the influences of their strong relationships), and use your weak relationships to add to your network.

How Ideas Pass Through a Social Network – Why God has ”Hand”

According to the book, you accept new ideas from people in your network that you admire, people you view as successful or educated.  The people who are influential to you are the ones you consider your closest “friends.”  The people you influence are the ones who view you as their closest “friends.”  Influence flows through social networks, from those perceived to be successful, educated, or wise to those who aspire to be like them.

In an episode of Seinfeld, George laments that he doesn’t have “hand” in the relationship with his girlfriend.  The one with “hand” is the one who is more influential on the other; the one without “hand” is the one who hopes to gain most from the association.  The one with “hand” has all the power and can take the relationship or leave it.

This is like the hierarchy of intelligences described by Joseph Smith in Abraham 3:19 -

• when “there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all.“  So, influence flows from the most intelligent to less intelligent spirits.

So God has the potential for the most influence among all intelligences.  But if you don’t know God, you just have to deal with the smartest mortal people you can find, be they authors, spouses, family members, prophets, talk show hosts or drinking buddies.

Dirty Little Secret:  People sometimes think friendships are equal or that advice from friends is all good since they have your interests at heart.  It’s not all good.

Rule #3:  Understand and define your position in your social network and in your relationships (who has “hand” with you; with whom do you have “hand”?).  IOW, don’t take advice from stupid people or from people who are taking advice from stupid people.

Social Epidemics

Ideas move from person to person through a social network.  These might be useful, productive ideas (“smoking is bad for you,”) or bad, unproductive or unhealthy ideas (“fried food dipped in lard is delicious”).  Likewise, within the church, various doctrinal interpretations operate like social epidemics.  An interpretation is introduced by someone, and that idea spreads if people view it as 1) credible on its own merits, 2) coming from a reliable source, and 3) not contradicted by a better sourced, more convincing argument.   BTW, rejecting bad ideas increases your influence over time as does embracing good ideas.  Look at what has happened to smoker populations over the last 30 years for an example of this.

Dirty Little Secret:  You are always vulnerable to the ideas and social norms of your network, especially if you are unaware that you are.

Rule #4:  Pay attention to how ideas flow in your network; accept the best ideas from the best sources.

Four Types of People in Communities

There are four different personalities that emerge in all societies: collaborators, freeloaders, punishers and loners.  This pattern recurs whenever societies form:

1. Individual loners live in relative isolation or small family groups.
2. Individuals learn that they can achieve more in collaboration.
3. Some individuals in the system (free-loaders) decide they can reap the rewards of the group without participating.
4. Some individuals resent the freeloaders and self-designate as punishers to control the behaviors that are counterproductive to the society’s greater good (at least in their view).

What might these types look like in a church setting?

• Loners.  These folks don’t really participate or interact much, so they are socially neutral.  They may be peripherally associated with the ward (Jack Mormons) or they may attend regularly.  They are more like visitors than members; they give nothing to and take nothing from the organization.
• Collaborators are the “norm” or the “majority.”  These are your average people who try to help others, accept help from them, and wish the community well as an insider.  They both give to and take from the organization.
• Freeloaders may be perpetual takers but not givers.  This could be in the form of taking things like church welfare, member contributions of time to the organization, individual service from others, or spiritual edification without putting equal or greater amounts of the same (service, money, ideas, spirituality) back into the community over time.
• Punishers  are out to define and protect the boundaries of the organization.  They want to say who is in and who is out.  If they are influential, they can convince others to “unfriend” you or to “friend” you.   They want to punish and get rid of the free-loaders.
  • Sometimes they go too far and start to “punish” those who aren’t free-loaders overall, but who are going through a rough period in which they need more than they can contribute.
  • They may also target loners if they mis-assess them as free-loaders due to their low contribution.

Dirty Little Secret:  We need punishers like we need antibodies.  But antibodies unchecked lead to excessive allergies, rejecting things that are not harmful or even that are good.

Rule #5:  Give as much or more than you get.  Don’t freeload.  Ignore punishers if you can, and stay the heck off their radar.  If you get there somehow, make it clear you are not a freeloader.

Can You “Friend” God?

The book posits that “friending” God is actually an effective way to create a broader social network because suddenly all of humanity is the friend of a friend (other believers) or the friend of a friend of a friend (anyone who knows another believer).  It all depends on who you consider to be “God’s friends,” which varies.  Some Christians would say all Christians are “God’s friends,” (although many exclude the types of Christians they don’t like such as Mormons).  IOW, belonging to a religion (friending God) does increase your social network instantly and substantially, and to some extent, you can define how it does that.

Dirty Little Secret:  God may not be a respecter of persons, but religious cultures are, and so is your social network.

Rule #6:  To maximize your religious social network, you have to friend God.  This can be as simple as viewing everyone as connected and being filled with love toward all humanity.

Friending God puts you in a theoretical sibling relationship with all of humanity.  In reality, the connections created are mostly “weak” ones (not direct friends), but they do carry the social benefits of weak connections:  links to 1) prospective spouses, 2) job opportunities, and 3) new ideas (good and bad) that pass through chains of influence to you.

Likewise, ”unfriending God” has some of the immediate disadvantages – you suddenly erase your weak connections, isolating yourself from those benefits of the community.  Similarly, a relationship with God is like a relationship with anyone else, except that it’s even more one-sided and subject to personal interpretation (although all relationships are like this to an extent).

Unfortunately, marriages sometimes fail when people mistake a weak connection (through their mutual “friend” God) for a strong connection.  Strong connections take personal investment and time to develop.

Dirty Little Secret:  Strong connections require admiration and influence.  And in a marriage, it has to be a two-way street.

Rule #7:  Bear in mind the difference between a strong tie to God (if you even have that) and a weak tie through God to another person.  Building strong ties takes work.  Marriages require strong ties with influence in both directions (not too much “hand” on one side or the other).

Are any of these tips helpful to you?  Do you disagree with any?  How does the church work for you as a social network?  Do these models help?  Discuss.

1). Your blessing always implies (even if it does not say it explicitly) the agency of another. So even if there is a promise involving another person they still have their choice to go down whatever path.

2). Your blessing (and only you can interpret this) would have made these promises on certain conditions. This does not mean that you are to blame but rather these situations are never just one factor.
3). It is not over yet. You do not know when or where these blessings might be fulfilled.
4). Faith is a paradox. I believe that we see our faith, or experience our faith, when we keep doing those things that are right even when it seems impossible for us to receive the blessings. It is the strength to endure even when we see no possibility of fulfillment. It is in these moments of struggle that we are forced to draw closer to God and rely more wholly upon him because there is nothing else to rely upon.

5). Is it possible that your patriarch, seeking to promise you something that would bring you hope and happiness, made this statement eventhough it was not directly inspired from God? They are not perfect. But I should couple this with my own thoughts that you have the right to pray about your blessing and interpret what it means. Priesthood holders have a difficult repsonsibility to try and understand the spiritual impressions we receive when we give blessings and sometimes it does not always come out quite right and the listener/receiver has to interpret. This is your responsibility.

My questions are these:

Have you experienced a failed patriarchal blessing and how did you deal with it?

Are my possible explanations flawed?

Are there other explanations I may have missed?

What would have said or done in this situation?

I admit that I believe in God, but for the purposes of this post I want to suspend that belief.  The reason being that I want to compare it with believing in Santa Claus who I know is not real.

The article argues that although some people are against teaching our children something that is false, there is some evidence to suggest that it might serve some important functions.  Believing in Santa helps to teach the importance of reciprocity in relationships, it assists in the development of imagination and helps children cope with stressful situations.  But are these reasons sufficient to teach your child about God even if you knew it was wrong, and more importantly maintain it.

But is such belief a form of abuse, as Richard Dawkins argues.  When asked about the sexual abuse of the young by religious leaders, Dawkins replied that ‘horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up catholic [or in any other faith - my note] in the first place’ [2].  Dawkins also believes that God should be given up at the same time as Santa Claus.

I would be horrified if someone believed in Santa past the age of 16, but I am not sure I could go so far as to say it is a form of child abuse.  I have a friend with a bright child who ‘figured out’ that Santa was not real and to prove it he set up a video camera watching the tree over Christmas Eve.  Knowing what was happening, the father arranged for a member of the Ward to dress up as Santa and bring the presents around.  Now, I personally do not agree with this, but I am not sure it is abusive.  If this continues then I would fear socially for the child, but the same could be said about believing in God.

So is believing in God a form of child abuse, assuming God is not real?

Notes

1. Gail Vines, The Santa Delusion: Is it harmless fantasy or cruel deception? in New Scientist, 22/29 December 2007, pp. 36-7

2. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion [London: Bantam Press, 2006] p. 356.

According to Allen and Leonard ‘perhaps no doctrine was preached more enthusiastically by President Grant or stressed more in Church literature during his administration than the Word of Wisdom’ [3].  Arrington’s seminal (if not a little controversial essay) on the economic factors that led to the importance of the Word of Wisdom deals with the period till 1900 and misses some crucial occurrences in the lead up to this principle becoming a ‘commandment’.

The Personal

President Grant had a friend who had died young because of alcohol related problems (according to Truman Madsen it was cirrhosis of the liver [4]).  At the funeral President Grant records, in a sermon given in 1931, that ‘as I stood at his grave I looked up to heaven and made a pledge to my God that liquor and tobacco would have in me an enemy who would fight with all the ability that God would give me to the day of my death, and I have kept that pledge so far’[5].  Perhaps what haunted President Grant most was that this young man had given up his habits to serve a mission, but had quickly resumed them when he finished his service.

The Political

According to the Encyclopaedia of Mormonism ‘The [prohibition] movement intensified the Church’s interest in the Word of Wisdom. There is evidence that Church Presidents John Taylor, Joseph F. Smith, and Heber J. Grant wanted to promote adherence to the Word of Wisdom as a precondition for entering LDS temples or holding office in any Church organization; and indeed, by 1930 abstinence from the use of alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea had become an official requirement for those seeking temple recommends.’[6].   

It seems this interest became even more pronounced when the calls for repeal began.  President Grant’s concern can be seen in his April 2, 1932 General Conference address.  There was a controversial speech by Elder Stephen L. Richards at that same conference which will be discussed later.  But at the very least, it seems that President Grant’s emphasis on making the Word of Wisdom a requirement emerged out of a political context in which he saw liquor becoming a problem for the Latter-day Saints.  He had lived through and been an Apostle through some of the previous period of emphasis which Arrington documents, and perhaps did not want to see the Church membership go down that road again.

Perhaps President Grant saw the Church collectively as being like his friend.  He may thought the membership would enter a period of relapse; and he was trying to prevent it.

The Prophetic

What is surprising, is that in President Grant’s sermons on this issue and on the policy change he does not cite any direct revelation.  Interestingly, President Grant said in 1928, which seems to contradict Alexander’s thesis of the 1921 date, that ‘the Lord has not made this an absolute commandment’.  The implication here from President Grant however, is that if the Lord asks his people to do something then we should respond.  In addition, in a CHI (published in 1928) the Word of Wisdom was not explicitly mentioned as a requirement for the Temple, but was in the 1933 edition [2].  Thus although the issue seems to have been informally incorporated as policy its codification was not enforced until the early 1930′s in-line with the possible repeal of Prohibition. 

In addition, the evidence suggests that there has never been a sustaining vote on this issue [1].  I am not claiming that President Grant never believed he had received revelation on this issue nor that he never shared a testimony that he believed this principle was revelation.  What interests me is how, as a Prophet, he did not justify this change by referring to a revelatory experience but rather in a personal commitment to a principle and to political or social fears.  I would have expected an effort, like President Kimball discusses, of overcoming bias and prejudice that individuals hold in order to prepare for revelation.  For President Grant it seems that he moved forward in a different way.

Some Controversy

Stephen L. Richards who was an Apostle during this time gave a sermon, which was apparently not printed in the conference report because it angered President Grant.  It has been subsequently printed by Sunstone.  The sermon suggested that there was fanaticism in the way Church leaders had approached the issue of the Word of Wisdom, and other behaviours.  The date Sunstone give for the delivery of this sermon is the 9^th April 1932.  Although there was not a General Conference session on that day, Stan Larson (source – fn 79) in a footnote in his work on B.H. Roberts makes reference to a Salt Lake Tribune article and First Presidency meeting that discussed Richards’ talk on the 9^th and the day after.  Sunstone claim they got their transcript from the Church archives.  So there is some confusion in my mind at least about where this comes from.  However, according to Michael Quinn [7], on May 5^th 1932, Stephen L. Richards told the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve that he will resign as apostle rather than apologize for his general conference talk which argued that the Church is putting too much emphasis on the Word of Wisdom. However on the 26^th May he later recanted and apologised for his remarks.  What this suggests to me is that this move may have been as much a personal drive from President Grant as from a revelation.  Moreover, it certainly was not wholly accepted at face value by all of the twelve.

Notes

1. Robert J. McCue, Did the Word of Wisdom become a Commandment in 1851? in Dialogue, no. 3 [Salt Lake City, UT.: Dialogue Foundation, 1981], p. 66-77.

2. Thomas G. Alexander, The Word of Wisdom: From Principle to Requirement in Dialogue, no. 3 [Salt Lake City, UT.: Dialogue Foundation, 1981], pp. 79

3. James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed., rev. and enl. [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1992], 525 – 526.

4. Truman G. Madsen, The Presidents of the Church, [Salt Lake City, UT. Deseret Book, 2004).

5. President Heber J. Grant, Answering Tobacco’s Challenge in Improvement Era, 1931, (Vol. Xxxiv. June, 1931. No. 8.)

6. Joseph Lyons, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 1-4 vols., edited by Daniel H. Ludlow (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 1584.

7. D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power [Salt Lake City, UT.: Signature Books, 1997).

Much has been said in this vein by people with more wisdom and experience than me. So my point here is not to examine the psychology, convince you to stay, leave, become a cafeteria Mormon or anything of that nature. I just want to speak with you. I want to talk directly to you and tell you at least one possible route you might take. You can take my words with a grain of salt, but do yourself a favor and at least ponder them for a moment!

To those struggling in their faith:
Turn inward, not outward. Stop making your tradition the object of your worries, and worry about you. Decide that you will take responsibility for your own spirituality. Recognize that the only thing in life you get to control is you – and rightfully so. Use that power to dictate your future spirituality and stop being controlled by other influences whether historical, cultural, or familial. Use the power found in personal responsibility to elevate yourself by loving others. Recognize that people make choices and get to control themselves just like you get to control you. These two attitudes allow you to build a healthy mechanism for interacting with people. You have compassion for others, and even organizations, and give them the benefit of the doubt because you know they are imperfect.  But you also reserve your right to act in response to their actions in the way you see fit. You try to create the perfect balance of love and compassion with resolute understanding of your right to control yourself.

You then arrive at a place where you get to decide what you believe and what you won’t believe. But you have also learned (since you’ve been there before) that you better not believe everything you think! You know you need to constantly learn from other people, cultures, ideas, science, religion, etc. If you don’t, you run the risk of reverting to the same mindset you previously had (although with a different set of ideas). You see that you’re not that interested in joining with people who simply verify what you already believe because there is no growth for you there (and that’s exactly what your old tradition gave you in your former self). You have now fully realized that the object of your disaffection was not your old tradition, but your old mindset and attitude. You have elected to take control and modify your expectations of your old tradition, people, and life in general.

You are now prepared to look to your old tradition, and when you do you find that it isn’t so bad when viewed from your new perspective – and besides you feel at home there in some sense. You are largely aloof of all the truth claims (they may or may not be true, it doesn’t really matter that much anymore), culture, and doctrinal problems but you enjoy associating with good people and you see everyone as “good people.” You occasionally feel like an “alien” because while you feel comfortable in your old tradition, you realize that you are on your own personal journey, grabbing bits of truth here and bits of truth there. You no longer feel like part of the “collective.”

You understand your purpose in the organization from the view of your new perspective. You’re not interested in making institutional changes as you view the church as your spiritual tool in the toolbox of life. You are invested enough that you want the organization to succeed, but divested enough that your world won’t end if it doesn’t.  You may not accept some callings offered to you, but welcome opportunities to make a difference on a local, more personal level in a way you are comfortable.  Once again, you are in control of your spirituality.

You look at the people in your old tradition and see them on their own journey, believing what they want, all while recognizing you can learn from them even if you don’t necessarily believe what they believe. You see most truth as relative for each person, yet admit that existence and nature are the ultimate objective truth and reality. You have arrived at a healthy balanced view of the world. But in that very moment of “arrival,” the next life event makes its way onto center stage in your mind and you’re right back to work through the new challenges trying each time anew to maintain the proper balance you developed before. But you know that with each cycle it gets better and better!

You are now in a strange paradox, feeling comfortably uncomfortable. Faithful Mormons will likely see you as apostate if they could see things from your perspective. And by the same token, apostates will see you as an apologist, caught up in ignoring reality. But you know you have embraced reality as your guiding star to help you navigate the seas of life! You have embraced the ideology that each ideology has some truth, and some falsehoods, and you accept the obvious irony in this very statement!

Good luck on your lonely journey, there are many who have come before you and will come after you to cross the same bridges.

According to the dictionary, to know has 6 different contemporary meanings (when used with a direct object): 

1. to perceive or understand as fact or truth; to apprehend clearly and with certainty; e.g. “I have a clear and certain understanding of eternal families.  My dead grandfather came back and said ‘yup’ that’s the way it is.”
2. to have established or fixed in the mind or memory; e.g. “I would be able to pick Jesus out of a line-up.”
3. to be cognizant or aware of; e. g. “I am aware of their being a devil on my shoulder, prodding me to do evil; can you guys see this?”
4. to be acquainted with (a thing, place, person, etc.), as by sight, experience, or report; e.g. “I have met Thomas S. Monson, and he sure looked like a prophet to me.”
5. to understand from experience or attainment (usually fol. by how before an infinitive);  e.g. “I understand the gospel because I have lived it and it makes my life better.” 
6. to be able to distinguish, as one from another;  e.g. “I know this church is the one that Jesus leads vs. those other false ones that Jesus merely dabbled with.”

To believe, on the other hand, has the following 5 meanings (when used with a direct object): 

1. to have confidence or faith in the truth of (a positive assertion, story, etc.);  to give credence to; e.g. “I have confidence in the idea of the atonement and that it will apply to me.”
2. to have confidence in an assertion;  e.g. “I believe that the church is a restoration of the early Christian church.”
3. to have a conviction that (a person or thing) is, has been, or will be engaged in a given action or involved in a given situation;  e.g. “I believe Jesus was resurrected.”
4. to suppose or assume; understand (usually fol. by a noun clause);  e.g. “I believe in the counsel that was given at General Conference.” 
5. to believe in a) to be persuaded of the truth or existence of; b) to have faith in the reliability, honesty, benevolence, etc., of; e.g. “I believe I have heavenly parents who care about me.”

Ether 12:6 - I would show unto the world that ^afaith is things which are ^bhoped for and ^cnot seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no ^dwitness until after the ^etrial of your faith.

Alma 32: 18 & 21 – 18 Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to ^abelieve, for he knoweth it. 21 And now as I said concerning faith—^afaith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye ^bhope for things which are ^cnot seen, which are true.

What do people at church mean when they say they “know” things they relate in their testimony?  Here are some possibilities:

1. They aren’t certain, but they’ve decided to act on their hope (the first stages of faith).
2. The language of certainty is the norm; they are simply spouting cliches or don’t want to sound “different” by expressing what they believe or hope.
3. They haven’t questioned to this point in their life or experienced doubts; therefore, they are “certain” by default.  They still have the unblinking faith of a child.
4. They have experienced a witness of a specific concept after acting on their faith.  They “know” this specific thing based on that witness.
5. They have experienced some general sort of “witness” (loosely defined) that they are applying holistically to all concepts taught at church, assuming that one witness covers all points of doctrines (all win or lose together).

So, what do you think it means when people say they “know”?  Is it a cliché that is damaging to those who don’t “know” but assume everyone else does?  Is it dishonest?  Is it an act of faith to say we know when we only hope or believe?  Would you rather hear more accurate language in testimonies?

Discuss.

This photograph was taken by Sebastiao Salgado at a gold mine in Brazil.  I first saw it in a room at the University I attend.  As an idealistic and aspiring academic I felt moved by the raw power of the worker as he resisted the guard.  Ever since then I have had a copy of this picture in my study areas.  It reminds me that my life is not just about doing good, but that I have a moral duty to alleviate as much suffering in this world as I can.  It reminds me that sometimes I need to resist those in power to protect the weak.  I believe that is part of the heritage that Christ has given us.

Egon Friedell

In this regard I was recently provoked to thought by something Egon Friedell has said about the Christian tradition.  I had never heard of Egon Friedell, until reading a book by Clive James entitled ‘Cultural Amnesia’ (which I whole-heartedly recommend), but I think I really like him.  James describes him as the ‘polymath’s polymath’.  Yet, Friedell was not merely a book-worm but was also one of the most famous cabaret artist’s of his day in a city (Vienna) full of performers.  Before discussing his ideas I wanted to share one tid-bit from his life which was (oddly) inspiring for me:

‘On the day of the AnschluB in 1938, Friedell saw the storm troopers marching down the street, on their way to the building in which he had his apartment full of books.  He was only a few floors up but it was high enough to do the job.  On his way out of the window he called a warning, in case his falling body hit an innocent passer-by.’

His magnum opus ‘Cultural History of the Modern Age’ contains this line: ‘Mankind in the Christian Era possesses one huge advantage over the ancients: a bad conscience’.  Now it seems that neither James nor Friedell were Christians but they recognised something that the world had been given because of Christianity.  In James’ words, ‘When Friedell talked about a bad conscience, he meant the mind that was capable of seeing that might and right were not the same thing’.

One challenge with making this distinction is discerning it amidst the normalising power of culture.  Seeing oppression and pain inflicted by those in power is difficult when those causing such situations are the same people we revere or respect; it is harder still is to resist it.  ‘Most men’ James notes ‘bend with the breeze: which is to say, they go with the prevailing power.  But a few do not.  With or without Christ’s help, they grow a bad conscience.  Thank God for that.’

Yet, what haunts me more is that, in the words Albert Camus, ‘I [find] that there [are] sweet dreams of oppression within me’.  I really believe that ’it is the nature and disposition of almost all men… to exercise unrighteous dominion’ (D&C 121:39); and this includes me.  Friedell’s ‘bad conscience’ must work inward as much as it flows outward; I must check myself against the tendencies that I have to use any ‘perceived’ authority I might have to justify my own prejudices.  James’ oppressive breeze blows both from within and from without.  

The last century saw many idealistic and bright people bend with that breeze, and yet, within the Christian heritage is the ‘bad conscience’, which urges us to resist oppressive behaviour, even from ourselves.  I wonder whether I have been true to my tradition.  I wonder whether I have stood up for the down-trodden and the out-cast. I wonder whether my respect for authority has led me to turn a blind-eye to unrighteous dominion (wherever that is found).  I hope I can be rigid in one of the few senses I see as important; that I will never concede to view that power leads inevitably to truth.

The story of Adam and Eve is the primary narrative when discussions of agency and accountability arise.  How we interpret the events of the Garden has a big impact on the way we frame this debate.  A standard statement is the second Article of Faith: ‘We believe that [individuals] will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression’.  Notions of Individual accountability are often rooted in this declaration because it apparently denounces ‘Original Sin’.

However I feel that this is actually contrary to what is being stated.  What the second Article of Faith acknowledges is that Adam and Eve’s action in the Garden has influenced the choices that are currently available to us now.  We are taught that people are conceived in sin and that we begin to desire sin in our earliest years, even before we are aware of it (see Mos 6:55).  We are born into a world where sin pre-dominates and this will inevitably impact the choices that we will make [1].  Therefore my capacity to choose is influenced by the choice of another.  This article of faith teaches that I will not be punished for Adam and Eve’s transgression, but my sins are a direct consequence of the world they created.  So is this really saying to us that there is a reduced accountability for what we do wrong in this life.  Certainly, at the very least, the choices I make now are impacted by what Adam and Eve did.

To put it another way, Lehi, when speaking to the Children of Laman and Lemuel, promsies them that they will not be held accountable for not believing and following the gospel if their parents continue to rebel.  In other words, Lehi suggests that the patterns of belief and action are set early in life and may be difficult to change, but these children will have a ‘reduced’ accountability because of the reduced likelihood that they will accept the gospel because of the actions of their parents.  From a different perspective, Boyd K. Packer has said that children are influenced by their environment and that the degree to which the society accepts a set of morals which are mis-directed is an important factor on the values we have.  Elder Packer therefore believes that the extent of such cultural ‘wickedness’ will be factored into our Final Judgment[2].

All this suggests that accountability and agency are actually a matter of being inter-dependent.  Our actions are invariably linked to a multitude of other people.  We are tied to this multitude, by the ripples of influence that reverberate out from every action.  If we fall, others will fall with us; but if we are lifted up to God, others will come with us as well.

Thinking this way helps me understanding a little the more the statement that ‘we without them cannot be made perfect; neither can they without us be made perfect’ (D&C 128:18).  I see this as not only applying to the salvation of the dead but also to each of those people who are around us; those who are tied to us by love or even by association.

I am not suggesting that we are merely puppets who are controlled by those around us.  We can choose to return evil for good, or good for evil.  However, we cannot make these choices, develop our values or live our lives separate from others.  It seems to me that our very nature indicates that we are social beings, that we are not alone in making choices and are therefore not wholly alone when speaking of our accountability.  Our choices and our accountability are reciprocal.

Notes:

1. Robert L. Millet, The Regeneration of Fallen Man in Selected Writings of Robert L. Millet: Gospel Scholars Series [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 2000], 172.

2. Boyd K. Packer, Our Moral Environment in Ensign, May 1992.

So, first of all, what is meant by being predisposed toward religious belief?  Here are the characterizations from the article:

• imagining the invisible hand of the supernatural in acts of randomness (aka “answers to prayer”)
• conjuring “non-physically present agents” and imagining “what if” scenarios involving these agents (e.g. angels and devils)

Hmmm.  Based on that, I’m not sure I’m religious after all.  Interestingly, the Reformation rejected many of these “superstitions” of Catholicism.  So, does that mean Protestants are less religious than Catholics?  Really?  I guess this means that religion = superstition.

Data shows that the parietal lobe (which detects where our physical body ends and where the larger world begins) can be suspended during intense meditation or prayer.  This indicates that our brains are wired to “commune with God.”  This is the quintessential religous experience.  So if the belief in God is hard-wired into human brains, then the logic goes that it is innate and therefore unchangeable.  Yet, the number of unbelievers has doubled since 1990.  This begs the question whether it really is innate or not.

New data suggests that maybe this predisposition to believe is not innate after all, but created by our environment (yes, the old nurture vs. nature argument).  There are two prevailing ways of looking at the data:

1. Our lives suck because we believe. Religious belief creates dysfunction (religious wars and being judgmental), causes stress (through guilt and perfectionism), causes us to fear death (and eternal damnation), causes us to become poor (through misplaced altruism and donations to churches).  This is the party line of some prominent atheists who are anti-religion.
2. We believe because our lives suck.  Religion is our way of dealing with stress, fear of death, poverty, and dysfunction.  If people live in an environment free of these things, they tend to become agnostic or atheist.  This is kind of like the idea that poor people cling to “God and guns.”  It’s what is meant when they say “religion is the opiate of the masses.”  Is it also what was meant when BY said he feared the Saints’ ability to withstand prosperity.

Interestingly, this trend holds true across most believers:  the worse their lives, the more religious they are.  The more prosperous people are, the less religious they are (the more secular).  This sounds a lot like the BOM prosperity cycle.  Once you get rich enough, you “outgrow” religion.  It reminds me of the joke about the guy who is going to die, and he says if God saves him he’ll give half of everything he has to God, so God saves him.  Then the guy says, “Oh, nevermind, God; looks like I got it covered.”  (cue rim shot).

Of course, this is tricky logic when applied to Mormonism because the most recent Pew Forum shows (yet again) that higher levels of education and income actually create higher levels of religious commitment, contrary to the trend in other faiths.  IOW, Mormons somehow bust the BOM prosperity cycle.  Take that, Nephites!  Maybe it’s all that reading of the BOM.

The article posits that it may be a combination of our brains being hard wired to believe, but that life circumstances have to reinforce that worldview (e.g. life has to be sufficiently dysfunctional) in order for the programming to kick in.  So, here are some more logical questions if that’s true:

• If social progress is the enemy of religion, should religion quit trying to solve social problems?  Should it try to create more social problems?   Remember, Jesus said “I came not to bring peace, but a sword.”
• Do things like “persecution complex” and imagining we were are in an actual war with Satan (people ranking as generals and so forth) work to kick in the God programming?  Are these “imaginary dysfunctions” adequate to the task or do they wear off like placebos?  Do we need actual persecutions and enemies for it to work long-term?
• Once your God programming starts, can it be rewritten or changed, or do you always have a glimmer of belief (or a nagging fear you are wrong in unbelief)?
• If your God programming doesn’t kick in by a certain age, does it take a major dysfunctional event (like personal tragedy) to get it to work, or is it too late for it to fully develop?

These questions are still unanswered by science, so each of you will have to come up with your own speculations!  What do you think?  Discuss.

Background

A bit of background information is necessary.  My family is of “pioneer stock” through both sides of my family, so we have a rich heritage of Mormon tradition.  However, my parents actually never forced, coerced, or otherwise tried to get me to go to church.  I honestly never felt pressured to live a certain way, obey any particular rules, go to church, or anything else. Part of this may be because I never gave them any reason to.  I have always been a straight shooter.  I have always tried my best to obey my leaders, earn all the awards, sing in the choirs, read all the books etc.  From a very early age (probably around 14 or so) I began reading my scriptures every night.  Because my patriarchal blessing told me to familiarize myself with the life of Joseph Smith, I read several hagiographic biographies of him.  I was no expert in Church History, but I thought that I had a good feel for it (snicker).

However, much of this was a cover up for the questioner inside.  I also had a lot of heterodox ideas that I kept bottled up.  As a young teenager it occurred to me that the general authorities, and past prophets often contradicted each other a great deal.  I was so concerned about this I even saw my bishop for it!  I also had some strange ideas about absolute Truth.  Typical answers for Nephi killing Laban seemed very unsatisfactory to me.  I concluded that the only truth could be whatever God wanted but I admittedly didn’t know how I would know what God wanted.  As a good Latter-day Saint, I deferred to my leaders and their revelations as God’s will.

I paint this picture to illustrate that my tale is, what I have come to learn, a typical disaffected Mormon story.  Often the culture in Mormonism is such that those that try the hardest, fall the hardest.

Unleashing the Analyst Part I

At BYU I decided to go into engineering.  While I had a propensity for analysis and questioning, I had no formal training in it, and I often deferred to authorities on various issues, assuming they knew much more than myself.  At around the beginning of my graduate work it occurred to me that I could do my own analysis.  I didn’t need to rely on any experts, or authorities.  I could do my own analysis and draw my own conclusions from my research (a necessity in order to obtain a graduate degree).

However, having said this, I only applied this thought process to my professional life, and politics.  As far as church was concerned, I still deferred to my leaders.

Proposition 8

After graduating from BYU in Electrical Engineering, I took a job in California.  In May 2008 Prop 8 came to the forefront of nearly every Californian’s life.  I won’t go into any details since it is more than familiar to everyone I’m sure.  Let me say that I started out determined to follow the Brethren.  I walked precincts, went to firesides, donated to protectmarriage.com, put up signs, and did the other things I was asked to do.  However, about three weeks before the vote I started wondering what the other side had to say.  I learned that in reality both sides (protectmarriage.com, and the “No on 8″ campaign) stretched the truth, used scare tactics, and were otherwise less than honest.

Political Craziness

About this point, since I was now outside of Utah, I felt a bit less pressure to toe the Republican line.  I had always felt that I didn’t align with either the Dems or the GOP.  I then discovered a commentator that was more aligned with my ideals (mostly Libertarian, although I hate assigning labels).  I started being very active on the forum on his website.  The majority of people on this forum seemed to be agnostic/atheist, and there were very very few who stood up for the traditional, conservative values.  Since I was not very well versed in politics and political history, I found myself mostly commenting on the social issues.  Many people challenged my opinion in ways that were very new to me, and I did not have adequate answers to their challenges.

I started to realize that maybe I wasn’t really different than other religious people.  In fact, maybe my choice of religion was/is just as arbitrary as those I thought were not in the “true” church.  Maybe I was/am wrong altogether and have not realized it.  This caused me to question why I believed the LDS church to be the one and only “true and living church” on the earth today.  I started to ponder my own spiritual experiences.

I will admit that I have always found it difficult to discern the spiritual promptings I receive.  It has always been befuddling to me why some thoughts are just thoughts and others are the promptings of the Spirit.  Furthermore, I have always wondered what it meant to have a spiritual witness that the church is true.  Did this mean I needed to cry?  Do I just need to feel peace?  And how could these things be separated from just regular emotions?

As I started rehearsing the spiritual experiences I held dear, I began to realize there was often a common pattern in them.  Namely, that I was going through a rough time in my personal life, I had a lot of anxiety, and generally had an important decision to make to which I needed some confirmation or answer.  I also realized that in many cases, in fact, even my most serious life questions, I actually didn’t get any answer at all.  In those cases I did what I thought was the most logical thing to do, and often attributed it to the Spirit.  This seemed to happen in the most serious of life decisions, and I was left to wonder if God had any interest in me at all.

Psychology

I started to develop an interest in understanding more about my emotions, “revelations,” and other cognitions.  I started looking into psychology and was fascinated by what I found.  I felt that my experiences could often be very easily explained in normal psychological terms and were really no different than people of other faiths.  I began to distrust my spiritual experiences, considering them to not be adequately reliable to tell me the truth about such a perplexing question as to which religion was “true.”

Ultimately, this was the lynch pin.  I felt that I had never received an “unmistakable witness” as President Packer has indicated:

Sometimes you may struggle with a problem and not get an answer.  What could be wrong?  It may be that you are not doing anything wrong.  It may be that you have not done the right things long enough.  Remember, you cannot force spiritual things.  Sometimes we are confused simply because we won’t take no for an answer. … Put difficult questions in the back of your minds and go about your lives.  Ponder and pray quietly and persistently about them.  the answer may not come as a lightning bolt.  It may come as a little inspiration here and a little there, ‘line upon line, precept upon precept’ (D&C 98:12).  Some answers will come from reading the scriptures, some from hearing speakers.  And occasionally, when it is important, some will come by very direct and powerful inspiration.  The prompting will be clear and unmistakable.

- Elder Boyd K. Packer

A Search for Evidence

All of this led to a search for some confirming evidence for the veracity of the church.  I didn’t know anything about all the conundrums, controversies, and tough questions surrounding the historicity of The Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, polygamy, and Church History in general.  As most of you will realize this led to a lot of problems.  Of course, one cannot address these issues without discovering lots of anti-mormon literature, as well as FARMS, and FAIRlds.org.  Upon discovering these sources I began to devour information about these topics.  However, I quickly discovered that while there was plenty to read about these topics, there was so much antagonism, polemics, distaste, and lack of good scholarship so as to destroy any confidence in most of the sources.  It seemed completely hopeless to discover any sort of truth in all the madness.  Ironically, I started to feel very much like what I envisioned Joseph himself must have felt like.

Unleashing the Analyst Part II

By now, I was prepared to finally unleash the analyst to the realm of religion and spirituality.  I had been doing it in my professional career, and in other realms of life for a number of years.  I had become good at doing my own independent research, both for my professional decisions, and life decisions (you don’t even wanna know what a pain it is to shop for a major purchase with me).

Discovering Church History for Myself

So, having unleashed the analyst, I was prepared to do my own study of church history.  I wanted to find the “truth” about Church History.  Of course, when I say “truth” I note that in fact it isn’t really “truth” per se.  It is the best guess that honest scholarship can make.  History is an interesting pursuit for a multitude of reasons.  We don’t have all the resources we would like, the resources we do have are biased, and the researcher himself may have his own biases.  Joseph Freeman once said

Everyone falsifies history even if it is only his own personal history. Sometimes the falsification is deliberate, sometimes unconscious; but always the past is altered to suit the needs of the present. The best we can say of any account is not that it is the real truth at last, but that this is how the story appears now.
Joseph Freeman

StayLDS.com

At about my point of deepest despair, when I wasn’t sure whether or not I would leave the church, I discovered the Mormon Stories podcasts, and StayLDS.com.  For those who don’t know, StayLDS.com is a site, with forum, in which disaffected, or otherwise questioning Mormons can go and discuss tough issues with the intent of remaining LDS.  At the time, I actually wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to remain LDS.  However, I did know that I didn’t need anymore negativity, nor did I need anyone to feed my ego, or validate my ideas.  I needed someone to show me another side – a perspective in which people with heterodox ideas remain an active part of the community.

The site has been tremendously helpful for me.  I feel much like John Dehlin does.  I am a Mormon, through and through.  It is my culture, my tribe, my people.  And I love them, even with all the quirks.

So Where Am I At Now?

At the present, I am still in pursuit of learning about Church History.  I have learned a lot, and formed some opinions which I loosely cling to.  I still have much to learn in this regard and I remain open to any number of possibilities.

I do a great deal of study about philosophy, and psychology, and don’t feel any need to fit this into a Mormon theological box.

I have not forgotten what has brought me to this point, so I am still fairly skeptical, and try to remain firmly grounded in reality.  In this way, I think I often come across as faithless.

I also like to explore the “Middle Way” in Mormonism.  I believe that a metaphorical belief in the Gospel benefits me every bit as much as a literal belief.

I love serving others, and find that Mormonism offers me a great way to accomplish this.  I also like having my heterodox ideas challenged in new ways because this helps me learn and grow.

Finally, I am a 100%, dyed in the wool, Buffet Mormon.  Yep, I pick and choose what I like, and what I don’t like.  I have separated my spiritual growth from the LDS church, and view the LDS church as a tool to help me obtain that growth.

Now go ahead and let me have it!!

For much of my life I really loved the Bible Dictionary definition of prayer. This definition emphasizes our need to communicate with God as His children. More specifically it states:
“Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God, but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them.”

I often wonder about the form of prayer. You know how it goes: address Heavenly Father, thank Him for blessings, ask for blessings, close in the name of Jesus Christ. What does this mean?

Recently I read “The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan. There is a portion where he pokes at our understanding of prayer. He says:
“Does prayer work at all? Which ones?  There’s a category of prayer in which God is begged to intervene in human history or just to right some real or imagined injustice or natural calamity – for example, when a bishop from the American West prays for God to intervene and end a devastating dry spell. Why is the prayer needed? Didn’t God know of the drought? Was he unaware that it threatened the bishop’s parishioners? What is implied here about the limitations of a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient deity? The bishop asked his followers to pray as well. Is God more likely to intervene when many pray for mercy or justice than when only a few do? – Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World”, p. 276″

I think Sagan’s point is a good one. Many literalist religious folk are sure that their prayers make the difference and that God blesses them, or others because of their prayerful efforts. At the very least they have confused correlation and causation, not to mention several other logical fallacies. They tend to ignore the times that God doesn’t bless anyone, or at least not in the way we want, and they regular find convenient explanation for God’s actions, or lack of actions. Many of them even stand in disbelief that a skeptic cannot see the hand of God in a recovery after well-meaning prayers on behalf of the afflicted. The entire idea of God answering prayers seems, to me, to be a bit presumptuous by assuming we are capable of speculating on God’s behavior. Worse than that it feels a bit too puppet-like for me.

On the other hand, I think Sagan has missed a very important metaphysical aspect of prayer. I will try to elucidate these points by responding to Sagan’s questions.

• Sagan: Does prayer work at all?
• jmb275: Yes, but I don’t think it works in the way that many believe – both skeptics and orthodox alike.
• Sagan: Which ones?
• jmb275: All that are asked in sincerity, because that’s what makes the prayer effective.
• Sagan: Why is the prayer needed?
• jmb275: It isn’t needed in an external, literal sense. But it may be helpful in a personal sense.
• Sagan: Didn’t God know of the drought?
• jmb275: Yes, I suppose so, but that’s irrelevant because prayer is not about God.
• Sagan: Was he unaware that it threatened the bishop’s parishioners?
• jmb275: This is once again irrelevant.
• Sagan: What is implied here about the limitations of a supposedly omnipotent and omniscient deity?
• jmb275: Absolutely nothing is implied because many skeptics, like many literalist religious people, have largely misunderstood the purpose of prayer.
• Sagan: Is God more likely to intervene when many pray for mercy or justice than when only a few do?
• jmb275: No, because prayer is not a matter of God intervening, or about numbers, or about blessings.

So what is prayer? To me, prayer is a personal yearning. It is our opportunity to commune with the inner god, the god in embryo. It is our opportunity to clear our mind, to focus on our most fundamental wants and needs, and decide what is really important in our lives. Most importantly, I believe it is our opportunity to reflect, and show gratitude – whether to a personal God or just something other than ourselves. Similarly, I also find great value in meditation, clearing my mind, focusing on breathing, living, and just being. It is my own personal and literal study of ontology.

Recently President Monson, in an Ensign article said:

“Will you join me as we look in on a typical Latter-day Saint family offering prayers unto the Lord? Father, mother, and each of the children kneel, bow their heads, and close their eyes. A sweet spirit of love, unity, and peace fills the home. As father hears his tiny son pray unto God that his dad will do the right things and be obedient to the Lord’s bidding, do you think that such a father would find it difficult to honor the prayer of his precious son? As a teenage daughter hears her sweet mother plead unto the Lord that her daughter will be inspired in the selection of her companions, that she will prepare herself for a temple marriage, don’t you believe that such a daughter will seek to honor this humble, pleading petition of her mother, whom she so dearly loves? When father, mother, and each of the children earnestly pray that the fine sons in the family will live worthily that they may, in due time, receive a call to serve as ambassadors of the Lord in the mission fields of the Church, don’t we begin to see how such sons grow to young manhood with an overwhelming desire to serve as missionaries? – President Thomas S. Monson, “Come unto Him in Prayer and Faith”, Ensign, March 2009″

Let me offer my interpretation of the above remarks. I believe that family prayer, like personal prayer is for us. We do it because it helps us show our love, reverence, and respect for those we love. We do it because it is our opportunity to plead aloud for solutions to the problems each family member faces, announcing our support, and love for that individual. We do it because it instills in our children, and ourselves, a reverence for a cause more noble than preservation of self. We do it because it gives us a chance to count our blessings, and name them one by one.

I submit that prayers are more about us than they are about God; that family prayers are effective because of what we say (overheard by our loved ones), not necessarily by any acts of God; and that the purpose of prayer is to align our will with what’s really important in our lives. Hopefully, what’s really important are other people, and our relationships with them. In this way we become the agent to secure the blessings that God is willing to grant to us and others. God’s blessings, I submit, are not conditional upon us asking for them, but are dependent on us recognizing the needs of others, placing them above our own, and becoming the means of providing those blessings.

So what do you all think? Does God literally answer prayers? Or are the prayers answered because we focus on what we need? Is there an unseen force in collective prayer, whether in large groups, or just a family that God recognizes? Or is it an exercise in coming together in a unified purpose?  Take the following two polls and tell us what you think.

[poll id="45"] [poll id="46"]

Discuss.

A recent article in Newsweek talks about this issue.  There are some biases inherent in some circles of scientists that are anti-religion.  Likewise, there are some biases among religionists that are anti-science.  The general arguments are:

• Pro-Science.  Science is the process of proving a theory through repeatable processes that always yield the same result.  Science leads to an understanding of truth.
• Anti-Religion.  Religion doesn’t hold up under the scrutiny of scientific theory.  Therefore, religion leads to a misunderstanding of truth.
• Pro-Religion.  Religious life is essential to human beings and is what makes life worth living.  Religion leads to a knowledge of human truth and the truths about God; truths that save the soul.
• Anti-Science.  Religion is a belief or hope in what is often considered “unknowable.”  Because God created all, he is not bound by the same sets of rules as humans.  Humans can never fully comprehend God.  Science is based on theories of men, not of God, and dismisses the more important spiritual truths that are essential to humanity.  Science may lead people to misunderstand or wrongly dismiss spiritual truth.

Generally speaking, the church’s stance is both pro-science and pro-religion and many church leaders have also been scientists.  So, consider the following example and the possible responses to the scientific proof.  The BOM speaks about horses, elephants, and the use of steel weapons and refers obliquely to the BOM people living somewhere in the Americas.  Based on current archaeological evidence, these animals and weapons have not been found.  Here are some possible responses one might have to this lack of evidence:

• Pro-science/anti-religion.  The BOM is clearly in error.  Obviously, the BOM was not an accurate historical record and was written by someone who did not know that these things did not exist.
• Pro-science/pro-religion.  The data may be in error or more data may be found.  Scientists may have been looking in the wrong place.
• Pro-religion/pro-science.  The book may be ancient but have inaccuracies in it due to assumptions by either the readers or the translator.
• Pro-religion/anti-science.  The BOM is true because I received a spiritual witness it is true, so scientific evidence is a non-issue.

Obviously, there could be other alternate views, but these are just some broad categories to force a choice.  So, where do you stand on an issue when science contradicts religion or vice-versa?  Take this poll to see.

[poll id="44"]

Discuss.

Let’s start with faith.  There are many definitions of faith, and each religion seems to place a slightly different emphasis on faith and its meaning.  From Wikipedia: “faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth of or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.”  In Christianity faith is an act of trust or reliance on Deity.  In this way it is distinguished by the object of its faith rather than the faith itself [1].  In Islam, faith is a complete submission of will to Allah.  In Hinduism it means an unshaken belief and purity of thought.  In Buddhism faith connotates a feeling of conviction, specifically a conviction that something is, a determination to accomplish one’s goals, and a sense of joy deriving from these two.

There is another important aspect of some people’s faith – fideism.  Fideism is the idea of having faith for the sake of having faith.  That is to say, it does not rely on logic, or reason of any kind.  It is independent of reason, and even holds that reason and faith are diametrically opposed.  This may lead us, in the church, to shun intellectualism and focus instead on faith.  For many TBMs, faith trumps logic.  Some believe that the events of the restoration were physical, external realities.  This can result in viewing our own spiritual experiences as evidence of external realities.  We are taught from a young age that the “Spirit” will direct us, put thoughts in our head, prompt us to do things, not do things, comfort us, and even tell us what is “true.”

Intellectualism (rationalism, reason, logic, etc.) is “any of a number of views regarding the use or development of the intellect . . .”  It is sometimes synonymously viewed with “rationalism” the idea that knowledge is derived through reasoning [2].

In my life I have had thoughts come into my head, felt comfort, and felt promptings.  However, it has never been clear to me, since some of these thoughts were wrong and uninspired, how to distinguish “spiritual promptings” I should heed, from just plain ‘ole regular thoughts.  In other words, my “thoughts,” or “promptings” or “experiences” have not always been a manifestation of external truth or reality.

Science is often the “poster child” for intellectualism.  But it indeed has a strong track record.  It is repeatable, reliable, and effective at describing the physical realities that surround us.  Although science is imperfect, its mechanisms are very good, indeed inspired.  On the downside, science is not spiritual.  Science doesn’t write poetry, compose music, paint pictures, or do other activities meet humanity’s spiritual needs.  Science is a utility.  It is one of many tools in the toolbox of life.  It complements faith.

Faith, on the other hand, inspires us, makes us happier, makes us feel good.  It serves as a guide to help us know right from wrong.  It gives us comfort, something to rely upon, and hold to.  I believe that faith is the soul’s innermost desire to express itself, to be born, to come out, to manifest itself in the world around us.  Arguably most importantly, faith moves us to action, and that action is a manifestation of the spiritual being within.  There is great worth in this concept.  It is in this sense, that I believe that faith, like science, is a tool in our toolbox of life.

Having said this, why is it that so many view intellectualism as mutually exclusive to faith?  Might I suggest one possible cause; that religions and people have a psychological affinity for treating the spiritual as physical realities.  Studies have shown that people who have sleep-paralysis, after having an episode, associate the events with reality.  They literally are unable to distinguish the fact that it was a dream.  Is it possible that this happens at the subconscious level even while awake?  Certainly for some people this will be more pronounced than for others.  This can help explain why Joseph had many visions, revelations, etc. which he deemed external realities, yet many, and even most, prophets after him have not.  Joseph was a visionary, for whatever reason.  That does not necessarily mean that his experiences were literal, external, physical realities.  And what if, indeed, they weren’t?

This does not, in my mind, diminish the idea that the metaphorical ideas shared through these experiences can help us in our lives.  Nor does it mean that the organization that he started was worthless even if it’s origins were slightly less miraculous than we like to tell.  Muhammad had visions, and conversations with the angel Gabriel which were eventually written down to form the Quran.  The idea that Muhammad wrote that book himself is heretical to a Muslim.  Yet if it really came from the angel Gabriel should we not heed the teachings contained therein?  But in Mormonism we don’t.  In fact, we don’t give it a second thought.  My solution to this conundrum is the same as that of Joseph.  Muhammad was a visionary.  He even wrote a beautifully inspired book that is every bit as sacred, special, and inspired as the Book of Mormon. However, I would suggest that the truths therein, and even his conversations with the angel Gabriel were internal experiences and metaphors.

This viewpoint makes it a lot easier for me to have faith in Joseph’s teachings, Christ, God, etc.  I have internalized these concepts.  They are metaphors for my spirituality.  I don’t need to reconcile them with science.  I don’t need to reconcile them with reason, or logic, or rationalism.  And I don’t need to reconcile them with any specific brand of religion as they all have metaphors that can help me in my life.  I can have the celestial kingdom right here, right now in my life, by being humble, kind, loving others, etc.  If we will live the way He advocated, we can unleash the inner god and in this way have a testimony of the doctrine.  This, I believe is what Jesus meant when he said “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.”  (John 7:17)

Is faith in an external reality necessary for spiritual growth?  If faith moves us to action, is faith in metaphorical ideas as powerful as faith in physical realities?  Does intellectualism present a problem for faith in external realities?  Is that problem reduced if we only have faith in metaphorical ideas?

Discuss.

[1] Wikipedia article on faith.
[2] Wikipedia article on intellectualism

• On one end (and according to most TBMs), anyone, at least in theory, can know the Church is true as long as they sincerely ask God, and as long as they aren’t too sinful.
• On the other end, there are people who firmly believe that no one can know anything for certain about God. As an LDS missionary, I met a woman who would counter every testimony by saying, “you don’t really know for sure, you only think you know.” Yeah, this was pretty awkward, especially in church. Also, it was rather odd how she alone could be certain that no one else was certain.

In addition to addressing the question epistemologically, it’s also important to take into account the historical usage of the term “true”.

In the 19th century, when sailors would get their bearings on ships, they would say that their heading was “true” if it would lead them to their destination. If they found that their heading was not leading them to their destination, their heading was considered “false”.

In 19th century America, when people would debate about religion, they would often argue if certain beliefs were “true” (or if they were useful for steering your life so that you would end up in heaven). If a belief was “false”, it would not help you get into heaven and by default, it would send you to Hell.

A number of Protestant (mostly Evangelical and Fundamentalist) denominations still use the “true”/”false” classification system for religious beliefs, arguing that their doctrines were “true”, and that anyone who said anything different was teaching false doctrine.

From this perspective it still doesn’t make a lot of sense to say “the church is true” (since a church can be anything from a building to a belief system), but the statement that the gospel is true is an assertion that the Gospel will lead you on to an eternal reward.

This is why it is so common for people to say that Mormons are going to Hell. The logic is that if: 

1. Mormons have beliefs that are not approved of God (such as the Book of Mormon or the prophetic authority of Joseph Smith) and
2. Their unapproved doctrine is false in the sense that it will lead them away from a heavenly reward then
3. Mormons are going to Hell.

The question of whether individuals or groups are capable of plotting “true” courses towards heaven (as well as the question of whether there can be more than one “true” course), are still widely debated.

I’d be interested to hear what others think.  Do you believe everyone can know?  Can anyone?  Can you?  Discuss.