Mormon Midrashim

Wikipedia Features Plural Marriage

2011-07-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

Happened to glance over the main page of Wikipedia last night and found this gem in the "On This Day" section:

1843 – Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, allegedly received a revelation wherein Christ proclaimed that anyone who rejects plural marriage will suffer damnation.

A part of me was a bit surprised. I know anyone can edit Wikipedia, but I expected the main page to have a little more class than, say, the kids in my seventh grade classes. A part of me was not at all surprised: Mormonism is in a blind spot as far as most people's sensitivity sensors are concerned. Most Americans can easily recognize that saying "1750 BCE -- Abraham purportedly received a revelation wherein the god El ordered the mutilation of all male genitalia" is both inaccurate and offensive, but won't blink about language involving Mormonism no matter how sensationalized or biased.

Since anyone can weigh in on Wikipedia, though, I decided not to let it just stand. I have no idea how to edit the main page directly, but there a "discussion" tab behind every page, and discussing is one of the things I do best. As it turns out, there's a section of the Main Page's discussion page specifically to errors in the "On This Day" page.

Using a neutral tone, I pointed out three problems with headline:
1) The use of "allegedly" is not consistent with Wikipedia's religious reporting on other areas (I referenced the Ten Commandments article as evidence: no "Moses allegedly received" phrasing there).
2) The phrase "anyone who rejects" is not consistent with the revelation (see D&C 132:3), which clearly limits any warnings to those who have "this law revealed unto them": i.e. people who have a direct experience with God on the subject, not just "anyone."
3) Hyperlinking "damnation" to the Wikipedia article of the same name is misleading, since Joseph Smith's views on damnation by 1843 were far different than the generic Christian, Muslim, and Jewish views given in that article.

I recommended a rephrasing that would get rid of the "allegedly" and the sensationalizing "damnation" bit altogether. I figured that letting someone neutral make the actual change would have the added benefit of avoiding a direct confrontation with whatever editor--probably far more experienced than me in working with Wikipedia--who had made the initial headline.

I went to bed.

When I woke up, the new headline was this:

1843 – Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, proclaimed a revelation recommending polygamy.

From a historical perspective, there's still a bit of a problem: "proclaimed" is hardly what happened in 1843. And the verb "recommending" could probably be improved on. But it's pretty much impossible to capture an event (actions in context) through a headline (words out of context) no matter what the subject, so I'm willing to cut the writer a lot of slack. The overt bias is gone, and that's good enough. I don't expect anyone to get everything right; I'll settle for some basic politeness.

An interesting side note--one of the responses on the discussion page to my criticism of the initial line was this:

"I think you make a couple of good points there. However, rewording the hook as you suggest to avoid them makes it very bland, and hardly worth having on the front page. I'm tempted to swap the hook for one of the other eligible unused ones (e.g. the 1862 Medal of Honor hook, and that's an FA) - any other thoughts?"

I had to smile when I read that. If you take out the sensationalism, the revelation on plural marriage seems hardly worth featuring for a broad internet audience. Since plural marriage is not practiced by something like 99.6% of people today who believe in Joseph Smith as a prophet, I don't think it would have been a bad call to swap it out for something else. But I'm also OK with the final form it took on the "On This Day" page.

Besides which, it was fun to see my influence on the front page of Wikipedia.

Tweeting Religiously

2011-02-22T16:20:00.000-08:00

The internet is not really built for reverent contemplation, but during my two weeks on Twitter, I've put up a few religious tweets:

10 Feb
Went down to the river to preach, but he knew / the Jordan must flow to the sea

18 Feb
Want to feed the hungry? Don't waste their grain on alcohol. Want to save the rainforest? Stop eating beef.

Mormons: help protect the environment by keeping the Word of Wisdom.

19 Feb
My daughter calls cemeteries "dictionaries." My grandfather agrees: he finds meaning by looking up the names of the dead. #familyhistory

Update

2011-02-12T09:07:00.000-08:00

Almost all of my writing time has been devoted to working on a book, so I've chosen to let my blogs go until I'm done (probably in April).

Yesterday, though, I decided to start writing a tweet most days: I'll post scripture-related ones on this blog periodically.

What sorcery? --Morm 1: 18-19

2010-12-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

"And these Gadianton robbers, who were among the Lamanites, did infest the land, insomuch that the inhabitants thereof began to hide up their treasures in the earth; and they became slippery, because the Lord had cursed the land, that they could not hold them, nor retain them again.
And it came to pass that there were sorceries, and witchcrafts, and magics; and the power of the evil one was wrought upon all the face of the land, even unto the fulfilling of all the words of Abinadi, and also Samuel the Lamanite."

In the generations after Jesus had come, people learned that certain plants were not to be cultivated or their powers concentrated, but the first wicked generation strayed in part because the rediscovered the effects of those plants.

And the Gadiantion robbers taught that if a man took an elixir from one plant, he would feel great power, and if he took an elixir of another, he could see visions, and if he took yet another, he could forget the guilt of every wrong he'd done.

But those who craved this false atonement and false Spirit grew deep pits in their bowels that made them a desperate sort of thirsty so that they always needed more and more of the elixirs and were willing to do more and more to get them.

And so it was that every man's treasure became slippery, as those who became living ghosts because of the elixir watched with one-sighted eyes for anything they could use to obtain more from those who knew the plants and the strongest ways to distill their essence into a liquid sort of gold.

Believing without Seeing --Luke 7: 6-9

2010-10-06T15:44:00.000-07:00

"Then Jesus went with them. And when he was now not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to him, saying unto him, Lord, trouble not thyself: for I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof:

Wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee: but say in a word, and my servant shall be healed.

For I also am a man set under authority, having under me soldiers, and I say unto one, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.

When Jesus heard these things, he marvelled at him, and turned him about, and said unto the people that followed him, I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." (Luke 7: 6-9)

There was also once a certain man, an American, who came to Jesus and said "Forgive me for my sins!" And Jesus said to him, "what did you do?" And the man said "I haven't broken any of the commandments or trespassed the law in any way, but whenever I burn oil, a child got sick from its well first in Nigeria, and the air conditioning I use for simple comfort strains the resources some yet-unborn grandson of mine might need to care for his wife and children." And Jesus said, "I haven't seen faith like that in Israel either, faith in the power of things you don't see."

Cool Video--Luke 10:33-35

2010-10-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

"But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him,

And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee."

I had a chance, between graduation at BYU and my return as an adjunct, to grow out my beard quickly and help out acting in a short church film of the Good Samaritan story. We shot at a very cool site near Goshen, UT: an old stone structure there made the director think of some abandoned building a scrappy man might have been able to make an inn out of. It looked really beautiful as the sun set, and since unlike the Samaritan, I didn't have to carry anyone up stone stairs, I could enjoy that.

The video is posted online now at the bottom of the page of the church's call for actors for further New Testament video projects which will be shooting this spring. It's five minutes or so and well worth watching. You should also pass on the call for actors/extras to anyone who might be a good fit.

The grey is added and I have age make-up:
the script calls for someone in his forties who
"looks worn out." It describes the innkeeper
as "chief cook and bottle-washer." It was sort
of a relief when they decided to age me--when
I got cast, I figured that meant I was looking
worn-out enough all ready to make up being
thirteen years shy of forty!

Best posts for a book?

2010-09-22T15:32:00.001-07:00

I'm currently compiling some of my Mormon-themed short stories, essays, poems, plays, screenwriting, and criticism into a book draft. I'm not entirely sure who would print the book yet, but I'm pretty sure at least a few hundred people would buy it.

I'd like to include a brief section with maybe ten of the short pieces in this blog. Any suggestions on which of these "midrashim" would be best for a book?

Reed -- Ps. 27: 4

2010-09-08T22:06:00.000-07:00

"One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple." (Ps. 27: 4)

When I was 18, I visited the Orem, UT ward I'd grown up in for the first time in six years. Those six years had changed a lot: a tight subdivision of condos had replaced what used to be orchards at the end of the once-dead-end street I grew up on, so the ward had a lot of new people I didn't know. Also: I was at least a foot taller and had grown long hair and beard, which made the child in me a little hard to notice on an impromptu visit.

The first person to recognize me, despite all the differences, was my childhood friend Reed. Most of my old friends had moved away to college by then, but Reed has Down Syndrome and still lived with his parents. The beard and hair didn't fool him one bit: he knew me on the very first glance, whispered across the chapel "James!"

A few years later, I got word that Reed was serving a church service mission and wrote him a letter. He wrote back. I didn't talk to him for quite a while after that, but would think of him sometimes, tell my wife about him when we'd pass my old neighborhood.

Today, I went to the church distribution store to pick up some things for my younger brother, who is currently in the Missionary Training Center. A man in the store looked like Reed's dad, but I shrugged it off as nostalgia playing with my perceptions. But then next to him was Reed, and I knew Reed for sure right away.

We talked. He'd been on another church service mission, this one with his parents to the Nauvoo Temple. He'd loved it, but didn't miss it much because he serves every Saturday morning in the Mount Timpanogos Temple as an ordinance worker. Maybe I should try to come when he's there, I said. Yes, said Reed. And say hi to your brother Stephen, who I used to play soccer with, he added.

I kept asking Reed questions about his life then, because I've missed the way he talks. He's got a nice, gentle way about him and he obviously loves his life so much.

A part of me thinks maybe even the temple is a little holier because Reed serves in it.

Another part of me thinks: it's so good God gave us temples, so that there's a place for Reed to serve so meaningfully.

If it felt so right, why did it turn out wrong? -- Matt 2: 1-2

2010-09-01T08:21:00.000-07:00

"Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him." (Matt 2: 1-2)

Could there be any doubt that the star they'd seen was most unusual? Could any of them question what he had felt on seeing that star, the way he'd simply known that this signified the coming of a very special Jewish their fathers had been hearing about since the days when Daniel served Darius?

A wise man knows that knowledge comes and goes, but that experience of spiritual certainty was more than ordinary knowledge. A wise man knows that some feelings are worth following across the desert, are worth giving up wealth to purchase frankincense, gold, myrrh. Those wise men knew that seeing that star meant they should drop everything and see the King of Israel's newborn son.

So they sold possessions. They bought the best presents and provisions for the journey. These easterners traveled west in past the borders of the Roman Empire, farther west than they'd ever been before, and found--nothing. There was Herod, yes, this was Jerusalem, sure enough. But no crying baby. Not even a toddler crawling around the floor. They'd been wrong, absolutely wrong. It was obvious--no king had been born in this house; there was nothing any star could do to change the reality that was right before their eyes!

"Can I help you?" said Herod.

And they were about to shrug, turn around, hang their heads, head home. About to stop watching fickle stars now and forever. About to forget the whole delusion that is Hope, about to give up their wisdom for good old realism and practicality.

But then one of them said, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?"

And the others chimed in, "We saw the star. We know we saw the star. If he isn't here, where exactly can we go to find and worship him?"

Maybe the stars don't lie. Maybe the feelings we've felt are worth crossing the desert for really are worth every sacrifice.

Oh, but all that doesn't make it easy to follow God past so many of our assumptions and expectations!

Joseph Smith's Dreams VII

2010-06-17T02:34:00.000-07:00

Dreams of Beginning, Part Three
28 April 1830

Joseph has trouble falling asleep tonight. The constable who arrested him sleeps with a musket by his side and his feet against the door. The constable tells Joseph he is doing so in case a self-appointed jury comes tonight to hold a trial with tar and feathers. For some reason, Joseph does not finds the constable’s kindness entirely comforting.
Joseph sleeps only fitfully, and has three dreams:

In the first, he goes to court and is not allowed to swear on the Bible, because the judge refuses to believe that he believes in it. He argues with the judge, who has the face of his father-in-law, but gets nowhere. He takes Emma out of the jury box and walks away with her into the woods, knowing that they will hold his trial without him and wondering how badly it will go.
In the second dream, Joseph can’t hear any of the testimony because a pack of dogs is barking loudly outside the window. Josiah Stoal testifies, and Joseph can’t hear a word. Polly Harris testifies, but Joseph can’t tell what she’s saying. The man who took away their farm in Vermont is testifying and the dogs are getting louder. The judge issues a verdict, but Joseph can’t hear it. Joseph can’t hear anything but the dogs.
In the last dream, Joseph goes to court and finds that God is the judge. Joseph’s legs turn heavy. He remembers drinking too much with some friends when he was sixteen, saying things about their neighbors Christians ought not to say and laughing too hard about them. Joseph’s lawyer is late. Joseph tries and tries, but though he’s sure he’ll feel much better when his lawyer arrives, he can’t remember his lawyer’s face or name.

Medical Tort Reform and Repentence -- D&C 58: 43

2010-06-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

"By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them."(D&C 58: 43)

Usually, when we talk about repentance, we're referring to individual sins (as in the scripture above). Sometimes, we might even forget that those aren't the only kind of sins: the Doctrine and Covenants, for example, frequently warns listeners to leave the sins of their generation. If a whole generation can sin, can't a company, a government, or even an entire profession?

Let's consider medical malpractice. Our mortal bodies are sacred, and it's probably safe to say that it's in some small way, least, sinful for a doctor or nurse to be careless in treating them. Sinful especially in the sense of being something no good doctor really wants to do, although habits, time constraints, etc. mean that doctors, like all people, don't always live up to the standard of conduct they want. There's a good case to be made that most malpractice, in fact, doesn't come from "bad" doctors, but from normal doctors failing to perform as well as they'd like under normal conditions.

Currently, the legal remedy for a doctor who makes a mistake with serious consequences is to take that doctor to civil court, preferably for a jury trial. If the effect of the mistake has been particularly tragic, the jury tends to award large amounts of money to the patient. This, it is assumed, will teach the doctor a lesson, and he/she will pay better attention next time. In essence, our legal system for medical malpractice is effective if and only if stiffer punishments invariably lead to better repentance.

I don't think that's the case. I have an easier time imagining that stiffer punishments encourage hiding one's sins or refusing to accept accountability for one's sins. What if, instead of focusing so exclusively on compensation for the families who are harmed, we put some sort of upper limit on medical malpractice awards, and focused more energy instead on changing habits and conditions for doctors' next patients? Doctors already meet regularly in most hospitals to talk about recent events and how to improve practice. What if malpractice trials devoted attention to what could be done in the future to decrease the overall incidence of a given accident?

That would certainly make it easier for doctors to quickly and fully confess their "sins," instead of having strong financial motivation to hide them. It might also make it easier for doctors, collectively, to forsake a given pattern of error by having freer access to the relevant data.

Would capping damages in medical malpractice cases actually serve to promote collective repentance?

Joseph Smith's Dreams VI

2010-06-10T02:33:00.000-07:00

Dreams of Beginning, Part Two
16 April 1830

In his dream, Joseph stands in the middle of a great field of wheat. Emma is beside him, and there is no one else in sight, maybe on earth. He reaches out and runs his palms across the grains. He can taste something in his mouth: touching this wheat tastes like honey. He wants to tell Emma about this, but when he looks at her, he realizes she already knows: that’s why they’re in this field. The sun is warm, and the wheat is high, and he knows that it’s time for the harvest.
Then Joseph’s father is there and Joseph Knight is there and they ask him how to cut the grain gently so the honey taste won’t go. And Joseph says: I don’t know how; I’m still young; you’re the experienced farmers. He says to his father: you taught my brothers how to cut the wheat, and they taught me. He looks at Joseph Knight and says Didn’t you teach your sons?
Touching the wheat never tasted like honey before, they say to him.
Emma smiles, and the light behind her hair says Hurry. He looks back to the wheat, and it says: Don’t worry. People have done this before, long ago, longer than your father’s fathers know.

The Globalization of Sin --Morm. 3: 22

2010-06-09T18:45:00.001-07:00

"And I would that I could persuade all ye ends of the earth to repent and prepare to stand before the judgment-seat of Christ." (Morm 3: 22)

A certain sin was extolled by a man named A in the country of B, but manufactured by a company called C in the distant region of D. In E (where A was particularly popular), a firm called F was soon particularly aggressive in advertising this sin to the demographic group G. Because of the distance between D and E, several hustlers--we'll call them H--were soon fully engaged in the business of selling the sin. They weren't content simply to sell to G, however, and quickly invited I to experiment with it as well. And oh, how I loved the sin! How I admired A, how faithfully I obeyed F, how willing I was to ignore the hurt caused by H throughout D and E, how blind I was to the plight of C's workers, who earned their daily bread spinning evil out of good, and good into evil.

Now who, in all this web of sin, will stand accountable before J at the last day? And where, in such a world, will we find room for J's Kingdom?

Joseph Smith's Dreams V

2010-06-03T22:31:00.000-07:00

Dreams of Beginning, Part One
6 April 1830

It’s a beautiful spring day. Joseph and his father are walking up a steep hill. The farther they walk, the steeper the hill becomes. The tools in Joseph’s hands grow heavy. His father begins to get ahead, Joseph is afraid he will not be able to keep up. Joseph drops the tools and increases his pace. The slope gets steeper and the grass gives way to rock. Joseph has to half-climb, half-walk to keep moving ahead. He can hear his father’s feet against the rock ahead, but he can’t see much at all anymore.
Joseph stops hearing his father. He’s worried about him, and increases his pace. Joseph’s lungs burn. His hands sting as they grasp the rocks, but he has to get to his father, has to make sure he’s still alive.
Joseph makes it up the steepest part of the trail and sees his father and brothers at a flat space ahead, standing in the shadow of a wall of rock too steep to climb. We’re ready to cut, says Alvin. He looks at Joseph, says: Do you have the tools?
Joseph’s heart sinks.
It’s all right, says Hyrum, we’ll just use our hands. When Joseph reaches out to tug at the rock, though, he leaves a red mark. His hands, lacerated from the climb, are bleeding.
William gets angry. He slams his fist against the rock. He storms off down the hillside. Samuel goes to talk him down. Hyrum follows, hoping that when William calms down, he can talk him into coming back.
Joseph and Alvin follow at a safe distance.
Then there’s a strange sound behind them. Even without them, a rock has been cut. Joseph sees it in the distance, and it’s stirring. He turns to Alvin in excitement, but Alvin looks worried. He says it’s getting bigger. He says it’s coming toward them. Joseph begins to run—he thought Alvin was running with him, but soon he notices that no one is beside or behind him, though Hyrum, Samuel, and William are still ahead. Joseph runs as fast as he can down the rocky slope, and he catches up to Hyrum. The rock is bigger, and they can hear it rolling closer and faster. It makes a dull roar and they are nervous. They catch up to Samuel and the rock is closer now, and sounds like it’s gaining speed, and nervousness inches toward terror.
They run faster than is safe down the hill, turning over their control to the slope itself, letting it hurtle their legs in ever-faster circles downward, now they run abreast of William also and the rock is still closer they can feel its presence at their backs and any moment now, Joseph thinks, the slope will become more gentle again and perhaps the rock will slow down—but no, it’s still steeper and perhaps becoming steeper and it’s steep for as far as their eyes can see and then they are running with the rock, in the rock, and Alvin and father are there in the rock with them and perhaps they will live the rest of history locked in stone.

AWESOME lesson on Pornography --1 Pet 3: 15

2010-06-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear" (1 Pet 3: 15)

Pornography is one of the serious challenges facing contemporary societies: due to recent changes in technology, it's widely accessible, and due to age-old factors in biology, it's highly addictive. More liberal societies typically do little to regulate it, and more conservative societies often don't acknowledge it enough to cope with it: the perfect recipe for a worldwide epidemic. How is a worldwide church supposed to cope?

The first phase in our collective awareness was to repeatedly affirm that pornography is bad. In a world where good is often called evil (Isa. 5: 20), this was--and is--an important step. As I learned doing research for a play involving a character struggling with pornography, however, it's not nearly enough. Many religious people's pornography problems are actually compounded by feelings of depression, low self-worth, and disconnection: that is, men and women who believe pornography is bad are more likely to view it anyway when they also feel bad about themselves. A culture in which we only talk about pornography as evil and shameful makes it difficult for people to reach out of a loop in which feeling guilty actually leads to more sin, and more sin in turn to greater guilt and disconnection.

That's why I was so impressed with my bishop's approach at our combined meeting on Sunday. He opened the lesson by asking us, a la Christ's parable in Matt 20: 1-16, who will be redeemed: people who keep the commandments all their lives, or people who don't and then repent. We answered, of course, that both will be redeemed. The bishop then asked us what the difference between the two is. We answered that keeping the commandments early means a better quality of life. That's when he told us his subject was pornography. By having framed it in terms of an optimistic question about redemption, he'd taken away some of the aura of shame and guilt and set a tone of hope instead.

He kept that tone throughout the lesson. A few particularly good moves stick in my mind:

1) The bishop said that he doesn't ask people in interviews whether they view pornography. He asks them what they did last time they ran across something pornographic. This was brilliant because rather than singling out people with a problem and making them feel separately addressed and indicted, he made having plans and coping strategies a part of our shared conversation. I'd also imagine that using that question makes it easier for people who are struggling to talk openly with him about their struggles and seek help. Being able to talk is a step toward being able to change and heal.

2) The bishop spoke not only of the problems of pornography, but also of the increased opportunities that come to those who can change their lives. He talked about things as simple as having more attention for children. He talked about the blessings of feeling more connected to those around us. This was brilliant because instead of only indicting the bad behavior, it provided a clear alternative more in line with people's deeply-held celestial goals.

3) The bishop invited a ward member who serves as a part-time missionary in church pornography counseling programs to talk about how the meetings are and how they work. The brother then talked about his love of his calling because he's able to see people turn from shame to hope. The bishop then spoke about how to gauge the seriousness of a pornography problem in terms of intensity, duration, and some other things I can't remember, thus helping people consider when it's important to seek counseling help.

I am glad that our church culture is very clear about the unacceptability of pornography and the dangers of pornography. I think that approaches like my Bishop's (and of church resources like the "Let Virtue Garnish Thy Thoughts" booklet) are important in creating an environment in which people can also talk about pornography, develop strategies for living better in a world full of pornography, and overcome problems with pornography.

In general, I hope that we can all pass on hope and encouragement about things with which people struggle as well as passing on a clear sense of good and evil in our own conversations and reactions.

Joseph Smith's Dreams IV

2010-05-27T02:26:00.000-07:00

Dreams of Completion, Part Three
19 April 1829

Moroni appears, in the dream, over Joseph’s teenage bed. Joseph has to be quiet, because all his brothers are sleeping around him, but Moroni speaks as if no one else were there at all.
Joseph—he says—where are the pages?
Joseph doesn’t have to look under his pillow to know they’re not there. He’s lost them. He’s lost them, and he wants to make excuses or even lie about it, but he’s standing in the presence of an angel. An angel who died in crushing loneliness to preserve the book Joseph has just lost.
I’ve lost them—again, says Joseph. He can’t look Moroni in the eye. I’ve lost them again and God, who knows my family is good at losing everything, should probably just find someone else to do his work this time.
No, says Moroni, No, it’s far too late for that.
So what do I do? says Joseph. Is there another book?
Just one, says Moroni, but it’s not the same. Like the Israelites in Moses’ day, you lost the law God wanted to give you. You couldn’t stand my father’s book, so all that’s left for you is mine.
Then Moroni rolls up his sleeve and Joseph sees for the first time that carved and scarred into his arm are the characters of the old language. Joseph’s eyes sting then and he understands at once that it’s because their surfaces are turning into stone, crusting over hard into an inescapable Urim and Thumim.
So when Joseph looks up he can’t help but read the Lamentations of Moroni, can’t help but read the unthinkable wars to come in the last days, when death falls like rain from the sky, and as a copy of the book is carved into Joseph’s mind he screams and he screams and he screams.

And he is still screaming when he wakes up and Emma is holding him tight, as if he were about to die, and Emma is desperately whispering to him that it’s all right it’s all right it’s all right.

Joseph Smith's Dreams III

2010-05-20T02:23:00.000-07:00

Dreams of Completion, Part Two
12 April 1829

Joseph and Oliver are standing at a desk over the manuscript. It’s evening, but the room is burning hot, no, boiling hot—the thick, wet heat of late summer and Joseph’s clothes stick to his body and sweat streams down into his eyes as he looks at the lamp they’ve translated by and though something inside of him presses a NO against his lungs and chest, Joseph reaches out to snuff the lamp—he can’t stand the heat—and gathers up the pages to carry outside and into town, to the printer’s.
The last light of dusk disappears quickly, now that the lamp’s been put out, and it begins to grow cold. Joseph is wearing a coat, but the wind picks up and stings the sides of his face, punishing him for his youth, for not being able to grow a good protective beard.
Joseph turns his head away from the wind and with a sinking sensation realizes maybe that’s why it happens, why he doesn’t see it: as soon as he turns his face, the wind races and begins to steal the pages from him, tearing them one by one from his hands. He clutches the rest close to his chest, but the wind still pries them from his arms. He wants to run after them, but he can’t because there’s a thick mist, a darkness to both sides of him, and now the wind blows it over him and there’s only five pages left.
Joseph realizes his only chance is to keep pressing forward, to put one foot in front of another until he makes it to the printer. Now the wind tears another pages out of his arms, tears it so violently from him that he can hear it rip apart in mid-air, or else against the branches of some tree he can’t see in the dark. He steps forward and it’s COLD there’s cold running water filling his boot with muck and silt and Joseph has to turn the other way as the wind steals another page. Three left. Three, and he doesn’t know which way to the printer, so he just runs until the wind knocks his whole body off balance and he falls hard on his side and loses a page—so that there’s only one left when he opens his eyes and sees that he’s fallen into the printer’s shop.
There’s no wind here. It’s eerily calm, and it’s dusk. Joseph is still lying on the ground, so the printer, in his work apron, walks over and extends his hand towards Joseph to help him up.
The printer is Martin Harris. Joseph hands him the last page, only to realize that it isn’t a page from the Book of Mormon at all. It’s a revelation for Joseph and Martin from last year, and fresh shame breaks out across Martin’s face when he sees it.

Consumer Confidence --Matt 6: 24

2010-05-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon [money]."(Matt 6: 24)

I once read a Hugh Nibley essay that warned, among other things, against seeing rebellious youth as more sinful than the socially-respectable men in suits working hard for "power and gain." In other words: we ought to be more alarmed by the yuppie than by the hippie, even more concerned about greed than about lust.

When I read the essay, I felt strongly that Brother Nibley was onto something: the Book of Mormon warns again and again against pride, especially pride based in material wealth. If it's really written for "our day," as we're so fond of saying, then economic sin is the kind we need to most carefully guard against.

I've been thinking about that article again since I ran across this image on the new media news-site Mashable (unlike many images I'm concerned about, I actually feel comfortable posting this one on my blog):

The image is actually quite clever: it takes a recently-minted Facebook icon which is spreading across the web and recontextualizes it in a way that is unexpected and humorous (and by extension, memorable). It's great new media design.

I think it's also fairly troubling.

This isn't the first ad or promotional image I've seen that tries to draw attention to a woman's breasts and doesn't even show her face. It's certainly not the first image that takes sexual attraction out of a normal life context, or that treats it, effectively, as a commodity--an entertainment experience, as it were, for a consumer base.

Thinking about pictures like this one, I'm more and more convinced that divisions between greed and lust are evaporating in our society. The decontextualization and commodification of sexuality in our contemporary, image-driven consumer culture are serious causes for alarm because they show the extent to which Mammon is infiltrating every aspect of life. It was bad enough when lust was a deadly sin. Now it's also a product, and part of a product-mentality that is bad, bad, bad (at least according to Jesus) for our souls.

I'm also more and more convinced that I've been wrong, over the years, to think of corporate execs with fancy cars and McMansions as being unique symbols of the worship of Mammon. The average American consumer, I think, is capable of an amazing amount of Mammon worship without ever noticing that something is wrong. We are all poster children for the money cult. We're all sell-outs to a system that isn't getting any less wrong.

We've got to find a way to live less as consumers and more as brothers and sisters if we're going to keep calling ourselves religious. That's no easy task, though, in a world that sees itself in products and has gotten very, very good at hiding the true costs.

Joseph Smith's Dreams II

2010-05-13T02:18:00.000-07:00

Dreams of Completion, Part One
6 April 1829

It’s the same dream as last night. The manuscript is finished, and Joseph gives it to Oliver to take to the printer. Joseph waits in a room made of oak on a chair made of pine. Oliver doesn’t come back. Joseph begins to grow nervous, he paces. Oliver doesn’t come back. He’s been gone too long, think Joseph, maybe he’s turned the pages back into gold, then melted them down and sold them.
No. Joseph turns and sees Oliver sitting in the pine chair. Oliver’s head is in his hands. He’s moaning. What is it, Oliver? says Joseph. What happened?
I fear I’ve lost my soul, says Oliver. Oh Joseph, I’ve lost the manuscript—all of it. The whole thousand and one pages.
Joseph realizes, of course, that it’s his own fault. He realizes now that before Oliver left for the printer’s, when they were so happy to be done, Oliver asked if he could show the manuscript to his wife. NO said the Spirit--but such was the mood of swaggering celebration, such was the sweet remission in the long ache of translation that reached down into sockets of Joseph’s eyes, that Yes he said Show her the plates, show them to anyone.
And now Oliver had, and it was Joseph’s fault that she had taken the pages from Oliver’s hands and in front of his face she had burned them, all of them—except one, which she would keep and change to prove the book a fake if Joseph ever produced it again.
It was Joseph’s fault, but anger still rose hot in his throat against her for the burning. He walked straight up to her—yes, she was there in the room! her back turned toward him, her face to the oak wall. He grabbed her shoulder, and turned her toward him—but try as he might, he could not see her face.

Joseph woke in a cold sweat. He tried to calm his heart by telling himself slowly again and again: Oliver doesn’t have a wife.

Three Visions of a Murder --1 Ne 4: 10

2010-05-12T14:37:00.000-07:00

"And it came to pass that I was constrained by the Spirit that I should kill Laban; but I said in my heart: Never at any time have I shed the blood of man. And I shrunk and would that I might not slay him." (1 Ne 4: 10)

Speaking of this story, perhaps Alma once said:

There were actually two Labans Nephi was afraid to kill: the Laban of the past, and the Laban of the future.

When the Spirit told Nephi to kill Laban the second time, Nephi remembered that Laban had tried to kill him and his brothers, had stolen their goods, and was in all contexts a wicked and oppressive man. This was enough to legally justify killing the Laban of the past, but Nephi still refused to strike a blow that in cutting against the past, would also cut into the future.

And so the Spirit spoke a third time, and continued to speak until Nephi understood that if Laban were allowed to keep the plates both legally purchased and ordained by God for the family of Lehi, the Laban of the future would continue to harm the family forever.

Violence is not justified only by what has been done in the past. There must also be a possibility that if violence is not committed, conditions will become worse in the future.

And perhaps Teancum said otherwise:

Nephi hesitated because he knows that whoever commits violence also brings the curse of violence back on himself. It is because Nephi killed Laban that Laman and Lemuel later attempted to kill Nephi: if Laban had given Nephi the plates, Nephi would never have been subjected to his brothers' violence. Thus, a share of the accountability for all the violence among the Nephites lies forever with Laban.

But maybe Nehor nonetheless believed:

That Nephi killed Laban was a historical necessity, and Nephi's hesitation came only because he did not understand that anything which is necessary is also right.

New Series: Joseph Smith's Dreams

2010-05-06T14:03:00.000-07:00

A long time ago, I started a thread called Church History Thursdays. Unfortunately, due to the complicated nature of the posts, I didn't keep that tradition going for long. In its place, I'd like to offer a new series called "Joseph Smith's Dreams" over the next few months. With each fictional dream, I'll attempt to imagine what some of the pressures on Joseph Smith might have felt like. As always, I'd appreciate your comments/questions/reactions.

Joseph Smith's Dreams: Introduction

When he’s awake, he sees angels, finds hidden records, stands face-to-face at least once with the Father and twice with the Son. When he’s awake, he sees Eden somewhere between white and native civilizations, hears words streaming out of the mouth of God, feels the weight of apostles’ hands on his head by a riverbank. When he’s awake, people press around him—some hungry for the Spirit, some thirsty for his blood—and he loses himself sometimes in the whirlpools of their words. When he’s awake, plagues sweep the nations, earthquakes roar—he can almost see the Second Coming and he’ll close his eyes and imagine the Son of Man in red when the mobs cover his body in hot tar.

So what is left for this Joseph-son-of-Joseph to see when he sleeps?

Maybe, on the banks of the Mississippi, drained by blessing the sick while camped in a malarial swamp, Joseph’s eyes slam shut like a Missouri prison and he dreams nothing at all.

Maybe, looking out at the moon from a second-story cell in Carthage, the dreamlessness of his sleep is a sweet respite.

But maybe, just maybe, there is no calm between the stormy days of this life. Maybe Joseph dreams every night.

Thesis Defense --1 Nephi 19: 6

2010-05-03T23:26:00.000-07:00

"Nevertheless, I do not write anything upon plates save it be that I think it be sacred. And now, if I do err, even did they err of old; not that I would excuse myself because of other men, but because of the weakness which is in me, according to the flesh, I would excuse myself." (1 Ne 19: 6)

During my thesis defense on Thursday, I talked about how I've tried to use my blogs to suggest a certain interconnectedness that permeates the world (see my recent Caucajewmexdian post). I went as far as to say that maybe having blogs that focus primarily on humor and ethnicity interconnected with a blog about Mormon scriptures might help dispel some negative stereotypes about Mormonism--stereotypes that even some bright Mormons tend to accept.

I did enough to talk up the interconnectedness of my three blogs, however, that one professor asked: "If showing people the multiple parts of your identity is so important, why separate them into three different blogs in the first place?"

My answer was this: even in the internet, I believe that we can strive to create more reverent and sacred spaces. Even Nephi kept two separate sets of plates: one for politics, another for religion. Separating the religion into its own space, perhaps, elevates both reader and writer. Spirituality is never totally independent of history, of course, but the concentration of reverent energy onto a separate set of plates can still serve, I think, to change the way that writer and reader alike approach the record. The separation allows the sacredness to happen.

Would Nephi have also kept a separate religious blog?

What's the Difference Between Science and Religion? --Numbers 21: 8-9

2010-04-29T09:25:00.000-07:00

"And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.

And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." (Num. 21: 8-9)

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego were thrown into a fiery furnace, fully prepared to die rather than accept idolatry, an angel from God was sent to question them. The angel said: "Doesn't Moses say to choose life? So why are you ready to choose death?"

The three young Hebrews, all well versed in the Torah, responded that they would die to keep the Ten Commandments, one of which said, "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them." (Ex. 20: 4-5)

But the angel, having anticipated this argument, produced a fireproof copy of the Torah and showed them the passage above, in which Moses is commanded by God to make a graven image--in direct contradiction to God's own commandment!

"I respect your courage," said the angel, "but how do you, who are willing to die for the words of this book, explain a passage like this?"

The three were quick to respond.

Shadrach said: "It's not actually the form of idolatry God objects to, but the content. Moloch and Baal were evil ideas, not just evil for being images. The idol we now refuse to worship is simply a stand-in for worshiping the king. That's why the commandment is reflexive: 'thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.' Moses' serpent wasn't made unto himself, but unto God. Because God was its content, its form as a graven image didn't make a difference."

Meshach always agreed with Shadrach as to course of action, but almost never agreed with the whole of his reasoning. And so he also answered: "God does object to idolatry as a form, and sanctified our people with a commandment against it. But he knew that our fathers in Moses' day had idolatrous hearts, and so he worked with them in the manner of their own understanding. Moses made the brazen serpent for them, but he received the commandments on Horeb for us. The fundamental point here is not of form or content, but context. God works differently for the children than for their rebellious parents."

Abed-nego, however, said to the angel: "When you return to heaven and tell this story, preserve my friends' explanations, but tell the listener that neither of them is necessary. It is enough to say that the story of the brass serpent is told to show that God is able to embrace contradictions."

Two Hundred Years of Concision --Omni 1: 30

2010-04-26T19:40:00.000-07:00

"And I, Amaleki, had a brother, who also went with them; and I have not since known concerning them. And I am about to lie down in my grave; and these plates are full. And I make an end of my speaking."

When Lehi and Nephi began to write, their sacred plates were mostly blank and full of possibility. By the time Jacob received the plates, however, they were more than half full, and so he wrote with greater concision. Enos, getting the plates after Jacob, wrote even more carefully, and Jarom more carefully still.

All the record-keepers from Jarom through Amaleki were faced with the terrible challenge of writing on plates that were nearly full. What do you say into a sacred history with almost no space left?

Only after Amaleki filled the plates and thus reopened history could the people see their own generation's experience as sacred again.

Kira's FHE --Alma 7: 24

2010-04-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

"And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works." (Alma 7: 24)

At family home evening last night (Monday night Nicole and I put off Family Home Evening to see a new play by a good friend of mine), Kira chose to read this scripture for the lesson. Kira is relatively new to the world of reading, and scripture print is pretty tight and small, so it took a while to make it through the verse. By the time she finished, I was ready for a song and prayer, but luckily Nicole had the patient to take time first to talk about what the scripture means.

What is faith? she asked Kira.

Kira, who is still too young to have worried about any of faith's opposites in her relationship with God, had no idea. We said: faith is talking to Heavenly Father even though you can't see him. She said: "I'm a faith girl."

What is hope? my wife asked Kira.

Kira said she didn't know that, either, until Nicole reminded her that she talks about hope all the time. Hope is like a wish said Kira. It's a wish for a good thing.

What is charity? said Nicole to Kira.

That one, of course, stumped Kira, since the answer is for her is probably that charity is a scriptures-only word. So I said: charity is a fancy word for love. And Kira said "I love everybody in the whole entire world." So I said: yes. That's charity. You love your parents, and that's one kind of love. Your parents love each other, and that's a different kind. When you love everyone in the world, that's charity.

And what are good works? asked Nicole.

For Kira, good works are being nice to her teacher and helping throw away trash. When I was a teenager, they were staying away from alcohol, drugs, and sex. For Shiprah and Puah, good works were disobeying a direct order from a king who thought he was a god and then lying about it. For Thomas S. Monson, they are remembering the widows and teaching people how to see their own lives in terms of service. For Nicole, perhaps, they include using her talents to find the wise and good in texts. And so on, into a thousand and one possibilities every night, so that my old stake president, Samuel Kiehl, used to say: "There are so many good things to do you can safely just cross bad off your list."

This is, I think, part of the meaning of the word "abound."

Righteous Disobedience --Ex. 1: 15-21

2010-03-31T20:31:00.000-07:00

"And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah:

And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.

But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.

[...]

Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.

And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses." (Ex. 15-17, 20-21)

We often teach that obedience is a virtue without emphasizing that it is obedience to God and goodness we mean.

I think it's important to remember that the scriptures themselves teach the possibility of righteous disobedience in certain contexts.

Seder Thought from a Seven-Year-Old --Ex. 2: 23-25

2010-03-29T21:06:00.001-07:00

"And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them." (Ex.2: 23-25)

Had a seder with my wife's family--including eleven children under the age of twelve--last night. I have a three-and-a-half page cutting of the Haggadah I like to use, but was a little worried about the kids paying attention even through that, so I tried to tell the story of the Exodus, as much as possible, by asking them questions.

For instance, when I asked "What did they people do when they wanted to stop being slaves?," one of my nephews correctly remembered/guessed, "They prayed."

"That's right!" I said. "And what did God do then?"

My seven-year-old niece raised her hand. "He prayed back," she said.

I like that. Here's to a God who prays back.

A Thought on Polygamy

2010-03-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

No scripture this time, just a thought. I am hardly alone in my occasional discomfort over the historical association between Mormonism and polygamy, and so I think it's worthwhile to share the latest thing I've told myself about it.

Most religious traditions, at key points in their histories, are confronted with questions over the role of marriage and sexuality in spiritual life. Some (Theravada Buddhism, Catholicism, Shakerism, etc.) see sex as leading away from God and treat asceticism and celibacy as an ideal. Other groups (ancient Judaism, Islam, some Reformation-era Anabaptists, etc.) endorse marriage, even in plural forms, as spiritually healthy. A few groups (Tantrism, Jacob Frank's sect, etc.) have gone as far as to teach free love or other forms of extramarital sexuality as having spiritual utility.

Luckily for us, historical forces have shaped the world in such a way that monogamy is a more common moral ideal today than any other system. While their priests still don't marry, for example, the contemporary Catholic Church is extremely supportive of the married couples who form the core of most Catholic communities. Jews in medieval Europe dropped plural marriage so as not to offend their neighbors and have continued to hold to monogamy since; Mormons abandoned our limited practice of plural marriage after less than fifty years of practicing it and are now devoutly monogamous.

Of course, growing up Mormon outside of Utah, you're still going to get ridiculed, probably frequently, over polygamy. And growing up Mormon anywhere, you're going to have to come to terms with the history of polygamy in the Church. Since monogamy is so much nicer, that can be tough.

Lately, though, coming to terms with our plural marriage history seems much easier than coming to terms with a religious heritage/history of idealized celibacy would be. I would rather deal with the legacy of a Joseph Smith, who felt that marriage, sexuality, and family were so spiritually significant that plural marriage deserved restoration than with the legacy of a figure like Buddha who felt compelled, as a part of his search for spiritual answers, to leave his marriage permanently and who preached celibacy for the spiritually serious.

Sure, Buddha's celibacy is a lot less controversial in our culture than Joseph's marriages--but I'd rather agree with Joseph that marriage is part of God's plan and deal with the strange baggage of plural marriage than have to disagree with my religion's history on the question of whether family life (including marital sex) is ideal or not.

Second-Generation Ship --1 Ne 17:17

2010-03-18T19:58:00.000-07:00

"And when my brethren saw that I was about to build a ship, they began to murmur against me, saying: Our brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship; yea, and he also thinketh that he can cross these great waters."

There was a very specific reason Laman and Lemuel were wary of building a boat.

Before he was a prophet, when his first four sons were still only boys, Lehi had claimed divine inspiration for the first time. He had been doing well trading along the camel routes from Arabia to Egypt--and then one day he came home and announced that God wanted him to build a ship and break into the lucrative trade in cedar from Lebanon.

Lehi threw his energy into the project with a religious intensity, and the boys got excited like they'd never been before. But getting the right permits and finding the right workers was hard; expenses built up fast and Lehi had to take out big loans; the ship almost didn't get built and almost as soon as the ship was built, there was a market collapse in Egypt and not much room for Lehi in the cedar trade anymore; finally, after a bad storm in the harbor, the ship sank.

It was the family's worst disaster. Lehi had to work extra hard and take long trade trips during Laman and Lemuel's early teenage years to bring the family fortunes back again.

So when Nephi told them God wanted another boat, Laman and Lemuel mocked him. To them, memories of the first boat meant that God didn't really get involved in nautical issues.

In Nephi's memory, though, the first boat was associated positively with his father's early faith. And it set a precedent for God's later command.

The difference between the brothers was in how they interpreted their early life experience.

(A variation on this story is also told in which the first shipbuilder is not Lehi, but Joseph Smith, while the brothers are not Laman, Lemuel, Nephi, and Sam but Warren Parrish, David Whitmer, Brigham Young, and Wilford Woodruff. In that version, the ship is not a ship, but rather the Kirtland Bank.)

Volunteering at Bayonet Point --Matt 5: 10

2010-03-11T13:24:00.000-08:00

"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. " (Matt 5: 10)

In 1838, mobs tried to drive all Mormons out of Missouri. When Mormons fought back, the state militia was called in against them. The Mormons soon surrendered, and were ordered to sign over the deeds to their property to the state to pay for the "war." Stephen LeSeur's history on the subject (published by the University of Missouri Press) says:
"After singing the deeds, the Mormons were required to raise their hands and swear that their actions were voluntary. This proved too much for Nathan Tanner, who raised his hand and mockingly waved it over the soldiers' bayonets. 'It looks like a free volantear act and deed at the point of bayenet' he remarked sarcastically. One of the guards knocked Tanner senseless and he was carried from the ground." (183-84)

Only if our personal or inherited memories teach us to use our own power extremely carefully will we be prepared to serve in the kingdom of heaven. Without the memory of earth's lesser power being misused, how can we ever become qualified to use heaven's greater power with the necessary humility and reverence?

And oh, how great a waste it is if we turn the memory of suffering from reverence to anger!

Hannah's Prayer --1 Sam 2: 3

2010-03-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

"Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed." (1 Sam 2: 3)

That Hannah was different had been clear to everyone well before she married Elkanah. Elkanah loved her for it: for her forthrightness, for her honesty before the Lord and men, and for the way that, when she prayed silently--something she was not afraid to do in public--her mouth still moved, as if her body couldn't help but participate in the prayer.

To most people, of course, her fervent prayers just made her look like an intoxicated and possibly schizophrenic bag lady, and they felt it detracted from the spirit of the Temple when she prayed outside of it.

So no one was really surprised when Hannah couldn't have children. In the thinking of the time, which tended to look for the quickest possible explanations, her barrenness was seen as a consequence of her actions. Once she was barren, confirming that her weirdness was not of God, it was much easier for people to publicly voice their concerns about her.

People used to tell Hannah that she was a bad representative of the House of Israel because she couldn't have children. They used to ask Elkanah if she was really committed to the Church. Some speculated that if she'd start acting more normal, she might yet give birth. Most figured, though, that it was already too late.

But Hannah kept praying like a drunk, lips silently moving. Kept saying what she felt instead of what she thought ought to be said. And God heard Hannah--oh yes, God loved few things more in those days than to listen to Hannah's prayers.

It may be of interest to contemporary audiences to know that even before Hannah's son was born, she promised God she'd never cut his hair.

Homogeneity and Heterogeneity -- Mos. 7: 18

2010-03-05T18:20:00.000-08:00

"And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them." (Mos. 7: 18)

Drona used to say that to be one is to overcome and surrender our differences, that only when we do so can all our collective energy be harnessed into a single shared goal, creating the strong beats out of Zion's one heart. We should be like the red blood that pumps through the body: of one type and purpose.

But Teancum Singh used to say that most difference ought not be surrendered, but connected, woven into the whole. For as God is one, all good things are one. Zion is built up when its members connect their own insights, heritages, and gifts to the gospel, creating the different synapses that form Zion's one ever-expanding mind.

And the debate between them dances across the face of our church to this day.

Testimony Meeting --D&C 101: 16

2010-03-04T22:53:00.000-08:00

"Therefore, let your hearts be comforted concerning Zion; for all flesh is in mine hands; be still and know that I am God." (D&C 101: 16)

In a certain city in a certain country, there was a ward in which no testimony meeting was considered complete without a quiet minute or so sometime between speakers, in which the stillness was allowed to bear its own witness.

Some Personal Reflections -- Matt 5: 44

2010-03-03T10:03:00.000-08:00

"But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you" (Matt 5: 44)

We've been reading the Gospel of Matthew to our daughter lately. Chapter 4, in which Jesus fasts for forty days, was Friday night--on Saturday, Kira told her grandma that she was "an hungered" just before dinner and when Grandy asked what she meant, Kira told her the whole Jesus fasting story. I am continually impressed by the spiritual hunger of this five-year-old.

From Saturday through last night, we've worked our way piecemeal through Chapter 5, which is the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. It's a little slower going, since there's no action and almost everything is in old metaphors, which take twice the explaining. It's been a good experience, though.

The verse at the beginning of this post came last night in our reading and back to my mind this morning. It came back because, on the Caucajewmexdian blog, I'm in the middle of a long story about feeling a little persecuted and despitefully used by a few administrators at BYU. My interactions with these people are (God willing) over, but I still harbor resentment towards them. If that does not quite make them "enemies," it at least makes them fall under the spirit of Christ's commandment here.

Nearly four years ago, when my troubles with these people started, I would pray for them. But then I got more frustrated with them and decided to stop and do my best to forget them instead--"forgetting," though, is not what Jesus has asked us to do about those who mistreat us.

On the Caucajewmexdian blog, I'm just getting into the part of the story where I keep getting punished for my 2006 disagreement with these administrators even long after I've dropped the issue. And if someone were to ask me, I'll have to admit that I did not pray for my persecutors then and did not again until today. I stuck mostly to resenting them.

Is it easier, sometimes, to try to forget than to pray for--let alone forgive--those who have offended us? Maybe part of the reason these difficulties have resurfaced for me in the past year is to teach me the difference between how to forget (something I'm willing to try--even if it's impossible) and how to forgive (something I have abstract faith in, but still don't entirely understand).

I think one reason we read scriptures instead of simply remembering them (as I often do) is that remembering tends to take you to the places your mind wants to go, whereas reading can be more effective at bringing your mind back to somewhere it does not naturally want to go, but probably ought to be.

I need turn back again, spiritually, toward those who have offended me. I need to keep Christ's commandment.

Instead of an eye for an eye, perhaps the new law invites us to look eye-to-eye at a person we've been harmed by.

The Paradox of Omniscience and Forgetfulness: D&C 58: 42

2010-03-01T09:54:00.000-08:00

"Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more." (D&C 58: 42)

When I read this passage, my left hand said to my right: "Here is a paradox that undoes all your scriptures. For if a God must be all-knowing, how can your God forget sins, which make up the greater part of human history? You can have one: omniscience or forgiveness. Not both!"
But my right hand told my left: "God knows everything that has been, that is, and that will be. God can never forget facts and events: never turn his all-seeing eye from what has been done. But what happened alone does not create reality: reality is also created in the meaning God chooses to assign it. When we repent and are healed, it is by reassigning meaning to our sins: they become transformed from rebellion to experience as the thrill and shame of sin (which once tempted us to do wrong and then hide it) are replaced by the awareness and humility of forsaken transgression (which teach us how to love and choose right). Nothing that happened changes, but a tempter becomes a teacher, actions which were wrong become memories which teach us to do right.
God never forgets anything that happens, but he chooses to forget the meaning (sin) our bad actions first had and remember instead the new meaning (experience) created through repentance and healing."
To which my left hand said, "Drat. I thought I had you on that one."

(And my right hand said nothing more to my left hand, but whispered a great mystery to those who could listen, "As it is with God, so it was with us, who carry the seed of Godliness: our greatest power is in how we choose to assign meaning to the actions which take place constantly around us.")

How did Salem differ from Sodom and Gomorrah? -- Isa 1: 9

2010-02-26T15:18:00.000-08:00

"Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah." (Isa 1: 9)

I was struck, this week in Sunday School, by the existence of one righteous city, Melchizedek's Salem, at the same time there are two wicked cities: Sodom and Gomorrah. Maybe it's just coincidence. Or maybe:

In the days of Terah, Abraham's father, there was one great city in the land of Canaan. In it, people were mostly part-wicked and part-good, but disagreed vehemently about how to go about both their wickedness and goodness. They gradually split into two factions, each faction aiming at a different half of righteousness, each officially indulging a different half of wickedness.

As the city became increasingly polarized, it became difficult to keep the peace: shepherds left their flocks wander as they shouted taunts at rival shepherds, water-carriers dropped their jugs in the midst of heated debates, even the midwives had difficulty focusing on births when the subject of factional ideologies came up, and, politics on their minds, would train new mothers to nurse only on one side.

Finally, the leaders of each faction met to decide the future of the city through a debate which would end only when one agreed that the other was right. The debate, however, lasted through the day and then through the night and soon it became an accepted fact of life that the factions' leaders could be heard at any hour roaring so loudly at each other that it became difficult to carry on a conversation over breakfast, to keep one's mind clear during evening prayers, and even simply to sleep.

No one know quite how a certain young boy silenced them, but afterward he became known by the name Melech-Zedek, "king of holiness," for teaching that compromise could be found if each would continue to advocate their preferred half of righteousness, but also be mindful of the other faction's critique of their preferred side of wickedness.

Many of the inhabitants of the city followed these teachings and learned to see their neighbors as the other half of a divine balance or paradox. Others, however, stayed faithful to the full orthodoxies of their own factions, ultimately deciding to create pure cities isolated from their different-minded neighbors.

One faction turned to the left and founded Sodom; the other turned to the right and founded Gomorrah.

Those who still had much in common with the founders of Sodom but would listen to their neighbors, who still had much in common with the founders of Gomorrah, began to call their own city, which was the remnant of the old single city, "Salem" meaning "peace."

Them bones -- Prov 3: 7-8

2010-02-24T14:07:00.000-08:00

I was wrong about yesterday's post being the last in this series. One more. Brace yourselves: it's pretty weird.

"Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.

It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones"

As my wife could testify, I am quite often wise in my own eyes. I even spend excessive amounts of times, some Sunday mornings, staring at myself in the mirror, just checking out how wise I look, and we end up late to church.

Last summer, at an appointment for my testicular cancer follow-up, the doctor noticed that my white blood cell count had been well below normal for as long as they'd been keeping records, and seemed to be dropping. He was a little alarmed, and, as doctors often do when alarmed, suggested that a needle be used to take a piece of me out so that we could both calm down and feel safe again. As usual, I consented.

The subsequent bone marrow biopsy revealed that, in a surprisingly literal fulfillment of Proverbs 3: 7-8, my bones actually have an abnormally high percentage of fat and an unusually low percentage of marrow. It wasn't really dropping, just taking a routine dip in its lifelong course below the bottom end of normal. This is why I get sick a lot whenever I don't sleep or otherwise put stress on my under-producing immune system. This is probably why, in fact, I currently am sick and sitting at home writing this very post!

Now, along with my poor qualities (e.g. excessive intellectual self-admiration), I have many good qualities--some of which I don't need very much at all. My special love of emptying dishwashers and drainracks, for example, has been much more useful since I married a woman with a particular and inexplicable dislike for those specific tasks.

I am wondering today whether God sprinkles trials and their complementary solutions into completely different places and lives in the hope that we'll finally get a clue and put the whole puzzle together. Is it possible that for every problem, there is an answer: but the answers we have are seldom the ones we most need, and the problems we have are not only for our own growth, but to be there for someone else's answer?

Maybe it's this persistent idea that gives me hope in shared/interactive efforts over individual efforts: be they for faith, for writing, or for health care.

Would Universal Healthcare Decrease Free Agency? -- Mos. 7: 32-33

2010-02-23T11:19:00.000-08:00

This may be the last post in my recent thread on universal health care and the gospel. I don't want to speak for any specific plan so much as to explore ideas about how the abstract ideal of universal health care interacts with various doctrinal concepts. I'd like to thank you for your patience and for participation in discussion thus far.

"The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency;

And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood" (Mos. 7: 32-33)

If Satan's plan had been accepted, he would have given people choices over what clothes to wear, which restaurants to eat at, whether to go skiing or mountain biking, and every other eternally meaningless decision elevated by capitalism. He would do this to hide the emptiness we would have in the place of our hearts, which would never know love or hate, never know anguish and happiness.

The agency God protected was our fundamental ability to choose love or hate, good or evil.

Taxes can neither increase nor decrease our God-given agency, because moral agency is not proportional to our economic means but is defined by our contextual decisions about love and hate, good and evil.

Even if a tax to support health care seems to be forcing us to do good, the triumph of God's plan means we will still be left with the vital moral choice alluded to in Moroni 7: 8.

The Parable of the Simple Disciple--3 Ne 27: 27

2010-02-22T08:59:00.000-08:00

I'd like to offer my deepest apologies for turning to the overtly political, but I've heard too many people compare plans in various countries to provide even basic health care to the public at large, regardless of economic status, as against a gospel plan of free agency and personal accountability. I don't want to advocate any specific political plan, but feel compelled to suggest that the gospel may actually be more for than against the abstract ideal of basic universal access to health care. Thank you for your patience over the next few days.

"And know ye that ye shall be judges of this people, according to the judgment which I shall give unto you, which shall be just. Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am." (3 Ne 27: 27)

It happened once that three American businessmen (men well respected in their communities and free of almost every sin except for the sin of pride, which they possessed in overabundance) were on a plane flight to Damascus together when a light filled their airplane's cabin and struck the three of them, out of all the passengers, temporarily blind. Each of the three heard the same voice calling him to repentance, each emerged a radically changed man, determined to live a life more like Christ's.

The first immediately stopped cutting his hair and grew a long, old-style Hebrew beard. He gave his $300 shoes and fine Italian suits to the poor and bought some sandals and a loom-woven semi-course robe. He broke bread and fish with his company's board members instead of taking catered business lunches. He started making plans to relocate to Israel.

The second began to speak, whenever possible, using quotations from the gospels. At dinner, he'd ask his wife to pass "the salt of the earth." He'd answer the phone by saying "What seek ye?" And instead of counting to three when preparing to discipline his children, he would tell them "even now the axe is laid at the root of the trees."

It was not easy to tell, just by watching him, how the third had changed. But the truth is that he let go of the resentment he had once felt for the various taxes he paid, and thanked God instead that he lived in days when instead of simply supporting the household of a king, his taxes were used to help feed the poor and oppressed, to educate all the nation's children and turn none away, to heal the sick and rehabilitate the injured, to make sure that weights and measures were conducted honestly, and that the widow and the fatherless were not turned away.

Luke 9: 11

2010-02-20T14:23:00.000-08:00

Universal Healthcare -- Gen 4: 9

2010-02-19T17:03:00.000-08:00

A Sign of the Times--Zeph 3: 9

2010-02-18T16:50:00.000-08:00

"For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent." (Zeph 3: 9)

When people in church meetings stop speaking in piles of cliches and start speaking and listening with care, with love both for the gift of language and for each other, the Second Coming will be close at hand, even at the door!

What Made Adam's Language Pure?--Mos 6: 5-6

2010-02-17T08:26:00.000-08:00

"And a book of remembrance was kept, in the which was recorded, in the language of Adam, for it was given unto as many as called upon God to write by the spirit of inspiration;

And by them their children were taught to read and write, having a language which was pure and undefiled."

What made Adamic a pure language?

Drona used to say that the language of Adam differed from our languages in that each word had only one corresponding and exact meaning. In this way, both misunderstandings and puns were prevented, and that is why we call that language pure.

Teancum Singh, though, said that in Adamic each word had at least seven very different possible meanings, which everyone knew, and that when people spoke or listened to it their minds considered the spaces between each of the possibilities, and how those spaces might enrich the possible meaning, and it is because this language was constantly enticing people to think more deeply and richly that we call it pure.

Nicole said that the language of Adam was pure only for those who wanted to understand what was said, and who spoke with care for words and for those around them, and that when Cain's language became violent and defensive, it ceased to be pure like the language of Adam. But in Zion, she said, everyone listened and spoke with care until theirs was again a pure language, and so it will be when the City of Zion is built once again before Christ comes.

Confounded Language! --Genesis 11:7

2010-02-16T08:32:00.000-08:00

"Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech."

This confounding did not consist of splitting one language into multiple languages, and thus rendering only small groups comprehensible to each other. When the Gods confounded the language, it was by replacing the pure Adamic language with a more fallen one, which failed to reliably express meaning the way the old language had. And to this very day, our language is still such that two people speaking the same language often only believe that they are actually understanding one another.

(I have a strong testimony of at least the last sentence of this midrash.)

The Joseph Smith Translation -- 1 Pet 4: 8

2010-02-15T08:33:00.000-08:00

In the King James Bible, 1 Peter 4: 8 reads, "And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins."

The Joseph Smith translation of this verse, probably from sometime between 1830 and 1833, modifies the last clause to, "for charity preventeth a multitude of sins."

The difference in meaning seems significant: covering is retroactive (you can only "cover" after a sin is committed), whereas preventing is proactive (you can only "prevent" before a sin is committed). The shift from the KJV to the JST relocates the scriptural principle in terms of time. That matters--right?

Here's Joseph Smith's most famous use of this scripture, from comments made on 7 November 1841: "If you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. [...]If you will throw a cloak of charity over my sins, I will over yours—for charity covereth a multitude of sins." (See History of the Church, 4: 445)

Notice that Joseph uses the King James wording rather than quoting from his own translation. Consequently, the quote's meaning seems far more closely related to the doctrine expressed in the King James version than that expressed in the JST. Why would Joseph do that?

If the JST consists of necessary corrections from inaccurate doctrines (due to mistranslation) to accurate ones (expressed in the new wording), then that famous 1841 quote is doctrinally compromised. If, on the other hand, the 1841 statement, representing "newer" revelation, replaces the "older" translation of the verse (probably from 1830-1833), then the JST markings in our scriptures may not be terribly reliable. The underlying question is whether it's better to read the JST as ruling out the old meaning of a passage knowing that it will also rule out future uses of the old wording, or better to let new use of old passages lead us to dismiss portions of the JST.

Perhaps, before choosing one of the above alternatives, we could consider a possibility that doesn't give in as easily to such either/or thinking:

What if the Joseph Smith translation is not typically designed to replace one meaning with another, but to suggest a richer range of meanings of a passage than can be expressed by a single word in English? In English, for example, "cover" and "prevent," as described in this post, speak to different parts of time relative to the moment of sin. But what if God, who has all time continually before him, speaks a native language that doesn't distinguish between these two? What if, for God, one word encompasses both "cover" and "prevent"? The JST phrasing, then, would not be superior but rather supplementary to the King James phrasing, each hinting at a different aspect of the intent of the text (which, according to this view, cannot be properly translated into a single verb in English).

Would we understand the gospel better if we believed that what God can say in one word often takes at least two apparently contradictory human words to express?

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog....

2010-02-11T14:07:00.000-08:00

...for this important update from the blog next door.

As many of you know, I keep three blogs: My Life and Hard Times, a surreal blog, Caucajewmexdian, a blog about family history and ethnic experience, and this one.

Twelve days ago my surreal blog was taken over by communists.

That sounds very strange, of course, but it is a surreal blog. I'd been giving monthly awards for the best comments called the "Commie" award with famous dead communists or their sympathizers as "guest presenters." In January, I made the mistake of letting Stalin be a guest presenter, and he promptly frightened all the nominees (myself included) into exile, gave himself the award, and installed a puppet guest blogger into my blog, who has been issuing regular manifestos since.

Even the blog template has suffered. The communists have turned the background an obnoxious shade of red which makes everything very difficult to read.

Brave readers have gone to find my goldbergish-style posts-in-hiding and anonymously posted them as comments on the hijacked "My Life and Hard Times" blog. Someone even broke into my email account to post, defiantly, in my name (I am hoping that was my wife or brother, because otherwise some stranger has my blogger password...)

All of which is to say: if you enjoy a good game, please go review recent posts on the "My Life and Hard Times" blog and join the quest to find the part of me that is the author of that blog. Then help me figure out how to oust Drona and take my blog back.

Why do angels glow? -- 1 Chr 29: 15

2010-02-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

"For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding."

Although Godliness has the property of light, our mortal physical state is designed to protect the unprepared from the power of the light within us.* Thus, our righteousness is described not as the full light which is our birthright, but as the shadow--because the existence of every shadow necessitates a casting light.

When bodies are transfigured or made celestial, their structures will be changed in such a way as to allow the natural light to shine forth out of them. The transfigured, the translated, and those resurrected as angels glow not because their essence is changed, but because the structures that obscure our inherent light are removed.

*Just as we would be overwhelmed by standing in the presence of God in our sins, we would be overwhelmed if we stood in the true presence of any human being. This is why love sometimes aches even in simple moments of family togetherness: every so often, when I watch my wife and daughter, a piece of their souls shine through more than usual and I am both overwhelmed and physically moved by it.

Jesus on the Cross -- Psalm 22

2010-02-05T11:28:00.000-08:00

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me, and from the words of my roaring?"(Ps. 22:1)

When Jesus had been on the cross for six hours (according to Mark's account), he cried out "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?", which is the first line in Psalm 22. In doing so, he was able to say much more to those who knew the psalms and had their hearts open to understanding than those who did not know the Psalms or had closed their minds to understanding were able to receive.

Does God sometimes give us the message on a day when we don't need it and the key to unlock it on the day when we do? When they sang together, what songs did Jesus and his disciples sing, and could they have imagined yet what the same words would later mean?

I Know the Church is True -- Jon. 2: 1

2010-02-04T09:24:00.000-08:00

"Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the fish’s belly"

Teancum Singh used to say that as it was in the days of Jonah, so shall it be in the last days. The Lord's servants may make mistakes from time to time, which may lead to some unexpected anguish, but that doesn't mean the Lord isn't always guiding the church.

You don't need to leave the church if you learn that a leader has done something you think is wrong. Even if it is wrong, you can always pray out of the fish's belly and the Lord will sustain you and see to it that things are worked out for the church as a whole in his due time.

As long as you can believe that God is with us, there is good reason to stay. Spiritual experience should trump disappointment with history or policy.

Which also means that history and policy can't make up for spiritual experience.

The Truest (and Scariest?) Mormon Doctrine -- D&C 121: 39

2010-02-02T20:43:00.001-08:00

"We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion."

Recent events on the Goldbergish blog have me thinking about this principle.

Communism, with all its ideals of exalting the everyday worker, was not immune to it. Corporate capitalism, though more acceptable in most circles, has its own share of blood on the hands as a bitter confirmation of this doctrine.

Religion through the centuries has not been immune. And, as this scripture shows, that isn't something we can just wipe away under the rug as a symptom of the Great Apostasy. This passage is talking about early LDS leaders. Our own leaders sinned in this particularly dangerous way. And I see no reason to believe that, since the late 1830s, human nature has fundamentally changed.

How do you believe in an ideology or support an organization knowing full well that sooner or later some of its leaders will exercise unrighteous dominion--possibly at a terrible cost?

I don't know, but I have faith that there is an answer.

Is such faith essential to staying involved in any party, community, or church today?

Bored in Church? --Matt 22: 37

2010-01-30T10:35:00.000-08:00

"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."

Stephen used to say that all our minds means both conscious and unconscious. It is good to be able to make new connections and insights in church, but even when that fails, the constant repetition of basic gospel truths help our love of God become habitual, thus fulfilling that portion of the commandment.

What makes our days so hard? D&C 82: 3

2010-01-27T17:51:00.000-08:00

"For of him unto whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation."

About a month ago, someone in church repeated a variation on the story that when people of the current rising generation die, they'll be greeted by spirits who are awed that they lived in times when it was so difficult to live the gospel. In some versions of the story, there's a pre-existence element as well: we were Generals in the War in Heaven and thereby proved ourselves prepared for the challenges of 21st century life, or something like that.

The First Presidency has issued letters emphasizing that these stories are neither doctrinally accurate nor helpful, but the stories keep getting told.

I think it's because in a larger sense, we really do feel that we've got a uniquely tough job. We live in a culture of material excess, in an atmosphere of sexual irresponsibility, and get made fun of at school for being Mormon. Who could have it worse?

I'll live it mostly to the reader's study of scripture and history to answer that question. My guess is that careful study will reveal that we:
-worry a lot less about forgetting our faith every time we move, either by choice or because someone took over land, slaughtered thousands of our people, and forced us into slavery.
-have an easier time studying scripture, since we know how to read, and since we don't have to risk our lives getting copies of the scriptures to read from.
-don't live in a culture where every other church in town has ritual prostitutes.
Maybe our times are not so bad after all. Maybe, from a historical perspective, it's downright easy to live the gospel today. Peer pressure probably does not compare to invading armies. The worst of Hollywood probably doesn't hold a candle to the sexual and violent entertainment promoted by certain brands of Biblical-era idolatry.

So what is the challenge of this stage of the last days?

Along with scriptures on the internet comes the commission to preach the gospel in all the languages of the world. Along with the relative political stability we prosper under comes the commission to build Zion before things turn really sour again. Along with a knowledge of numerous gospel laws comes the necessity not only to live them, but also to be ready for more commandments and revelations, to hope for them even.

Unto whom much is given, much is required. That's the real burden of our days.

Foreordained -- 2 Sam 12: 5-7

2010-01-12T23:16:00.000-08:00

"And David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord liveth, the man that hath done this thing shall surely die:

And he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.

And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man." (2 Sam: 5-7)

When God went to choose a spirit, before the foundation of the world, to become the most famous king of Israel, it was of this moment that he thought, when Nathan the prophet would tell the sinning king the parable of the little ewe lamb. Men who would be mighty kings in other lands were passed over: God chose David because the others would have had Nathan killed, his body left for wild dogs to fight over. David had a soul that could face its own sins. David alone, of the unborn kings, would find the strength to say, "I have sinned before the Lord." David alone, of all the kings, would count each subsequent trial as necessary and just.

This is why the Messiah was sent to the lineage of David.

Sunday School Blues--D&C 88: 122

2010-01-10T20:45:00.000-08:00

"Appoint among yourselves a teacher, and let not all be spokesmen at once; but let one speak at a time and let all listen unto his sayings, that when all have spoken that all may be edified of all, and that every man may have an equal privilege." (D&C 88:122, emphasis added)

To say that Sunday School today turned into a conversation between the brother in the front row and the teacher would be to overstate the extent to which the teacher was permitted to contribute.

There's nothing wrong with the brother who monopolized our class; he seems like a very interesting guy, and he doesn't always take over. But today, whatever filter normally prevents him from immediately speaking to almost every question was malfunctioning, and so he single-handedly cut off the participation of most of the class.

According to the scriptures of the restoration, we are all supposed to speak, and we are all supposed to be privileged to hear from the wide range of perspectives available in our classes. Perhaps this is because a living church needs words that are themselves alive: the right answers are not enough; in our classes, we need answers infused with the individual spirits of those speaking them. No matter how insightful one individual may be, if he or she speaks in a way that cuts off, rather than encourages, that participation by other class members, the Lord's directive on gospel education is not being followed.

[Insert embarrassed look here.]

You will probably not be surprised to hear that I fear I am guilty of the very offense I now preach against. As you can tell from this blog, I like to talk about the gospel. A lot. I think my own ideas are cool and that everyone wants to hear them and that I do a service to the world when I talk or write. (Doctors, I think, call that narcissism. It's the -ism I'm best at.) The truth, however, is that church classes are better when people like me are careful not to talk too much.

So, in the spirit of repentance, today I have prepared advice for my fellow over-exuberant class participants. Do you know who you are? I hope so.

Tips for the talkative student:
1) Be aware of your own talkativeness. Do you find yourself speaking much more than others? Do you find yourself wanting to weigh in on every question? Don't be ashamed. That words and ideas come to your mind quickly is a spiritual gift. Do be cautious: this gift is one that sometimes gets in the way of others.
2) Carefully choose when to speak. Because I know that I will want to answer open-ended questions, I avoid volunteering to read scriptures and answering fact-level questions. These opportunities are better left to those who might struggle more to think quickly of responses to open-ended questions, but may find themselves responding to a scripture they themselves read out loud or elaborating on a fact-level answer they give to a question. If I volunteer for everything, I take away opportunities others might make use of to develop their own thoughts, and in the process, rob myself of their insights.
In addition to avoiding those two kinds of participation in most cases, I try to distinguish between responses to teacher questions that will be most useful to me personally and ones that will be most useful to the class as a whole.
I try to avoid speaking on questions that get good responses from my classmates and direct my comments, when possible, to times when they might help improve the class energy and get more people thinking/speaking rather than times when they will get in others' way.
3) Bring a pen and paper to class. If you are at risk of talking too much, this may prove extremely helpful. With a pen and paper, you can respond to every open-ended question the teacher asks, but in a way that doesn't monopolize the class and does give you a record of your insights. You also will have extra opportunities to respond because you can write ideas that come to you because of your classmates' comments. I think you'll also find that the Spirit will help you more when you're trying to help the class be conducted in accordance with the Lord's counsel.
After church, you can talk over your scribbled-down insights at home with loved ones, post them on a blog, or fold them into a paper crane and set it on your windowsill.

Doubt & Awe: Mark 6: 49-52

2010-01-04T11:15:00.000-08:00

"But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out:

For they all saw him, and were troubled. And immediately he talked with them, and saith unto them, Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.

And he went up unto them into the ship; and the wind ceased: and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered.

For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened."

What happened with the apostles in this case should not be surprising.

A fisherman can see a miracle performed with bread and easily accept it as miraculous: but perform a miracle on the sea, which he knows intimately, and he'll be shocked, amazed, and even afraid.

It was the bakers who were shaken to the core when Jesus fed the multitude with bread. Each of us harbors the greatest doubts in the area of his or her own expertise.

All Things -- Rom. 8: 28

2009-12-31T10:48:00.000-08:00

"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." (Rom 8: 28)

A certain woman had two teachers: one who served his students and another whose students served him.

The first loved to listen, loved to give advice that helped others do work they could find joy in. He gave strong reproofs to students he knew well and who trusted him, reproofs grounded in his understanding of their goals and weaknesses.

When their time together drew to an end, she went to him, tried to express the debt she felt she owed him, to explain how grateful she'd been to count herself as his pupil.

But he said, "Don't thank me; thank the God who allowed us to cross paths."

The second teacher loved to be listened to, gave sharp reproofs at a glance without considering their implications, wanted others to do work that pleased him. She struggled under him, asked if there wasn't a better way.

When their time together drew to an end, he called her into his office and told her that he had been good for her--if not through his counsel than through his resistance. Either, after all, would contribute to her growth, and someday she would thank him.

"No" she said. "But I will thank the God who allowed us to cross paths."

Is the Devil a Christian?--Matt 7: 21

2009-12-22T20:20:00.000-08:00

"Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."

Parley P. Pratt wrote a great story about this.

Anachronistic Religion -- D&C 84: 100

2009-12-10T14:35:00.001-08:00

"The Lord hath redeemed his people;
And Satan is bound and time is no longer.
The Lord hath gathered all things in one.
The Lord hath brought down Zion from above.
The Lord hath brought up Zion from beneath."

A common criticism of Mormonism is that our sense of the past is anachronistic. People take issue with the overt Christianity of Book of Mormon prophets. They are suspicious of the way certain phrasings seem to come before their time. These same critics probably wonder what Peter, James, and John are doing in the woods of the nineteenth-century American frontier, and why temples with fonts held up by statues of twelve oxen reappear in the past today. They are intensely frustrated that we can't seem to keep our time periods straight and take it as evidence that our religion cannot be true.

I wonder if we realize, though, how deeply our religion is anti-chronistic, how much it undermines common assumptions about the absolute reality of time as a line divided cleary into past, present, and future. In Mormon thought, time is not so tight. What appear to outside critics to be oversights, sloppy fiction writing on the part of Joseph Smith and subsequent prophets, are actually profound expressions of a deep truth about the way redeemed human experience will work.

J.S. Quote

2009-12-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

Ran across this quote from Joseph Smith, quoted in George M. Hinkle's testimony against him in Missouri in 1839:

"I have heard Joseph Smith, jr. say that he believed Mahomet was a good man; that the Koran was not a true thing, but the world belied Mahomet, as they had belied him, and that Mahomet was a true prophet."

I wouldn't ordinarily put a lot of confidence in someone's politically motivated testimony against Joseph Smith, but this one is part of a larger pattern. Numerous individuals in 1838 and 1839 testified that Joseph had said something positive about Muhammad, or in which he identified himself with Muhammad. According to Thomas Marsh and Orson Hyde, who left the church just before the 1838 violence, Joseph Smith said that if his persecutors wouldn't leave him alone, he would become a second Muhammad and leave a trail of blood to the Pacific.

In nineteenth-century America, of course, comparing a religious leader to Muhammad was a worse slur, even, than comparing a religious leader to the Pope, which was the more politically correct way of accusing someone of unspeakable conspiracies.

From the 21st century, though, I find myself wondering what Joseph Smith actually said and whether there was a surprising degree of openness and fair-mindedness to it. Was he trying to say that early Islamic military history was not simply aggressive and coercive, but more deeply a response to bitter persecution? Did his perspective allow for important religious values to have been transmitted by God to a non-Christian faith? (Times have changed a great deal--when later LDS prophets issued a proclamation espousing such views in the 1970s, no one testified against them in court over it.) Did he simply feel a certain affinity for anyone as hated as Muhammad?

We may never know. But it seems probable that he did, in fact, say something and that several of his followers, bound too tightly in the mentality of their era's culture, grew disaffected over it. Perhaps the lesson of this incident as that we ought to be cautious not to let values from our own 21st-century culture tear us away from the values God's spirit has spoken to our souls.

Collapsing Time -- Mark 9: 1

2009-12-02T08:27:00.000-08:00

"And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." (Mark 9: 1)

Few understand that this prophecy was fulfilled six days after it was given.

This is because the Kingdom of God exists outside of time as we experience it: in the Kingdom, past and future can be at once present. Sometimes, in the course of history, individuals have been allowed to step outside of time to see the way the Kingdom appears when all times are allowed to co-exist. When the kingdom of God comes to earth in its power, human time will melt away as the hoar frost before the sun. In isolated instances, however, individuals have already passed through the constraints of human time, even in their mortality, to experience the time of the Kingdom. This, too, is a coming of the Kingdom of God in power.

One of these instances was at the valley of Adam-ondi-Ahman: when Adam gathered his posterity to bless them, the godliness with him was so great that the future also became present and he was able to bless the whole of his posterity though all the generations and dispensations that would come to exist on earth. We have yet to live the same moment he lived then, but before the Savior returns, the godliness with us will be so great that we will see our presence before Adam and the dispensations of the gospel will melt together. What happened near to the beginning of earth's time and what will happen toward the end of earth's time are in fact as one moment in the Kingdom, simply viewed through two different angles.

Enoch and the people of Zion, likewise, stepped out of time, but so fully that they only become present in human time when others match their righteousness and are able to experience the omnipresent time of the Kingdom with them. This is the way in which Enoch's Zion will join our Zion in the last days: as soon as we can see time as God does, we will see that we are standing in their presence.

Six days after prophesying that some would see the Kingdom before tasting death, Jesus took Peter, James and John to a high mountain. That they saw Christ glorified there could happen because they had been allowed to step out of time and into the Kingdom, where the future, glorified Christ was already present. They also saw Elias and Moses from the past--on the mountain, Moses had once seen them as he received the commandments including the Melchizedek Priesthood!

It is said that in the temples, the human time grows particularly porous. It is through our presence in the temples that we are prepared to step out of human time.

Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg

2009-11-28T22:01:00.000-08:00

"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." (Joshua 1: 8)

When God gave this commandment, he knew he was commissioning a hundred billion works of art, because the shape of every human mouth is different in some way--and so it is that, while all righteous people can speak with the same spirit, no two can give the exact same shape to the words.

I wrote a story a year ago that, in many passages, reveals how the words of God take shape coming out of my mind and mouth. If my thoughts here have resonated with you, I'd encourage you to take some time with, and invest some of your energy in, "Tales of Teancum Singh Rosenberg."

Hidden Treasures -- D&C 89: 11

2009-11-28T21:40:00.000-08:00

"Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving."

When Joseph Smith received the Word of Wisdom, the phrasing in this verse probably meant very little. When could you eat an herb or fruit except in its season? Nothing else would have been possible, to my knowledge, on the nineteenth-century American frontier.

In today's globalized food economy, though, the phrasing may have a special prophetic resonance. Relatively few people are concerned with what's in season or local in days when everything can be shipped from the other side of the world to a nearby grocery store.

And yet--how much fuel might be saved and environmental damage avoided if we would base more of our diet, once again, off more locally-grown, in-season grains, fruits, and vegetables? How much more prepared would our communities be for coming days of calamity if we were already growing a higher percentage of our food within a more accessible range of distance?

Perhaps hidden in the text of the Word of Wisdom are warnings with extra potential in our day to help us keep balance in an overconfident and often short-sighted world.

American Liturgical Calendar? -- Eccl 3: 1

2009-11-26T21:43:00.001-08:00

" To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven"

Thanks to the Byrds, these may be some of the best-known words of scripture in American culture. I started thinking about them yesterday in conjunction with Thanksgiving.

It's interesting, I think, that we write our values across the face of the year. The Jewish calendar, both ancient and modern, does this: there are holidays for triumph, for mourning, for relief, for judgment, for repentance, for miracles. A season, so to speak, set aside for various doctrinal remembrance purposes.

Most cultures today probably operate in similar ways, though they don't know it. In the United States, for example, national holidays accompany religious holidays to create a sort of ad-hoc liturgical calendar in which holiday and value correspond something like this:
New Year's: Accountability/Progress
Easter: Peace[?]
4th of July: Community
Halloween: Curiosity about the Unseen
September 11th: Awareness of Vulnerability
Thanksgiving: self-explanatory
Christmas: Hope

In each case, of course, the values can be undermined by commercialized vice. New Year's can be devoted to drunkenness, the 4th of July to jingoism, Halloween to immodesty, September 11th to vengeance, Thansgiving to gluttony, and Christmas to the twin sins of envy and greed.

As an optimist, however, I prefer to see our calendar of holidays as having important moral and spiritual potential. May we allow each season to turn us toward that which is right and good.

The Primary Program--Isa. 3: 1-4

2009-11-23T11:36:00.000-08:00

"For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water,

The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient,

The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.

And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them."

Sunday morning, my five-year-old daughter Kira climbed into our bed about an hour earlier than I had any intention of getting out of it. So we stayed in bed, and Nicole got to half-sleep while Kira sang softly to herself, asked for story after story about when I was a kid, and played morning games like she always does.

After a while, though, something (maybe in a primary song we sang?) made her decide she wanted to read scriptures, so she hopped out of bed and want to fetch them while I offered moral support in the form of a constant stream of reminders to be gentle and careful and not let her mother's bookmarks fall out (as you can tell, I'm a very helpful morning Dad).

She insisted on picking where we would read and happened to open the book to the passage in Isaiah quoted above. Thanks to her attention span, that's as far as we got at the time--a beautiful image of the proud and talented someday submitting to rule by children.

A few hours later, in sacrament meeting, the educated and experienced vacated the stand to make way for the primary program. How often, I wonder, do we fulfill prophecy without ever noticing it?

Self-definition--D&C 121: 43-44

2009-11-11T15:51:00.000-08:00

"Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;
That he may know that thy faithfulness is stronger than the cords of death."

When I was in high school, my best friend dated a girl who was very proud of her family's Greek roots. Since I am deeply invested in the lives of my own ancestors, I admired that--which is probably why I was so disappointed the day she told us derisively about a Turkish guy our age who had come to a Greek festival trying to fit in, and how she and all her friends had laughed at him for thinking a Turk had any business hanging out with Greek people. I realize that there's a long and bloody history of conflicting interests between Turkey and Greece, but the idea that she defined her own ethnicity so much in terms of an inherited enmity was alarming to me.

I still find it alarming, but I've realized it's hardly unique. Teenagers often position themselves culturally by telling the world what one genre of music they dislike (typically rap or country, sometimes Top 40). What they are against matters more to their peers, apparently, than who they are. Party politics work in a similar way: to be a Republican, it's important to dislike and distrust Democrats; to be a Democrat, it's best if you stereotype and suspect Republicans.

Some Mormons may be tempted to think that because of recent political disagreements, you define yourself as more Mormon by being opposed to gay rights activists or even "gays" in general. This is simply not the case.

That's why I'm so pleased that the Church is not acting this way in its relationship with local gay rights activists. Yes, the two groups have serious disagreements over same-sex marriage. The Church came out strongly against Proposition 8 both politically and rhetorically for reasons that have not gone away. And yet--in the wake of Proposition 8, Church leaders quietly began meeting with gay rights activists, trying to understand their concerns and positions on other issues. Although the Church rarely takes overt political positions, they recently issued a statement of support for a nondiscrimination ordinance in Salt Lake City.

Having disagreed with a certain firmness and sharpness, they are now looking for issues on which they can agree and take shared action. This is not simply a public relations move--it's action to ensure that we not fall into the evil habit of seeing ourselves as being, by definition, someone else's opponent or enemy.

Not Taking the Sacrament--1 Cor 11: 29

2009-11-10T13:16:00.000-08:00

"For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. " (1 Cor 11: 29)

To take the sacrament when conscious of a significant sin is to be as Cain when he denied the murder of Abel. (Gen 4: 9-10) And yet--to attend the service and not take the sacrament is to accept accountability before the Lord as David did before Nathan. (2 Sam 12)

In plain English:

It's hard to come sit in sacrament meeting and not take the sacrament, possibly with family members, neighbors, or friends watching. And that's why I really believe that the brave act of passing on the sacrament tray can bring as much healing to the repentant person as taking the sacrament gives to the person with nothing so serious to repent of.

Walking to Church D&C 61: 3-4, 15

2009-11-09T17:14:00.000-08:00

"But verily I say unto you, that it is not needful for this whole company of mine elders to be moving swiftly upon the waters, whilst the inhabitants on either side are perishing in unbelief.
Nevertheless, I suffered it that ye might bear record; behold, there are many dangers upon the waters, and more especially hereafter . . .
Wherefore, the days will come that no flesh shall be safe upon the waters."

My family and I live in Utah Valley, which means that we're almost always within walking distance of a church. Theoretically speaking, so is almost everyone else--but that doesn't keep the buildings from needing very large parking lots. Why do so many people drive to churches that are only a few blocks away?

This Sunday we were running late, and it was awfully tempting to just drive. Cars' convenience is addictive that way: the possibility of speed tends to seduce us when we're in a hurry. We decided not to risk getting any more addicted to the car than we already are though and walked instead, even though we'd be late.

I'm glad we did. Kira, our five-year-old, got to hear the leaves crunch under her feet. We stepped in and out of each other's shadows. We could feel air on our faces and the ground under our feet. This is a worthwhile part, I thought, of raising our child as a daughter of God: spending time on Sabbath mornings with her in the world God made.

We need to learn to not always rush when there is so much to be learned and done walking.

Maybe this is part of the Lord's warning to his servants in early Restoration days against travel on the water. He couldn't warn them about cars and have them understand, so he tried to teach them that acceleration often includes isolation instead. That always speeding to somewhere else means forgetting where you are.

Does Satan ride today less on the river than on the interstates--or even right here on the internet?

The Sins of the Fathers Against Latin America--Ex. 34: 6-7

2009-10-28T11:12:00.000-07:00

"And the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation." (Ex. 34: 6-7)

As God reveals himself to Moses, the scripture juxtaposes God's mercy with the truth that an individual's or society's sins can consequences that carry themselves on in the next four generations.

Carlfred Broderick used to say that one reason some people may be born into broken homes is to purify the lineage by stopping the cycle of damage and abuse. For as the child of a sinning parent turns to God, he or she can often spare the children the legacy of damage that comes from the past sins.

When Elder Clayton spoke of an indigenous man in the Andes whose back bent under the weight of firewood he had to carry in order to earn a livelihood, I thought of the sins of the United States against Latin American nations.

And I wondered if the Perpetual Education Fund will serve as a means for us to begin to atone for the sins of our nation.

Can the empowerment of education begin to counterbalance the ruptures in history we forced?

Will the sins of our national predecessors visit us into the next three or four generations, or can we free our lineage from the heritage of their sins?

An Infinite Canon--D&C 68: 4

2009-10-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

And whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost shall be scripture, shall be the will of the Lord, shall be the mind of the Lord, shall be the word of the Lord, shall be the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation."(D&C 68: 4)

Elder Scott said this means we should write personal revelations down, so that our souls grow in tandem with our own personal sacred texts.

Elder Uchtdorf said words infused with divine love become as scripture, wherever or by whomever they may be spoken.

Knowledge as a Club --2 Ne 28: 4

2009-10-22T08:51:00.000-07:00

"And they shall contend one with another; and their priests shall contend one with another, and they shall teach with their learning, and deny the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance." (2 Ne 28: 4)

Our faith, though strongly advocating education, is inherently suspicious of institutionalized intellectualism. Why?

Because knowledge is light--but all too often we treat it as power.

It is our faith's sad experience that people who see themselves as having power often tend toward unrighteous dominion and abuse.

Moroni's Teachings--JSH 1: 54

2009-10-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

"Accordingly, as I had been commanded, I went at the end of each year, and at each time I found the same messenger there, and received instruction and intelligence from him at each of our interviews, respecting what the Lord was going to do, and how and in what manner his kingdom was to be conducted in the last days." (JS-H 1: 54)

Although Moroni related all things relative to the establishment of the church in that generation, Joseph understood none of them, as the apostles of old had understood nothing Jesus had said of his own death and resurrection. Experience unlocks doctrine: through the remainder of his life, Joseph's trials unlocked Moroni's teachings piece by piece, and so it was that the Restoration unfolded.

The Jaredite Voyage and the Manti Temple: Ether 6: 2-3

2009-10-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

"For it came to pass after the Lord had prepared the stones which the brother of Jared had carried up into the mount, the brother of Jared came down out of the mount, and he did put forth the stones into the vessels which were prepared, one in each end thereof; and behold, they did give light unto the vessels.

And thus the Lord caused stones to shine in darkness, to give light unto men, women, and children, that they might not cross the great waters in darkness." (Ether 6: 2-3)

When Jaredites left the terrestrial land of Bountiful to be driven by the winds toward the fullness of the promise, they had to travel in special ships which were designed to serve also as temples. It was for this reason that the Lord made the brother of Jared ask for his hand to touch the stones and fill them with light instead of simply doing so on his own initiative: a temple cannot be sanctified by God without a dedicatory request by an authorized human servant of God. It is also in memory of this ancient temple that the Lord later called shipbuilders to construct a roof for the temple in Manti: the first created after the Saints had been driven from initial destinations to an unexpected promised land.

Sealing--Hel. 10: 7

2009-10-14T15:37:00.000-07:00

"Behold, I give unto you power, that whatsoever ye shall seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven; and thus shall ye have power among this people."

What the gospel asks us is to live on earth in ways that we want sealed in heaven, and through the Atonement to loose ourselves on earth from what should not be sealed to us in heaven. Exaltation is not an entirely separate state of being: it is a sanctification, purification, and endless continuation of what the deepest and most basic gospel principles allow us to build on earth.

Have prophets with sealing power been waiting for thousands of years to seal up the whole earth? No, I think they've understood that their role is to prepare and perhaps to seal pieces. The Messiah, when he returns, will be responsible for sealing everything, and people in the millennium will help him.

All You Need is Love--Matt 6: 24

2009-10-13T11:01:00.000-07:00

"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."(Matt 6: 24)

Elder Uchtdorf used to say: Misery is the love of wrong things, happiness is the love of right things.

Thus, the pursuit of happiness (which can result in happiness only when we are already happy!) is less worthwhile than the pursuit of ethics, morality, and righteousness--which anchor us such that happiness will know where to find us.

All you need is the right kind of love.

Angels with Skin On--Heb 13: 2

2009-10-10T03:09:00.000-07:00

"Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." (Heb 13: 2)

In Mormon thought, there is no distinction between humans and angels. Angels are humans who have lived and are now glorified messengers of God, or else humans who have yet to live and fulfill specific missions on earth as part of their premortal existence.

Whenever we offer hospitality for another, then, we are always entertaining angels. Because of their mortal covering, though, how often do we do so unaware?

Thanks to Paul Bindel for making me think of this today.

Conference History Notes

2009-10-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

Simon Peter and Joseph Smith

Imagine my surprise when Elder Callister used a list of Peter's apparent weaknesses to introduce a talk on Joseph Smith--the same parallel that started this blog's church history series! I think Elder Callister powerfully articulated the counter-productivity of allowing Joseph's imperfections to keep us from enjoying the rich doctrines of the Restoration. I do think, though, that we'd be well-served not simply by overlooking Joseph's faults/failures, but by treating them as a more important part of a dynamic experience of spiritual growth that we can learn from. The stories of Peter's mistakes, after all, are valuable parts of the scripture--they're not something to overlook, but to treasure!
We don't need Joseph Smith to be an example of what's right. We can let him be an example of how to learn and grow--sometimes by being wrong and making significant mistakes--without compromising our belief in him as a prophet.

The Buttercream Gang

President Monson also invoked the church's past by relating a story about Thomas B. Marsh. This story has endured for the last century and a half, I think, because it speaks an important truth about the dangers of anger. That utility has kept alive the story even though it is probably not historically accurate.

Where did the story come from? The first historical reference I've found to it is from George A. Smith in the late 1850s, roughly twenty years after the fact and in a completely different environment from which some of the complexities of the past could be forgotten. Maybe the events George A. Smith describes did take place in some form--although I'd be surprised if a case that caused so much trouble between the leading apostle and the church really got all the way to the First Presidency without anyone writing about it. I think it's just as likely that the Marshes were never involved in a dispute over butter at all--maybe someone else had a butter dispute that George A. Smith later misremembered as involving the Marshes (just as members today sometimes quote lines from inspirational poems thinking that they are in the scriptures, or attribute pieces of wisdom to some anonymous General Authority).

Thomas B. Marsh did leave the church in 1838 and did swear an affidavit--preserved today in Missouri state archives--against Joseph Smith. But considering the context of the times, it seems much more likely that he was concerned about the aggressive military strategy and rhetoric the Mormon community took in the early and middle stages of the "Mormon War." Several thoughtful Mormons correctly predicted that an aggressive defense would prove "disastrous"--rather than protecting the community as intended, it resulted in Governor Boggs' infamous extermination order. Marsh and others who saw this miscalculation tried to escape from a Mormon community they saw as both desperate and doomed. In Marsh's case, swearing an affidavit against Joseph Smith publicly distanced him from the church enough that he could live in peace in the state and enjoy its protection of his constitutional rights. He saw a serious fault in Mormonism, bailed out, and avoided the harsh consequence of being driven from the state...

...but Mormonism didn't die. The Saints lost most of their property to their Missouri persecutors once again and walked across the frozen ground into Iowa and Illinois to think about their future. The Prophet was sent to prison in Liberty, reflected on what had gone wrong, and composed what is probably the most profound letter in Mormon history. Spring came, things changed, the Saints started over again and in a few years the movement was strong enough to face another set of crises.

Cort likes to say that the church is like a great stone rolling down a mountain and from time to time, it hits up against something hard and some pride or errors are knocked off--but the stone keeps rolling, keeps growing smoother, until one day it will be what God wants it to ultimately be.

Sometimes we, like the historical Thomas Marsh, see real problems with the course the church takes or the tenor of church culture and want to break ourselves off from the stone before it collides painfully with the consequences of its own awkwardness. And yet, says Cort, if we do we lose the momentum that comes from being part of a collective gathered by God. We miss the growth that comes through sharing the very pain we have foreseen and wished to avoid.

In 1857, Thomas Marsh sought out and was rebaptized into the church. He realized what he had missed by believing too much in his fears about what could result from a church course that was legimitately dangerous.

Did the pain he suffered from 1838-1857 in some way stand in for the pain he could have learned from had he remained with the Saints? I do not see Marsh as a pathetic figure: I see him as someone whose courage and humility ultimately made up for his mistakes.

And somewhere on the other side of the veil, where he is probably sharing the gospel with the spirits of his ancestors, I imagine Thomas Marsh happy.

The Holy Ghost in an Era of Change--Joel 2: 28-29

2009-10-07T11:03:00.000-07:00

"And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit." (Joel 2: 28-29)

Elder Scott used to say that in our days, the uncertainty is such that the young will have to prophesy just to be able to prepare themselves adequately for the future.

Ashamnu -- Isa 53: 6

2009-09-26T22:40:00.000-07:00

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." (Isa 53: 6)

Protestant Christianity today emphasizes the role of individual sin, and the need for a personal Savior, and perhaps because we are surrounded by Protestants, sometimes we think that way with them. I hope, though, that we Latter-day Saints never entirely lose sight of the "we" of the Old Testament.

We have sinned, says the prophet. Not you that one time and I in another, unrelated incident: in some important sense, our sins are connected--as it is written in another place "the whole world lieth in sin, and groaneth under darkness" (D&C 84: 49). When the Lord punished Egypt for enslaving the Israelites, he did not confine his punishment to Pharaoh but he punished the whole society that upheld Pharaoh, a society that had become complicit. Ashamnu, an ancient Hebrew prayer of confession says, meaning "we have become guilty." We, like the Egyptians, have accepted a culture of exploitation, of incompassion, of immorality and dishonesty, of judging on the outward appearance though the Lord looks at the heart.

Is there something to be said, then, for repenting not only individually, but also in a collective way? Can we stand together against the isolation of sin by acknowledging that another's sin is not entirely independent, that his or her sin is woven into our own?

Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu begins a Yom Kippur prayer: we have become guilty, we have betrayed, we have stolen. The prayer continues with a category of sin for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet as the congregation stands and confesses the faults of the community together.

Can we, who believe that no individual can be made perfect alone (D&C 128: 18), likewise seek a communal healing? Can we who believe in a shared heaven learn do more to share certain burdens (Mos 18: 8) that they may be light?

An Apology and Some Notes

2009-09-17T15:48:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the pressures of grad school (including a time- and energy-consuming struggle to get my online work taken seriously as creative nonfiction), I haven't been able to draft the longer essays I'd like to do for Church History Thursdays. If I get authorization to use these blogs for a thesis project, I'll be able to write more consistently again--wish me luck!

For now, I'll leave some notes about things I'd like to discuss to at least give you some idea where we're headed:

1) I think Joseph Smith made mistakes that contributed to discontent over the Fall of the Kirtland Bank--and that we can learn something productive from recognizing both what mistakes he might have made and what positive long-term affects the Kirtland Bank experience had on the church in spite of its flawed execution.

2) You may have heard that Joseph Smith once got into a fist-fight with an Apostle--who also happened to be his brother. Could the human details of this story become part of our understanding of a dynamic restoration?

3) Missouri's "Mormon War," in which the Governor issued an order authorizing the extermination and/or forced removal of all Mormons from the state, figures prominently in LDS cultural memory. I'd like to speculate on what might have motivated Joseph Smith, Lyman Wight, and Thomas Marsh to take three separate courses before and during the war, each of them problematic. I'd also like to talk about how my rougher version of history can be spiritually instructive today.

Thank you for your patience thus far--hopefully it will be rewarded in the near future.

A Beautiful Mormon Heresy -- 3 Ne 27: 27

2009-09-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

"And know ye that ye shall be judges of this people, according to the judgment which I shall give unto you, which shall be just. Therefore, what manner of men ought ye to be? Verily I say unto you, even as I am." (3 Ne 27: 27)

Mattathias used to say that the use of "I am" in this verse is the same as in John 8: 58 and by extension Exodus 3: 14.

To those who can see this layer of meaning, it becomes an expression of what is considered by mainstream Christianity to be one of our most radical and despicable heresies.

May we never cease to be such heretics!

A Little Help from My Friends

2009-09-03T07:00:00.000-07:00

I'll borrow my discussion on Church History this week from a few friends:

Cort once told me that the topical organization of the Joseph Smith priesthood/relief society manual gave him the sense that Joseph Smith more or less understood how the church and gospel were supposed to work all along. Only after getting hired as a Research Assistant for the Joseph Smith Papers Project did he begin to understand how principles unfolded more gradually, and that Joseph went through the changes along with everyone else. He thinks it's important to learn to see Joseph Smith as being affected by the Restoration instead of simply as affecting the Restoration.

Joe Darowski pointed out that sometimes we think of the Restoration as Joseph Smith's story, when in fact it is God's story, and Joseph Smith is one of many characters and movements that God wove into it.

Epistemology (part one) -- Acts 3: 22-23

2009-09-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

We are all, I think, well aware that the kind of knowing we talk about in testimony meetings is different in many ways than say, the kind of knowing scientists discuss. So what do we mean we say we know something? How does the way we deal with knowledge on a day to day basis complicate the term? This is the first of an occasional series on Mormon Epistemology: or the ways we think about knowledge.

Here, to start, is today's scripture:

"For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.

And it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people" Acts 3: 22-23

I once heard an elderly and faithful stake missionary in the former East Germany teach in his farewell address that, after much fasting and praying, he had come to know that the prophet mentioned in this was passage was Joseph Smith. He said it with solemnity and conviction--did it reach the hearts of his hearers?

My first reaction was to think that he should have fasted less and read more: JS-H 1: 40 specifically identifies the prophet in question as Christ.

This missionary's midrash, then, that Joseph Smith was that prophet, was almost certainly incorrect in terms of its identification of the prophet in question. So why had he felt like the the answer to his question was yes?

One possibility, of course, was that the missionary had not actually fasted and prayed about that passage, but rather about Joseph Smith, and subsequently assigned his testimony to the wrong passage. In that case, I should be careful not to condemn him, that I be not condemned (Luke 6: 37). Maybe God gives us knowledge in a connect-the-dots way: here's a little, there's a little (2 Ne 28: 30), now draw the connecting conclusions that give it life-guiding meaning on your own. And maybe we, like kindergartners, draw our lines a little squiggly so that they go through places where they don't technically belong. Maybe the missionary didn't know that part of the line, he knew some dots and got the line wrong. And does that matter? To a great extent, yes: mistaking Joseph Smith for Christ in one place is probably going to cause you problems in others. But with sufficient humility and charity, you should be able to work through the problems you cause yourself by thinking you know things you actually don't, and it'll turn out OK in the eternal scheme of things. You'll be better off for having drawn your knowledge sloppily, as it were, than if you'd stuck to a few random dots of purer revelation and drawn no conclusions at all.

Another, more intriguing possibility was that the missionary had prayed about that passage, but God had discerned an intent behind the question to know whether Joseph Smith was a rasul (like the prophet Moses promised). Perhaps God, in order to assure the missionary that Joseph Smith was indeed the prophet of the Restoration, answered the question in ways we interpret as meaning yes. That scenario gives rise to another model for our spiritual knowledge in which God's revelations are often contextual and informed by personal intent, less manifestations of absolute truths than reassurances that He is with us and approves of the course we are about to take. That would explain how God could work in images of heaven and hell when they answered specific questions about the nature of divine justice, then show a more detailed and surprising vision of three degrees of glory to Joseph and Sidney, reserving a more complete truth beyond the scope of men's preparedness for future revelation.

This model may seem to suggest that actual our "knowing" is not knowing, that we cannot be certain of any truth spiritually after all. Maybe that's correct in the strict sense, but I think the more important lesson from a view of revelation is contextual is the need for continuing revelation to "triangulate" the truth. Maybe you asked something at one point in your life, and got an answer based on an intent you later forgot. If you rely on your mind's understanding of the soul's answer, you might run into trouble. If you keep the connection between God and your soul open, however, you can continue to ask your questions as context and intent change over the years, gradually refining your sense of truth until, in some future state, you come to a promised purity and fullness of knowledge.

False Midrashim and the Fall of the Kirtland Bank (part one)

2009-08-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve heard an interesting false midrash on D&C 104: 17 several times now. It goes that the phrase “the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare” means that we don’t need to worry about things like future oil shortages because, after all, God said there would be enough.

I first heard this from a student in a Brigham Young University freshman composition class I was substitute-teaching—it was the heart of argument in an 8-page paper on energy policy. I asked him to read the next verse, and suggested that the promise is conditional (see D&C 130: 20-21) on our ability to live gospel laws: if people live modestly, if they impart of their substance to ease entrenched distributional inequalities, then there is enough for everyone. But, to butcher another scripture, if we all drive SUVs (even to church meetings two blocks away), we have no promise.

But who really wants to listen to me? Wouldn’t it be more righteous to have the faith to believe that a God who can split the water move mountains build planets can give us a little extra oil just for our faith?

It’s interesting: Mormonism’s commitment to balancing faith, works, and grace actually may be closer to productive paradox. We don’t believe in 33% faith, 33% works, 33% grace, we believe in at least 100% of each. Mormons should have:
-absolute faith in a living God’s miraculous power
-a standard of ethical and moral living that moves us toward our dream of Zion
-a total ability to let go sometimes and believe that God is great enough to save us

This is wonderful, but sometimes leaves us vulnerable to false ideas that appeal to, say, our sense of faith or righteousness. Relying on faith, we sometimes fail to be sufficiently faithful as stewards (an assignment that requires our vigilance and intelligence).

That’s what happens with the false midrash that teaches sufficient means limitless.

Marvin Hill argues it may be what happened with the Kirtland Bank, but works to distance Joseph Smith from such confusion. Next week, I’ll talk about why it’s OK to think that Joseph might have made the same error, and had to learn this lesson along with everyone else.

False Midrashim -- A of F 8

2009-08-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

"We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God"

We tend to focus on the historical translation process of the Biblical text when considering this scripture, and forget perhaps that each of us "translates" the scriptures, in a significant sense, every time we read or remember them! All of us, in fact, are constantly creating our own little midrashim, or interpretative stories, to move from words in scriptural language not entirely native to us to some sort of application or way of seeing the world. (Language, after all, as I learned from Punjabi, is as much as system of associations that changes from individual to individual and over time as a collection of vocabulary and grammar. We don't necessarily share the language created to connect God with the prophets, even if it's written some form of English.) We have to interpret the scriptures in order to live, and thanks to the spiritual Urim-and-Thummim of the gift of the Holy Ghost often do quite well, but still need to remember there is always a degree of separation between the text and our interpretations.

And so it is that I believe the scriptures to be the word of God, but understand fully that they are frequently translated incorrectly by myself and my fellow Latter-day Saints!

What makes a translation good or bad?

-To me, the stories we tell ourselves about the meaning of scripture don't necessarily need to be historically accurate to be acceptable. In Tyler Perry's play Madea Goes to Jail, for example, Madea tells her foster child that Peter stopped being able to walk on the water because he looked down, saw Jonah and the whale, and got distracted, which teaches us to mind our own business and not let other people's drama get in the way of doing what we need to do. The ahistorical nature of this thoroughly amusing midrash does more to add to than take away from its moral and spiritual productivity.

-I don't care for the idea, common among fundamentalists of every sect and religion, that a given interpretation must be wrong simply because another one is right. The ancient rabbi Rava used to teach that only the simplest solution for any question only required the use of a single passage (as opposed to a collection of several scriptural sources), and further that the same passage could be properly used to answer a near infinite number of questions! I don't know that I subsribe to the first half of Rava's system, but I enjoy the confidence in the power of revealed words inherent in the second half. Is God so poor that he could only fit a single meaning into each phrase or verse? The experience of most Latter-day Saints is that the answer is no. The same verses speak to us at different times in life with different answers. We are well acquainted with the mystical powers of revealed words, and ought to dismiss fundamentalist stubborness on single interpretations as shallow at best.

-I think an interpretation is only truly wrong when it is counter-productive. Some interpretations are always and inherently counter-productive (if you were to interpret the scriptures, for example, as encouraging you to follow Satan, you will always be wrong), most wrong interpretations, however, are more contextually counter-productive: perhaps useful in a narrow context, but problematic when overgeneralized (for example, overextending a scripture that teaches the productive truth that God can heal to counter-productively rule out scientific medicine).

An important closing question:
Is this current midrash on the nature of interpretation good or bad? What do we get out of it?

The Opposite of Pride -- Alma 4: 12

2009-08-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

"Yea, he saw great inequality among the people, some lifting themselves up with their pride, despising others, turning their backs upon the needy and the naked and those who were hungry, and those who were athirst, and those who were sick and afflicted." (Alma 4: 12)

I posted recently on the question: "what is the opposite of faith?" In that case, doubt, fear, and rebellion are only a few of the possible responses. The opposite of pride is more commonly accepted as humility, and yet what does humility mean?

In this verse, the opposites of pride must be verbs. To oppose pride is to respect instead of despise, to face the needy instead of turning our backs and closing our eyes, to to act against others' hunger and thirst, to minister to the sick, and have empathy with the afflicted.

Why do I choose to say respect instead of love? Because what passes today for Christian love is too often condescending--love without respect is also prideful.

What does it mean to face the needy? Emmanuel used to say that to relate to another face-to-face is to sense the vulnerability of the Other and that, as Rambam used to say, the loss of any one person is the loss of a whole world.

Why hunger and thirst? Perhaps the hunger is physical and the thirst spiritual, a thirsting for knowledge and peace.

Why sick and afflicted? "Sickness" is for those ailments that can be healed in this life, "affliction" is for those conditions God has given individuals to endure for the entirety of their mortal sojourn.

Money (Last Thursday's Overdue Post)

2009-08-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

Joseph Smith tells us in his 1838 history (the one we keep in the Pearl of Great Price) that Moroni warned him specifically that Satan would use the "indigent circumstances" of his father's family to tempt him to use the plates to get rich. (JS-H 1: 46) Moroni neglected to mention that publishing the translation of the plate's text would cost more than Joseph had ever owned in his life. He also didn't say anything about how that significant publication cost would only be the beginning of a long succession of financial demands that revealed projects would place on Joseph and those who believed the Book's words.

While we're intellectually aware that the early church was pretty poor, I don't know that we modern saints often consider how that constant back-of-the-mind gnawing of money worries may have influenced Joseph Smith. He does not appear to have tried to scale back plans from what he thought the Lord wanted because of a shortage of resources. He may have made some unwise choices, though, in trying to make the means sufficient for the visions he cherished.

A few thoughts:

-Was Joseph worrying about who would fund the printing of the Book of Mormon when he asked God again and again whether he could lend the 160 pages to Martin Harris? It's one matter to take "no" for an answer. It's quite another to wonder if you're going to alienate the only person with any significant financial means who believes in what you're doing. Did Joseph stay up late worrying about how his relatively wealthy friend Martin Harris would feel if he kept saying no? Did he pray a little too insistently before falling back asleep?

-The Saints sacrificed a great deal to contribute toward the building of the House of the Lord in Kirtland. Was Joseph trying too hard to generate money in other ways to fund church projects after the temple's dedication? Certainly, he appreciated sacrifices, but were there ever points when he wished he could stop asking people for money? Or when he figured they'd sacrificed enough and should be able to live in greater prospertity already?

-The Saints, under Joseph's direction, had refused to sell land after they were driven from Jackson County in 1833--they felt that to do so would be denying their faith in God's revelation of Jackson County as a sacred place. By 1838, they were settled outside Jackson County and facing pressure to move again. Joseph was still trying to pay debts left from his failed business ventures in Kirtland. Did he want too desperately to stay in a place where he hoped to establish prosperity and let some saints go too far in trying to protect it?

I don't know to what extent these are accurate and productive readings of each situation, but I do think that Joseph's complicated relationship with money deserves some attention in the way faithful Latter-day Saints think about him and the kinds of challenges he faced.

Missouri Conflict

2009-08-15T00:49:00.000-07:00

Ran across a few old news items that reminded me of church history:

26 Sept 2008: Socio-Economic-Religious Background to Conflict

12 April 2009: "Dignity", Refugees, Problematic Peace Committees

These are more or less current events in rural Orissa, one of India's less developed and modernized areas. I'm reminded of several of the social and economic factors that may have informed the Missouri conflict. The way Laxmananda Saraswati's assassination was immediately blamed on Christians reminds me of how the 1842 assassination attempt on Boggs was immediately blamed on Mormons.

I'm not saying the two conflicts are the same, of course, but maybe looking at one now can help us think about what things might have been like then.

How resonant are Orissa conflicts with Mormon/Missourian ones in the 1830s?

The Myth of Joseph Smith

2009-08-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

1. Ritz Crackers and Richard Bushman

Talked to Cort yesterday over a lunch of a few Ritz crackers about early LDS church history.

Cort and I exist in two interrelated, but distinct worlds--one in which we're busy chasing documents, trying to carve out a window to the past through what Joseph referred to in a letter as "the little narrow prison almost as it were totel darkness of paper pen and ink and a crooked bro=ken scattered and imperfect language," another in which we need that same past to operate as a repository for values and meaning, a life-enhancing myth.

I use myth in the most respectful sense of the word, to mean "a sacred story." Myths aren't necessarily untrue, the term is to differentiate between the what happened and the more significant what does it mean to us. You see, the events of a person's life alone, the traces left in artifacts and papers, aren't worth most people's time. The meaning comes through the myth that tells us what the person stands for.

Take the example of Jesus Christ. Events in his life include getting born, getting lost on a family trip, getting baptized, telling stories, writing on the sand, getting arrested, and getting killed in a particularly painful way. It's a confusing life, one not considered worth noting in any secular record from during or near his lifetime. Myths, though, taught the prepared how to understand him. There were myths of the Messiah, a God-filled individual who would transform and sanctify the world. There were myths of sacrifice and reconciliation that revealed meaning in his staggering suffering and terrifying death. And there were myths about Incarnation, and how through the example of a divine man we could come to know God. These and other myths, drawn from a variety of sources, were essential to accessing productive spiritual meaning from the events of Christ's life. I believe in Christ--and I owe that belief partly to guiding interpretative myths.

Yesterday, over Ritz crackers in the BYU library's hidden sixth floor, Cort and I talked about myths for finding meaning in the life of Joseph Smith.

Cort was particularly concerned because the myths of Joseph Smith he grew up with don't always fit as well as we might like with what we think we're learning from the written and material fragments Joseph Smith left behind. I don't think this is because our fundamental myth of Joseph Smith as a rasul, the Prophet of the Restoration, breaks down under pressure. I think the problem is with extra layers of myth we want to add for educational purposes. We want Joseph Smith not just to be a prophet, but an embodiment of all good values and pure wisdom, someone we can use anecdotally as an example of every principle, something like what Mason Weems tried to do with George Washington. Richard Bushman once reputedly described the LDS use of this approach as telling church history on credit cards--when morals are emphasized without any investment in correlation to fact, someday a reckoning will come due as those taught overdrawn myths struggle to reconcile them with our best guesses at historical reality.

We need to do more to promote myths of Joseph Smith, I told Cort, that do more to ease than to complicate our relationship with his history. That's too big a task for one day, but it's one I feel a need to start more openly working on. Encountering a new myth for a familiar figure, after all, can be exhilarating.

2. Walking on Water

I remember a Jeffrey R. Holland talk (looking it up I noticed it was halfway through my mission, which may explain why it's so vividly imprinted on my mind) called "The Grandeur of God." In that talk, Elder Holland reminded us of an important and "often uncelebrated" myth for understanding Christ, the myth of Christ's life as a revelation of the nature of the Father. It's a productive way, I think, to approach Christ and a productive way to approach God.

Perhaps a year before I heard that Elder Holland talk (if memory serves correctly, which it often doesn't), my companion and I were listening to his Truman G. Madsen tapes about the life of Joseph Smith. In one passage, I recall Madsen sharing what was probably his myth for approaching Joseph Smith, though I didn't recognize it as such at the time. Madsen said in that passage that the reason he studied Joseph Smith was to be inspired by Smith's Christlike attributes. In Smith, perhaps, Madsen hoped to see Jesus the way Elder Holland asked us to look to Jesus and to see in him God. Do we want Joseph to be a window to Jesus? To we want him to be an Incarnation of the whole gospel?

Now, I don't consider it blasphemous to look for God and Christ in any human being--I think part of exaltation is learning to see God in everyone around you, and was greatly inspired by Pres. Uchtdorf's first talk as an apostle, in which he proved himself to me to be a special witness of Christ (D&C 107: 23) by saying "I have seen the face of Christ in your faces, in your deeds, and in your exemplary lives." But I think we're going to be disappointed if we use the myth of Joseph Smith as a Christlike figure to access him the way we use Jesus as a Father-like figure when looking at his life, the same way we would be disappointed if we expected from Peter, the leader of the early Christian church, what we expect from Jesus Christ.

What are our myths of Peter? How do the scriptures make meaning out of him?

Peter is the one who walks on water, but gets frightened and sinks (Matt 14: 28-31), the one who tries to defend the Prince of Peace by cutting off a servant's ear (John 18: 10), the one who denies Christ and bitterly weeps (Matt 26: 75), the one who has and embraces a movement-changing vision (Acts 10: 9-28), but later gets rebuked by Paul for being afraid of revealing how far that vision has taken his faith from his people's customs (Gal 2: 11-14).

Our myth of Peter is a one of our greatest myths of discipleship and church leadership. It is about miraculous faith accompanied by devastating failures in faith, about startling visions and doctrines coupled with burdensome day-to-day business and persistent inequalities. We don't expect Peter to do everything right, or to embody every positive principle. Part of his myth is the ways that he falls short and fails. (Can we see Christ's grace in Peter's stumbling?)

What if we approached Joseph Smith the way we do Peter? What if, instead of expecting him to have all the answers, we were interested in the moments throughout his prophetic career that left him looking for guidance, as a gospel gradually emerged? What if it was OK for him to have prejudiced based on his place and time of origin, as Peter clearly did, and mostly importantly--what if we could replace some stories about how Joseph Smith lived the principles of the gospel with some stories about how he struggled with them? We don't want to speak evil of the Lord's anointed, certainly, but can we learn to speak of his failures productively and well? Can they play a greater role in our meaning-making myths of Joseph Smith?

I think that will start with the faithful learning to tell new Joseph Smith stories that fit the Peter sort of myth instead of the George Washington one.

3. Church History Thursdays

I don't think I'm the only one working on this, of course. Developing more reconcilable myths is a widespread endeavor, especially since the advent of the internet.

My personal contribution to this broad and scattered project will be to start a subset of posts on this blog dedicated to new ways of telling stories from the history of the Restored Church. We'll try to make these thoughts a regular Thursday event--some thoughts may be significantly shorter than others.

I hope you find them productive ethically and spiritually, as well as more historically resonant.

What is the opposite of faith? -- Deut. 31: 27

2009-08-09T13:23:00.000-07:00

"For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck: behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the Lord; and how much more after my death?" (Deut. 31: 27)

The word faith is surprisingly difficult to define: it can mean acceptance of a set of beliefs, it can be used to express an attitude of confidence and trust. To be "faithful" implies consistency and fidelity, talking about a "faith" denotes a set of beliefs and an accompanying community of relationships. Why did God choose such a slippery word to instruct us?

We try to anchor ourselves to the word, at times, by speaking of its opposite.

If the opposite of faith is doubt, faith is primarily an intellectual principle, practically synonymous with belief (not an unslippery word itself, as Mark 9: 24 shows).

If the opposite of faith is fear, then faith is primarily an emotional principle, trust made courage--but what, then, of the scripturally desirable fear of the Lord?

Perhaps it is better to see rebellion as faith's opposite. Faith, then, is a more a matter of how we choose to align ourselves than about the more passive elements of belief. Faith is less a matter of head or heart than of feet, and where they stand.

Or maybe it's best to see faith as a principle of many opposites, a word God made slippery precisely so that it can face us in every aspect of self.

Who Needs to Know? -- Mark 1: 11

2009-08-07T14:33:00.000-07:00

"And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." (Mark 1: 11)

Three verses report on what God said after Jesus' baptism: Matt. 3: 17, Luke 3: 22, and this verse in Mark. Only Matthew has God saying "this is" my beloved son. Mark and Luke both have "thou art."

What does the one word difference imply?

To me, the change seems to indicate a different intended audience. In Matthew, God is speaking to the people who are present, bearing testimony, as it were, of Jesus.

In Mark and Luke, however, the words are clearly intended for Jesus himself--as a reassurance, perhaps, that his course thus far has been pleasing in his Father's sight? As a revelation that his intimations that God is his father in perhaps more than the way in which God is the father of all human beings are correct?

Or did Jesus simply need to hear the voice of God in order to start his ministry? Did he need to hear directly in that moment: "you are ready"?

The Point -- 2 Nephi 2: 25

2009-08-05T23:48:00.000-07:00

"Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." (2 Ne 2: 25)

"Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein." (Luke 18: 17)

The midrash?

'Nuff said.

Photos courtesy of V. Elisabeth Westwood

Ruling the World -- Matthew 18: 1

2009-07-31T14:29:00.000-07:00

"At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"

We typically read this as evidence of the Apostles' petty egotism, but a conversation with Cort today put it in a whole new light. Why did the Apostles raise this question?

My midrash today is that they were trying to figure out how to rule the world.

You see, in the earliest moments of Christianity, spiritual and political messianic hopes were probably not disentangled in any way, shape, or form. The apostles probably believed that the day would come when Jesus literally ruled the Earth (or at least the land of Israel, the only truly important part of the earth from their frame of reference). Things Jesus said would have actively encouraged this expectation: in the preceding few verses (Matt 17: 24-27), for example, Jesus makes the claim that as heirs of the king, the disciples are by right exempt from the temple tax (though he advises Peter to pay it any way to avoid trouble). Would Peter have been so off the mark to relate this story to other disciples as evidence that Jesus had a right to political power? The apostles probably lived in expectation of the day when miraculous, apocalyptic events (a legion of angels a la Matt 26: 53? a spontaneous submission of Gentile kings to the anointed one as in Isa. 49: 22-23?) would bring political power into Jesus' hands and make them into a sort of cabinet for the world's new order, to reign under him as kings and judges over the tribes of Israel (Luke 22: 29-30). Yes, for now what was Caesar's would be rendered unto Caesar (Matt 22: 21), but anytime now God would strip Caesar of what was rightfully Christ's.

The question, then, as to who will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven may have more to do with jurisdiction than with ego. Who will serve in what position in the coming literal kingdom, the heaven to be established in a messianic age on earth? Should we start finding small ways to organize and prepare now for when that transfer of power comes?

Jesus' famous response (Matt 18: 4) actually does nothing to dismiss these notions, and was probably not intended to. Rather than limiting their expectations about receiving political power, Jesus teaches them something about the ethical exercise of political power. How should you act if placed in charge of the world? is perhaps the real context for his short sermon.

Ah...and how do we act, when moment and circumstance temporarily lend us power over another person's world? Because all across the world, every day, can it truly be maintained that such states do not naturally and accidentally occur?

One month in, what does this blog do for you?

2009-07-27T22:14:00.000-07:00

My aunt Juli once told me there's an old Jewish tradition that says no one should study the scriptures all alone--whenever possible, you should have someone to discuss the text with. There are numerous possible reasons for this advice: it halves the chances that people will interpret the scriptures as asking them to do something terrifying and psychopathic, for example. On a brighter note, the tradition suggests that there's some extra effect of human interaction as part of study, that discussing scripture is somehow far better than simply reading it.

Does this count? I haven't done a great job of actively inviting participation in this blog's first month, so it's not the dialogic study the sages would have suggested for me yet.

What are you getting out of this so far? Please comment.

Anime Ammon -- D&C 1: 24

2009-07-23T11:02:00.001-07:00

"Behold, I am God and have spoken it; these commandments are of me, and were given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language, that they might come to understanding."

What is the manner of our language and how does it change over time? Is there an inherent value to connecting with God, at times, in the manner of our own language, whatever it may be?

I talked to an agent for Deseret Book several months ago about the possibility of publishing an additional illustrated version of the Book of Mormon, in which the characters were anthropomorphized people-animals (a la, for example, Brian Jacques novels) rather than people. I suggested this partly just because my brother used to draw Book of Mormon characters that way, and partly because I thought obviously imaginary renderings like that would free up children to visualize characters on their own and solve the problem of children taking problematic existing depictions literally.

The group I was with was excited about the proposal, but the agent was not. He said that customers are pretty sensitive about what they get in terms of religious depictions and was pessimisstic about the ability of such a work to sell.

If I were to re-pitch a similar concept today, though--and I probably should--I would frame it as a "kids illustrate Book of Mormon stories" project and incorporate a variety of styles coming from actual young artists around the world. D&C 1: 24, I think, provides an appropriate justification: giving children a chance to receive these stories in the manner of their own language might help them come more quickly and organically to meaningful understanding.

To give you a flavor of such a work, I present the following three drawings by Braden and Franklin, two of my own primary students.

Braden loves Ammon, and it shows.

One Sunday the boys had a heated discussion on the topic: "Who would you have joined: Coriantumr or Shiz?" Franklin has been fascinated with that story every since. (Tangential note: Gabe insisted he would've hidden in a rock to avoid the war. The other boys told him that Coriantumr and Shiz were sweeping the land to force everyone to fight, and that Gabe, lacking a prophet's protection, would have been found and forced to fight. Gabe responded that he would have hidden in Ether's rock, taking quite literally the sentiment that we should follow the prophet.)

This last one is Braden's. It's Jesus, I think during his visit to the Nephites (I also think Braden meant to draw feet, but ran out of time). I prefer this Jesus's wrinkled face and intense gaze to the glowing Jesus of of the Simon Dewey and Greg Olson paintings that seem to dominate the LDS market at the moment. The manner of Braden's language has more power for me.

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled midrash...

2009-07-21T16:57:00.000-07:00

...for this very interesting link. These bloggers report on a visit by LDS missionaries and I think it's a great window into what missionaries look like to many people. Having served a mission myself, it's kind of fun to step out of what was my frame of reference at the time and think about how many of the people I interacted with may have seen me.

Among the most positive things: the missionaries prayed for the blog of those whom they visited. Let's help answer the missionaries' prayer by visiting. (Probably should leave the follow up to the missionaries, though. These people don't need every Mormon on the internet asking what they thought about their reading.)

Lehi the Heretic -- 1 Ne 1: 19-20

2009-07-20T13:02:00.000-07:00

"And it came to pass that the Jews did mock him because of the things which he testified of them; for he truly testified of their wickedness and their abominations; and he testified that the things which he saw and heard, and also the things which he read in the book, manifested plainly of the coming of a Messiah, and also the redemption of the world.

And when the Jews heard these things they were angry with him; yea, even as with the prophets of old, whom they had cast out, and stoned, and slain; and they also sought his life, that they might take it away." (from 1 Ne 1: 19-20)

When Lehi told the people about their own sins, they "mocked" him. Mocking, to me, suggests they aren't taking it too hard: these are callous and self-assured sinners who don't feel a need to respond directly to charges of misconduct.

Then Lehi tells them about a vision he had and a book he read in that vision which gave him a specific brand of Messianic hope--and that's when they get angry and try to kill him.

So, let me get this straight: a man comes claiming to be a prophet and tells you that you are about to be destroyed in consequence of purported sins, and you think he's deluded but amusing. Then he tells you that a Messiah will come and redeem the world--and you want him dead? How does that make any sense?

I remember an investigator complaining once about the overt anticipation of Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon: Biblical prophecies of Christ's coming, he explained, were invariably verschluesselt (encoded, hidden, locked, in need of a key) whereas the Book of Mormon ones seemed too direct, too overt. My explanations at the time were that the translation process may have removed some of the culture-bound crypticness of Book of Mormon prophecy in favor of overt and accessible modern language, or that the total geographic separation from the land where Christ would be born made God more willing to be overt in his revelations to Nephite prophets.

My more recent theory, though, is that Lehi, and Nephi after him, were simply heretics whose version of Messianic hopes placed them outside the acceptable constraints of mainstram Judaism. They were more overtly Christian in their thinking and "bold" in their preaching, and that's a big part of why they had to leave, lest they suffer the same fate as Zenos (see Hel. 8: 19).

Nephite religion, then, should be viewed less as a direct extension of Judaism than as a breakaway new religious movement differentiated above all by the divergent Messianic teachings of its founders. At approximately the same time that Buddha was departing from classical Hindu thought by his teachings on the nature of spiritual discipline and his divergent doctrine of the soul, Lehi and especially Nephi were stepping out of conventional Judaism with their ideas of how the Messiah should be defined and what redemption would constitute.

Nobel Prize Caliber Revelation -- D&C 104: 17-18

2009-07-18T23:57:00.000-07:00

"For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.
Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment." (D&C 104: 17-18)

The implicit argument here is that there are enough resources for the appropriate use of all men, and that it's our collective failure to allocate them adequately that leads to poverty and starvation. Amartya Sen was awarded a Nobel Prize for saying just that.

Rasul and Nabi

2009-07-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

I was talking once with an elderly Baha'i from Iran, who asked numerous questions about my faith and church. When I told him we'd had fifteen prophets lead our church since 1830, he was stunned. A prophet's arrival, he said, is not an everyday event. A prophet comes perhaps only once every thousand years--how could we claim to have had fifteen in so short a time? And why would we need to revolutionize religion so often?

I referred to the Biblical tradition we would each have some familiarity with. There had been a Moses, but also a Joshua, an Isaiah, a Daniel. Moses had brought the Law, I explained, but even with further prophets to guide them, people barely remembered it! Joseph Smith had restored our kind of religion to earth, but every generation needs a prophet to lead and guide it.

He nodded, apparently satisfied with my answer, and explained, "I've been told Arabic is the most perfect language in the world; maybe it's true. In Arabic, there are two words for "prophet": rasul and nabi. A rasul brings a new kind of religion; a nabi helps guide it. Every rasul is also a nabi, but not every nabi is a rasul." He went on to say that Baha'is see Muhammed not as the last rasul, but rather the last nabi of his age, leaving room for Baha'is to accept the claim of Muhammed to be the "last prophet" (nabi) and yet to believe in the nineteenth-century revelations Baha'u'llah as a new prophet (rasul).

Which makes me wonder if it's easier in the handful of LDS branches where Arabic is spoken to talk about our doctrine of dispensations. We believe, after all, in a distinction between prophets who ushered in new dispensations and prophets who operated within existing dispensations, and why not use the words rasul and nabi to talk about that difference? (We wouldn't be using the words in exactly the same way as Muslims do, or in the somewhat different way Baha'is do, but we don't use most Biblical terms quite the way most Protestants do, either. It is the right of every faith to give new meaning to old language.)

So here's to the rasuls Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, and Joseph Smith, with apologies to those who I have missed--and here's to the many nabis we honor alongside them, to the tireless Joshuas and Brigham Youngs, sent by God to guide his people in the wake of recently-arrived dispensations.

Jonathan Edwards and Joseph Smith -- Gen 3: 15

2009-07-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

"And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."

Jonathan Edwards used to say: in reference to the seed of the woman, it is not written "they" shall bruise, but "it" shall bruise --"her seed," then, is in reference to a promised One. In this passage, then, is the first implicit Messianic promise of the scriptures.

Joseph Smith said: not "bruise" but "crush" the serpent's head, and that Adam and Eve received direct as well as implicit promises, that from the days of our first ancestors these things have been taught openly to those who converse with God.

The Book of Mormon as Midrash? -- Deut. 30: 19

2009-07-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

"I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live"

Could you read the whole Book of Mormon productively as if it were a midrash on this single verse?

Peter Spangenberg introduced me to the German word"nachhaltig" while I was living in Eberswalde. I realized years later that there's an English equivalent, "sustainable" but something about having to learn the word made me think more deeply about the underlying concept: "nachhaltig" as I came to understand it, described a way of doing things that didn't break down in and of itself (like most ways of existing do). The point of commandments, I came to believe, was to prepare us to live in a way that was ultimately and eternally nachhaltig, ethically and spiritually sustainable. Thus, perhaps, the saying of Moses that our choice is one of life or death, for us and our posterity. And yes, why not?, a Book as explanatory story, not only proclaiming,"For the Lord God hath said that: Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; and inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence." (2 Ne. 4: 4) but also following cycles of pride, rebellion, excess, and decay across generations, in and out of centuries.